Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Frye. It's time for Unearthed. I know there are folks who are very excited about this because when we had a Saturday Classic come out recently that had the word unearthed in the title, heard from some excited people, and I was like, hold on just a tiny bit longer until the actual new unearthed stuff comes out, which is finally now. So if you're new to the show, this is when we talk about things that have been literally or figuratively unearthed over the last few months. In this case, this is the last quarter of this is two parts. Uh. Today we're going to be talking about lots of updates to prior episodes and some books and letters. Uh. Somehow the exhumations and repatriation so been in part two of these for a long time. I put him in part one this time, uh, and then we'll talk about different stuff in part two on Wednesday, and she's changing it up. Look out. Uh. We have quite a few updates, but we are starting on a more somber note to begin with. On August seen, we did an episode called The Motherhood of Mamie Till Mobley. She was the mother of Emmett Till, who was murdered in Mississippi in nineteen fifty five after Caroline Dunham claimed that he had grabbed her, threatened her, and made lewd comments to her in her husband's grocery store. Emmett was just fourteen at the time, and this was a particularly brutal murder, one that was part of a pattern of lynchings in which white men murdered black men and boys, often after allegations of wrongdoing by white women. In a tween episode of Unearthed, we talked about how the U. S. Department of Justice had reopened the case and to Emmett Sells murder. Let's follow the seventeen publication of a book called The Blood of Emmett Till. The author of this book had interviewed Caroline Donham and had reported that she admitted to lying about her encounter with Emmett. When the d o J announced that it was reopening this case, some of the response to that announcement was understandably cynical. The book had been out for more than a year and a half at this point, so people were like, why now. In December, the Justice Department announced that it was closing the case again. Donham denied that she had recanted her earlier testimony, and the FBI could not prove whether that was true or not. The d o J issued a release noting that if Donnam had lied to investigators, that would be perjury, but perjury in state court is not a federal matter, and the statute of limitations had expired regarding both Donham's testimony in nine and an investigation when the case was previously reopened in two thousand four. J. W. Milum and Roy Bryant, who were both acquitted of this crime but later confessed to it in a magazine article, are both dead. The dj did not find any evidence that would allow them to charge a living person with a crime, so it closed the case again. The release about this also noted quote in closing this matter without prosecution, the government does not take the position that the state court testimony the woman gave in nineteen was truthful or accurate. Descendants of Henrietta Lacks have filed a suit against Thermo Fisher Scientific for its use of lax cells without her or her family's consent and without compensation to them. These cells were taken from LAX's body without her knowledge or permission, while she was being treated for cervical cancer at Johns Hopkins in nineteen fifty one. Most cells die really quickly after being removed from the human body, but these kept living and repre you sing. They became the first immortal human cell line and were known as HeLa cells. They've been part of all kinds of medical research. This includes research into drugs and treatments that were then sold for profit. According to coverage in the Washington Post, civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who's representing the family, expects to file other suits against other companies that similarly earned a profit from LAX's cells. We have not done an episode about Henrietta Lax specifically, but she was part of our Six Impossible episodes. There's a book about that in which we recommended that people who were interested in Lax the story read The Immortal Life of Henrietta A. Lax. That's a book by Rebecca Sclute. That episode came out on September six. Moving on, in our year end Unearthed for we talked about archaeologists starting work at the site of Williamsburg's first Baptist church. This church was founded by enslaved in free black people in seventeen seventies. The congregation met in places like a brush harbor and a carriage house before the church structure was built. In eighteen fifty six, when we talked about this in archaeologists had found thousands of artifacts and evidence of two graves. In October of this year, it was announced that the team has unearthed the building's foundations, as well as more than twenty additional graves. This work has been happening as Colonial Williamsburg has been trying to emphasize Williamsburg's black history during the colonial period, something that the historical attraction really ignored in earlier decades. This even extends to the church itself. When First Baptist Church moved to a new building in nineteen fifty six, it was because Colonial Williamsburg had bought the property to turn it into a parking lot. Next project is underway to study the mummies in the Capucine Catacombs in Sicily, specifically focusing on mummified children there. It's too early to share any results from this work yet, but it intends to try to close a current gap in the research by using non invasive imagery to study forty one mummified children and get a better idea of their lives and how they died. We talked about the Capuchin Catacombs in the episode six More Impossible Episodes on September six, Turkey open shipwrecks from the Gallipoli Campaign as an underwater museum in October. Until this area had been guarded by the Turkish military because of the presence of unexploded torpedoes and other weaponry among the wrecks, but the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism took control of the site in advance of the anniversary of the Gliboli Campaign and worked to map the site and mark the locations of any explosives and make the area safer for public diving. So this is now the Gallipoli Historic Underwater Park, with twelve of the sixteen ships in the area open to the public for diving. One of the future plans for the site is to install plaques with QR codes at the rex so that divers can use waterproof phones to see what these vessels used to look like. The site was originally planned to open during the summer, but that had to be delayed due to the COVID nineteen pandemic. Our episode on the Gallipoli campaign came out on November. UNESCO called on Britain to return the Parthenon marbles to Greece. At a meeting of the UNESCO Intergovernmental Committee for the Return of Cultural Property to its Countries of origin in September, the committee unanimously adopted a decision acknowledging that Greece's demand for the marbles be returned was quote legitimate and rightful. In October, a UK government spokesperson issued a statement that set, in part quote our position is clear the Parthenon sculptures were acquired legally in accordance with the law at the time. The British Museum operates in the pendently of the government and free from political interference. All decisions relating to collections are taken by the museum's trustees. This was also on the agenda during a meeting between the British and Greek Prime ministers in November. Also, the parson On Gallery was closed to visitors for more than a year, including after the British Museum reopened. After its closure due to the pandemic. This led to questions and contradictory answers from the museum about what has led to that closure and whether that closure is related to a roof leak in the gallery where the sculptures are housed. Our two part episode on Lord Elgin and the Marbles came out on January and two of twenty twenty. Next Up, researchers have analyzed and o'b Citian mirror belonging to John D, adviser to Queen Elizabeth. The first prior host did an episode on John D on October five eleven. This research was published in the journal Antiquity. In our tober D used this mirror for ritual purposes, including as a scrying object. Eighteenth century historian Horace Walpole described it as quote the black stone into which Dr D used to call his spirits. This research is confirmed that the mirror is of Aztec origin and made a volcanic glass from Mexico. The same was true of three other obsidian objects also held at the British Museum, all of which were studied using geochemical analysis. This mirror was probably made in the early sixteenth century, and it's possible that it was commissioned by the Spanish to take back to Europe. The Spanish knew that obsidian was religiously significant to the Aztecs, but we don't totally know how it came into John D's possession. Everybody loves a shipwreck and the Mary Rose sank in battle in fifteen forty five and in n conservators raised it from the ocean floor and took steps to conserve it. Today it is in the mirror a Rose Museum. The Mary Rose was part of prior Hosts episode five Shipwrecked Stories on April, and it has also come up in previous editions of