Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from house
Speaker 1: works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast Time
Speaker 1: to Glean a Charcoalboarding and I and today we start
Speaker 1: our story off the coast of southwestern Spain, near the
Speaker 1: port of Ulva on April nine. A local fisherman named
Speaker 1: Jose Antonio ray Ma Maria was out in a little
Speaker 1: skiff that morning trying to spot sardines for the larger
Speaker 1: fishing boats. But what he spotted instead was a kind
Speaker 1: of lumpy object just floating on the water, which he
Speaker 1: at first mistook for a dead porpoise. Once he got closer, though,
Speaker 1: he realized it was the dead body of a man,
Speaker 1: floating face down. The man was wearing a yellow life
Speaker 1: jacket over a trench coat, boots and a British uniform,
Speaker 1: and there was a black briefcase attached to him by
Speaker 1: a chain. The body was in pretty rough shape, as
Speaker 1: you would imagine, it smelled terrible, and the face was rotting.
Speaker 1: The fisherman on the larger boat had no interest in
Speaker 1: helping them out. They did not want to get the body,
Speaker 1: so Maria dragged the body aboard his tiny boat and
Speaker 1: rowed it to shore, where he got help dragging the
Speaker 1: body into the sand, and authorities kind of took over
Speaker 1: from there. After this gruesome discovery, Maria just went back
Speaker 1: about his business. This was, after all, World War two,
Speaker 1: and although Spain was officially neutral, the fisherman probably just
Speaker 1: assumed this was some sort of war casualty that had
Speaker 1: washed up to their shores. But what he didn't realize
Speaker 1: is that he had just set in motion what the
Speaker 1: BBC has referred to as quote the most successful wartime
Speaker 1: deception ever attempted. It was known as Operation Mincemeat, and
Speaker 1: it was set into motion by the British to fool
Speaker 1: the Nazis, and it's said to have changed the course
Speaker 1: of the war. The dead man, whose personal effects identified
Speaker 1: him as Major William Martin, was carrying documents that ultimately
Speaker 1: convinced Hitler that the Allies were going to attack one
Speaker 1: place when they really had designs on another. But how
Speaker 1: did this plan work? And why was it so effective?
Speaker 1: And who was that dead guy? So we're going to
Speaker 1: look at all of those things, and we should mention
Speaker 1: here that Ben McIntyre's book Operation Mints Neat helps us
Speaker 1: answer a lot of these questions on the way through.
Speaker 1: It's a source for a lot of the details that
Speaker 1: we include in this two part episode, So there's a
Speaker 1: lot to look forward to here. And if that name
Speaker 1: sounds familiar, it's because we just consulted Ben McIntyre's book
Speaker 1: on Adam Worth for our Napoleon of Crime, the Real
Speaker 1: Professor Moriarty episode, So he's popping up all over the place.
Speaker 1: You're coming like the Queen Victoria of authors, Queen Victoria
Speaker 1: of historians. Before we get into talking about Operation mince
Speaker 1: Meat specifically, first we need to talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about what was going on worth World War two at
Speaker 1: the time and why a deception plan like Operation mints
Speaker 1: Meat would have been necessary in the first place. In
Speaker 1: late ninety two, the Allies had invaded and six fessfully
Speaker 1: taking control of North Africa from the Germans and an
Speaker 1: offensive known as Operation Torch, and this was a real
Speaker 1: blow to the Germans, not least of all because it
Speaker 1: put the Allies just across the Mediterranean from Hitler's fortress,
Speaker 1: as Nazi occupied Europe was sometimes called, and so the
Speaker 1: Germans began speculating about where in southern Europe the Allies
Speaker 1: would attack next. In an article for The New Yorker
Speaker 1: and Malcolm Gladwell outlines a few of the possibilities. You know,
Speaker 1: there was Sardino, which wasn't defended that heavily, Plus it
Speaker 1: was a good spot from which to bomb southern Germany.
