I got the opener this week.
Headline on this one.
I'm just gonna start with that.
I'm gonna go with it.
Orcas are ramming boats off the Spanish coast puzzling experts
and myself because I didn't even know that they had orcas.
I guess that makes sense on the one side.
They wouldn't be in the Mediterranean.
Let's read more about it.
Pot of orcas repeatedly rammed a yacht in the Strait of Dervolter this week,
damaging it enough to require Spanish rescuers to come to the aid of its four crew members.
Are they gonna get the orcas opinion on this?
Maybe they deserved it.
Does he want?
We'll have to wait to see to the end where they say that we asked the orcas for their statement
or they have not replied to a request for statement.
It's coming.
Okay.
So it was the latest episode in a perplexing trend in the behavior of orcas populating the
Atlantic coast off the Iberian Peninsula that has left researchers searching for a cause.
Spain's maritime rescue service said that the orcas repeatedly ran into the musty,
a 20 meter vessel sailing under a UK flag laid on Wednesday, rendering its rudder in operative
and cracking its hull.
Rescues needed to pump out seawater before towing her to safety.
The alert reached the Spanish service via their British counterpart who relayed the
distress call.
The Spanish service said a helicopter and a rescue boat were deployed to help the damaged boat
to dock in Barbate.
This is the 24th.
Wow.
Such incident registered by the services here.
The service didn't provide data from last year.
But the Atlantic orca working group, a team of Spanish and Portuguese marine life researchers
who study orcas near the Iberian Peninsula say such incidents were first reported three
years ago.
In 2020, the group registered 52 such events, some of which resulted in damaged rudders that
increased to 197 in 2021 and 207 in 2022.
What are we at for this year?
24.
That's a good memory.
The orcas seem to be targeting boats in a wide arc covering the western coast of the
peninsula from the waters near the Strait of Gibraltar to Spanish Northwest Galicia.
So they are mustering together against the boats, it looks like.
It's all the same offenders that spend most of the year near the Iberian Coast in pursuit
of red tuna.
The so-called Iberian orcas averaged from 5 to 6.5 meters in length compared to the orcas
in Antarctica, which can reach 9 meters.
They're all over the ocean.
Oh yeah.
Why did they just think they were in the PNW?
Yeah, I always thought that too.
But like, no, they're in Australia, they're in the Antarctic, they're all along South America.
I didn't expect there to be Spanish orcas.
Yeah.
There's no attacks against swimmers, just yachts apparently from what I gather from this
article and the interactions on boats seem to stop once the vessel becomes immobilized.
Holy shit, that is scary.
They have sentience about them.
They're actually going to like break the boats.
Yeah, I've liked the theory that they're just heavily anti-capitalist at this point
as they're taking the Borsois class.
This is a feel-good story.
Good for them.
I feel like good for them at this point.
In recorded history, wild orcas actually have never killed a human.
So I feel like they're not in the wrong here.
As orcas have rarely actually been on the wrong side of history.
Well, that's a great...
Humans more often than not have been on the wrong side of history.
They very well have.
And there's not a whole lot of things that are on the right side of history.
Here it is right here.
Orcas have not responded for a comment on the article.
Okay.
Yeah.
I'm glad they at least reached out.
Yeah, well, they didn't.
They've not responded.
No, the reporter reached out.
Oh, yeah.
Not the orcas.
They did.
I mean, there's a really nice picture in this article.
It is of a orca ramming the side of the boat.
Just kidding.
It's not.
It's just going under the ocean.
But that's interesting.
I wonder what their motives are against the boats.
What it's ever done to them.
I actually find it quite hilarious that several of the subreddits that are
anti-status quo and anti-imperialists.
Okay.
I thought you're going to say orca.
No.
Have taken these guys on as like their mascots because they appear to be just attacking the upper class.
Because like you even saw in the article, it was a yacht that they attacked.
It was a yacht.
Not a dingy.
Yeah.
I like it.
I got to say I'm on the orca side too at this point is giving the information I now have.
So good for them.
There's also a little thing that says that orcas communicate with each other.
But not reporters, clearly.
No, only each other.
They do not go outside their species.
So they have a culture.
Obviously they're getting together against these boats for some reason.
Yeah.
And I should just make a clarifying statement on what I said earlier about orcas never having killed anybody.
It is just wild orcas as captive orcas have killed people before.
I mean with within reason, I can't blame them.
And these boats have obviously done something to them.
So I mean they're in the rain on that too in my mind.
Yeah, boats too long have had priority, I guess, over the sea.
The orcas being the more pushy of the whale category are finally fighting back.
Obviously.
They are the apex predator.
They in fact even feed on great white sharks.
So really?
Oh yeah.
I know that.
I don't think you might have.
I don't know.
It's hard to say.
But yeah, feel good story to start this episode off.
And with that, let's get into this episode.
Okay.
From the unexplained to the mundane, come join us on a journey to the fringe.
Hello and welcome to Journey to the Fringe here to reveal some uncomfortable truth to you
the listener like Christians.
You either worship Jesus Christ or you're Christians.
You can't have it both ways.
Also, we mostly discuss fringe topics.
We are your podcast hosts Taylor and Chelsea.
And today we take a look at the fringy side of a fairly mundane and normal topic.
And in a different way than our usual mundane fringiness.
And that is of course the Smithsonian Museum.
Now you might think why would somebody talk about this on a fringe topic podcast?
And which I would say to you then you clearly have not been in the conspiracy community that often.