Unearthed. Even though the water logged wood was treated to try to preserve it, there were still bacteria living in the wreckage. Conservators learned fairly recently that some of these bacteria were secreting zinc sulfide nanostructures, which could turn acidic when exposed to the air. This is threatening the wreck. The polyethylene glycol that was used to preserve the ship can also form acidic byproducts when breaking down over time. Researchers have used X rays with scanning electron microscopy to pinpoint exactly where the problem areas are this is still a work in progress. It has basically let conservators see where the problem is so they can figure out how to address it. We still have a few more updates and we will get to them after we take a quick sponsor break now that we're back from the break. The latest round of work at the Anti Catheras shipwreck site has concluded. Although there were some objects that were brought to the surface, this was really mostly a planning effort getting ready for a project that will span from so there was a lot of mapping work along with completing a three D high resolution model of the site. One thing that they have flagged for a future study is a partial statue that's trapped under a boulder. The Anti Catheras shipwreck is something else that makes a lot of appearances on Unearthed, and our episode on the mechanism that it's named for came out on July. The Neolithic city of Catay has come up on several installments of Unearthed. The latest discovery there involves what kind of fabrics its residents typically used. The two biggest contenders have long been wool and linen, but according to research published in the journal Archaeology, it was neither of those. Instead, it was bass fiber, which comes from trees. It's in the layer between the bark and the wood. Moving on, in November, the Louisiana Board of Pardons overwhelmingly voted to posthumously pardoned Homer Plessy. Homer Plessy intentionally violated Louisiana's separate car law, which segregated its street cars in eight The resulting legal action went to the Supreme Court, and the court established that segregation was legal as long as the segregated facilities were equal. The final step in the pardon process is the approval of Governor John Bell Edwards. As of recording this episode, Edwards has not given that approval, but he had stated that he planned to do so, hopefully at a formal ceremony that would include members of the Plessy family. Our episode on Plessy Versus Ferguson came out on February and other news, The Boston Globe has reported a new clue in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Heist Paul Callin Tropo told the Globe that in his friend Bobby Denaty came to his office and showed him a finial in the shape of an eagle. The fennel seemed to be one of the thirteen pieces of art that had been stolen from the museum in a very famous heist. After their conversation, Donaty wrapped this fennel up and he left, but then he was murdered the following year. Callin Tropo never saw him again. Although this account is newly revealed, the possible connection between Denaty and the heist is not new. He was identified as a potential suspect back in and his name has come up in other investigations into the heist. Our episode on the Gardener Museum Heist most recently came out as an update on April. We have talked about the system of residential boarding schools that separated Indigenous students in the US from their families and an act of cultural genocide in several previous episodes. On December seven, the Department of the Interior and the National Indian Boarding School Healing Coalition announced a memorandum of understanding relating to sharing records and other information. The Department will create a report due by April one that will focus on historical records, especially on burial sites. As part of all this, and in our last update of one, the Gilgamesh dream tablet, which has been discussed on more than one edition of Unearthed, was formally repatriated to Iraq in a formal ceremony at a Rocks Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and that happened in December. We are going to move on now to books and letters. During the French Revolution, Marie Antoinette kept up a correspondence with Swedish count Axel von Ferston. He was her confidante and there were rumors that he was also her lover. They kept at this correspondence secretly while the royal family was held at Tweelery Palace in seventeen nine one and seventeen two. During that time, the family made a failed escape attempt. Some of these letters are in the French National Archives, but it's tricky to learn a lot about this period in her life because parts of them have been scribbled out. Researchers have now used X ray fluorescent spectroscopy to read the scribbled out parts of eight letters. They looked for the presence of different elements used in the inks, along with using statistical analysis and other techniques to further clarify those results. Historians who have reviewed the revealed text has said that the letters show a lot of affection for the Count, but they don't conclusively say one way or the other whether the Queen and the Count were having an affair. However, this research has suggested who did that redacting and that it was the Count himself. One of the challenge aspects with this research was how similar the inks were that they were trying to separate out to get a look at and after the original writing and the redaction was done using the exact same ink, suggesting that the Count did the scribbling himself, either as he was making the copies of these letters or shortly after copying them. This research was published in the journal Science Advances in October under the title two d macro XRF to reveal redacted sections of French Queen Marie Antoinette's secret correspondence with Swedish Count excels on Person another correspondence news. A team of researchers from M I T and King's College London have been researching letter locking techniques. That is a process of folding letters in a way that they make their own envelope and then cutting a piece of the paper and folding it through itself to make a lock that, like seals, the letter shut the safeguarded the letter because you could only open it by destroying that paper lock, so it was impossible to read somebody else's letter without them knowing it had been tampered with. These locks could be incredibly intricate. A video that the team released in ten shows a letter lock modeled after the one on Mary, Queen of Scott's last letter. The folding and cutting processes obviously slow for the sake of video clarity, but even with that in mind, it takes about thirty steps and four minutes to complete. Studying letter locking is really challenging. This practice was most prevalent in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and so the letters involved are old and fragile, and then often at least part of the lock is missing since it was destroyed when the letter was opened. Unopened letters with intact locks do exist, but they're extremely rare. But after studying about a dozen locks, including those on letters by Mary, Queen of Scott's, Elizabeth First, and Catherine de Medici, the team has published the Spiral locked Letters of Elizabeth the First and Mary, Queen of Scots that was published in Electronic British Library Journal. In addition to illustrating specific locks using step by step diagrams, this paper proposes a generic version of the spiral locks. This is also an open access paper, so you can go check out all these locks yourself if you want. Okay, I'm waiting and I'm aching for someone to make like a cricket file that we can I'll have a locked letter um because it sounds amazing. A document known as Chronica Universalist was discovered in it Is by Milanese friar Galvinnius Flama, and it dates back to thirteen forty five. While working with the document, professor Paolo Kisa of the University of Milan found a passage that seems to describe the continent of North America. Flamma describes sailors from Denmark in Norway traveling to Iceland and beyond that a place called Grolandia presumably Greenland, and then further west another land named Marco Latta, where giants live. Kaisa believed that marco Latta is the same place that the Norse described as Markland. That was a place west of Greenland, probably what we know today as Newfoundland or Labrador. This doesn't mean that anybody from the Mediterranean, where this document was written, had actually traveled there themselves, but it does suggest that at least some people from the area had heard of it all the way back in thirteen forty five, almost a hundred and fifty years before Columbus's voyages. This was published in the journal Terre Inconnite at the end of September, but it didn't make mainstream news coverage until October. Moving on, archaeologists from County Clare, Ireland, have found Ireland's oldest ink pen at ca her Connell Castle ring Fort. This is made of a hollow bird bone with a copper alloy nib and it dates back to the eleventh century. At that time, literacy was most associated with the clergy, but this seems to have belonged to lay people. So archaeologists wanted to confirm that this really was a pen, not some other object that would not have had