Speaker 1: But the problem with it was that you couldn't land
Speaker 1: a whole lot of ground troops there at once. There
Speaker 1: was also Greece and the Balkans. Greece was vulnerable, and
Speaker 1: the Balkans supplied Germans with raw materials for their war efforts,
Speaker 1: so that could also be a huge blow to them
Speaker 1: and a good contender for for a potential site. But
Speaker 1: according to McIntyre, the obvious choice for the next Allied
Speaker 1: invasion was really Sicily, which was located, of course at
Speaker 1: the toe of Italy's boot, and this had the advantage
Speaker 1: of being close enough in proximity to North Africa that
Speaker 1: the Allies would be able to use short range fighter
Speaker 1: plane and invading Sicily also opened up the possibility of
Speaker 1: taking Italy out of the war, which would of course
Speaker 1: be an enormous blow to the Germans and setting the
Speaker 1: stage ultimately to invade France. So on January twenty three,
Speaker 1: Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt jointly approved the invasion
Speaker 1: of Sicily, which was known as Operation Husky and would
Speaker 1: be the next big offensive for them. The problem though,
Speaker 1: was that if Sicily was such an obvious choice for
Speaker 1: an Allied invasion, it was probably going to be obvious
Speaker 1: to the Access Powers as well, and if Hitler anticipated
Speaker 1: their move and had the chance to concentrate more troops
Speaker 1: in Sicily before they got there, things could turn out
Speaker 1: really bad for the Allies. And that's where the need
Speaker 1: for deception comes in. Yeah, the Allies had to somehow
Speaker 1: convince their opponents that they were going to do something
Speaker 1: completely different from what they were actually going to do
Speaker 1: if they were going to have a fighting chance here.
Speaker 1: One plan created for this purpose was Operation Barkley, which
Speaker 1: basically aimed to convince the Germans that the Allies were
Speaker 1: going to attack Greece, Sardinia and Southern France instead of Sicily.
Speaker 1: And this plan was implemented in several ways, including creating
Speaker 1: a fake army and the Eastern Mediterranean, having double agents
Speaker 1: spread false information around, creating fake radio traffic, and recruiting
Speaker 1: Greek interpreters and officers, among other things. But back in London,
Speaker 1: a couple of British intelligence officers were working on something
Speaker 1: a bit more unusual. Yeah, that's an understatement. So the
Speaker 1: plan that was being hatched in London actually had its
Speaker 1: roots in a top secret memo known as the Trout Memo,
Speaker 1: which was distributed in nineteen thirty nine by Admiral John Godfrey,
Speaker 1: who was Britain's Director of Naval Intelligence, and by his
Speaker 1: personal assistant, Lieutenant Commander Ian Fleming, who of course went
Speaker 1: on to write the James Bond novel. According to McIntyre,
Speaker 1: Fleming had a real knack for intelligence planning. It was
Speaker 1: always coming up with these really imaginative, sometimes pretty cookie
Speaker 1: or crazy ideas for deceiving or outsmarting the enemy, and
Speaker 1: it's thought that he had a very heavy hand in
Speaker 1: the Trout Memo. The memo essentially contained fifty one suggestions
Speaker 1: for tricking the Germans by introducing erroneous ideas into their heads.
Speaker 1: Many were outlandish, some maybe not so much. Ideas ranged
Speaker 1: from things like distributing messages in bottles from a fictitious
Speaker 1: U boat Captain kersen Hitler's Reich, to distributing false information
Speaker 1: through fake copies of the newspaper. But number twenty eight
Speaker 1: on the list is the one that interests us. And
Speaker 1: that one was entitled quote a suggestion, not a very
Speaker 1: nice one, and it read quote The following suggestion is
Speaker 1: used in a book by Basil Thompson. The corpse, dressed
Speaker 1: as an airman with dispatches in his pockets, could be
Speaker 1: dropped onto the coast, supposedly from a parachute that had failed.
Speaker 1: I understand there is no difficulty in obtaining corpses at
Speaker 1: the Naval hospital, but of course it would have to
Speaker 1: be a fresh one, so that outlines what's going to
Speaker 1: happen here. But the Basil Thompson book mentioned was called
Speaker 1: The Milliner's Hat Mystery. And Thompson himself had been the
Speaker 1: head of Scotland Yards Criminal Investigation Division and made his
Speaker 1: name as a spy catcher during World War One. He
Speaker 1: also wrote twelve detective novels which weren't really that memorable.
