Ice Man

Christmas isn't widely celebrated in Japan. Only one percent of the population there identifies as Christian, and those who participate in the festivities do so differently from other countries. In Japan, many people don't cook a turkey with all the trimmings for their Christmas inner. They go to KFC. The tradition started back in nineteen seventy four, when the fast food chain began offering a holiday themed meal based on the

standard fair that Americans ate at holiday time. Almost fifty years later, KFC is still so popular during Christmas that orders must be placed months in advance. Mexico, on the other hand, is home to a yearly festival every December, known as the Night of the Radishes. The purple root vegetables are grown specifically for this three day events and

are carved into elaborate statues and dioramas. Carvings are begun the morning of December twenty three and finished by that evening so everyone can enjoy the finished artworks over the next few days. Meanwhile, a very different kind of holiday is celebrated in Netherland, Colorado. It's centered around a man named Bretto Morstol, otherwise known as Grandpa Bretto. Grandpa Bretto

was born and raised in Norway. He was a fan of the outdoors and spent much of his time hiking and fishing during the warmer months, while skiing in the winter. He loved being outside so much he made his living at it for thirty years as a park director where he lived. Grandpa Bretto sadly died in nine of a heart condition, but his family wasn't quite ready to lose him just yet. They had him put on ice and shipped to Oakland, California, where a cryonics facility was standing

by to preserve his body with liquid nitrogen. He stayed there suspended for four years until his body was reclaimed by his daughter and her son, who had been working on a cryonics initiative of their own in Colorado. Their efforts didn't last long, however. The grandson was deported from the u S after his visa had expired, and so Grandpa Bretto's daughter Odd hid her father's frozen body in a shed behind her house, packed with dry ice. Things

only went from bad to worse after that. She had already lost her son and now she was in danger of losing her father again. The authorities evicted Odd from her home for living there without any running water or electricity. Without her there to monitor the condition of her father's body, she was worried he would fall out and decompose, so the city gave her an ultimatum disposed of the corpse or spend ten days in jail. In fact, the whole ordeal had forced to change to the city's local ordinances.

From that point forward, no resident of Netherland, Colorado would be allowed to store a dead body on their property. That went for beloved pets too. Odd and Grandpa Bretto, however, were the exception. Because the story had brought so much unwanted attention to the city, they allowed the deceased patriarch to stay in his shed. Unfortunately, there was still the matter of his upkeep, which required considerable amounts of dry ice to preserve his condition. Luckily for him, that also

had been taken care of. His grandson had put out a classified ad seeking to hire someone to tend to his grandfather's frozen body. Bow Schaffer, the CEO of a local cryonics company, answered the call. He started coming to the shed once a month along with several volunteers and six hundred pounds of dry ice, which they would pack against Grandpa Bretto's coffin, keeping him at a frosty minus

sixty degrees fahrenheit. The manufacturer of the shed he'd been stored in also got involved and built Grandpa Bretto a new enclosure that would better facilitate Shaffer's preservation efforts. All of this fuss turned Grandpa Bretto into a local celebrity, so much so that in two thousand two a holiday was started in his name, well sort of. Frozen Dead Guy Days is a two day festival celebrated quite appropriately over a weekend in March, just as winter begins to

thaw and spring buds bloom. Among the many activities. There are live music performances, tours of Grandpa Bretto's shed, coffin races, and even a Grandpa Bretto lookalike contest. A local ice cream company also sells a special flavor aptlete called Frozen Dead Guy, made of dark blue ice cream to symbolize the festival's namesake. Crushed up oreos for the dirt and

sour gummy worms crawling out of it. Yeah, Frozen Dead Guy Days has been known to draw as many as twenty five thousand people to Netherland, Colorado, making the icy celebration the hottest ticket in town. You might not realize it at first, but the buildings and rooms we passed through every day are home to all kinds of secrets. Walk the streets of New York or Philadelphia and you might notice symbols on the buildings. A letter g or an hour glass could indicate that it had been built

by Freemasons. Freemasons have become the stuff of legend, who often find themselves the subject of countless books and films, and for good reason. Lost treasures, the knights, templar, secret rooms, and passageways. It's enough to warrant an action movie or three for a sculpture named John. His status as a Freemason would allow him to build the most important room in America, one that no one would ever see. John was born in eighteen sixty seven in an unincorporated part

of the US known as Idaho Territory. He grew up in a family of Mormon polygamists, his father making a living as a talented carpenter. As the family moved around the country, first to Missouri than to Nebraska, John began working with his hands like his father. Eventually he channeled his passion into sculpture. He studied art in both San Francisco and Paris for some time before returning to the

US setting up shop in New York City. It wasn't long before one of his sculptures was bought and put on display by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a first for a living American sculpture. The Church of Saint John the Divine then hired him the craft statues of the Twelve Apostles for the exterior of their cathedral. However, John had greater aspirations. Literally, on the advice of his wife, he turned toward creating massive works, such as a giant

bust of President Abraham Lincoln. The marble statue currently sits in the Capital Crypt in Washington, d c. His work only grew from there, and John graduated from Marble to the courts Monza Knighte of Stone Mountain in Georgia. He had been hired by c Helen Plaine, a member of the Knighted Daughters of the Confederacy who wanted to honor her ancestors. She tasked him with carving a gigantic bob

relief into its side. John's original plan was to depict a procession of the three most important Confederate leaders of the Civil War, General Stonewall Jackson, Jefferson Davis and General Robert E. Lee, as well as a thousand soldiers behind them, but the project was plagued by issues, mostly monetary, and so John was fired after having only carved out part of Lee's head. He then destroyed his blueprints and models, fleeing to North Carolina to avoid a war that had

been issued for his arrest. The rest of the memorial was completed over the next four decades by numerous sculptors and architects, and was finally opened to the public on April fourteenth of nineteen sixty five, exactly one hundred years after Lincoln's assassination. Despite his reputation for arrogance and being difficult to work with, as well as his ties to the Ku Klux Klan, John was still in high demand.

A new project on the Horizon would cement his name into the history book as one of the greatest and most problematic sculptors of all time. The task one room, a room that measured a hundred feet long and eighty feet tall. Built into its stone walls, John envisioned brass cabinets meant to house the most important items in American history, namely the Declaration of Independence and the U s Constitution.

It was intended to be an ode to American exceptionalism, complete with key events in the country's history carved into the sides, as well as busts of United States presidents, scientists, artists, and industrialists. John and his fellow Freemason started working on it in the summer of nineteen thirty eight, continuing until nineteen forty one, when two major issues brought the project to a halt. For one, the US was entering World War Two and funding was going to dry up for

some time. Secondly, John passed away in March of that year. His work would have to be completed without him. Unfortunately, the Hall of Records was abandoned for sixty years. In that time, the scope change cansiderably. For one, it would no longer hold the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution,

well not exactly. Instead of the original parchment documents, the Hall of Records contains a single wooden box, inside of which were placed sixteen porcelain plates, and on those plates were written the complete texts of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Declaration of Independence. The box was then stored in a titanium vault beneath a halfton granite capstone at the hall's entrance. No one is allowed inside the Hall of Records. In fact, most people can't even

see it, despite its prominent location. That's because it's creator, John G. Borg Lam, built it right behind Abraham Lincoln's head into the side of Mount Rushmore. 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 aided 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. Ye