March 4, 2025 • 10 mins
Some individuals do all they could to fix what is broken, while others become part of the problem. Here are two stories to illustrate what we mean.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of
the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all
of these amazing tales are right there on display, just
waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
(00:36):
Virginia shivered as she limped along the mountain road, her
prosthetic leg dragging in the deep snow. There was nothing
but danger and death behind her. In France, the Gestapo
had learned her identity, and she'd woken days ago to
find her own face staring back at her from thousands
of posters that blanketed the city. Her only hope now
(00:56):
was Spain. She wondered what would happen if she died
out here, crossing the Pyrenees on foot. Would anyone find her?
Would her body make it back to America? Because if
Virginia had done her job well, no one would ever
know who she was. And Virginia was very, very good
at her job. Born in nineteen oh six in Baltimore, Maryland,
(01:17):
to a middle class family, Virginia discovered early on that
she longed for adventure. She was great with languages, so
after studying French, Italian, and German in college, she ended
up moving to Poland. There she worked as a clerk
in the US embassy in Warsaw. Her real ambition, though,
was to be a diplomat. Virginia thought that she could
(01:37):
be useful in international relations. Yet, despite multiple applications and
an appeal to Franklin Delano Roosevelt himself, the State Department
wouldn't make her an ambassador. There's a big chance gender
played a role in that, at the time, only six
US ambassadors were women. Around the same time that Virginia
was petitioning the State Department, an incident happened that defined
(01:58):
her young life. When she was twenty seven years old,
she shot herself in the foot while hunting in Turkey.
The wound quickly developed gangreen, and to save her life,
doctors amputated her leg. For the rest of Virginia's life,
she walked using an ill fitting wooden prosthetic that she
nicknamed Cuthbert, which gave her a pronounced limp. Virginia continued
(02:19):
to work in US embassies in Turkey, Italy, and Estonia
until World War II broke out. Across Europe, constantly denied
an opportunity to be an ambassador. Now, Virginia believed that
she could do something that made a difference. Starting in
nineteen forty, she volunteered as an ambulance driver in France.
She quickly met a British spy who recognized Virginia's tenacity,
(02:40):
then put her in touch with British intelligence. By nineteen
forty one, she was one of their first female undercover
agents in France. Posing as a New York Times reporter,
Virginia relied on the Nazis' misogyny. You see, at the time,
the Nazis refused to believe that women were capable of
being a spy. Stationed in Lyon, France, she befriended both
(03:01):
nuns and sex workers, and that way she heard information
that the Germans dropped at church and at the brothel.
She used this intelligence to secure safe houses for the
French resistance and help them plan attacks. Before long, Klaus Barbie,
the infamous Gestapo officer in charge of intelligence in Leon,
became aware that someone was spying on the Nazis. When
(03:22):
he figured out that it was Virginia, he set his
Gestapo officers after her demanding that they bring the limping
lady to him. Although Virginia was able to evade capture
by wearing a number of disguises, by nineteen forty two
she was forced to flee to Spain, walking through the
Pyrenees Mountains in the dead of winter. After her great escape,
England wouldn't send her back into the field, but the Americans,
(03:45):
with their brand new Intelligence office, were looking for a
woman with her experience, so in nineteen forty four, Virginia
returned to France as an American OSS agent. Knowing that
Klaus Barbie had her description, Virginia went deep undercover. On
her SAE second tour, she dyed her hair gray and
drew wrinkles on her face to appear as an old woman.
(04:06):
She ground down her two perfect American teeth and disguised
her limp with long skirts and an old woman's shuffling steps.
On her second tour, Virginia organized fighters to blow up bridges,
derailed trains, and sabotage phone lines. On D Day, Virginia's
efforts directly prevented reinforcements from reaching the Nazis in Normandy
(04:27):
and stopped the troops on the beach from retreating. When
Virginia returned home after the war, she refused to talk
about her service. She reasoned that many of her spy
friends had lost their lives after coming clean to the
wrong person, even when she received a Distinguished Service Cross.
The only witness that Virginia allowed at the ceremony was
her own mother. Virginia spent the next decade working for
(04:50):
the CIA before retiring. She passed away in nineteen eighty
two with her story still unknown in the intelligence circles, which,
in her line of work wasn't really bad thing. After all,
a good spy is someone who doesn't attract attention, which
is why Virginia Hall is probably the greatest spy you've
never heard of. We've all heard of royal food tasters,
(05:25):
unlucky peasants whose job it was to taste the food
of kings and queens to see if it had been poisoned.