Speaker 1: But Fleming, the important guy here, had just read them
Speaker 1: all devoured them. And that's the sort of spy novelist
Speaker 1: connection we're looking at. Yeah, it's interesting. McEntyre points out
Speaker 1: the spy novelist connection between Fleming and with Basil Thompson here.
Speaker 1: Both of them were both spies and then later became novelists,
Speaker 1: or simultaneously became novelists, we should say, and it's almost
Speaker 1: as if with you know, this connection tells us, it's
Speaker 1: almost as if you needed that imagination, the same imagination
Speaker 1: needed to create a novel could create a great spy plan.
Speaker 1: But the Trout memo kind of hung around British intelligence circles,
Speaker 1: but no one really did anything with suggestion number twenty
Speaker 1: eight for several years until a man named Charles Christopher
Speaker 1: Chumbley came into the equation. Chumley was a twenty five
Speaker 1: year old flight lieutenant in the Royal Air Force, seconded
Speaker 1: two and MY five the Security Service. He couldn't fly
Speaker 1: because it was bad eyesight, so that was a big
Speaker 1: disappointment to him. But he was also the secretary of
Speaker 1: the twenty Committee, which was the top secret group in
Speaker 1: charge of overseeing double agents. So Chumley was this really tall,
Speaker 1: kind of awkward looking guy, very eccentric, but much like Fleming,
Speaker 1: he was said to possess a really great imaginative mind,
Speaker 1: especially when it came to intelligence planning, which was the
Speaker 1: important thing to be great at here. Even before Operation
Speaker 1: Husky got underway, though, Chumley had seen the trial memo
Speaker 1: and he had come up with his own plan, which
Speaker 1: he presented to the twenty Committee in October two. He
Speaker 1: called it the Trojan Horse, which was quote a plan
Speaker 1: for introducing documents of a highly secret nature into the
Speaker 1: hands of the enemy and um In this plan he
Speaker 1: outlined how they'd get a body from one of the
Speaker 1: London hospitals, they dress it up in an Army, Navy
Speaker 1: or Air Force uniform, and they'd put these fake secret
Speaker 1: documents into a pocket. Then they would fill the lungs
Speaker 1: up with water and drop the body by plane in
Speaker 1: some place where currents would eventually bring it into enemy territory.
Speaker 1: He goes on to say that, quote, while the courier
Speaker 1: cannot be sure to get through, if he does succeed,
Speaker 1: information in the form of the documents can be of
Speaker 1: a far more secret nature than it would be possible
Speaker 1: to introduce through any normal b one a channel. And
Speaker 1: that's far more secret, of course, because a dead body
Speaker 1: can't be forced to reveal anything like a living person can.
Speaker 1: So that's kind of what he meant, like meant by that.
Speaker 1: So again to some people, this might sound kind of outlandish,
Speaker 1: kind of crazy, but Chumley had good reason to think
Speaker 1: that this would work because a similar real life situation
Speaker 1: had actually presented itself during the British invasion of North Africa.
Speaker 1: The precedent exactly, a British plane had crashed off of
Speaker 1: Spain's Atlantic coast and everyone was killed. A couple of
Speaker 1: the passengers who washed ashore were carrying information about the
Speaker 1: North African operation, including the date of the attack, wireless
Speaker 1: messages that the British intercepted, because of course they were
Speaker 1: very worried about this, so they were trying to listen
Speaker 1: into the Nazi chatter. So messages they intercepted after the
Speaker 1: fact indicated that the Germans did get some info from that,
Speaker 1: but fortunately for the British, the Germans ignored it. Ironically,
Speaker 1: they thought the whole thing might be a trick. They
Speaker 1: thought it was a deception, even though it for real.
Speaker 1: But this precedent did tell the British a couple of things. First,
Speaker 1: it told them that Spain, although it was officially neutral,
Speaker 1: could be counted upon to path on info like a
Speaker 1: dead body with letters paths on info like that to
Speaker 1: the Nazis. And then set and lee after their loss
Speaker 1: in North Africa, if the Nazis got this kind of
Speaker 1: information again, they might be more likely to believe it
Speaker 1: this time. So the twenty Committee, though they weren't entirely
Speaker 1: convinced this plan would work, they were intrigued by Chumley's idea,
Speaker 1: and they asked him to explore whether or not they
Speaker 1: could actually make it happen. They assigned you and Montague
Speaker 1: as his planning partner. Montague was really excited about the idea.
