Seconded

of course, about vanilla, but it wasn't always so. As a matter of fact, for the first few hundreds of years that we knew about this famous flavor, it was considered an incredible luxury outside of its origin in Mexi, unavailable to the common tongue, until one adolescent boy changed all of that. The vanilla orchid or vanilla plantifolia if you're into science, is a native of Mexico. It produces a delicate pod that's after curing, gives us the aromatic

beans with that famous flavor. It was cultivated for centuries in Mexico, first by the Teutonic people, and was later exploited by the Spanish during the brutal days of the conquistadors, and it quickly became a hit with European royalty. The problem with that, at least so far as Europe was concerned, was that while the orchid could be grown in any environment, it would only produce the vanilla beans in its native habitat. And this all came down to one factor, the melapana bee,

which could only be found in Mexico. Essentially, without the bee to pollinate the blossom, the flower would wilt without producing that prized sea pod, and so for three long centuries after being brought to Europe it remained incredibly rare. No matter where where they tried to grow it, the flower would produce no fruit. That is until twelve year old Edmund Albius. Albius was born into slavery in eighteen twenty nine on the French island of Bourbon in the

Indian Ocean. He was the child of an enslaved woman and a white father who would not claim him. He was an intelligent young man who was deeply interested in the natural world, and he worked in the plantation garden where vanilla vines had been planted and struggled to thrive. By the time he was twelve, he had set his intelligence on the problem of the vanilla orchids. He noticed that they withered before producing the same sort of seed

pods similar flowers would grow. Other flowers in the garden did not seem to have that same problem, and so Albius came up with a method both simple and revolutionary. Using a small sliver of bamboo and his thumb, he gently lifted the rostelium, which is a small barrier between the flowers male and female organs or antler and stigma, and pressed the two parts together, transferring the pollen between

the two. He was effectively mimicking the pollinator's method, in particular that of a small Mexican bee who had kept the vanilla orchid fruiting in Mexico, and because of the pistol shape that his handmade while performing the delicate action, he named the technique La pistolae. That very season, the very first vanilla pods were harvested in Bourbon. Albius had created an effect a technique of pollinating the orchid that required no special tools beyond a sliver of wood and

a steady hand. Anyone could produce vanilla now, and they did. Plantations all over the tropics began to use Young Edmund's technique, and soon Madagascar was out producing Mexico in vanilla exports. With all of the new vanilla on the market, prices plummeted seemingly overnight. Vanilla went from being an exotic flavor only sampled by the rich, to a popular flavor among

the masses. It could suddenly be found in desserts and perfumes all around the world, and because of that, one would think that young Edmund Albius would find worldwide acclaim well in a just world at least, but it was not a just world, and Albius's station in life afforded him no recourse when the plantation owner, again named Charles Frapier, took credit for the method. Later on, French botanist Joseph Decane would also take credit, and Albius himself was considered

a footnote in the story of his own ingenuity. He received no accolades, no royalties, nothing in the way of compensation for the revolutionary scientific achievement. His work made vanilla production a massive industry, but to the plantation owners and importers went all the spoils. When slavery was abolished in French colonies in eighteen forty eight, the then nineteen year old Albius continued to work as a gardener, living in obscurity until his death at the age of fifty one.

He would only receive the recognition that he deserved decades later. Today, in Bourbon now Reunion, Edmund Albius is spoken of with great reverence. There are streets and schools named after him, and statues built in his honor. That Vanilla is nearly universally beloved is a statement to his brilliant discovery. It also serves as a reminder of the many minds and talents that have been overlooked throughout the centuries due to the racism and exploitation that is the hallmark of colonialism.

So the next time you sip a latte or take that first delicious spoonful of ice cream, remember the name Edmund Albius, the young genius that brought that taste to the world. It's no exaggeration to say that ancient Egypt was an incredible and mysterious place. Archaeology tells us that ancient Egyptian civilization lasted for over three three thousand years, which means it endured longer than everything that has happened since.

