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: She grew up in an African paradise. Born in nineteen
Speaker 1: forty in Kenya, Wangari Mattai was surrounded by trees, plains,
Speaker 1: and rivers. She could see all kinds of exotic animals
Speaker 1: rights in her own backyard. By the time she reached adulthood,
Speaker 1: new programs in the United States and Kenya encouraged Kenyan
Speaker 1: women to receive the education they had previously been denied.
Speaker 1: Wangari took advancevantage of this. She had grown up seeing
Speaker 1: how women in Kenya were often treated. They were told
Speaker 1: to submit to their husbands and be easy to control,
Speaker 1: to not develop any skills outside of homemaking, and that
Speaker 1: wasn't the life that Wangari wanted. She received an undergraduate
Speaker 1: degree in biology at a university in Atchison, Kansas, of
Speaker 1: all places, and then a master's degree in biological sciences
Speaker 1: at a university in Pittsburgh. She then returned home to
Speaker 1: Kenya and attended the University of Nairobi, where in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy one, she became the first woman in all of
Speaker 1: East Africa to earn a doctorate a PhD in veterinary anatomy.
Speaker 1: Her education was clearly an adventure unto itself, but her
Speaker 1: story had only just begun, because as she worked at
Speaker 1: the university, more and more women from local villages came
Speaker 1: to ask for her help. Their water sources were drying up,
Speaker 1: their trees were dying, and they were having to walk
Speaker 1: farther and farther for food, water, and firewood. Wangari was
Speaker 1: shocked to hear that the paradise she had grown up
Speaker 1: in was falling apart. She set out to investigate and
Speaker 1: found a clear cause of this problem. Large commercial farms
Speaker 1: and tea plantations were diverting water for themselves and driving
Speaker 1: the surrounding villages into desolation and poverty. These enterprises were
Speaker 1: owned by the wealthy of Kenya and sometimes even by
Speaker 1: foreign investors. Putting her degrees into incredible use, Wangari devised
Speaker 1: a plan to plant hundreds of trees in the country,
Speaker 1: not only would they provide the villages with food and firewood,
Speaker 1: Their roots would help the rivers to retain more water. Eventually,
Speaker 1: this project, founded in nineteen seventy seven, came to be
Speaker 1: known as the Green Belt movement. The project wasn't just
Speaker 1: good for the environment, though it also provided women with
Speaker 1: employment and educational opportunities. Kenya was backsliding into anti women
Speaker 1: policies at the time, once again denying them greater roles
Speaker 1: in society. Planting trees helped to restore several villages, and
Speaker 1: Whngari felt that Kenya was beginning to turn toward a
Speaker 1: sustainable future, But by nineteen eighty nine, it was becoming
Speaker 1: increasingly clear that the country's president, Daniel arat moy was
Speaker 1: a corrupt dictator, more interested in selling off the country's
Speaker 1: resources than helping its people. President Moi wanted to help
Speaker 1: a British millionaire build an office park right in the
Speaker 1: middle of Uhuru Park, a massive green space in the
Speaker 1: center of Nairobi. Wungari couldn't stomach the idea of losing
Speaker 1: so many trees in what was already an urban area.
Speaker 1: She mobilized an international pressure campaign, bringing attention to the
Speaker 1: issue and raising money to sue the government. The courts
Speaker 1: sided with Wungari and the plan to build the office
Speaker 1: park was blocked. But this is when President Moy decided
Speaker 1: to show his true colors. He had Wangari and her
Speaker 1: followers arrested and charged with treason. They were set to
Speaker 1: be executed, but were saved at the last minute by
Speaker 1: humanitarian pressure from the United States. It might have been
Speaker 1: surprising to the rest of the world, but Wangari had
Speaker 1: seen her whole life how strong women were dealt with
Speaker 1: in Kenya. She wasn't afraid, and she was determined to
Speaker 1: keep fighting moist government. She continued to grow the green
Speaker 1: Belt movement until it spread to thirty other countries, planting
Speaker 1: literally millions of trees and providing employment and community for
Speaker 1: many disenfranchised people. She spoke out at every opportunity about
Speaker 1: corruption in Africa and how Western corporations were continuing to
Speaker 1: create inequality there. By two thousand and two, the movement
Speaker 1: had thrown its weight behind a candidate name m Y Kibaki,
Speaker 1: a challenger to Moy's presidency. Kibaki won the election and
Speaker 1: made Wanghari his environmental Minister. She had spent years doing
Speaker 1: everything she could to give back to the country that
Speaker 1: had provided her with such an idyllic childhood, not only
Speaker 1: that she had transformed it into a more sustainable place
Speaker 1: and a place where women could have more of a
Speaker 1: chance at equality. Wangari had not done any any of
Speaker 1: this for the accolades, which made it all the more
Speaker 1: surprising to her when in two thousand and four she
Speaker 1: became the first African woman to be awarded a Nobel
Speaker 1: Peace Prize. This sent a clear message to Western corporations
Speaker 1: that their plunder of Africa wasn't just bad for the environment,
Speaker 1: it was bad for people. It was truly inhumane. It
Speaker 1: might seem curious to some that the environment could be
Speaker 1: so closely linked to justice, but after all, people can't
Speaker 1: live without land and resources to provide for them, and
Speaker 1: it takes brave, tireless individuals like Wangari to remind us
Speaker 1: of that sacred connection between humanity and the earth. Elmer
Speaker 1: was born in Maine in eighteen eighty, but by the
Speaker 1: age of twenty he was headed west to start a
Speaker 1: new life after his mother and grandfather died through the Midwest,
Speaker 1: falling into a life of crime and joining a band
Speaker 1: of outlaws. He was the explosives guy, but he never
Speaker 1: quite got the hang of the job. For example, while
Speaker 1: trying to crack a safe during a train robbery, Elmer
Speaker 1: accidentally used too much dynamite and melted all the silver
Speaker 1: coins he was trying to steal. A few months later,
Speaker 1: during a bank heist, he managed to blow up the
Speaker 1: entire bank except for the safe, which remained unopened. Like
Speaker 1: I said, he was not the best at what he did.