Speaker 1: He was one of the more enthusiastic ones on the committee.
Speaker 1: He had also read the Trout Memo and so he
Speaker 1: kind of got it. And he had grown up in
Speaker 1: London in a wealthy Jewish family, and he was a
Speaker 1: brilliant forty two year old defense lawyer. McEntire says that
Speaker 1: he quote possessed the rare ability to read an interlock
Speaker 1: teacher's mind. After the war broke out, Montague joined the
Speaker 1: Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve and became a lieutenant. But Godfrey
Speaker 1: soon recognized his talents and recruited him for the Naval
Speaker 1: Intelligence Department, and so he'd taken on more and more
Speaker 1: responsibility there over time. So once Chumley and Montague started
Speaker 1: working together, started putting their heads together on the Trojan
Speaker 1: Horse plan, which is still what it was being called
Speaker 1: at this point. Their first order of business was to
Speaker 1: see if they could actually get their hands on a
Speaker 1: dead body. I mean, no plan if you don't have
Speaker 1: a body to work with. So when he outlined initial plan,
Speaker 1: Chumley clearly thought that finding a body would be relatively simple.
Speaker 1: He thought you could just walk into a military hospital,
Speaker 1: plunk down ten pounds, walk off with anybody that you wanted.
Speaker 1: But in reality the plan, that plan at least, wasn't
Speaker 1: really very practical because deaths during war times, whether they
Speaker 1: were from battles or whether they were suicides, didn't leave
Speaker 1: behind the right kind of bodies for an operation like this.
Speaker 1: For example, you couldn't use a bombing victim because it
Speaker 1: would be pretty obvious that that person had died in
Speaker 1: a bombing and their body wouldn't be in the right
Speaker 1: condition for what they were trying to suggest here, you know,
Speaker 1: a drowning or something like that. Even with somebody who
Speaker 1: had hanged himself or poisoned himself, it would be pretty
Speaker 1: easy to tell how he really died. Also, in all
Speaker 1: of these cases there is the family and friends of
Speaker 1: the deceased to consider people who would want to know
Speaker 1: why the body of their loved one was being taken away,
Speaker 1: And you didn't want to let too many people in
Speaker 1: on the plan because you want it to be secret.
Speaker 1: Of course, according to McIntyre, they briefly considered quote pulling
Speaker 1: a birken hair and just stealing a corpse from a grave,
Speaker 1: but they quickly decided against that, ring a bell to
Speaker 1: podcast listeners, Katie and I did an old episode on
Speaker 1: the famous body snatchers in here. Instead, Montague ended up
Speaker 1: approaching a man that he knew from his lawyer days
Speaker 1: named Bentley Purchase, who was a coroner in northwest London. Now,
Speaker 1: Purchase wasn't quite what you'd expect from a coroner. He
Speaker 1: was kind of like a Tim Burton character the most.
Speaker 1: He was happy go lucky, with the real mccab sense
Speaker 1: of humor. For example, after he gave Montague directions to
Speaker 1: where he worked, he said, quote, an alternative means of
Speaker 1: getting here is, of course, to get run over. That
Speaker 1: might be faster, you never know. Purchase was initially pretty
Speaker 1: hesitant though, to just despite his sense of humor, hesitant
Speaker 1: to just hand over a body, and he was pretty professional. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But when he heard that it was for a matter
Speaker 1: of national importance, he agreed to help Montague obtain a
Speaker 1: body that could appear to have died in a plane
Speaker 1: crash or to have died by drowning, and he'd have
Speaker 1: Montague choose from one of the unidentified bodies. These wouldn't
Speaker 1: have next kin looking for them, you know, so there'd
Speaker 1: be fewer strings attached. But there wasn't anything currently in
Speaker 1: the mortuary that fit the bill, fit the bill that
Speaker 1: they were looking for, so they'd have to wait a
Speaker 1: while until somebody came in. At the end of January nine,
Speaker 1: a suitable candidate finally did come along. It was a
Speaker 1: thirty four year old Welsh tramp named Glenn Michael, who
Speaker 1: had committed suicide by drinking rat poison in an abandoned warehouse.
