The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week - The Beauty of Corpses, Zombie George Washington, Solar-Powered Telegraphs

Episode Date: August 29, 2018

The weirdest things we learned this week range from a plan to bring George Washington back from the dead to a solar storm that powered telegraphs with no batteries. Whose story will be voted "The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week"? Buy tickets to our live show in NYC! http://www.popsci.com/wtlive The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week is a podcast by Popular Science. Share your weirdest facts and stories with us on Twitter: www.twitter.com/weirdest_thing #weirdestthingpod Follow our team on Twitter Rachel Feltman: www.twitter.com/RachelFeltman Mary Beth Griggs: www.twitter.com/MaryBethGriggs Anna Brooks: www.twitter.com/Anna_Brooksie Popular Science: www.twitter.com/PopSci Theme Music by Billy Cadden: www.twitter.com/billycadden Edited by Jason Lederman: www.twitter.com/Lederman --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/popular-science/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/popular-science/support Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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And while a lot of the fun facts we stumble across make it into our articles, there are lots of other weird facts that we just keep around the office. So we figured, why not share those with you? Welcome to the weirdest thing I learned this week from the editors of Popular Science. I'm Rachel Thalman. I'm Mary Beth Greggs. I'm Anna Brooks. Before we get started, in case you haven't heard, we have some weird and wonderful news,

which is that we are going to perform a weirdest thing live show at Cavaliener. yacht in New York City on September 14th at 6.30 p.m. Tickets are like 12 bucks, totally worth it, and they're limited, so they're going to go fast. Head to popsye.com slash WT. Live or our Twitter or Facebook page to figure out how to get some for yourself. Now, time for the show. So on the weirdest thing I learned this week, we start by each offering a little tease of some kind of fact or story or Wikipedia spiral that we found in the course of reading, writing, writing, reporting, et cetera, living our lives. And then we decide which one we just absolutely have to hear more about first.

Then, once we've all had time to spin our little science yarns, we reconvene and decide what the weirdest thing we learned this week actually was. Anna, why don't you start? Great. So my weirdest tidbit, I actually heard a while ago, but it has always stuck in my mind. And I think about it, I feel like on a weekly basis. It's about bloodletting and how that was probably what killed George Washington. Not a throat infection.

Oh, interesting. Blood. Mary Beth? Similarly, macabre, but delightful, I think. I found out recently that there are 300-plus-year-old jars of embalmed objects that look very fascinating that are still in existence, and I found out some really incredible stuff about the person who made these back in the 1600s. Ooh, that's a person to know.

Okay, so mine is about an incident when there were so-called northern lights visible in the sky as far south as the tropics. I'm really curious about the embalming. Me too. Okay. I want to know more. We can have a macabre sandwich today. All right. That sounds delicious.

What? Oh, God. I don't know. I don't know how much your appetites, how your appetites are going to handle this one, but we'll find out. Frederick Roich was a Dutch anatomist and botanist who became just completely fascinated by anatomy and embalming. And it kind of grew out of his medical career. He started off as a trainee to a pharmacist back in the days. And then he went on to university, became a trained surgeon.

and started working in a lot of different ways in the city of Amsterdam with the medical community. But it was an interesting life because he became the person who started approving midwives in Amsterdam to work. Which, you know, I was a little surprised at that because he came into office as the surgeon- obstetrician for Amsterdam. and which was a, you know, this is a very big city in Europe for the time that we're talking about. Like it's a major trade port.

And so he starts deciding, he decides once he gets into this position, no, midwives need to know more anatomy. I'm going to give them all an exam to make sure they know what they're talking about. And I was thinking, mm, like midwives have been doing this for a while. or like basically all of human history. Like maybe this is a little odd. But it turns out there were about 140 midwives at the time and 134 took and passed this exam, which actually covered some pretty basic stuff.

