This is an IHeart podcast.

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 Curiosity's.

If you travel around South Africa, you might wind up in Klan Kuru, an arid valley in the western cape.

Nestled between two mountain ranges, the valley is known for stunning views and gorgeous weather.

It's also home to nine elaborate mansions, each looking like a tiny palace fit for a Maharaja. These are called the feather palaces. They were built by

nine South African families who became rich during the feather craze of the early 1900s.

Yes, you've heard that right, the feather craze. Now, if you've never heard of it before,

you are not alone. Most people have no idea that at one point, feathers were worth more by weight

than diamonds. Even more bizarre were the lengths that some people went to to corner the feather

market. They were ready to beg, borrow, and literally steal just to get their hands on some

ostrich plumes. By 1910, American women were obsessed with big, stately hats, adorned with

bushy feathers. The bigger the feathers, the better the hat. Some women even fixed taxidermied

birds to their brims. After all, why settle for a few feathers when you can have the

whole animal? And ostrich feathers were the fluffiest feathers on the market, so they were the

most sought after. And since they had to be shipped from overseas, they were expensive.

At the time, South Africa was the ostrich farm capital of the world. Austrich feathers were the fourth largest

expoint, just behind gold and diamonds. And interestingly enough, the ostrich trade was largely run by

a Lithuanian Jewish community. They had escaped Tsarist rule and emigrated to a town called

Oatshorn in the Kleinkaru Valley, where they swiftly set up ostrich farms,

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