There are so many curious stories hidden in plain sight--behind locked doors or metaphorically beneath common names. And we're going to explore a couple of them today.
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Welcome to Aaron Benky's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of I Heart Radio and Grim 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. Time, as many have said, is like a river. It is constantly flowing, carrying moments away on a current, never to be seen again. And like a river, time changes everything it touches. It erodes mountains and topples civilizations. Eventually, much of what we know today will be gone and replaced with something else, all thanks to the passage of time. But every once in a while I misses something like an island whose people have been isolated from the rest of the world, or a box buried for future individuals to on Earth and learn about an era they weren't around to see. And once in a while, these overlooked pockets of time are brought to the surface, giving us a glimpse into a past once thought to be lost forever. Francis LaBelle Leepac was a period of great significance between eighteen seventy one and nineteen fourteen, Europe saw a boom in scientific and cultural breakthroughs, and at the center of it all was Paris. The City of Lights became the birthplace for groundbreaking movements in art and music. Around this time lived a woman named mart du Florian. Born in eighteen sixty four, she'd lived a rough life, dating all the way back to her early childhood. Her brother and sister had died when they were infants, leaving her and only child. Things didn't get much better as she got older either. She gave birth to her first son, Henri, when she was just eighteen, only to lose him three months later. Fortunately, a year after that, she had another son, whom she also named Henri. He lived far longer, passing away in the mid nineteen sixties. Du Florian was a French courtesan, moving within elite social circles and carrying on affairs with prominent politicians and artists at the time, and one such artist was Giovanni Bordini. Baldini hailed from Italy, yet much of his career was spent in Paris. He was known for his beautiful portraits of people like artist John Singer, Sergeant and poet Robert du Montesquieu. Funny enough, do Montesquieu also happened to be a client of du Florian's. Baldini's nickname was the Master of Swish, which he had earned for his unique flowing style, not his basketball skills. His paintings seemed to come alive, as though he had captured his models in motion. Among his many subjects was du Florian. Though much of Baldini's work eventually found its way into galleries and private collections, his portrait of Madame du Florian was lost to time. Now do Florian lived in a fifte hundred square foot apartment for most of her life. It was located near the Red Light District, putting her right in the middle of the action during the Belle Lipoch. Sadly, do Florian passed away in that home in nineteen thirty nine, leaving on Red to handle her affairs. He then began living in the same apartments himself, along with his own daughter, but she fled Paris in nineteen forty two and moved to the south of France. In doing so, she left her father and the apartment behind her and never looked back. It was believed that on relived there until he died in nineteen sixty six, but even that wasn't enough to bring her back for a visit. Despite not once returning to the property even after her father's death, she chose to pay the rent each month for the next forty four years. She died in two thousand ten at the age of ninety one. With no one left to claim ownership of the apartment nor its contents, it was opened up by the executors of her will to a local auctioneer, and what he found, albeit under a thick layer of dust, astounded him. The apartment had been untouched for decades. It was filled to the brim with elegant furniture one years old or more. In the bedroom, they found a four poster bed complete with a canopy. A massive vanity had been tucked into the corner, on top of which sat empty bottles and canisters, as well as an array of hair brushes. In the kitchen, glassware pots, pans, and cutlery, all of it still in place, as though it had been waiting for its owner to come home. There was a giant stuffed ostrich in one room, along with some mickey mouse and porky pig dolls, all made before the Second World War, and artwork paintings of all shapes and sizes hung on the walls. Some had been leaned against furniture and were even seated on chairs across from each other, like they'd been having a conversation. The piece to resistance, however, was one particular painting, the portrait of the apartment's original owner, Madame du Florian, painted by the master of Swiss himself, Giovanni Boldini. In the end, it seems the auctioneer hadn't unlocked an apartment door at all. He'd unearthed the time capsule that nobody knew had existed for over seventy years. Better late than never. I suppose there's something powerful about a name. If it's a name we share with others, it has power to connect us to them. Maybe your own name comes from an emotional experience had by your parents, or perhaps it's a way to pay respects to a loved one from our past. Sometimes, though, a name transforms over the years to represent more than just a family line, but an actual legacy. In Heinrich would eventually experience that. But it all started with a simple gift. Actually, there was a lot about Heinrich that was simple. He was born into a simple life in the mountains of Germany back in seventeen nine seven. His father was a simple forester, and while he had a lot of siblings eleven, in fact, life with all of them was fairly simple. And then war changed all that. Sometime around eighteen oh five, his father left to fight the French elsewhere in Europe, and he took all of the oldest boys with him. Heinrich, though, was only eight, so he stayed behind with his mother and the rest of his siblings. But the French were stronger, and soon enough they were pressing into German territory. In Heinrich's mountain town. To protect the family, his mother took them deeper into the mountains, but while it protected them from the French, had put them in other dangers. Before long, only Heinrich and one sister survived orphans in a war torn country. And then a miracle happened. The father he believed to have died, suddenly returned. With the war over, the remnants of his family pulled together, and if there was one thing they knew better than most, it was would Not only was Heinrich's father a forester, but he was a carpenter, and those skills came in handy as their town and those around it began to rebuild homes, roads, barns, fences, and of course, his father also planted more trees. In eighteen twelve, though, tragedy visited Heinrich's family once again. A powerful storm drove everyone in town to seek shelter, and while it was over quickly, there was a bit of lightning, and one lightning strike coincidentally struck the house his family was hiding in. Everyone except Heinrich was instantly killed. It was more war after that. There he was at the age of fifteen with no one to care for him or to call family, so he joined up with the Prussian army, a post that took him all the way to a Belgian town called Waterloo. He survived, although tens of thousands of his fellow soldiers did not. Again, loss had become a part of his world. When peace returned and Heinrich was able to settle down, he fell back on that family love of wood. Soon enough. He was a skilled cabinet maker, but also dabbled in music on the side. In fact, that was a passion he shared with his wife Julianne, who he married in eight Now it might be easy to assume Heinrich's legacy was loss, the loss of his mother and siblings, the loss of his father, even the loss of his fellow soldiers in Belgium at the Bottle of Waterloo. He and his wife certainly did their best to replace that missing family by having ten children of their own. If you want to interpret his story that way, there's nothing wrong with that. But Heinrich would be remembered for something else, something that came not out of loss but out of joy. And like I said at the beginning of this story, it was all about a gift. You see, when he married his wife Julianne, he did something very romantic. He made her something with his own hands, something wonderful and beautiful, something that would fill their home with joy and happiness and song. Heinrich made her a p know and it wouldn't be the last one he would make. For the rest of his life. Heinrich would grow a business around that skill, and his pianos would win countless awards. Before long they were coveted instruments, and they still are to this day. Maybe his loss was our gain. Maybe he wanted his family name to live on without fear of war or tragedy taking it away. Whatever his reason for creating, the world of music and the piano itself, will never be the same, all thanks to Heinrich Heinrich Steinway. 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. The show was created by me Aaron Manky in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television and show, and you can learn all about it over at the World of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious. Yeah,