to do with literacy, so they made a replica of it, and it did indeed work as a dip pen that you would dip into your ink. Uh. This suggests that literacy may have been more common outside the clergy at this point than was previously thought, especially among wealthier people, and in our last bit of books and letters. According to Dr Irving Finkel, curator of the Middle Eastern Department of the British Museum, the oldest ever drawing of a ghost has been discovered on a thirty five hundred year old Babylonian clay tablet. This tablet was part of an exorcist's instructions on how to get rid of ghosts by transferring the ghost into a figurine aid by the exorcist. The drawing shows what appears to be a male ghost with his hands tied and the rope appearing to be held by a woman. This tablet has been in the collection of the British Museum since the nineteenth century, but it had never really been studied before now. The first translation of its uniform text was apparently incorrect, and then the space where this drawing is looks empty unless it's lit from above at the right angle, so the drawing in particular was tricky to spot. And the text ends with the magnificent phrase do not look behind you creeped me out a little bit when I was working on this. I love it so much. We now have a couple of interesting finds involving toilets. First, in Smyrna, near Turkey's western coast, archaeologists have found what they believe is the actor's rest room from a theater. The space had room for about twelve toilets arranged as a you, with eats that were about sixteen inches high, so just about standard in height. Right, it isn't a standard toilet in the US between sixteen and seventeen. I haven't. I haven't done any toilet work on my house recently. You gotta renovate, pull out, and reinstall a toilet once in a while. Um in Jerusalem, archaeologists have found a twenty seven year old toilet and indoor toilet would have been a luxury on its own at this point, and this one seems to have been particularly nice, with the seat made to be comfortable to sit on and a very deep septic tank underneath. As is often the case with these kinds of fines, there's lots to examine in that septic tank, including animal bones and pottery that could offer some insight into what the people of the household ate and drink. We also have a few pieces of DNA research talk about this time around first researchers have studied the DNA of mummies that were in the Tareem Basin in western China in the nineteen nineties. These mummies were preserved naturally in the desert, and archaeologists had found their facial features, dress, and hair color unusual for the region. That had fed into the idea that perhaps these had been people who had migrated into this area from somewhere else. The prevailing hypothesis has been that these were Indo Europeans, but when researchers evaluated the DNA from the thirteen oldest mummies at one burial site, they found that they were a genetically distinct ancient North Eurasian people. It's not clear why this one group of people remained so genetically isolated, but the people of the Tareem Basin also developed a unique and distinctive culture. For example, they buried many of their dead in wooden coffins shaped like boats with marker shaped like oars. And our next bit of DNA research, the US military has ended a six year project to identify the remains of soldiers and marines from the USS Oklahoma who died in the bonding of Pearl Harbor. They were doing this using DNA and dental records. This project identified three fifty five sailors and marines, but ultimately there were thirty three crew members who could not be identified. The remains of these marines and sailors were reinterred at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific. Autosomal DNA analysis has confirmed that Ernie La Pointe is the great grandson of Tatonka Yotake, also known as Sitting Bull, making him and his sisters the Lakota Leader's closest living relatives. This analysis started with a lock of Tatonka Yotak's hair, which had been in the collection of the Smithsonian for more than a century before being returned to the family in two thousand seven. The family burned most of the hair in a religious ceremony, but kept part of it for future analysis. It had been stored at room temperature at the Smithsonian, which had caused it to degrade, so it took fourteen years for research ers to find a technique that would work. This research was done not just to confirm the points ancestry. Currently to Tonka yo Takes burial site is in South Dakota. It's in an area that he wasn't culturally connected to, and which the Point has described as being desecrated. The point hopes that these remains can be exhumed, tested to confirm that they did belong to his great grandfather, and then reburied somewhere more appropriate. We should note here that there are nuances to the use of DNA analysis to confirm Indigenous family relationships. Different Indigenous nations have different perspectives on when and whether it's appropriate to use DNA research, and of course individual Indigenous people have their own opinions as well. Requirements for providing DNA evidence also imply that DNA is superior to Indigenous nations own records, but often when it comes to something like repatriating a person's remains, especially when it involves a non indigenous organization or government, DNA evidence can back up Indigenous records and histories that have already documented the family connections involved. There are also a lot of ethical considerations to DNA research more generally, and an ethical code for DNA research was just published in the journal Nature in October. So we're gonna pause here for another sponsor break, and then we'll come back for repatriations. Next up. We are going to talk about some repatriations from the last quarter of In October, the Smithsonian Museum of African Art removed ten works of art from the Kingdom of Benin from display. These ten are amongst sixteen works at the museum that are known to be connected to the raid on the Kingdom of Beneath, in which British colonial forces looted thousands of works of art. There are many other pieces at the Smithsonian which might have come from this rate as well, but those connections haven't been traced and confirmed yet. The museum is currently negotiating with Nigeria's National Commission for Museums and Monuments on a repatriation plan for these pieces. New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art returned three pieces of Benin artwork to Nigeria in November, including to sixteenth century brass plaques in a fourteenth century brass head. These had originally been in the UK and had actually been repatriated previously in nineteen fifty, but then we're purchased by a private collector and later donated to the met These artworks and the Kingdom of Benin and the raid in all of that has come up on several previous episodes of Unearthed and other episodes of the show, so there is a forthcoming episode on all of this dedicated just to it. The Government of France repatriated twenty six objects from the Kingdom of Dahomey to Benin in November as well. These are part of the Royal Treasures of abam May and include the doors of the Palace of Abba May. We've done an episode on the Palaces of abam May on the show before. Yeah, that's also gets into the kingdom itself, which to be clear, this is not the same kingdom as Benin. The Kingdom of Benin was in what's now Nigeria. Kingdom of Dahomey is and what's and now. Another collection of objects was returned to Ethiopia in November. The items being returned this time came from Britain, Belgium and the Netherlands, but most of them had been taken by the British Army in eighteen sixty eight. These pieces included a ceremonial crown, two silver embossed horned cups, a shield and other items. Ethiopian officials described this as the largest repatriation of artifacts to the tree so far. The Ethiopian government is also advocating for the return of a long list of other objects as well, including tablets representing the ark of the Covenant. During the expedition in which the British Army had taken these objects, they also attacked the fighting force of Emperor to a drowse. The second the Emperor had been losing ground and support among his nobility, and he ultimately took his own life. In the face of all this, a British Army officer took his son, Prince Ala Maehu to England, where he died at the age of eighteen and was buried at Windsor Castle. In addition to the other cultural and artistic objects the Ethiopian government is trying to have returned, they are also asking for the prince's remains. The US has returned more than nine hundred objects to Molly. These objects are presumed to have been stolen and falsely described as replicas in their paperwork. The first group of them was spotted in two thousand nine when they arrived at the port of Houston as part of an illegal shipment. Because have included axe heads, funerary urns, and pots. The Denver art museum is repatriating four Khmer objects to Cambodia. The museum had acquired these objects between two thousand and two thousand five, but they had been looted from Cambodia in the nineteen seventies. The art dealer who sold these pieces to the museum was indicted in connection