The ancient Egyptians were highly literate and left behind many records, but the sands of time have worn those records down to where we only have brief, curious snapshots into Egyptian history. We know relatively little about some of its most significant rulers, the pharaohs, but the snapshots that we do have for one particular ruler paint him as the most curious pharaoh of all. Peppi the Second was only six years old

when his older brother suddenly died. All he'd ever known was living at the palace and having his every need attendant to Now, in the year twenty two seventy eight BC, he was crowned pharaoh, and the whole kingdom had to do whatever he wanted. Since he was forced to stay at the palace by his mother, He demanded that his servants bring him interesting things from all over the kingdom.

He loved playing with chunks of turquoise and copper, or looking at finely sculpted pottery in statuary, But his whole world changed one day when he received word from an expedition leader in the south, the explorer Harcouf had captured a pigmy hunter. These were the short, mysterious people far to the south, near where the nile flowed out from the underworld. For a number of weeks, all Peppy could think about was what it would be like to have such a strange person in his court. So he wrote

back to Harcouf with special instructions. The pigmy was to be treated with the utmost care. He was to be surrounded on Harcouf's boat on both sides so that there was no risk of him falling into the nile, and he should also be surrounded by guards at night to protect him in his sleep. When Harkuf finally arrived with a captive, Peppy was overjoyed. The short dark man was unlike anyone he had ever met before. He would keep him as a dancer in his court for as long

as he lived. As Pepy got older, his tendency to use people for his own comfort or amusement didn't get any better. He saw himself as a guy, so that's all he needed to justify his every whim and a good example of this comes from the time when he was finally out from his mother's thumb and ruling Egypt on his own. His long days of seeing his subjects in his throne room had started to wear on him. He was always hot, and the endless flies that flew

in from the nile constantly pestered him. They say that one day he noticed that the flies tended to congregate around the jar of honey at his food table. He looked from the jar of honey to his enslaved people

standing by, and he got a terrible idea. Peppi had these enslaved people coated in honey from head to toe, turning them into gooey, glistening golden monoliths by his side, And now instead of pestering him, all of the flies pestered his enslaved people, swarming around them and getting stuck in the honey. We can only imagine what it was like for those people when they went to clean up after a long day of serving beside the pharaoh. One final curious snapshot of Peppi comes from his adult years.

This story was actually written hundreds of years after his death, so it may be more legend than fact, but it's a historical interest to Egyptologists. None the less One of Peppe's court officials, a man named Cheeti, noticed that Peppe

mysteriously left his chambers every night for four hours. Once the pharaoh was believed to be an incarnation of the sun god Ra, Cheety wondered if perhaps he was traveling to the underworld each night, as the myths around Ra suggested, driven by a healthy dose of curiosity, something we can all relate to. Cheaty followed Peppe from the shadows, winding

through the columns of the palace. As the pharaoh journeyed out into the moonlight, he crossed a courtyard next to the palace and arrived at the home of one of his general's sarsanet. Peppe threw a brick at the window, and the general appeared, lowering a ladder for the pharaoh to climb up. He disappeared inside, and Cheety waited four hours until the pharaoh re emerged. Although the story never says what Peppy was doing at the general's house, it

strongly implies that they may have been lovers. If so, this mysterious affair is yet another unusual chapter in Peppi's legacy. Given that this is all we know about the Pharaoh, and that the sands of time have likely erased all other records of his life. We will probably never have the full picture, but that just makes us even more curious about this ruler who lived longer ago than any of us can imagine. I hope you enjoyed today's guided

tour through the Cabinet of Curiosities. This show was created by me Aaron Manke in partnership with iHeart Podcasts, researched and written by the Grim and Mild team, and produced by Jesse Funk. Learn more about the show and the people who make it over at Grimandmild dot com slash Curiosities. You'll also find a link to the official Cabinet of Curiosity's hardcover book, available in bookstores and online, as well as ebook and audiobook. And if you look looking for

an ad free option, consider joining our Patreon. It's all the same stories, but without the interruption for a small monthly fee. Learn more and sign up over at patreon dot com, slash Grimandmild, and until next time, stay curious.