Toxic

but danger and death behind her. In France, the Gestapo had learned her identity, and she'd woken days ago to find her own face staring back at her from thousands of posters that blanketed the city. Her only hope now was Spain. She wondered what would happen if she died out here, crossing the Pyrenees on foot. Would anyone find her? Would her body make it back to America? Because if Virginia had done her job well, no one would ever know who she was. And Virginia was very, very good

at her job. Born in nineteen oh six in Baltimore, Maryland, to a middle class family, Virginia discovered early on that she longed for adventure. She was great with languages, so after studying French, Italian, and German in college, she ended up moving to Poland. There she worked as a clerk in the US embassy in Warsaw. Her real ambition, though, was to be a diplomat. Virginia thought that she could

be useful in international relations. Yet, despite multiple applications and an appeal to Franklin Delano Roosevelt himself, the State Department wouldn't make her an ambassador. There's a big chance gender played a role in that, at the time, only six US ambassadors were women. Around the same time that Virginia was petitioning the State Department, an incident happened that defined her young life. When she was twenty seven years old, she shot herself in the foot while hunting in Turkey.

The wound quickly developed gangreen, and to save her life, doctors amputated her leg. For the rest of Virginia's life, she walked using an ill fitting wooden prosthetic that she nicknamed Cuthbert, which gave her a pronounced limp. Virginia continued to work in US embassies in Turkey, Italy, and Estonia until World War II broke out. Across Europe, constantly denied an opportunity to be an ambassador. Now, Virginia believed that

she could do something that made a difference. Starting in nineteen forty, she volunteered as an ambulance driver in France. She quickly met a British spy who recognized Virginia's tenacity, then put her in touch with British intelligence. By nineteen forty one, she was one of their first female undercover agents in France. Posing as a New York Times reporter, Virginia relied on the Nazis' misogyny. You see, at the time, the Nazis refused to believe that women were capable of

being a spy. Stationed in Lyon, France, she befriended both nuns and sex workers, and that way she heard information that the Germans dropped at church and at the brothel. She used this intelligence to secure safe houses for the French resistance and help them plan attacks. Before long, Klaus Barbie, the infamous Gestapo officer in charge of intelligence in Leon,

became aware that someone was spying on the Nazis. When he figured out that it was Virginia, he set his Gestapo officers after her demanding that they bring the limping lady to him. Although Virginia was able to evade capture by wearing a number of disguises, by nineteen forty two she was forced to flee to Spain, walking through the

Pyrenees Mountains in the dead of winter. After her great escape, England wouldn't send her back into the field, but the Americans, with their brand new Intelligence office, were looking for a woman with her experience, so in nineteen forty four, Virginia returned to France as an American OSS agent. Knowing that Klaus Barbie had her description, Virginia went deep undercover. On her SAE second tour, she dyed her hair gray and drew wrinkles on her face to appear as an old woman.

She ground down her two perfect American teeth and disguised her limp with long skirts and an old woman's shuffling steps. On her second tour, Virginia organized fighters to blow up bridges, derailed trains, and sabotage phone lines. On D Day, Virginia's efforts directly prevented reinforcements from reaching the Nazis in Normandy and stopped the troops on the beach from retreating. When Virginia returned home after the war, she refused to talk

about her service. She reasoned that many of her spy friends had lost their lives after coming clean to the wrong person, even when she received a Distinguished Service Cross. The only witness that Virginia allowed at the ceremony was her own mother. Virginia spent the next decade working for the CIA before retiring. She passed away in nineteen eighty two with her story still unknown in the intelligence circles, which,

in her line of work wasn't really bad thing. After all, a good spy is someone who doesn't attract attention, which is why Virginia Hall is probably the greatest spy you've never heard of. We've all heard of royal food tasters, unlucky peasants whose job it was to taste the food of kings and queens to see if it had been poisoned. It wasn't a great job, and it wasn't a fool proof method of preventing poisoning. I mean, what if the taster simply had more immunity to the poison than the ruler.

What if the tasters bite of food happened to be poison free? But the rest of the dish was still deadly. What if the taster just threw their spoonful of food over their shoulder when the king wasn't looking well. One ancient ruler considered all of this and developed a method of poison prevention that remains one of the most curious in history. Mithridatees the sixth learned of the dangers of

poison from a young age. In one twenty BC, when he was still in his adolescence, his father, Mithridatees the fifth died of poisoning at a massive banquet. It was a violent and dramatic death too, that stayed with his son for the rest of his life. The younger Mithridates had his mother, who was also his aunt, locked in prison along with his brother. He then married his own sister and officially became king of Pontus. For those who don't know, Pontus was a Greek kingdom about as far

from Greece as could be. The capital, Sinop, was the exact center of the southern coast of the Black Sea. Mithridedes knew that he would have to be tough to survive against the Armenians to the east, the Romans to the west. He exercised constantly, but he also prepared his body in other ways. Not wanting to meet with the same fate as his father, he allegedly developed a mixture that contained every known toxin, but just in tiny amounts.

He mixed it with honey, and then he let it hardened and consumed one every day as a little piece of candy. This supposedly made him immune to every poison, and he made this fact known throughout public demonstrations, where he would drink whole bottles of poison and walk away without issue. With his legend secured, Mithridates led the armies of Pontus north along the eastern coast of the Black Sea,

conquering modern day Crimea. Not satisfied with this, he returned south to Sinop and then went west and conquered most of modern day Turkey. This was a bold move, as part of Asia Minor belonged to the Roman Empire, and thus began the first of not one, not two, but three wars between Mithridates and Rome. These three conflicts are known collectively as the Mithridatic Wars, showing what a legendary

and persistent enemy he was to the Romans. He once conquered so far west that he was able to connect his kingdom to the Greek homeland, finally reuniting with fellow Greeks in city states like Athens and Macedonia. Now, truth be told, part of his success came down to good timing. The Romans were engaged in a chaotic civil war at this time, which led to their leaders making peace with Mithridates when they otherwise would have kept on fighting him.

They were further distracted by wars with other enemies, including the legendary slave uprising led by Spartacus. By seventy two BC, many of these conflicts had been settled, though the Romans were finally ready to take revenge. Roman general Lucullus began a now legendary military campaign wherein he rapidly took back most of the territory that Mithridates had conquered. He did so with a speed that seems more appropriate for a

board game than real life. When Lucullus was called back to Rome, another famous Roman general, Pompey the Great, continued his work chasing Mithridates all the way to his last remaining conquests north of the Black Sea. In sixty five BC, Mithridates had left his part of his kingdom under the rule of one of his sons, who refused to fight

the Romans any further. Knowing that it was a lot cause, Mithridates then killed him in response, which proved a step too far for another of his sons, who led Mithridates's remaining army in a revolt against their king. Finding himself truly cornered, Mithridates realized that his long life of poison, betrayal, and conquest had all been for nothing. It turns out that he kept a dose of the one poison that could still kill him in his sword hilt, and he

prepared to take it. But he happened to have a few of his daughters with him, and they begged him to share the poison, knowing that they would not be treated well by their brother if he captured them, and so being a good father, I guess he shared the poison. But in doing so he made a mistake, because now when he drank the remainder, he found that it wasn't enough to overwhelm his already toxic blood. Instead, he had to take a dagger and plunge it into his own chest.

It's ironic, really, he had worked his entire life to avoid assassination by poison, so when death finally did come knocking, that death was so much more painful. 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 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.