to a vast looting network in ten but died the following year before he could stand trial. These pieces include statues of Hindu and Buddhist religious figures, as well as a prehistoric bell that was believed to be part of a set used to call warriors to battle. A private collector has returned a piece of a Maya steely that disappeared from an archaeological site in the nineteen sixties. This piece depicts the masked head of an ancient Maya leader, and the collector plans to auction it off in twenty nineteen, but when Guatemalan authorities saw the listing, they called for the piece to be returned. The collector did return this piece voluntarily, although coverage of this does not deteril how they came to possess it in the first place. And lastly, billionaire hedge fund manager Michael Steinhardt has been banned from purchasing antiquities for the rest of his life as part of an agreement to return one d eighty objects that were smuggled out of eleven different countries. Steinhardt purchased them without regard to their legality, and this agreement means he will have to stand trial. In a statement, Manhattan District Attorney Cyvance Jr. Said, quote, for decades, Michael Steinhardt displayed a rapacious appetite for plundered artifacts without concern for the legality of his actions, the legitimacy of the pieces he bought and sold, or the grievous cultural damage he wrought across the globe. Investigations into this were a joint effort involving authorities in Bulgaria, Egypt, Greece, Iraq, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Syria, and Turkey. Stolen objects are now being returned to these countries. Alright, it's time for everyone's favorite, we heart exhumations. Uh, And we have a few exhamations to talk about. In October, police in Belgium exhumed remains of seventeen victims of the nineteen fifty six boas Decaisier mining disaster. Only about ten people who were in the mind when it caught fire survived. Two hundred sixty two people were killed. The seventeen bodies being exhumed were the ones who could not be identified. The hope is to use DNA evidence to confirm who they are by comparing their DNA to living relatives, but a few of the miners listed as missing after the disaster had no known relatives. Exhumations at the bon Secour Mother and Baby Home in tomb Ireland are slated to begin this year. The Mother and Baby Home has come up on several prior installments of unearthed Nearly eight hundred children are known to have died while this home was in operation, but there were no burial records for them, and part of the burial site is believed to be a disused septic tank. In late November, authorities exhumed the body of Poland's Commander in Chief, Edward Smigrids, who died suddenly in December of n but there have been a lot of unanswered questions about his cause of death and when he actually died. There has been speculation that he may have been poisoned and that his body was embalmed to hide evidence of that crime, or even that this was not his body and that he really escaped and died much later. It is, of course too early to have any results of that investigation yet. And lastly, there have been a couple of recent calls to exhume particular historical figures. German singer Roberto Blanco has called for the remains of Ludwig von Beethoven to be exhumed for racial DNA testing, and Joseph Stalin's grandson has called for his body to be exhumed to determine whether he was poisoned, as well as for him to be reinterred alongside his wife rather than at the Kremlin. Now we have two different signs about archipelagos that Europeans thought were uninhabited when they first arrived there and also didn't seem to have evidence of previous settlements. But it turns out people did live there much earlier. Yeah, it's uh, it's easy to sound real judge with this, but really this was challenging evidence to find. First Portuguese sailors arrived in the Azores in four seven, they believed it had never been inhabited. It didn't seem like it had ever been inhabited, but it's possible that people lived there seven hundred years before that. Research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences examined sediment cores taken from several lakes on these islands. The cores suggests that between seven hundred and eight fifty there were livestock there, like cows and sheep. These were not animals that would have lived there unless there were humans there. These same years also saw an increase in residues from large fires and a corresponding decrease in the native tree pollen. One hypothesis is that these were North seafarers and that they arrived in the Azores due to shifting climate the temperatures and winds that encouraged exploration from the northeast Atlantic. Similarly, Europeans first arrived in the Falkland Islands in sixteen ten and similarly believed them to have never been inhabited, but it looks like people may have actually lived there hundreds of years earlier. The similar reasoning at work here. There's a sudden increase in evidence of large fires, including around the years one fifty and four ten, as well as in seventeen seventy, which was after Europeans that had established settlements there. Other evidence of earlier settlement includes a projectile point similar to ones that were used by indigenous people's on the South American continent, and mounds of bones that show evidence of human activity. Their current conclusion is that indigenous people from South America made brief visits to the islands rather than establishing long term settlements there, meaning that it would have been harder for Europeans to see evidence of that once they got there in the seventeenth century. It's also possible that these South American visitors introduced the wara to the islands. This is the only land mammal considered to be native to the Falklands, and it's also called the Falkland Island dog or the Falkland Islands wolf. It hasn't been entirely clear how this animal got to the island, but Europeans hunted them to extinction in the nineteenth century. Earlier research has suggested that they have walked across an ice bridge, but this latest research suggests that maybe folks from South America brought them along and we have a final random occurrence to end on. In October, the Westbrook Main Police Department reported that a nineteenth century grave stone had been found in the middle of a local road. The stone read Mrs Mary, wife of David Pratt, died January one, eighteen forty, age fifty nine. It appears that this stone belonged to Mary Pratt of Yarmouth, Maine, who had been buried at the old Baptist Cemetery there. The most likely scenario is that her grave had been marked with this stone at the time of her death, and that it was replaced when her husband died in eighteen sixty one and was buried alongside her. There is a stone at their graves now that commemorates both of them, although it's not clear how this stone wound up in the road. A hundred and sixty years later. Westbrook police stressed that they did not believe foul play was involved. However, The Boston Globe noted in its reporting that this is one of a string of strange happenings in Westbrook, comparing the town to something out of a Stephen King novel. In ten there was a very large snake, as in a ten foot long snake that was reported to be living along the presump Scott River and was nicknamed Wessey or the presump Scott Python. This was followed by a strange disc of ice forming in the same river over the winner of followed by on landslide. So, at least in the Boston Globe's opinion, tombstone was just the latest thing the snake brought it. Um, We're gonna have more unearthed next time, but in the meantime, do you have listener mail? Real quick listener mail from Jenny. Jenny wrote and said I'm catching up on last month episodes and had to write in about your mother Goose episode and one of my favorite jokes on Sesame Street. Back in the eighties when I was primed Sesame Street age, they had a segment called the Ladybugs Picnic, and it's accounting song about all the things the ladybugs do on their nick like sack races and the like. But there's also a great line in there about how they quote talk about the high price of furniture and rugs and fire insurance for ladybugs. Just so morbidly dark and hilarious all at the same time. As an adult, it makes me laugh every time I hear it and thought you might enjoy it as well. Thanks for the great listening, Jenny. Thanks Jenny for telling us about this. When I read this email, I was like, I've never heard of this song before in my life, and then when I clicked on the YouTube link, I was like, no, wait, I definitely have. I remember this from my childhood that was similarly prime Sesame Street age. Maybe not quite in the eighties, but definitely in the late seventies. So thanks Jenny for this note and for the YouTube link. Uh It's on Sesame Street YouTube page if you want to look at it, if you want to send us a note. We're a history podcast at I heart radio dot com and we're also all over social media at missed in History, which is where you'll find our Facebook and Twitter and Pinterest and Instagram, and you can subscribe to our show on the iHeart radio app or wherever you like to get podcasts. Stuff you missed in History Class