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 far Down and I'm debline and chocolate boarding. And
Speaker 1: the central figure of today's episode is one that's been
Speaker 1: requested quite frequently. It's Tico bra Hay, a famous Danish
Speaker 1: astronomer of the sixteenth century who is remarkable because he
Speaker 1: made a lot of his observations with the naked eye. Essentially,
Speaker 1: this was pre the invention of the telescope. Yeah, impressive stuff.
Speaker 1: And I think people keep on requesting him because he's
Speaker 1: been in the news a lot recently because of a
Speaker 1: certain dig that's going on, an exhamation excitation, which most
Speaker 1: of you know that's like the theme of the podcast.
Speaker 1: So I was really pleased when you picked this lend
Speaker 1: of bline. I was like, you're you're learning fat well,
Speaker 1: you know, I want to I want to blend. So
Speaker 1: this is my chance. But the news that Sarah is
Speaker 1: referred to is Chico brought His remains were brought up
Speaker 1: for the second time. He was exhumed in November for
Speaker 1: about a week um His remains were taken from the
Speaker 1: tomb that they rested in Prague and scientists. They did
Speaker 1: this because they want to get a better idea, some
Speaker 1: more insight into the unusual circumstances that surrounded his death. Yeah, because,
Speaker 1: I mean, for a long time, people have thought that
Speaker 1: he died of a bladder infection. I know, it's kind
Speaker 1: of unfortunate, it's an unfortunate reputation to have, But people
Speaker 1: thought that he died because while he was at a
Speaker 1: banquet at the Emperor's court in Prague, he refused to
Speaker 1: excuse himself to go to the bathroom. So he's like
Speaker 1: a good example for teaching your kids, don't hold it
Speaker 1: too long, don't go ahead and say you need to go.
Speaker 1: He claimed he had a good excuse. He thought it
Speaker 1: would be rude, um, basically a breach of court etiquette
Speaker 1: to do that in the middle of this dinner. But
Speaker 1: suffice to say, what happened as he returned home and
Speaker 1: he was unable to urinate after that experience. That was
Speaker 1: the case for actually eleven days. Can you imagine, sounds
Speaker 1: agonizing until he finally died on October one. So this
Speaker 1: is kind of the back story to it. Um. There
Speaker 1: have been varying reports. People said that his bladder burst,
Speaker 1: it had become twisted somehow torn. It was kind of unclear.
Speaker 1: Kidney disease was also proposed as a possible suspect in
Speaker 1: the situation. Even at that time, though, there were some
Speaker 1: rumors going around, some some murmurings that maybe murder had
Speaker 1: been involved because Tico was basically healthy guy. He was
Speaker 1: about fifty four fifty five years old, um didn't have
Speaker 1: any illness. So it was a little suspect and he
Speaker 1: had enemies, and he had enemies definitely. We'll find out later.
Speaker 1: So fast forward to the nineteen nineties, the Progue National
Speaker 1: Museum happens to be in possession of Tico's mustache. I also,
Speaker 1: I thought this was really like timely knew is because
Speaker 1: it's November, you know, the whole mustache month. You're supposed
Speaker 1: to grow mustache if you are so able to do
Speaker 1: so in November to celebrate mustache. So I mean, I
Speaker 1: feel like maybe they dug him off to coincide with this.
Speaker 1: Probably not, but cheers. Oh well, they actually that was
Speaker 1: his first exhamation in one where they got the mustache,
Speaker 1: so maybe they celebrated November at that time as well.
Speaker 1: Basically they got the mustache and then in they brought
Speaker 1: it back out the prog Museum. They sent a few
Speaker 1: hairs over to some researchers in Denmark and they discovered something.
Speaker 1: At that time, they discovered some really high mercury levels
Speaker 1: in ticos system. It was about a hundred times above normal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so in nine Danish and Swedish scientists decided to
Speaker 1: do a few more tests on those hairs, and this
Speaker 1: time they used a proton microbe, which was more sophisticate
Speaker 1: to technology, and they found out that all that mercury
Speaker 1: hadn't accumulated over years and years, It had all come
Speaker 1: in one single dose, which was only about thirteen hours
Speaker 1: before he died. So suddenly this seemed very suspicious, very
Speaker 1: likely the cause of death not this first ladder or
Speaker 1: kidney disease or something. Right, So that's basically what they're
Speaker 1: trying to get more information on with this current exhimation.