It wasn't a great job, and it wasn't a fool
proof method of preventing poisoning. I mean, what if the
taster simply had more immunity to the poison than the ruler.
What if the tasters bite of food happened to be
poison free? But the rest of the dish was still deadly.
(05:46):
What if the taster just threw their spoonful of food
over their shoulder when the king wasn't looking well. One
ancient ruler considered all of this and developed a method
of poison prevention that remains one of the most curious
in history. Mithridatees the sixth learned of the dangers of
poison from a young age. In one twenty BC, when
(06:07):
he was still in his adolescence, his father, Mithridatees the
fifth died of poisoning at a massive banquet. It was
a violent and dramatic death too, that stayed with his
son for the rest of his life. The younger Mithridates
had his mother, who was also his aunt, locked in
prison along with his brother. He then married his own
sister and officially became king of Pontus. For those who
(06:29):
don't know, Pontus was a Greek kingdom about as far
from Greece as could be. The capital, Sinop, was the
exact center of the southern coast of the Black Sea.
Mithridedes knew that he would have to be tough to
survive against the Armenians to the east, the Romans to
the west. He exercised constantly, but he also prepared his
body in other ways. Not wanting to meet with the
(06:50):
same fate as his father, he allegedly developed a mixture
that contained every known toxin, but just in tiny amounts.
He mixed it with honey, and then he let it
hardened and consumed one every day as a little piece
of candy. This supposedly made him immune to every poison,
and he made this fact known throughout public demonstrations, where
(07:10):
he would drink whole bottles of poison and walk away
without issue. With his legend secured, Mithridates led the armies
of Pontus north along the eastern coast of the Black Sea,
conquering modern day Crimea. Not satisfied with this, he returned
south to Sinop and then went west and conquered most
of modern day Turkey. This was a bold move, as
(07:31):
part of Asia Minor belonged to the Roman Empire, and
thus began the first of not one, not two, but
three wars between Mithridates and Rome. These three conflicts are
known collectively as the Mithridatic Wars, showing what a legendary
and persistent enemy he was to the Romans. He once
conquered so far west that he was able to connect
(07:52):
his kingdom to the Greek homeland, finally reuniting with fellow
Greeks in city states like Athens and Macedonia. Now, truth
be told, part of his success came down to good timing.
The Romans were engaged in a chaotic civil war at
this time, which led to their leaders making peace with
Mithridates when they otherwise would have kept on fighting him.
They were further distracted by wars with other enemies, including
(08:14):
the legendary slave uprising led by Spartacus. By seventy two BC,
many of these conflicts had been settled, though the Romans
were finally ready to take revenge. Roman general Lucullus began
a now legendary military campaign wherein he rapidly took back
most of the territory that Mithridates had conquered. He did
so with a speed that seems more appropriate for a
(08:37):
board game than real life. When Lucullus was called back
to Rome, another famous Roman general, Pompey the Great, continued
his work chasing Mithridates all the way to his last
remaining conquests north of the Black Sea. In sixty five BC,
Mithridates had left his part of his kingdom under the
rule of one of his sons, who refused to fight
(08:57):
the Romans any further. Knowing that it was a lot cause,
Mithridates then killed him in response, which proved a step
too far for another of his sons, who led Mithridates's
remaining army in a revolt against their king. Finding himself
truly cornered, Mithridates realized that his long life of poison, betrayal,
and conquest had all been for nothing. It turns out
(09:19):
that he kept a dose of the one poison that
could still kill him in his sword hilt, and he
prepared to take it. But he happened to have a
few of his daughters with him, and they begged him
to share the poison, knowing that they would not be
treated well by their brother if he captured them, and
so being a good father, I guess he shared the poison.
But in doing so he made a mistake, because now
(09:41):
when he drank the remainder, he found that it wasn't
enough to overwhelm his already toxic blood. Instead, he had
to take a dagger and plunge it into his own chest.
It's ironic, really, he had worked his entire life to
avoid assassination by poison, so when death finally did come knocking,
that death was so much more painful. I hope you've
(10:06):
enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe
for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the
show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was
created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership with how Stuff Works.
I make another award winning show called Lore, which is
a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can
(10:28):
learn all about it over at the Worldoflore dot com.
