Ancient Mysteries: DARK HISTORY OF WITCHES (S4, E5) | Full Episode | History

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LEONARD NIMOY: Here on "Ancient Mysteries," experience the horror of the Burning Times when thousands of accused witches were tortured and burned at the stake. Discover the startling truth behind the terrifying legend of the witch. Before we unlock the future, we must find the keys to the past. I'm Leonard Nimoy. Join me, and open the door to ancient mysteries, beginning now here on A&E. [theme music] [dramatic music] The witch, evil sorceress, seductive enchantress flying in the moonlight-- what do we know of her mysterious origins? Who were the real women behind the myth of the witch? Who are these people with extraordinary supernatural powers? Where did they come from? And what did they do? Are they here now? These are questions the human community has been asking for a long time. It may be that the witches are a remnant of a long lost goddess, a figure of incredible power who brought life and death. LEONARD NIMOY: Why were witches tortured and burned at the stake during the Middle Ages? How did the belief begin that witches could fly? How did a child's game spark the tragedy of the Salem witch trials? And why, despite the witch's fearsome legacy, are thousands again practicing the ancient arts of witchcraft? Discover the enduring power and forbidden secrets, the myth and the magic of the witch on "Ancient Mysteries." [tense music] [soft heavy music] The witch, sorceress, enchantress, the devil's consort. A fearsome being of fairy tale and myth, she has haunted the human consciousness for thousands of years. The witch remains a chilling specter that still captures the human imagination and baffles us with grim mysteries. For a psychologist, the witch definitely represents the dark side of the female presence. She is the shadow. She is the woman out of control. LEONARD NIMOY: What is a witch? When did the belief in witches originate? Do they exist? Or are they merely bizarre creations of the human imagination? Over centuries, the image of the witch has undergone a strange transformation. [liquid bubbling] In ancient Scandinavia, Freya, goddess of prophecy, soared through the heavens in a chariot. [powerful music] In Greek mythology, the witch was as beautiful as she was deadly. The sorceress Circe enchanted Ulysses' sailors with her magical brew of honey wine. Then, with a touch of her magic wand, she turned each man into a pig. Even earlier, in Hebrew tradition, a woman named Lilith, her long, red hair streaming, slipped into unprotected homes, preying on newborns and stealing men's seed. [soft music] Perhaps no figure in myth or legend has been so despised and feared as the witch. BRIAN LEVACK: Being a witch was just about the worst thing you could be accused of being because you practiced cannibalistic infanticide. You danced naked. You practiced promiscuous sex. You were part of the nightmare of society. LEONARD NIMOY: The image of the witch is indelibly imprinted on the modern consciousness. And yet in their earliest beginnings, magical female beings who possessed supernatural powers were not seen as a source of evil. Surprisingly, some scholars trace the origin of the witch back to ancient deities who were as benign as they were powerful. Witches have been around as long as the human community has been trying to deal with disease and avert disaster. It may be that they developed from early goddess cults, that these are the women who served the goddess. [soft music] LEONARD NIMOY: These goddess figures, some dating back 20,000 years, were revered for their magical ability to enhance fertility and nurture the land. All-powerful creation deities, they held sway over the forces of the universe. For thousands of years, the creation goddess was honored as the all-powerful divine force. She was known by many names. In ancient Mesopotamia, she was called Inanna, the Queen of Heaven. In Egypt, the predominant civilization of the ancient world, she was known as Isis. In the land of Canaan, she was Asherah. All of them were supreme goddesses who presided over the sacred forces of life and death, worshipped by those who relied on the Earth's fertility for their survival. [gentle music] People who depended on the Earth for sustenance, on the cycles of nature, on the reproductive capacities of the Earth to survive and the association of those natural forces with the female body and, therefore, the identification of the female as sacred makes perfect sense. LEONARD NIMOY: Not only did the ancients worship powerful female deities, but throughout the Middle East, often those who practiced the holiest of rituals were women. Could these priestesses trained in the sacred arts have been the earliest antecedents of the witch? Over the centuries, these ancient priestesses came to be known as the wise women. These women made house calls. They removed impurity, [non-english].. They took off sorcery, [non-english].. They cured babies. They dealt with infertility. They had cures for impotence. And they even did sort of practical family therapy because