is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Frye. It's time for Unearthed. I know there are folks who are very excited about this because when we had a Saturday Classic come out recently that had the word unearthed in the title, heard from some excited people, and I was like, hold on just a tiny bit longer until the actual new unearthed stuff comes out, which is finally now. So if you're new to the show, this is when we talk about things that have been literally or figuratively unearthed over the last few months. In this case, this is the last quarter of this is two parts. Uh. Today we're going to be talking about lots of updates to prior episodes and some books and letters. Uh. Somehow the exhumations and repatriation so been in part two of these for a long time. I put him in part one this time, uh, and then we'll talk about different stuff in part two on Wednesday, and she's changing it up. Look out. Uh. We have quite a few updates, but we are starting on a more somber note to begin with. On August seen, we did an episode called The Motherhood of Mamie Till Mobley. She was the mother of Emmett Till, who was murdered in Mississippi in nineteen fifty five after Caroline Dunham claimed that he had grabbed her, threatened her, and made lewd comments to her in her husband's grocery store. Emmett was just fourteen at the time, and this was a particularly brutal murder, one that was part of a pattern of lynchings in which white men murdered black men and boys, often after allegations of wrongdoing by white women. In a tween episode of Unearthed, we talked about how the U. S. Department of Justice had reopened the case and to Emmett Sells murder. Let's follow the seventeen publication of a book called The Blood of Emmett Till. The author of this book had interviewed Caroline Donham and had reported that she admitted to lying about her encounter with Emmett. When the d o J announced that it was reopening this case, some of the response to that announcement was understandably cynical. The book had been out for more than a year and a half at this point, so people were like, why now. In December, the Justice Department announced that it was closing the case again. Donham denied that she had recanted her earlier testimony, and the FBI could not prove whether that was true or not. The d o J issued a release noting that if Donnam had lied to investigators, that would be perjury, but perjury in state court is not a federal matter, and the statute of limitations had expired regarding both Donham's testimony in nine and an investigation when the case was previously reopened in two thousand four. J. W. Milum and Roy Bryant, who were both acquitted of this crime but later confessed to it in a magazine article, are both dead. The dj did not find any evidence that would allow them to charge a living person with a crime, so it closed the case again. The release about this also noted quote in closing this matter without prosecution, the government does not take the position that the state court testimony the woman gave in nineteen was truthful or accurate. Descendants of Henrietta Lacks have filed a suit against Thermo Fisher Scientific for its use of lax cells without her or her family's consent and without compensation to them. These cells were taken from LAX's body without her knowledge or permission, while she was being treated for cervical cancer at Johns Hopkins in nineteen fifty one. Most cells die really quickly after being removed from the human body, but these kept living and repre you sing. They became the first immortal human cell line and were known as HeLa cells. They've been part of all kinds of medical research. This includes research into drugs and treatments that were then sold for profit. According to coverage in the Washington Post, civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who's representing the family, expects to file other suits against other companies that similarly earned a profit from LAX's cells. We have not done an episode about Henrietta Lax specifically, but she was part of our Six Impossible episodes. There's a book about that in which we recommended that people who were interested in Lax the story read The Immortal Life of Henrietta A. Lax. That's a book by Rebecca Sclute. That episode came out on September six. Moving on, in our year end Unearthed for we talked about archaeologists starting work at the site of Williamsburg's first Baptist church. This church was founded by enslaved in free black people in seventeen seventies. The congregation met in places like a brush harbor and a carriage house before the church structure was built. In eighteen fifty six, when we talked about this in archaeologists had found thousands of artifacts and evidence of two graves. In October of this year, it was announced that the team has unearthed the building's foundations, as well as more than twenty additional graves. This work has been happening as Colonial Williamsburg has been trying to emphasize Williamsburg's black history during the colonial period, something that the historical attraction really ignored in earlier decades. This even extends to the church itself. When First Baptist Church moved to a new building in nineteen fifty six, it was because Colonial Williamsburg had bought the property to turn it into a parking lot. Next project is underway to study the mummies in the Capucine Catacombs in Sicily, specifically focusing on mummified children there. It's too early to share any results from this work yet, but it intends to try to close a current gap in the research by using non invasive imagery to study forty one mummified children and get a better idea of their lives and how they died. We talked about the Capuchin Catacombs in the episode six More Impossible Episodes on September six, Turkey open shipwrecks from the Gallipoli Campaign as an underwater museum in October. Until this area had been guarded by the Turkish military because of the presence of unexploded torpedoes and other weaponry among the wrecks, but the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism took control of the site in advance of the anniversary of the Gliboli Campaign and worked to map the site and mark the locations of any explosives and make the area safer for public diving. So this is now the Gallipoli Historic Underwater Park, with twelve of the sixteen ships in the area open to the public for diving. One of the future plans for the site is to install plaques with QR codes at the rex so that divers can use waterproof phones to see what these vessels used to look like. The site was originally planned to open during the summer, but that had to be delayed due to the COVID nineteen pandemic. Our episode on the Gallipoli campaign came out on November. UNESCO called on Britain to return the Parthenon marbles to Greece. At a meeting of the UNESCO Intergovernmental Committee for the Return of Cultural Property to its Countries of origin in September, the committee unanimously adopted a decision acknowledging that Greece's demand for the marbles be returned was quote legitimate and rightful. In October, a UK government spokesperson issued a statement that set, in part quote our position is clear the Parthenon sculptures were acquired legally in accordance with the law at the time. The British Museum operates in the pendently of the government and free from political interference. All decisions relating to collections are taken by the museum's trustees. This was also on the agenda during a meeting between the British and Greek Prime ministers in November. Also, the parson On Gallery was closed to visitors for more than a year, including after the British Museum reopened. After its closure due to the pandemic. This led to questions and contradictory answers from the museum about what has led to that closure and whether that closure is related to a roof leak in the gallery where the sculptures are housed. Our two part episode on Lord Elgin and the Marbles came out on January and two of twenty twenty. Next Up, researchers have analyzed and o'b Citian mirror belonging to John D, adviser to Queen Elizabeth. The first prior host did an episode on John D on October five eleven. This research was published in the journal Antiquity. In our tober D used this mirror for ritual purposes, including as a scrying object. Eighteenth century historian Horace Walpole described it as quote the black stone into which Dr D used to call his spirits. This research is confirmed that the mirror is of Aztec origin and made a volcanic glass from Mexico. The same was true of three other obsidian objects also held at the British Museum, all of which were studied using geochemical analysis. This mirror was probably made in the early sixteenth century, and it's possible that it was commissioned by the Spanish to take back to Europe. The Spanish knew that obsidian was religiously significant to the Aztecs, but we don't totally know how it came into John D's possession. Everybody loves a shipwreck and the Mary Rose sank in battle in fifteen forty five and in n conservators raised it from the ocean floor and took steps to conserve it. Today it is in the mirror a Rose Museum. The Mary Rose was part of prior Hosts episode five Shipwrecked Stories on April, and it has also come up in previous editions of Unearthed. Even though the water