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Speaker 1: Welcomed Aaron Mankey's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of I

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Speaker 1: Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world is full

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Speaker 1: of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book,

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Speaker 1: all of these amazing tales are right there on display,

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Speaker 1: just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet

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Speaker 1: of Curiosities. According to legend, there exists a magical spring

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Speaker 1: capable of turning anyone who drinks its waters young again.

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Speaker 1: Countless explorers have gone looking for it, most famously pon Stalion,

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Speaker 1: the Spanish conquistador. The promise of immortality is compelling. Life

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Speaker 1: is so short already, and we don't have nearly enough

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Speaker 1: time to see and experience all of what it has

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Speaker 1: to offer. It's no wonder that the myth has persisted

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Speaker 1: to this. But one woman lived a full and satisfying

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Speaker 1: life unlike any other, and she didn't need a magical

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Speaker 1: elixir to do it. Her name was Margaret and Nieve,

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Speaker 1: born Marguerite and Harvey on the island of Guernsey in

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Speaker 1: seventeen ninety two. Her father had made a lot of

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Speaker 1: money as a merchant shipman as well as a privateer

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Speaker 1: during wartime, so the family was fairly well off. Margaret

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Speaker 1: had six younger siblings, two of whom died when they

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Speaker 1: were very young. She almost died herself when she was

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Speaker 1: little after taking a nasty fall down a flight of stairs. Luckily,

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Speaker 1: she survived, although the accident had left her with a

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Speaker 1: concussion that lasted for three days. Her father commanded Guernsey's

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Speaker 1: militia during the French Revolution at the end of the

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Speaker 1: eighteenth century, the time that she remembered as being particularly

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Speaker 1: tough for her and her family. Almost ten years later,

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Speaker 1: in eighteen oh seven, a fifteen year old Margaret and

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Speaker 1: her father set sail for the coastal town of Weymouth, Indorset, England,

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Speaker 1: but a bad storm during the trip tossed and turned

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Speaker 1: their boat around, forcing them to land on Chisel Beach

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Speaker 1: on the other side of Dorset. But Margaret made it

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Speaker 1: out unscathed and went on to attend a school in Bristol.

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Speaker 1: She developed a love for reading there, with a particular

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Speaker 1: fondness for poetry and literature. She also learned how to

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Speaker 1: speak fluent French and Italian while attending a finishing school

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Speaker 1: in Brussels when she was in her early twenties, Margaret

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Speaker 1: was something of an anomaly among girls of her age

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Speaker 1: at the time. She loved to travel and study. Then

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Speaker 1: she wasn't in a rush to get married. In the

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Speaker 1: years before her eighteen twenty three marriage to John Nive

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Speaker 1: from Kent, Margaret went to Waterloo's battlefield after the dead

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Speaker 1: had already been buried. She collected souvenirs and brought them

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Speaker 1: to London, where she showed them to a Prussian field

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Speaker 1: marshal named Gebhart von Blucher, who had been present at

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Speaker 1: the battle. Waterloo was also her honeymoon destination with John.

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Speaker 1: Eight years after that first visit, Margaret even met General

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Speaker 1: Charles du Maurier, who had fought during the French Revolutionary Wars,

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Speaker 1: and referred to her as law spiritual, meaning the spiritual

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Speaker 1: or the witty. Sadly, her happiness was cut shorts in

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Speaker 1: a teen forty nine upon the death of her husband.

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Speaker 1: She and John had never had any children together. Margaret

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Speaker 1: ended up moving back to Guernsey to live with her

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Speaker 1: sister Elizabeth. There they resided in the home their father

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Speaker 1: had bought back in eighteen o eight, named Showmier or

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Speaker 1: the Thatched Cottage. The sisters didn't let their old age

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Speaker 1: stop them, though, they spent much of their later years

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Speaker 1: traveling all over Europe, including a trip to Poland in

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Speaker 1: eighteen seventy two. It was there that an eighty year

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Speaker 1: old Margaret got her first glimpse of Krakow, which was

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Speaker 1: still under Austro Hungarian rule. She never slowed down, even

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Speaker 1: after Elizabeth died in eighteen eighty five. It was as

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Speaker 1: though Margaret was living for both of them. If she

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Speaker 1: wanted to snack on hern apple, she would climb a

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Speaker 1: tree and pluck one right off the branch. If she

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Speaker 1: craved marmalade, she would make it herself in her kitchen.

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Speaker 1: To her, age was just a number. On May eighth,

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Speaker 1: her birthday, the whole town came out to celebrate. Two

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Speaker 1: hundred and fifty residents, including town officials and neighbors, gathered

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Speaker 1: along with her, surprised and elated that Margaret had made

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Speaker 1: it to the age of one hundred and eight. That

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Speaker 1: was also the same year she came down with bronchitis,

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Speaker 1: although that didn't stop her. She continued to survive and

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Speaker 1: thrive up until her death at one and ten. So

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Speaker 1: what was her secret to such a long life? According

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Speaker 1: to a newspaper article, written about her. Margaret drank a

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Speaker 1: glass and a half of sherry at every lunch and

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Speaker 1: a little bit of whiskey and water at dinner time.

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Speaker 1: She also woke up early every day and didn't snack

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Speaker 1: between meals. She took her last breath on April four

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Speaker 1: of nineteen oh three, a month shy of turning one eleven.

