David: Hello, hello. Welcome to,
Leila: welcome to Fun fact
David: for Wait, wait, speculation
Leila: Saturday.
David: Silly speculation Saturday, we
Leila: didn't have time. I mean, we just wanted to make a silly
speculation Saturday this
David: week. We'll go into that right after the intro. But this
is the Fun Fact Friday feed, but we're doing a sole speculation
Saturday this week because we wanted to dig into something
that may be a little controversial. Yep, so
Leila: speculation Saturday is a show that we sometimes do where
we cover topics that we couldn't cover on Fun Fact Friday because
they're not technically well, they could be true. They just
have a lot of speculation around them,
David: silly speculation. Saturday, turn your volume just
a little bit little quiet.
Leila: I don't, I don't remember the episode where we came up
with silly speculation Saturday. It
David: was a while back. I could go look on the site and look up
silly speculation. Saturday, I can do that real quick.
Leila: What episode of Fun Fact Friday, where we like, oh, we
David: should do, oh, wow. It was a long, long time ago in a
galaxy, far, far, far away. Yeah, I believe it was back when
we were still in the house doing the we were. I remember silly
speculation, Saturday the moon. That was episode 112 that wasn't
long ago. No, yeah, go back further than that. Let's see, I
think the first
Leila: or in the house 37
David: I can't find it. I don't see. Hold
Leila: on, I got it. You start talking about, yeah. So
David: basically, what we're going to be talking about this
episode after we do what we're going to do our support first,
but we're going to be talking about stolen artifacts. 97 was
the back rooms. I believe that was the first one episode 97
that was the first silly speculation Saturday, if you're
if you're on our feed and you see the SSS before the title.
That means it's silly speculation Saturday. Typically,
I'll put the art. We'll have silly speculation Saturday over
top of fun factfriday. Who knows? Maybe this would be
eventually a separate feed, or we'll just transfer over to
doing more topics like this. Let us know what you think. Hit us
up mail@funfacfriday.com or on our socials, which should be
able to find, pretty easy.
Leila: Did we do a one on SCPs, um, I don't we did
David: think, I don't think so. Did we? Did we do? Let's do a
find a CP, nothing, wow,
Leila: and like a dream or something. I can I remember
that? No, I
David: think we started researching SCPs, and we were
just like, Yeah, but what? For those who don't know SCPs?
There's a, there's a, essentially, it's just a
fiction, almost like an open source fiction website, SCP
Foundation, where there's like a shared universe, and people do,
they do stories about different artifacts that get found and
that it's creatures, creatures, or entities or whatever, and
it's, it's kind of just like a shared fictional universe where
there's this foundation called the SCP Foundation, that secure,
contain, protect. So any anomalous thing that they find,
they have to find a way to contain it, contain it. And is
it, it's fun to read. Sometimes, there's a lot about of them.
Yeah, there's, there's a lot of junk, um, because anybody could
write, you know, anybody could write a thing. But every once in
a while, there's a really good creature or just idea it's
pretty neat, pretty neat stuff. But we are talking about museums
today, specifically
Leila: museums that steel crap. Yeah, or are have contested
items, right,
David: right. Oh, one little last disclaimer for silly
circulation Saturday, sometimes we do get a little more into
topics that might not be suitable for the youngins. So
maybe not this episode, maybe not this episode, but just a
disclaimer, yes, of them, yeah. So just Parental discretion
advice. Do a quick scan through and listen. Yeah, so we're going
to talk about our support. We are value for value podcast, and
we rely on our listeners to support us. We don't do ads, we
don't do sponsorships or anything like that. That way, if
we like a product or don't like a product, we can speak our mind
about it and not feel censored in any way. And also, we don't
have to worry about getting quote, unquote canceled for
talking about speculative topics like museums that steal stuff.
So you can help us out by going to funfacfriday.com and clicking
the donate button. Or you can go to store.funfacfriday.com and
buy some merch. When you get some more merch up there, you.
Uh, we're always talking about it, but rarely ever actually
make the stuff, because I'm not an artist. But yeah, we did get
some support this past week. We got our two PayPal sustaining
donations. We got Stephen Grimes for $10 $10 fantastic. That
covers one of our servers. And then Dr Scott for 1912 $19.12
which is our Oreo donation. And that's 1912 is the year Oreos
was invented. And we love us some Oreos. And that pays for
the rest of our servers. So
Leila: thank you so much for our PayPal donators. Yes,
David: monthly sustaining donations. You can see our
PayPal link at the donations link on funfafightfriday.com. We
also received donations via the podcasting 2.0 value for value,
Satoshi sending system, boosts, yeah. And we definitely received
some boosts this week with notes, and that's one of the
cool things about boost. You can use a modern podcast app like
fountain.fm, and you can send a note along with your donation.