Like, okay, what do you do in the event of a breach birth where the legs are coming out first? How to stimulate contractions, that sort of stuff? And he set up an actually continuing education program where midwives who had not been practicing for longer than 10, 10 years would have to go to like anatomy lectures. And he also introduced like a rule that basically said if someone spots that maybe the placenta is not delivered whole, that a midwife has to like show it to a doctor and make sure,

like they can't just throw it out and get rid of the evidence. And that's a really big deal because having something in there can lead to awful hemorrhaging. Okay. So this is this is kind of a, it's public health very early on. He was also a doctor at the Court of Justice and was charged into looking into violent deaths and injuries in the city. So this is all to say. Both positions give him access to bodies. And for an anatomist, lots and lots and lots of bodies.

In particular, like, this is still not a great time for maternal or infant health. So there are a lot of infant bodies. There are a lot of bodies of prisoners. And at this time, you're starting to learn more and more about. about anatomy, and they're starting to do more and more dissections of the human body. And so this is something where he's really starting to use these bodies, you know, for scientific. Right. And for fun.

You know, there's that aspect of it, too. So he started developing these embalming techniques because he wanted to make sure that you could, you know, work with a body not just in the really cold months when it's not decomposing, but like throughout. anatomy labs year round basically basically like that was something that he wanted to start doing and so he he kept working on these embalming methods that would keep

bodies fresher from hunger and so he was the first person to inject arteries with stuff after death just stuff and so the stuff was a liquid red wax that he would shoot

into into these veins and arteries. Right. Is he like melting down a bunch of red candles he had kicking around? It wasn't like red candles. He started off using just white wax, but then he would add the red because he found out that it actually gives a more lifelike color

if you have that. And so it created this really interesting display. That sounds really creepy. Yes, yes. And it also, on a scientific note, it also made it possible for early people that are studying anatomy to actually trace tiny blood vessels that would otherwise have gotten lost in the body. So you're actually able to chart out the circulatory system a little bit better than you were before.

Yeah. So that's the science part. But Frederick wanted to share what he had learned. So he created this elaborate museum in Amsterdam where he could display his elaborate embalming jars, allowing the public to come in and see the growing collection. So he would actually have tours and he would let the public come in. This wasn't just like doctors and everything. It was anybody who was interested and wanted to kind of see what was going on.

And he posed skeletons and anatomy specimens in embalming jars in really fanciful ways that were elaborately decorated by him and his daughter, Rachel, who went on. Rachel, is there something you need to tell us? And she's fascinating. She actually went on to become a really famous artist for her day. She did these beautiful flower paintings that you've probably seen in textbooks and museums. And she was just, she was an artist in her own right, which is pretty awesome. But I've got some images here of these displays, which I think, I think are pretty cool and bizarre.

So we'll start off with the nice ones. So right now I'm showing them pictures of two vases. A little armadillo in that jar. Right. Oh, so cute. Right. So they've got an armadillo. and

a bird is holding it a bird in the other and the tops of these jars are kind of elaborately decorated

with kind of a scene from that that creature might have seen in life is the idea

and it's a very interesting presentation because you have these animals that have been

taxidermate and preserved and you also have like evidence of life and that was part of

kind of the point of these He wanted this to be a celebration of life, not just dead stuff in jars. Not just dead stuff in jars. Is there liquid in there? Or is it just embalming from the inside? Yeah, it's both.

So he actually developed this incredible liquid that he called, I think it was, liquor balsamicum. I had that on my salad today. Right. Yeah. And so the balsamicum was his own invention that would preserve the as well, specimens in this clear, clear seeming liquid for long amounts of time. It was kind of what he thought of as his trade secret, so it was...

His secret sauce? Yeah, it was his secret sauce for dead things. But it was also like, why would you do this? And I'm going to show you another one, which is one of his more famous ones. We're getting a little bit grosser now, and so you've got lots of tiny skeletons posed in very fanciful ways with their arms kind of outstretched. And what they're posing on top of is a bunch of kidney stones and gallstones. And the things they're standing next to are these red wax.

It looks like trees. Okay. So it looks like you've got skeletons posed among little sticks and trees. They're actually like wax casts of the circulatory system. Wow. This is a nightmare. And see, the thing is he actually didn't want it to be a nightmare. He posed these things in this way and how.

had these nice decorations and his daughter, Rachel, made these kind of beautiful lace work for various different body parts and things because, you know, he didn't want people to be scared. He had, has been quoted as saying, you know, first of all, I do it to all lay the distaste of people who are naturally inclined to be dismayed by the sight of corpses. So he was like, I don't want people to be freaked out by dead things. So I'm going to, you know, pose skeletons in these very strange ways. Sometimes they're scary, though. I am all for that. You know, I think our society has a really messed up relationship with death and the dead.

