Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avergan.

This day April 1, 1986, a group of researchers visit Mount Vernon, Virginia to begin an exclamation of the grave of George Washington.

This was part of a larger research project to better understand the founding fathers and what scientists found when they did this exclamation led to some very interesting information about Washington.

It also created some misinformation that we are in some ways living with today. So here to discuss

the exclamation of George Washington is as always Nicole Hammer of

Columbia and Kelly Carter Jackson of Wellesley. Hello. Hello, Jody.

Hey there.

Kelly, we should be clear that Washington wasn't exactly buried.

He's in a lead coffin which resides in an above ground tomb on the Mount Vernon

Grounds. But nevertheless, why are scientists at this

moment going back into his coffin? Well I think there's so much that we can find out

through DNA now and it's kind of really exciting to be able to see what new information that we can learn about George Washington.

There's also been so many myths circulated about him and his wooden teeth and you know certain aspects of his life that I think people are curious to know

about and so they started doing this process to figure out if they could really

bring some truth to light about some ideas about

George Washington and his biology. Yeah, I mean it's so interesting you kind of get

this sense that it's like we have this new DNA technology we have this new tool this so like let's play with it.

And so what do we want to do?

Well, let's figure out some things about our founding fathers.

I don't think it's a coincidence that this is that pretty soon after the

bicentennial, you know, I think there's just a sort of interest in

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