they would come to a house and cleanse it of evil words. LEONARD NIMOY: From the early rituals sprang the sacred ceremonies which would later be known as witchcraft. What magical powers did these so-called ancient wise women possess? Accounts from ancient Turkey describe how the wise women would sit inside a sacred circle drawn with salt to recite their magical incantations. [mysterious music] Their ritual objects were simple. But they were believed to possess awesome powers of healing and protection. What's interesting about-- is that they are so clearly understood to be positive figures in their society. No king could be without their counsel. No army could recover from a defeat without their ritual activities. No baby could be born without their presence. LEONARD NIMOY: The question fascinates scholars. How did the benign image of the wise woman become transformed into the malevolent figure of the witch? [soft heavy music] Some scholars believe the answer may lie in events which took place three millennia before the birth of Christ. [steadfast music] In this turbulent time, tribes of nomads known as the Indo-Europeans invaded the Western world from the east. They were a warrior people who brought with them a strong belief in aggressive male gods of war. Over the centuries, the belief in their male sky gods would come to dominate the once mighty female Earth deities. One of the things we see in the development of the history of religions is that very often goddesses start out in very prominent roles and are gradually demoted. We actually see their names moving down on the list that the scribes are copying over and over and over again. [soft music] LEONARD NIMOY: Some scholars believe that when the Hebrews, worshippers of one god, settled in the land of Canaan around 1300 before the common era, they perpetuated this male-dominated vision of their own creation story. Some believe that in the biblical story of creation, Eve is the mortal version of the earlier goddess Asherah. In the Garden of Eden, it is Eve who bears responsibility for the fall of all humanity. And the sacred tree and the snake, once benign symbols of the earlier goddess culture, become something both dangerous and forbidden. Obeying the laws of the Bible, the Hebrews condemned witchcraft as a pagan practice, banning it from the land of Canaan. WOMAN: "Let no one be found among you who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, or consults the dead." Deuteronomy 19:10. LEONARD NIMOY: Strangely, despite this prohibition, one of the most mysterious stories in the Bible describes a magical encounter between a biblical king and a witch. This story is set in a period when King Saul is locked in a ferocious battle with the Israelites' formidable enemy, the Philistines. On the eve of the fateful battle of Gilboa, a troubled King Saul seeks out a forbidden sorceress, hoping that she may call up a spirit who can counsel him from beyond the grave. It's a fascinating story because Saul has already banished all the witches from the land. And yet when push comes to shove, he's showing up at the local wise woman's house to get the true skinny on the upcoming battle. WOMAN: "Then Saul said unto his servants, 'Seek me a woman that hath a familiar spirit, that I may go to her and inquire of her.' And his servant said to him, 'Behold. There is a woman that hath a familiar spirit at Endor." 1 Samuel 28:7. [light music] LEONARD NIMOY: King Saul visits the witch in the village of Endor on the outskirts of Nazareth. He asks her to summon the prophet Samuel from the dead so that he may receive Samuel's wisdom before the battle. The witch obeys the king's request. CAROLE FONTAINE: She digs a ritual pit, makes a little sacrifice, and, sure enough, she brings up the ghost of Samuel the prophet from the land of the dead. LEONARD NIMOY: Tragically, the ghost has only ominous news for the troubled king. The specter of Samuel predicts that Saul will die in battle. On the next day, Samuel's terrible prophecy of doom is fulfilled. Why does the Bible, while forbidding witchcraft, contain this enigmatic story of a revered Hebrew king visiting a witch in his time of need? It is an ancient mystery which remains unanswered. [heavy music] LEONARD NIMOY: In the 14th century, all Europe was overrun by a mysterious plague known as the Black Death. As the scourge swept across the land, whole villages were decimated. In all of Europe, one in every three would perish. With the onset of the Black Death came hysteria, the fear that a great inescapable evil had descended upon the land. With this fear came the belief that this misfortune was the work of the devil himself. Throughout Europe, the Church established a tribunal known as the Inquisition to root out all religious heretics feared as the dangerous accomplices of the devil. [mysterious music] By the late 14th century, one form of heresy was judged to be especially malevolent. Witchcraft is defined as the most heinous of all forms of heresy because it is when you sell your soul to the devil. And it puts not just the individual, not just the Church at risk. It puts all of