The Talented Mr. Martin

town was nothing special. Inside it, however, was a secret, one discovered by two Italian art dealers named Alfredo Fazzoli and Romano Pelessi. Within the chapel was a life size stat you of Madonna and child. It had been carved out of wood and painted by a claimed Renaissance artist, Giovanni Pizzano. Chiseled in the sculpture was a rarity, as all of his known work was done in stone, not wood.

This piece was literally a one of a kind, and word about its existence soon made it to Harold Parsons, who acquired art for the Cleveland Museum of Arts in Ohio. He was given a private viewing of the sculpture within the chapel, and quickly offered eighteen thousand dollars for it. One year later, the museum's curator announced its arrival to the public and that tests were being conducted to verify its authenticity. To the trained eye, there was no way

it couldn't have been made by Pizzano. The smooth curves, the intricate details, it was all there. The museum X rayed the sculpture and saw something odd inside. Nails had been used to hold pieces of it together. But it wasn't the nails themselves that upset the museum's experts. It was how old they were. The nails were brand new. The mada A sculpture. It was shipped back to Italy deemed a fake, and in its place, the museum purchased

a statue that was considerably older. It had been carved in the town of Magna, Grecia, settled by the ancient Greeks around seven fifty b C. It depicted the Greek goddess Athena, and though it cost the museum one twenty thousand dollars, its historical significance was priceless. For three years, museum visitors admired the statue, getting a firsthand look at the incredible talent of the ancient Greek virtuoso. Then in

nineteen the art world ground to a halt. Like the Madonna and Child before it, the Statue of Athena had been found to be a fake. In fact, many statues and sculptures in museums everywhere had been uncovered as forgeries, and all of them had been made by one man. His name was Alco Dosina and he had been born in eighteen seventy eight in Cremona, Italy. He had studied art at an Italian trade school, learning how to copy the works of the masters even from a young age.

Dosina as a talented mimic, and he didn't see school as a place to learn greatness. For that, he would need to enter the professional world. He took apprenticeships working for art restorers in his hometown as well as in Milan. He traveled from church to church throughout Italy, repairing real statues and sculptures. Then, in nineteen sixteen, Dosina joined the military to fight in World War Two. Despite the fighting,

he never gave up his art. He'd even managed to find time to make a small sculpture of Madonna and Child out of terra cotta, which he took around Rome with him while on leave for the holidays. It was during this time when he met an antique dealer, Alfredo Fazzoli. Puzzoli didn't realize the little sculpture was a fake. He thought Dosana had stolen it from a church, maybe during a raid on a small town during the war. He wasn't even upset when he realized he'd paid twelve dollars

for a forgery. To Fazzoli, Dosana would be his meal ticket when the war ended. He went into business with Osena, churning out modern antiques for over a decade. But Dosana claimed all along that he hadn't done it for the money. He'd seen almost none of it, except for the price he'd charged the dealers for each commission. While Fazzoli and Pelessi were raking in millions of dollars, Dosina had made a few hundred dollars per commission, enough to live on,

but hardly a fortune that he deserved. It had no idea his works were being displayed in museums all around the world. Either the Metropolitan Museum of Arts in New York City conducted its own investigation after buying a bogus sculpture. Its agents eventually unmasked Dosena as the forger. They visited the artist in his studio, where he showcased his works without fear or shame in his eyes. He wasn't imitating

the masters. He himself was a master, and he believed his sculptures deserved to be displayed alongside those of the greats, and they soon were. He held exhibitions of his work in France and Germany from nineteen twenty nine to nineteen thirty one. Two of his sculptures can be seen on display at the University of Pittsburgh today. Despite his wounded reputation, there is no doubt that Alceo Dossena was a talented imitator, and imitation, after all, is the sincerest form of flattery.

Dead Men tell no tales. It was a common pirate saying that meant that a dead man couldn't give away any secrets. But one man found floating off the coast of Spain during World War two had a wild story to tell. It would alter the course of the war and turn the tide against the Germans at a crucial time. His name was Major William Martin and he was an officer with the British Royal Marines. In late April of nineteen forty three, Major Martin and his briefcase were discovered

drifting in the ocean by Spanish fishermen. The men took the body to the nearby town of Hueva, where authorities performed an investigation. Inside the briefcase, they found diplomatic cables between Martin and British like Consul Francis Hasselden, who also happened to reside in town, and he could identify the corpse. After a quick autopsy, which described the cause of death as drowning, Major Martin was buried in a local cemetery

with honors. In early May. The Spanish Navy held onto the briefcase, though, which should have meant that it was secure from the enemy. However, as it was being transported to Madrid, German sympathizers got their hands on it just long enough to snap a few pictures of what was inside, including the encrypted cables. They sent the photos to a top agent within the German intelligence agency, and that agent passed them onto the head of his agency, who stepped

in and insisted the Spanish turnover what they had. They agreed to give up the documents, but not before getting to look at them. First. They extracted the damp and letters from their envelopes, dried them, and then took their own photographs. The letters were then placed in salt water overnight and slid back into their envelopes so it didn't look like anything had been tampered with. The Spanish sent what information they had on to the Germans, while the

documents themselves were sent back to Hasselden. The British vice consul had no idea The enemy knew their plans and were preparing to defend themselves from an Allied invasion, an invasion that would march through Greece into the Balkans and overtake German forces there. That July, the Germans acted quickly. Adolf Hitler an Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini met to

discuss next steps. Hitler insisted that his first Panzer division defend Greece, while tens of thousands of German troops were pulled out of Sicily and planted in Sardinia. On July tenth of ninety three, Hitler's forces waited for the Allies to arrive in Greece, and they waited and waited until one hundred sixty thousand Allied troops finally showed up, but not in Greece, in Sicily, over four hundred miles away. The German soldiers there were now sorely outnumbered. The Allied plot,

known as Operation Mincemeat, had been a trick. There had never been a Major William Martin nor any encrypted cables. The man found off the coast of Spain had been a homeless man from Wales who had sadly died from eating rat poison, but his body would go on to help win the war against the Germans in a critical way. His preserve corps was taken aboard the h M mess Seraph, a British sub along with a briefcase full of fabricated documents.

There were the letters, of course, which outlined the military plans, but he also carried a photograph of a woman purported to be his fiancee, bank documents and a receipt for an engagement ring, all of which had been included to add authenticity to the invented persona, and it had worked. The submarine then surfaced off the coast of Spain and lowered the body into the water, and everything played out

exactly as the British had hoped. The deceptive information leaked its way to the Germans, who pulled troops out of Sicily, leaving it wide open for attack. As a result, the Allies retook Sicily from the Germans and Mussolini was stripped of his power. A new Italian government took his place, which negotiated a surrender with the Allies. An evil empire crumbled, all thanks to one man who never existed in the first place. 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.