logged wood was treated to try to preserve it, there were still bacteria living in the wreckage. Conservators learned fairly recently that some of these bacteria were secreting zinc sulfide nanostructures, which could turn acidic when exposed to the air. This is threatening the wreck. The polyethylene glycol that was used to preserve the ship can also form acidic byproducts when breaking down over time. Researchers have used X rays with scanning electron microscopy to pinpoint exactly where the problem areas are this is still a work in progress. It has basically let conservators see where the problem is so they can figure out how to address it. We still have a few more updates and we will get to them after we take a quick sponsor break now that we're back from the break. The latest round of work at the Anti Catheras shipwreck site has concluded. Although there were some objects that were brought to the surface, this was really mostly a planning effort getting ready for a project that will span from so there was a lot of mapping work along with completing a three D high resolution model of the site. One thing that they have flagged for a future study is a partial statue that's trapped under a boulder. The Anti Catheras shipwreck is something else that makes a lot of appearances on Unearthed, and our episode on the mechanism that it's named for came out on July. The Neolithic city of Catay has come up on several installments of Unearthed. The latest discovery there involves what kind of fabrics its residents typically used. The two biggest contenders have long been wool and linen, but according to research published in the journal Archaeology, it was neither of those. Instead, it was bass fiber, which comes from trees. It's in the layer between the bark and the wood. Moving on, in November, the Louisiana Board of Pardons overwhelmingly voted to posthumously pardoned Homer Plessy. Homer Plessy intentionally violated Louisiana's separate car law, which segregated its street cars in eight The resulting legal action went to the Supreme Court, and the court established that segregation was legal as long as the segregated facilities were equal. The final step in the pardon process is the approval of Governor John Bell Edwards. As of recording this episode, Edwards has not given that approval, but he had stated that he planned to do so, hopefully at a formal ceremony that would include members of the Plessy family. Our episode on Plessy Versus Ferguson came out on February and other news, The Boston Globe has reported a new clue in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Heist Paul Callin Tropo told the Globe that in his friend Bobby Denaty came to his office and showed him a finial in the shape of an eagle. The fennel seemed to be one of the thirteen pieces of art that had been stolen from the museum in a very famous heist. After their conversation, Donaty wrapped this fennel up and he left, but then he was murdered the following year. Callin Tropo never saw him again. Although this account is newly revealed, the possible connection between Denaty and the heist is not new. He was identified as a potential suspect back in and his name has come up in other investigations into the heist. Our episode on the Gardener Museum Heist most recently came out as an update on April. We have talked about the system of residential boarding schools that separated Indigenous students in the US from their families and an act of cultural genocide in several previous episodes. On December seven, the Department of the Interior and the National Indian Boarding School Healing Coalition announced a memorandum of understanding relating to sharing records and other information. The Department will create a report due by April one that will focus on historical records, especially on burial sites. As part of all this, and in our last update of one, the Gilgamesh dream tablet, which has been discussed on more than one edition of Unearthed, was formally repatriated to Iraq in a formal ceremony at a Rocks Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and that happened in December. We are going to move on now to books and letters. During the French Revolution, Marie Antoinette kept up a correspondence with Swedish count Axel von Ferston. He was her confidante and there were rumors that he was also her lover. They kept at this correspondence secretly while the royal family was held at Tweelery Palace in seventeen nine one and seventeen two. During that time, the family made a failed escape attempt. Some of these letters are in the French National Archives, but it's tricky to learn a lot about this period in her life because parts of them have been scribbled out. Researchers have now used X ray fluorescent spectroscopy to read the scribbled out parts of eight letters. They looked for the presence of different elements used in the inks, along with using statistical analysis and other techniques to further clarify those results. Historians who have reviewed the revealed text has said that the letters show a lot of affection for the Count, but they don't conclusively say one way or the other whether the Queen and the Count were having an affair. However, this research has suggested who did that redacting and that it was the Count himself. One of the challenge aspects with this research was how similar the inks were that they were trying to separate out to get a look at and after the original writing and the redaction was done using the exact same ink, suggesting that the Count did the scribbling himself, either as he was making the copies of these letters or shortly after copying them. This research was published in the journal Science Advances in October under the title two d macro XRF to reveal redacted sections of French Queen Marie Antoinette's secret correspondence with Swedish Count excels on Person another correspondence news. A team of researchers from M I T and King's College London have been researching letter locking techniques. That is a process of folding letters in a way that they make their own envelope and then cutting a piece of the paper and folding it through itself to make a lock that, like seals, the letter shut the safeguarded the letter because you could only open it by destroying that paper lock, so it was impossible to read somebody else's letter without them knowing it had been tampered with. These locks could be incredibly intricate. A video that the team released in ten shows a letter lock modeled after the one on Mary, Queen of Scott's last letter. The folding and cutting processes obviously slow for the sake of video clarity, but even with that in mind, it takes about thirty steps and four minutes to complete. Studying letter locking is really challenging. This practice was most prevalent in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and so the letters involved are old and fragile, and then often at least part of the lock is missing since it was destroyed when the letter was opened. Unopened letters with intact locks do exist, but they're extremely rare. But after studying about a dozen locks, including those on letters by Mary, Queen of Scott's, Elizabeth First, and Catherine de Medici, the team has published the Spiral locked Letters of Elizabeth the First and Mary, Queen of Scots that was published in Electronic British Library Journal. In addition to illustrating specific locks using step by step diagrams, this paper proposes a generic version of the spiral locks. This is also an open access paper, so you can go check out all these locks yourself if you want. Okay, I'm waiting and I'm aching for someone to make like a cricket file that we can I'll have a locked letter um because it sounds amazing. A document known as Chronica Universalist was discovered in it Is by Milanese friar Galvinnius Flama, and it dates back to thirteen forty five. While working with the document, professor Paolo Kisa of the University of Milan found a passage that seems to describe the continent of North America. Flamma describes sailors from Denmark in Norway traveling to Iceland and beyond that a place called Grolandia presumably Greenland, and then further west another land named Marco Latta, where giants live. Kaisa believed that marco Latta is the same place that the Norse described as Markland. That was a place west of Greenland, probably what we know today as Newfoundland or Labrador. This doesn't mean that anybody from the Mediterranean, where this document was written, had actually traveled there themselves, but it does suggest that at least some people from the area had heard of it all the way back in thirteen forty five, almost a hundred and fifty years before Columbus's voyages. This was published in the journal Terre Inconnite at the end of September, but it didn't make mainstream news coverage until October. Moving on, archaeologists from County Clare, Ireland, have found Ireland's oldest ink pen at ca her Connell Castle ring Fort. This is made of a hollow bird bone with a copper alloy nib and it dates back to the eleventh century. At that time, literacy was most associated with the clergy, but this seems to have belonged to lay people. So archaeologists wanted to confirm that this really was a pen, not some other object that would not have had to do with literacy, so they