Speaker 1: He'd grown up in complete poverty, both his parents were dead,
Speaker 1: and he seemed to have come to London just simply
Speaker 1: to die. We don't know that for sure, but that's
Speaker 1: almost how it looked. He really didn't know anyone there,
Speaker 1: He didn't have any sense of purpose, any sort of job,
Speaker 1: any attachments. Um. He just ended up dead. Michael ended
Speaker 1: up and purchases Morgue and Purchase put him in cold
Speaker 1: storage and immediately contacted Montague. Michael seemed pretty perfect for
Speaker 1: the plan. As we mentioned, he was single, penniless, no
Speaker 1: relatives were looking for him, and Purchase said that the
Speaker 1: amount of rat poison he'd taken wasn't enough to be
Speaker 1: detected later as the cause of death. And we'll talk
Speaker 1: about that a little more later on in part two.
Speaker 1: But um but that was the situation that Montague came
Speaker 1: into the Purchase off. I told Montague, though, he was
Speaker 1: going to have to act fast because he couldn't stave
Speaker 1: off decomposition of the body for very long. The military
Speaker 1: would have to use the body of Michael within three
Speaker 1: months if they were going to use it at all.
Speaker 1: That meant Montague and Chumley had to get official permission
Speaker 1: from the twenty Committee to actually go forward with the plan,
Speaker 1: because remember they were just exploring the idea for now.
Speaker 1: They didn't actually see if they could get a body
Speaker 1: in the first place, right, They didn't actually have the
Speaker 1: go ahead, So they presented their proposal a week later,
Speaker 1: with the plan renamed Operation mince Meat. Since Trojan Horse
Speaker 1: would obviously immediately took off the Nazis that was going on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if they heard any sort of like wireless chatter about
Speaker 1: a trojan horse, they would know that something was going
Speaker 1: to happen. The code names, interestingly, it was just kind
Speaker 1: of a side note, but those were selected from random
Speaker 1: lists that were periodically recycled. So mince meat had been
Speaker 1: previously used for a mine lane operation in the early
Speaker 1: nineteen forties. But it just happens to be really perfect. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it happens to be really perfect for this kind of
Speaker 1: a kind of operation. Of all the surprising things in
Speaker 1: this story that might have surprised me most, that this
Speaker 1: was not a purposefully chosen code name. It just worked, no,
Speaker 1: because you know this is That's one of the interesting
Speaker 1: discussions in McIntyre's book too, as he kind of talks
Speaker 1: about how Churchill especially did not want them to use
Speaker 1: names that could be associated with the type of mission
Speaker 1: that could match exactly and um and usually Montagu went
Speaker 1: along with that as well. But he just kind of
Speaker 1: thought that it was almost like a good omen that
Speaker 1: they that this happened to pop up on the list
Speaker 1: that they could choose from, so they chose it and
Speaker 1: it was a good fit and their proposal that they submitted,
Speaker 1: obviously was more specific than the more general plan that
Speaker 1: Chumley had laid out before, and it suggested that the
Speaker 1: body would carry documents to throw the Nazis off on
Speaker 1: the Allies plans to invade Sicily. So the twenty Committee
Speaker 1: was good with it. They told them to go ahead.
Speaker 1: But even with that hurdle behind them, Chumley and Montague's
Speaker 1: real challenge was really just starting. Because they couldn't just
Speaker 1: drop the body as is into the enemy's hands. It
Speaker 1: would just be some random guy. They had to create
Speaker 1: a whole new personality for it to make the entire
Speaker 1: story believable. And of course Montague and Chumley did have
Speaker 1: some experience with this because they had created fictional personas
Speaker 1: and their work is double agents, and a lot of
Speaker 1: the double agents who they worked with had armies of
Speaker 1: sub agents who supposedly fed them information to report back
Speaker 1: to Germany. But a lot of these sub agents were
Speaker 1: just completely made up. Yeah. I mean, the reasoning here
Speaker 1: is fake spies much easier to work with than real ones.
Speaker 1: I mean, the hard part about it was really keeping
Speaker 1: up with all of their various fake lives and personalities.