Because boy does it show up for some reason a lot.
And if you haven't then welcome.
And if you haven't been welcome, we will guide you through it.
Yes.
So today's episode is on the Smithsonian Museum.
It is the US government's basically institutional museum side.
We're going to get into where it comes from, why it's called the Smithsonian,
what it encompasses and more importantly from there the controversies that have plagued it
from the fringy side.
I'm excited.
And without further wait, let's just get right into this.
So why is it called the Smithsonian Museum?
Well, strangely enough, it's going to start with a guy named Jacques-Louis Macy,
a man who has never and will never set foot in the United States.
Okay.
Did he commit crimes?
He committed as far as I can tell no crimes other than the accumulation of wealth that was not his own.
Okay.
Is he dead?
Very much so, yes.
Okay, that's what he got you.
He is born in Paris in 1765.
The illegitimate child of Elizabeth Hungerford,
Keet Macy and Hugh Percy, whose original name was Hugh Smithson.
Did you just say three people?
No, it's one of those fancy people names, so there's a lot of names involved.
So Elizabeth Hungerford, Keet Macy is one person.
Okay.
And Hugh Percy, who is Hugh Smithson, is another person.
Okay, I'm glad we clarified that.
And Hugh Smithson, he was the first Duke of Northumberland.
Hugh Percy, this child at birth is given the name Jacques-Louis Macy.
His birth date was not recorded, so we don't know the exact date or location of his birth,
but it is possible that it was in Pentemont Abbey.
Shortly after his birth, he became a naturalized British citizen because you know you've got
some fancy people in your family, and he was given the anglicized name James Louis Macy.
He adopted his father's original surname later on in 1800 of Smithson, following his mother's death.
He attended university at Pembroke College, Oxford in 1782, eventually graduating with a
Masters of Arts in 1786.
As a student, he participated in a geological expedition to Scotland and studied chemistry
and mineralogy.
This is a guy who is very well off and never really has to settle on a specialty.
He's well off, yet he was an illegitimate child.
They weren't married.
Well, that was the fancy thing to do at the time.
Okay.
Yeah, because you know, again, this is even like pre-liar's clubs, so you had Mr. Sifts.
Yes, that's right.
I forgot about that history.
TV really changed modern society.
Smithson was a nomad by lifestyle, traveling throughout Europe, and as a student in 1789,
1884, he participated in a geological expedition with Bartholomew Fahad de Saint-Fond,
one person there again, William Thornton, and Paolo Andriani to Scotland and especially the
Herbides.
He was in Paris during the French Revolution.
Not a great place to be a rich person, but he does survive.
And in August 1807, Smithson became a prisoner of war while in Tonning during the Napoleonic
Wars.
He arranged a transfer to Hamburg, where he was again imprisoned and now by the French.
The following year, Smithson wrote to Sir Joseph Banks and asked him to use his influence to
gain release, and Banks succeeded and Smithson got to return to England.
So you know, all over the map this guy.
In 1766, and this is outside of the linear story, his mother inherited from the Hungerford
family of Stoodley, where her brother had lived up until his death, and his controversial legal
stepfather, John Marsh Dickinson, who I believe is just known as Dickinson.
Of course.
John Marsh Dickinson of Dunstable died in 1771.
Smithson's wealth stemmed from the splitting of his mother's estate with his half-brother,
Colonel Henry Louis Dickinson.
His sciencing, like I said, is very eclectic.
He was very well off, so he didn't really need to specialize and do it for the money.
He studied subjects ranging from coffee making to the use of kalamine.
I eventually renamed Smithsonite in making brass.
He also studied the chemistry of human tears.
Snake Vanim occurred and would publish 27 papers over the course of his life.
And this is just all for pleasure.
Yeah.
He was nominated to the Royal Society of London by Henry Cavendish and was made a fellow on April
26, 1787.
What the hell's the full level?
I know.
It's a very fancy title.
What is it?
I always hear that term, and I don't know what it actually means.
It just means like you're a fancy science person or a fancy expert in your field.
Oh, it says man or boy, which is what I would know it as, but you used it in a different context.
Yes.
So I'm not sure what it is.
Okay, I accept that.
Within the context of higher educational institutions, a fellow can be a member of a highly ranked
group of teachers at a particular college or university or a member of the governing body
in some universities.
It can also be a specially selected postgraduate student who has been appointed to a post called
a fellowship, granting a stipend, research facilities and other privileges for a fixed period.
I guess it does change depending on like who you're talking to it about.
Yeah, I wasn't rolling with the fellowship crowd.
That's why I didn't know what it was.
Yeah, we were never on fellowship tracks.
We were never.
Okay, let's continue.
Over the course of his career, Smiths and Socialized and worked with many scientists.
Some of them you may know their names.
I only theorize I know who Henry Cavendish is based on bananas, the Cavendish banana.
I have only heard of the name, not even the banana.
Okay, but he also worked and socialized with Joseph Priestley, Sir Joseph Banks, Antoine
Lavoisier and Richard Kerouan, probably very great names.
Explored and examined Kirkdale Cave.
His findings published in 1824 successfully challenged previous beliefs that the fossils
within the formation at at Cave were from the Great Flood.
So he was great at dispelling misconceptions as well.
Okay.
He's also credited with first using the word silicates, which is a fancy sciency rock work.
I'll believe you on that one.
So he does all this fancy science work and he was so busy with it.
He never got married.
