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The Atlas Obscura Podcast

Re-up Your Luck

The Atlas Obscura Podcast

SiriusXM Podcasts & Atlas Obscura

Society & Culture, Places & Travel

4.61.6K Ratings

🗓️ 2 June 2021

⏱️ 13 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

We explore the power luck has on us all, rational or not, through the unlikely places people go to re-up Read more in the Atlas: https://www.atlasobscura.com/lists/lucky-places-good-luck-charms

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

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

0:09.1

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

0:13.7

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

0:19.7

and writers like Oscar Wilde and Proust.

0:22.5

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

0:27.7

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

0:35.2

with a very certain kind of need.

0:37.9

It's the tomb of Victor Noir.

0:42.3

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

0:48.1

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

0:52.2

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

0:57.3

nephew of Napoleon.

1:00.3

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

1:05.0

acclaimed sculptor Jules de lau.

1:07.3

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

1:13.0

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

1:19.0

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

1:24.3

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

1:30.8

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

1:38.4

And second, the bulge is very, very shiny.

1:48.1

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

1:54.1

the hands of countless women over the decades.

...

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