Yeah,
Leila: so just listening, or just listening. Thank
David: you. I was about to correct you sent 847
Leila: again, which we still don't know what it means, 847
SATs. 847 SATs on the hippo Medus. He sent it twice, but he
sent two different notes.
David: And on these notes, I read through them, and I'm
almost like, Are you mocking the AI? Or are you? Are you? Did you
use AI to help write the boost? We need to know. We need to know
just listening.
Leila: Think it's mocking. Think so too. But the first one he
sent, I'm beginning. I'm beginning to think that mashed
potatoes were invented with a bunch of tomatoes and potatoes
got together in square dance in Illinois. Imagine a room filled
to fill to overflowing with fruit from the vine and veggies
from underground shaking and jive driving, making a racket so
inviting that who should stop by but a bunch of hippopotamy
Exclamation point? Well, the tomatoes split comma because
they know how the sauce is made. Semicolon, but the taters didn't
comma on the dance floor. They stayed.
David: Why are you saying the punctuation?
Leila: Because I'm bad at punctuating
David: my actual sentence one second. There we go. There we
go. Technical issue. We've
Leila: been messing with the whatever you call it, settings,
settings, yeah,
David: or recording settings with a equalizer and compressor
and filters and all this, yeah? So yeah, we got, we definitely
appreciate that. And you want to say the second one sure we got
another 847, stats from just listening from the hippo Medus
episode. Those potatoes did regret it. And this might be a
continuation from the previous one. It is those potatoes did
regret it. They never felt such caress as on the fateful day
they danced with the hippopotamus, hippopotam a,
hippopotamus, hippopotam a. That's awesome.
Leila: Exclamation point.
David: I love it. It sounds very AI, but I don't think it was
Leila: either, because it has Illinois in there and Illinois
facts. Remember, yep, on the random facts episode this
David: wonder. I wonder if just Liz, it was like, make a, make a
make a comment based on the transcript of this episode.
Boom.
Unknown: I hope so fun.
David: Yeah, some of the AI things have a limit on how much
you can put in the input. But if you pay for them, it take makes
that limit, like, really high, because I know I did some
really, very long prompts when I was writing our our show notes
maker, or not, our show notes, our RSS feed maker, using the AI
to help program it. But we definitely appreciate all the
boost, all the PayPal sustaining donations, and we would
appreciate any more help anybody wants to give. I am heading out
to Podcast Movement up in DC in a couple of weeks, and I'm going
to be passing around my resume, trying to trying to get in,
like, officially get into the, you know, get a job, like a
proper job in the podcasting space, hopefully without having
to compromise my morals, having to do with with advertising or
or anything like that. Yeah, so we'll see our show. We'll never
do that, and that's because we own, we own that. But, yeah,
museums, museums,
Leila: they do. Yeah, they do. So how we got this topic is he
sent me a link of artifacts out of place in history. I think,
yes,
David: because that's a topic I would love to do sometime. Yeah,
yeah.
Leila: And I was like, Oh, why don't we do the fact that, like,
the British Museum steals crap from other places, like the
Rosetta Stone. And he was like, Well, you know, the
Smithsonian's been doing crap like that, too. And I was like,
Okay, let's
David: do some museum talk. So steel is an interesting like,
way saying it like steel, I don't know, I didn't dig into
the British Museum, but most of the Smithsonian stuff that is at
not even just the Smithsonian, but a lot of American museums,
they bought it. They bought the artifacts thinking they were
legit artifact dealers. It turns out it was just just, you know,
people just stole stuff, and then we're selling it with fake
papers,
Leila: like, I'm pretty sure that the crap to the British
Museum took is actually taken,
David: right, right, right. So you'll go into the British
Museum. I didn't look into that at all, but there was the I'm
trying to find, the the link. Oh, that's your link. That's not
my link. The first, the last two are mine. Okay, gotcha. So I
found one talking about, before we go into the British Museum of
the Smithsonian, there's an article, oh my gosh. Oh my gosh.