He never had any kids and he had this wealth, a huge wealth.
At the time I was trying to figure it out.
It was about a hundred thousand gold sovereigns, which I was looking up what that means in today's
words.
It's about 45 million dollars.
Okay, that's a lot.
And there's so many words being used in this episode that are just so above what I surround myself with.
So Smithson dies in 1829, June 27 in Genoa, Italy, in his well written in 1826.
Smithson left his fortune to the son of his brother, that is his new nephew, Henry James Dickinson.
Dickinson had to change his surname to Hungerford as a condition of receiving this inheritance.
And also it was stated in the well that Henry James Hungerford or Hungerford's children would
receive his inheritance.
And if the nephew did not live and had no children to receive the fortune,
it would be donated to the United States to establish an educational institution to be
called the Smithsonian Institute.
Is that foreshadowing?
A little bit.
It's a little soft for us, but it is there.
What a bizarre will.
Like what bizarre stipulations.
Well, when you're looking at a state planning, a lot of people want to keep money in their family,
no matter where it will go.
So he would put it to a nephew, the only nephew.
And then the exception there, if we can't keep it in the family,
I want my name to live on forever.
So that's basically what he's doing.
Okay, makes sense when you put it that way.
And then Henry Hungerford dies on June 5th, 1835, never got married and had no children.
So the U.S. ends up getting this cash.
And this is basically what it says in the will.
I then bequeath the whole of my property to the United States of America to found at Washington
under the name of the Smithsonian Institute in the establishment for the increase in diffusion
of knowledge among men.
So this money ends up going to the U.S., a place where he had never set foot.
So it's a little weird about that.
I was just going to say why the U.S.
My theory is because everything so established in Europe that that money is not going to get
your name attached to anything.
Okay.
You're not going to get the Oxford University renamed or Cambridge or anything like that
renamed with this kind of cash.
Fair enough.
Okay.
And this is a place that is like burgeoning, there's a lot of unexplored areas.
So he probably thought that an institution in that area would be necessary at some point.
And it's likely that he could get his name attached to it.
Okay.
But this is just speculation on my part.
It was really hard to find anything that really explained why he specifically did it.
That makes sense.
So let's just run with that.
And so established was the Smithsonian Institute.
However, it wasn't just his money.
It was the government of the U.S. that always wanted to set up a science institution from
its inception.
And I guess just getting this little bit of money nudged them towards doing it.
And it wasn't actually always known as Smithsonian Institute.
Today, it is known as Smithsonian Institution or simply the Smithsonian.
It is a group of museums, education and research centers and the largest such complex in the world
created by the U.S. government for the increase and diffusion of knowledge.
And it was founded on August 10th, 1846, 10 years after they officially got that money in the will.
It operates as a trust instrumentality and is not formally a part of any of the three branches
of the federal government.
It just gets funding from it.
It was originally organized as the United States National Museum,
but the name ceased to exist administratively in 1967 when Smithsonian is the only name it goes by.
It is commonly called the nation's attic because it houses some 154 to 155 million different
museum items, all catalog and some stored, some out for viewing pleasure.
The institution includes 19 museums, 21 libraries, nine research centers, the nation's zoo,
and other architectural landmarks mostly located in and around the District of Columbia.
Okay, that answers my next question.
Additional facilities are located in Maryland, New York, and Virginia and more than 200 institutions
and museums in 45 states.
Puerto Rico and Panama are Smithsonian affiliates.
Institution publications includes the Smithsonian and the Aaron Space Magazine.
Almost all of the institution's 30 million annual visitors are admitted into these museums
and other things free of charge, except for one of these facilities called the Cooper Hewitt
Smithsonian Design Museum, which charges an admission fee.
Its annual budget is around $1.25 billion, with two-thirds coming from annual federal
appropriations.
Other funding comes from the institution's endowment, private and corporate contributions,
membership dues, and earned retail, concession, and licensing revenue.
As of 2021, the institution's endowment had a total value of about $5.4 billion.
Also, just a few things that weren't quite in there, but also good to know,
they have 2.2 million library volumes, 148,200 cubic feet of archives, 2,981 scholarly publications.
So a lot of stuff happens, it includes a lot of museums, a lot of research.
At this point, you might be wondering, what's the conspiracy?
Where is the fringiness coming from?
Maybe it's the relationship to Mr. Smith's in here and why he set it up.
Well, surprisingly, no.
Then there are actually quite a few different conspiracies about the Smithsonian.
I'm going to touch on a few that we're not actually going to talk about at all.
And this isn't the first time it's actually come up in an episode.
Do you remember the Hope Diamond that we talked about in the Cursed Objects?
Yes.
It is in the Smithsonian.
Right.
I think he said that.
That is it.
And I'm pretty sure the delivery guy died on the way delivering it, if I'm thinking of the right one.
I think so too, but it's also if I'm thinking of the right one.
Also, things of note that they've been accused of, or at least people have speculated on,
the Smithsonian Institute went in search of Noah's Ark at Mount Ararat, which they deny.
Antiques Department turns down so-called prehistoric artifacts that are out of place,
which they deny and say that most of the people that are saying that they're sending them there
are just straight up lying and not sending them.
And there is an archive center underneath the National Mall in Washington, DC,
which also they say isn't true and they have lots of warehouse space anyways that we don't need to
think about.
But why would they would have to have a secret one underneath the middle of Washington, DC?
For the secrets, of course.
Yeah, of course.
