We've all been there. You're standing in a museum staring at a painting and all you can think is I don't get it.

To me, knowing the story behind an artwork is a huge part of knowing how to look at it.

I'm Amanda, the host of the Art of History podcast, where we view history through the lens of some really great works of art. Each episode we dive deep into the bigger picture behind some familiar and maybe not so familiar pieces.

Check out art of history now wherever you get your podcasts.

You're listening to an airwave media podcast.

Hello and welcome to the past and the curious.

If you are a new listener I am mix Sullivan if you are a long time listener I am

mix Sullivan anyway you shape it I'm mix Sullivan and this is the past and the curious I make the show

for fun for you. So I hope you enjoy this episode. If you're listening in the time

period that I release it the Olympics happened to be going on, but this isn't an Olympic specific episode.

You can listen to this whenever.

It's an episode that just talks about a couple of international competitions.

There's one Olympic story, but the other one is about

the field of cloth of gold, which is one of the most amazing historic moments from

from European history it's really fascinating I've always had a had a

curiosity about it so it was fun to dive a little deeper in that The other story is about the 1904 Olympic marathon which is one of the

wildest stories in all of history. I'm not telling the whole story we're just going to focus on one person. I hope you enjoy.

If you go back in time before the modern day and the rise of republics and democracies and

representative government, Kings and Queens were very important and powerful in Europe, But sometimes it was hard to know who was in charge of what.

Heck for a period of time, King Henry the 8th, know, the very famous, very frequently married and exceedingly British king of England, believed he was also the King of France.

This is not because he was confused or delusional.

The Pope had given French King Louis the 12th, the boot, and might have sort of kind of told Henry that he was the top dog in the foreign nation.

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