Speaker 1: But the question still lingers, even if they find out
Speaker 1: if it's murder, who would want to murder Tico? And why? Yeah,
Speaker 1: what did you do that's so wrong? So that's a
Speaker 1: little bit of what we're going to look into in
Speaker 1: this episode. And but first we're gonna take you back
Speaker 1: to the beginning, so we always do as we do.
Speaker 1: He was born Tiga bra Hay actually with a different,
Speaker 1: slightly different first name, on December four six, in an
Speaker 1: area that would now be considered South Sweden, but it
Speaker 1: was then part of Denmark. Yeah, and his parents were nobles,
Speaker 1: but they didn't have that big of an influence on
Speaker 1: his life because of something that happens at age two. Yes,
Speaker 1: he was kidnapped, and he's kidnapped by his uncle, Jorgan Brahi. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's go to the strange part. His dad apparently uh
Speaker 1: made a deal with Jorgan before Tico was even born,
Speaker 1: and the deal was that if the child was a boy,
Speaker 1: Organ could adopt him. You see, Organ, he didn't have
Speaker 1: a son, so therefore he didn't have an air so
Speaker 1: he really wanted this to occur. But after Tico actually
Speaker 1: showed up, Otto kind of changed his mind. He changed
Speaker 1: the deal, or maybe his wife mentioned something like no,
Speaker 1: I'd really rather not give away my firstborn. That could
Speaker 1: also be an aspect of it. But fortunately Otto and
Speaker 1: his wife have a second son named Steen, and at
Speaker 1: this point Organ is like, well, Tico is mine. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you have two sons, I'm at least taking one
Speaker 1: of them and Otto. Tico's father was pretty upset about
Speaker 1: this at first, that his son got swiped by his brother. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was. He threatened to murder his brother Organ at first,
Speaker 1: but then he eventually relaxed about it a little bit,
Speaker 1: and he he saw the benefits that the situation could
Speaker 1: potentially present. He saw that, Okay, my brother Organ, he
Speaker 1: is lord of Tranicker Castle. He's very wealthy, he's very
Speaker 1: well educated. So he saw after a while that Tico
Speaker 1: could be on a tractor pretty sweet inheritance if he
Speaker 1: stayed with his uncle. Yeah, that both of his sons
Speaker 1: might end up with a better future, right, And so
Speaker 1: Organ being well educated and his wife inga they sent
Speaker 1: Tico on the trap to getting a good education too.
Speaker 1: By all accounts, they were very loving parents and he
Speaker 1: had like a really good childhood. So in about fifteen
Speaker 1: fifteen nine, when he was about twelve or thirteen years old,
Speaker 1: Tico went to the University of Copenhagen and was there
Speaker 1: until about fifteen sixty two. His main area of study
Speaker 1: there was law, which is what his uncle wanted him
Speaker 1: to do. But it was kind of the expected job
Speaker 1: for a man of his class exactly, but it didn't
Speaker 1: take a little. It didn't take very long for a
Speaker 1: couple of things to happen while he was there. First off,
Speaker 1: he started writing his name as Tico instead of Tico,
Speaker 1: which was the more modern style. And then most significantly,
Speaker 1: he witnessed a total eclipse of the sun on August one,
Speaker 1: fifteen sixty And this was just an amazing phenomenon to
Speaker 1: him because it was something that had been predicted and
Speaker 1: that it actually came to be, and he was just
Speaker 1: sort of fascinated by the fact that this was possible. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he knew there must be something behind astronomy, and so
Speaker 1: he started to study it more. He started to go
Speaker 1: out and study the stars at night, even though his
Speaker 1: family was trying to get him to focus on law
Speaker 1: and not be out stargazing. But after leaving school, he
Speaker 1: toured Europe and went all over Wittenberg, Rostock, Basil, Augsburg.