But the two that we are going to talk about are a lot of fun.
Chelsea, I think you've at least heard of both of them and we're going to dig into these stories
of where they kind of come from.
We'll see.
So this is the title of an article that I found on GaiaTV written by the ever famous Gaia staff.
That's all it says is the author, so you know it's up.
What?
Yeah, somebody would even put their name to this, which is hilarious.
That could be David Wilcox.
Yeah.
If it could be Corey Good, it probably in fact was Corey Good at gunpoint.
Do you refuse to get his name on it?
Yeah, of course.
Well, whoever wrote it was definitely a gunpoint.
The title of this article is This Conspiracy Claims The Smithsonian Destroys Giant Skeletons
by Gaia staff written on November 11, 2019.
That just makes it credible.
Yeah.
And this is the one we're going to talk about first.
The Smithsonian Institute is ever present in the covering up and disposal of giant skeletons found
across North America.
Have heard of this.
Now, originally I started with the Snopes article because it's always fun to kind of
start with the debunk that they do.
And I find it really lacking, but we're going to talk about it anyways.
This is the article straight from Snopes.
Kim LeCapria wrote this on December 17, 2014.
Did the Smithsonian destroy thousands of giant human skeletons?
The claim.
The Supreme Court ordered the Smithsonian Institute to disclose that it destroyed several
giant skeletons in the early 1900s to preserve the mainstream narrative of evolution.
And I do apologize.
It's called the Smithsonian Institution.
I call it the Smithsonian Institute because I don't like saying institution.
It's just too long, but the full name is institution.
I like that you're not just calling it the Smithsonian.
I could just call it the Smithsonian.
Easy enough.
On December 3, 2014, World News Daily report published an article titled Smithsonian
Admitted Destruction of Thousands of Giant Human Skeletons in Early 1900s.
In that article, the site reported the Smithsonian colluded with unspecified parties to suppress
information providing the existence of the giant and the Supreme Court ruled in 2014
that documentation of the discovery be classified in 2015.
A number of factors in this story claim conflict with the standard template for junk news,
but the article also follows a formula in several ways.
On the latter score, searches for the American institution of alternative archaeology,
which is included in the story, point back either to the article itself or to other pages
referencing this article, a strong indicator that the organization does not exist.
Furthermore, the claim regarding Smithsonian guarding classified documents is unusual,
as the earliest technical classification of documents in the United States goes back only
as far as World War One.
Whereas the discovery of giant skeletons is dated vaguely as occurring in the early 1900s
prior to the First World War and the need to classify documents as we would today had not
yet come to issue.
And such a measure would be even less likely to apply to an archaeological discovery.
An image on World News Daily report claims was taken in Ohio in 2011,
has existed on the internet since 2008 and prior references identify the location as a picture
as Turkey, not Ohio.
And the date initially claimed of the image back then was that it was taken in the 1990s.
Another image of giant skulls included with the article dated to a 2008 claim
made on the website of the Coast to Coast radio program.
Yet another image frequently attached to other versions of the claim depict
Edward Bopre, French-Canadian man afflicted with gigantism who died in 1904.
Cytos celebrity at the time, Bopre's existence was hardly a secret and certainly not classified
by the Smithsonian.
Finally, no such Supreme Court decision exists and if it did, it would have been a matter
of public record and widely reported mainstream publications due to its notability.
I think that's enough of that article to kind of like show you what they're focusing on,
but I feel it's a real cop out because yes, they're pointing to this one particular article,
but the claims that the Smithsonian is covering up giant skeletons being found goes back way
further than 2014.
It goes far back as the early 1800s.
You can find newspaper articles all over the internet of giant skeletons being found in
the New World and their skeletons being shipped to the Smithsonian Institute for further research.
So they could just in this article, they completely disregard the fact that these articles exist
and just say that this one article is clearly fake and that's where it all comes from,
which I find a little bit of a cop out.
So I decided to do a little bit more research of my own and give you guys an idea of why exactly
people in the 1800s or why people were sending giant skeletons to the Smithsonian institution
in the early 1800s to the early 1900s or if they actually were.
Chelsea, we're going to learn a bit about North American history,
which I did not know, but I find incredibly interesting.
During the 19th century, which would be the 1800s, there was a widespread belief in North America
that there is a prehistoric lost race.
And I should just warn you, this is going to be one of those histories of mythological things
that ends up ending in racism, ethnocentrism, and a genocide.
From the time period, I would just assume that.
But it's just funny how many of our episodes that we end up doing end up coming back to this theme.
It is a disturbing amount yet.
During the 19th century, there was a widespread belief in North America of a prehistoric lost race.
European settlers embraced this myth of pre-Columbian settlement from the old world,
which reframed colonization as the continuation of a primordial pass in which the roles of
native people were diminished or dismissed through a process that historian Douglas Hunter
described as white tribism.
The settlers interpreted signs of intellectual and cultural capabilities and North American ruins
as signs that white people put them there and were the creators.
White Americans developed myths around what are known as the Great Mound Builder Races,
which describe a rationale for the colonization of American was Midwest.
Various versions of the myth held that the massive earthworks along the Mississippi Valley,
like Grave Creek Mound and the Great Serpent Mound, were not built by ancestors of North Americans,
as is now widely believed.
According to the myths, the Indians had exterminated the prehistoric white race of mound builders.
This cast genocidal violence towards the Native Americans as defensive or retributive.