Okay, so the links in our show notes are kind of if you go to
the New York Times too often, it's behind the paywall. So, you
know, you use your your smarts to get around all that. But
there was a sarcophagus covered in gold at the Met Museum,
right? And Kim Kardashian has a picture posing next to it at the
Met Gala. And basically that was a big contentious thing, because
the sarcophagus had been basically smuggled in. The Met
paid $4 million for it, and it turns out it was smuggled in by
by the bad people. And all of this was brought to light by one
of the guys who initially stole it, oh, took the mummy out of
it, threw it in the in the Nile River, and was like, Hey, wait a
minute. I didn't get any of that $4 million so he started whistle
blowing and started telling everybody, you know, that's not
that's not legit. Somebody stole that. Somebody stole that. And
he was like, basically, I stole it and then sold it to somebody
for a much lower price than that. They made up fake papers
and then sold it to the Met for $4 million and now the Met is
like, yeah, so we, we've got to, we got to send this, send this
thing back another Mets, like, out of $4 million and they can
do anything about it. And so they thought they were doing the
right thing. And they just, they just kind of, kind of weren't so
$4 million down the drain for the met on this.
Unknown: Oh, I think they've gotten it back.
David: What do you mean they've gotten it back? I
Leila: like donations and crap. It's a museum. I think they've
gotten it back. Oh, the
David: $4 million Oh yeah, yeah. Museums. Anytime we go to a
museum, there's always, like, the big glass box up in the
front where you can drop money in. Yeah, we always throw a
couple bucks in there, just because value for value, right?
So, um, yeah. So they've got this, they've got this
sarcophagus, and it's got it actually, they confirmed that it
was one of the ones that was stolen, because the guy who had
taken the mummy out of it. Didn't take all of the mummy.
There was a pinky finger left in there. It was like, stuck to the
side. That's disgusting. So the moral of the story is,
basically, if you're going to steal a sarcophagus, make sure
you get rid of all of the mummy and know what you've got, you
know, yeah, don't let anybody lowball you. Yeah, you took, you
took a lot of risk stealing that thing. And, um, you know, if you
ever happen to be in the the pawn shop, great, robbing
business, yeah, yeah. And the, the guy the pawn shops, like,
ah, best I can do is four to 450 cent, you know,
Leila: at least do like six. Come on.
David: All right, so why don't you tell us about the British
Museum, which is what got you interested in this topic.
Leila: Okay, so the British Museum has stolen a lot of
artifacts, and I am saying stolen with the regard that
possibly they are not stolen, but there has been like requests
to send them back to the rightful owners, you know. So
they have stolen the Rosetta Stone, and that's in their
museum. I'm trying to find it
David: okay? So when you're talking about stolen, yes, and
while you're finding your pieces, there you go. So when
you talk about stolen for a museum, do you feel like
stealing? Was the intent? Or do you feel like it was like, this
belongs in a museum. We need to get this thing in a museum so
the most people can benefit from seeing it and knowing its
history. Or do you think it was like, but we're gonna take this
because people will pay money to come see it. You know, because
museums are free, typically donation based, so I don't, I
don't know if there's, like, an ill intent, or if, just, like,
we want as many people to see this as possible, so we're gonna
put this in them in London, you know. Yeah, okay, we'll go
ahead. Talk about the Rosetta Stone. What is the Rosetta
Stone? First of all, and then it's
Leila: a big old rock. It's a big old and it's got some, it
has some stuff engraved in it, in like hieroglyphs, and they
did translate it into, like a piece of paper or something.
David: The Rosetta Stone is how we learned to translate
hieroglyphics into modern languages. It's it's a
translation stone.
Leila: Yeah, the stone was discovered by French soldiers in
the northern town of Rashid. Rashid, terrible pronunciation
in 1799, shot up. Okay, thank you during Napoleon Bonaparte's
military occupation in the country, but passed into British
hands after the general forces were routed. Rooted in 1801, so
it was taken from where it was made, I'm assuming, and given to
the British and they brought it back, and then they put it in
the British Museum.
David: So it was a, was a spoil of war. Does that sound like but
I mean, they put it in a museum. It's not like somebody just took
it. Somebody just took it and kept it for money purposes. So I
don't know, I'm, I'm just kind of like playing the devil's
advocate here. Of like, Napoleon stole it. I'm guessing maybe he
paid for it. But no things like the Rosetta Stone, which you
know are when it was originally made, 2000 5000 80,000 years
ago, whenever it was made. Doctor,
Leila: I have more information. Oh, okay, okay. Dr, howis said
he hopes to see the stone, which he described as an icon of
Egyptian identity, displayed in the grand Egyptian Museum in
Giza once it opens in late 2023 or early 2024 he was also
pursuing the return of the Zodiac of Dendera from the
louver and the Nefertiti bust From the NOE Museum in Berlin.
But yeah. So the British Museum is just holding the Rosetta
Stone, and he's hoping that they give it back.