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Speaker 1: She was not only the first female super centenarian, meaning

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Speaker 1: that she had lived to be one d and ten,

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Speaker 1: but she also was the only person to exist within

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Speaker 1: three centuries. Margaret and nev had survived the seventeen hundreds,

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Speaker 1: lived through the eighteen hundreds, and had made it to

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Speaker 1: the nineteen hundreds. She had seen the world change unlike

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Speaker 1: anyone else, but she didn't just witness history. She was

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Speaker 1: also a big part of it. It's every kid's least

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Speaker 1: favorite time of the year when department stores put away

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Speaker 1: their water guns and pool noodles and replaced them with

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Speaker 1: crans and notebooks. That's right, it's time to go back

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Speaker 1: to school. But thanks to one man's efforts, the back

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Speaker 1: to school season has become a little more fun because

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Speaker 1: it isn't about a number two pencil or glue sticks.

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Speaker 1: It's about how cool your notebook is. His name was

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Speaker 1: Ernest Bryant crutch Field, and he was an executive at

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Speaker 1: the Mead Corporation, founded in Dayton, Ohio in eighteen forty

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Speaker 1: six by Daniel Meade. The company had started small as

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Speaker 1: a paper manufacturer, then in the twentieth century, it began

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Speaker 1: producing other products such as cardboard shipping containers. As it

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Speaker 1: continued to grow, meat acquired companies like Data Corporation, which

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Speaker 1: had lucrative divisions for inkjet printing and electronic data management.

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Speaker 1: But Ernest had no part in printing or data management.

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Speaker 1: His department, called New Ventures, was focused on finding the

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Speaker 1: next big thing for the office supply market. He started

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Speaker 1: by conducting research in nineteen seventy two with a fellow

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Speaker 1: from Harvard, and their findings told them that classroom rosters

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Speaker 1: were only going to get a little larger in the

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Speaker 1: coming years, and not only that, but those students were

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Speaker 1: going to have to deal with heavier course loads and

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Speaker 1: smaller lockers on top of it all. Ernest looked at

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Speaker 1: the numbers and saw that notebook and folder sales were

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Speaker 1: jumping by thirty percent each year. But that presented a

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Speaker 1: new problem. Kids shouldn't have to lug half a dozen

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Speaker 1: notebooks and folders around in their backpacks as they moved

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Speaker 1: throughout their school day. So he started thinking about ways

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Speaker 1: to lighten their loads, and he stumbled on a novel thought.

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Speaker 1: He had changed the standard horizontal pockets and needs folders

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Speaker 1: to vertical pockets instead. He called these new products peaches.

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Speaker 1: Unlike regular folders, which allowed the papers inside to fall

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Speaker 1: out when turned upside down, peaches trapped the paper within.

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Speaker 1: Thanks to their vertical pocket design, Students couldn't shake, drop, swing,

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Speaker 1: or otherwise chuck their folders across the room and have

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Speaker 1: everything fallout if it all stay within the two cardboard house.

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Speaker 1: That was one problem solved, but another still remained that notebook.

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Speaker 1: Ernest settled on a three ring binder style which was

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Speaker 1: made of plastic with a snap button to hold everything in.

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Speaker 1: This way, kids didn't have to jam all their different

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Speaker 1: notebooks into their backpacks at one time. It was groundbreaking.

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Speaker 1: This binder system that Ernest had come up with collected

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Speaker 1: the peaches, the paper and the notebooks all in one place,

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Speaker 1: and the kids loved it. He knew that because he

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Speaker 1: never stopped focus testing his creation, even his own teenage

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Speaker 1: kids at home offered their feedback. Through the development process,

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Speaker 1: Ernest spoke to children and teachers. He toured schools, and

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Speaker 1: he got to look at the lockers and the cubbies

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Speaker 1: that kids were using to store their supplies between classes.

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Speaker 1: After half a dozen prototypes, he finally settled on a

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Speaker 1: version of his binder that would accommodate almost everyone. It

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Speaker 1: was made of PVC and boasted plastic rings that didn't

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Speaker 1: snap closed on tiny fingers. Inside there was a place

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Speaker 1: to store a pad and a pencil, while a flap

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Speaker 1: on the outside held it all in one place with

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Speaker 1: a button snap. Ernest wrote and filmed a commercial in

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Speaker 1: New York in only three hours on a shoestring budget.

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Speaker 1: It first aired in Wichita, Kansas in eight At the

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Speaker 1: very same time, the first shipments of the product were

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Speaker 1: arriving in stores. Surprisingly, even to Earnest, they sold out

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Speaker 1: almost immediately. Wanting to understand why, he started including feedback

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Speaker 1: cards to see why kids like them. Those who filled

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Speaker 1: them out and mail them in were promised a free

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Speaker 1: binder for their troubles. Ernest got fift hundred cards back.

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Speaker 1: The reasons ranged from I heard it was good, my

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Speaker 1: girlfriend had one too, because they keep your papers where

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Speaker 1: they belong. A few years later, the binders expanded from

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Speaker 1: their test market into stores all over the country. They

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Speaker 1: came in three colors and three unique designs like soccer,

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Speaker 1: a coastline, and a dog and a cat. Over time,

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Speaker 1: licensing deals allow them to feature characters like Garfield or

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Speaker 1: artwork from designers like Lisa Frank. For several generations, Ernest

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Speaker 1: Bryant crutch Field's product transformed the school supply landscape. Kids

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Speaker 1: everywhere had to have one stocked with folders otherwise known

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Speaker 1: as trappers, along with paper stored within its three ring

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Speaker 1: keeper system. School was already hard enough, thanks to the

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Speaker 1: trapper keeper, it was a little easier to hold everything together.

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Speaker 1: I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet

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Speaker 1: of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn

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Speaker 1: more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com.

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Speaker 1: The show was created by me Aaron Manky in partnership

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Speaker 1: with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show

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Speaker 1: called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show,

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Speaker 1: and you can learn all about it over at the

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Speaker 1: World of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.

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Speaker 1: One