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Stone Cold · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

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  Speaker 1: Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history
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  Speaker 1: is an open book, all of these amazing tales are
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  Speaker 1: right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.
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  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. Ernest Hemingway described bull
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  Speaker 1: fighting as the only art in which the artist is
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  Speaker 1: in danger of death and in which the degree of
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  Speaker 1: brilliance in the performance is left to the fighter's honor.
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  Speaker 1: He loved it so much, in fact, it became part
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  Speaker 1: of his debut novel, The Sun Also Rises. He eventually
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  Speaker 1: devoted an entire nonfiction book to the sport. Bull Fighting
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  Speaker 1: got its start way back in seven eleven a d
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  Speaker 1: as part of a coronation ceremony for a king. And
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  Speaker 1: if that performance space feels familiar, the and ring the
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  Speaker 1: circular stadium, that's for a very good reason. Bullfighting sprung
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  Speaker 1: out of Rome's gladiatorial games, back when the Roman Empire
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  Speaker 1: still ruled over Spain. There are three phases or stages
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  Speaker 1: of a traditional bullfight. In a cape stage, the matter
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  Speaker 1: door holds his cape up to the bull, taunting him
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  Speaker 1: and encouraging him to charge. This display is meant to
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  Speaker 1: show off the bull strength. In the piccador stage, Picadores
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  Speaker 1: on horseback poke and anger the bull with lances. Once
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  Speaker 1: the bull has been properly amped up, Bandarierro's run on
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  Speaker 1: foot and stick the bull with colored darts. The final
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  Speaker 1: stages the killing stage. That's when the bull, weakened by
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  Speaker 1: all the previous action, is forced into its final battle
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  Speaker 1: with the matador. If the matter door does his job successfully,
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  Speaker 1: it's over for the bull in a matter of moments,
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  Speaker 1: and the ring is cleared for the next contender. All
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  Speaker 1: in all, it's violent and cruel sport, but one deeply
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  Speaker 1: rooted in Spanish history. Over the years, some bullfighters have
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  Speaker 1: emerged as celebrities known all over the world. Manolette became
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  Speaker 1: a household name thanks in parts of both Hemingway and
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  Speaker 1: Orson Welles, the latter of whom befriended the young fighter
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  Speaker 1: and spoke highly of his skills at Hollywood dinner parties.
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  Speaker 1: After Manolette's death in nineteen forty seven, Louis Miguel Domin
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  Speaker 1: England rose to become a champion unlike anyone the sport
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  Speaker 1: had ever seen, often referred to as the best bullfighter
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  Speaker 1: of the twentieth century, and men continued to dominate bullfighting.
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  Speaker 1: Even today, though women have made it to the forefront
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  Speaker 1: on occasion. Conchita Citdron born in n became one of
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  Speaker 1: the most famous bullfighters in the world. However, it was
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  Speaker 1: a female bullfighter known only as La Roverte who made
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  Speaker 1: the biggest splash. At the turn of the century, she
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  Speaker 1: had found only modest success in the ring as a novelty.
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  Speaker 1: Women at the time weren't often welcomed in bullfighting circles,
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  Speaker 1: as they were considered to be too delicate for such
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  Speaker 1: a dangerous sport. However, La Riverte had no trouble keeping
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  Speaker 1: up with the men. Audiences loved her. She became an
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  Speaker 1: inspiration for little girls who wanted to chart different paths
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  Speaker 1: than that had been planned for them, and unsurprisingly, some
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  Speaker 1: men had a problem with that. If La Roverte wouldn't
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  Speaker 1: leave bull fighting behind, then they would find a way
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  Speaker 1: to take bull fighting away from her, and that's exactly
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  Speaker 1: what they did. In night, seven years after her career
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  Speaker 1: had taken off, the Spanish government passed a law banning
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  Speaker 1: women from the sport. They cited the idea of women
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  Speaker 1: fighting bulls as immoral. La Riverte didn't seem to mind,
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  Speaker 1: though she had a backup plan and a secret one
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  Speaker 1: that no one else knew. During her last fight, after
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  Speaker 1: she had teased and pierced her final bull, La Raverte
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  Speaker 1: shocked the crowd by ripping off her wig and fake assets,
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  Speaker 1: revealing her true identity to be that of a man
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  Speaker 1: named Austin Rodriguez. The audience went wild, and not in
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  Speaker 1: a good way. Rather than embrace Augustine and root for him,
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  Speaker 1: they turned on him the way they'd seen it. They
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  Speaker 1: had been defrauded for seven years by a man pretending
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  Speaker 1: to be a woman. His career never recovered, and Augustine
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  Speaker 1: retired to Majorca, where he eventually died in obscurity. Fortunately,
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  Speaker 1: the laws were reversed years later, and women eventually returned
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  Speaker 1: to the ring. In the best part, none of them
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  Speaker 1: had to wear a wig to get in. In the
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  Speaker 1: mid eighteen hundreds, flecks of shiny metal found in a
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  Speaker 1: water wheel led to hundreds of thousands of Americans migrating west.
