Lost Bones

Pam, are you here to game with me? In a minute, Ryan, but first, it's time to share what's happening on the 10 News Podcast. The 10 News is a kids news podcast for curious 8-12-year-olds that even grown-ups can learn from. What else is there to say? That we cover everything from the Supreme Court and the warn Ukraine to Pokemon and Minecraft, and we'll always tell you 10 things you need to know. And we're available wherever you get your podcasts. Is it game time now, Pam? It's game time, Ryan. Let's go! Yeah, that's right. It's Mick, and I'll be back in Boston on Sunday, April 26th for WBWR's mega awesome, super huge, wicked, fun podcast play date. I perform at noon just after my friends from greaking out who go on it to end. Greaking out and the past and the curious, throw in some grim, grim, grim, grimness and you have a really special day of live podcast fun. I can't wait. It happens at WBWR's City Space, and is one of my absolute favorite events. Details and tickets for the entire weekend are at WBUR.org. I also have links at my website, and I'll have a very special guest. I can't wait to see you in Boston. You're listening to an Air Wave Media Podcast. Hello friends! Welcome to the past and the curious. It is I, Mix Olive and host of The Past and the Curious, and I am in possession of all 206 of my bones. I have all of my bones, as far as I know. In comparison, the people that you're going to hear about in the stories today do not have all of their bones. Now, they're not alive, which is how their bones wound up in different places, and in some cases you'll see we don't even know where they are. We're pretty sure they got split up and wound up in a lot of different places, but people didn't keep track. So there's some missing bones. Okay, yeah, it's just a fact. Now, the first story that you're going to hear though, a very famous classical composer, and you'll hear some of his music as well. I didn't use all my own music for this particular episode. I used some of the composer and questions music. His name was George Frederick Hondel. I found some of his beautiful music in the public domain archives. His grave has some extra bones, so go figure. Joseph Heiden is buried in a beautiful tomb in Eisenstadt, Austria. If you ever go there and you try to open his casket, you will be arrested by security. Why would you do that? But if you're super insistent, and a sweet talker, and you somehow manage to convince them to let you take a peek, or you're just a speedy casket opener, and can peel back the heavy lid before anyone can stop your weird mission to see what's inside, well, you're going to be surprised to find three things in there. One skeleton of a human body, and two human skulls. Yep, that's right. Two skulls. Now I know what you're wondering. Did Joseph Heiden, the famed classical composer, hero to Mozart and so-called "father of the symphony" have two heads? No, of course not. He was a unahead, a lone dome, a mono-noggin. So where then did this second head come from? Well, it's kind of a funny story. Maybe you've heard the word "sudo science" before. Maybe you've heard it recently. A pseudo science is any belief that claims to be scientific and based in fact, but does not actually hold up to the scientific method. In other words, it seems logical if you don't question it or investigate it with honest information and actual scrutiny. There's a lot of pseudo science floating around these days, but that ain't new. Beginning in the 1700s, one of the most popular pseudo sciences was "Frenology". Put your hand on your head and rub it around. If you've got hair, try to feel through that hair, and notice any bumps or dips that your skull might have. We've all got lumpy skull bones, and like a fingerprint, all of our lovely scully lumps are different. Unique. That's great. None of us are walking around with a head, that's a perfect sphere. We'd look like a crudely drawn balloon-headed cartoon character if we did. But people who believed in "Frenology" thought that those subtle bumps and different shapes could tell you everything you needed to know about a person's mental and character traits. By feeling bumps in one place and dips in another, they believe that they could predict things about a person, even judge their character. In their own bumpy minds, some believed that head bumps could indicate things like a person's ability to be good with numbers, their likelihood to be honest, potential to excel at art, or even be a criminal. Of course, this is bunk. We are far more complex of creatures than this, and you certainly cannot tell character traits from someone's physical body. More than one person with a bony head lump or a particular skull shape was probably told that they would be a violent criminal, when all they wanted to do was make horseshoes or read books or whatever. It's a bad idea to place limits on people like this. Nevertheless, "Frenology" fans were always looking for skulls to prove that their belief was real, and unfortunately that often meant stealing skulls from graves. And two "Frenology" fans recognized that the death of musical genius Joseph Heiden was an opportunity that doesn't come along very often. Not long after the