Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm fair a Dowdy and I'm debling a truck reboarding.
Speaker 1: And for our last episode of the year, here we're
Speaker 1: gonna be talking about some historical discoveries that came out
Speaker 1: of ten just things that we're weird or fun or
Speaker 1: made a lot of news, things that we thought were
Speaker 1: worth talking about. Yeah. In our recent podcast we've mentioned
Speaker 1: several discoveries, so these are just some different ones that
Speaker 1: we didn't get to focus on in those And the
Speaker 1: Graveyard of Ships was one um. The Gladiator Graveyard was
Speaker 1: another find from this year that was really interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and one of my favorites from earlier this year was
Speaker 1: the Medici cold case with the dueling medical journals about
Speaker 1: how a couple of matchees died. So, you know, we've
Speaker 1: covered a lot of interesting historical finds this year. It
Speaker 1: these five really stood out at us or just seemed
Speaker 1: like so much fun, and some of them were actually
Speaker 1: listeners suggestions, So I hope you enjoy it. You can
Speaker 1: always submit your own suggestions if you um, if you
Speaker 1: feel like we overlooked truly the most exciting or weird
Speaker 1: historical discovery of tell Us. But this is our list
Speaker 1: of five, and we're going to start with one of
Speaker 1: the most recent. It just came out around Thanksgiving this year,
Speaker 1: and that was the Picasso trove of paintings and drawings
Speaker 1: and sketch books, tons of stuff. Yes, Sarah, you did
Speaker 1: a blood post on this, didn't you. I did, and
Speaker 1: um it was something that as soon as I saw
Speaker 1: the story, I was like, Okay, I need to talk
Speaker 1: about this. It's very interesting. So, I mean, Picasso was
Speaker 1: a prolific artist. Obviously he left a lot of art behind,
Speaker 1: but it's not every day that a huge trove of
Speaker 1: art like this that's uncataloged pops up out of nowhere.
Speaker 1: And the way it came about, it's kind of a
Speaker 1: shady story find it. So what we know is earlier
Speaker 1: this fall, the retired electrician Pierre Leguineck contacted Claude Picasso,
Speaker 1: the artist's son, seeking to have a stash of works authenticated. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the younger Picasso said, well, I really need to
Speaker 1: take a look at them in person to rule to
Speaker 1: decide if they're authentic or not, and he encouraged Lagune
Speaker 1: to come to Paris and show the works in person,
Speaker 1: and Claude later told the French newspaper Liberation. Um. I
Speaker 1: found this quote through the New York Times quote. I
Speaker 1: felt a great surprise, naturally, lots of emotion at the
Speaker 1: discovery of pieces with which we were not familiar, but
Speaker 1: also a deep disturbance. Many of these pieces were not dated,
Speaker 1: which means they never should have left the studio shady. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So that's kind of a bad sign there. And the
Speaker 1: thing is, even though Picasso was quite generous with his art.
Speaker 1: He'd give it out to family and friends, and he
Speaker 1: would even um use it like at the cafe or
Speaker 1: something in exchange for his coffee. And I don't know
Speaker 1: his meal of that. Dash off a little picture and
Speaker 1: sign it and date it and that would replace the bill. Um.