David: And but my thing, my question is, like, on all of
these things, do you feel like you personally, do you feel like
one person has more of a claim to ownership as the other,
because these things have been moved around for 1000s of years,
so all of the sales or or moving of the things, or donations of
the thing might have all been legit. So does the one in Giza
have more of a claim on the Rosetta Stone than the British
do, because, like, the guy who found the Rosetta Stone maybe,
like, okay, so he owns the land, right? The Rosetta stones on,
and he finds it, and he donates it to to a guy, right? Because
the guy's like, I'm gonna display this so everybody can
see it, everybody can learn from it. And then that guy's like,
All right, well, we wrote everything down on a piece of
paper from it. Let's put it in a museum. So he donates it to a
museum, and then Napoleon takes it, and then the British take it
from Napoleon after because they don't want it to fall into the
wrong hands and get destroyed, so they put it in the British
Museum. So like the chain of custody over, you know, however
many years could be very murky, and it might be all legit. So
does the people do, the people in Giza at that museum, really
have a claim on it, or they just kind of saying that should
probably be over here, because it's part of Egyptian history,
when really it's part of a history of the world? Yeah, so I
don't know. I'm, I'm kind of, that's why this topic so
controversial, because it's like, who really owns the
history of the world doesn't necessarily belong to the person
and the person who found it might have sold it, you know, we
don't know. So when, when people say that the museum stole the
artifacts? I'm, I'm a little dubious on all of them, you
know, I'm not saying that. Yeah, we didn't we the British that
museums and and artifact dealers and things like that didn't go
in and just steal stuff or even mislead like, let's say there's
like a small maybe not so it. Society somewhere that has some
artifact, right? And they go to them, and they're like, Hey,
what are you know? What if we give you, like, some some water
wells and some tractors, you can use all these cool things, and
you just give us that, that useless gold thing over there,
and it's just sitting there, yeah? And they're like, oh,
yeah, because, I mean, that's kind of, it's slimy, but still,
it's a deal. Yeah, deal's a deal. I don't know. I'm just
kind of, I'm playing the devil's advocate here on behalf of the
dealers and the museums and all that. Like the Smithsonian,
there are rumors. Can't find anything really substantiated,
because there's a lot of debunking articles that go along
with this thing. But the Smithsonian has allegedly been
purchasing anytime somebody finds a the remains of a of a
giant like they find giant skeleton, the Smithsonian will
swoop in and pay the person who found it a lot of money and take
it and hide it or destroy it. So that's a rumor that's been going
around for quite a while, and a lot of people say it's debunked.
And a lot of people you know, but the burial mounds that have
been in America since before anybody was here, I guess
somebody had to be here make them. But since modern
civilizations have been here, they've allegedly found lots of
giant skeletons in these mounds. And the there's like news
articles way back in like the 1800s of somebody finding, like
an eight foot tall skeleton on their property, and people from
the Smithsonian come and grab it. And I'm kind of led to
believe that the Smithsonian is doing that, based on another
article that I found that is founded on cnn.com and it's back
from last year. In August, the Smithsonian is apologizing for
its dark history behind the collection of human remains. Oh,
yeah. So I can go into that, unless you've got more British
Museum
Leila: stuff. I have British Museum stuff on the human
remains too.
David: So if you just oh, so I'll kick talk about Yeah. Okay,
so basically, an early 20th century the Smithsonian was
collecting human body parts. The It is currently in possession of
30,700 human body parts, including 255 brains. You can
find a link to this in the show notes under the title
Smithsonian steals people. Brain says, Sorry. 100 years later,
and basically in the early 1900s they were trying to prove that
white people were superior to people of color. The Smithsonian
was was trying to prove this particularly someone named
Alice, her Delica hurdle. I can't even how do you have that
many consonants in a row? H, r, d, l, I, C, K, A is the last
name. Okay, any who the the there's those, yeah, there's a
quote here. It was a poor, abhorrent and dehumanizing work,
and it was carried out under the Smithsonian's name as secretary
of the Smithsonian. I condemn these past actions. This is
somebody currently talking Yeah. I condemn these past actions and
apologize for the pain caused by her, druka and others in the
institution who acted unethically in the name of
science, regardless of the era in which the actions occurred.
He continued, I recognize too that the Smithsonian is
responsible for both the original work of her and others
who subscribe to his beliefs and for the failure of the return of
the remains he collected to descendant communities in the
decades since. So my guess is, is this herd lica didn't write
down and keep track of all the body parts. So getting them back
to their original communities is probably really tough. You know
they were, they were probably just like, hey, I go dig up all
those graves. There was a lot of let's see, when they took them,
that was largely from black and indigenous people, as well as
people of color, mostly without their consent. And see, there it
goes again, with the mostly without their consent. So
perhaps some of them were with consents like, Yeah, we don't.