Josiah Priess, American antiquities released in 1833, crystallized the idea of a lost race,
mentioned in the book of Genesis, that created the monuments of North America before being
exterminated by savages.
Between 1812 and the American Civil War, nearly all Americans writing about the continent's
history used this myth of the white mound building races.
And it was so prominent that there is a famous quote from a statement made by Abraham Lincoln,
this was made in 1848.
It's called Niagara Falls.
It calls up the indefinite past when Columbus first sought this continent.
When Christ suffered on the cross, when Moses led Israel through the Red Sea,
nay, even when Adam first came from the hand of his maker.
Then as now, Niagara was roaring here.
The eyes of that species of extinct giants, whose bones filled the mounds of America,
have gazed on Niagara as ours do now.
Contemporary with the whole race of men and older than the first man,
Niagara is strong and fresh today as 10,000 years ago.
Relection to Niagara.
Yeah, I did not know.
Like it was so prominent that the president of the time would make a statement just about
how casually, yeah, the giants were around.
Don't worry about it.
They too saw Niagara Falls.
Readers of the time taught a biblical basis for the primordial race,
including connections to the lost tribes of the Nephilim, which you hear a lot in
conspiracy world.
Giants from the book of Genesis and Joseph Smith incorporated this pre-Columbian white
race into the Mormon teachings.
Hundreds of newspaper articles credulously describe the purported discovery of the giant
skeletons, sometimes with anatomical irregularities attributed to the Nephilim.
For example, a massive skeleton unearthed in Tennessee toured the state as a specimen for
this lost race.
The reconstructed skeleton was mounted to a timber frame in a standing position with
missing bones recreated from wooden raw hide.
Preachers, doctors, and journalists confirmed it to belong to the genus Homo,
despite a standing height estimated up to 20 feet tall, as it would be described.
When the giant was taken to New Orleans, medical doctor William Carpenter found it to be a
young Macedon's remains, and Carpenter reported that there was not fraud,
and the man exhibiting the bones boxed them up after discovering that they were not human,
but rather a widespread desire to believe.
The Macedon ceased to be exhibited as a person, but soon after purported giants were unearthed,
exhibiting reported or sold for profit all over the country.
Throughout the 19th century, some scholars expressed doubt about the excavation of purported
giants but had little impact on public perception.
Many readers embrace the skeletons as evidence of biblical history against unpopular
experts whose discoveries undermine a literal interpretation of the Bible.
With a rise in white literacy rates and the emergence of the cheaper penny-pressed newspapers,
there was a strong market for these tales that gave them greater impact than all
university scholarship that will be coming out at the time.
Stories frequently ran presenting as straight fact, hoaxes, scams, and misinterpretations
of extinct megafauna.
Some newspapers outright just fabricated stories.
Ethnologist Cyrus Thomas spent years compiling his report on the mound explorations for the
Smithsonian Institute, which is where the Smithsonian starts to come in here,
and the 1894 in-depth study on North America's earthworks provided over 700 pages of conclusive
evidence that they were built by the native people as they were at the day.
Not a race of white giants.
Thomas's report shifted academic attitudes, but news reports of giant skeletons continue
to come out for decades afterwards.
It was common for the stories to claim that the bones were then sent to the Smithsonian
Institute and the Smithsonian's Bureau of Ethnology did encourage those excavating mounds
to send the Native American bones to their mound exploration division,
which is where this story kind of meets a little bit of fact in fiction.
Prior to the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, the Smithsonian
collected over 18,000 of these skeletons.
However, the sensationalist newspaper articles were often invoking the Smithsonian name
only in order to lend their own article credibility.
Nothing would actually be sent for these articles.
In 1934, Alice Herdlika, curator of anthropology at the Smithsonian Institution,
rejected the existence of a race of giants between 7 and 8 feet tall.
Herdlika blamed the will to believe for the many reports of giant's discoveries.
Herdlika blamed amateur anthropologists for being fooled by bones,
and he stated that people were most often fooled by the length of the femur bone,
because they are often not familiar with how human anatomy works,
so when they see a femur, it's often not placed right into the skeleton,
so people think that they're longer than they are.
He also stated in 1934 that reports of giant's skeletons occurred about two or three times every
month.
So it was common, like, way up in history in North America.
In 2020, the Columbus Dispatch reported that archaeologist Donald Ball collected articles
about giant's skeletons, which were purportedly found in burial mounds dating back as far as 1845,
and he determined that when the claims about giant's skeletons were scrutinized,
they didn't reveal giant's skeletons.
One story in Indianapolis Journal reported in August 29th, 1883, that a 9 foot skeleton had been
found.
Dr. M.M. Adams investigated and concluded that the bones were not of a giant,
and the individual was not above the height of 5 feet 8 inches.
He determined that it was a giant fraud upon the people,
and I believe the pun was in fact intended at that time.
And that, I think, gives a better idea of why the Smithsonian Institute is related to the cover-up
of giants throughout the history of North America.
Okay, they're real, right?
Giants, oh yeah, and the Smithsonian is covering them up very benignly,
because, you know, the Native Americans actually just get everything they treated in giants.
That was a really roundabout way to see this.
Yes.
I'm also a little disturbed that they're so, like,
casually digging up burial mounds and sending the bones away.
Well, you gotta remember that they didn't really consider Native Americans people at the time,
like, on par.
Okay, I don't want to remember that, but you make it.
And part of it too, then saying that they can no longer find these giants that were said to them,
or these remains?
