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Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Manky's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of

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

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Speaker 1: full 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. There are some strange and disturbing things crawling

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Speaker 1: around the bowels of the Internet. Some are better left unmentioned,

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Speaker 1: while others have been thankfully forgotten. Early memes and hamster

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Speaker 1: dances have gone the way of free a O L

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Speaker 1: c d S, never to be heard from again. Today

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Speaker 1: we express ourselves online with emoticons, emojis, and cartoon dogs,

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Speaker 1: unfazed by encroaching flames. But one piece of the Internet

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Speaker 1: of old still lingers on in our memories. In fact,

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Speaker 1: it predates the Web as we know it. Back in

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Speaker 1: the mid nineteen nineties, a series of cryptic messages haunted

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Speaker 1: usenet boards, kicking off an adventure with the potential to

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Speaker 1: either become an epic treasure hunt or a digital dead end.

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Speaker 1: Usenet was an online venue where people would share news

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Speaker 1: and messages, sort of like today's Internet. Forums. In August

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Speaker 1: of nineteen ninety six, Usenet users were bombarded with hundreds

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Speaker 1: of strange messages comprised of blocks of text with no

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Speaker 1: clear meaning, and they all had been sent with the

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Speaker 1: same subject line, Marcovian parallax denigrate Today, As the saying goes,

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Speaker 1: the Internet is forever, meaning that what we share, even

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Speaker 1: if we delete it remains cataloged somewhere on the web.

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Speaker 1: That wasn't the case back then. Most users believe these

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Speaker 1: Marcovian parallax messages to be spammed, so they deleted them.

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Speaker 1: Many were lost. Only one still remains today. It's contents

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Speaker 1: are nothing but random words and names strung together without

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Speaker 1: any punctuation. On first glance, the message is meaningless. For example,

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Speaker 1: it starts jitterbugging McKinley, abe break Newtonian inferring call update,

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Speaker 1: and then continues on for a few dozen words or so.

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Speaker 1: But it didn't take long for several curious users to

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Speaker 1: start looking deeper into the messages. Their inquiries kicked off

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Speaker 1: what would become known as the first true Internet mystery,

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Speaker 1: a puzzle to be solved by the web's best and brightest.

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Speaker 1: One theory suggested the CIA was transmitting coded information within

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Speaker 1: the text. Another believe the key would be found in

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Speaker 1: the subject line Markovian you see could have been related

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Speaker 1: to the Markov chain, or a mathematical system based on

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Speaker 1: the probability that one state will transition to another, for example,

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Speaker 1: whether a tornado will strike a particular area based on

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Speaker 1: the behavior of previous tornadoes. Users toiled over possible solutions,

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Speaker 1: always coming up emp But it was one particular sender

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Speaker 1: who raised a few eyebrows years later. Her name was

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Speaker 1: Susan Lindauer, and she had sent one of the messages

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Speaker 1: from an email address trace back to the university in Wisconsin.

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Speaker 1: Lindauer had been a journalist who in two thousand four

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Speaker 1: was arrested by the FBI and charged with acting as

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Speaker 1: an agent of a foreign government. In other words, she

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Speaker 1: was accused of being a foreign spy. At the time

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Speaker 1: the parallax messages were sent, however, she was believed to

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Speaker 1: be working for the CIA. After her release, she denied

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Speaker 1: any involvement in sending any of those messages. In reality,

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Speaker 1: she never had anything to do with them. The truth

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Speaker 1: was a lot less exciting. There was a second Susan Lindauer.

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Speaker 1: She had been a student at the University of Wisconsin.

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Speaker 1: While the former journalist was living in Washington, d C.

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Speaker 1: Someone had used her email address in order to hide

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Speaker 1: their real one. Still strange coincidence did occur in two

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Speaker 1: thousand nine, when the connection between the parallax messages and

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Speaker 1: the alleged spy Lindauer were first made. The Wikipedia page

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Speaker 1: for the Markovian parallax detegrade was deleted without warning. To

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Speaker 1: those who trafficked in conspiracy theories and distrust of the government.

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Speaker 1: That was a giant red flag which brings us to

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Speaker 1: the simplest possible explanation of all, especially for anyone who

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Speaker 1: has spent more than five minutes on the Internet. It

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Speaker 1: must have been done by trolls. When the messages couldn't

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Speaker 1: be deciphered or decoded, it was assumed that they were

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Speaker 1: a prank or a hoax, something to rile people up

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Speaker 1: in the days before Twitter and Facebook, and typically after

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Speaker 1: enough time has passed, someone always steps forward to like

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Speaker 1: claim to their handiwork. Gibberish messages that have endured on

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Speaker 1: the Internet for a quarter century seemed like the kind

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Speaker 1: of things someone would want to own up to by now,

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Speaker 1: and yet no one has all this time later, and

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Speaker 1: they are still as much a mystery as they were

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Speaker 1: back then. So was it an early attempt to code

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Speaker 1: a chatbot or share confidential information. We may never know

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Speaker 1: the truth, but somewhere one is out there still working

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Speaker 1: on a solution to the Marcovian parallax detegrate, fueled by

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Speaker 1: their curiosity and the compulsive urge to be the one

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Speaker 1: to type first in all caps in the comments section. Ancient,

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Speaker 1: not at all, but it certainly is curious. With age

