Speaker 1: Welcomed Aaron Mankey's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world is full
Speaker 1: of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book,
Speaker 1: all of these amazing tales are right there on display,
Speaker 1: just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet
Speaker 1: of Curiosities. Fashion doesn't sit still. It's constantly changing every decade,
Speaker 1: every year, every season. Sometimes certain trends return, like the
Speaker 1: bell bottom craze of the nineteen nineties, and sometimes they
Speaker 1: rightly go away forever, like the polyester leisure suits of
Speaker 1: the seventies. But one clothing item has withstood the test
Speaker 1: of time, existing for thousands of years across a variety
Speaker 1: of cultures, even though it is widely considered to be
Speaker 1: a modern creation. It started in fifty sid b c.
Speaker 1: In the ancient city of catalhu Yuck, the ruins of
Speaker 1: which can be found today in modern day Turkey. During
Speaker 1: this era, an image of the mother goddess of the
Speaker 1: native people was crafted. The image showed her wearing two
Speaker 1: strips of cloth, one covering her chest and the other
Speaker 1: covering her lower half, as she sat upon two leopards.
Speaker 1: A similar outfit was seen thousands of years later in
Speaker 1: fourteen hundred b c. It was depicted in Greek vases, urns,
Speaker 1: and artwork, and was often seen on women participating in
Speaker 1: athletic activities throughout history. Evidence of this garment was also
Speaker 1: found in ancient Roman mosaics, Greek sculptures, and Latin literature.
Speaker 1: It is almost as old as time itself. However, even
Speaker 1: though this article of clothing was worn commonly and publicly,
Speaker 1: it became increasingly seen as immodest and vulgar by more
Speaker 1: conservative minded individuals as time war on. It was until
Speaker 1: one man decided to tackle it head on and drag
Speaker 1: it into the sunshine of the modern age. His name
Speaker 1: was Louis Rayard, born in France in eighteen seven. He'd
Speaker 1: worked as an automotive engineer until his mother's death around
Speaker 1: nineteen forty. She had owned a clothing business, and Louis
Speaker 1: took it upon himself to step into her shoes. No
Speaker 1: pun intended running the company from that point on. Sometimes
Speaker 1: he would stroll the nearby beaches and he would note
Speaker 1: how the women couldn't get the kind of sun tan
Speaker 1: they wanted. Their swimsuits covered too much of their bodies,
Speaker 1: so they would roll the fabric back to expose more
Speaker 1: of their skin. And this gave him an idea. What
Speaker 1: if they didn't have to roll up the fabric, What
Speaker 1: if they could wear a swimsuit that exposed their middrift
Speaker 1: for them instead. It took several years, due in part
Speaker 1: to the war effort and fabric shortages, but by ninety
Speaker 1: six Louis had come up with just the thing, and
Speaker 1: so had someone else. Jacques Heim, also from France, had
Speaker 1: gotten his start working for his parents for Company Me.
Speaker 1: Just like Louis, Jacques took the reins and started running
Speaker 1: it himself some years later, eventually broadening its offerings beyond
Speaker 1: fur coats and stoles. The company's new Cotur line included dresses,
Speaker 1: and Jacques also started producing clothes for young girls. But
Speaker 1: aside from all of that, he made a bathing suit.
Speaker 1: It was comprised of a ruffled bandeau and a pair
Speaker 1: of short bottoms with a thin strip of middrift exposed
Speaker 1: between them. He called it the Atom French four Adam
Speaker 1: and advertised it by pain sky writers to write out
Speaker 1: the phrase the World's smallest bathing suit in the sky
Speaker 1: over a popular resort but Jackaim didn't have Louis Royard's
Speaker 1: marketing prowess. Louis knew what people wanted to see. He
Speaker 1: would use even less fabric than his competitor, a meager
Speaker 1: four small triangles tied together that amounted to no more
Speaker 1: than thirty square inches of material. It had to be
Speaker 1: seen to be believed. All he needed was a model. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: no one wanted to wear it, as there wasn't much
Speaker 1: there to begin with. But he eventually found his model
Speaker 1: in a young nineteen year old dancer named Micheline Bernardini.
Speaker 1: She worked at a local music hall and agreed to
Speaker 1: be photographed in louise new bathing suit. On July five,
Speaker 1: he took her to a public swimming pool in Paris
Speaker 1: and introduced her to the crowd. She made quite a splash.
Speaker 1: The bottoms of her new swimsuit stopped just below her
Speaker 1: navel and exposed more of her backside than any other
Speaker 1: suit on the market, and as promised, her middrift was
Speaker 1: fully exposed. Newspapers printed photos of her in the ensemble
Speaker 1: too great acclaim, mostly from men. However, it was banned
Speaker 1: in several countries and even a few places in the
Speaker 1: United States. Over time, however, it gained in popularity among
Speaker 1: swimmers and beach goers, and despite Joaquim beating Louis Royard
Speaker 1: to market with his design, it was Louie's name for
Speaker 1: the product that ultimately stuck. He had named his swim
Speaker 1: suit after the location of a US atomic test site
Speaker 1: near the later called Bikini a Toll. So with one
Speaker 1: word and a few pieces of fabric, two men brought
Speaker 1: a seventy year old garment into the twentieth century with
Speaker 1: the invention of the bikini, and Louis even managed to
Speaker 1: outdo his competition. A few weeks after Jacques had his
Speaker 1: slogan written across the Sky for the resort, Louis hired
Speaker 1: his own skywriters to do the same, except this time
Speaker 1: he had them write something better smaller, it said, than
Speaker 1: the smallest bathing suit in the world. Comedian and filmmaker
Speaker 1: Mel Brooks famously said, rhetoric does not get you anywhere,
Speaker 1: because Hitler and Mussolini are just as good at rhetoric.