We don't care about the remains. Those are nobody, go to us, you
know, give us. Give us 100 bucks when you can have them all,
whatever you know. So the Smithsonian has currently, just
to tell you how big this organization is, 157 million
items in their collection. You. Uh huh, there. Sometimes they
call it the nation's attic. So probably, oh, that's neat, send
to the Smithsonian. We'll stick it in, stick it in a warehouse
somewhere. So in 1989 the National Museum of American
Indians Act was enacted, and it says that the Smithsonian has to
return the remains of individuals as quick as possible
to the descendants or the tribe from which they were taken. The
Smithsonian has repatriated the remains of more than 5000 people
to the American Indian tribes that they took them from. So
it's kind of kind of a creepy pass for the Smithsonian. So it
kind of makes me think, if they're doing that, and then,
like it's just coming out that all this stuff was happening,
what else have they done over the years? What else is in in
unmarked or just marked with a random number boxes in the
Smithsonian's warehouses. Yeah, and it wouldn't it makes you
wonder. Makes me wonder, because I've got kind of a
conspiratorial mind. Maybe they've got stuff that they were
they picked up and are hiding, because it goes against the the
what the current narrative is for the history of America,
slash the world. You know, if they find something that goes
against what we have written down as history, it's like, man,
they're gonna have to rewrite a whole lot of books if this piece
of whatever gets found. Yeah.
Leila: So the British Museum has a bunch of human remains, and
they say on their website that they treat them with nice
respect of the dead. Oh, I'm sure they do. I'm sure they do,
yeah, but there is no really way to see if these were given to
the museum by people in the family or stuff like that. So it
does raise the same concerns, right that you were talking
about, but they have a thing on their website that shows you all
of the human remains in their collection. It's 116 pages long.
How many page has like nine things on it?
David: So like 1000 1000 items. And is that individual people's
Roman, or is that, like, lots? Is that, like, we've got 3030,
bodies from this?
Leila: No, I think this is like, individual because, like, Okay,
let me look at the first page. Okay, we have, like, human
skull, and some of these are things like, wrapped in skin or
hair, you know, right? So it's not even just, like, full
bodies, it's just parts, parts.
David: Yeah, that's what this says, is, it's parts, 30,000
parts. So, yeah, make sure you include that PDF in the show.
Yes, that's, uh, that's interesting. I'd like to
actually look through that a little later. Yeah. So what do
you think about do you think that it was mostly with
nefarious because, like, to me, I've met a lot of people that
work in museums, and they are just, like, really into the this
is so neat. Come look at this and this. And granted, those are
like, the front end workers and the people just, you know,
they're hired there or whatever. But like, I don't feel like a
lot of museums have like, this malicious intent of well, we're
gonna get that because they'll bring more people to our our
door. I'm sure there are people, because they want to get as many
people in the door as possible, get more grants and things like
that. But I don't know, and I'm not saying, Oh, everybody runs a
museum is pure of heart and all that, but I feel like most of
them are probably trying their hardest, at least these days, to
do things as above board as possible. It's like that, that
sarcophagus with the Met Museum, they paid $4 million for this
thing. So they, they're thinking, oh, you know, and they
had, they had paperwork, and they had, you know, everything
looked above board to them. So they're like, oh, wow, this is
really cool. And it's all legit, yeah, neat. We can put this
thing out, but now the people want it back. So I don't know
this PDF
Leila: is really thorough too, because it has like what it is,
it has where it comes from in alphabetical order, and it has
like, when it was from, and how many there is in the museum, and
usually just ones. But that's really cool. Not saying it's
cool that they have human remains, but it's cool how they
throw up about it.
David: Now there are people who are definitely like artifact
pirates, yeah, Thomas, Thomas hooving having having a
metropoli, Metropolitan Museum of Art curator who later became
its director, took particular pride in his ability to outsmart
rivals in the global pursuit of masterpieces. So this has got
one of the guys that you can't give the benefit of that out to.
In one instance, he recalled spiriting a Romanesque relief.
From a Florentine church out of Italy, with the help of a dealer
who, Hoving said, often stashed objects under a mattress in his
station wagon. His quote is, my collecting style was pure
piracy, and I got a reputation as a shark. So that kind of guy
is probably the problem. Yeah. So, yeah, there you go. Old
Thomas Hoving messing it up for everybody.
Unknown: Yeah.
