Speaker 1: Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history
Speaker 1: is an open book, all of these amazing tales right
Speaker 1: there on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome
Speaker 1: to the Cabinet of Curiosities. Harry was really good at chess.
Speaker 1: I don't mean that in a casual way either. Harry
Speaker 1: was tried and tested in dozens of large tournaments and
Speaker 1: proved to be incredibly good at it. He started playing
Speaker 1: at the age of fifteen, and over the years that followed,
Speaker 1: became a master of the game. In he managed to
Speaker 1: become the United States representative in a British competition known
Speaker 1: as the Hastings Tournament. Most of the other chess players
Speaker 1: there were a lot older than him, and there's a
Speaker 1: rumor that they were a bit rude to him. He
Speaker 1: might have had something to do with his age, sure,
Speaker 1: but it was more likely to be connected to the
Speaker 1: cigars he smoked while he played. Whether or not they
Speaker 1: liked him didn't matter. Harry beat them all. I'm not
Speaker 1: going to sugarcoat this story. Harry didn't live long. He
Speaker 1: passed away in nineteen o six at the age of
Speaker 1: thirty three, but he left behind a legacy that still
Speaker 1: makes people scratch their heads today. Not for his typical
Speaker 1: victories in normal chess competitions, though, no, Henry built a
Speaker 1: reputation for something entirely different, group matches. He would sit
Speaker 1: down with a number of other chess players, each with
Speaker 1: their own game board and pieces set up, and then
Speaker 1: play against all of them simultaneously. It would often take
Speaker 1: place during an official tournament when many of the players
Speaker 1: had the day off, so these were just random players
Speaker 1: off the street. He was playing groups of the best
Speaker 1: chess players in the world, all at the same time,
Speaker 1: and he would win. Once he sat down with a
Speaker 1: group of sixteen players and beat thirteen of them. Another time,
Speaker 1: he played against twenty one contestants at a German tournament
Speaker 1: and managed to record eleven draws, three wins, and six losses.
Speaker 1: It was incredible to see as many people recorded one
Speaker 1: player managing to think through and compete with a dozen
Speaker 1: or more high level opponents at the same time. Well,
Speaker 1: it was amazing. His best match was in Moscow in
Speaker 1: nineteen o two. There he sat down with twenty two
Speaker 1: tournament players and beat all but one of them. If
Speaker 1: he hadn't died four years later, there's no telling what
Speaker 1: else he would have been able to accomplish. Henry Nelson
Speaker 1: Pillsbury was a phenomenon, and not just because he beat
Speaker 1: so many players at the same time. No, as if
Speaker 1: that weren't enough of a handicap, Henry managed to secure
Speaker 1: all of these records with one additional limitation. You see,
Speaker 1: he played each and every one of these group matches
Speaker 1: is seated in a chair facing away from his opponent's
Speaker 1: boards while others called out the moves to him. Henry
Speaker 1: Nelson Pillsbury wasn't blind, but he played each of these
Speaker 1: games as if he was. William was what you might
Speaker 1: call an explorer. He grew up at the end of
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century at a time in America when war
Speaker 1: was raging across the state of Kentucky. No, not that
Speaker 1: kind of war. This was the Kentucky Cave Wars, which
Speaker 1: was a sort of competition between the people lucky enough
Speaker 1: to own land over large cave systems who wanted to
Speaker 1: sell tickets to tourists. Honestly, it was like a lot
Speaker 1: of things in life. If there's money to be made,
Speaker 1: people have a tendency to get competitive about it. But
Speaker 1: of course this was a pretty odd business opportunity. If
Speaker 1: you owned land with access to a cave that people
Speaker 1: could walk into and look around, you could sell tickets
Speaker 1: for admission and make a living. Except in Kentucky there
Speaker 1: are a lot of caves. William was thirty seven years
Speaker 1: old and lived on his father's land in central Kentucky.
Speaker 1: About a decade before, he had discovered a cave on
Speaker 1: the family property there and had begun selling tickets to visitors.