society at risk. LEONARD NIMOY: Spawned by the growing panic, the image of the witch became magnified by the popular imagination into a terrifying reality. In the hysteria of the time, many believed that witches possessed the powers of flight. Surprisingly, as early as the 16th century, scholars suspected there might be a medical reason why those who practiced witchcraft believed they could fly. One German physician at the time, Johann Bayer, suggested that the fantasies of flight were actually a result of witches anointing themselves with a hallucinogenic drug called datura. [soft music] As depicted in this early silent film, it was believed that witches flew to their dreaded nocturnal gatherings known as sabbaths. BRIAN LEVACK: The witch was believed to have made a face-to-face pact with the devil. And the witch was believed to actually worship the devil in large nocturnal assemblies. And, indeed, at these sabbaths to which they allegedly flew, there were various forms of immoral activity. It was believed that there was promiscuous sex taking place at the sabbath. So, indeed, you have the image of a secret society that reverses all the moral norms of society. LEONARD NIMOY: The sabbath was believed to be a frenzy of naked dancing and gluttonous feasting on the flesh of human infants. It reached its climax with the appearance of Satan, the prince of darkness himself, who would have sexual intercourse with the assembled witches in an unbridled orgy. [ominous music] The imagery of the witches' sabbat with its panoply of prohibited sexuality had a fascinating appeal to the people of that time, especially when we consider that celibacy and control of sexual impulse has always been considered an appropriate expression of Christian behavior. [soft flute music] LEONARD NIMOY: In 1486, a book was written to assist the witch hunters in the grim task of identifying and prosecuting witches. The work was entitled the "Malleus Maleficarum" or the "Hammer Against Witches." Penned by two Dominican monks in Germany, Jacob Sprenger and Heinrich Kramer, the "Malleus" expressed the prevailing belief of the time, that women were sexually vulnerable beings, easy prey for the devil. MAN: "What else is a woman but a foe to friendship? They are evil, lecherous, vain, and lustful. All witchcraft comes from carnal lust, which is, in women, insatiable." The "Malleus Maleficarum." CAROLE FONTAINE: Although there had been witch hunting manuals before the printing of the "Malleus Maleficarum," it was actually Jacob Sprenger and Heinrich Kramer who linked lust and the particular condition of women's bodies to demonology and witchcraft. ELIZABETH SAY: It's very specific. I mean, it's incredibly detailed. How do you know witches? How do you target them? For example, you never begin asking someone, "Are you a witch?" You ask them, "When did you become a witch?" LEONARD NIMOY: For 200 years, the lurid descriptions in the "Malleus" would serve as a manual for zealous witch hunters. Ironically, this book of intolerance and persecution was, in its own time, second only to the Bible in popularity. [soft music] The victims of the persecution that the "Malleus" helped to inspire were often the people who were doing the most to help their community. BRIAN LEVACK: When villagers felt that they had been harmed magically, that they had been the victims of witchcraft, there was a natural tendency to suspect that women were the witches who had harmed them. And that probably is because women performed functions that were very, very closely associated with magic. Women were the cooks. Women were the healers. Women were the midwives. [baby coos] LEONARD NIMOY: Most of the accused witches were older, widowed, or single. Many were adept in the use of herbs for healing. Ironically, these skills made them objects of suspicion, for if these women could heal with potions and herbs, could they not also do terrible harm as well? There are cases on record in which, for example, a midwife has been practicing apparently with great success for 15, 20, 30 years. Suddenly, she's accused of witchcraft, killing babies at the behest of Satan. And out of the woodwork, there come people who she has delivered babies with for a generation who suddenly say, in fact, she's guilty. [heavy music] LEONARD NIMOY: Why were friends and family members so quick to accuse the innocent of witchcraft? It is a question which baffles historians to this day. And still, the worst was yet to come. Fueled by intense fear and hatred, the flames of the Inquisition seemed unquenchable. Soon, thousands would be snared in the web of terror and betrayal. Once the accused witches were arrested, the true horror began. LEONARD NIMOY: By the end of the 1600s, throughout Europe, the witch hunting hysteria had reached its peak. Thousands were arrested and brought before inquisitors for examination. [slinking music] [shouting] Under the inquisitor's brutal scrutiny, the accused witches were stripped and searched. And they were prodded mercilessly with long needles to find the mark of the devil. With the Inquisitor, any suspicious wart, mole, or birthmark could