Speaker 1: But he was really worried about imposters, and so he
Speaker 1: didn't give too much away. He always did sign and dated,
Speaker 1: and sometimes he was even quite reluctant to part with
Speaker 1: his art. He's known to have bought back pieces that
Speaker 1: he missed too much. Right. So, the knowing that the
Speaker 1: idea that this formal electrician of Picassas was given two
Speaker 1: hundred seventy one sketches, lithographs, paintings, and notebooks seemed a
Speaker 1: little bit off to Claude. Yeah, and so to say
Speaker 1: the least, Yeah, definitely. The police were brought in and Liquinek,
Speaker 1: who was separated from this eighty million dollar stash of
Speaker 1: art estimated eighty million dollars, and the Picassa Foundation followed
Speaker 1: the whole thing up with a lawsuit. So this electrician
Speaker 1: thought he was going to be getting the seal of
Speaker 1: approval from Claude ends up being sued for a legal
Speaker 1: receipt and leg Nick still maintains that the art was
Speaker 1: a gift from either Picasso or Picasso's wife. Um, it's
Speaker 1: going to take a while to sort out. It seemed
Speaker 1: weirdly though, Lego Nick and his wife are now saying
Speaker 1: they're actually heirs to even more Picasso's since they're distant
Speaker 1: cousins of a chauffeur of the artists who was also
Speaker 1: given some works. Yeah, this is something that came out
Speaker 1: after the first major news cycle of the Picassa story,
Speaker 1: but wasn't before or after the lawsuit. After the lawsuit,
Speaker 1: but it's so weird of like double the Picassa staff
Speaker 1: was a very important electrician. It seems he was with
Speaker 1: an important connection to an important chauffeur um. So, despite
Speaker 1: the legal trouble though, the stash itself is pretty cool
Speaker 1: and it's worth a mention um in our list of
Speaker 1: important historical finds. It dates from nineteen hundred to nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty two, when Picasso was a young and struggling artist,
Speaker 1: and it includes portraits of his first wife, the ballerina
Speaker 1: Olga Koklova, and a blue period watercolor. Yep. There are
Speaker 1: also nine cubus collages, thirty lithographs, and more than two
Speaker 1: hundred drawings, so overall sounds like a boon to the
Speaker 1: art world at least, if not to Pierre Legunac. We'll
Speaker 1: see um. So the next item on our list is
Speaker 1: kind of a different, different bird fashion related you could say.
Speaker 1: You could say that and uh, it involves shoes, so
Speaker 1: I'll give you a little background on it. Up until
Speaker 1: this year, the oldest known leather shoe belonged to a
Speaker 1: guy named let's see the Iceman, a mummy found nineteen
Speaker 1: years ago in the Alps near the Italian Austrian border.
Speaker 1: His shoe had bear skin soles, deer skin panels, tree barknetting,
Speaker 1: and it was kind of filled with like soft grass
Speaker 1: that went around the foot and functioned as a kind
Speaker 1: of primitive sock. And the shoes were water proof and
Speaker 1: kind of wide looking. I mean to me, they almost
Speaker 1: looked like something that would be set in a ski
Speaker 1: or like a snowshoe or something. But they look I mean,
Speaker 1: pretty advanced for something that was made probably about fifty
Speaker 1: years ago. Um. I think that was pretty big fine
Speaker 1: at the time. But this year scientists funded in part
Speaker 1: by the National Geographic Foundation, published a new finding in
Speaker 1: the shoe arena, and that was a fifty five hundred
Speaker 1: year old leather lace up moccasin, which they found in
Speaker 1: an Armenian cave on the Iranian and Turkish borders. This
Speaker 1: discovery has cleverly been referred to by some news outlets.
Speaker 1: I love these descriptions as the ultimate vintage shoe or
Speaker 1: prehistoric product. Yeah, didn't you want to get your hands
Speaker 1: on some? I definitely do. Well, No, not exactly, because
Speaker 1: when you hear a little bit more about this, you're
Speaker 1: going to be a little bit grossed out by how
Speaker 1: it was so well preserved. You want it safely behind glass. Um,
Speaker 1: just to put that date in Prespective. The shoe is
Speaker 1: older than Stonehengnge. It's even about a thousand years older
Speaker 1: than the Great Pyramids of Giza, and it's from the
Speaker 1: Cololithic period or Copper Age, which researchers still don't really
Speaker 1: know a whole lot about. So it's old. It's an
Speaker 1: old old shoe. Yeah, it's old as dirt and was
Speaker 1: so well preserved because of the cool, dry environment in
Speaker 1: the cave, and also because it was covered in layers
Speaker 1: of sheep dong which provided kind of a seal around it.
