Welcome to Aaron Manky's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of I Heart Radio and

Grim and Mild. Our world is full of the unexplainable. And if history is an open book, all of these

amazing tales are right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.

Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. If there's one thing sitcoms can teach us, it's that Get Rich Quick schemes never work.

Whether it was Ralph Cramden, Homer Simpson, or Al Bundy, the idea of spending a little

money to make a lot of money never really panned out. Luckily those characters just had

to wait for next week's episode and all would be forgotten and

forgiven.

There were no real stakes or consequences, not like in real life, where people like Bernie Madoff

and Charles Ponzi, for whom the Ponzi scheme was named, found themselves in jail, or worse.

But during the mid-19th century, two men decided to try their hands at their own Get-rich

quick scheme, and it worked out a lot better than anyone had expected.

Their names were William Smith and Charles Eaton better known as Billy and Charlie.

We don't know much about their early lives but we do know what they did for a living, and I'm using big air quotes there.

They were mud larks, meaning that they would scour the mud flats along the Thames for discarded objects that might be worth something.

And then they sold those objects to a man named William Edwards.

He was a dealer of sorts who would sell what Billy and Charlie had brought to him to another

dealer, one George Eastwood.

Eastwood happened to specialize in antiques.

So what did Billy and Charlie uncover in the mudflats?

A lot, actually.

Pilgrim's badges were common, as were coins and small statues.

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