made a replica of it, and it did indeed work as a dip pen that you would dip into your ink. Uh. This suggests that literacy may have been more common outside the clergy at this point than was previously thought, especially among wealthier people, and in our last bit of books and letters. According to Dr Irving Finkel, curator of the Middle Eastern Department of the British Museum, the oldest ever drawing of a ghost has been discovered on a thirty five hundred year old Babylonian clay tablet. This tablet was part of an exorcist's instructions on how to get rid of ghosts by transferring the ghost into a figurine aid by the exorcist. The drawing shows what appears to be a male ghost with his hands tied and the rope appearing to be held by a woman. This tablet has been in the collection of the British Museum since the nineteenth century, but it had never really been studied before now. The first translation of its uniform text was apparently incorrect, and then the space where this drawing is looks empty unless it's lit from above at the right angle, so the drawing in particular was tricky to spot. And the text ends with the magnificent phrase do not look behind you creeped me out a little bit when I was working on this. I love it so much. We now have a couple of interesting finds involving toilets. First, in Smyrna, near Turkey's western coast, archaeologists have found what they believe is the actor's rest room from a theater. The space had room for about twelve toilets arranged as a you, with eats that were about sixteen inches high, so just about standard in height. Right, it isn't a standard toilet in the US between sixteen and seventeen. I haven't. I haven't done any toilet work on my house recently. You gotta renovate, pull out, and reinstall a toilet once in a while. Um in Jerusalem, archaeologists have found a twenty seven year old toilet and indoor toilet would have been a luxury on its own at this point, and this one seems to have been particularly nice, with the seat made to be comfortable to sit on and a very deep septic tank underneath. As is often the case with these kinds of fines, there's lots to examine in that septic tank, including animal bones and pottery that could offer some insight into what the people of the household ate and drink. We also have a few pieces of DNA research talk about this time around first researchers have studied the DNA of mummies that were in the Tareem Basin in western China in the nineteen nineties. These mummies were preserved naturally in the desert, and archaeologists had found their facial features, dress, and hair color unusual for the region. That had fed into the idea that perhaps these had been people who had migrated into this area from somewhere else. The prevailing hypothesis has been that these were Indo Europeans, but when researchers evaluated the DNA from the thirteen oldest mummies at one burial site, they found that they were a genetically distinct ancient North Eurasian people. It's not clear why this one group of people remained so genetically isolated, but the people of the Tareem Basin also developed a unique and distinctive culture. For example, they buried many of their dead in wooden coffins shaped like boats with marker shaped like oars. And our next bit of DNA research, the US military has ended a six year project to identify the remains of soldiers and marines from the USS Oklahoma who died in the bonding of Pearl Harbor. They were doing this using DNA and dental records. This project identified three fifty five sailors and marines, but ultimately there were thirty three crew members who could not be identified. The remains of these marines and sailors were reinterred at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific. Autosomal DNA analysis has confirmed that Ernie La Pointe is the great grandson of Tatonka Yotake, also known as Sitting Bull, making him and his sisters the Lakota Leader's closest living relatives. This analysis started with a lock of Tatonka Yotak's hair, which had been in the collection of the Smithsonian for more than a century before being returned to the family in two thousand seven. The family burned most of the hair in a religious ceremony, but kept part of it for future analysis. It had been stored at room temperature at the Smithsonian, which had caused it to degrade, so it took fourteen years for research ers to find a technique that would work. This research was done not just to confirm the points ancestry. Currently to Tonka yo Takes burial site is in South Dakota. It's in an area that he wasn't culturally connected to, and which the Point has described as being desecrated. The point hopes that these remains can be exhumed, tested to confirm that they did belong to his great grandfather, and then reburied somewhere more appropriate. We should note here that there are nuances to the use of DNA analysis to confirm Indigenous family relationships. Different Indigenous nations have different perspectives on when and whether it's appropriate to use DNA research, and of course individual Indigenous people have their own opinions as well. Requirements for providing DNA evidence also imply that DNA is superior to Indigenous nations own records, but often when it comes to something like repatriating a person's remains, especially when it involves a non indigenous organization or government, DNA evidence can back up Indigenous records and histories that have already documented the family connections involved. There are also a lot of ethical considerations to DNA research more generally, and an ethical code for DNA research was just published in the journal Nature in October. So we're gonna pause here for another sponsor break, and then we'll come back for repatriations. Next up. We are going to talk about some repatriations from the last quarter of In October, the Smithsonian Museum of African Art removed ten works of art from the Kingdom of Benin from display. These ten are amongst sixteen works at the museum that are known to be connected to the raid on the Kingdom of Beneath, in which British colonial forces looted thousands of works of art. There are many other pieces at the Smithsonian which might have come from this rate as well, but those connections haven't been traced and confirmed yet. The museum is currently negotiating with Nigeria's National Commission for Museums and Monuments on a repatriation plan for these pieces. New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art returned three pieces of Benin artwork to Nigeria in November, including to sixteenth century brass plaques in a fourteenth century brass head. These had originally been in the UK and had actually been repatriated previously in nineteen fifty, but then we're purchased by a private collector and later donated to the met These artworks and the Kingdom of Benin and the raid in all of that has come up on several previous episodes of Unearthed and other episodes of the show, so there is a forthcoming episode on all of this dedicated just to it. The Government of France repatriated twenty six objects from the Kingdom of Dahomey to Benin in November as well. These are part of the Royal Treasures of abam May and include the doors of the Palace of Abba May. We've done an episode on the Palaces of abam May on the show before. Yeah, that's also gets into the kingdom itself, which to be clear, this is not the same kingdom as Benin. The Kingdom of Benin was in what's now Nigeria. Kingdom of Dahomey is and what's and now. Another collection of objects was returned to Ethiopia in November. The items being returned this time came from Britain, Belgium and the Netherlands, but most of them had been taken by the British Army in eighteen sixty eight. These pieces included a ceremonial crown, two silver embossed horned cups, a shield and other items. Ethiopian officials described this as the largest repatriation of artifacts to the tree so far. The Ethiopian government is also advocating for the return of a long list of other objects as well, including tablets representing the ark of the Covenant. During the expedition in which the British Army had taken these objects, they also attacked the fighting force of Emperor to a drowse. The second the Emperor had been losing ground and support among his nobility, and he ultimately took his own life. In the face of all this, a British Army officer took his son, Prince Ala Maehu to England, where he died at the age of eighteen and was buried at Windsor Castle. In addition to the other cultural and artistic objects the Ethiopian government is trying to have returned, they are also asking for the prince's remains. The US has returned more than nine hundred objects to Molly. These objects are presumed to have been stolen and falsely described as replicas in their paperwork. The first group of them was spotted in two thousand nine when they arrived at the port of Houston as part of an illegal shipment. Because have included axe heads, funerary urns, and pots. The Denver art museum is repatriating four Khmer objects to Cambodia. The museum had acquired these objects between two thousand and two thousand five, but they had been looted from Cambodia in the nineteen seventies. The art dealer who sold these pieces to the museum was indicted in connection to a vast looting network