Speaker 1: Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history
Speaker 1: is an open book, all of these amazing tales right
Speaker 1: there on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome
Speaker 1: to the Cabinet of Curiosities. Dinosaurs lived over two fifty
Speaker 1: million years ago in what's known as the Mesozoic Era.
Speaker 1: The first human beings, or as close as we know
Speaker 1: as human beings, first appeared between five and seven million
Speaker 1: years ago. History has taught us that dinosaurs and humans
Speaker 1: did not coexist. It was a chronological impossibility. And yet
Speaker 1: there's a belief that species from both sides may have
Speaker 1: crossed paths at some point in history. Valdemar juls Rud
Speaker 1: certainly believed that. He was a hardware store owner from Germany.
Speaker 1: In the sum of nineteen forty four, while on horseback
Speaker 1: near the Mexican city of Akambaro, he noticed something sticking
Speaker 1: out of the ground in a dried up river bed. Actually,
Speaker 1: he noticed many things, small figurines made of clay that
Speaker 1: looked like animals of some kind. Several of them had
Speaker 1: rows of sharp teeth, and some were depicted in battle
Speaker 1: with humanoid figures, while others had the human figures. Writing
Speaker 1: atop their backs. He hired a local farmer to help
Speaker 1: him dig around the area. Maybe there were more of
Speaker 1: these clay creations to be found. Soon it was clear
Speaker 1: that the two men had gotten much more than they
Speaker 1: had bargained for. They pulled over thirty thousand clay figurines
Speaker 1: out of the dirt. The human shaped ones were of
Speaker 1: particular interest because they seemed to represent cultures from all
Speaker 1: over the world, including ancient Egyptians and Sumerians, people not
Speaker 1: known to have ever set foot in Mexico. Thinking that
Speaker 1: he had stumbled upon an archaeological gold mine, Joel's Rudd
Speaker 1: collected all of the figurines he had found and stored
Speaker 1: them in his home. Were Words spread of the strange pieces,
Speaker 1: and eventually people came to find out for themselves whether
Speaker 1: they were truly an ancient plaything or just discarded modern
Speaker 1: art projects. Charles de Pesso, an archaeologist working for a
Speaker 1: cultural preservation organization in Arizona, immediately dismissed the Akambaro figurines
Speaker 1: as fake. They showed nowhere no dirt in their crevices.
Speaker 1: They couldn't have been more than a few years old,
Speaker 1: he said. Most likely they were made by the local
Speaker 1: farmers as part of an elaborate hoax. Others weren't so skeptical, though.
Speaker 1: In ninety one, Los Angeles Times reporter Lowell Harmer traveled
Speaker 1: to Joels Rad's home in Mexico to see them for himself,
Speaker 1: and he was convinced of their authenticity. His article about
Speaker 1: the figurines led to more stories from other papers, all
Speaker 1: of which fueled further exploration of the area. Mexico sent
Speaker 1: for archaeologists to the site to see if there were
Speaker 1: other figurines that hadn't yet been found. There definitely were,
Speaker 1: but there was more as well. The bones of two
Speaker 1: dinosaurs were also discovered a little deeper underground. After the
Speaker 1: government shut down the site from further digging, rumors about
Speaker 1: what had been found there only grew larger. Another archaeologist,
Speaker 1: Charles Hapgood, wasn't convinced with Dipesso's claim that farmers had
Speaker 1: made the roughly thirty two thousand figurines on their own.
Speaker 1: For one, they had no reference for what a dinosaur
Speaker 1: was supposed to look like. The farmers were poor and
Speaker 1: uneducated to think that they'd sit around sculpting lizards out
Speaker 1: of clay, rather than tending to their farms didn't make
Speaker 1: any sense. Hapgood's colleague, Earl Gardner, apparently agreed. He sent
Speaker 1: a few of the figurines to a lab for radio
Speaker 1: carbon dating, which placed their age at roughly thirty five
Speaker 1: hundred to sixty years old. Further tests would yield a
Speaker 1: more accurate time period of around BC. Other tests have
Speaker 1: been conducted over the years to Scientists attempted to run
Speaker 1: thermo luminescent dating on a few dozen figurines, but the
Speaker 1: results were in conclusive. Of and the fact that no
Speaker 1: one has been able to accurately chart their origins hasn't
Speaker 1: helped skeptics or believers prove the validity of the figurines.
