Better Than One

put things off that they don't want to do. In eighteen twenty, Hungarian Prince Nicolaus esther Hazy finally made up his mind to finish something sitting on his to do list. Say ten years earlier, when his court composer Joseph Haydn died, he swore that he would move the man from his modest grave in Vienna to a beautiful tomb at the Estra Hazy estate. But when the body was exhumed, the prince was in for a shock. It seemed that his

friend had lost his head, quite literally. Joseph Heiden's body was in the coffin with a powdered wig atop it. The skull, however, was missing. Now, if you're a classical music fan, you've probably heard of Joseph Heyden. He was born in seventeen thirty two to a poor family in Austria. Although neither of his parents had been musically trained, music was a huge part of his home life. His father taught himself to play the harp, and his mother liked

to sing with their neighbors. When Joseph showed interest in music at an early age, his parents knew that he'd have no chance to learn if he stayed with them in the village, so at a young age of just five years old, Joseph went to live with his cousin, the choir master of a larger town. As Joseph grew up, he dedicated his life to music, first as a singer in several choirs, then as a music teacher and accompanist,

and finally as a composer. In seventeen sixty one, when Joseph was twenty nine years old, the prominent ester Haze family recruited Joseph to write music and direct their court musicians. Joseph Oversaw music for the ester Hazes for the rest of his life. During his long career, he had a huge influence on classical music. He didn't invent the concept of the symphony, which is a musical piece of an orchestra with several contrasting movements, but he did make them

hugely popular. He also was the first to write music for a string quartet, which usually involves two violins of viola and a cello. He was a close friend of Mozart and even trained Beethoven. But Joseph's strangest claim to fame came after his death. When he died in eighteen oh nine, Vienna was under attack by Napoleon's French army.

His patrons, the ester Hazes, wanted to bury him at their estate, but it was much too difficult to transport Joseph's body from the city, so he was buried in a local semin terry, with the idea that they would move him later after the war. When Prince Nicholas tried to do that eleven years later, that's when he first discovered that Joseph had lost his head. So why would someone take the dead composer's skull? Well, you can blame the idea of phrenology. Phrenology was a pseudoscience that assumed

that the bumps on someone's skull predicted their intelligence. People believe that certain bumps on your head might mean that you were skilled in music, or art or other talents. The skulls of famous musicians like Joseph Heiden might have all kinds of musical bumps and lumps. So when he died, two amateur phrenologists bribed a grave digger to steal his head from the coffin. These men were Joseph Rosenbaum and Johann Peter. Rosenbaum had actually met Joseph Heiden many times.

In fact, Joseph was friends with Rosenbaum and his opera singer wife. When Rosenbaum and Peter received Joseph's head, they quickly cleaned the skull and examined it, hoping to find some sign of Joseph's immense talent. They both claimed that he had a fully developed bump of music on his head, signaling that he was a great composer. Now, for years, Peter and Rosenbaum passed the skull back and forth between themselves, but in eighteen twenty, when Prince Nicholas realized that his

friend's head had been stolen. He very quickly figured out who the thieves were. But Rosenbaum, who had the skull at the time, didn't want to give up his prize possession, so when the authority searched Rosenbaum's house, he hid the skull in a mattress. He even had his wife lay on top of it and claimed that she had her period in this less enlightened age. That was enough to keep the mail investigators away. Finally, Rosenbaum gave Prince Nicholas

another skull from his collection. Prince Nicholas buried it with Joseph Haydn's grave, believing that his friend's body had finally become whole. Joseph's real skull, though, kicked.

many of his works were performed. But it wasn't until nineteen fifty four, one hundred and forty five years after Joseph Hayden's death, that his real skull was finally reunited with his body. Not knowing who the other skull belonged to, the ester Hazes left that one in the coffin as well, finally bringing an end of the world's longest game of hide and go seek. Throughout the annals of history, there have been individuals whose lives have defied the boundaries of

time and whose stories stretch across the ages. That's usually because of their remarkable accomplishments, but in the case of this story, it's because it literally spans so much time. Our story begins with an anecdote that borders on the absurd. In nineteen sixty nine, a French woman named Jean Calmo entered into a unique arrangement known as an en viege, a French system in which a property is sold for a lump sum, with the buyer making monthly payments to