Speaker 1: But there was a problem. The more popular Mammoth Cave
Speaker 1: was easier to get to, so it had the majority
Speaker 1: of the business in the area. Not one to be deterred,
Speaker 1: William formed a plan. If he could find another entrance
Speaker 1: to his family's own cave system, perhaps even one that
Speaker 1: was closer to the foot traffic near Mammoth Cave, he
Speaker 1: might be able to increase their business. So William went exploring,
Speaker 1: and in he found something promising. He called it Sand
Speaker 1: Cave and set about explore in it properly to make
Speaker 1: sure it would work for all his goals. On January
Speaker 1: he was crawling through a narrow part of the cave
Speaker 1: when his lantern went down, leaving him in the dark.
Speaker 1: Normally a very careful man, William accidentally kicked a large boulder,
Speaker 1: which somehow rolled onto one of his legs, crushing it
Speaker 1: and trapping him in the dark. His brothers and friends
Speaker 1: tried to get him out but failed. Rescue workers failed
Speaker 1: as well. A local college offered to send their entire
Speaker 1: basketball team, but the offer was politely declined. They did
Speaker 1: their best to keep Williams spirits up and brought him
Speaker 1: food and water, but at the end of the day
Speaker 1: he was trapped in a small cave, and that horror
Speaker 1: wasn't about to just go away. On February four, six
Speaker 1: days after becoming trapped, a group of men took him
Speaker 1: a meal, and on their way out, the entrance to
Speaker 1: the cave collapsed. William was still pinned beneath the boulder,
Speaker 1: but now he was also cut off from the rest
Speaker 1: of the world. His scuwers began to dig down from
Speaker 1: a different location, but it took them ten days. When
Speaker 1: they finally broke through and reached him on February, he
Speaker 1: was already dead. It took William's family another two months
Speaker 1: to retrieve his body, which they buried on their farm
Speaker 1: on April nineteen, and then, oddly, the entire family sold
Speaker 1: the farm two years later, moving away and leaving the
Speaker 1: family cemetery behind. The new owner, being very aware of
Speaker 1: the story of William's death, saw a business opportunity. He
Speaker 1: dug up the explorer's body and moved it to the
Speaker 1: cave there on his own land. He even had a
Speaker 1: glass box made for it so that everyone who visited
Speaker 1: would have a good view. Like the curiosity it was.
Speaker 1: It sat in its glass case for nearly two years,
Speaker 1: but in March of nineteen someone broke in and stole
Speaker 1: William's body. When it was recovered a week later, the
Speaker 1: damaged leg was missing. They the Corps put inside a
Speaker 1: metal coffin, secured it with chains, and then placed it
Speaker 1: deeper inside the cave. It stayed there until nineteen eighty nine.
Speaker 1: There might be a silver lining to all of this, though,
Speaker 1: When William became trapped in the cave back in nineteen five,
Speaker 1: the media went wild. Historians believed that roughly fifty thousand
Speaker 1: tourists came to the cave during those two weeks of
Speaker 1: agony for William. They bought food and drink from the
Speaker 1: local vendors, and then visited other nearby caves. Over fifty
Speaker 1: reporters traveled there as well, each one hoping to write
Speaker 1: the Great account of the ordeal. William Floyd Collins was
Speaker 1: a star for a while. The result was an explosion
Speaker 1: in public awareness of the Kentucky Cave system. In nineteen
Speaker 1: forty one, the US government declared the entire Mammoth Cave
Speaker 1: area to be a national park, protecting it for future
Speaker 1: generations to enjoy. Each year, over half a million people
Speaker 1: step inside and do a little exploring of their own safely.
Speaker 1: I hope, I hope You've enjoyed today's guided tour of
Speaker 1: the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast
Speaker 1: dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Mankey
Speaker 1: in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award
Speaker 1: winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series,
Speaker 1: and television show, and you can learn all about it
Speaker 1: over at the World of Lore dot com. And until
Speaker 1: next time, stay curious.