Part of that is, in 1990, they had to give back all these remains to the culture that they took them from,
because they said, wow, this was a really dick move to destroy all of their burial mounds
and take all of their bones.
Maybe they should have them.
So part of that too is, oh, they don't have them anymore, or they're hidden.
They had to give them back.
Well, yeah, and at that point, like, you've already entered the poltergeist realm,
that you're getting a pretty decently heavy haunting next to those burial grounds that were robbed of there.
Oh, and also, that was one of the controversies about the Smithsonian is that it's haunted.
It should be noted that they returned all of the Native burial artifacts and bones
back to the people in the 1990s, which was ended the haunted.
They just did.
It simply remains a lie.
Simple is that.
Yeah, no reason to haunt anymore, so it stops.
That shed some light on quite a few things.
I should also make a point at this time that a lot of the conspiracy side and like Gaia TV,
they'd like to bring up a man by the name of John Powell.
He was a contributor to the Smithsonian Institute and the Powell Doctrine,
but I find it completely unnecessary to talk about in this portion if you want to learn more, go ahead.
But I feel like this sums it up perfectly.
Right, that's a good point to make.
I just wanted to make sure that I acknowledged that people bring up the name John Powell,
and I thought it was stupid.
So I'm not going to do it.
Okay, you won't find him here, folks.
But that moves us on to the next controversy.
Chelsea, do you have any questions about this giant?
I don't think so.
I mean, I'm always disappointed by a logical explanation.
I'll admit it.
And that's what that was.
Thank you for grounding us.
Grounding us and making sure that we know that this is another fringy mythology or belief
that is grounded in genocide.
Fully disappointment, this podcast is.
Yup, the fringe.
It's only two steps away from it.
Confirmed genocide.
Yeah, exactly.
No, no questions.
Okay, this brings us to the next controversy that you will hear the Smithsonian Institute brought up with.
And Chelsea, this one I think you will like.
It is the discovery of Egyptian artifacts in the Grand Canyon.
Right, I will like this one.
And to this, we will go right back to the first article that was ever written on this topic.
It was in the Arizona Gazette.
It's the Monday evening edition, April 5th, 1909.
The title of this article is exploration Grand Canyon, mysteries of immense rich cavern being brought to light.
And this is a longer article, so just sit tight with it, okay?
Okay.
The latest news of the progress of the exploration of what is now regarded by scientists is not only the oldest archaeological discovery in the United States,
but the most valuable in the world, which was mentioned some time ago in the Gazette, was brought to the city yesterday by G.E. Kinkade,
the explorer who found the great underground citadel of the Grand Canyon during a trip from Green River, Wyoming down the Colorado in a wooden boat to Yuma several months ago.
According to the story yesterday to the Gazette by Mr. Kinkade, the archaeologist of the Smithsonian Institute, which is financing the exploration,
the discovery, which almost conclusively proved that the race which inhabited this mysterious cavern, hewn in solid rocks by human hands, was of oriental origin,
or possibly from Egypt tracing back to Ramses.
If their theories are borne out of the translation of the tablets engraved with hieroglyphs, the mystery of the prehistoric people of North America,
their ancient arts, who they were and whence they came, will be solved.
Egypt and the Nile in Arizona and the Colorado will be linked by a historical chain running back at ages, which staggers the wildest fancy of the fictionists.
Under the direction of Professor S.A. Jordan, the Smithsonian Institute is now prosecuting the most thorough exploration which will be continued until the last link in the chain has been forged.
Nearly a mile underground, about 1480 feet below the surface, the long main passage had been delved into to find another mammoth chamber from which radiates scores of passageways like the spokes of a wheel.
Several hundred rooms have been discovered, reached by passageways running from the main passage, one of them having been explored from 854 feet and another 634 feet.
The recent findings include articles which have been known as native to this country and doubtlessly they had their origin in the Orient.
War weapons, copper instruments, sharp edged and hard as steel indicate the high state of civilization reached by these strange people.
So interested have these scientists become that preparations are being made to equip the camp for extensive studies and the force will be increased to 30 or 40 persons.
Forgoing further into the cavern, better facilities for lighting have to be established, for the darkness is dense and impenetrable for the average flashlight.
In order to avoid being lost, wires have been strung from the entrance to all passageways leading directly to large chambers.
How far this cavern extends, no one can guess, but it is now the belief of many that what has already been explored is merely the barracks, to use an American term, for the soldiers, and that far into the underworld will be found the main communal dwellings of the families and possibly other shrines.
The perfect ventilation of the cavern, the steady draft that blows through indicates that it has another outlet to the surface.
Mr. Kinkade was the first white child born in Idaho and has been an explorer and hunter all his life. That's quite the claim to fame, hey?
Just gonna say what?
Thirty years having been in the service of the Smithsonian Institute, even briefly recounting, his history sounds fabulous, almost grotesque.
Let's look at a quote from him.
First, I would impress that the cavern is almost inaccessible. The entrance is almost 1486 feet down as sheer canyon wall.
It is located on government land and no visitor will be allowed there under penalty of trespass.
The scientists wish to work unmolested without fear of the archaeological discoveries being disturbed by curio or relic hunters.
A trick there would be fruitless and the visitor would be sent on his way.
I do just like that they say, hey, you're trespassing on your way. It's all they're gonna do.
The story of how I found the cavern has already been recounted, but in a paragraph, I was journeying down the Colorado River in a boat alone, looking for mineral.
