Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Manky's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world is
Speaker 1: full 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. It was childish, really, the kind of schoolyard
Speaker 1: name calling that might have involved mentions of someone's mother
Speaker 1: or ugly shaved dogs walking backwards. I'm sure you can
Speaker 1: recall a few from your own childhood, except the ones
Speaker 1: hurling the insults weren't children, No far from it. They
Speaker 1: were grown men fighting a war. During the Revolutionary War,
Speaker 1: both the Americans and the British troops disparaged each other
Speaker 1: with the most deprecating putdowns they could come up with.
Speaker 1: It was war, after all, But instead of mere taunts,
Speaker 1: both sides used ditties, simple songs with memorable, pointed lyrics.
Speaker 1: You see, the American and British troops played fifes and
Speaker 1: drums to signal battle, wake up, performed chores, and boost
Speaker 1: the men's fighting morale. As they headed to battle, both
Speaker 1: sides saying a variety of verses mocking the other. Each
Speaker 1: had their favorite targets to Americans love to insult King
Speaker 1: George the Third and the British love to insult the Americans.
Speaker 1: For the British Red Coats, the melody They've Chosen had
Speaker 1: been around for a couple hundred years or more, but
Speaker 1: it was a quick witted British army doctor who is
Speaker 1: credited with revising the lyrics from their soldiers came up
Speaker 1: with even more verses, and the more degrading the better.
Speaker 1: It became a kind of competition within their troops. The
Speaker 1: title alone was meant to be as insulting as possible Yankee, Doodle, dandy,
Speaker 1: and yes, we sing this as a patriotic song today,
Speaker 1: despite the original meaning behind the words. During war, Yankee
Speaker 1: was British slang for being an American rebel, whether derived
Speaker 1: from a similar sounding Cherokee word meaning coward or a
Speaker 1: Dutch word meaning little Johnny. Yankee wasn't meant as a compliment.
Speaker 1: A doodle was a bumbling, sloppy fool, which is how
Speaker 1: the primly dressed British Redcoats saw the Americans, and the
Speaker 1: word dandy was an alternate word for a man obsessed
Speaker 1: with clothing in the mid seventeen hundreds, The most flamboyant
Speaker 1: and eccentrically dressed of these men were called Macaronis, which
Speaker 1: had nothing to do with Italian pasta. Macaronis were part
Speaker 1: of the British subculture who wore the tiniest of hats
Speaker 1: upon the largest of wigs, loud and flashy waistcoats, bright hosiery,
Speaker 1: and dainty shoes. In Britain, these men's suspected orientation was
Speaker 1: nothing shorts of scandalous. In the song the bumbling American
Speaker 1: road to Town on a pony instead of a real horse.
Speaker 1: Lacking social grace or status, he placed a feather in
Speaker 1: his hat and declared himself as fashionable as the Macaronies.
Speaker 1: The innuendo was that the inept Americans couldn't even manage
Speaker 1: to be a proper member of the gay community. In
Speaker 1: April of seventeen seventy five, the British play the tune
Speaker 1: from Boston to Lexington and Conquered. The battle with the
Speaker 1: Americans didn't go in their favor, though, and as the
Speaker 1: Red Coats hastily retreated, the drums, fife and singing played
Speaker 1: back the perky tune once more, not from the British,
Speaker 1: though the Americans now mocked them with their own rendition.
Speaker 1: One officer condemned the act, claiming the Rebels had made
Speaker 1: them dance until they were tired, and it wouldn't be
Speaker 1: the last time either. After defeating the British at Saratoga
Speaker 1: in seventeen seventy seven, the Americans repeatedly serenaded the Red
Speaker 1: Coats with the song, causing an English officer to say
Speaker 1: hearing the once degrading words sung back at them in
Speaker 1: their moment of defeat was pure agony. The America Prikins
Speaker 1: had turned the insult around, making the tune their victory song,
Speaker 1: minimizing the mockery and disparaging the words meant as weapons.
Speaker 1: As schoolyard insults went, the Rebels did a pretty good
Speaker 1: job with that old I'm rubber and your glue technique.
Speaker 1: The Americans sang it again at Yorktown, much to the
Speaker 1: Red coats chagrin. The catchy Diddy became the state anthem
Speaker 1: for Connecticut. Before long, the British came to loathe the
Speaker 1: song they had written. It haunted them on every battlefield.
Speaker 1: The Rebels even sang the song at Fort McHenry, while
Speaker 1: Francis Scott Key wrote America's second national anthem, yes I
Speaker 1: said second, because Yankee dood old Andy was America's first.
