Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild.
Speaker 2: Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history
Speaker 2: is an open book, all of these amazing tales are
Speaker 2: right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. A lot of us
Speaker 2: probably grew up with childhood pets, dogs, cats, goldfish, hamsters,
Speaker 2: maybe a lizard or a snake. If you were the
Speaker 2: adventurous type, that is, and if you're anything like me,
Speaker 2: your pets were more than just animals. They were friends,
Speaker 2: They were parts of the family. And that's how it
Speaker 2: was for the person at the center of this story too.
Speaker 2: Her name was Mary Sawyer. She was born on her
Speaker 2: family's farm in Sterling, massachuse It's in eighteen oh six,
Speaker 2: and at ten years old, she developed a curiously close
Speaker 2: relationship with one of the farm animals. One afternoon in
Speaker 2: eighteen sixteen, Mary was out doing chores with her father
Speaker 2: when she stumbled on a tiny white figure laying in
Speaker 2: the grass. It was a baby lamb. It had been
Speaker 2: abandoned by its mother, and now it was curled up
Speaker 2: there sick, frail, and helpless, Mary begged her father to
Speaker 2: let her bring the lamb home and try to nurse
Speaker 2: it back to health. He said okay, so she scooped
Speaker 2: up the animal off the ground and carried it into
Speaker 2: the house. There, she wrapped the lamb in a piece
Speaker 2: of old clothing and sat with it in front of
Speaker 2: the fireplace all night long. By the time the sun rose,
Speaker 2: the lamb was strong enough to stand up on its own.
Speaker 2: For the next few days, Mary fed at milk from
Speaker 2: their family's sheep. Mary grew to love that lamb, and
Speaker 2: it loved her too. As soon as it could walk,
Speaker 2: it started following her everywhere, which was, you know, cute,
Speaker 2: until the ten year old had to go to school.
Speaker 2: That is, One morning, as Mary and her brother Nat
Speaker 2: walked to the red Stone School, Mary heard a faint
Speaker 2: bleeding sound behind her. She turned around and saw the
Speaker 2: lamb trotting up the street. Nat suggested that they bring
Speaker 2: the animal to school. The kids got to class before
Speaker 2: their teacher, Miss Kimball. Mary put her lamb underneath her
Speaker 2: desk and covered it with a basket, hoping that she'd
Speaker 2: be able to keep it hidden. Miss Kimball arrived the
Speaker 2: lesson began, and for a while everything seemed to be
Speaker 2: going according to plan. But then the teacher called on
Speaker 2: Mary to stand up and read something out loud. When
Speaker 2: Mary got up from her seat, the lamb jumped out
Speaker 2: from beneath the basket. It bleeded super loudly, and just
Speaker 2: like that, the ruse was up. Mary turned bright red.
Speaker 2: She was worried that she was going to get in trouble,
Speaker 2: but Miss Kimball didn't look angry. She was doubled over laughing.
Speaker 2: So were all of Mary's classmates. Apparently, the image of
Speaker 2: Mary being followed around by a lamb who was so
Speaker 2: clearly obsessed with her was hilarious. Still, Miss Kimball told
Speaker 2: Mary that she couldn't bring the pet back to school
Speaker 2: in the future.
Speaker 1: The animal home and it stayed there. However, the lamb's
Speaker 1: story was far from over. The Next day at school,
Speaker 1: an older student named John Rolson handed Mary a piece
Speaker 1: of paper. On it was a poem he had written.
Speaker 1: It said, Mary had a little lamb. Its fleece was
Speaker 1: white as snow, and everywhere that Mary went, the lamb
Speaker 1: was sure to go. And thus an immortal nursery rhyme
Speaker 1: was born. Well sort of There's actually some debate about
Speaker 1: how Mary had a Little Lamb became such a popular rhyme.
