Dig This

get rich quick schemes never work. Whether it was Ralph Cramden, Homer Simpson, or Al Bundy, the idea of spending a little money to make a lot of money never really panned out. Luckily, those characters just had to wait for next week's episode and all would be forgotten and forgiven. There were no real stakes or consequences, not like in real life, where people like Burnie in Charles Ponzi, for whom the Ponzi Scheme was named, found themselves in jail

or worse. But during the mid nineteenth century, two men decided to try their hands at their own get rich quick scheme, and it worked out a lot better than anyone had expected. Their names were William Smith and Charles Eton, better known as Billy and Charlie. We don't know much about their early lives, but we do know what they did for a living, and I'm using big air quotes there.

They were mudlarks, meaning that they would scour the mudflats along the Thames for discarded objects that might be worth something, and then they sold those objects to a man named William Edwards. He was a dealer of sorts who would sell what Billy and Charlie had brought to him to another dealer, one George Eastwood. Eastwood happened to specialize in antiques. So what did Billy and Charlie uncover in the mudflats? A lot? Actually, Pilgrim's badges were common, as were coins

and small statues. They made a good living for themselves selling found antiques for about a year, raking in roughly two hundred pounds. Edwards was thrilled with their discoveries, although there were some questions about how the two men were finding all of those relics. According to them, it was their own good fortune brought on by the construction of the Shadwell Dock in London. The constant churning and digging of the land meant previously lost artifacts were finally coming

to the surface. Eastwood in particular, was so taken with the boy's work that he eventually started buying from them, directly selling the objects off to wealthy collectors as well as the British Museum, but not to everyone was as taken with Billy and Charlie as Edwards and Eastwood. In fact, their near endless stream of artifacts piqued the curiosity of several parties, including those who had purchased from them in

the past. There was a suspicion that Williams and Eaton were not being entirely truthful about where they'd found these badges and coins. In fact, some people believed the two men hadn't found the items at all. They were suspected of being forgers. Eastwood, of course refuted the claims, arguing that everything he sold was the real deal, and others also stepped forward claiming that the items discovered by Billy

and Charlie were authentic. Archaeologist Charles roach Smith, for example, claimed that many pieces dated back to the sixteenth century, simply because there were no originals or molds to prove that they'd been copied. Eventually, the allegations became too severe to ignore. It was George Eastwood who levied a libel suit against the British magazine Athenaeum after it published an article claiming the artifacts were fake, although to be fair,

the article did not mention Eastwood outright. A trial was held in August of eighteen fifty eight, where William Smith took the stand. He stood by his defense that everything he and Charlie had sold up to that point, about two thousand items had been found at the Shadwell Dock site. Roach also testified as to their provenance. Over the course of the trial, a number of experts and collectors came forward with similar testimonies that the objects they purchased or

examined were authentic to the fifteenth or sixteenth century. By the end of the trial, Well, the lawyer for the defense, had argued that there was no proof George Eastwood had been libeled, and so the jury was forced to find the magazine not guilty. But the trial did have one beneficial effect. It was the perfect pr for Eastwood's new shop, which he opened the following year in eighteen fifty nine. Sadly, his success did not last long, because two years later

someone found out the truth about Charlie and Billy. The guy's name was Charles Reed, and Reid had come from an organization known as the Society of Antiquaries. He started asking around the Shadwell Dot construction site for more information about the objects the men had found, and as it turned out, nobody had ever seen anything in the mudflats

while digging. It was as though the items had appeared out of thin air, and this brought Reed to an individual known as a tasher, someone who scavenged the sewers for treasure, and as luck would have it, this tasher had worked with Smith and Eaton before and knew how they'd really come into all those antiques. They had a workshop where they made them. Everything Billy and char had sold had been created from materials like lead alloy and plaster of Paris. It was a complicated process, but the

results spoke for themselves. After their big reveal, the two men kept making forgeries, which carried on until they were arrested in eighteen sixty seven. They were quickly released, and one year later, Charlie passed away from tuberculosis. He was just thirty five years old. Billy continued on for a while after that, but he didn't last long. Nothing else is known from him after roughly eighteen sixty nine. But funny enough, if you find one of their pieces for

sale today, you might notice a hefty price tag. That's because they've increased in value over the years. Are they antiques, well, technically now, yes, but each one is also a brilliant forgery that some might call a work of art. When a knock came at the door of the besieged Russian Parliament building in nineteen ninety one, panic spread throughout the building.