And until next time, stay curious.
Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of
the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all
of these amazing tales are right there on display, just
waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
(00:36):
Virginia shivered as she limped along the mountain road, her
prosthetic leg dragging in the deep snow. There was nothing
but danger and death behind her. In France, the Gestapo
had learned her identity, and she'd woken days ago to
find her own face staring back at her from thousands
of posters that blanketed the city. Her only hope now
(00:56):
was Spain. She wondered what would happen if she died
out here, crossing the Pyrenees on foot. Would anyone find her?
Would her body make it back to America? Because if
Virginia had done her job well, no one would ever
know who she was. And Virginia was very, very good
at her job. Born in nineteen oh six in Baltimore, Maryland,
(01:17):
to a middle class family, Virginia discovered early on that
she longed for adventure. She was great with languages, so
after studying French, Italian, and German in college, she ended
up moving to Poland. There she worked as a clerk
in the US embassy in Warsaw. Her real ambition, though,
was to be a diplomat. Virginia thought that she could
(01:37):
be useful in international relations. Yet, despite multiple applications and
an appeal to Franklin Delano Roosevelt himself, the State Department
wouldn't make her an ambassador. There's a big chance gender
played a role in that, at the time, only six
US ambassadors were women. Around the same time that Virginia
was petitioning the State Department, an incident happened that defined
(01:58):
her young life. When she was twenty seven years old,
she shot herself in the foot while hunting in Turkey.
The wound quickly developed gangreen, and to save her life,
doctors amputated her leg. For the rest of Virginia's life,
she walked using an ill fitting wooden prosthetic that she
nicknamed Cuthbert, which gave her a pronounced limp. Virginia continued
(02:19):
to work in US embassies in Turkey, Italy, and Estonia
until World War II broke out. Across Europe, constantly denied
an opportunity to be an ambassador. Now, Virginia believed that
she could do something that made a difference. Starting in
nineteen forty, she volunteered as an ambulance driver in France.
She quickly met a British spy who recognized Virginia's tenacity,
(02:40):
then put her in touch with British intelligence. By nineteen
forty one, she was one of their first female undercover
agents in France. Posing as a New York Times reporter,
Virginia relied on the Nazis' misogyny. You see, at the time,
the Nazis refused to believe that women were capable of
being a spy. Stationed in Lyon, France, she befriended both
(03:01):
nuns and sex workers, and that way she heard information
that the Germans dropped at church and at the brothel.
She used this intelligence to secure safe houses for the
French resistance and help them plan attacks. Before long, Klaus Barbie,
the infamous Gestapo officer in charge of intelligence in Leon,
became aware that someone was spying on the Nazis. When
(03:22):
he figured out that it was Virginia, he set his
Gestapo officers after her demanding that they bring the limping
lady to him. Although Virginia was able to evade capture
by wearing a number of disguises, by nineteen forty two
she was forced to flee to Spain, walking through the
Pyrenees Mountains in the dead of winter. After her great escape,
England wouldn't send her back into the field, but the Americans,
(03:45):
with their brand new Intelligence office, were looking for a
woman with her experience, so in nineteen forty four, Virginia
returned to France as an American OSS agent. Knowing that
Klaus Barbie had her description, Virginia went deep undercover. On
her SAE second tour, she dyed her hair gray and
drew wrinkles on her face to appear as an old woman.
(04:06):
She ground down her two perfect American teeth and disguised
her limp with long skirts and an old woman's shuffling steps.
On her second tour, Virginia organized fighters to blow up bridges,
derailed trains, and sabotage phone lines. On D Day, Virginia's
efforts directly prevented reinforcements from reaching the Nazis in Normandy
(04:27):
and stopped the troops on the beach from retreating. When
Virginia returned home after the war, she refused to talk
about her service. She reasoned that many of her spy
friends had lost their lives after coming clean to the
wrong person, even when she received a Distinguished Service Cross.
The only witness that Virginia allowed at the ceremony was
her own mother. Virginia spent the next decade working for
(04:50):
the CIA before retiring. She passed away in nineteen eighty
two with her story still unknown in the intelligence circles, which,
in her line of work wasn't really bad thing. After all,
a good spy is someone who doesn't attract attention, which
is why Virginia Hall is probably the greatest spy you've
never heard of. We've all heard of royal food tasters,
(05:25):
unlucky peasants whose job it was to taste the food
of kings and queens to see if it had been poisoned.