Speaker 1: But instead of visiting all the courts and doing the
Speaker 1: things he should have done as this young nobleman, he
Speaker 1: spent time studying at a few universities. Exactly, he was
Speaker 1: at the University of Leipzig from about fifteen sixty two
Speaker 1: to fifteen sixty five. His uncle actually sent him there
Speaker 1: again to study law, but of course he kept gazing
Speaker 1: at the stars. In fifteen sixty three, he had what
Speaker 1: was his second significant astronomical experience, so to speak, which
Speaker 1: was the first recorded observation of the overlapping of Jupiter
Speaker 1: and Saturn. And this was significant because it was something
Speaker 1: that was sort of off from what other scientists had predicted.
Speaker 1: So he had studied the works of Ptolemy and Copernicus,
Speaker 1: but what this showed him was that a lot of
Speaker 1: what was known at the time about the positions of
Speaker 1: the planets and the stars wasn't exactly accurate. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: he knew there was room for him and room to
Speaker 1: improve on what was already knew. Yeah. So he dedicated
Speaker 1: his life at this point to studying astronomy and stars. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And he kept on traveling, kept on studying astronomy and
Speaker 1: at Rostock. He actually got into an argument with another
Speaker 1: student over a mathematical point, which seems like as good
Speaker 1: a thing as any to get into, not arguing over um.
Speaker 1: They take it pretty far. They fight a duel, and
Speaker 1: some people say it was a drunken duel. That doesn't
Speaker 1: sound too surprising. But it ends with the other student
Speaker 1: slicing off part of Tico's nose and a big part,
Speaker 1: a big part of it. And to deal with that,
Speaker 1: he had an artificial nose created, which was supposedly made
Speaker 1: of either silver or gold, and that was I mean,
Speaker 1: that's probably what he's best known for its fakes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we'll talk a little more about that later. But
Speaker 1: during this period he did something else that was a
Speaker 1: little scandalous. He'd already anchored his family by studying the astronomy,
Speaker 1: which wasn't as respected as the law, and then he
Speaker 1: went off and married a woman who was basically considered
Speaker 1: a peasant. Her name was Kirsten Jorgan's daughter. She was
Speaker 1: a daughter of a parson, and family and friends never
Speaker 1: really accepted her. I mean for a long time his
Speaker 1: they had eight kids, I think, and they were considered
Speaker 1: illegitimate because the marriage was so beneath him, right, people
Speaker 1: never really recognized it. But I mean, he's doing all
Speaker 1: right financially at least, even if they're not recognizing his family.
Speaker 1: He's still this wealthy nobleman. And when his father and
Speaker 1: uncle both die in fifteen seventy one, he inherits his
Speaker 1: uncle's estate and at least part of his father's estate,
Speaker 1: so he's he's got all the resources he needs to
Speaker 1: continue his studies and really launched himself fully into astronomy. Yes,
Speaker 1: so then he sets up his own sort of small
Speaker 1: observatory and lab on another relative's property, just to totally
Speaker 1: devote herself. Right and there, on November eleven, fift seventy two,
Speaker 1: he made what is perhaps considered his most significant discovery.
Speaker 1: He noticed what he called a new star and it
Speaker 1: was brighter than Venus and located where no star was
Speaker 1: supposed to be in the Cassiopeia constellation. And he published
Speaker 1: a work about it called Di Nova Stella, which is
Speaker 1: the New Star translated. This was really big news for
Speaker 1: the intellectual community at the time. Yeah, it shook them up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because they figured that we know everything we could never
Speaker 1: know about where the stars are. The stars do not move,
Speaker 1: you don't get a new one, and so this was
Speaker 1: major news for them. Yeah. It almost was controversial. It
Speaker 1: rubbed some people the wrong way. They didn't want to
Speaker 1: believe it. But he uh, now we know what he
Speaker 1: observed was a supernova or the explosion of a dying star.