So all for it. I'm also here for really creepy messed up art. But I have to say that this is some really creepy messed up art. And I'm not sure it quite conveyed the sentiment he was trying to convey about death. No, that was kind of the point. He also, you know, he would have skeletons. saying things like, you know, I've never looked better. Oh, my God.

I mean, that's our vernacular of that. But yeah, that's the idea. And that was part of it. And it continued to have this cultural impact for a while. In the 1800s, an Italian writer, Giacomo Leopardy, wrote an essay called Dialogue between Frederick Roche and his mummies. And it was this essay about death. And it ended up with the children reassuring Roche that, like,

No, death was very peaceful, and I, like, didn't suffer at all. It features dialogue, like, as the imagined Frederick enters the place where, you know, all of his mummies and skeletons have come to life is the premise behind this essay. And so he says, he says, children, children, what game are you playing at? Do you not remember that you are dead? Oh, my God. Sorry. What does all this mean?

Are you so puffed up from the Tsar's visit that you imagine yourself no longer subject to the laws of nature? How I always feel for the Tsar visits. So speaking of the Tsar, this was referencing, this collection became so famous and it featured over 2,000 specimens that ended up being visited by Peter the Great back in 1697. And so in 1717, apparently Peter decided, you know, I just, I love this collection so much, I have to have it, and bought the entire collection and moved it back to St. Petersburg. Oh, my God. So it's now in St. Petersburg. And a lot of it has survived to this day. If you go on the website at the, it's called the Kunstcomra Museum in St. Petersburg, you can actually see some of it.

of these specimens, and I'm sure if you went to visit, you could also see them today because they do still exist. They're a little bit disturbing, and so I do have a picture. I don't know if I want to show you. I want to see it. We're going to link to it online instead of just having the picture on our website. But this is one of them. And so it's got a infant in embalming fluid. This is one of the things that had been part of the midwifery process, obviously not. a great outcome, sadly. And the idea was that he wanted to preserve these specimens and show what development of human anatomy was like.

And so it's a child and the placenta and on top is a lovely scene involving Ussie Horse, Coral, and some little shells. So you can see also in the image there's a knit cap or a lace cap on top. and that was probably something that his daughter had, you know, created for this specimen. Because he wanted and she wanted people to see these as living things, as humans, which was very important, that this isn't just dead, you know, impersonal stuff, even though they did seem to have a kind of impersonal, odd relationship with it. It's really intriguing.

Yeah. Very cool. All right. We're going to take a quick break, but we'll be right back. At Outdoor Life magazine, we've never been easy on the gear we test, which is precisely why you can trust the gear we make. Introducing GuideLife, Performance, products, and apparel designed with the editors of Outdoor Life. Made for backpackers, campers, hunters, and anyone who enjoys the outdoors. And like any great adventure, this one starts at Base Camp.

The collection includes tents, lanterns, duffles, sleeping bags and pads, and more. Available now on Amazon and OLGaidLife.com. And we're back. And I think since we're going the macabre sandwich route, I'll do my fact, and then we'll get to the blood. So. All the blood. Set the scene. It is 11.18 a.m.

Cloudless morning in the UK. Thursday, September 1st, 1859. And Richard Carrington, who at the time was 33 years old, he's a very prominent astronomer of that time. He was in his observatory, and his telescope was projecting an image of the sun, which it always did. And he was drawing set spots because what do you do if you're an astronomer in the 1800s, but draw some spots, I guess. And he was looking at a big group of sunspots and then. suddenly he saw these two really bright white lights appear over them. And they got really intense, really fast,

and started to kind of change shape in interesting ways. And he was like, whoa, something's going on here. And he later wrote, being somewhat flurried by the surprise. I hastily ran to call someone to witness the exhibition with me. but that really backfired because he came back like 60 seconds later and was mortified really had a way with words

to find that it was already much changed and enfeebled so he basically missed it is the point but what he was seeing was a coronal mass ejection so for those of you who are less familiar we'll have more info in this on popside.com

but our sun produces a lot of weather Marybeth writes about this a lot. Do you want to briefly explain what a coronal mass ejection is? So the outermost layer of the sun's atmosphere is the corona, which is weirdly hot. It's just boiling, way hotter than the sun's surface. And sometimes periodically we will see these large eruptions that seem to come from it. And it's basically a lot of plasma racing out from the sun.

