Two curious women, two curious tales. Following them on their journeys will be the highlight of your day.
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Welcome to Aaron Menke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all of these amazing tales are right there on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. The things that we endure shape our identities, for better or for worse. What we go through influences our future decisions. If we don't learn from our mistakes, history is bound to repeat itself. During one of the darkest periods in American history, one young girl refused to let injustice sully her spirit. It all began on an afternoon in eighteen thirty five, twelve year old Aramenta entered a bustling shop in Maryland. As she stood near the counter, she noticed a plantation overseer arguing with a teenage boy. The Civil War hadn't broken out in the US yet, and the boy was enslaved, just like Aramenta. She couldn't help but listen in on their dispute. Apparently, the boy had run away from the plantation. Now it was the overseer's job to bring him back. Their arguments escalated, and the man lunged to grab the boy, but the boy turned and ran, evading the man's grip by a hare. In a fit of rage, the overseer grabbed a two pound brick from a nearby shelf and he hurled it toward the boy, but his aim was off. Instead, it struck Arimenta on the head with a sickening thud. She collapsed to the floor, unconscious. Blood trickled from the wound as she lay motionless. Indifferent to her condition, the overseer left Aramenta to be helped by others. Floating between life and death, she was sent to her mother's home to heal. When she finally regained consciousness, the world seemed blurry and distant. Her head throbbed with every heartbeat. For months, her mother nursed her back to health. Aramenta recovered for the most part, but the injury was life changing. From that day forward, she suffered from severe headaches and seizures, but she was resilient. After this traumatic event, Aramenta wanted to ensure that others didn't suffer the way that she did, so she turned to the art of healing in order to become an expert healer. Aramenta started learning everything she could about plants and herbs. Enslave people often relied on plants for medicinal purposes, drawing on traditional knowledge passed down through generations. She had learned many of these skills from her mother. She could treat infectious diseases, including smallpox, with a home brew Aramenta was also in a unique position because she spent more time away from the plantation than others were able to. Therefore, she could explore and experiment with plant life. Thereby perfecting her recipes. Aramenta became famous among other enslaved people or her medical acumen. Eventually she gained attention from people outside her community. After the Civil War broke out in eighteen sixty one, the Union Army asked her to join their efforts as a nurse, and this was a huge deal for someone who had lived most of their life on a plantation. But Aramenta was one of the lucky few who could leave, so she slipped away to join Union forces. It was risky, but Aramenta had survived scary things before. She was brave. In her new role. She used herbal remedies to treat wounded soldiers. Even though she was in a new environment and still suffering from her head trauma, she quickly learned to forage for the kinds of plants she needed. Because of this, one colonel noticed how well equipped she was out in the rugged wilderness, so he came to her with a daring request. He wanted her to help raid nearby plantations and free the enslaved people there. Aramenta was more than ready for the challenge. Throughout the rest of the war, she helped rescue over seven hundred people. She was a hero, and she did it all while managing headaches and seizures. As heroic as she was, Aramanta couldn't go on living like this. She had so much more she wanted to do in life. Following the war, many freed people still needed medical care, and countless families hoped to reunite. Araminta could help them, but she needed to put an end to her own pain first, so she traveled to Boston for brain surgery. She was eager to get it over with, but once she went into the operating room, there was a problem. Modern comforts for pain reliefs, such as anesthesia, weren't available. Resourceful as ever, Araminta asked the doctor for a bullet. He was naturally confused, so she explained that during the war she had seen soldiers bite down on bullets as a way to cope with painful procedures. So this was how Aramenta withstood brain surgery and survived. Go ahead and add that to the list of courageous feats, right. Aramanta went on to continue healing people just like she wanted, except no one called her Araminta anymore. That's because earlier in her life, after escaping enslavement, she marked the occasion with a new name. She took her mother's first name and her husband's last name, and that's how she became known as Harriet Tubman. Confidence is key, whether you're going into an interview for a new job or climbing Mount Everest, it's important to put faith in yourself. Like the Little Engine that Could always said I think I can. I think I can. In fact, sometimes confidence can help us achieve great things when the deck is stacked against us. It's the boost that we need to overcome the odds and achieve greatness. And when we're confident in our skills, we have no problem taking on a difficult task without question. We might even tell the other person that we can do it with one hand tied behind our backs. Well, for some people, that extra challenge isn't so many metaphorical. For one woman, it was her daily life. Her name was Anastasia Amelianova Igorova and she was born in the Soviet Union in nineteen twelve. Her young life was plagued by tragedy, with her father dying when she was only nine. She was left at an orphanage by her mother just a few years later. Anastasia grew up committing crimes both large and small to get by. She stole and she panhandled. But in nineteen twenty seven, her whole life changed. A tragic fall from an automobile left her permanently disfigured, unable to secure help from the government, and refusing to become a collective farm worker for the Soviet Union, Anastasia did what she always did. She found a way to survive. She set out on her own, traveling despite her injuries. But this wasn't something really done by people in her condition or in her country. But Anastasia wasn't like anyone else. She was fiercely independent, choosing to venture out into the world and overcome her circumstances. She traveled throughout Ukraine and the Caucuses, covering much of Russia, with little to her name except her will and her wits. In nineteen forty five, toward the end of World War II, she found her way into Poland. Of course, Anastasia didn't speak the language, but she managed to skirt by and make her way to Austria, now Allied territory. It was here where she was temporarily imprisoned in a refugee camp for displaced persons before she was released. Back on the road, she traveled to Yugoslavia. Her final stop was Italy. Sadly, she experienced a decline in her mental state that resulted in being committed to a facility in Naples. That's where the Soviets rediscovered her. Their plan was to take her back to her home country as part of an initiative to search for and retrieve former citizens for repatriation. Well, Anastasia knew what would happen if she told them the truth, so she fed them a line about being taken by the Germans and shuttled all over Europe. And Asia, satisfied with her tale of woe, the Soviet authorities whisked her back home and placed her in the custody of her mother and brother, people she had seen in years, and that's where her story pretty much ends. Little is known of her life after her epic journey had come to a close. The Soviets instituted a number of rules and laws to prevent tramping the vagrant kind, not the levacious kind, so it's likely that Anastasia settled down and lived the rest of her life in her homeland. It's a shame that more people don't know about her trek across multiple continents because the car accident she survived didn't just injure her. It had taken something from her. That fall from the car had damaged her leg so badly it had to be amputated, but she never let it keep her down. Anastasia managed to travel thousands of miles on one leg, using various crutches and walking aids. There were no prosthetics available to her, so she may do with what she had and came back with a heck of a story to tell her estranged family. She had survived on her own as a one legged traveler, kicking but metaphorically, of course. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. This show was created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can learn all about it over at the Worldoflore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.