Speaker 1: But you know, at the time, just the fact that
Speaker 1: he had seen something in there that was different was
Speaker 1: a big deal. So after this, Tico becomes pretty famous
Speaker 1: throughout Europe. He's a well known and well respected astronomer,
Speaker 1: and he has a dream of establishing an even larger,
Speaker 1: very large observatory, and he plans to do so in
Speaker 1: Germany until King Frederick the Second of Denmark convinces him
Speaker 1: to stay. Um basically makes him an offer he can't refuge,
Speaker 1: makes them a pretty sweet offer. King Frederick is basically
Speaker 1: Frederick the second becomes a patron of sorts for Tico.
Speaker 1: Possibly because his life had been saved by Tico's uncle,
Speaker 1: That could factor into it, but I think part of
Speaker 1: it was also that here's this fabulous, famous astronomer, and
Speaker 1: I don't want to lose him. I want him to
Speaker 1: stay in my country. So all these things combined maybe
Speaker 1: convince him to offer Tico the entire island of then
Speaker 1: and foot the bill for the construction of a large
Speaker 1: observatory and house, and essentially makes the villagers Tico's tenants.
Speaker 1: So basically he can get rent from them. You can
Speaker 1: get rent from them, duties. It's an awesome deal from
Speaker 1: Tico's point of view. Yeah, so he gets to build
Speaker 1: his observatory, picks his own architect and he calls it Urannaborg,
Speaker 1: which translates to Castle of the Heavens, and it's complete
Speaker 1: with it's a pretty swanky place, even complete with indoor plumbing,
Speaker 1: which is ironically I think you're considering his unusual death.
Speaker 1: Yet it's a little ironic. But he designs his plumbing himself,
Speaker 1: and it was very uncommon at the time, so it's
Speaker 1: always something that you'll see mentioned about Uranna borg Um,
Speaker 1: even though it's kind of a funny thing to mention,
Speaker 1: I guess. And this was considered the world's first large
Speaker 1: research institute. So he has all these assistance that help
Speaker 1: him and he is just observing away and they do
Speaker 1: a lot of work there. All of Tico and all
Speaker 1: of his assistance catalog the positions of at least seven
Speaker 1: seventy seven stars. Some people say it's more like a
Speaker 1: thousand stars, and the work replaces Ptolemy's it becomes the
Speaker 1: standard astronomical text, I guess or or data set. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was a pretty big deal. And then in the
Speaker 1: fifteen eighties he came up with what he thought to
Speaker 1: be his biggest achievement ever, and that was a theory
Speaker 1: about the Solar system that contradicted Copernicus. Basically, he hoped
Speaker 1: with this, he hoped to eventually confirm this with his data. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and just to give you a rundown of how these
Speaker 1: theories differed. Copernicus thought that the Sun was the center
Speaker 1: of the universe and all the planets revolved around the Sun.
Speaker 1: But Tico thought that the Earth stayed put, it remained
Speaker 1: in this stationary position, and the Sun and the Moon
Speaker 1: revolved around the Earth, orbiting the Earth, and the other
Speaker 1: planets orbited the Sun. So it was kind of a mishmash,
Speaker 1: I guess. Yeah, it was a little topsy turvy compared
Speaker 1: to Copernicus his theory. And of course, and now we
Speaker 1: know that Copernicus was actually correct, but that came later on.
Speaker 1: So all of his data collecting, all of his observations
Speaker 1: later in life were to help confirm this theory. Up
Speaker 1: until this point, he appears to have led a charm
Speaker 1: to Life Islands his observatory two estates from his family.
Speaker 1: I mean, he's well known, he's well respected. But then
Speaker 1: in fifteen six things start to go south a little bit.
Speaker 1: Frederick the second has died and his son Frederick son,
Speaker 1: that is, Christian the fourth assumed the throne of Denmark
Speaker 1: and Norway, and he's not as fond of Tico. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you mentioned earlier that you saw different accounts of that.