be enough to condemn someone to death. [shouting] Once evidence of witchcraft was found, a confession was required, for it was against the law to execute a witch without one. The practice of torture, which had been banned for centuries, was revived to extract them. Some of the most horrendous and, in some ways, sophisticated methods of torture that were developed were developed during the Inquisition, tortures that are really too horrific almost for us to imagine any human being surviving through. The whole phrase "the third degree" can be traced back to this medieval period of torture that there were three degrees of torture and that the third degree was the degree that killed the person being tortured. [heavy music] LEONARD NIMOY: Instruments such as thumbscrews, leg screws, head clamps, and the iron maiden were all designed to inflict unbearable pain. Incredibly, even under torture, the witch was viewed as highly dangerous. The "Malleus Maleficarum" warned the torturer never to look a witch in the eye for fear of her evil powers. Because if you look into her eyes, you might have compassion for her. And in the book, it says this is her casting her spell on you. But what that means is there was no room left-- no room left-- for the Inquisitor to have any compassion for the person that was being tortured. LEONARD NIMOY: Under torture, most accused witches confessed to the most heinous of crimes. To avoid more suffering, they told their torturers what they thought they wanted to hear. BRIAN LEVACK: In the hope of getting these people to confess to the fantasies that judges and inquisitors had developed and, indeed, had acquired from their reading, these people were subject to excruciating physical pain. And we do know that if the pain is severe enough, we will confess to almost anything that our inquisitors want us to confess to. LEONARD NIMOY: To determine guilt or innocence, the English devised a method known as swimming the witch. [tense music] If the accused floated, she was judged a witch and condemned to death. If she sank and drowned, she was judged innocent. Either way, the suspect was doomed. For thousands of others in Europe, however, death came by fire. But why this method of execution? Scholars believe it was thought that only when the witch's body had been reduced to ashes would her evil sorcery truly be destroyed. [soft music] On the fateful day, the condemned would be packed into a wagon and paraded through narrow cobblestone streets to the village square. There, the accused witch was bound to the stake. Records show that on a single day in one village square in Germany, 139 alleged witches were burned to death. The town historian noted that the place of execution looked like a small wood from the number of stakes. [screaming] For the 200 years known as the Burning Times, witch hunts erupted like sporadic wildfires across Europe. The worst persecution would take place in the rural villages of France and Germany. There, under interrogation and torture, suspects were forced to surrender the names of their neighbors. But why did the fury of the witch hunts escalate so rapidly? Who did you practice with? Who else is involved in your rituals? You torture someone enough, you will give what is wanted in order to end the torture. And if it means naming someone, then you name someone. But this begins an escalating circle, an ever-widening circle. And eventually, you would have dozens, maybe hundreds of people who have been named as a result of one or two women originally being identified as witches. [soft music] LEONARD NIMOY: Perhaps no town in the 16th century captured the horror of the Burning Times more shockingly than Wurzburg, Germany. There, the overzealous magistrates decided that almost the entire town was possessed by the devil. They condemned 600 people to death. 19 were priests. 41 were children. There were towns, in Germany in particular, where there were no women left after the inquisitors came through. Everyone was killed. [dramatic music] LEONARD NIMOY: When the fires of the Burning Times have finally smoldered into ashes, thousands had perished. Exactly how many actually died will perhaps always remain a mystery. Scholars estimates range from 60,000 to 300,000 victims. Although the fires of the Burning Times in Europe started to die out by the late 1600s, the witch hunting frenzy would spread to the New World. LEONARD NIMOY: In the strange and terrible history of the witch, perhaps no incident is more startling or more hotly debated than an event which took place in an obscure village in Massachusetts, a phenomenon which still haunts scholars with unanswered questions. During the Salem witch trials of 1692, in a few terror-filled months, nearly 200 people would be condemned as witches. 