Speaker 1: And if you look at pictures of it online, and
Speaker 1: I'm sure just by googling the oldest leather shoe you
Speaker 1: can find some photos of it around it looks like
Speaker 1: something that was covered and counting. It doesn't look too hot.
Speaker 1: But what is so remarkable about it is that the
Speaker 1: level of detail that was preserved basically, I mean laces, eyelets,
Speaker 1: and even the straw that was inside it was still there.
Speaker 1: It's the one case of wind stepping in poop is
Speaker 1: a good thing, definitely um And as far as its
Speaker 1: style goes, it's said to be some to the pempooties
Speaker 1: worn on the Aran Islands in the west of Ireland
Speaker 1: up until the nineteen fifties. It's basically like a raw
Speaker 1: hide slipper um and in size it's comparable to a
Speaker 1: woman's size seven. But they're not positive yet whether it
Speaker 1: was worn by a woman or worn by a man. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's a right footed shoe. But they said
Speaker 1: that even though it's sort of comparable to what a
Speaker 1: woman's foot would be now, it could have been a
Speaker 1: man's foot back in that time. Well that was notable too,
Speaker 1: wasn't it That it was made. Each shoe was made
Speaker 1: for a specific foot. They weren't interchangeable as many old
Speaker 1: shoes are. Ably, and the actual discovery, and this was
Speaker 1: a really interesting story, was made beneath one of several
Speaker 1: cave chambers by Armenian doctoral student Diana Zardarian. She noticed
Speaker 1: a small pit of weeds as she was exploring, and
Speaker 1: so she reached down and touched in that area, and
Speaker 1: she found two sheep horns and an upside down broken ole,
Speaker 1: and under that she said she felt what she thought
Speaker 1: was an ear of a cow, which to me would
Speaker 1: be alarming, but apparently she thought that was pretty cool.
Speaker 1: But when she took it out, she looked at it
Speaker 1: and she thought, Oh my god, And this is a
Speaker 1: quote that she gave to The New York Times best
Speaker 1: quote ever, best quote of two thousand. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: it's a shoe. To find a shoe has always been
Speaker 1: my dream. So there you go. I mean, and not
Speaker 1: just any shoe, the old issue, the oldest shoe, the
Speaker 1: dreams of archaeologists coming coming true in two thousand and ten.
Speaker 1: Another interesting thing about this fine though, it seemed to
Speaker 1: scientist that the shoe was put in the pit on purpose,
Speaker 1: and they can't really figure out why you would put
Speaker 1: a shoe in a pit, but they're working on it.
Speaker 1: So it's just kind of a quirky, interesting discovery, and
Speaker 1: it might have some really important implications because learning where
Speaker 1: the skin processing techniques came from might give us an
Speaker 1: idea of the complexity of this society. So, I mean,
Speaker 1: you learn a lot about a man buy his shoes
Speaker 1: definite ling today and back in the day, so our
Speaker 1: next find. It's also of the ancient variety, although it
Speaker 1: has to do more with that religion and construction projects
Speaker 1: than fashion. So archaeologists for a long time have assumed
Speaker 1: that the area around Stonehenge was empty, and Professor Vince
Speaker 1: Gaffney of Birmingham University, who studies the whole area, said, quote,
Speaker 1: people have tended to think that as Stonehenge reached its peak,
Speaker 1: it was the paramount monument existing in splendid isolation, and
Speaker 1: that's sort of how you look at it today. You
Speaker 1: know that screen saver like blue sky behind it in Greenfield,
Speaker 1: nothing else. Yeah, you don't think of a bunch of
Speaker 1: other stuff being around Stonehenge. But that's not how it was,
Speaker 1: apparently not at all. So we know that Woodhenge was
Speaker 1: discovered in about two miles away from the Stonehende site,
Speaker 1: and there have been multiple discoveries just in the past
Speaker 1: few years Ditches Roads burial grounds, there was a stash
Speaker 1: of Bronze Age monuments only a few miles off. Even
Speaker 1: another wooden hinge found in two thousand nine. The details
Speaker 1: of that one really haven't come out yet. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: the wooden hinge that was discovered this July in as
Speaker 1: it has to have been for our list, tops all
Speaker 1: of these other discoveries. A lot of archaeologists are saying
Speaker 1: that it's the most impressive find on the site in
Speaker 1: the past fifty years. So how did they find this? Well?