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  Speaker 1: Their goal was to strike it rich in what would
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  Speaker 1: come to be known as the California Gold Rush. Half
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  Speaker 1: a century later, Beaumont, Texas, became the site of another
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  Speaker 1: kind of rush. This time, the bounty was oil and
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  Speaker 1: The discovery ignited a fervor across the state. People came
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  Speaker 1: in from all over, mostly by train, and all that
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  Speaker 1: traffic meant wear and tear on the tracks. In fact,
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  Speaker 1: it took an army of workers to keep the trains
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  Speaker 1: running smoothly, and one such person was G. W. Davis,
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  Speaker 1: a repairman who eventually found himself at the center of
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  Speaker 1: a bizarre story if only he'd lived to tell about it.
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  Speaker 1: You see, Davis had contracted an illness known as Bright's disease,
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  Speaker 1: which caused inflammation and the kidneys. Not much was known
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  Speaker 1: at the time about how to treat such a sickness,
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  Speaker 1: which had already claimed the lives of a North Dakota
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  Speaker 1: senator and poet, Emily Dickinson. Unfortunately, Davis's prognosis wasn't good.
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  Speaker 1: He was watched around the clock by a team of
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  Speaker 1: doctors who did all that they could, but were ultimately
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  Speaker 1: unable to save him. On February seven, one month after
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  Speaker 1: being died nosed, he passed away, and the care he
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  Speaker 1: had received in that time left his family destitute the
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  Speaker 1: cemetery where they planned on burying. Davis took pity on
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  Speaker 1: the family and offered to house his body temporarily. Once
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  Speaker 1: they had obtained the funds for a proper burial, he'd
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  Speaker 1: be moved to a permanent plot. Weeks passed by as
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  Speaker 1: Davis's family scrimped and saved, and when they were finally ready,
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  Speaker 1: they asked the cemetery to move the corpse. A family
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  Speaker 1: friend went out to oversee that move. He watched them excavate,
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  Speaker 1: heaving shovel fulls of dirt away as they dug six
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  Speaker 1: feet down, but something wasn't right. As they reached the coffin,
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  Speaker 1: they noticed a strange sight. Apparently, the grave had filled
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  Speaker 1: with almost two ft of this colored water, covering the
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  Speaker 1: coffin entirely. The grave diggers brought in a pump to
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  Speaker 1: siphon out the liquid before attempting to lift the coffin,
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  Speaker 1: and then ran into another problem. The coffin wouldn't budge.
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  Speaker 1: They thought that perhaps the often had also filled with water,
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  Speaker 1: rendering it too heavy to move, but when they opened
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  Speaker 1: it up, they realized that something else had happened. Entirely
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  Speaker 1: Davis's body was still inside, however, it had transformed. Rather
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  Speaker 1: than decomposed like a normal corpse, it had turned to
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  Speaker 1: solid stone. A news article at the time described Davis's
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  Speaker 1: body as having been chiseled from marble by an expert sculptor.
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  Speaker 1: His hands were still folded across his chest, and except
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  Speaker 1: for the hair and clothes, everything was perfectly preserved. More
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  Speaker 1: workers were called in to hoist the casket out, and
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  Speaker 1: while efforts were made to keep the particular circumstances from
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  Speaker 1: Davis's family, the rumors surrounding his condition spread and they
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  Speaker 1: eventually found out. What followed was a battle to keep
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  Speaker 1: their beloved relative out of the hands of greedy collectors,
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  Speaker 1: people who would have paid top dollar to own the
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  Speaker 1: morbid artifact for their own collections or to add it
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  Speaker 1: to a traveling side show. The family asked to have
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  Speaker 1: the body transferred to a secret location known only to
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  Speaker 1: them and the family friend who had watched over the
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  Speaker 1: initial burial. Upon reaching his resting place of the last
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  Speaker 1: few months, they found the ground to have been disturbed, and,
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  Speaker 1: fearing the worst, they dug it up. They were right.
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  Speaker 1: G W. Davis's stone form had disappeared from its grave.
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  Speaker 1: Everyone was considered a suspect, from the random strangers who
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  Speaker 1: had offered money for the body, to the family and
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  Speaker 1: friends who had participated in his burial, and yet no
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  Speaker 1: charges were brought against a single person. No clues had
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  Speaker 1: been left behind follow the perpetrator. Several local papers covered
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  Speaker 1: the discovery, but nothing ever turned up The thieves identities
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  Speaker 1: are still unknown to this day, as is the location
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  Speaker 1: of the body, if it still exists at all. We're
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  Speaker 1: all we know. Davis is still out there somewhere, waiting
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  Speaker 1: to be rediscovered. Stone dead, of course. I hope you've
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  Speaker 1: enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe
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  Speaker 1: for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the
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  Speaker 1: show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was
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  Speaker 1: created by me Aaron Manky in partnership with how Stuff Works.
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  Speaker 1: I make another award winning show called Lore, which is
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  Speaker 1: a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can
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  Speaker 1: learn all about it over at the World of Lore
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  Speaker 1: dot com. And until next time, stay curious.