Every year, more than 3 million people visit the Paralysia Cemetery in Paris.

It's home to hundreds of thousands of tombs, and you can buy a map directing you to all

the graves of the cemetery's most famous residents, folks like the singer Jim Morrison

and writers like Oscar Wilde and Proust.

But among that list of celebrities and historical figures is a name that pretty much no one will

recognize, but whose tomb attracts a lot of visitors, and a very certain kind of visitor,

with a very certain kind of need.

It's the tomb of Victor Noir.

Victor Noir was a journalist in Paris in the 1800s, and he didn't publish anything especially

remarkable during a short lifetime, and he probably would have been forgotten to history

if it weren't for the fact that he was shot and killed by Prince Pierre Bonaparte.

The nephew of Napoleon.

That act triggered a wave of protests and led to the commissioning of a statue by the acclaimed

sculptor Jules de lau.

But even that isn't really why people are visiting his grave today.

They visit for more personal reasons, and they aren't there for Victor, exactly.

The statue that covers Victor Noir's grave depicts him laying down as if he had just

been shot, and that alone is kind of jarring, but then you notice a couple of other things.

First, the crotch of this statue has a bulge to it.

And second, the bulge is very, very shiny.

Though the statue is largely dark and discolored, that particular part has been polished by

the hands of countless women over the decades.

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