Speaker 1: You had to be really consistent and remember all the details. Oh,
Speaker 1: you know, does does this one sick? Um? What's going
Speaker 1: on with us? Was it was he taking time off?
Speaker 1: You know? Is this one shiftless? You have to remember?
Speaker 1: Like about them? Yes, and so Monte and Chumbley they
Speaker 1: wanted to similarly create a whole fictional life for the
Speaker 1: dead body that they were using, the logic being that
Speaker 1: the more believable he was, the more believable the whole
Speaker 1: hoax would ultimately be. So Chumbley and Montague spent a
Speaker 1: lot of time honing this guy's story, what he liked,
Speaker 1: what he didn't like, what his strengths and weaknesses were,
Speaker 1: the people in his life, you know. They made up
Speaker 1: family members and stories for the family members. The first
Speaker 1: big decision they had to make, though, is what kind
Speaker 1: of officer he would be. He had to be someone
Speaker 1: who could wear a standard size uniform, because they obviously
Speaker 1: couldn't take a corpse to a tailor and have them
Speaker 1: fitted for a uniform. And he had to be someone
Speaker 1: who was important enough to be carrying secret documents, not
Speaker 1: part of it had to be believable to so they
Speaker 1: finally settled on the fact that he would be an
Speaker 1: officer of the Royal Marines, and to pick a name,
Speaker 1: they had to choose one from the current names on
Speaker 1: the Navy list, because the Germans would probably have a
Speaker 1: copy of that and they might even check up to
Speaker 1: make sure that the name was there, that he wasn't
Speaker 1: just an entirely fictitious person. They ultimately picked Captain William
Speaker 1: hind Nori Martin, who was serving in Rhode Island at
Speaker 1: the time and probably wouldn't hear about what was going on.
Speaker 1: That he had just washed up dead in Spain, and
Speaker 1: they made the corpse of fake I d so he
Speaker 1: could be easily identified from there. They took several other
Speaker 1: steps to round out the dead body's character. Just a
Speaker 1: few examples of what they did. They got him a
Speaker 1: new uniform, which Chumbley actually wore around for a while
Speaker 1: so that it wouldn't seem so new. He wanted to
Speaker 1: wear it out a little bit, make it a little dirty.
Speaker 1: And they also gave the dead body a family background
Speaker 1: in a place of origin, so they had him come
Speaker 1: from an upper middle class family, and they said that
Speaker 1: he was from Wales, which was incidentally the only real
Speaker 1: thing about about the real identity of the body. Yes,
Speaker 1: They made him Roman Catholic by putting across around his neck,
Speaker 1: and this kind of did double duty. It added personality
Speaker 1: to him and it also helped ensure that there probably
Speaker 1: wouldn't be an autopsy. Catholic countries were hesitant to perform
Speaker 1: autopsies anyway, but especially on other Catholics. I thought that
Speaker 1: would discourage them even more. And they gave him kind
Speaker 1: of a rascally side too. Aside from his religion and
Speaker 1: his his family background, they made him fiscally irresponsible. They
Speaker 1: planted and overdrow half notice on him, and they actually
Speaker 1: had it written by a real bank manager, so everything
Speaker 1: was legit. And they gave him a love life. They
Speaker 1: created a fictional fiance for him, which was inspired by
Speaker 1: a real young woman who worked for British counterintelligence. They
Speaker 1: included letters from her, obviously changing her name, and they
Speaker 1: even included a photo of her. And Montague kind of
Speaker 1: got into character here by flirting with the girl and
Speaker 1: actually dating her even though he was married. So in
Speaker 1: a way, I mean McEntyre points out how they both
Speaker 1: kind of take on this character. You know, exactly tell
Speaker 1: me by wearing the clothes and Montu by pretend fiance
Speaker 1: and that's just part of it. They discussed and they
Speaker 1: developed every part of his life and thought through every
Speaker 1: object they put on their fictional officers person. And part
Speaker 1: two of this podcast we'll talk more about the man
Speaker 1: that Montague and Chumley created and whether they did a
Speaker 1: good job in doing it, because people have of freeing
Speaker 1: opinions about that. We'll also get into their next big challenge,
Speaker 1: planning the actual drop of the body and find out
Speaker 1: what happened to the body once it got got past
Speaker 1: the shore and onto Nazi radar. Al Right, so until
Speaker 1: next time, lenty to look forward to. Until next time,
Speaker 1: we will move on to listener mail. So for this
Speaker 1: listener Mail, we have some postcards to share from people.