Just a plasma burp. Yeah. Yeah, it's bad. And so we call those coronal mass ejection. which can be tied up with magnetic fields and all this kind of stuff, and it goes racing out into space. Yep. Wow.

So what happens in kind of the daily course of our interactions with the sun is that the magnetic energy of the sun is interacting with our magnetic field, and that can do some interesting things in the atmosphere. And near the poles, it very stereotypically causes the aurora. Borealis, or cloakly known as the Northern Lights. And that's just us seeing the evidence of those like supercharged particles interacting with the magnetic field at our poles. So this happens all the time.

And sometimes we have, you know, solar storms where that's happening a little bit more intensely than normal. So like sometimes, you know, instead of just seeing the Northern Lights as far north as like the Yukon will see them in, you know, Maine and everybody gets real excited. So pretty. I did. But really. But this day in 1859, the next morning, in fact, they were visible as far south as the tropics, like all over the world. Wow.

And this was like before dawn, in some places it was like midnight. Skies all over were just bursting with these red and green and purple aurora. Bright as daylight. There were reports of people accidentally getting up and starting work or like birds waking up. There was actually one newspaper wrote about, like, a guy who, like, woke up and, like, hunted three, like, larks or something that thought it was daytime. Oh, my God. Oh, I would hunt down some larks, too, if you were waking me up to that hour. That was not nice.

So, yeah, or people were going out and thinking that neighboring towns were actually on fire because the sky was so bright, red. And what was happening was what's now called the Carrington event, which was a couple of huge solar storms. and according to traces in Arctic ice, it was the biggest in 500 years, at least, and twice as big as the second biggest in that time. So like really like a twice a millennia event that's only based on the data we have. So it's possible it's even more rare than that.

We've had smaller storms that have some impact on us since then. You know, if we have an increase in solar activity, we'll see more Aurora, will sometimes have, you know, in like 1972, there was a storm that knocked out telephone lines. But nothing the size of Carrington. If Carrington happened today, it's estimated that it would cost tens of billions of dollars in satellite damage alone because it would mess with our GPS, it would mess with satellites. Just like there's so much magnetic energy in the air.

And in fact, here's like the coolest thing about the Carrington event, in my opinion. is that, you know, there was no GPS then, obviously, but there was a telegraph. There had been for about 20 years. It was really, it really just started taking off as like a method of, you know, carrying business from state to state, et cetera. And it started sparking because there was so much electricity in the air.

And so operators were like getting shocked and seeing like flames come out of the telegraph. So some of them, they removed the batteries to keep it from electrocuting them. And some of them kept working. There was such an electrical charge in the air that the wires were just picking it up. Which like, that's just so amazing to me. Why don't we just do that now? Harness, like create solar storms and harness that energy.

Right, because what we want is just as much solar storm as possible. Yeah. Who needs GPS? So the Carrington event was this huge, you know, worldwide phenomenon. But it really didn't affect the economy or public health too much, according to recent research. There are anecdotal reports of increased public drunkenness in New Orleans. That just sounds, yeah. That just seems like there are beautiful colors in the sky and it's nice out.

So, you know. Yeah. There was a higher birth rate near Paris. An appropriate amount of time after for people to maybe tie to that, but it was also just like a nice warm summer, which tends to increase birth rate. Researchers determined that the only conclusion they could draw from that was that the solar storm didn't have a negative effect on fertility, which is interesting because it's a thing we don't really know. There's a reason why researchers are really tried to dig into all of the data we had around 1859 because we can imagine what a story. storm like that would do now or, you know, is it going to raise cancer rates? You know, obviously we know about the trouble it could cause to our electrical grid and, you know, our global

positioning systems. We know that if a storm this big happened and somebody was on a spacewalk and they would have like just a couple minutes to get into the ISS. The ISS would probably adequately protect astronauts, but they would have to get inside. So that could be bad. And of course, The obvious question there is, like, could we really be caught off guard by a source from this big? And the answer is yes. Yes. We know very little about space weather. We're just starting to understand it now.

