Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of
Speaker 1: the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all
Speaker 1: of these amazing tales are right there on display, just
Speaker 1: waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
Speaker 1: History is full of stories brought to us by undercover journalists,
Speaker 1: intrepid reporters who risk their life, limb and freedom to
Speaker 1: get the ungettable scoop. Their reporting has spark reform and
Speaker 1: changed the world, but few can boast a career to rival.
Speaker 1: Nellie Bly born in eighteen sixty four as Elizabeth Jane Cochrane.
Speaker 1: She began writing under the pen name Nellie Bly when
Speaker 1: she was just fifteen years old. Despite her obvious instincts
Speaker 1: for investigative work, Nellie's first newspaper, the Pittsburgh Dispatch, relegated
Speaker 1: her topics they associated with female readers. She was stuck
Speaker 1: writing about fashion, garden parties, and society gossip, which frustrated
Speaker 1: her to no end. So at twenty two, she quit
Speaker 1: her job and headed to New York City. She hoped
Speaker 1: to launch a career in writing hard hitting articles for
Speaker 1: a serious newspaper. Now in eighteen eighty seven, there were
Speaker 1: few papers as serious or respected as Joseph Pulitzer's New
Speaker 1: York World. Nellie managed to get a meeting with a
Speaker 1: company's managing editor, then pitched him her idea for a
Speaker 1: piece on the immigrant experience. The editor, though, wasn't interested
Speaker 1: in her story, but he was impressed by Nellie's tenacity,
Speaker 1: so he offered her another assignment. If she could get
Speaker 1: into the mental health asylum on Blackwell's Island, spend a
Speaker 1: week there, and then write about what she saw, he
Speaker 1: would publish the story and give her a job. Nellie
Speaker 1: accepted the challenge and immediately got to work formulating a plan.
Speaker 1: Her first step was to check into a temporary boarding house.
Speaker 1: After staying up all night so that her eyes were
Speaker 1: rimmed with shadows, she started going around the building, accusing
Speaker 1: the other tenants of being insane. She made such a
Speaker 1: disturbance that the police were called. The next morning. When
Speaker 1: she was hauled in front of a judge, Nellie feigned amnesia,
Speaker 1: claiming I don't remember, I don't remember, over and over again.
Speaker 1: She was examined by several doctors who quickly concluded that
Speaker 1: she was quote positively demented and undoubtedly insane. Within days
Speaker 1: of her arrest, Nellie boarded a tiny boat bound for
Speaker 1: Blackwell's Island. The conditions that the asylum turned out to
Speaker 1: be far worse than she had expected. The facility was
Speaker 1: crawling with rats, the food barely edible, the drinking water filthy.
Speaker 1: Patients were tied together with rope, made to sit on
Speaker 1: hard benches for hours, and taken for walks in the
Speaker 1: cold while wearing thin clothing. Worst of all, the nurses
Speaker 1: insulted and beat the patience when they stepped out of line.
Speaker 1: After her week was complete, Nellie tried to convince the
Speaker 1: hospital staff to let her go, but they ignored her. Eventually,
Speaker 1: her editor arrived and convinced them to release her, explaining
Speaker 1: that she was a reporter on assignment. Nellie had spent
Speaker 1: ten days on Blackwell's Island. She wrote a series of
Speaker 1: six articles about her experience, which were published that October.
Speaker 1: The story stunned the public, which had never before gotten
Speaker 1: such a clear look at the inner workings of a
Speaker 1: mental health facility. An investigation into the asylum's practices was launched,
Speaker 1: eventually leading to increased funding for mental health patients, and
Speaker 1: Nellie became a star. She kept working as a journalist
Speaker 1: for The New York World, covering subjects from corrupt lobbying
Speaker 1: practices to the women's suffrage movement. Her groundbreaking work inspired
Speaker 1: a surge and female investigative journalists derisively termed stunt girl journalists.
Speaker 1: The implication was that these women were simply after attention,
Speaker 1: not capable of real reporting. But for Nellie Bly, it
Speaker 1: was hardly a gimmick. From the first day of her
Speaker 1: career to the last, her fearlessness and dogged pursuit of
Speaker 1: the truth were second to none. She did whatever it
Speaker 1: took to get her story, and in the process, she
Speaker 1: became one herself. The rangers at the Grand Canyon had
Speaker 1: a problem. Their park was crawling with an invasive species,
Speaker 1: and they had been tasked with getting rid of the animals.