It wasn't a great job, and it wasn't a fool
proof method of preventing poisoning. I mean, what if the
taster simply had more immunity to the poison than the ruler.
What if the tasters bite of food happened to be
poison free? But the rest of the dish was still deadly.
(05:46):
What if the taster just threw their spoonful of food
over their shoulder when the king wasn't looking well. One
ancient ruler considered all of this and developed a method
of poison prevention that remains one of the most curious
in history. Mithridatees the sixth learned of the dangers of
poison from a young age. In one twenty BC, when
(06:07):
he was still in his adolescence, his father, Mithridatees the
fifth died of poisoning at a massive banquet. It was
a violent and dramatic death too, that stayed with his
son for the rest of his life. The younger Mithridates
had his mother, who was also his aunt, locked in
prison along with his brother. He then married his own
sister and officially became king of Pontus. For those who
(06:29):
don't know, Pontus was a Greek kingdom about as far
from Greece as could be. The capital, Sinop, was the
exact center of the southern coast of the Black Sea.
Mithridedes knew that he would have to be tough to
survive against the Armenians to the east, the Romans to
the west. He exercised constantly, but he also prepared his
body in other ways. Not wanting to meet with the
(06:50):
same fate as his father, he allegedly developed a mixture
that contained every known toxin, but just in tiny amounts.
He mixed it with honey, and then he let it
hardened and consumed one every day as a little piece
of candy. This supposedly made him immune to every poison,
and he made this fact known throughout public demonstrations, where
(07:10):
he would drink whole bottles of poison and walk away
without issue. With his legend secured, Mithridates led the armies
of Pontus north along the eastern coast of the Black Sea,
conquering modern day Crimea. Not satisfied with this, he returned
south to Sinop and then went west and conquered most
of modern day Turkey. This was a bold move, as
(07:31):
part of Asia Minor belonged to the Roman Empire, and
thus began the first of not one, not two, but
three wars between Mithridates and Rome. These three conflicts are
known collectively as the Mithridatic Wars, showing what a legendary
and persistent enemy he was to the Romans. He once
conquered so far west that he was able to connect
(07:52):
his kingdom to the Greek homeland, finally reuniting with fellow
Greeks in city states like Athens and Macedonia. Now, truth
be told, part of his success came down to good timing.
The Romans were engaged in a chaotic civil war at
this time, which led to their leaders making peace with
Mithridates when they otherwise would have kept on fighting him.
They were further distracted by wars with other enemies, including
(08:14):
the legendary slave uprising led by Spartacus. By seventy two BC,
many of these conflicts had been settled, though the Romans
were finally ready to take revenge. Roman general Lucullus began
a now legendary military campaign wherein he rapidly took back
most of the territory that Mithridates had conquered. He did
so with a speed that seems more appropriate for a
(08:37):
board game than real life. When Lucullus was called back
to Rome, another famous Roman general, Pompey the Great, continued
his work chasing Mithridates all the way to his last
remaining conquests north of the Black Sea. In sixty five BC,
Mithridates had left his part of his kingdom under the
rule of one of his sons, who refused to fight
(08:57):
the Romans any further. Knowing that it was a lot cause,
Mithridates then killed him in response, which proved a step
too far for another of his sons, who led Mithridates's
remaining army in a revolt against their king. Finding himself
truly cornered, Mithridates realized that his long life of poison, betrayal,
and conquest had all been for nothing. It turns out
(09:19):
that he kept a dose of the one poison that
could still kill him in his sword hilt, and he
prepared to take it. But he happened to have a
few of his daughters with him, and they begged him
to share the poison, knowing that they would not be
treated well by their brother if he captured them, and
so being a good father, I guess he shared the poison.
But in doing so he made a mistake, because now
(09:41):
when he drank the remainder, he found that it wasn't
enough to overwhelm his already toxic blood. Instead, he had
to take a dagger and plunge it into his own chest.
It's ironic, really, he had worked his entire life to
avoid assassination by poison, so when death finally did come knocking,
that death was so much more painful. I hope you've
(10:06):
enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe
for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the
show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was
created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership with how Stuff Works.
I make another award winning show called Lore, which is
a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can
(10:28):
learn all about it over at the Worldoflore dot com.
And until next time, stay curious.
Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities News
Host
Aaron Mahnke
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