Speaker 1: Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history
Speaker 1: is an open book, all of these amazing tales are
Speaker 1: right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. When we create something,
Speaker 1: we're also creating a legacy. We're leaving behind something for
Speaker 1: future generations to find, and if there's any justice in
Speaker 1: the world, our name will still be attached to it
Speaker 1: when they do. No one remembers Hans Lippershe. Hans was
Speaker 1: a Dutchman who built the first telescope in sight. He
Speaker 1: even tried to patent it, but his application was denied.
Speaker 1: Decades later, Galileo, with his eyes turned towards the stars,
Speaker 1: would use lipper Chase designed to build his own and
Speaker 1: his name would become synonymous with the invention. And what
Speaker 1: about Antonio Miyucci. In eighteen sixty Antonio built the first
Speaker 1: working telephone, and just like Liperche, he tried to secure
Speaker 1: a patent for his invention. He succeeded, but when it
Speaker 1: came time to renew it, he couldn't afford the ten
Speaker 1: dollar renewal fee and lost his patent Two years later
Speaker 1: in eighteen seventy six, and up and comer named Alexander
Speaker 1: Graham Bell filed a patent for his own telephone. As
Speaker 1: you might imagine, Miucci was livid. He contacted a lab
Speaker 1: at Western Union where he'd sent the original plans for
Speaker 1: his telephone, which would serve as the proof he'd used
Speaker 1: to sue Bell for appropriating his work. But there was
Speaker 1: just one problem. The plans were gone. No one knows
Speaker 1: for sure what happened to them, but Bell might have
Speaker 1: had a part to play in that, after all, he
Speaker 1: worked in the very same lab at the time. And
Speaker 1: then there's Gottlieb. Richard Troub, the German American was a
Speaker 1: tinkerer from Chicago, and in nineteen oh seventy penda letter
Speaker 1: to Motorcycle Illustrate did magazine. In it, he mentioned a
Speaker 1: four horsepower motorcycle that he built from scratch and even
Speaker 1: included a photo of himself beside it. It's spent a
Speaker 1: year working on it between seven pm and eleven pm,
Speaker 1: six nights a week. It boasted a three and a
Speaker 1: half gallon gas tank, fifty five inch wheelbase, and in
Speaker 1: his words, perfect grip control. It was also way ahead
Speaker 1: of its time compared to similar bikes coming from the
Speaker 1: larger manufacturers. No bicycle had yet adopted the twin break
Speaker 1: single cam system that Troub used, and at the time
Speaker 1: nothing else on the market could keep up with its
Speaker 1: top speed of eighty five, and it was road tested too.
Speaker 1: By the time he'd written that letter to the magazine,
Speaker 1: Trout had already ridden his bike for over fifteen hundred
Speaker 1: miles without a single bit of trouble. He owned a
Speaker 1: small bicycle shop attached to his property, where he presumably
Speaker 1: built that bike, as well as at least one other
Speaker 1: just like it, although that one has been lost to time.
Speaker 1: But what happened to the first Troub motorcycle? The one
Speaker 1: that he wrote about in the letter? While in nineteen sixteen,
Speaker 1: the son of one of Troub's neighbors decided that he
Speaker 1: just had to have it, so he stole it from Troub.
Speaker 1: The boy's father couldn't believe his son would do something
Speaker 1: like that, so as a punishment, he made him sign
Speaker 1: up to join the army. The young man was shipped
Speaker 1: overseas and sadly didn't come home. The motorcycle, though, was
Speaker 1: never returned. The prevailing theory is that just before he
Speaker 1: was deployed the Sun hid the bike so that he
Speaker 1: could come back to it when he returned from the war,
Speaker 1: but his parents had no idea what happened to it.
Speaker 1: Little did they know it was right under their noses.
Speaker 1: The family eventually sold their apartment building and moved away. Then,
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty seven, the new owners decided to spruce
Speaker 1: things up with some renovations. They hired a contractor who
Speaker 1: was tearing down a brick wall when he noticed something
Speaker 1: behind it, a two wheeled contraption that looked about fifty
Speaker 1: years old. The long lost Troub had been found. Not
Speaker 1: knowing what they had, the building's owners traded the bike
Speaker 1: to a Chicago motorcycle dealer for a seven hundred dollar Suzuki.
Speaker 1: The dealer restored the Trial back to its original glory,
Speaker 1: and then ten years later he sold it to Hollywood
Speaker 1: stuntman Bud Ekins. Bud had worked as Steve McQueen's stunt
Speaker 1: double and was in Chicago working on a small budget
Speaker 1: film called The Blues Brothers the day. The Trial lives
Speaker 1: at the Wheels through Time Museum in North Carolina, where
Speaker 1: Gottlieb Troub's legacy has been allowed to live on. Surprisingly,
Speaker 1: it still runs just as well as it did back
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixteen. The museum's owner, Dale Waksler, can sometimes
Speaker 1: even be seen riding around town on it, proving that
Speaker 1: the old saying is true. They just don't make them
Speaker 1: like they used to. All it takes is an idea,
Speaker 1: a phrase, or a philosophy to send people into a panic.
