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 right there on display, just waiting
Speaker 1: for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. History,
Speaker 1: as they say, is written by the victors, which is
Speaker 1: a little ironic when you consider that this phrase, often
Speaker 1: attributed to Winston Churchill, is actually of uncertain origin. So
Speaker 1: much of the past has been lost, and the historical
Speaker 1: records we do have can be extremely biased. Take the
Speaker 1: story of Nathaniel Russell, for example. Born in Rhode Island
Speaker 1: in seventeen thirty eight, Nathaniel moved to Charleston, South Carolina
Speaker 1: in his late twenties. He began a career as a merchant,
Speaker 1: trading rice, tobacco, cotton, and human beings. Nathaniel made a
Speaker 1: fortune participating in the African slave trade. In seventeen eighty eight,
Speaker 1: when he was fifty years old, Nathaniel married a woman
Speaker 1: named Sarah Hopton. Sarah was the daughter of a wealthy
Speaker 1: Charleston family, so the union secured his social and economic
Speaker 1: position in colonial America. He later paid for the construction
Speaker 1: of a lavish mansion in South Carolina, where his family
Speaker 1: and the humans that he enslaved lived. These days, the
Speaker 1: Nathaniel Russell Houses considered one of the most important examples
Speaker 1: of Neoclassical architecture in America. It's since been restored, but
Speaker 1: remains decorated in ante bellum fashion. Think floor to ceiling windows,
Speaker 1: a giant spiral staircase, and oil paintings hung on every wall.
Speaker 1: The home gives the impression of luxury and esteem, two
Speaker 1: things that Nathaniel and his family certainly enjoyed. But like
Speaker 1: I mentioned, the Russells weren't the only ones who lived
Speaker 1: inside this Charleston mansion. Over two centuries, the stories of
Speaker 1: the people they enslaved were lost, But then in twenty seventeen,
Speaker 1: representatives from the Historic Charleston Foundation decided to restore the
Speaker 1: kitchen House. Now, the kitchen house was a separate building
Speaker 1: on the property. It's where enslaved people would have worked
Speaker 1: and lived, Unlike the rest of the mansion, though this
Speaker 1: part had never been fixed up, which meant that there
Speaker 1: were parts that had never been explored. When conservation experts
Speaker 1: cut into the walls, they found a whole lot of dust.
Speaker 1: Beneath that, there was hair, buttons, marbles, part of a waistcoat,
Speaker 1: fragments of a newspaper from November of eighteen thirty three,
Speaker 1: and lots of rodent droppings. It was a nineteenth century
Speaker 1: rat's nest, preserved inside the walls for roughly two hundred years. Now,
Speaker 1: if the thought makes your stomach turn, I don't blame you,
Speaker 1: but here's the thing. Rats are actually furry little historians,
Speaker 1: and their archives are entirely unbiased. You see, in order
Speaker 1: to build their nests, rats gather a bunch of random
Speaker 1: stuff from their environment. They inadvertently create a snapshot of
Speaker 1: a specific time in place, simply by collecting the items
Speaker 1: that happened to be there. There is an entire area
Speaker 1: of study devoted to this phenomenon. It's called rat nest archaeology,
Speaker 1: and the practice has revealed interesting items all over the
Speaker 1: American South. For example, at Poplar Forest Thomas Jefferson's Virginia Retreats,
Speaker 1: rats filled the walls with newspapers, eighteenth century board game pieces,
Speaker 1: and even an entire shoe. At the Bray School in Williamsburg, Virginia, rats.
Speaker 1: Pilford a mechanical pencil from the eighteen thirties, one of
Speaker 1: the earliest models manufactured in the United States, and it
Speaker 1: goes back even further than that. Rats can also help
Speaker 1: us understand ancient history. In Central Oregon's Paisley Caves, seven
Speaker 1: thousand year old rodents' nests were found to contain man
Speaker 1: made items. This suggests that some of the earliest humans
Speaker 1: in the region lived in those caves too. But I
Speaker 1: want to go back to the Nathaniel Russell House. Of
Speaker 1: all the stuff rodents hid in the walls of the
Speaker 1: kitchen House, one thing stuck out to me the most
Speaker 1: scraps torn out of an early writing textbook. Remember this
Speaker 1: was inside a building where only enslave people lived and worked,
Speaker 1: and this was an era when the vast majority of
Speaker 1: enslaved people were forced to remain illiterate. Based on the
Speaker 1: paper scraps, archaeologists think that those who lived inside the
Speaker 1: Kitchen House were teaching themselves to read and write in
Speaker 1: a world that said that they were less than human.