Speaker 1: The story that I just told you is Mary Sawyer's
Speaker 1: version of the events. However, the poem wasn't actually published
Speaker 1: until fourteen years later in a book written by Sarah
Speaker 1: Josepha Hale. When Mary saw the poem in print, she
Speaker 1: was confused. Sarah's version included three extra stanzas which talked
Speaker 1: about the lamb being caught in the classroom, but Mary
Speaker 1: had no idea how Sarah knew the story or how
Speaker 1: she got the lines that John Rollstone had written. According
Speaker 1: to Sarah, she didn't know the Stone and she hadn't
Speaker 1: taken any lines from John. She claimed that she made
Speaker 1: up the entire poem on her own. By this point,
Speaker 1: John Rollstone was dead and the slip of paper that
Speaker 1: he'd given to Mary was long gone, without any proof
Speaker 1: that he had penned the poem. Mary and Sarah's literary
Speaker 1: feud continued for years. Finally, they both agreed to sign
Speaker 1: a statement saying that the other was not lying, which
Speaker 1: was pretty confusing. It meant that Mary conceded that Sarah's
Speaker 1: poem was original, while Sarah conceded that she hadn't plagiarized
Speaker 1: the first stanza, and the story itself both couldn't be
Speaker 1: true at the same time. But there you are. Even
Speaker 1: after Mary Sarah and that Little Lamb passed away, people
Speaker 1: still argued over the nursery rhyme's true origin. In nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty seven, over one hundred years later, a book titled
Speaker 1: The Story of Mary and Her Little Lamb was published.
Speaker 1: The author argued that John Rollstone should get credit for
Speaker 1: writing the famous rhyme. As for that author's name, it
Speaker 1: was a guy named Henry Ford. He'd become so obsessed
Speaker 1: with the legendary lamb that he not only wrote a
Speaker 1: book about it, but he also purchased the Redstone School
Speaker 1: where the entire saga had begun. These days, Sarah Josepha
Speaker 1: Hale is usually credited as the author of Mary Had
Speaker 1: a Little Lamb, But now you know that the real
Speaker 1: story is far more complicated and a lot more curious.
Speaker 1: When discussing how he built his entertainment empire, Walt Disney
Speaker 1: once said, if you can dream it, you can do it,
Speaker 1: which certainly sounds nice, right, And if it were true,
Speaker 1: the world would be a much simpler place. But Disney's
Speaker 1: advice ignores the more practical aspects of business. Just take
Speaker 1: the story of one of his contemporaries, the automobile mogul
Speaker 1: Henry Ford, for example. Ford had no shortage of dreams.
Speaker 1: Born in eighteen sixty three in a Michigan farming town,
Speaker 1: he moved to Detroit at sixteen to begin working as
Speaker 1: a machine operator's apprentice. In the late eighteen hundreds, he
Speaker 1: started toying around with the idea of a so called
Speaker 1: gasoline powered horseless carriage. Over ten years later, his rudimentary
Speaker 1: designs evolved into the world's first manufactured automobile, the Ford
Speaker 1: Model T. It was a hit from the moment that
Speaker 1: it went on the market in nineteen oh eight. Ford
Speaker 1: had to innovate to meet the ever growing demand for cars.
Speaker 1: You probably know that he invented the assembly line, which
Speaker 1: made the production of vehicles cheaper and more efficient, So
Speaker 1: finding labor wasn't necessarily the problem finding materials was. You see,
Speaker 1: by the late nineteen twenties, other car companies had sprung up.
Speaker 1: The production of vehicles was at at all time high.
Speaker 1: Sourcing materials became a challenge, and it was especially difficult
Speaker 1: and expensive to get rubber, which at the time was
Speaker 1: created from the sap of the rubber tree. While other
Speaker 1: companies might have tried to strike deals with rubber manufacturing plants, Ford, ever,
Speaker 1: the dreamer, went a different routes and I'm very different.
Speaker 1: Ford set a meeting with representatives from the Brazilian government.
Speaker 1: By the end of the conversation, he had purchased two
Speaker 1: point five million acres of land in the Amazon rainforest.