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Speaker 1: and experience often comes wisdom. Those who perform difficult jobs,

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Speaker 1: like doctors, pilots, and teachers, developed new perspectives shaped by

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Speaker 1: their daily lives. One of the hardest jobs in the world,

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Speaker 1: or at least in America, is that of President of

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Speaker 1: the United States. Just look at the hair of those

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Speaker 1: who have occupied the seat dark brown or black on

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Speaker 1: inauguration day, only to fade to a dreary gray by

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Speaker 1: the time they leave office. One president with one of

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Speaker 1: the toughest times in office was Grover Cleveland. Cleveland was

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Speaker 1: first elected in eighteen eighty four, but his two terms

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Speaker 1: were very different from other presidents in history in that

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Speaker 1: he did not serve them consecutively. Cleveland lost his re

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Speaker 1: election in eighteen eighty eight, only to win it again

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Speaker 1: four years later in eighteen ninety two. He was no

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Speaker 1: stranger to higher office, as he had gone from sheriff

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Speaker 1: of Erie County, New York, to the mayor of Buffalo

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Speaker 1: in eighteen eighty two until he became Governor of New

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Speaker 1: York in eighteen eighty three. Cleveland's rise to the presidency

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Speaker 1: was fast, and with it came a lot of stress.

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Speaker 1: The Democrats spent much of his first campaign fighting corruption

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Speaker 1: in Washington. His opponent, James G. Blaine, was known as

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Speaker 1: greedy and immoral, causing many Republicans to defect to Cleveland's side. Unfortunately,

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Speaker 1: he was not free from scandal himself. Years earlier, Cleveland

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Speaker 1: had been seeing a woman named Maria Helpin. The two

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Speaker 1: had a child together, and after she accused him of

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Speaker 1: sexual assault, he had her locked away in an institution

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Speaker 1: and the child was sent to be raised by friends.

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Speaker 1: Blaine and the rest of the GOP made sure the

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Speaker 1: public was well aware of just what kind of man

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Speaker 1: Grover Cleveland really was. Despite this setback, the presidential hopeful

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Speaker 1: clinched his winds in every swing state, beating Blaine to

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Speaker 1: become the twenty second president of the United States. However,

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Speaker 1: his troubles were only at the beginning. One big issue

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Speaker 1: that he and his administration faced early on was a

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Speaker 1: currency crisis. A rift had been created between two bipartisan

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Speaker 1: groups of Democrats and Republicans, one of which one of

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Speaker 1: the U S Dollar to be backed by silver, while

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Speaker 1: the other groups stood by the gold standard. Cleveland backed gold,

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Speaker 1: those in the West and the South advocated for silver,

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Speaker 1: which was cheaper and could help the impoverished in those areas.

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Speaker 1: The conflict resulted in a stalemate, with no changes made

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Speaker 1: on either side. Cleveland also faced numerous civil rights issues

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Speaker 1: during his two terms, as well as Native American land disputes,

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Speaker 1: voting rights battles, labor strikes, and countless other conflicts. All

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Speaker 1: this political turmoil turned the man's hair a little grayer,

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Speaker 1: his heart beat a little faster, and the stress of

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Speaker 1: the job took its toll on his health. In fact,

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Speaker 1: he already started feeling the effects of the presidency as

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Speaker 1: early as his first term. Some days, keeping his true

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Speaker 1: feelings hidden was harder than he thought. In eighteen eighty seven,

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Speaker 1: an old friend from New York had come to Washington.

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Speaker 1: His name was James, and he wanted to build a

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Speaker 1: canal across Panama that would connect the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

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Speaker 1: Two decades before the United States would embark on such

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Speaker 1: a project, James needed Congress to convince Nicaragua, which controlled

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Speaker 1: the area, to let him dig his canal. He moved

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Speaker 1: to Washington and lobbied for months, hoping to move the

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Speaker 1: needle in his direction. During his time there, he also

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Speaker 1: made sure to drop by the White House and visit

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Speaker 1: his good friend Grover Cleveland. Days before he set to

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Speaker 1: move back to New York, James asked Cleveland if he

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Speaker 1: could bring his son, Frank with him. Cleveland agreed, and

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Speaker 1: the following day, father and son walked through the doors

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Speaker 1: of six hundred Pennsylvania Avenue. On their visit, they had

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Speaker 1: arrived during one of Cleveland's rougher days. The President had

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Speaker 1: been locked in his office for a long while, but

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Speaker 1: James and Frank waited patiently outside. When he eventually emerged,

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Speaker 1: Cleveland bent down and shook five year old Frank's hand

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Speaker 1: and muttered something odd. He said, my little man, I

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Speaker 1: am making a strange wish for you. May you never

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Speaker 1: grow up to be president of the United States. It

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Speaker 1: wasn't something anyone expected to hear that day. Frank didn't

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Speaker 1: seem to pay it any mind, though he actually went

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Speaker 1: on to have quite a successful career in politics later

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Speaker 1: in life. And if that unusual wish muttered to him

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Speaker 1: by Grover Cleveland had seemed like some kind of an agreement, well,

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Speaker 1: Frank broke it and offered a new deal instead. Voters

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Speaker 1: never knew him as Frank, though to them he was

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Speaker 1: the thirty second President of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

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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. Subscribed 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 Mankey 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. Yeah,