composer's death in 1809, Joseph Rosenbaum and Johann Peter stole Joseph Heiden's skull from his buried body. While carrying the relatively fresh skull secretly away in a carriage, the summer heat created some unpleasant smells for the two men. Rosenbaum was committed to the job, but he couldn't help but throw up as he transported. The musician's noxious noodle. Heiden was a really important musician. Born in Austria, he was a very talented singer as a young boy, and then turned his attention to piano and composition. After years of struggle, he found success thanks to the patronage of Prince Esther Hasey. With the money from this employment, Heiden could focus on writing more and more ambitious music. He became friends with Mozart, he was a teacher de Beethoven, and Heiden's compositions explored the possibilities of different types of instrument ensembles, and he was important in defining the traditional string quartet, two violins of Yola and a cello. This is a very common arrangement for classical composers to write for after him. He also had a sense of humor. Tired of people falling asleep in his concerts, he wrote his famous surprise symphony, which starts soft and pretty, and then features a loud chord out of nowhere to keep people awake and on their toes. By the time he died in 1809, he was a celebrity and an agreed upon genius, which is why Rosenbaum and Peter wanted to steal his skull. They could analyze it to see which skull bumps indicated someone was a musical genius, and lucky for them, a man named Napoleon and his army had just marched into Austria and were shooting cannonballs all over the place. Everyone was very distracted. Plus, the invading French army prevented Prince Esther Hasey from giving his pal Heiden the full burial that he deserved. So, other than a little barf, the Heiden head heist was pretty easy. Johann Peter kept the skull for years in a fancy little box. With a twisted pride, he would show it off to friends. But 11 years after Heiden's death, Prince Esther Hasey thought about his old friend. With Napoleon gone and everything relatively calm, he decided to finally give Heiden a burial worthy of a musical genius. So, they exhumed his body for a fancier final resting place. And what did they find inside? They found a fancy grey wig, a skeletal body, and zero skulls. Who stole Heiden's noodle? His cranium has gone AWOL. It's a misplaced brain case. Pretty quickly, Esther Hasey figured out who had stolen it. Peter and Rosenbaum were notorious phrenologists who had known Heiden when he was not. a skeleton. So he sent officials to Peter's house. "Come out, come out, we know what you're hiding in there." "Oh, what do you think I'm hiding?" "You're hiding hiding and we know it. So just make this easy." "I'm not hiding hiding. That's absurd. Come on and take a look around." But Johan Peter was, hiding hiding and doing a pretty good job of it at that. The man had tucked the musician's bony noggin into a mattress in his bedroom. There his wife pretended to be sick so the man would let her be undisturbed as she covered the skull like a mother goose on an egg. The skull searcher scoured the rest of their home, found nothing, and left empty-handed. Eventually Peter gave the skull to Rosenbaum. Perhaps it was still stinking, or maybe the heat from the search for the hidden hidden had become too much. The officials had come awfully close already. As you might expect, Rosenbaum was confronted as well. "Okay, okay, you got me. I've got the skull. Here, I'll give it to you. Ah, here it is. One genuine musical genius skull. Oh, that hiding boy oh boy. Wasn't he great? I'm gonna miss you, brosif. Say hello to the rest of your bones for me." And then he handed over a skull, which the Esther Hazy family believed to be the skull of Joseph Heiden. Were they right? They were worse than right. They were wrong. They bought the ruse hook, line, and sinker. It was not Heiden's head at all. It was someone else's. Now why this dude had a random head sitting around is another question entirely, and I think it does give you a clear glimpse of the kind of guy that he was. As a result, some random skull was put into Heiden's fancy new tomb with his wig in the rest of his bones. And there the mismatched skeleton sat undisturbed for over a century. Meanwhile, Rosenbaum chuckled to himself about his deceptive genius. He probably felt around on his own skull, searching for bumps to prove to himself that he was destined to outsmart an Austrian royal family. He had Heiden's skull until he died in 1829. When the details of his will sent the cranium back to his old friend and frenology, Johann Peter. But Peter didn't keep it for long. Soon, the skull was the token in a game of hot potato. He gave it to his doctor, who gave it to a friend, who then gave it to a music club in Vienna. And there it remained for decades and decades. Sometimes on display, sometimes rubbed for good luck before a performance. Sometimes hidden away. In 1954, 145 years after Heiden's death, descendants of Prince Esther Hasey learned the truth and decided to put the matter to bed once and for all. They finally took possession of Heiden's actual genuine, really real skull and built a beautiful