Speaker 1: If Area fifty one, a government site is off limits
Speaker 1: to the public, that must mean that aliens are being
Speaker 1: kept there. Did we really go to the moon or
Speaker 1: was the whole thing done on a sound stage? A
Speaker 1: spoiler alert. We definitely went to the moon, But there
Speaker 1: are still people out there to this day who refuse
Speaker 1: to believe the truth, opting for their own version where
Speaker 1: only they really know what's going on. Conspiracy theorists ignore
Speaker 1: what's on the surface and instead lift up the curtain
Speaker 1: to see what's underneath, even if there's nothing there. Take
Speaker 1: Pink Floyd, for example, The Dark Side of the Moon
Speaker 1: Wizard of Oz mash Up was already well known by
Speaker 1: the mid nineteen nineties, and even if the two works
Speaker 1: didn't line up exactly, there was enough there to propel
Speaker 1: the novelty from quiet rumor to cultural touch point. Pink
Speaker 1: Floyd released their album The Division Bell right around the
Speaker 1: same time as the inner net was starting to come
Speaker 1: into its own use. Net groups were one of the
Speaker 1: main ways people communicated back then, similar to today's Reddit
Speaker 1: forums used. Net groups were big storehouses of information where
Speaker 1: people could post anonymously and have discussions on any number
Speaker 1: of topics. As the band kicked off its Division Bell
Speaker 1: World tour, an anonymous user posted a message to the
Speaker 1: Pink Floyd group where they believed they discovered a secret
Speaker 1: message the band had delivered. The person offered to guide
Speaker 1: listeners to a deeper meaning Listen, read, think, communicate. These
Speaker 1: were the words they wrote before signing off under the
Speaker 1: name Publius. Additional messages from Publicius followed, including one that
Speaker 1: claimed the Division Bell album contained one central meaning, unlike
Speaker 1: the band's previous albums, which had been open to a
Speaker 1: variety of interpretations. Even back then, Internet audiences were skeptical,
Speaker 1: and many believe this person to be part of the
Speaker 1: band or even the record company, just trying to drum
Speaker 1: up interest in the album. But it was the last
Speaker 1: message that people took farther down the rabbit hole than
Speaker 1: they'd ever been before. It spoke of a planned communication.
Speaker 1: On Monday July in East Rutherford, New Jersey, at ten
Speaker 1: thirty pm, white lights would flash. There is an enigma,
Speaker 1: Publius promised. Trust Those who had believed in Publius's messages
Speaker 1: had their faith confirmed. As the band performed this song
Speaker 1: keep Talking during their July eight concert, the like display
Speaker 1: at the front of the stage started flashing and the
Speaker 1: words Enigma Publius appeared. In fact, the phrase showed up
Speaker 1: at several performances thereafter, yet the band claimed not to
Speaker 1: know about any of them. Pink Floyd's lighting director was
Speaker 1: also thought to have been a co conspirator, but according
Speaker 1: to him, he was just doing what he was told
Speaker 1: by the band. The phrase popped up again when the
Speaker 1: band's album A Momentary Lapse of Reason was re released
Speaker 1: the same year. Sadly, two years later, the service hosting
Speaker 1: the usenet where Publicist was posting was shut down, although
Speaker 1: similar posts appeared on other message boards and websites thereafter,
Speaker 1: making people wonder if either the account had returned or
Speaker 1: that the enigma had been solved. In two thousand two,
Speaker 1: it seemed as though the puzzle really had been solved
Speaker 1: by Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmore. In an interview, he
Speaker 1: claimed the whole publicist enigma had been employed by the
Speaker 1: record company to get people talking about the album, and
Speaker 1: the band's lighting designer, Mark Brickman confirmed Gilmore's statement, adding
Speaker 1: even further intrigue to the legend. Apparently, the publicist enigma
Speaker 1: was the creation of a Washington d C. Insider, a
Speaker 1: former member of the intelligence community who had worked in encryption.
Speaker 1: Brickman later recanted his statement, though claiming he regretted saying
Speaker 1: anything at all, and before he died. The author Douglas
Speaker 1: Adams weighed in on the whole thing. During a public
Speaker 1: online chat. Someone asked him if the publicist enigma was real.
Speaker 1: Adams was reported to have said, it had nothing to
Speaker 1: do with me. I can't say anything about it. He
Speaker 1: might have been telling the truth, or perhaps he had
Speaker 1: been sworn to secrecy by a clandestine government agency. Of course,
Speaker 1: you might be wondering what Douglas Adams, the author of
Speaker 1: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, had to do with
Speaker 1: Pink Floyd at all. Well. Adams had given the division
Speaker 1: bell it's title after David Gilmore donated a large sum
Speaker 1: of money to one of Adam's charities, the Environmental Investigation Agency,
Speaker 1: which might explain a comment made by Pink Floyd biographer
Speaker 1: Nick Mason at a book signing. When asked about the
Speaker 1: publicist enigma, Mason claimed that a solution would have led
Speaker 1: to a crop of trees planted in the middle of
Speaker 1: a clearing. If the publicist enigma really was a record
Speaker 1: company invention, Pink Floyd might have created one of the
Speaker 1: first truly viral Internet hoaxes. After all, they were the
Speaker 1: ones who said you have to be trusted by the
Speaker 1: people that lie to you. 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 Manky 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 World of Lore dot com.
Speaker 1: And until next time, stay curious. Yeah