- Oh, my God, the land that I own,

this land used to have a theater on it and no longer does.

What the F happened.

- Oh, Mark.

- I'm good.

Hello, my name's Mark Gagliardi

and today we're gonna talk about William Shakespeare

and The Great Theater Heist of 1598.

- (laughs) Oh, (beep).

- All right, let me set the stage for you.

It's the late 16th Century in a neighborhood,

just North of London called Shoreditch,

where the most brilliant minds

of the time have started gathering at the taverns.

You've got, Sir Walter Raleigh and Christopher Marlowe,

who's like the biggest playwright in the world.

And it was there that James Burbage makes this land deal

with Giles Allen and decides to build his own theater.

It is called The Theatre with an R E not an E R.

You do it with an R E 'cause it's classier.

- [Moderator] Yeah.

- So William Shakespeare shows up.

I'm William Shakespeare.

I'm the new guy.

So then he spends the late 1580s writing

and starring in some of his early works,

but in 1594, the theater scene was viciously crippled

by Bubonic Plague outbreak, so James Burbage,

founder of The Theatre has decided,

"Here's what I'm gonna do.

I'm gonna get together a troupe of actors made

of all of the actors whose troupes

had disbanded during the Bubonic Plague

and create a supergroup of Elizabethan actors

called the Lord Chamberlain's Men."

- Would you like water?

I'll take that as a no.

- So Shakespeare's found his home

and his home is The Theatre.

And at this time, Shakespeare is prolific.

He's writing some of his best plays.

He's churning out, he's like,

"Okay, here, try this one out, this one's called Hamlet.

Here, try this one out, I call this one Othello.

You're probably gonna need some shoe polish

to play Othello, but nobody's socially conscious enough

that black face isn't a bad thing at this point."

So Shakespeare has these guys doing these amazing plays

until 1597, Giles Allen says,

"Hey, you want to renew the lease?"

"Hang on a second, I've decided these plays are bullshit.

I hate The Theatre."

And James Burbage is like, "Wait, what?"

So Giles Allen, Giles Allen?

Giles Allen, Giles Allen, says,

"I'm a Puritan, so I think that plays are dumb,

even though you're doing Shakespeare and your plays

are gonna be read by (beep) school kids in 2015,

because they're that GD important.

Theater is like, you know, of the devil, so sorry."

And James Burbage was so distraught by this that he died

of a broken heart and Giles Allen said,

"James Burbage is dead.

This is my land.

I'm gonna do what I want with it."

But one of the Lord Chamberlain's men went,

"Hey fellas, hang on a second.

I've been looking at the lease, the like actual piece

of paper that our lease is written on,

and that lease says, Giles Allen owns the land,

but technically speaking, we own the building.

What are we going to do about this?"

So then, hold on, (shakes face)

So on the night of December 28, 1598,

it happened that Puritan landowner,

Giles Allen, was out of town for the Christmas holiday.

The Lord Chamberlain's Men decided

to take matters in their own hands.

William Shakespeare and the members

of the Lord Chamberlain's Men are like,

"You know what?

This building belongs to us and we're going to take it."

They went into the costume storage rooms,

they put on their most terrifying military battle gear,

and they proceeded to take down the entire building,

including the thirty-foot beams

that held the building a loft brick by brick.

Every last piece.

- I got you.

- What are we talking about?

- Alexander Hamilton.

How dare you.

So Giles Allen came back.

He realized that, "Oh my God, the land that I own,

this land used to have a theater on it

and no longer does, what the F happened."

- Try to bring you back up.

- So Shakespeare and the Lord Chamberlain's Men,

they took down a whole building and they took all

of those pieces across the Thames and board by board

they rebuilt this theater, rechristened it The Globe,

and this is where Shakespeare premiered his greatest works.

And Hey, did you learn Hamlet in high school?

It's 'cause Shakespeare and his buddies stole a theater.

- Hello.

My name is Jimmy O. Yang and today we're gonna talk

about the kidnapping of Lincoln's body.

- Nice and thirsty, huh?

The story began in 1875 in Chicago.

This dude, Big Jim Kennally had like

the best counterfeiting ring in Chicago.

But the real man behind the scene was this guy named Boyd.

He was the guy that made the best press

and his fake bills are so good people would look

at them and be like, "Yeah it looks like real money to me."

But it's not. (laughs)

So they were making so much money

that the Fed finally caught up with them

and then Boyd took the heat, and he went to jail.

And now big Jim is like, "Shit, I just lost my guy,

I don't have my cash full anymore.

What can I do about this?"

So he went to the saloon that he owned called The Hub

and he talked to a couple

of his goons called Mullen and Hughes.