Speaker 1: Maybe Christian just doesn't like Tico and wants to completely
Speaker 1: shut down his operation. Maybe it was more of a
Speaker 1: budgetary issue, you know, he just didn't have room to
Speaker 1: fund this astronomer as much as his father had. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I mean Tico was not cheap. He was living
Speaker 1: large out on the island of then, throwing parties, drinking,
Speaker 1: eating lots, and really not treating his tenants very well
Speaker 1: at all. So because of this clash with Christian the fourth,
Speaker 1: he ends up moving to Prague with his wife, where
Speaker 1: or Roudolph the Second gave him refuge and he continues
Speaker 1: his work there. But really at that point he had
Speaker 1: collected the majority of the data that he was going
Speaker 1: to collect over the course of his lifetime. So he
Speaker 1: has all of that. He's still working with it, he's
Speaker 1: still observing things, um, but at this point he most
Speaker 1: of his life's work is complete. Time to analyze everything
Speaker 1: you've gotten and what happened to the island and his
Speaker 1: large observatory. Well, Christian the Fourth reportedly had it torn down,
Speaker 1: so unfortunately it doesn't exist today. We can't even visit
Speaker 1: this place, you and your plumbing and everything, you know.
Speaker 1: So while he's in Prague, another significant thing happens. Tico
Speaker 1: takes on an assistant named Johannes Kepler in six hundred Yeah,
Speaker 1: and Kepler is a very different guy in away from Tico.
Speaker 1: He comes from a different background. He's not a nobleman,
Speaker 1: but by the time they meet, he's got a good reputation.
Speaker 1: He's a respected sigh antis and he's also a Copernican.
Speaker 1: So opposite opposite theories. They don't believe the universe works
Speaker 1: the same way, so he thinks that the planets orbit
Speaker 1: the Sun. It seems like it would be really hard
Speaker 1: to have a productive partnership with another astronomer if you
Speaker 1: had such a fundamental difference, but it seems like it
Speaker 1: could have worked well together. They could have worked well together.
Speaker 1: Kepler was a theory guy and Tico was the data guy,
Speaker 1: So if they had put their heads together, who knows
Speaker 1: what could have happened. But it turns out that they
Speaker 1: had kind of a tough working relationship. But couple really
Speaker 1: wanted to work with Tico because he had come up
Speaker 1: with sort of his own theory about um the orbits
Speaker 1: of the planets. He thought that they were spheres, one
Speaker 1: inside of the other, and so he really wanted to
Speaker 1: work with Tico so that he could use his data.
Speaker 1: But then, of course he comes to Tico, and Tico's
Speaker 1: totally stingy with all his observations in his data and
Speaker 1: completely at odds with his own beliefs. You don't want
Speaker 1: your data to prove something that disproves what you've been
Speaker 1: working on. Sure, so, as we mentioned that the two
Speaker 1: butted heads, they argued. Kepler even walked down and left
Speaker 1: at one point, and then Tico kind of came back
Speaker 1: and relented and they came back together. But then, of
Speaker 1: course Tico dies suddenly in six o one, and Kepler
Speaker 1: after that point becomes the Imperial Mathematician in Prague, which
Speaker 1: gives him access to all of Tico's data, So what
Speaker 1: he wants, he's finally got what he needs. Unfortunately, though,
Speaker 1: once he has all this data he's been waiting for
Speaker 1: for so long, it doesn't confirm his theory about the
Speaker 1: spherical orbit. That's true. At least he knows this, and
Speaker 1: he did confirm Copernicus' view of the Solar system and
Speaker 1: to come up with the important laws of planetary motion
Speaker 1: that he's still known for today. Yeah. So Kepler's work
Speaker 1: definitely benefits from having this data, which of course comes
Speaker 1: from Tico's death. So suspicious. Yeah, And in things about
Speaker 1: the mercury poisoning came out, a lot of people started thinking, well,
Speaker 1: what did this guy have to gain from it? And
Speaker 1: it makes them a pretty likely suspect, but there's no proof,
Speaker 1: there's no proof. A lot of people suggest that he
Speaker 1: might be a suspect, but there's no real hard proof
Speaker 1: I don't think to support that. Fortunately, we have we
Speaker 1: have some other suspect. There are some other suspects lined
Speaker 1: up here. One suspect is the Jesuit Order. They could
Speaker 1: have been to blame because they didn't really like the
Speaker 1: influence that Tico had as a Protestant over Prague's emperor
Speaker 1: Routolf the second. So that was what would have made
Speaker 1: them a suspect. Their motive in it, I guess, And
Speaker 1: there are others that think that Christian the Fourth may
Speaker 1: have had something to do with it, since he's not
Speaker 1: a fan, no, not a big fan of Tico at all,
Speaker 1: so he might have had a score to settle there,
Speaker 1: and there's been some sort of recent theorizing about that front,
Speaker 1: at least, hasn't there. Yes, there has a guy named
Speaker 1: Peter andrews En who is a Strasburg German studies expert.