David: So, do you think that, like, do you think that they
should, they should have to do that? I personally, I feel like
all the museums, especially history museums around the
world, and I know that they do have like tours of things like
the Titanic exhibit toward it toured around until it got a
permanent spot in Vegas, like the what the Rosetta Stone, for
example. I feel like that that shouldn't be in one place,
because traveling is expensive. And if I want to see the Rosetta
Stone, it's going to cost a lot to go to another country to see
it, yeah, whereas if they bounced it around like it spends
a year,
Leila: also, it's so historic that they don't want anything to
happen. They don't
David: want to move it around more than they have to. That's
That's true also, yeah, I don't know. I don't know what the
solution should
Leila: be in the place where it made history, you know, right?
Like the MOE statues should be in Easter Island, where they
were found and where they were made to be part of that culture,
you know, Yeah, but see, that's where they made history, and
David: never see them, you know, like, I'll never get down to
eastern island, yeah.
Easter Island is not, they don't have, you know, big airport hub
where you can get down there on a discount, you know, to see
these things, whereas if they pick up one of them and fly it
somewhere, or put it on a boat and send it to a museum, you'll
get to see it. I got to see a part of the Berlin Wall at a
museum one time. We think, I think it was the Smithson. Might
have been Smithsonian when I went, I've been to the
Smithsonian once. I think that's where we were. And I got to see,
like, a huge section of the Berlin Wall with all of its
graffiti and stuff on it. And that was extremely interesting.
And I don't think I'm probably ever going to Germany. I don't
really have any interest to go to Germany. It's really neat to
be able to see something from a different place, you know,
different part of the world. I find it interesting. And if
everybody's hoarding their own artifacts and stuff, well, of
course I say all this, but with the internet and with even like
the 3d scan technology and stuff like that, soon enough, you'll
be able to pop on your VR headset, another already doing
this with some museums, and you'll be able to virtually walk
around, and it'll feel like you're there, yeah, because, I
mean, you can't touch any of this stuff anyway. It's not like
a Bob Ross painting that was so fun, that was so neat. Phaedra
did not want to touch that painting. She's
Leila: like, hands on it, really touching it. But yeah, Bob
David: Ross wants you to touch the paintings like he said. He
said, he said as much. He's like, if you can't touch it, you
can't feel the texture that the paint. Painting going nowhere.
Just don't chip at it. You know, the girl
Leila: walked up to us and was like, Yeah, you can touch it. He
would love he would love it to know that y'all were like, Yeah,
appreciating his paint up close. And it
David: meant something to me, and it meaning something to me,
yeah, would mean something to Bob Ross, you know, it my, my
Wonder of touching this thing that I saw him paint on, you
know, PBS, however, many years ago when I was a kid, like, I
think he would have enjoyed that. I enjoyed it. Yeah, so now
art, art is a whole different thing, yeah, because art is used
for money laundering, yeah, when you, when you tell me that that
that painting, right there, whatever painting it is sold for
$40 million yeah, there's somebody laundering money.
There's, there's no way somebody's trying to, somebody's
trying to move money around without raising suspicions.
Yeah, and that's a real easy way to do it, because since artists
subjectively priced,
Leila: one more thing I want to talk about, okay, yeah, the how
do you say it? I don't know. Parthenon. Parthenon, Parthenon
sculptures. The British Museum has a whole bunch of them, and
they're really cool. I look on the website and they're really
cool. They look amazing. But they have been requested to be
returned to Greece, and there has been. In, like meetings
about getting them back to Greece, but they just haven't
gone through with it. So
David: who's gonna pay to get them there? Maybe that's what's
the sticky point,
Leila: maybe. But okay, it says what has been requested, a
formal request for the permanent return to Greece. Of all the
Parthenon sculptures in the museums collection was first
made in 1983 there have been various meetings and discussions
since that media coverage has referred to the Greek government
requests to borrow the sculptures, but a loan request
has never been received. The trustees will consider any loan
request for any part of the collection subject to all normal
loan conditions success. Successive Greek governments
have refused to acknowledge the trustees title to the Parthenon
sculptures. So I think it is about the money right now,
moving it, yeah, moving it,
David: that's gonna cost a lot, because in order to have the the
care taken to make sure that nothing gets broken, you're
gonna have to pay people a lot of money. Yeah, sounds like a
full their loan. Oh, yeah. And then I've never seen this
before, yeah, oh, it's the all those old Greek and Roman
statues and stuff are amazing. And I would love to have seen
them with the paint on them, because, like, they painted, you
know, like they weren't just white stone, which, there's
something beautiful about it just being white stone
Leila: also. But I want to go back to that museum in, uh,
what's its face?
