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Mini But Mighty · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

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  Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
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  Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of
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  Speaker 1: the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all
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  Speaker 1: of these amazing tales right there on display, just waiting
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  Speaker 1: for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
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  Speaker 1: When you think of the strongest animal in the world,
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  Speaker 1: what comes to mind. Maybe you imagine the blue whales.
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  Speaker 1: Clocking in at over one hundred feet long and weighing
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  Speaker 1: around two hundred tons, they're the largest animals to have
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  Speaker 1: ever existed on Earth. Their hearts alone can weigh up
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  Speaker 1: to four hundred pounds, and the ventricles inside are big
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  Speaker 1: enough for a human being to crawl through. Or maybe
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  Speaker 1: you think of elephants. The African bush elephant is the
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  Speaker 1: law or just land mammal on the planet. They can
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  Speaker 1: grow up to twenty four feet long, thirteen feet tall,
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  Speaker 1: and weigh up to eleven tons. They also have a
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  Speaker 1: life span of about seventy years, which is longer than
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  Speaker 1: any other mammal except humans. Or perhaps you think of ants.
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  Speaker 1: The common American field ant is pound for pound stronger
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  Speaker 1: than any body builder out there. They can lift up
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  Speaker 1: to five thousand times their own body weight. That's like
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  Speaker 1: a two hundred pound man lifting a million pounds. So
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  Speaker 1: when it comes to the world's most industrious animal, there's
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  Speaker 1: some seriously tough competition. But the organism that tops the
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  Speaker 1: list might surprise you. It was discovered in seventeen seventy
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  Speaker 1: three by a German naturalist named Johann august Ephrium goes
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  Speaker 1: And that's kind of a mouthful, so we're just gonna
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  Speaker 1: call him Johan. Now, Johan discovered an organism that defied
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  Speaker 1: everything scientists knew about life on Earth. You see, he
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  Speaker 1: was really into studying water, and specifically the microorganisms that
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  Speaker 1: lived in water. Well, one day he was looking at
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  Speaker 1: some liquid under a micros and he noticed this tiny
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  Speaker 1: little thing wriggling around beneath the lens. It had eight legs,
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  Speaker 1: translucent skin, and a tube for a mouth. Johann thought
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  Speaker 1: this was curious. This aquatic being looked kind of like
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  Speaker 1: a miniature bear, and so he named it a wasser bear,
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  Speaker 1: that's water bear in German. And Johan noticed something very
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  Speaker 1: interesting too. When the water bear was taken out of water,
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  Speaker 1: it dried up, but it did not die, it entered
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  Speaker 1: a sort of sleep like states, kind of like an
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  Speaker 1: actual bear going into hibernation. As soon it was back
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  Speaker 1: in water, it woke back up good as new. Now,
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  Speaker 1: even in the seventeen hundreds, this discovery definitely caught the
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  Speaker 1: attention of the scientific community. An Italian clergyman named Lazzaro
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  Speaker 1: Spalanzani began studying the animal, and he noticed that it
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  Speaker 1: moved really slowly, so he gave it the name ill
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  Speaker 1: tartegrado or slow stepper in Italian. In English we would
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  Speaker 1: call the animal the tartar grade. Since it was first found,
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  Speaker 1: scientists have done a ton of re search on tartar grades.
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  Speaker 1: Here's what they've discovered so far. When a tartar grade
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  Speaker 1: is in the water, it seems like your standard microorganism.
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  Speaker 1: It only has a life expectancy of a few weeks.
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  Speaker 1: But when it dries out and enters that hibernation, which
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  Speaker 1: the scientists call the ton state, it becomes nearly indestructible.
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  Speaker 1: And I'm not exaggerating either. In the Ton state, tartar
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  Speaker 1: grades can withstand temperatures as low as one degree above
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  Speaker 1: absolute zero and as high as the boiling point of water.
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  Speaker 1: They can get blasted with thousands of times the radiation
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  Speaker 1: that would be fatal to a human and be totally fine.