in ten but died the following year before he could stand trial. These pieces include statues of Hindu and Buddhist religious figures, as well as a prehistoric bell that was believed to be part of a set used to call warriors to battle. A private collector has returned a piece of a Maya steely that disappeared from an archaeological site in the nineteen sixties. This piece depicts the masked head of an ancient Maya leader, and the collector plans to auction it off in twenty nineteen, but when Guatemalan authorities saw the listing, they called for the piece to be returned. The collector did return this piece voluntarily, although coverage of this does not deteril how they came to possess it in the first place. And lastly, billionaire hedge fund manager Michael Steinhardt has been banned from purchasing antiquities for the rest of his life as part of an agreement to return one d eighty objects that were smuggled out of eleven different countries. Steinhardt purchased them without regard to their legality, and this agreement means he will have to stand trial. In a statement, Manhattan District Attorney Cyvance Jr. Said, quote, for decades, Michael Steinhardt displayed a rapacious appetite for plundered artifacts without concern for the legality of his actions, the legitimacy of the pieces he bought and sold, or the grievous cultural damage he wrought across the globe. Investigations into this were a joint effort involving authorities in Bulgaria, Egypt, Greece, Iraq, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Syria, and Turkey. Stolen objects are now being returned to these countries. Alright, it's time for everyone's favorite, we heart exhumations. Uh, And we have a few exhamations to talk about. In October, police in Belgium exhumed remains of seventeen victims of the nineteen fifty six boas Decaisier mining disaster. Only about ten people who were in the mind when it caught fire survived. Two hundred sixty two people were killed. The seventeen bodies being exhumed were the ones who could not be identified. The hope is to use DNA evidence to confirm who they are by comparing their DNA to living relatives, but a few of the miners listed as missing after the disaster had no known relatives. Exhumations at the bon Secour Mother and Baby Home in tomb Ireland are slated to begin this year. The Mother and Baby Home has come up on several prior installments of unearthed Nearly eight hundred children are known to have died while this home was in operation, but there were no burial records for them, and part of the burial site is believed to be a disused septic tank. In late November, authorities exhumed the body of Poland's Commander in Chief, Edward Smigrids, who died suddenly in December of n but there have been a lot of unanswered questions about his cause of death and when he actually died. There has been speculation that he may have been poisoned and that his body was embalmed to hide evidence of that crime, or even that this was not his body and that he really escaped and died much later. It is, of course too early to have any results of that investigation yet. And lastly, there have been a couple of recent calls to exhume particular historical figures. German singer Roberto Blanco has called for the remains of Ludwig von Beethoven to be exhumed for racial DNA testing, and Joseph Stalin's grandson has called for his body to be exhumed to determine whether he was poisoned, as well as for him to be reinterred alongside his wife rather than at the Kremlin. Now we have two different signs about archipelagos that Europeans thought were uninhabited when they first arrived there and also didn't seem to have evidence of previous settlements. But it turns out people did live there much earlier. Yeah, it's uh, it's easy to sound real judge with this, but really this was challenging evidence to find. First Portuguese sailors arrived in the Azores in four seven, they believed it had never been inhabited. It didn't seem like it had ever been inhabited, but it's possible that people lived there seven hundred years before that. Research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences examined sediment cores taken from several lakes on these islands. The cores suggests that between seven hundred and eight fifty there were livestock there, like cows and sheep. These were not animals that would have lived there unless there were humans there. These same years also saw an increase in residues from large fires and a corresponding decrease in the native tree pollen. One hypothesis is that these were North seafarers and that they arrived in the Azores due to shifting climate the temperatures and winds that encouraged exploration from the northeast Atlantic. Similarly, Europeans first arrived in the Falkland Islands in sixteen ten and similarly believed them to have never been inhabited, but it looks like people may have actually lived there hundreds of years earlier. The similar reasoning at work here. There's a sudden increase in evidence of large fires, including around the years one fifty and four ten, as well as in seventeen seventy, which was after Europeans that had established settlements there. Other evidence of earlier settlement includes a projectile point similar to ones that were used by indigenous people's on the South American continent, and mounds of bones that show evidence of human activity. Their current conclusion is that indigenous people from South America made brief visits to the islands rather than establishing long term settlements there, meaning that it would have been harder for Europeans to see evidence of that once they got there in the seventeenth century. It's also possible that these South American visitors introduced the wara to the islands. This is the only land mammal considered to be native to the Falklands, and it's also called the Falkland Island dog or the Falkland Islands wolf. It hasn't been entirely clear how this animal got to the island, but Europeans hunted them to extinction in the nineteenth century. Earlier research has suggested that they have walked across an ice bridge, but this latest research suggests that maybe folks from South America brought them along and we have a final random occurrence to end on. In October, the Westbrook Main Police Department reported that a nineteenth century grave stone had been found in the middle of a local road. The stone read Mrs Mary, wife of David Pratt, died January one, eighteen forty, age fifty nine. It appears that this stone belonged to Mary Pratt of Yarmouth, Maine, who had been buried at the old Baptist Cemetery there. The most likely scenario is that her grave had been marked with this stone at the time of her death, and that it was replaced when her husband died in eighteen sixty one and was buried alongside her. There is a stone at their graves now that commemorates both of them, although it's not clear how this stone wound up in the road. A hundred and sixty years later. Westbrook police stressed that they did not believe foul play was involved. However, The Boston Globe noted in its reporting that this is one of a string of strange happenings in Westbrook, comparing the town to something out of a Stephen King novel. In ten there was a very large snake, as in a ten foot long snake that was reported to be living along the presump Scott River and was nicknamed Wessey or the presump Scott Python. This was followed by a strange disc of ice forming in the same river over the winner of followed by on landslide. So, at least in the Boston Globe's opinion, tombstone was just the latest thing the snake brought it. Um, We're gonna have more unearthed next time, but in the meantime, do you have listener mail? Real quick listener mail from Jenny. Jenny wrote and said I'm catching up on last month episodes and had to write in about your mother Goose episode and one of my favorite jokes on Sesame Street. Back in the eighties when I was primed Sesame Street age, they had a segment called the Ladybugs Picnic, and it's accounting song about all the things the ladybugs do on their nick like sack races and the like. But there's also a great line in there about how they quote talk about the high price of furniture and rugs and fire insurance for ladybugs. Just so morbidly dark and hilarious all at the same time. As an adult, it makes me laugh every time I hear it and thought you might enjoy it as well. Thanks for the great listening, Jenny. Thanks Jenny for telling us about this. When I read this email, I was like, I've never heard of this song before in my life, and then when I clicked on the YouTube link, I was like, no, wait, I definitely have. I remember this from my childhood that was similarly prime Sesame Street age. Maybe not quite in the eighties, but definitely in the late seventies. So thanks Jenny for this note and for the YouTube link. Uh It's on Sesame Street YouTube page if you want to look at it, if you want to send us a note. We're a history podcast at I heart radio dot com and we're also all over social media at missed in History, which is where you'll find our Facebook and Twitter and Pinterest and Instagram, and you can subscribe to our show on the iHeart radio app or wherever you like to get podcasts. Stuff you missed in History Class is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.