Speaker 1: But if you can bring these people down with comedy,
Speaker 1: they stand no chance. He understood that in order to
Speaker 1: rob evil people of their power, he had to make
Speaker 1: them the butt of the joke. Perhaps no work of
Speaker 1: his exemplifies this more than the musical number Springtime for
Speaker 1: Hitler from Brooks's nineteen sixty seven film The Producers, the
Speaker 1: over the top Broadway performance in which Nazis sing and
Speaker 1: dance paying tribute to a giant poster of their leader
Speaker 1: as the Hitler character entered the scene, and its portrayed
Speaker 1: as a laughable beateneck not a fearsome dictator. But what
Speaker 1: mel Brooks might not have known at the time was
Speaker 1: that he didn't have to make up stories to make
Speaker 1: the Nazis look like fools. One real life German U
Speaker 1: boat captain managed to do that all on his own.
Speaker 1: His name was Carl Adolph Schlitt, and he was in
Speaker 1: charge of German submarine U twelve O six. The U
Speaker 1: twelve oh six was a two D and twenty foot
Speaker 1: sub weighing as much as eight hundred and seventy one
Speaker 1: tons when submerged. It was built later in the war
Speaker 1: and as a result had a few upgrades that separated
Speaker 1: it from its earliest counterparts. One such upgrade was its
Speaker 1: use of deep water, high pressured toilets, unlike British subs,
Speaker 1: which kept septic tanks. On board that could be emptied
Speaker 1: at a later time. The U twelve oh six fired
Speaker 1: human waste into the ocean with every flush. This new
Speaker 1: plumbing system allowed use of the restroom while the sub
Speaker 1: was at depth, no need to worry about a heavy
Speaker 1: tank to add weight to the vessel. There was only
Speaker 1: one catch. Flushing the toilet was a lot more complicated.
Speaker 1: It even required training on how to do it properly
Speaker 1: without jeopardizing the integrity of the vessel and the lives
Speaker 1: of the people on board. A person had to turn
Speaker 1: a series of valves in just the right order to
Speaker 1: evacuate the toilet's contents without seawater coming back in. In
Speaker 1: April of the U twelve oh six was traveling two
Speaker 1: feet below the waters off the coast of Scotland when
Speaker 1: Captain Schlitt got the urge. He might have had a
Speaker 1: large meal or one too many cups of coffee that day,
Speaker 1: but whatever it was, he had to go now. Being
Speaker 1: a submarine captain, a man in control of a massive
Speaker 1: vessel and his own destiny, there was no reason for
Speaker 1: him to think he couldn't handle something as simple as
Speaker 1: using a toilet. And yet he soon learned that flushing
Speaker 1: the U twelve O six is commode required more than
Speaker 1: a jiggle of the handle. After he had done his business,
Speaker 1: Schlitz stood up and realized that, unlike the sub, he
Speaker 1: was out of his depth. He called in an engineer
Speaker 1: to a system. Now there were two Nazis in a
Speaker 1: small submarine bathroom with no idea how to flush the toilet.
Speaker 1: The engineer turned one valve and that's all it took
Speaker 1: for all hell to break loose. The room started to
Speaker 1: take on seawater, with Schlitz remnants swirling around with them.
Speaker 1: And to make matters worse, the bathroom was positioned over
Speaker 1: the sub's battery. As the water breached the compartment, another
Speaker 1: kind of toxic gas, flooring gas, to be precise, filled
Speaker 1: the vessel. Schlitz and his crew had no choice but
Speaker 1: to surface, and at the worst possible time. The U
Speaker 1: twelve O six was almost immediately spotted by the British
Speaker 1: Royal Air Force and fired upon. With no other options,
Speaker 1: the fifty or so German crew abandoned the sub, which
Speaker 1: was then deliberately sunk to keep its secrets from the Allies.
Speaker 1: Four Nazis died that day, while the others were captured
Speaker 1: in Schlitt's official report, he stated that he had been
Speaker 1: in the engine room when one of his engineers had
Speaker 1: tried to repair a vent at the front of the vessel.
Speaker 1: The ensuing on rush of sea water made the sub
Speaker 1: buoyant and they were forced to surface. He made no
Speaker 1: mention of his time in the bathroom nor the failed
Speaker 1: flush that had sealed the fates of him and his crew.
Speaker 1: Captain Schlitt was only twenty seven when he was handed
Speaker 1: control of the U twelve O six. It was his
Speaker 1: first patrol. After spending several years in a p O
Speaker 1: W camp. He was released and lived to the ripe
Speaker 1: old age of ninety. But he had to live every
Speaker 1: day of that knowing that he got his men killed
Speaker 1: or captured because he didn't know how to flush a toilet.
Speaker 1: And that's a real Schlitz show, if you ask me.
Speaker 1: I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet
Speaker 1: of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn
Speaker 1: more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com.
Speaker 1: The show was created by me Aaron Manky in partnership
Speaker 1: with How Stuff Works. I make another award winning show
Speaker 1: called Lore which is a podcast, book series, and television show,
Speaker 1: and you can learn all about it over at the
Speaker 1: World of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.