We've got a couple interesting stories on the subject on Popside.com that I will link to in this week's blurb. But the long and short of it is that, like, wow, we know very little about the sun. And it's like right the heck over there. So, yeah, it was a real moment of truth for people, the Carrington event, because it made them. realize what kind of effect the sun could have on us and these systems that we were coming to rely on. Though not everyone agreed that it was the sun. There were some theories that now sound very silly. But Carrington, you know, having seen his bright lights, even though he missed the best part, he was pretty positive.

And other astronomers that came to agree. But yeah, even today we know very little about the sun. And, you know, there are missions like NASA's Parker Solar Probe is getting closer. Yeah, oh, it's going to be so cool. I'm so excited. But, you know. Terrifies me. Don't go too close.

No, they're going to go so close. They're going to go under, we're going to go be just four million miles away from the sun, which is so close. It's so close. It's great. It's great. So hopefully in the next few years we will come to better understand when our son is about to spit a bunch of plasma at us. And fingers crossed, we will not have a Carrington event size event anytime soon because we are definitely not prepared. Yeah, there are people that are like trying to prepare.

Like there are definitely some electrical grid operators and stuff. They're actually doing drills and that sort of thing, trying to prepare for some. space weather, trying to make sure, okay, if something like this happens, can we shut down our solar grid and, like, transfer power over to somewhere else? And, you know, how can we, how can we deal with something like this? Because now our world, it's not just telegraph. I mean, I'm all for the New Orleans way of doing things, just, you know, laissez-le-a-bant-ru-est, and, like, party it down. But, you know, the problems that we have with even minor solar storms today, I mean, it can still screw up your GPS and send you, like, towards a lake or something like that.

But, yeah, it's a wild, wild thing. Yeah, I'm sure if we had a Carrington event scale CME today, you know, we would obviously know what was going on. But I bet some weird stuff would happen. Yeah, and I also think that we'd probably be just like those guys on the telegraph. We take the batteries out of our laptops and be like, oh, I'm still typing. Yeah, that's my question is like what stuff would just be picking up electricity from the air? Yeah, I wonder if our computers would be robust enough to deal with it. I don't know.

I'm skeptical. Yeah. And if everyone's computers don't work, the whole world it's going to fall apart. Oh, see, then you just have to go to New Orleans. Just go outside and drink. Yeah. Great. Okay.

We're going to take a quick break. It's really easy to get confused by all of the tech news flying around the internet. On last week in tech, the popular science tech team explains everything and tells you how all of these stories affect your daily life. New episodes post every Monday on Apple Podcasts, Google Play Music, SoundCloud, and pretty much anywhere else you can listen to podcasts. We'll talk to you then. Wow, that could have been the ad for your thing right there. That's a thought. Please at me.

Okay. So Anna, tell us about some blood. I will tell you about blood. And I will tell you about George Washington's blood. Great. So there is some controversy about George Washington's death. Also, keep in mind, I'm not from America. So if I say something wrong about George Washington, I apologize to everyone in America.

So it's commonly known, or if you look it up, that he died of a throat infection. but some people think he died of hypovalemic shock, which is basically what happens when you lose a bunch of blood, which he did, because his doctors drained it all from him. Wow. How much blood are we talking, Anna? Okay, so the numbers are varying on this, but the general consensus is that it's five to seven pints of blood.

And how much blood is in the human body? That's a good question. It depends on your size and size, weight, but in general it's between nine to 12 pints. Whoa. So even if we're being really generous, they took half his blood. Oh, my gosh. And you can't really live with half your blood's missing.

You would be very deflated and dead. So it's kind of like, why would you keep taking blood? So I'm going to rewind. We're going to go back and talk about why. he was getting his blood drained in the first place. It started on a light snowy morning in December of 1799. Our old friend and former president, George Washington, was spending the afternoon riding on a horse, of course.