Speaker 1: You know how we love postcards. We have one from
Speaker 1: Strasburg from listener Ed and he says, dear to Blien
Speaker 1: and Sarah, longtime listener, first time postcard and my trip
Speaker 1: down the Rhine. I've been looking for unusual stories that
Speaker 1: might make good podcast. Here's a picture of the astrological
Speaker 1: clock that, for some mysterious reason is located inside the
Speaker 1: cathedral in Strasburg. Keep up the good work. We also
Speaker 1: got another postcard from Hillary and this is an amazing postcard.
Speaker 1: It's one of those three d ones where there's like
Speaker 1: the plastic really thing overlaying it, and if you look
Speaker 1: at it one direction, it's one picture of man Cello.
Speaker 1: If you look at it, the other picture is another
Speaker 1: angle of manta Cello. She wrote to us, have you
Speaker 1: ever seen such a trippy historical postcard before? I hadn't.
Speaker 1: I don't think I have either, and we've received quite
Speaker 1: a few of them. She said that she went to
Speaker 1: visit Monticello a few weeks ago, and funny that you
Speaker 1: just read about clock's Deablina because she mentions that she says,
Speaker 1: for example, in Jefferson's day, it would have been a
Speaker 1: sign of status to have a clock in the house.
Speaker 1: He had one in every room he designed. The one
Speaker 1: in the entryway it showed the days of the week,
Speaker 1: not just the hours. Sunday was down in the basement
Speaker 1: since he ran out of vertical room for the chain
Speaker 1: with weights that sank into each day's allotted space on
Speaker 1: the wall. Um, I have you ever been to Montochello?
Speaker 1: I haven't. It's a very fun spot to visit, and
Speaker 1: I feel like everybody has their own favorite weird Jefferson
Speaker 1: designed thing in the house because there's a lot. What's yours? Um,
Speaker 1: I really, I'm just like the triple hung windows. I
Speaker 1: thought that was so smart because you get a double
Speaker 1: air current coming in a good pre air conditioning thing
Speaker 1: if you're living in Virgin cool, very green. Well, this
Speaker 1: next postcard we have is the Spirit of seventies six,
Speaker 1: the painting by Willard and apparently it hangs in the
Speaker 1: Seleckman's Room and Abbot Hall in Marblehead, Massachusetts, which I
Speaker 1: didn't realize. And the postcard is from listener Rachel, and
Speaker 1: she says I love your podcast and listened regularly while
Speaker 1: biking on our town's bike path. We have a great
Speaker 1: deal of history here, the birthplace of the U. S. Navy,
Speaker 1: the first soldiers for the Revolution and Civil Wars, protected
Speaker 1: USS constitution in War of eighteen twelve, and much more.
Speaker 1: I'd love to hear a podcast on my little hometown.
Speaker 1: We get overshadowed here by our next door neighbors, Salem
Speaker 1: and Uh. I thought this was a good one. Of course,
Speaker 1: I used to live in Boston. We've mentioned that before,
Speaker 1: and I've been to Marblehoad before I did. I covered
Speaker 1: a freelance story there once and I went up there
Speaker 1: once also with my husban and before he was my husband,
Speaker 1: and it's a beautiful little town and we went to
Speaker 1: like a great little ice cream shop and had ice
Speaker 1: cream there, and I just I just loved it. So thanks.
Speaker 1: Good to hear from you, Rachel. Good to hear from
Speaker 1: all of you who write in and send us postcards.
Speaker 1: If you want to share with us your travels or
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Speaker 1: you can write us at History Podcast at Discovery dot com.
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Speaker 1: And if you want to learn a little bit more
Speaker 1: about dead bodies and I guess studying them in a
Speaker 1: different sort of way than Chumley is doing. We do
Speaker 1: have an article on how body farms work. You can
Speaker 1: search for body farms on our homepage at www dot
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com for more on this and
Speaker 1: thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: I was Amber Day, that I was Amber Day, eat
Speaker 1: even