Speaker 1: They were working to gain a small bit of power,
Speaker 1: the ability to tell their own stories, to record their
Speaker 1: own history. And we know this because, as it turns
Speaker 1: out history is not written by the victors, it's collected
Speaker 1: by rats. For most of us, learning to write a
Speaker 1: bicycle was a rite of passage, one that involved more
Speaker 1: than a few scraped elbows and knees. Learning how to balance,
Speaker 1: pedal and break can be tough, but beyond the actual
Speaker 1: mechanics of riding a bike, there's a deeper lesson that
Speaker 1: all kids need to learn. When you fall, you have
Speaker 1: to get back up and try again. Thankfully, our modern
Speaker 1: pedal powered machines have a relatively low risk of injury.
Speaker 1: In fact, when they were first developed, they were advertised
Speaker 1: as safety bicycles, and that's because their predecessors were remarkably dangerous.
Speaker 1: The first two wheeled bicycle was invented in Germany in
Speaker 1: eighteen seventeen. Its official name was the lauf Machine or
Speaker 1: running machine in English, but everybody just called it the
Speaker 1: bone shaker. It looked similar to bicycles of today, except
Speaker 1: it was made almost entirely out of wood and it
Speaker 1: didn't have any pedals. The idea was that you could
Speaker 1: sit down, kick the ground to get some momentum, then
Speaker 1: the wheels would propel you forward. It was kind of
Speaker 1: like the car from the flint stones. But it wasn't
Speaker 1: exactly an off road vehicle since it was wooden. The
Speaker 1: tiniest pebble or crack the pavement would send shutters through
Speaker 1: the whole machine, hence the nickname the bone shaker. This
Speaker 1: is how the American Cyclopedia described it. Quote. The defects
Speaker 1: of the running machine its rigidity and its strain on
Speaker 1: the rider in propelling it by muscular thrust, besides rendering
Speaker 1: it impractical for general road travel and subjecting the rider
Speaker 1: to severe jolting, were frequent cause of abdominal hernia. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Clearly the design needed some improvements, so an English inventor
Speaker 1: named James Starley, better known as the father of the
Speaker 1: bicycle industry, answered the call. In the eighteen seventies, he
Speaker 1: updated the running machine in a number of ways. Instead
Speaker 1: of wood, his new design was made with hollow metal
Speaker 1: frame and rubber tires. He also added pedals. All in all,
Speaker 1: it seemed like the bicycle was moving in a good direction. Right. Well,
Speaker 1: there's one more thing that you should know. James Starley's
Speaker 1: bike was built for speed, which is why its front
Speaker 1: wheel measured over five feet tall and its back wheel
Speaker 1: was a meager fourteen inches in dice diameter. Oh and
Speaker 1: it didn't have any brakes. This weird bike was called
Speaker 1: a penny Farthing. It was named after two British coins,
Speaker 1: which were vastly different in size. Just like the two wheels,
Speaker 1: Getting on and off was a challenge, and the lack
Speaker 1: of brakes meant that crashes were very common. But still
Speaker 1: the machine speed was a big draw. By the early
Speaker 1: nineteen hundreds, people flocked to London to watch and join
Speaker 1: penny farthing races. These events were exciting too, if only
Speaker 1: because the spectacle was so strange and the risk of
Speaker 1: disaster so high. Bikes could travel over fifteen miles an hour.
Speaker 1: Because the front wheel was so tall, riders often sat
Speaker 1: five to seven feet up in the air. If two
Speaker 1: penny Farthings collided, the drivers would be pitched out of
Speaker 1: their seats, and way back then, nobody was wearing helmets.
Speaker 1: Penny Farthings fell out of fashion in the nineteen twenties
Speaker 1: when the safety bikele hit the stores, but curiously, the
Speaker 1: Victorian era vehicle has experienced a modern resurgence. Competitive races
Speaker 1: became common again in the nineteen eighties, although helmets are
Speaker 1: now required. Perhaps the most well known Dash takes place
Speaker 1: in the English village of Nottsford. Every ten years. The
Speaker 1: streets are blocked off to make room for the Great Race,
Speaker 1: a penny farthing sprint for the benefits of charity. The
Speaker 1: last Great Race was held in October of this year.
Speaker 1: Melissa Idel, the current European female Penny Farthing racing Champion,
Speaker 1: was there. She describes riding the asymmetrical bike as and
Speaker 1: I quote, a combination of flying a helicopter and riding
Speaker 1: a mechanical horse. It's avant garde, it's risky. One jerk
Speaker 1: can mean the bike flips and that's you hurtling through
Speaker 1: the air. And with that, I think it's fair to
Speaker 1: say that the Penny Farthing puts a different spin on
Speaker 1: the age old wisdom. If you fall from seven feet high,
Speaker 1: get back up, brush yourself off, and consider getting a
Speaker 1: bike that actually has brakes. I hope you've enjoyed today's
Speaker 1: guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free
Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by
Speaker 1: visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by
Speaker 1: me Aaron Mankey in partnership with how Stuff Works. I
Speaker 1: make another Award winning show called Lore which is a podcast,
Speaker 1: book series, and television show and you can learn all
Speaker 1: about it over at the Worldoflore dot com. And until
Speaker 1: next time, stay curious.