As he does. Yeah, he's never off the horse. But the weather turned, and all of a sudden it started to hail, and there was freezing rain, and at this point, George Washington is 67. So, you know, like, none of us want to be out of the freezing rain, but seniors get indoors. Because George Washington was apparently a very punctual man,

he could not be late for anything. He always had to be on time. So instead of changing out of his freezing cold, wet clothes, he just went straight to dinner. He's like, Martha, I'm not keeping you waiting. Martha's his wife. I'm here. So he's promptly on time for dinner and sat through the meal.

I'm sure she loved him being there and his dripping wet clothes. That sounds like a passive aggressive thing to me. He's like, I'm on time, damn it. And she's like, go change. and then he's just sawing away at his steak or whatever he was doing. So, of course, he woke up the next day feeling terrible, super sick. And, you know, instead of staying in bed and just relaxing, drinking fluids, he decided to go back outside into the snow and do some tree clearing for a few hours.

Damn it, George, didn't you learn a lesson? George. It's a cherry tree. Stay in bed. So by that night, his condition had worsened. he had a terrible throat cold. He was really sick. So Martha sends for a doctor.

George Washington also, all his friends seem to be doctors. Like in all the research I did, all his best friends are doctors, which I guess is handy. But in this case, it's not because they clearly killed him accidentally, maybe. So a doctor arrives, and, you know, as you do as a doctor, when your patient is sick, you're like, I'm going to drain about a half a pint of blood from you. So bloodletting was a treatment that George Washington and a lot of other people thought, very highly of. Back in the day, it was used to treat headaches when you had a fever. They would extract blood. They thought the illness was in your blood. Oh, and for anyone who doesn't know,

bloodletting is just what it sounds like. It is letting blood out of your body, extracting blood from your system. So it's been around for thousands of years. I don't think it's as popular today as it was then. It's slightly less popular. Yeah, that's not what I get when I go for a check up. Yeah, I don't know. So if you have a fever or migraine, maybe turn to Tylenol before before opening up a vein. Exactly. Awesome. So doctors back in the day thought that illnesses were caused by having too much blood in your body. So they're like, hey, we'll just drain a bit and it'll be okay. But back in the 1100s, churches in Europe did not like this. Blood stays in the body. It doesn't leave. So they banned monks and priests from getting it done. So of course,

course, good old barber stepped in and started offering services like bloodletting, amputations, and cupping at barbershops. And I have this image of like a monk sneaking out of the church at night, going to a backdoor barbershop, being like, get the blood out of me. And George Washington isn't the only famous person who has looked at bloodletting. Mary Antoinette, who is the queen of France, while she was giving birth, they extracted some blood from her. Just what you mean. Less blood.

Exactly. When you're having a baby, like while giving birth too, not before or after. Apparently, she was about to faint, was very dizzy, so they drained some of her blood. Everyone thought it was a miracle cure because all of a sudden she felt better. But at the same time, that was happening. Someone had opened a window and let some fresh air into the room. So I don't know, though. I'll let you make up your mind on that one.

Charles the second, who is the king of England in 1685, he met a similar actually, but probably a lot more gruesome fate than our dear George Washington. Charles II, long story short, he had a seizure, and over the course of the next three days, basically had almost all the blood and his body drank. Wow. And he died. He didn't make it.

Back to George. Washington in a time span of 16 hours, a bunch of different doctors had come through training blood, so by the end of it, they say about five to seven pints of blood was drained from him. That's what happens when you have too many doctor friends. They will all treat you, and they will just take more and more blood. Exactly. And yeah, every couple hours, a new doctor would show up because they're like, come help, Georgia's super sick, and they'd come galloping over and take a bunch of blood.