Speaker 1: Using geophysical imaging technology, which is a machine that looks
Speaker 1: a little bit like a riding lawnmower, but it's really
Speaker 1: a radar scanning system which lets them scan three yards
Speaker 1: deep at twelve miles per hour. And Gaffney's team they
Speaker 1: use this technology to find something interesting and it was
Speaker 1: almost three thousand feet two thousand ft from Stonehenge. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what they found was an eighty foot wide bank and
Speaker 1: ditch with entrances aligned with those Stonehenge. Uh. There, of course,
Speaker 1: if you are familiar with Stonehenge, that means those entrances
Speaker 1: are also aligned with the solstice. So on the salstice,
Speaker 1: the sun enters into the circle inside of this bank
Speaker 1: and ditch combo where twenty four holes, each three feet across,
Speaker 1: which they reckon. A pole of that size could have
Speaker 1: supported a pole up to nineteen feet high. And they
Speaker 1: assumed that it was a wooden hinge because if there
Speaker 1: had been stones there, the holes might have been a
Speaker 1: little more beaten up if the stones had been excavated.
Speaker 1: Since then, the archaeologists assumed that the wood just rotted
Speaker 1: in place. And in the center of this whole thing
Speaker 1: is a burial mound about forty ft wide. So there
Speaker 1: you go a hinge in the middle of in the
Speaker 1: middle of the field. Ye Gaffney calls it a timber
Speaker 1: equivalent to Stonehenge and guesses that it's about years old
Speaker 1: and is near that was near when Stonehenge was at
Speaker 1: its peak. Since Stonehenge was built in phases, and we
Speaker 1: of course don't know what this new hinge find was
Speaker 1: used for, but theories range from everything from being a
Speaker 1: cemetery to being hospital to being a site for funerals.
Speaker 1: And since the fine came at the beginning of this
Speaker 1: three year long surveying project with this writing lawnmower type machine,
Speaker 1: we can expect probably some more fines out here around
Speaker 1: Stonehenge in the next few years. And this kind of
Speaker 1: site is pretty easy to miss after thousands of years
Speaker 1: of plowing. You know, there's a good chance there might
Speaker 1: be something else. Yeah, it's almost like you need this
Speaker 1: technology to be able to detect the minute traces of
Speaker 1: whatever's left. Yeah. But as I thought was interesting, Stonehenge
Speaker 1: itself might have likely started out as a ring of
Speaker 1: wooden posts like this one found in two thousand ten,
Speaker 1: before farmers brought in the blue stones, followed by the
Speaker 1: large giant sarcen stones. Yeah, and the legends around where
Speaker 1: the stones came from in Stonehenge I've always thought are
Speaker 1: really cool. Uh there's like a legend that the stone
Speaker 1: were brought to England from Ireland by the wizard Merlin,
Speaker 1: and that those stones had originally been brought to Ireland
Speaker 1: from Africa by Giant who thought they had um mystical
Speaker 1: healing properties. So anything having to do with Stonehenge, it's
Speaker 1: probably gonna make our list, I'd say, But this is
Speaker 1: just too weird not to mention, and it honestly kind
Speaker 1: of confused me when I was researching this wooden Henge.
