Ghost in the Machine

in West Yorkshire, England. Since the early nineteenth century, Denby Dale has been known for its meat pies. There are three things one must know about the pies, though. First is that they are only ever baked for special occasions. The first celebratory pie was made in seventeen eighty eight after King George the Third had recovered from about with

mental illness. Another was made in eighteen forty six after a set of tariffs known as the Corn Laws were lifted, allowing imported corn and other grain to enter the country without heavy taxes placed on the buyers. In eighteen seventies seven, two pies were baked roughly a week apart. The first had been made as part of Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee, a grand banquet celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of her assuming the throne. It was cooked with all kinds of meat inside,

including chicken, rabbit, veal and pork. It was also disgusting due to errors in timing. The pie had sat in the sun for too long and stunk too high heaven. No one could stomach more than a whiff of it, which was why it was quickly taken out in the middle of a field and buried in quicklime. One week later they attempted the pie again, this one called the

Resurrection Pie, and it was good. Denby Dale also baked a pie for the turn of the New Millennium in two thousand, as well as one to celebrate the Queen Mother's one birthday that same year, which brings us to the second important fact about the pies. Only ten have been made over the past two hundred years. The village of denbie Dale population sixteen thousand, three hundred sixty five at the time I'm recording this, beasts on a single pie roughly once per generation. They don't cut it into

paper thin slices. Though their process is the third reason why denbie Dale pies are so coveted. They're enormous. For example, the Millennium pie required two and a half tons of beef and potatoes, three and a half tons of pastry for the crust, and roughly eight to ten hours to cook on a forty ft wide metal pie dish, and sometimes the pies would serve double duty. During World War Two, when scrap metal was in high demand to make things like tanks and airplanes, denbie Dale's pie dish was donated

to the war efforts and melted down. The villagers held a goodbye party for it as well, marchie it down the street for all to see, before holding a cricket match in its honor. In nineteen sixty four, a pie was baked to honor four royal births that had occurred that year, and the dish that was used was launched down a canal as a publicity stunt, and it worked.

The event was written up in one major newspaper. However, not every pie went smoothly, aside from the inedible pie of eight seven, the one that was baked after the repeal of the corn laws claimed the life of one baker who had gotten trapped inside the crust after cutting into it. It also crushed the stage on which it was displayed, and the fifteen thousand villagers and attendants ended

up eating pieces of it right off the ground. And in nine a pie baked for a fundraiser on behalf of the hudders Field Royal Infirmary got stuck in the oven. At least twenty men armed with crowbars worked at it for two hours to jimmy at loose. The next pie hasn't been announced yet, but if you'd like to taste one for yourself, individual Denbie Dale Highs are sold in

grocery stores all over England. Don't worry, though, the only qualities these pie share with their giant predecessors is their name. They should fit just fine inside your car. In the city of Naples is a palace known as the Palazzo di Sangro. The brick building is surrounded by homes and shops. It faces the Church of San Domenico Majorre, and in a way it looks out of place, but this enormous mansion has been part of the city since the sixteenth century.

And is home to some of the most beautiful and bizarre works of art. The palace was commissioned by the Duke of Torre Major. During construction, it became home to the Duke's family, as well as the composer Carlo Gesualde, who ended up murdering his wife there. One of the Duke's relatives, The first Prince of San Severo, felt the palace and its inhabitants needed a private place to pray. In fifteen ninety he had a family chapel built in the gardens on the property. The structure changed hands and

forms over the years. It was converted from a regular chapel into a family burial chapel in sixteen There was also a tunnel between the main house and the chapel until the late nineteenth century. However, in the mid seventeen hundreds, this Palace of Death gained new life as a kind of museum. Sculptures by Antonio Cordini and Giuseppe San Martino were dedicated to the deceased family members intoured in the tombs. They depicted life size women draped in translucent cloth with soft,

lifelike features, but were carved from solid stone. But it was the seventh Prince of San Severo, Roimando de Sangro, who helped guide the chapel's art collection. Raimondo was a man of many disciplines, including science, spiritualism, and of course, the fine arts, but he was also an inventor. During his life, he mixed chemicals together to concoct his own version of an eternal flame, and allegedly created a horse drawn carriage that used wooden horses instead of live ones.

Oh and it could ride on water as well as on land. The prince's proclivities didn't exactly endear him to the townspeople, though he became quite the topic of conversation. In fact, they're developed a kind of dark lore about him. The locals believed he killed people for his experiments and could conjure blood from nothing. Of course, two of his

most famous creations didn't help matters for him. They're known as the Anatomical Machines, and they are comprised of the skeletons of a man and a pregnant woman pinned against the wall. Over their bones are red and blue vessels intricately weaved into complex formations, just as they would have been when the subjects were alive. Rumor had it that the Prince killed two of his servants in order to create them. Not only that, but there had also been

a third machine, a child, complete with its preserved placenta. Unfortunately, it was stolen from the museum in the nineteen nineties and it was never recovered. Over the years, stories circulated about their creation that the Prince had been experimenting with alchemy and had turned the servants blood into metal by injecting them with a special chemical. The good news is that the prince had almost nothing to do with the bodies. He didn't kill anyone himself, nor did he have anyone killed.

He purchased the skeletons, presumably from a funeral home or a medical university, and then had anatomus Giuseppe Salerno turned them into works of art in seventeen sixty three. Using the two human forms supplied by the Prince, Salerno went about reconstructing their circulatory systems for display in the Chapel Museum, But the vessels were not original to the body. They were made of wire and beeswax. The only organic part of the anatomical machines were the bones them else Today,

the skeletons are on display behind glass. Visitors can see how the skulls were cut apart and reassembled using metal hinges, conveying their purpose as either objects of medical study or more likely, sideshow curiosities. Prince de Sangro helped build his family's legacy by filling his home with unique sculptures, some of them beautiful and some of them strange. Beyond words. One thing for sure, though he certainly had an eye for art. No bones about it. I hope you've enjoyed

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