Speaker 1: He a couple of years ago came up with a
Speaker 1: scenario that has Christian the Fourth as a mastermind and
Speaker 1: a plot that also involves Tico's distant cousin, Eric Brahe,
Speaker 1: and it's assumed in this scenario that Eric Brahe is
Speaker 1: the killer. And the reason Anderson came up with this
Speaker 1: theory is that he found he discovered Eric Brahe's six
Speaker 1: hundred page diary in the Royal Library of Stockholm, and
Speaker 1: he says it contains some pretty definitive evidence that shows
Speaker 1: it shows Eric Brahe going away on this huge mission.
Speaker 1: Around this time, he's wrangling an invitation to the banquet
Speaker 1: that Tico attended, the one where he didn't use the
Speaker 1: bathroom the entire time, And it also shows that Eric
Speaker 1: visited Tico at his home after the banquet in the
Speaker 1: day's length, and he also expresses some remorse in his
Speaker 1: diary in his writing, so there's one theory for you. Um,
Speaker 1: but other people think and this is not maybe not
Speaker 1: quite as exciting and scandalous, but some people think that
Speaker 1: Tico's death was accidental mercury poisoning. That because he was
Speaker 1: also a bit of an alchemist, he might have tried
Speaker 1: to cure himself by dosing himself with too much mercury
Speaker 1: and accidentally dying from it. Yeah, that's another possibility. And unfortunately,
Speaker 1: scientists say that we'll never know the truth because even
Speaker 1: though they can find out that they might find out
Speaker 1: if it's murder or if it was accidental poisoning, but
Speaker 1: after former plus years, it's unlikely that they'd be able
Speaker 1: to identify specific killer. So we this may have to
Speaker 1: remain a mystery. We do have one thing we can
Speaker 1: look forward to though. Yes, they may solve the mystery
Speaker 1: of the fake knows, and that came about the first
Speaker 1: time they exhumed Tico bra Hay in nineteen o one.
Speaker 1: They discovered that the metal plate that was his nose thesists, Yes,
Speaker 1: it was missing, it was not in his tomb, and
Speaker 1: when they sort of tested the area, they found copper
Speaker 1: there rather than silver and gold, which everyone thought it was.
Speaker 1: So they're hoping to test now and see if they
Speaker 1: can figure out what the nose was actually made up
Speaker 1: with a silver and gold Was it a silver and
Speaker 1: copper alloy? Maybe he had multiple notes. Maybe he had
Speaker 1: multiple ones. That's also a theory. Maybe he had one
Speaker 1: for special occasions and one for just everyday use. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you need a females need different looks, So that's one
Speaker 1: thing that we can look forward to hopefully. Yes, I
Speaker 1: would like to learn about the nose, if not the
Speaker 1: murder something um. But I guess that about wraps it
Speaker 1: up with Tico. If you have any more fun stories,
Speaker 1: you should email us. We talked about Katie and I
Speaker 1: talked about his moose or Elk earlier on the Animals podcast.
Speaker 1: So poor l pretty interesting guy. Yep, there's so much
Speaker 1: more we could say about Ticco if we had all
Speaker 1: the time in the world. So do you have any
Speaker 1: other specific questions or you want to add something, definitely
Speaker 1: write us. Yeah, you can email us at History Podcast
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com. We're also on Twitter
Speaker 1: at mist in history, and we have a Facebook fan page,
Speaker 1: so we have a lot of ways to share your
Speaker 1: Tico stories with us. And if you want to learn
Speaker 1: a little more about supernovas and other stellar events. You
Speaker 1: can check out our article how stars Work on our
Speaker 1: home page at www dot how stuff works dot com
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