Speaker 1: He called his new property Fordlandia, and he planned to
Speaker 1: turn it into a self sufficient utopian city where he
Speaker 1: could farm an endless supply of rubber. Construction began immediately.
Speaker 1: Ford had a huge water tower installed. Cape Cod's style
Speaker 1: homes were built behind white picket fences. There were swimming pools,
Speaker 1: a tennis court, a golf course, and the most important
Speaker 1: part of all, miles upon miles of rubber trees were
Speaker 1: planted in Fordlandia. As for who actually did the planting, well,
Speaker 1: Ford hired native Brazilians. However, for all his lofty ideals
Speaker 1: about having a self sufficient utopian community, Ford put a
Speaker 1: lot of restrictions on what his living employees could do.
Speaker 1: No one was allowed to drink alcohol. Food was provided,
Speaker 1: but the menu consisted of brown rice, whole wheat, bread, oatmeal,
Speaker 1: and canned peaches. As you might imagine, this didn't do
Speaker 1: much to raise morale. Beyond the abysmal dining conditions ford
Speaker 1: Landia was dangerous. Sure. Ford had put in homes and
Speaker 1: luxury amenities, but he didn't really know anything about living
Speaker 1: in the Amazon. Deadly snakes prowled the area, scaring the employees.
Speaker 1: Malaria ran rampant because Ford didn't provide mosquito nets. After
Speaker 1: a while, employees started calling Henry Ford's utopia Inferno verde
Speaker 1: or green Hell. In nineteen thirty, they staged a rebellion
Speaker 1: that got so extreme that Brazilian military had to intervene.
Speaker 1: On top of all of this, Ford's rubber trees, the
Speaker 1: whole reason that he had started for Landia to begin with,
Speaker 1: weren't thriving the way he hoped. He brought in a
Speaker 1: botanist to figure out the problem. It turned out pretty
Speaker 1: much everything was wrong. You see, when rubber trees grow
Speaker 1: in the wild, they're usually pretty far away from one another,
Speaker 1: so they have ample room to expand. But Ford had
Speaker 1: put his trees in a tight grid, essentially suffocating them.
Speaker 1: Plus the soil quality in Fordlandia was so poor that
Speaker 1: even if the trees had been planted further apart, they
Speaker 1: probably wouldn't have grown anyway. By nineteen forty two, the
Speaker 1: Fordlandia farm was producing about seven hundred and fifty tons
Speaker 1: of latex each year, but in order for Ford's huge
Speaker 1: investment to break even, he needed to be producing fifty
Speaker 1: times that much thirty eight thousand tons, that is. But
Speaker 1: if Ford thought that it couldn't get any worse, his
Speaker 1: Amazonian utopia was soon plagued by fungus caterpillars and a
Speaker 1: blight on the rubber trees themselves. In nineteen forty five,
Speaker 1: he had to face the facts he could not do
Speaker 1: it simply because he had dreamed it. Fordlandia was an
Speaker 1: utter failure. So Ford sold the land back to the
Speaker 1: Brazilian government at a loss of about twenty million dollars.
Speaker 1: And get this, not a single drop of rubber produced
Speaker 1: in Fordlandia ever made it into a Ford vehicle. It
Speaker 1: didn't need to. Synthetic rubber became widely available in the
Speaker 1: nineteen forties, rendering Henry Ford's entire project useless. Of course,
Speaker 1: he still went down in his as one of the
Speaker 1: most savvy businessmen who ever lived These days, most people
Speaker 1: don't know about his Amazonian disaster, which is why I
Speaker 1: consider it my duty to bring the curious Tale of
Speaker 1: Fordlandia straight to your ears. I hope you've enjoyed today's
Speaker 1: guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free
Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by
Speaker 1: visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by
Speaker 1: me Aaron Mankey in partnership with how Stuff Works. I
Speaker 1: make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast,
Speaker 1: book series, and television show, and you can learn all
Speaker 1: about it over at the Worldoflore dot com. And until
Speaker 1: next time, stay curious.