And he's like, "Guys, we're gonna

go kidnap Abraham Lincoln's dead ass body."

- Wow.

- And we're gonna hold it for ransom for Boyd's release

from prison and 200 grand.

Boom.

And then his buddy, Mullen, and he was like,

- "Big Jim at it again with the great ideas."

- And in that midst of that conversation,

this other guy named Lewis Swegles came up to him like,

"Hey guys, you guys talking about stealing Lincoln's body?

'Cause um, I don't mean to brag,

but I am the boss of body snatching."

So now Mullen and Hughes was like,

"Whoa, Swegles, you seem like a legit guy.

Come on in in our crew."

So now Hughes, Mullen and Swegles

are now in the kidnapping crew of Lincoln's dead body,

but little did Hughes and Mullen know that Swegles

was actually an informant for the new agency

called The Secret Service.

So he went back to the head of The Secret Service Agency,

Patrick Tyrell, who was from the Tyrell family

of Game of Thrones. (laughs)

- Do you ever go outside?

- Not really.

Mostly video games and game of Thrones.

(both laugh)

Okay.

So Swegles is like, "Yo, Pat, I got a scoop for you.

These guys are ploying to kill your dead president."

"Well you can't kill him."

"Sorry, these guys are plotting to kidnap their president.

You should go cash their ass red handed."

So Patrick Tyrell, he was super down with this.

He was like, "Yes, this is it.

If we have protected that president,

that means we are protecting live president.

This is the publicity we need to cement ourselves

as the goddamn Secret Service

of the United States of America."

So Hughes, Mullen, and Swegles went to the grave

that night, and the Secret Service guys,

they're all camped out around the graveyard to try

to catch these guys red handed,

and then when the three guys got to Lincoln's grave

they're like, "Whoa, I guess this is how

like rich people burry themselves.

It's a mausoleum, a sarcophagus, and then a coffin."

Like, "Shit, what should we do?"

So Mullen took out his axe and he was like,

"I'm just gonna bash this shit and take Lincoln's body."

And Swegles, obviously, he didn't want

to damage Lincoln's body.

He was like, 'Oh, whoa, guys, you can't do that,

dude, you know, that's gonna alert the graveyard owner

and we'll have less time to run."

And then Mullen's like, "You know what?

You're right.

We're going to do this slightly more, what's the word?"

Like sophisticated?

"Slightly more, yeah, you're right, we're gonna do this

with a little more finesse."

So then Mullen picked the padlock, right?

And they got in the grave, they're like,

"Okay, let's try to lift it, and then

we just take the whole thing."

And then they realized they're all too weak

to lift the sarcophagus, so they're like,

"Shit, we're really unprepared."

So Swegles like, "Ah, you know what, boys, you know,

I'm just going to go outside, smoke a cigarette,

and think about this."

Is somebody having sex next to us?

- [Moderator] It's definitely an animal.

I don't think it's sex. - It's an animal?

- It's a coyote or a dog.

- That's a sexy ass coyote.

So Swegles uses this opportunity

to signal Patrick Tyrell and the Secret Service guys,

so they all like tippy-toed in there.

But then this guy, George Hay, was so stoked and nervous

he fired his firearm on accident. (makes gunshot noise)

Oops!

And everybody freaked out.

So Hughes and Mullens like,

"Shit, we gotta get out of here."

And all the Secret Service Agents

start like firing in the dark.

They're like, "Boom, man, this is (beep) bullshit, dog."

So by the time they got to the mausoleum,

Mullens and Hughes has gotten away.

So it was a huge mess and the Secret Service guys are like,

"Ah, shit, we really (beep) this one up."

So Hughes and Mullens, they didn't know

it was the Secret Service.

They just thought it was some random dudes shootout

at a graveyard, so they just went back

to the hub and they just chilling.

And then the Secret Service (beep) bust

into the bar and catch up with them.

So they're all patting each other's back.

They're like, "We finally got these

(beep) assholes, you know?

This is the establishment of the Secret Service.

We're gonna protect president's dead

or alive for now to eternity."

So in the end, to quote my grandfather...

- Up, up, down, down, BA, BA, select start.

- Si, Senor.

- Hi, my name is Mark Gagliardi,

and today we're gonna talk about the theft

of the Mona Lisa painting.

This is a painting.

It's 1911.

Paris is the center of the universe.

But at this moment in time,

the Mona Lisa was not actually a terribly famous painting.

It's just one of the paintings that's hanging in the Louvre

and the French are like,

"Yeah, it's a painting in the Louvre.

It kind of looks like my aunt, but you know,

I don't think it's all that important."

And at this point, Vincenzo Peruggia, an Italian immigrant,

got a job as a glassmaker in the Louvre.