David: What's his face? Yeah. In Virginia, yeah, the Chrysler
Museum, yeah, yes. Chrysler Museum has some amazing art in
it. So does the the what is it? North Carolina Museum of Art up
in Cary. Oh, yeah. It has, it has a lot of your mom always was
one in Cary. She likes the Chrysler museum the most,
though, out of all the ones she's been to, I remember when
we went to the Smithsonian they had this huge pillar, not glass,
a Plexiglas pillar filled with transistors, like floor to
ceiling, and the ceilings were really high, and then it had an
Intel 486 chip sitting in front of it, and said, this chip has
10 times the amount of transistors inside of this tube,
and this was back in the 90s. Wow. So now might have been a
386 chip. I don't remember Intel chip. So now it like you'd have
to fill the building with transistors. I know to meet one
of the new processors. Some of those new processors have like,
40 gajillion transistors in them, gajillion I'm trying to
I'm going to start teaching Leila about how computers work
and all that, because she's got some classes coming up for
computer science. So I'm going to get on top of getting her the
basics soon. Yeah, so, but yeah, I feel like you have to go
artifact by artifact with this stuff, and like I was saying
earlier about being able to travel all over the world to see
all of these different artifacts, when you pull most of
them into one, one museum that's well funded and can keep track
of everything and make sure everything's in a good condition
and and all that. Like, if you have an artifact from somewhere
that's less advanced, has an unstable government, things like
that. Like, let's say we send the Billy Bob stone, I don't
know, not, not the resistance back to, you know, some small,
uncivilized place where it was gotten from, right? Because it's
this huge piece of human history. But that place gets it
for their little museum that's basically just a shack with no
kind of security or anything. Now, that stone, the billabob
Stone, gets stolen by random people locally and then sold
back to a big museum or a private collector, you know. So
it kind of makes sense to have the big, really historical items
stored in places and shown in places that can protect them and
preserved, I
Leila: just hope, is that all of the places that they come from
have given permission to the like, British Museum,
David: right? And with this really old audience, really old
stuff that the museums have had for decades or centuries,
there's no, really no way to know, yeah, because the records
just weren't kept back then everything was on a handshake
or, you know, things like that. So I don't know. It's just
speculating here, huh, huh that. I don't know it's probably 5050,
legit and stolen, yeah, stuff, but get out, yeah, just get out
to a museum and look at stuff when you can. When you can. We
enjoy going to museums that used to be one of me and Phaedra date
things, because it's free. I mean, we always made a donation
of some kind, even it was only a couple bucks. We didn't have a
lot of money. We were dating, and we were always looking for
stuff to do that was cheap, and museums. Yes, even our little
local museum here just did a prohibition, oh, it was neat.
What's it called? Exhibit? And had, you know, stills and stuff,
yeah, and bunch
Leila: of in prohibition,
David: yeah, one of the things that we went we went to the
caves in the mountains a couple couple months ago. Oh, the
caverns. And the caverns we went to, they had a bunch of old
distilling stuff. Oh, yeah, moonshine, moonshine stills, and
and,
Leila: and they had a history of how they got, tried to get down
there, but they failed a couple times. Yeah, so like the holes
in the ceiling and crap before
David: the big holes were dug to enter the caverns, they had to
go through these tiny little holes. So they had to take all
the distilling equipment down there, and a lot of it didn't
even fit in the holes, like the big tub. So they had to take
everything down, piece by piece, build it down there, instead of
just
Leila: carrying a huge pile of moonshine equipment from where
they tried and they didn't accomplish it, and the broken
stuff, and it was all like, roped off, so you couldn't get
to it, obviously.
David: Well, it was all broken because the the coppers came in,
yeah, and smashed up the whole operation. After they found out
about it, they left it there. So it's really cool to see it.
Yeah, it was neat seeing 100 year old distilling equipment.
Yeah, I
Leila: didn't expect that when I came in. Was neat, neat stuff.
Neat was neat stuff. But
David: what else did we have? Let me see, what other links did
I have here? Smithsonian, oh, when I went, when I was going
through the Giant Skeleton stuff, there is a museum in
let's see. Where would it say that it was because I was gonna
say, gonna say Ireland. But it says the, oh, a London Museum.
There it is. There is a London museum that is getting rid of a
giant skeleton. Oh, now the giant isn't like I was talking
about giant with like, nine foot people, 10 foot people. This is
a seven foot seven man known as the Irish giant. He was on his
deathbed in the late 1700s 1783 and he made a final request of
his friends that they bury him at sea so that surgeons won't be
able to dissect him to figure out why he was so big. Shortly
after his death, at the age of 22 a whole tribe of surgeons put
a claim on the poor, departed Irish giant and surrounded his
house, just as Greenland harpooners Would, an enormous
whale. Is the quote. I love
Leila: it. If I was, if I was weird, I had, like, a weird
deformity in me, I would be like, Man, they never go find
me, nope. And I would like do something like that.