Speaker 1: After reviewing their options, it was determined that relocating the
Speaker 1: critters would be prohibitively expensive. Their best option was to
Speaker 1: hunt them down one by one and purge them from
Speaker 1: the park. The animal in question wasn't a type of
Speaker 1: rat or snake, or even an insect. It wasn't a bear, coyote,
Speaker 1: fox or other animal typical of American parks. The creatures
Speaker 1: causing all the fuss were burrows. Burrow is Spanish for donkey.
Speaker 1: The terms are interchangeable, but in the Western US, burrow
Speaker 1: is commonly used to signify wild members of the species,
Speaker 1: and that's exactly what the Canyon burroughs were. After being
Speaker 1: brought to Arizona from Spain in the fifteen hundreds, many
Speaker 1: of the hardy animals had gotten loose and multiplied. Eventually
Speaker 1: they become a common sight at the Grand Canyon, where
Speaker 1: they were occasionally caught and used as pack animals. While
Speaker 1: the burroughs were popular with tourists, they presented a very
Speaker 1: real problem for the park. They destroyed natural vegetation, they
Speaker 1: drove out native species, and defecated in local streams, so
Speaker 1: as early as the nineteen twenties, rangers started hunting them down,
Speaker 1: mostly without the awareness of the public. But that changed
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty three when children's author Marguerite Henry published
Speaker 1: Brightly of the Grand Canyon. The novel told a fictionalized
Speaker 1: story of a very real wild burrow who lived in
Speaker 1: the park for thirty years between eighteen ninety two and
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty two. When he was alive, Brightley was beloved
Speaker 1: by tourists and park staff alike. He made a name
Speaker 1: for himself as a stubborn, friendly guy who loved pancakes
Speaker 1: and hated hard work like most of us. Right, he
Speaker 1: made an exception for a boy named Bob McKee, whose
Speaker 1: parents managed a tourist facility on the North Rim. Bob
Speaker 1: could always get Bridy to help him collect fresh water
Speaker 1: from a nearby spring, and they spent countless hours together
Speaker 1: wandering through the terrain. Unsurprisingly, the children's book skirted how
Speaker 1: the real Bridie died. One winter, he got snowed in
Speaker 1: with a pair of cowboys during a blizzard. When they
Speaker 1: ran out of food, they resorted to eating the port donkey.
Speaker 1: It was a sad ending, but far from the conclusion
Speaker 1: of Bridie's story. The children's books soon became a movie,
Speaker 1: turning him into a minor celebrity. A bronze statue of
Speaker 1: Bridy was commissioned to promote the movie. It was later
Speaker 1: gifted to the Grand Canyon National Park and placed at
Speaker 1: South Rim Visitor Center. This was a bit of a
Speaker 1: problem for the park rangers, though, who were still trying
Speaker 1: to deal with their own borough problem. In nineteen seventy six,
Speaker 1: they ramped up efforts to wipe the invasive species from
Speaker 1: the park. This time, when the public found out that
Speaker 1: the rangers were killing the boroughs, they immediately thought of Brdy.
Speaker 1: Protests were held, Scathing editorials were written. Politicians received thousands
Speaker 1: of letters from kids begging them to save the boroughs.
Speaker 1: The park responded by putting Brdy's statue in storage, which
Speaker 1: just angered people more. Pretty soon they had a serious
Speaker 1: pr crisis on their hands. Luckily, by this point, Brdy's
Speaker 1: cause had generated some serious donations, almost half a million dollars.
Speaker 1: The money was used to airlift over five hundred boroughs
Speaker 1: from the Grand Canyon by helicopter, relocating them to a
Speaker 1: ranch in Texas. Afterwards, the park rangers quietly hunted down
Speaker 1: the remaining boroughs, then put up a fence to keep
Speaker 1: any more from getting in. At the urging of the
Speaker 1: public look, Brdy's statue was taken out of storage and
Speaker 1: put back on display. Today, he can be found in
Speaker 1: the Grand Canyon Lodge, knows shiny from thousands of hands
Speaker 1: touching it. His current spot is near the place where
Speaker 1: Bob McKee's family lived back when he and Bridy collected
Speaker 1: water together. He'd been through quite the journey, become a
Speaker 1: movie star and the focal point for a battle between
Speaker 1: environmentalists and animal rights activists. But in the end, the
Speaker 1: faral Donkey found his way back home. I hope you've
Speaker 1: enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe
Speaker 1: for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the
Speaker 1: show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was
Speaker 1: created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership with how Stuff Works.
Speaker 1: I make another award winning show called Lore, which is
Speaker 1: a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can
Speaker 1: learn all about it over at the Worldolore dot com.
Speaker 1: And until next time, stay curious.