On this day in 1828 a mysterious boy named Kaspar Hauser appeared in Nuremberg. He bore only a note addressed to the local cavalry commander describing the boy as an orphan from an unnamed place near the Bavarian border. The boy was eventually taken in by a local shoemaker who learned that he had lived his entire life in a straw-lined cage and would eat only bread and water. They boy would be assassinated under bizarre circumstances in 1833, fueling wild speculation and controversy over the boy’s origins. One popular theory is that he was the illegitimate son of Charles Grand Duke of Baden, though his true identity remains a mystery.