Speaker 1: One other failure took place in October of nineteen eleven.
Speaker 1: That's when Elmer's crew tried to hijack a train carrying
Speaker 1: four hundred thousand dollars as it passed through Oklahoma. It
Speaker 1: was supposed to be one of the biggest heists in
Speaker 1: US history, but when Elmer and his accomplices climbed on board,
Speaker 1: they realized they had stopped the wrong train. The safe
Speaker 1: was completely empty, and the would be bandits made off
Speaker 1: with just forty six dollars and a jug of whiskey.
Speaker 1: It would help the story if at this point you
Speaker 1: just closed your eyes, gently, shook your head, and muttered
Speaker 1: with a sigh, oh Elmer. The very next morning, law
Speaker 1: enforcement caught up with Elmer, who was hiding in a
Speaker 1: barn in Oklahoma. There was an hour long standoff that
Speaker 1: involved a lot of shooting, but it ended when Elmer
Speaker 1: was shot in the chest. His body was taken to
Speaker 1: a local funeral home and EMBALMD. I mean, that was
Speaker 1: their job, right and they did it well. But because
Speaker 1: Elmer had no family, his body went unclaimed, not for days,
Speaker 1: not for weeks, but for years. And that was when
Speaker 1: the second act of his story began. At some point
Speaker 1: two carnival promoters purchased Elmer's corpse from the funeral home
Speaker 1: and propped him up as an exhibit in their traveling show,
Speaker 1: promoting him as the outlaw who would never be captured.
Speaker 1: And over the fifty years that followed, his body changed
Speaker 1: hands over and over again, making the rounds through more
Speaker 1: than a few traveling sideshows. And then in nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: eight he was sold to the Hollywood wax Museum, But
Speaker 1: when the museum closed for good later that same year,
Speaker 1: Elmer's corpse got jumbled up among all the wax mannequins.
Speaker 1: And that's a lot, isn't it. Few of us will
Speaker 1: take such a journey in life, and Elmer did it
Speaker 1: all while stiff as a board. He might not have
Speaker 1: been good as an outlaw, but Elmer sure knew how
Speaker 1: to get around. In the nineteen seventies, a camera crew
Speaker 1: was setting up in an abandoned theme park in Long Beach, California,
Speaker 1: called the House of Horrors. They were getting ready to
Speaker 1: film an episode of a TV show called The Six
Speaker 1: Million Dollar Man. Inside one of the creepy old rides,
Speaker 1: which was decorated with skeletons and wax mannekins, the director
Speaker 1: looked through the camera's viewfinder and told one of the
Speaker 1: crew members to move a glow in the dark mannekin
Speaker 1: that was hanging from a noose in the corner of
Speaker 1: the frame. The crew member grabbed the hanged man by
Speaker 1: the arm, and when he gave it a tug, the
Speaker 1: arm snapped off. As the director and the cameraman laughed
Speaker 1: about it, the crew member took a closer look and
Speaker 1: in the center of the broken arm was a brittle,
Speaker 1: white human bone. This was no mannequin. It was an
Speaker 1: actual mummified corpse. The film crew stopped laughing and immediately
Speaker 1: called the police. When the coroner's office took the mummy in,
Speaker 1: they found a few bizarre hints to the man's identity.
Speaker 1: His body was riddled with bullets that were more than
Speaker 1: seventy years old. In his pockets, they found ticket stubs
Speaker 1: to a wax museum, and in his mouth was a
Speaker 1: corroded penny dated nineteen twenty four. It took a little
Speaker 1: bit of detective work, but they eventually put a name
Speaker 1: to the mummy. He was a wild West outlaw named
Speaker 1: Elmer McCurdy. In April of nineteen seventy seven, Elmer was
Speaker 1: finally buried in a cemetery in Oklahoma. Two feets of
Speaker 1: concrete were poured over his grave to ensure that after
Speaker 1: all the years of exploitation, Elmer would finally be able
Speaker 1: to rest in one piece. I hope you enjoyed today's
Speaker 1: guided tour through the Cabinet of Curiosities. This show was
Speaker 1: created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership with iHeart Podcasts,
Speaker 1: researched and written by the Grim and Mild team, and
Speaker 1: produced by Jesse Funk. Learn more about the show and
Speaker 1: the people who make it over at Grimandmild dot com
Speaker 1: slash Curiosities. You'll also find a link to the official
Speaker 1: Cabinet of Curiosity's hardcover book, available in bookstores and online,
Speaker 1: as well as ebook and audiobook and if you're looking
Speaker 1: for an ad free option, consider joining our Patreon. It's
Speaker 1: all the same stories, but without the interruption for a
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Speaker 1: patreon dot com. Slash Grimandmild, and until next time, stay curious.