Cyrus the Great of Persia was a conqueror, and he tried to increase his empire by marrying

Tamiris, the widow of the king of the Massingeti people. She refused his offer, and so he

decided that he would invade her kingdom instead. Turns out, that was a big mistake. Listen to the latest episode of Noble Blood,

available now. Listen to Noble Blood on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you

get your podcasts.

Welcome to Aaron Menke's Cabinet of Curiosity's, a production of IHeart 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.

Crime does not pay. It's a saying that almost everyone knows. We teach it to our children to remind them not to take shortcuts, because in the end, your actions have consequences and your choices will catch up with you. Stealing something is still stealing something. Of course, this sort of moralizing has not prevented crime from happening.

Thievery is a profession as old as the very

concept of ownership. And since we no longer hang thieves for taking things, and most petty

theft happens too fast to notify police, merchants have found themselves in need of alternate ways

to deter criminals. United States banks, for example, are armed with a dummy wad of cash that conceals a trap for

potential robbers. Inside this innocuous-looking wad of tens and $20 bills, there is a small

explosive triggered by radio to detonate when brought out of the doors of the bank. This explosion

releases tear gas and sometimes a colored paint that marks the bank

robber, and more importantly, the stolen money. Any cash marked in this way would be unusable to

the criminal in question. This bank robber deterrent is known as an intelligent banknote

neutralization system, or IBMS. The first prototype was developed in 1982 using

colored smoke rather than paint. After a decade in development, the modern system was fully

finalized and remains in common use to this day. But this was not the only crime deterrent

that took off in the 1980s. On the other side of the globe, the country of Japan was

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