Speaker 1: At almost the exact same time as this news came out,
Speaker 1: really within days, another study came out on a similar
Speaker 1: ancient wooden hinge in Ohio, and the site itself is
Speaker 1: in a new discovery. They've known about this Ohio Henge
Speaker 1: for a while, but the revelation was that it was
Speaker 1: also a line to match up with the solstice. So
Speaker 1: pretty cool double hinge find and sort of a bonus
Speaker 1: edition for our list. Cool and freaky. Next, we have
Speaker 1: kind of a sweet find. I think Sarah Um archaeologist
Speaker 1: began and covering this footprint of the building in James Town, Virginia,
Speaker 1: which was of course the first English settlement in the
Speaker 1: New World earlier this year, and by August they'd realized
Speaker 1: that it was actually the remains of the church in
Speaker 1: which Pocahontas married English tobacco farmer John Rolfe. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: Pocahontas Katie and I did an episode on her more
Speaker 1: than a year ago. But she was, of course the
Speaker 1: Powatan Indian woman and daughter of the chief, and she
Speaker 1: apparently befriended the settlers of the Jamestown Colony as a
Speaker 1: young girl and was a frequent visitor, really helped them
Speaker 1: stay alive and survive. And in sixteen fourteen she married
Speaker 1: John Rolfe, also the subject of an earlier posodcast um
Speaker 1: and that start their marriage was essentially an alliance between
Speaker 1: the Native Americans in the English and it started this
Speaker 1: period of peace between the Powatan Indians. In sixteen fourteen,
Speaker 1: Pocahontas married John Rolfe, who was also the subject of
Speaker 1: an earlier podcast, and their marriage was essentially an alliance
Speaker 1: that started a period of peace between the Powatan Indians
Speaker 1: and the colonists that lasted for about eight years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and just an interesting side fact to that marriage as that,
Speaker 1: according to one colonil, she'd actually been married before to
Speaker 1: an Indian named Kokum. So it's a fun fact thrown
Speaker 1: in there. But back to the chapel. How did they
Speaker 1: know that they had actually found it? I mean, what
Speaker 1: gave them the evidence? Well, they weren't really sure at first,
Speaker 1: but they figured out the building's dimensions, and then they
Speaker 1: realized that there were four graves neatly aligned in the
Speaker 1: center of the east end of the building, and it's
Speaker 1: the spot that would have coincided with where the altar
Speaker 1: would have been and also where elite members of the
Speaker 1: church would have been buried. Also, the second thing was
Speaker 1: that there were eight post holes large enough and deep
Speaker 1: enough to have held timbers capable of supporting a large
Speaker 1: cathedral type ceiling. And then there was also a footprint
Speaker 1: of a pretty chapel and that was in line with
Speaker 1: the holes, and this they figured that that would be
Speaker 1: there because it was documented by Jamestown colonist William Stracy
Speaker 1: in sixteen ten in his account of the chapel. The
Speaker 1: fourth thing that kind of clued them into the fact
Speaker 1: that this was Pocahon's wedding chapel is that the structure
Speaker 1: was located near ware an X or perhaps across, which
Speaker 1: is thought to represent a church site on maps of
Speaker 1: that era. It's marked on a six O eight Zuniga map,
Speaker 1: which is a rare firsthand sketch of James Fort and surroundings. Yeah, so,
Speaker 1: so far archaeologists have only excavated about half of the church,
Speaker 1: so there's definitely going to be a lot to come
Speaker 1: in eleven um and they're hoping to find a few
Speaker 1: different things, namely the identities of the four people buried
Speaker 1: near the altar area. They have some guesses though, based
Speaker 1: on date recorded dates of deaths and the status within
Speaker 1: the community. And some of their guests are the Reverend
Speaker 1: Robert Hunt, who is jamestown first Chaplain, Sir Ferninando Wenman,
Speaker 1: who is the Master of Ordinance for Fort James, Captain
Speaker 1: Peter Wynn, a sergeant major of the fort, and Captain
Speaker 1: Gabriel Archer, who was a member of the colony's first
Speaker 1: governing council. So those are the number four names thrown
Speaker 1: out for who's buried in Pocahona's chapel. It'll be interesting
Speaker 1: to find out who it really is. And it looks
Speaker 1: like maybe we can look forward to learning more about that,
Speaker 1: maybe as soon as next summer. So our final entry
Speaker 1: for this list of historical discoveries is on the light side.