the seller until the seller's death. In Jean's case, she sold her apartment located in the city of Arles to her lawyer, and he believed that he was making a long term investment and paid a total of nine hundred and eighteen thousand francs over time. But in nineteen ninety five, when the lawyer was seventy seven years old, he passed away. And you might be wondering why he would have entered into the agreement in the first place if he thought

that his client would outlive him. But that's the thing. He had every reason to believe that he would inherit that apartment. You see, in nineteen ninety five when he passed away, Jean was one hundred and twenty years old. Today, she's known to have the longest human life span on record. Oh and for the curios, yes, the lawyer's family continued making payments until Jean died two years later. In the end, the price paid was more than double the apartment's value.

But this is only one part of the curious story. After all, one hundred and twenty years is a long time. That is, if Jean really lived that long. Before I explained the skepticism behind her supposed lifespan, I'll tell you a little bit more about Jean's life. Jean had a husband named Fernand and a daughter named Yvonne. Fernand's family owned a dry goods store, and they lived in an

apartment above it. Later on in her life, Jean would tell the story of a customer who bought canvases there in eighteen eighty eight, an artist named Vincent van Go. Jean's life was riddled with tragedy, though. In nineteen thirty four, her daughter Yvonne died of tuberculosis, so she and Fernand took in their grandson, Freddy. Then, in nineteen forty two, Fernand passed away, Jean and her son in law, Joseph,

moved into an apartment together. About twenty years later, Joseph and Freddy both died from separate causes, and Jeane left all alone. Now in her late eighties, Jene distracted herself from her loneliness by staying busy and active. People in town often spotted her running errands, moving swiftly throughout the city streets. When she was close to one hundred, the

mayor even commented that she looked twenty years younger. Some say that she even still rode a bike in the early nineteen nineties, at the age of one hundred and sixteen, Jane earned the title of oldest person alive. Researchers validated Jeane's age by observing and interviewing her, and finally, on August fourth of nineteen ninety seven, Jane passed away. But

her story doesn't even end there. In twenty eighteen, a geriatrician and a mathematician, two men from Moscow who met on Facebook, of all places, teamed up to disprove Gene's title as the oldest person to have ever lived. The geriatrician examined some photos of Gene and believed that when she was supposed to have been one hundred and ten, she looked more like ninety. We know that when she was alive. The mayor of her city also said that she looked twenty years younger than she she claimed to be.

The mathematician first used statistics to rule out the probability that a person could reach the age of one hundred and twenty. Then, as he scraped the Internet for information about Gene, he found discrepancies in many of her stories and the reports about her life. One example was that Jeane apparently told mixed versions of that story about van Go. Sometimes she said her father helped him. Other times she said her husband Fernand did. She also said that Fernand

introduced her to van Go as his wife. However, in eighteen eighty eight, when this encounter supposedly occurred, Jean and Fernand weren't even married yet. This made the mathematician even more suspicious, and he started using photoshop to tinker with Jane's features. This was how he developed the theory that for sixty years, the woman who called herself Jeane Calmo

was actually her daughter Yvonne. He believed that in nineteen thirty four, when Yvonne supposedly died, it was really Jeane who had passed away, but the family claimed the body belonged to Yvonne. He thought that maybe they did this so that Yvonne could avoid taxes on her inheritance from her mother. In his eyes, this explained by Jean would have lived with her son in law, who in this theory,

would have been her husband. It also would have meant that Yvonne entered into that agreement with her lawyer for the apartment knowing that he would never get it. Since these two men conducted their investigation, other scientists and researchers have also published work debunking Gene's record breaking age, but the topic has caused controversy between them and the researchers

who originally validated her age. Online salutes and fanatics have entered the chat, and a twenty twenty New Yorker article dove deep into each side. But even if Gene can't claim the longest lifespan, she might qualify for other titles like best fraud or worst person to purchase an apartment from. Whatever the case, her story shows that even when we encounter amazing mysteries, there's always someone on Facebook willing to tell you how wrong you are. I hope you've enjoyed

today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership with How Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can learn all about it over at the Worldoflore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.