And oh, also, while they were doing all this draining, they were doing a bunch of other, air quote, medical treatments as well. They induced blisters on his throat to balance out the fluids in his body, which I've never heard of. But like, if you have a throat infection, can you imagine that? It's like, let's add something painful on the outside. To, like, create a pus-filled blister, like on the outside of your throat? Maybe they were like We're drawing the pus out of his throat Not realizing they were just making

More pus? Yeah, something like that And while this was happening They forced him to drink a mixture A concoction of molasses, butter and vinegar To soothe his throat Oh, that just makes you puke It apparently almost suffocated him

Oh no! Oh George And I can imagine George was taking this With like such grace He was probably lying there just, yes, I trust everything you're doing. And he should not have trusted everything they're doing. So sadly, on December 14, 1799, George Washington died. Side story, Dr. William Thornton, who in his words said he was overwhelmed with the loss of the best friend I had on Earth.

But I feel like every single doctor probably said that about George Washington. I mean, it's George Washington. So I don't know. So Dr. Thornton was on his way. over to try and treat George Washington. He didn't make it on time, so he showed up, and George Washington had died, and he was very, very upset. So everyone is preparing for the funeral and the burial, and Thornton was like, hey, you know what, I'm going to try and bring him back from the dead. It's not over. I'm bringing him back. It's happening. He's not dead yet. So because it was really cold,

and for some reason, you two might know more about this, he requested not to, you know, to be buried for three days after his death before being put in. That's definitely just to make sure you're dead. Yeah. That's where a lot of weird and bizarre traditions. Also just like the tradition of a wake in general comes from that idea. You have a nice loud party. Everybody comes through.

Everybody looks at the person, establishes that they're dead. The person has plenty of time to not be dead. and you're making lots of noise because it's awake. And so, yeah. And I mean, they also, like, they used to bury people and have, like, a bell tied to them. Yeah. So that, like, they were very worried about, you know, they were very worried about burying people alive back then. So that makes sense that he wanted to, you know, wait a few days.

I've heard sometimes with the bells, too, they'd hear the bells ringing, so they'd frantically dig up the body. But it was just, like, worms and creatures or something had gone in there. George had, because it was so cold out, I'm not sure if they kept him outside exposed, probably not, but he had basically been kept on ice for two days because they didn't want him to start decomposing. So he was basically frozen, solid, a big president, popsicle. So Thornton tells all the other doctors there. He says, this is the plan. We're going to thaw him out slowly in cold water. Like he's a chick, like a butter. All turkey. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, turkey may be better. Giant, giant turkey.

Then we'd slowly bring him back up to temperature. Inflate his lungs with air, and then pump him full of lamb's blood. So I don't know about you. I'm picturing a George Washington lamb zombie who's like, br-hr. They're just like making it turducken. Wow. So. Oh, that's such a good idea.

One of our early episodes, I talked about smoking. cinemas and like the history of resuscitation. And it was, it was around the 1700s that people first started talking about, um, how you, like, was it possible to resuscitate people? So, uh, what year did George Washington to die? 1799. Right. So it was like pretty much peak, you know, doctors being like, wow. And, you know, to be fair, you know, there's more info on this in the earlier episode, but for years, there had been no attempt to make into resuscitate. people by Western doctors at least. You know, if you, like, fell into some water and came out unconscious, they'd be like,

well, you're dead. So the fact that people realized you could, like, do chest compressions and, you know, save drowning victims, that, you know, there were incidents where, you know, somebody might seem to have stopped breathing, but you could get them back. It really made some doctors think that maybe all sorts of resuscitation was possible. So in this guy's defense, it was a time. of, you know, resuscitation miracles. And I'm sure he was like, if we're going to try it on anyone, we're going to try it on George Washington.

That's exactly what he said. And he was very upset that everyone kiboshed the idea, like 20 years later, if it was brought up, he would just, we should have tried it. So he thought it might work. And he was very sad for years after, but he did not get to try it. Wow. I think that, for me, that story wins because of the turn at the end. with the strange presidential popsicle recipe

involving lamb's blood. I mean, I don't think you can get any better than a presidential popsicle. No. Like, that's my vote too. Anna wins. Thanks, guys. Actually, we should be thanking George Washington.

RIP. Thanks, George. P is for a popsicle. The weirdest thing I learned this week is a popular science podcast. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Play Music, SoundCloud, or wherever you're listening right now. And if you like the show, please rate and review us on iTunes.

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