14 women and five men would be hanged on Salem's Gallows Hill. How did the witch hunt of 1692 begin? And why here? The settlement of Salem was named after the holy city of Jerusalem. But here, the Puritans had found no land of milk and honey. Salem had endured 20 years of Indian wars. It was wracked by internal pressures, land disputes, and deep religious divisions tore at the struggling community. Though the Puritans clung to their strict religion, it offered little comfort. Eternal damnation was an ever present threat. And the world of demons seemed as real as the hard New England soil. [heavy music] RICHARD GODBEER: People living in the 17th century tended to believe that most things could be explained supernaturally. If you stumped your toe or if your cow fell sick or if your food went rotten before it should have done, there must surely be some kind of supernatural explanation for this. [mysterious music] LEONARD NIMOY: Ironically, scholars believe that the witch hysteria of 1692 began in the home of a Puritan minister, the Reverend Samuel Parris. Even more surprisingly, the event which sparked the ensuing terror was a child's game. It started when the Reverend Parris's daughter, Elizabeth, and his niece, Abigail Williams, were playing a game with the household slave, Tituba. RICHARD GODBEER: They had been using a primitive crystal ball. This consisted of a glass of water with a raw egg broken into it. And then they would gaze into it, ask a question, and hope that images would come out or appear in the water. Well, at one of these experiments, one of the girls believed that instead of seeing the features of a wealthy, attractive future husband, she saw, instead, a coffin. [heavy dramatic music] LEONARD NIMOY: Besieged by apparitions of death, the girls were soon thrown into convulsions. Within days, nine other girls in Salem was simultaneously stricken with the same mysterious affliction. Under pressure from the Reverend Parris, the girls reveal the names of three witches whom they said had caused their possession-- Tituba, the household slave, Sarah Good, a poor beggar woman, and Sarah Osborne, a widow rumored to have had an illicit affair with one of her servants. All three were outsiders in the community, easy targets for suspicion. What motivated the girls to make their astonishing accusations? What was the source of their possession? There are two possible explanations of the girls' fits at Salem. One is that they were experiencing some kind of psychological malady that they were hysterical in one way or another. The other explanation is that they were being deliberately deceptive, that they were practicing some kind of fraud. CAROLE FONTAINE: It may have been, at least on the part of the young girls who claimed to be bewitched, a real form of social release. They were so tightly controlled and their status in patriarchal Puritan households was so marginal that this was a way of becoming the center of attention. [soft music] LEONARD NIMOY: Although it might seem incredible in modern times, the accusations made by the possessed girls in Salem were taken seriously by the local authorities. They set up a tribunal to investigate the charges. What compelled the local magistrates to convene these extraordinary trials? Surprisingly, some scholars believe that the trials may have concealed a political agenda. One common explanation has been that the parents and relatives of the girls used the accusations as a way to attack their enemies. And it's extremely striking that most of the accusers came from one side of the factional dispute and most of the accused from the other side. LEONARD NIMOY: Sparked by the Salem trials, the hysteria spread to 24 outlying villages. By September 1692, the jails overflowed with nearly 200 accused witches. 27 were found guilty, and 19 were hanged. After execution, their bodies, forbidden a proper Christian burial, were left to rot in the open air on Salem's Gallows Hill. Why did the witch trials finally end? Some scholars believe the trials ended quickly because the witch hunters accused one victim too many, the wife of the governor of Massachusetts. With the power structure in New England seemingly threatened, the leaders saw to it that the trials were abruptly stopped. What ultimately brought the terrors of the Burning Times in the Old and New World to an end? It remains an intriguing mystery. Some scholars believe that the advent of science may be a decisive factor. ELIZABETH SAY: The witchcraft trials come to an end for many reasons. But I think a large part of the reason was that society moved away from its fear of the supernatural and the unexplainable. You curse your neighbor's cow, and the cow dies the next day, and suddenly, you're a witch. Well, as different explanations for why the cow bloated up and died become available, the identification of witchcraft as the source of all evil in society will begin to diminish. And it eventually will disappear. LEONARD NIMOY: And yet, strangely, despite the growth of science, the belief in witchcraft was far from over. LEONARD NIMOY: Over hundreds of years, with the rise of science, the fearsome image of the witch gradually faded. [liquid bubbling] By the early 20th century, the dreaded sorceress was reduced to the outrageous Halloween witch of popular culture. Yet surprisingly, in our own time, there has been a dramatic rebirth of the ancient arts of witchcraft. An estimated 200,000 men and women in the United States and Europe have