Some 42 miles up the river from El Tovar Crystal Canyon, I saw on the east wall stains in the sedimentary formation about 2000 feet above the riverbed.
There was no trail to this point, but I finally reached it with great difficulty.
Above a shelf, which hid it from the river, was the mouth of the cave.
There are steps heading into the entrance, some 30 yards, from what was at the time the cavern was inhabited at the level of the river.
When I saw the chisel marks on the walls inside the entrance, I became interested and secured my gun and went in.
During the trip, I went back several hundred feet along the main passage till I came to the main crypt, in which I discovered the mummies.
One of these I stood up and photographed by flashlight.
I gathered a number of relics which I carried down the Colorado to Yuma from once I shipped them to Washington with details of the discovery.
Following this, the exploration was undertaken.
The main passage is about 12 feet wide, narrowing to 9 feet towards the farther end.
About 57 feet from the entrance, the first passage branch off to the right and left, along which on both sides are a number of rooms about the size of ordinary living rooms of today.
Though some are 30 to 40 square feet.
These are entered by oval shaped doors and are ventilated by round air spaces through the walls into the passages.
I'm going to skip ahead just because it's very mundane archaeological stuff they're talking about to the shrine that they're going to talk about.
Over 100 feet from the entrance is a cross hall several hundred feet long in which was found the idol or image of the people's god sitting cross-legged with the lotus flower or lily at each hand.
The cast of the face is oriental and the carvings show a skillful hand and the entire is remarkably well preserved as is everything in the cavern.
The idol most resembles Buddha.
Though the scientists are not certain as to what religious worship it represents, taking into consideration everything found thus far, it is possible that the worship most resembles the ancient people of Tibet.
Surrounding the cycle are smaller images, some beautiful in form, others crooked necked and distorted shapes, symbolical probably of good and evil.
There are two large cacti with protruding arms, one on each side of the days on which the gods squads.
All of this is carved out of the hard rock resembling marble.
In the opposite corner of the cross hall were found tools of all description made of copper.
The people undoubtedly knew the lost art of hardening this metal which has been sought by chemists for centuries without result.
On a bench running around the workroom was some charcoal and other materials probably used in the process.
There is also slag and some similar to matte showing that these ancient people smelted ores but so far no trace of where or how this was done has been discovered nor the origin of the ore.
Among other finds are vases or urns and cups of copper and gold made very artistic in design.
Pottery work included in namel, ware and glazed vessels.
Another passageway leads to the granaries such as are found in the Oriental temples and they contain seeds of various kinds.
One of the very large storehouses has not been entered as it is 12 feet high and can be reached only from above.
Two copper hooks extend to the edge which indicates that some sort of ladder was attached.
These granaries are rounded and the materials on which they are constructed I think is very hard cement.
A grey metal is also found in this cavern which puzzles the scientists.
For its identity has not been established it resembles platinum.
Stroom promiscuously over the floor everywhere are what people call cat eyes or tiger eyes a yellow stone of no great value.
Each one is engraved with the head of a Malay type.
On all the urns, on the walls, over the doorways and tablets of stone which were found by the images are mysterious hieroglyphics.
The key to which the Smithsonian Institution hopes yet to discover these writings resemble those found on the rocks about this valley.
Engravings on the tablets probably have something to do with the religion of the people.
Similar hieroglyphs have been found in the peninsula of Yucatan but these are not found in the Orient.
Some believe that these cave dwellers built the old canals in the Salt River Valley.
Among the pictorial writings only two animals are found one is the prehistoric type.
The tomb or crypt in which the mummies are found is one of the largest of the chambers.
The walls slanting back at an angle of about 35 degrees.
These are tiers of mummies.
Each one occupying a separate hewn shelf.
At the head of each is a small bench on which is found copper cups, pieces of broken swords.
Some of the mummies are covered with clay and are all wrapped in a bark fabric.
The urns of cups on the lower tiers are crude.
While as the higher shelves are reached the urns are finer in design showing an interstage of civilization.
It is worthy of note that all the mummies examined so far have been male.
No children or females buried here.
This leads to the belief that the interior sections are warrior barracks.
Among the discoveries no bones of animals have been found.
No skin, no clothing nor bedding.
Many of the rooms are bare but for the water vessels.
One room about 400 to 700 feet was probably the main dining hall for cooking utensils are found here.
What these people lived on is a problem.
Though it is presumed that they came south for the winter and farmed in the valleys going back north in the summer.
Upwards of 50,000 people could have lived in the cavern comfortably.
One theory is that the present Indian tribe found in Arizona are descendants or serfs or slaves of the people which inhabited the caves.
Undoubtedly a good many thousands of years before the Christian era people lived here which reached a high state of civilization.
The chronology of human history is full of gaps.
Professor Jordan is much enthused over this discovery and believes what he has found will prove incalculable value in archaeological work.
One thing I have spoken of may be of interest.
There is one chamber the passageway to which is not ventilated and when we approach it a deadly, sneaky smell struck us.
Our light would not penetrate the gloom and until stronger ones are available we will not know what the chamber contains.
Some say snakes but others boohoo this idea and think that it may contain a deadly gas or chemicals used by the ancients.
I would really hope at this time that there are no snakes as it is thousands of years old in theory.
No sounds are heard but it smells sneaky just the same.
No idea what a sneaky smell is.
The whole underground institution gives one of shaky nerves creeps.
The gloom is like a weight on one's shoulders and our flashlights and candles only make the darkness blacker.