marble tomb for the now complete composer in Bergkertsch Austria. Finally, Joseph Heiden's skull was reunited with the rest of his remains. Of course, this brought up the odd issue of what to do with the mysterious and incorrect skull that had been with the bones until the reunion. With no clue about who had once called the substitute skull their own head and no other ideas what to do with it, it was decided that the best plan was just to leave it in there. So, to this day, Joseph Heiden's tomb holds not one, but two human skulls. One is his and the other is a mystery. Hey, here's a message for the grownups. And I assume you're like me and are excited that it is spring. Now, spring does mean that there is some big motion to the end of the year. I don't want to alarm anybody, but you know, that's just what happens. Home school families are looking to get ahead of spring goals and all of those end of year milestone. So, it is the perfect time to reinforce key skills, build confidence, all that good stuff before wrapping up the end of the year. The other thing about spring is schedules have a way of filling up with activities and travel and sports and spring events, all that stuff, you know, it's tough to keep learning consistent. So, IXL makes it simple to stay on track with focused, flexible practice that fits your routine. IXL is an award-winning online learning platform that fits seamlessly into homeschooling. It offers interactive practice across map, language arts, science and social studies from pre-K all the way to 12th grade. IXL personalizes learning for each child, keeps them engaged and gives parents clear insights into progress. I have recently logged on and found some great things to add to our family routine and I see some true benefits in using it with my children. It's simple, it's time-saving, everything is organized by grade and subjects so you can quickly find what each child needs without juggling multiple resources. It's also flexible and personalized. So, whether reviewing, you know, an earlier concept, you got to catch back up on some stuff or tackling new material, IXL adapts to each child's pace with no pressure. It's proven and trusted as well with over 15 million students using IXL. So, make an impact on your child's learning. Get IXL now. And the past and the curious listeners can get an exclusive 20% off IXL membership when they sign up today at www.ixl.com/curious. Yes, visit www.ixl.com/curious to get the most effective learning program out there at the best price. Yes, it is time for you to have 30 seconds and this one comes from Windsor who, if I'm mistaken, sent me a really awesome drawing of a dragon once. Windsor, you did it all. You know how much I love stories about transcontinental voyages on non-traditional modes of transportation, right? Obviously you do. You also got the catchphrase in there and you also did it with swagger and style. So, hats off to you, Windsor. Thank you so much. If anyone else out there has a story about traveling a continent on something weird or anything at all, it doesn't have to be that. Send that to me. But you only have 30 seconds to tell that story, don't you forget? Send it to hello at thepastandacurious.com. Just use like a voice memo app thing and send me the MP3 file. It'll be great! Oh boy, it's a quiz again and this quiz is about bones and other similar body parts. So question number one. The oldest musical instrument of a non-percussive variety is believed to be a flute made out of what? Well yeah, bones duh, but what kind of bones? Birdboats, in some cases, vultures or in others from a swan. Both of those varieties of flute instruments made from bird bones are more than, or somewhere around 40,000 years old, according to archaeologists. The hollow bird bones, which are lighter for flying, also makes them a great tool for making flutes. And tattoo needles, I have seen. Okay, question numero dos. Great Britain's oldest near complete human skeleton shares a name with a kind of cheese. What's his name? His name is Cheddar Man, which I think would make a great name for a superhero, but he is neither a superhero nor a cheese aficionato. He was just a regular old ancient guy who skeleton was found in a cave in England called Cheddar Gorge. It's disappointing, I know. Okay, question number three. Astronomer Galileo's skeleton is not complete. One piece of his body is on display inside a fancy glass egg in Florence, Italy. So what's he missing? Well Galileo's actually missing a few things, including a backbone and a tooth, but on display is his finger. His middle finger, more specifically. It was taken from his body when they moved it 95 years after he died. You can go visit it if you want at Florence's Institute of Museum of the History of Science, but I understand if you don't want to. ♫ Tea pain and the missing bones ♫ Thomas Paine was one of the most important figures of the American Revolution. More than a few people would argue that in some ways he was just as important as George Washington himself. But while Washington rests in a tomb visited by millions, has monuments galore, and states and cities and counties named after him, Thomas Paine has almost none of this. In fact, here's a weird