dedicated themselves to following the ancient path of the witch. After so many centuries of persecution, why would anyone choose to be called a witch? Through the centuries, there have been so many misconceptions about witches-- the green-faced warted hag that wears the conical hat, the night flyer, the sorceress or sorcerer who works as the devil's consort. There are many negative connotations and myths about witches. But I will assure you that all are very untrue. LEONARD NIMOY: What sparked the modern revival of ancient witchcraft? Scholars have traced its rebirth back to the astonishing work of a young British archaeologist named Margaret Murray. In her controversial book, "The Witch-Cult in Western Europe," published in 1921, Murray presented a startling theory. She insisted that in European history, witchcraft had not been an obscure cult but a dominant religious force. She argued that the witches who were prosecuted in the 15th and 16th and 17th centuries were actually the practitioners of a pagan religion, which she claimed was the main popular religion throughout Europe. LEONARD NIMOY: Murray's romantic vision of a powerful cult of witches was soon discredited by historians. But her popular book sparked a renewed fascination with witchcraft. By the mid-20th century, modern witchcraft had become the spiritual path for thousands of believers. They called their religion Wicca from an ancient Anglo-Saxon word meaning craft of the wise. Inspired by these early origins, modern witches rely on the simplest of ritual elements-- candles, herbs, incense, and crystals, which they believe can be imbued with magical power. But how might these powers work? BARBARA AMADEA MACGRAW: When we harness the forces of nature, in essence, what we're doing is kind of like a very directed, powerful sending of a prayer. LEONARD NIMOY: Of all the rituals of contemporary witchcraft, the sabbath is perhaps the most important. WITCH: Powers of the west, powers of the waters, be here now! WITCHES: Blessed be. LEONARD NIMOY: The modern witches' sabbath is in no way connected to the dreaded sabbath of the Burning Times. There is no pact with the devil. Instead, the roots of this modern sabbath can be traced back to much earlier traditions, the pagan rituals that marked the Earth's changing seasons. This midsummer night's sabbath is traditionally observed on the shortest night of the year. In the hills above Los Angeles, these witches come together to celebrate the season. BARBARA AMADEA MACGRAW: For a witch, the divine is not separate from the world. This is the plane of the sacred. There isn't some place else to go. We are not on some linear course that ends in some judgment. We are in an ever-continuing, ever-changing circle. LEONARD NIMOY: How do modern witches use their magical powers? Claiming their ancient heritage, the followers of Wicca seek to live by a code of conduct summed up in a single age-old phrase. "Do what you will, but harm none." When you become a witch, the first thing you learn about this natural power of the universe, which is all around us and that we use all the time-- every single member of the human race uses it-- is that it hurts. You can burn your fingers with it. Therefore, you use it wisely. You use it in a positive sense. [soft music] I think modern people, at least for most of this century, probably didn't believe in witchcraft because we now live in a mechanistic world. Matter is dead for us. It is something to be exploited. It is not imbued with magical powers. I think, though, that we're beginning to shift from that old Newtonian universe through Einstein's universe of infinite possibilities into a postmodern world where we powerfully understand the effect of random events and the effect of the observable. [soft music] LEONARD NIMOY: After enduring centuries of misunderstanding, the witch has once again returned to reclaim her ancient heritage, one that for generations was branded as evil but which scholars believe was, in fact, a legacy of ancient wisdom. [light music] In our own time Wicca, the spiritual path of the witch, is recognized as an official religion. And like other religions, it is imbued with a faith in divine powers, with a profound respect for the forces of nature, and the love of humanity. Like all quests of the spirit, it is one rich with magical possibilities. [theme music]
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Channel: HISTORY
Views: 656,465
Rating: 4.7921619 out of 5
Keywords: history, history channel, history shows, ancient mysteries, history ancient mysteries, ancient mysteries show, ancient mysteries full episodes, ancient mysteries clips, mysteries, aetv, a&e tv, Ancient Mysteries season 4 episode 5, Ancient Mysteries s4 e5, Ancient Mysteries s04 e5, Ancient Mysteries 4X5, Ancient Mysteries fullepisodes, watch ancient mysteries, watch full episodes history, ancient mysteries season 4 clips, watch ancient mysteries full episodes, Past of WITCHES
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Length: 46min 20sec (2780 seconds)
Published: Wed Jul 15 2020
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