Welcome to our weekly classic episode, Ridiculous Historians. Hey, Noel, you remember Isaac Newton? He's the apple guy, right? Or figs or something? It's a, it's a fruit is cake. It's not a cookie. Fruited cake. Fruited cake. Yeah. But isn't the old tale of Isaac Newton discovering gravity when the apple fell not too far from the tree and conked him on the noggin?

That's the anecdote, for sure.

And he also did a lot of other stuff.

We know him for scientific pursuits, like you were saying.

But before we did this episode in 2019, we were not aware that he spent some time as the master of the royal mint. He was an absolute sleuth when it came to spotting fake currency.

Oh, yeah.

And unlike some royal positions, this was not ceremonial.

He took the job of bird-dogging foragers seriously,

and he was getting a kind of Sherlock Holmesian about it.

No, there's a bit of a Holmes Moriarty rivalry in this story, and the Moriarty to Newton's

Holmes was a fellow by the name of William Chaloner, a counterfeiting Kingpin and Supervillain,

a big bat of today's tale.

This is an I-Heart podcast, guaranteed human.

Ridiculous history is a production of IHeart Radio. Oh man, oh man, oh man, oh man.

Friends and neighbors, fellow ridiculous historians, welcome to the show.

I, for one, am excited because today's episode concerns one of our favorite genres of historical individuals, the con artist.

The flim flam man, which our last episode did as well.

We have a preponderance of con artist in the show.

And I have no regrets about it.

Who am I?

I'm Ben.

That's who you are.

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