thing about Thomas Paine. We don't even know where his bones are. They've been lost for two centuries. How do you lose the bones of a founding father who influenced the minds of revolutionary Americans more than nearly anyone else? Well, it's easier than it might seem. And it involves many trips across the Atlantic Ocean. If you don't know who Thomas Paine is, that's okay, not many people do. Tea pain! He was almost forgotten in his own lifetime. But once upon a time, he was the best-selling writer in America, and with his pen, he might have inspired as many people as Washington inspired with his sword. But he was a late-comer to an America that was boiling over in the 1770s. He arrived in Philadelphia in 1774 when he was 37 years old. But he got to work pretty quickly. Born in England in 1737, Thomas Paine went to school until he was about 12. And then he joined the workforce, making stays for ship sales. By adulthood, he had tried a bunch of jobs, and he didn't like any of them, or he wasn't good at them, or both. He made his first notable writing while working in the ex-size tax office in England. He didn't really like that he and the others with the same job. We're not getting paid a livable wage. So he wrote and published a pamphlet that logically argued for a pay increase for he and his fellow workers. He got fired. That was 1772. After Benjamin Franklin agreed to introduce him to friends back home in America, Thomas Paine and all of his bones crossed the Atlantic for the first time in 1774. People there were already mad at King George, and Thomas Paine, despite having lived all of his life in England, felt no allegiance to the King. In fact, he thought that the rebellious Americans had a point. As you probably know, 1776 was a milestone year. The Declaration of Independence was written. Armies were fighting, and George Washington was struggling to convince Americans that, "A, they should fight, and B, they might even have a tiny chance of winning." Not everyone believed him. There were plenty of loyalists and other people who just didn't want to get involved. But in January of that year, more and more people made up their minds to join the cause for independence. That is because Thomas Paine published Common Sense. At 47 pages long, it was called a pamphlet, not a book. But today we might call it a booklet. Written and simple clear and persuasive language, Paine advocated for American independence and the potential of the new country. It struck a big, beautiful cord with the public. At that time, there were about 2.5 colonists in the 13 colonies, and Paine sold 500,000 copies of Common Sense. Half a million. That's a copy for one in every five people. That's a high number. And Paine's writing truly convinced a lot of people. It helped build momentum towards the soon-to-come Declaration of Independence, and it kept up people's spirits when things got bad. "T. Paine tries to join the army." Yeah, Paine tried to join the army, but Washington realized that he was more valuable to the cause as a writer. So Paine instead traveled with the troops as an embedded journalist, writing from the field and giving people across America a clear picture of the crisis that America faced. These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country. But he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Those were some of the famous words that he published as the American army struggled through the famously bleak winter at Valley Forge. Paine even used some of his sales earnings to pay for supplies for the under-supplied troops. Then Thomas Paine and all of his bones sailed back across the Atlantic, where he was a big part of a team who convinced King Louis XVI the France to help the Americans against the British with money and soldiers. Then Thomas, bones and all, sailed back across the Atlantic again and wrote more. When the war ended, he had little money but still felt the revolutionary spirit. So back across the Atlantic he went, landing in England. He had an idea for a new kind of bridge and thought that it might put some money in his pocket. But that got sidetracked by the news of the French Revolution. Putting pen to paper once again, he wrote a new pamphlet, The Rights of Man. This booklet was in favor of the French Revolution but also critical of European society in general. And England didn't like this at all. So he was charged with treason, the book was banned, and he had to flee before he wound up in jail. But to avoid the mess in England, he snuck to France. Thanks in part to the success of the American Revolution, France was in the midst of a revolution of its own. King Louis XVI probably regretted helping out with that American Revolution because it kind of helped start one in his own backyard. And this French Revolution was very much against him. But the whole messy affair could cost him his head. Though tea-pain wanted to end the rule of kings and wanted people to have power, not monarchs, he still pled with the revolutionaries to spare Louis's head. But his appeals to keep Louis in one piece rather than two backfired. Louis went to the guillotine while pain went to jail for sticking his neck out for the king. He was a writer, so he wrote more