Speaker 1: It was seen as the ugliest structure in Paris when
Speaker 1: Gustav Eiffel's ought iron structure began construction in July of
Speaker 1: eighteen eighties seven, over three hundred artists, sculptures, and fellow
Speaker 1: architects petition the World's Fair Commission against the plan. It
Speaker 1: looked like a giant black smokestack. They protested. The tower
Speaker 1: would be a monstrosity so hideous and loathed that even
Speaker 1: the commercially minded Americans wouldn't want it. Their complaints were ignored,
Speaker 1: though that same commissioner helped choose Eiffel's design from over
Speaker 1: one other entries in a contest for the chance to
Speaker 1: build the centerpiece for the eighteen eighty nine Paris World's Fair,
Speaker 1: and while the tower bears Gustav's name, it actually was
Speaker 1: one of his employees who drew the original design. Guzdav
Speaker 1: rejected the engineer's first submission, asking him to go back
Speaker 1: and add more flourishes. At a thousand feet tall, the
Speaker 1: Eiffel Tower became the world's tallest building. Over eighteen thousand
Speaker 1: pieces of iron were used, each of the four corners
Speaker 1: oriented with the four points of the compass, and for
Speaker 1: opening day, the tower had been painted a reddish brown color.
Speaker 1: While visitors from around the world marveled at the structure
Speaker 1: during the fair, most Parisians considered it an isore. Novelist
Speaker 1: guy du Mampasan reportedly ate his lunch at the tower's base,
Speaker 1: the only place he could find where he could look
Speaker 1: at the skyline and not see the tower. Since Eiffel
Speaker 1: had paid eighty percent of the construction costs himself, the
Speaker 1: city granted him twenty years to recoup his money before
Speaker 1: tearing the tower down for scrap metal. For a small fee,
Speaker 1: people could take an elevator to the third floor to
Speaker 1: enjoy a view of the city. In the past, only
Speaker 1: the wealthy could see Paris from such heights, and only
Speaker 1: from a hot air balloon. Ten years after the World's Fair,
Speaker 1: the tower was painted yellow to match the ever popular
Speaker 1: style trends of the city. While the tower brought in
Speaker 1: modest funds from visitors looking to view the world's most
Speaker 1: romantic city, it wasn't enough to make the tower more useful,
Speaker 1: Eiffel had a meteorology lab installed on the third floor,
Speaker 1: buying the tower a little more time. In nineteen ten,
Speaker 1: during World War One, the government granted Eiffel an extension.
Speaker 1: The French found that the structure was useful to transmit
Speaker 1: telegraphs to ships in the Atlantic Ocean. The tower was
Speaker 1: also used to relay zeppelin alerts to dispatch troops reinforcements.
Speaker 1: They found other uses for it too. In nineteen o nine,
Speaker 1: Eiffel installed a wind tunnel at the tower's base. Companies
Speaker 1: and inventors have run thousands of tests in that tunnel,
Speaker 1: including the Wright Brothers airplanes. In nineteen eleven, a German
Speaker 1: scientist used the tower to detect radiation levels known today
Speaker 1: as cosmic rays. In fact, seventy two of the country's
Speaker 1: most acclaimed scientists have their names engraved on the first
Speaker 1: floor gallery. Daredevils have also taken to the tower, the
Speaker 1: first in nineteen twelve, where a tailor attempted to fly
Speaker 1: from the first floor tower using a spring loaded parachute.
Speaker 1: He crashed, though he luckily survived. Fourteen years later, another
Speaker 1: pilot attempted to fly between the four corners and died
Speaker 1: when his plane became entangled in the aerial wire station
Speaker 1: and burst into flames between nineteen twenty five. At nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty six, the French automobile company Citron paid to use
Speaker 1: the tower as a giant billboard. The lights on the
Speaker 1: one hundred foot tall letters burned so bright that Charles
Speaker 1: Lindbergh used the Eiffel Tower as a beacon to land
Speaker 1: in Paris during his transatlantic solo flight of nineteen twenty seven.
Speaker 1: In nineteen forty, the French cut the elevator cables to
Speaker 1: the tower. The Germans who occupied Paris were forced to
Speaker 1: climb the stairs to fly the Nazi flag from the top.
Speaker 1: Hitler later ordered the tower destroyed, but his own general
Speaker 1: disobeyed him. By nineteen fifty seven, television transmitters were attached
Speaker 1: to the tower, and at last the tower was declared
Speaker 1: a national treasure in nineteen sixty four. But it was
Speaker 1: an event fifty years earlier in nineteen fourteen that helped
Speaker 1: solidify the tower as a permanent structure, and it all
Speaker 1: had to do with capturing a spy. That year, a
Speaker 1: radio message was intercepted from the tower between Germany and Spain.
Speaker 1: The details not only allowed the French to counter organize
Speaker 1: an attack. They also captured and executed the notorious spy
Speaker 1: Mata Harri. It's ironic, really, and more than a little curious.
Speaker 1: Although millions visit the famous landmark every year for what
Speaker 1: they can see, it was something invisible that ultimately saved
Speaker 1: the Eiffel Tower from becoming scrap metal radio waves. I
Speaker 1: hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities.
Speaker 1: Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about
Speaker 1: the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show
Speaker 1: was created by me Aaron Manky in partnership with how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore,
Speaker 1: which is a podcast, book series, and television show, and
Speaker 1: you can learn all about it over at the World
Speaker 1: of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.