Speaker 1: It's kind of fun and hopefully it'll get you in
Speaker 1: the spirit for ringing in the new year. You said spirit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the clue to to what this item has to
Speaker 1: do with UM. There's long been an argument that Stone
Speaker 1: Age farmers grew cereals not just for food, but to
Speaker 1: make beer. And I mean that argument has been around
Speaker 1: for a while, but just this year the archaeologist Brian
Speaker 1: Hayden from Simon Fraser University in Canada has started studying
Speaker 1: it more carefully and released a report on it. UM
Speaker 1: just trying to figure out what the importance of the
Speaker 1: Brew had been for the development of a lot of
Speaker 1: world cultures. So here's a little background on that. The
Speaker 1: Neolithic Arab people in Southwest Asia pioneered the use of
Speaker 1: wild cereals. You would think that they did this to
Speaker 1: have something to eat, right, But actually that wasn't so
Speaker 1: much the case. Archaeological evidence says that up until the
Speaker 1: Neolithic Age, things like barley and rice weren't really a
Speaker 1: big part of people's diets. Since you have to gather them,
Speaker 1: winnow them, hask them, grind them. It's just a lot
Speaker 1: of work in general, process and grains to a point
Speaker 1: where you can eat them. Yeah. So people probably didn't
Speaker 1: go to that much trouble. Yeah. Um, But Hayden's research
Speaker 1: found that people in Syria would travel up to forty
Speaker 1: or sixty miles to get access to grain. So it
Speaker 1: seemed like there must be some motive for obtaining grains
Speaker 1: that had to do with something other than just eating them,
Speaker 1: and that's likely to make beer out of them or
Speaker 1: some sort of alcohol. Because if you needed something fancy
Speaker 1: or ceremonial to serve at your banquet, beer was a
Speaker 1: pretty good bet. Yeah. Beer actually became a big staple
Speaker 1: at feast, along with meat and something starchy like bread
Speaker 1: or porridge. Um, if you're postcapey good beer, you'd probably
Speaker 1: be in pretty good standing with them. Yeah, and you
Speaker 1: might loosen up a little bit, maybe work out a
Speaker 1: deal or something. You can see why it would be useful. Um.
Speaker 1: Discovery kind of reminded me of the two thousand seven
Speaker 1: discovery of Cash of Mine pottery. Um that I think
Speaker 1: I talked about some in the History of Chocolate episode.
Speaker 1: Archaeologists had found theobram mine, which is the chemical calling
Speaker 1: card of cacao in this pottery. Um. But the weird
Speaker 1: thing about it is it didn't have classic mix there's
Speaker 1: for the chocolate drink. It had the co cow, but
Speaker 1: it didn't have vanilla or honey or spices. It just
Speaker 1: had the cacaw chemical And it meant that these vessels
Speaker 1: probably held cacao alcohol, which was this fermented beverage made
Speaker 1: from fruit pulp instead of the beans. And maybe they
Speaker 1: assume that maybe in the process of making this more
Speaker 1: ancient beverage, this alcoholic beverage, somebody discovered that you could
Speaker 1: make another drink that it's probably a little tastier out
Speaker 1: of the fermented beans. Pretty smart. Yeah, it's also kind
Speaker 1: of reminiscent of the whiskey rebellion, Yeah, which has been
Speaker 1: on my list for a long time. Yeah. And the
Speaker 1: idea there is that because grains are easier to keep,
Speaker 1: cheaper to transport, and infinitely more valuable when they've been
Speaker 1: processed in alcohol, Um, why not do it that way? Yeah,
Speaker 1: So maybe people started domesticating grains so that they could
Speaker 1: make beer. Who knows, Yes, that would definitely be the
Speaker 1: more flavorful alternative I think. But hopefully this has gotten
Speaker 1: you in the spirit to go out and have a
Speaker 1: good time for New Year's Eve. Put on your dancing shoes. Yes,
Speaker 1: let loose a little bit. And now it's time for
Speaker 1: a listener mail. So our first email comes from Shane
Speaker 1: in Ohio, and he wrote that he teaches advanced placement
Speaker 1: US history in northern Ohio and he loves the podcast. Um.