while he was in prison. And finally, in 1802, after being released, he and his now aging bones returned to America. There, people either had no idea who he was anymore, or they just did not like him. Over the course of all of his writings and publishing success, he managed to anger just about everyone. When he died, his body was not welcome to be buried in the nearby church burial grounds. Six people attended his funeral and the lone grave was dug on some remote farmland he owned in New York State. And there he sat for the next 10 years. One of the very, very, very few people to come visit his grave, described it as a little hole under the grass and weeds. The lonesome visitor who said this was a man named William Cobbett, a British man who had come to admire Thomas Payne very much. And what he saw broke his heart. He believed that Thomas Payne was a hero to America, to the world, to his native England. And William believed Thomas Payne would be welcomed back to his native soil as a hero, albeit as a dead hero. Was he right? No, he was worse than right. He was wrong. ♪ Tea pains sat in ♪ Well, Cobbett was right about one thing. He figured no one in America would care if he dug up tea-pains' bones. He dug them up, put the bones in a crate, and took them. Didn't even cover his tracks. And yeah, no one cared. So one last time, Thomas Payne's bones traveled across the Atlantic Ocean. Cobbett's plan was to take the bones around the country, charge admission to see them, and then use the profit to build a memorial to Thomas, in which he'd place the writers well-traveled bones. It's unclear if the British public just had no interest in paying to see Thomas Payne's bones, or if they had no interest in paying to see any bones at all. I mean, money for a peek at some bones seems like a waste of money to me. Probably not a great business model in general. At any rate, Cobbett was mistaken about even the slightest bit of enthusiasm for poor old Tom. For the most part, people were still mad at him all around England. So eventually, Cobbett gave up. He put tea-pains' bones in a box and stuck them under his bed. You might as well. that sleeping just above the bones of a founding father would lead to great revolutionary revelations in one sleep, or even historical hauntings, but this was not the case. The bones just sat there, basically forgotten about in his bedroom. And over the Atlantic and America, barely anyone even noticed that they were gone. So Covid kept the bones of tea-pain for 16 years until he died in 1835. Then the bones became his son's problem. Understandably not wanting to share his bedroom with the bones, his son tried to sell the pain remains, but found just as his father had that no one really cared. Somehow he got rid of them. There have been reports that some finger bones wound up in private collections, but that's unclear. It's just as likely that those fingers disappeared, along with everything else. And still today, no one knows where the bones of Thomas' pain are, and at this point it's been centuries will probably never know. When Payne died, newspapers had printed an obituary. It's simply read, "He lived long, did some good, and much harm." In the many years that have followed he has earned back a significant place in the history books. It is unquestionable that his writing helped convince everyday Americans that independence was a worthy cause. And his views on human rights, democracy, and the safety of people have shaped views today. In fact, many people still read his writing, but his words are as close as you can get to him these days because "Tee-pains bones are long gone." Thanks for listening to my dad's podcast. Oh yeah! Thanks for listening to this. Oh yes. Now, goodbye! Yeah, what they said. Thanks for listening to The Past and the Curious. Hey, a couple thank yous. I do want to thank some Patreon sponsors. Thank you so much. It really, helps us stay doing what we're doing. So thank you to Dalton Car of Tennessee. Love you, bud. Thank you so much for your support. And Sadie Thomas in Pennsylvania. How diddly do to you too. Thank you for your support. I'm glad you're out there listening. And last but not least, the ameries of Missouri, Rosie, Maggie, and Ben. I will write you a song next month. And who knows? I might bump into you in the month ahead. Everybody else, thank you as well. Thanks for tuning in. Thanks for listening. Thanks for dropping lines and doing just being kind out there. It means the world. And I'm happy to produce this show for you. If you want to help in any way, you can leave a review at your platform, your listening platform of choice. You can share it. You can tell people with your mouth that this is a show that you enjoy and they should try. All of that helps tremendously. And there's, you know, there's some tough times for a lot of podcast friends out there. And I want to make sure that the past and the curious is around for another hundred who knows how many episodes, right? So thank you very, very much. And I also hope that everyone out there keeps all of the bones that they need and all of the bones that they treasure. This has been the past and the curious. My name is Mix Elevon and I'll talk to you soon.