Was this a hardline communist delivering a message for Russian President Boris Yeltsen was at the military coming to end the coup it had just started a few days earlier. The answer was even more surprising. Standing on the other side of the door was a man in uniform, not military, but manager. He knocked on the door again and called out the last two words the lawmakers inside had ever expected to hear. Pizza delivery. What does cheesy, crispy tomatoy pizza have to do with the last days of the

Soviet Union? It turns out a lot more than you'd expect. In the late nineteen eighties, the USSR was facing an economic crisis. Moscow had dire food shortages. The ruble was practically worthless, and Soviet family struggled to feed their children. So Mikhail Gorbachev, the leader of the USSR, decided they needed to try something different. This new policy would be called Perestroika, meaning reconstruction. Peristroika included a lot of changes, but one of the most dramatic would be to allow

some capitalist policies to take roots in the USSR. For example, the state could now create partnerships with foreign businesses seeing a hot new market. American chain restaurants were the first in line in Moscow. At the time, family dining was a radical concept. Most sit down restaurants were expensive, so

eating out was a rich person's pastime. One American business wanted to change that, so under the policy of Perestroika, the Soviet Union's first pizza hut opened in September of nineteen ninety, right near Red Square, and it was an immediate hit. The first day Pizza Hut opened, a line wrapped around the building. The staff had to lock the doors in between seatings, as otherwise the customers would just

flood the dining room. Even after the initial buzz calmed down, the mass the Scout pizza hut would continue to serve fifty thousand customers a week. Even as Soviet citizens were chowing down on pepperoni and cheese, there was trouble brewing

in the halls of government. The Berlin Wall had just fallen two years before in nineteen eighty nine, Inflation was running rampant, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania had already voted for their independence, and under Gorbachev's new policies, capitalism was becoming part of the Soviet system. Two Communist Party hardliners, the USSR, was falling apart. They believed they needed to act, and act fast, and they got their chance on August nineteenth

of nineteen ninety one. That day, Mikhail Gorbachev headed to his summer home in Ukraine, the KGB swooped in and held him hostage, telling the world that he was ill. With him out of the way, plotters from the KGB, the military, and the Communist Old Guard sprung into action. Tanks rolled down the streets of Moscow, passing right by the pizza huts, shattered doors. Boris Yeltsen, the President of Russia and Gorbachev's ally, had been in Kazakhstan when the

coup broke out, but immediately flew back to Moscow. He gathered together a group of lawmakers who supported Gorbachev's reforms and barricaded himself in the Russian Parliament building. Over the next few days, hardliners rallied outside of Parliament while citizens protested in the streets inside. Yeltsin and the lawmakers issued statements to the press and the people of the Soviet

Union condemning the coup and calling for Gorbachev's release. Western businesses in Moscow wanted to help, and did so the only way they knew how. After spending a day shuddered, Pizza Hunt fired up its ovens and prepared dozens of pizzas. The manager, in a pizza hut uniform marched a team carrying two hundred and sixty pizzas, twenty cases of pepsi, and gallons and gallons of fresh coffee, passed the tanks and barriers and right up to the door of Parliament.

If Yeltsin and his allies were going to end this coup, they needed cheesy sustenance, and plenty of it. The coup attempt eventually fell apart, and after two tense days, Gorbachev was freed and the usurpers admitted defeat. However, this was one of the final straws in the downfall of the Soviet Union. Over the next few months, country after country would secede from the USSR until it was formally dissolved

in December of nineteen ninety one. Although Pizza Hunt had a short tenure in Moscow, it had a large impact. Perhaps this is why in nineteen ninety seven, Gorbachev agreed to appear in an ad for the restaurant chain. In the commercial, as several Russians argue over whether Gorbachev helped or hurt the country, they all agree that he did one thing right, bringing them Pizza Hunt most curious of all,

though this ad was never broadcast in Russia. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. This show was created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership with

how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can learn all about it over at the worldoflore dot com, and until next time, stay curious.