David: So his buddies did try and fulfill his wish, all his
wishes, wishes, his wishes, but an anatomist named John Hunter
thwarted the plans, reportedly paying 500 pounds to Byron's to
open Byron's coffin and replace his remains with weights. A few
years later, Hunter displayed Byron skeleton and at his London
home turned he turned it into a museum as a part of an exhibit
for abnormal growth of human bones. So basically, one
Leila: dude's house, that one dude's house. What? Who pants
guy?
David: Oh. Guillermo del Toro, yes, his house. Is so cool. Hop
on YouTube and look up Gilda gilmo Del Toro house tour. It's
so cool. He had to buy a second house. How cool it is. He's got
so many artifacts and stuff and souvenirs
Leila: and from history, yeah.
David: So anyway, he the guy had gigantism, yeah, and his
skeleton has been floating around for different through
different museums throughout the the centuries. And they're
finally just, they're finally just like, Yeah, we're gonna get
we're gonna get rid of it, yeah? But the Rampage was so big,
yeah. His. Check the article. I think I just called it Irish
giant, Irish giant skeleton. It doesn't look that deformed, as
rib cage is bigger than a normal rib cage, yeah. I mean,
obviously everything looks a little tiny bit bigger. Propriet
propriety, proportion, proportionally. Yeah, it doesn't
look way out of proportion. So basically, there, following the
announcement the skeletons removal from you, they released
a joint statement expressing their delight over the news.
There was never a coherent argument for the museum to do
otherwise, given Byron's explicit decision for his body
not to fall in the hands of John Hunter for fear of what then
precisely happened. But it is entirely unclear what further
research the Hunterian had in mind. Our suspicion is that the
museum still wants some medical students simply to see the
skeleton in private, which again would go against Byron's
documented wishes the. Like you've got the skeleton. The guy
obviously didn't want what's happening to his skeleton to
happen now, granted, he's gone, but you it's modern times. You
can buy a extremely high quality 3d scanner for a couple 1000
bucks. You can use your phone with the new Unreal Engine to
make a 3d scan of this thing and extremely high resolution
pictures, and then you've got a perfect 3d model of it to study.
And let some and let, let the man, let the man buried at sea,
yeah, you know. And this is what I mean with the stealing. Like
this is obviously, Yeah, that guy paid 500 bucks for it, but
he paid somebody to open the coffin and replace the remains.
It wasn't an above board deal. It's not like the the money went
to the the Irish giants family, you know, yeah, this one kind
of, I don't know. It upsets me. I personally don't care what
happens to my remains for I'm gone. Really don't, but I
wouldn't want, I don't think I would want it paraded around and
people making money off of it, you know, but whatever,
whatever, man, I'm not, I'm not a fan of this story, so I think
that's going to do it for this silly speculation. Saturday,
what's your favorite stolen skeleton?
Leila: Yeah,
David: let us know. Let
Leila: us know. Mail@funfacfriday.com or don't
send a skeleton, please. No,
David: no skeletons. My wife is horribly afraid of skeletons.
Not like afraid of her. They freak her out. They just give
her the creeps. And I'm like, you've got one inside you. She's
like, you as funny. Maybe the
Leila: real skeletons were the friends you made along the way.
Right? Literally,
David: right. They were, they were part of them. Yeah. All
right, everybody. Have a fantastic weekend. We are coming
up on Episode 200 if you want to send us a little note of
wondering, maybe your favorite clip, maybe favorite part of an
episode, something memorable about the show, little note or
something like that, would be fantastic to read on our 200th
episode, coming up in three weeks, maybe four weeks of doing
this an episode, it happens people, yeah,
Leila: like yesterday, we just didn't have time. So
David: Phaedra was out of town, and she was coming back
yesterday, we were getting ready to record, and I was like, Man,
the house is a mess. I want her to come home to a nice, clean
house. Yeah. So we spent the morning cleaning up the house,
and then we had to go get a hot dog because it was and then we
got home, and I was like, Look, we're just not gonna have time
to record, because she's gonna get home. And then we wanted to
spend time with her, because we haven't seen her in a week. So I
so so, you know, sometimes we get we get distracted. This
shows it's a fun hobby for us, and hopefully you'll enjoy our
little fun hobby, and we're glad to have you all along for the
ride. Yeah, and we have a fantastic weekend. We'll see you
next week on Fun Fact Friday or silly speculation Saturday, bye.
Kyle Hebert: Fun Fact Friday with Leila and David is a Medus
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