Imagination can revel in conjectures and ungodly daydreams back through the ages that have elapsed till the mind reels dizzily in space.
Horeen, Heron, and Egyptologists believed in the Indian origin of the Egyptians and the discovery of the Grand Canyon may throw further light on the human evolution and prehistoric ages.
I skipped a bit of the end just because it talks about Native American culture but I think we got the gist of that story.
Pretty groundbreaking hey Chelsea?
Yeah, yeah. I'm a little confused by a few parts but I feel like you can take a strut a little.
A little bit, yeah. It accuses a Smithsonian Institution member scientist of like actually investigating it and it just dies out from there as I don't know how many of you have heard of the Egyptian artifacts that they've pulled out of the Grand Canyon.
And almost as if they're covering it up.
Yeah, yeah, but it wasn't really just only Egyptian.
No, it was all over the mat. You got some Tibet, you got a Buddha.
The Grand, yep.
You got a snake room.
Yeah.
The mind runs wild with all the potential that was in there and the specificity that they were able to bring.
1486 feet or 1482 feet exactly down.
Yeah.
They were measuring the rooms, they found some mummies, pretty cool.
Yeah, and there is some contradictions within that that it housed a culture, right? It housed its own culture but it was all artifact.
It was all artifacts from various cultures.
Yes.
On the world.
Yeah, you know, it was an amalgamation of all the people who just happened to meet there on Wednesday nights.
Yeah, yeah, but they were all.
It was potlucks and they kind of just built from there.
They brought their own artifacts.
Yeah. Chelsea, I don't know if you notice this right off the bat.
When I introduced this article in the Arizona Gazette, I didn't say the name of the author and that's because there is no attached author to this article.
Okay.
Okay, suspicious.
A little bit.
Wasn't the staff at the Arizona Gazette?
No, they didn't even put that.
Nobody wanted their test generally take the blame.
And it goes from here.
I found a good article breaking this down.
The holes in the Arizona Gazette article emerges as soon as you start to examine its basics.
For one, there is no recorded existence of anybody working at the Smithsonian Institution by the name of Kinkade or Jordan.
Who are you know, the people investigating it for the Smithsonian?
That's both a very unique name and a very general name.
You can probably find a Jordan anywhere.
In the same Gazette in March, they had also like published an article about Kinkade's adventures down to Colorado, but there's no mention of any Egyptian artifacts or a cave that he had found.
Okay.
And in 2000, a representative of the Smithsonian Institution, not the Institute, as it is called throughout most of this article and why I had to talk about earlier that is the Smithsonian Institution, not the Institute.
Ah, okay.
Because it is inaccurately named throughout this article.
They responded to one of these inquiries in an email exchange affirming their position that the story is in fact a hoax, which they would say.
They would if they're hiding it.
This is the article that this comes from.
Yes.
You can't find any trace earlier, but there are a lot of references to this article.
There are a lot that don't claim this one as its reference point, but they basically say the exact same thing.
They just don't reference this article and it come out later.
So it makes sense.
So this is their statement.
The Smithsonian's Department of Anthropology has searched its files without finding any mention of a Jordan, Kinkade, or a lost Egyptian civilization in Arizona.
Nevertheless, the story continues to be repeated in books and articles.
End quote.
Haley Johnson, president of the Grand Canyon Historical Society, also speaks to the inconsistencies in the original article.
There's images in it, which are clearly fake, she says.
In 2009, an article in the Old Pioneer magazine published by the Grand Canyon Historical Society, author Dan Lago, examined more than a dozen newspaper articles from the time and found that most ignored the Gazette story entirely with only one paper reprinting it without comment.
The one paper that did comment, the Coconino Sun in Flagstaff, Arizona, pointed to a likely culprit behind this hoax story.
Joe Mulhotten, a traveling salesman who became famous in the 1870s and 1880s for deceiving newspapers into publishing fake articles.
Joe Mulhotten is known in every city of the United States and has probably caused more trouble in newspaper offices than any other man in the country.
The New York Times wrote in 1891.
Like wow.
The wild stories written in the most plausible style have more than once caused special correspondence to hurry from coast to coast to investigate some wonderful occurrence which only existed in the imagination of the great liar, again, who would have benefited greatly from a Liars Club.
And I can't believe how often this comes up.
He just needed TV to let's face it.
Yeah, it's true.
And yeah, I think that at least explains that controversy and those are the ones we're going to be talking about today.
That's why the Smithsonian Institute comes up so often for coverups is mostly giants and ancient pre-civilization to North America that they're hiding from everyone else.
Pretty much every time you look at it, it can be traced directly back to a hoax though.
Oh no.
Or a misidentification.
I was hoping for something more.
Like, yeah, they totally do.
Verified there's giants.
Yeah, outside of the three giants that they have, they're all fakes.
Well, that was both educational and disappointing.
I agree fully.
That's just how it goes with a little bit of genocide thrown in, which just is how we do it sometimes.
That's just about every Journey to the Fringe episode.
Yeah.
Chelsea, any questions before we end this one?
Nope, I've gotten them all out as we've gone along on this one.
Well, with that, I have been Taylor here with Chelsea.
We are Journey to the Fringe.
Thank you all for listening and we will see you next week.
If you really want to communicate with us and give us ideas for new episodes or tell us that we're wrong and terrible, either way, please send us an email at journeytothefringeatgmail.com.
Now, I'll see you in the next episode.