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  Speaker 1: They can even go into the vacuum of space with
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  Speaker 1: no high tech astronaut gear. Might I add, and return
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  Speaker 1: to Earth unscathed. Basically name an apocalyptic scenario and the
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  Speaker 1: tartar grades will probably be aok. Oh, And I should
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  Speaker 1: also mention they can stay in the Ton States with
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  Speaker 1: no food or water for thirty years. Now. Based on
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  Speaker 1: the fossil record, scientists believe that tartar grades have been
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  Speaker 1: around for about six hundred million years. That means they
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  Speaker 1: existed four hundred million years before the dinosaurs, and they
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  Speaker 1: survived the mass extinction that made the t rex a
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  Speaker 1: thing of the very distant past. Because of their incredible strength,
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  Speaker 1: tartar grades can be found on every continent, including Antarctica.
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  Speaker 1: If you scoop up some water from a nearby ponder lake,
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  Speaker 1: chances are you might be able to find one swimming
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  Speaker 1: around inside. Of course, it won't surprise you to know
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  Speaker 1: that scientists are very interested in what exactly makes the
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  Speaker 1: tartar grades so resilient, and they found something that might
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  Speaker 1: actually prove useful for humanity. It turns out. Tartar grades
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  Speaker 1: have a protein in their body that experts call damage
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  Speaker 1: suppressor or d SUP. D SUP is able to bind
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  Speaker 1: to DNA inside the tartar grade's body and protect that
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  Speaker 1: DNA from damage, which is at least partially what makes
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  Speaker 1: the tiny water bear so massively strong. This is all
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  Speaker 1: relatively new science, by the way, but it's possible that
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  Speaker 1: the desup protein could eventually have a medical use in humans,
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  Speaker 1: and who knows, maybe one day we'll be able to
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  Speaker 1: make our selves as strong as those curious little creatures.
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  Speaker 1: We all love our pets, sometimes a little too much.
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  Speaker 1: We don't just spring for the gourmet food and expensive colors,
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  Speaker 1: but there are also those little outfits the treats, and
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  Speaker 1: they usually hog our covers at night as well. The dogs, cats,
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  Speaker 1: ferrets and lizards in our lives aren't just animals, they're
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  Speaker 1: members of the family. And Francis Henry Egerton, the eighth
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  Speaker 1: Earl of Bridgewater, treated his family very well. Egerton was
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  Speaker 1: born in seventeen fifty six in London. His aristocratic family
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  Speaker 1: was well known and well respected, with members having served
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  Speaker 1: within the military and the English government. Francis was sent
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  Speaker 1: to Eton and Christ's College Oxford for his schooling. Nearly
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  Speaker 1: fifty years after graduating with the Bachelor of Arts degree,
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  Speaker 1: he inherited his title of the eighth Earl of Bridgewater,
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  Speaker 1: and of course a lot of money from his late
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  Speaker 1: brother John. But as with most rich aristocrats, Egerton was
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  Speaker 1: known for being a little eccentric. He was a lifelong bachelor,
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  Speaker 1: and in his later years he abandoned his familial home
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  Speaker 1: in Hertfordshire for three point thirty five rus sent on
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  Speaker 1: Aree in Paris. This property was originally a hotel, but
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  Speaker 1: its new owner renamed its hotel Egerton, and got up
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  Speaker 1: to some wild hygiinks while living there. For one, he
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  Speaker 1: loved animals. Egerton kept a number of dogs, cats and
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  Speaker 1: birds in his home, and he didn't just adore his pets,
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  Speaker 1: he pampered them. His dogs had their own personal footmen
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  Speaker 1: who would put little leather boots on their paws and
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  Speaker 1: fasten a linen napkin around each of their necks. At
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  Speaker 1: meal time, every pooch had their own seat at the
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  Speaker 1: dinner table, where they would sit patiently while they were
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  Speaker 1: served a gourmet meal on silver platters. As I said,
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  Speaker 1: the man was eccentric, but not every dog had his
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  Speaker 1: day with the Earl of Bridgewater. Two of the man's dogs,
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  Speaker 1: named Bijou and Beesh, were less obedient than their other siblings.