Speaker 1: He said that he especially enjoyed the Sherlock Holmes and
Speaker 1: the Last podcast, and that's partly because he's really into
Speaker 1: finding Easter eggs and shows, which, um, if you're not
Speaker 1: familiar with Easter eggs, they're like the little things that
Speaker 1: if you watch really carefully and probably if you have
Speaker 1: a DVR and can actually pause your TV show, um,
Speaker 1: you'll catch just a little inside um easter eggs for
Speaker 1: hardcore fans. So regarding House and Sherlock Holmes, he wrote,
Speaker 1: there was a little Easter egg whenever they show the
Speaker 1: address that Gregory House lives at to twenty one B.
Speaker 1: Baker Street. Yep, the same as Mr Sherlock Holmes. And
Speaker 1: then um, this was just so sweet. But he wrote,
Speaker 1: if you want to make a history teacher. It's happy
Speaker 1: if he can be short of a day at the Smithsonian.
Speaker 1: Mentioned any of this in some future podcast, and my
Speaker 1: quote History Nerds datus will be forever cemented in my classroom,
Speaker 1: which is a great thing. So I hope we've like
Speaker 1: boosted your reputation in your classroom. And um enjoy watching
Speaker 1: your Lost reruns and your House episodes. Yeah, definitely. This
Speaker 1: next letter is also Sherlock Holmes related. It's from Chris
Speaker 1: and he says this is his first time writing in.
Speaker 1: He says, I am a fan of the Sherlock Holmes stories,
Speaker 1: and since you asked for favorite Sherlock stories, I must
Speaker 1: mention a favorite that was also one of the ones
Speaker 1: that was never told. Holmes was fond of referring to
Speaker 1: adventures that he and Watson had embarked on that weren't
Speaker 1: written about, and in the Adventures of the Sussex Vampire,
Speaker 1: Holmes says, mattil to Briggs was not the name of
Speaker 1: a young woman, Watson. It was a ship which is
Speaker 1: associated with the giant rat of Sumatra, a story for
Speaker 1: which the world is not yet prepared. How can you
Speaker 1: not be intrigued by that giant rats it isn't drinking,
Speaker 1: I think definitely. He also adds, as the other letter
Speaker 1: did a couple of House Sherlock associations and he says
Speaker 1: he's pitt fans of both shows and he mentioned the apartment.
Speaker 1: Everybody also mentions that Dr James Wilson and House plays
Speaker 1: the part of Dr John Watson. That even give a
Speaker 1: nod to it in in universe with House being shot
Speaker 1: by a man named Moriarty and a made up love
Speaker 1: interest for House named, of course, Irene Adler, which was
Speaker 1: also a Home's character. So we have a lot of
Speaker 1: homes enthusiast out there. I think we got a lot
Speaker 1: of mail about favorite homes stories and just general Sherlock
Speaker 1: commentary on the latest show and other favorite theories. Yes,
Speaker 1: and we love to get those letters. So if you
Speaker 1: have any comments on previous podcasts or today's podcasts, favorite
Speaker 1: discoveries of two thousand ten that we didn't mention that
Speaker 1: you want to share with us, please write us at
Speaker 1: History Podcast at how stuff works dot com. You can
Speaker 1: also visit us on Facebook or a Twitter at Myston History. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we also have tons of year end wrap up
Speaker 1: articles being published right now and as we speak image
Speaker 1: galleries of best news stories of and you can search
Speaker 1: for them on our home page at www dot how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands
Speaker 1: of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. To
Speaker 1: learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon
Speaker 1: in the upper right corner of our homepage. The How
Speaker 1: Stuff Works iPhone up has a ride. Download it today
Speaker 1: on iTunes