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  Speaker 1: When they misbehaved, he would sequester them in a separate
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  Speaker 1: room of the hotel for one week, devoid of attention
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  Speaker 1: from their doting owner. And when he wasn't having dinner
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  Speaker 1: parties with his dogs, Egerton was keeping a close eye
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  Speaker 1: on his footwear. He wore a different pair of shoes
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  Speaker 1: every single day. At night, he would take them off
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  Speaker 1: and line them up in one room next to the
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  Speaker 1: pair from the previous day. By the end of the year,
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  Speaker 1: he had three hundred and sixty five individual pairs of
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  Speaker 1: shoes that could tell him what the weather was like
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  Speaker 1: on a particular day of the year, or how muddy
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  Speaker 1: it had been. Apparently he had never heard of an
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  Speaker 1: almanac or a journal. Of course, he may have had
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  Speaker 1: his strange behaviors and spent his money on frivolous things
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  Speaker 1: like a year's worth of shoes, but Egerton was no fool.
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  Speaker 1: In fact, he'd been a Fellow of All Souls at
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  Speaker 1: the University of Oxford, and in seventeen eighty one he'd
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  Speaker 1: been made a Fellow of the Royal Society, a designation
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  Speaker 1: reserved for people who'd made a significant contribution to the
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  Speaker 1: fields of men and science. He also did not stand
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  Speaker 1: to be pushed around by anyone. When Napoleon Bonaparte came
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  Speaker 1: to Paris to rearrange the city according to his plan,
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  Speaker 1: the would be emperor didn't stay long at hotel Egerton,
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  Speaker 1: the Earl kicked him out, and he did the same
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  Speaker 1: thing to the Duke of Saxe Coburg, who tried to
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  Speaker 1: take the hotel for himself. On that occasion, Egerton armed
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  Speaker 1: thirty of his servants ready to go to war over
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  Speaker 1: his home. The Duke wound up leaving empty handed. But
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  Speaker 1: not all was right in the City of Lights. The
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  Speaker 1: Earl longed for his days back in England when he
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  Speaker 1: would go out with his hounds and hunt wild game.
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  Speaker 1: You might think hunting would be impossible inside a hotel,
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  Speaker 1: but you'd be wrong. Egerton held small hunts on the property,
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  Speaker 1: complete with English hounds and an English fox. As he
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  Speaker 1: got older and couldn't walk so well, his servants would
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  Speaker 1: help him by putting a gun in his hands and
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  Speaker 1: holding him up to shoot pigeons, rabbits and partridges. When
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  Speaker 1: Francis Henry Egerton died on February eleventh of eighteen twenty nine.
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  Speaker 1: He left a collection of sixty seven manuscripts about French
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  Speaker 1: and Italian literature to the British Museum. He also bequeathed
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  Speaker 1: them twelve thousand pounds to start a fund so they
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  Speaker 1: might acquire additional manuscripts in the future, and he left
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  Speaker 1: eight thousand pounds to the President of the Royal Society.
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  Speaker 1: The money was to go to any authors chosen to
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  Speaker 1: write a treatise on the power, wisdom and goodness of God,
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  Speaker 1: as manifested in the Creation. Eight such treatises were composed
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  Speaker 1: between eighteen thirty three and eighteen thirty six. As the
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  Speaker 1: Earl of Bridgewater, Edgarton was no stranger to side eye
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  Speaker 1: or rumor. He lived his life the way he wanted,
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  Speaker 1: which is something most of us only dream about, and
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  Speaker 1: he did it with style and flare and some really
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  Speaker 1: well dressed dogs. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour
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  Speaker 1: of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts,
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  Speaker 1: or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities Podcast.
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  Speaker 1: The show was created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership
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  Speaker 1: with how Stuff Works, I make another award winning show
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  Speaker 1: called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television
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  Speaker 1: show and you can learn all about it over at
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  Speaker 1: the Worldoflore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.