Speaker 1: Over the years, debate has raged as to whether the
Speaker 1: Acambaro figurines or remnants of a time when man and
Speaker 1: dinosaur or something like them coexisted, or perhaps they were
Speaker 1: someone's idea of a historical prank. We may never know
Speaker 1: the truth about where the figurines came from, but it
Speaker 1: sure is a curious vision of the past, isn't it.
Speaker 1: However improbable it might be, it's fun to imagine a
Speaker 1: time when humans might have done something typically only seen
Speaker 1: in Hollywood blockbusters. Riding a top ferocious dinosaurs like a
Speaker 1: common horse, and if they did, it would be easy
Speaker 1: to see the Akambaro figurines as something very familiar to
Speaker 1: our modern minds action figures. World War Two ripped Europe apart,
Speaker 1: but out of it came countless innovations we still used today. Penicillan,
Speaker 1: although discovered years earlier, was first put to use on
Speaker 1: the battlefield to stave off infection in wounded soldiers. British
Speaker 1: radio experts Robert rats and Watts and Arnold Wilkins helped
Speaker 1: introduce the world to radar by reflecting radio waves off
Speaker 1: a bomber as a way of detecting enemy aircraft. In fact,
Speaker 1: the British were behind quite a few wartime technologies, all
Speaker 1: developed to give the Allies and edge in the field. However,
Speaker 1: as one side was evolving, so was the other. German
Speaker 1: U boats had come into their own during World War One,
Speaker 1: but the Treaty of Versailles, signed in nineteen nineteen forbade
Speaker 1: Germany from building new subs again. Of course, the Germans
Speaker 1: weren't going to let something as small as a global
Speaker 1: declaration of peace stopped them. Under the guise of research,
Speaker 1: they continued developing U boats until their undersea fleet was
Speaker 1: the large just in the Second World War. The subs
Speaker 1: could travel long distances in frigid temperatures, far from shore
Speaker 1: and beyond the reach of most land based planes. That
Speaker 1: made finding and stopping them almost impossible until an English
Speaker 1: inventor came up with an idea for a new kind
Speaker 1: of vessel. He sent his proposal for a modified aircraft
Speaker 1: carrier to Lewis Mountbatton, a British Royal Naval officer. It
Speaker 1: would be a stealth craft designed to withstand the freezing
Speaker 1: temperatures of the mid Atlantic, able to transport fighter planes
Speaker 1: to areas where U boats were known to occupy. They
Speaker 1: called it Project Tobacic, and the first step was to
Speaker 1: construct a scale model of this carrier at Canada's Jasper
Speaker 1: National Park. The inventor, Jeffrey Pike, wanted to make sure
Speaker 1: it would be able to withstand artillery fire from the Germans,
Speaker 1: so he got to work on a sixty ft long
Speaker 1: prototype fitted with a one horsepower engine. He hired a
Speaker 1: team of people to constructed at Patricia Lake in Alberta,
Speaker 1: not telling them exactly what it was they were building. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: they had gotten a late start. It was already April
Speaker 1: and the weather was heating up. Soon there would be
Speaker 1: no way to verify the ship's resilience against the harshness
Speaker 1: of the icy mid Atlantic, But rather than give up
Speaker 1: and wait until the next year, the British look to
Speaker 1: the Americans to assist in their efforts. Due to a
Speaker 1: previous issue while working with the United States on a
Speaker 1: separate initiative, Jeffrey Pike was cut out of Project Tobaccic,
Speaker 1: absent their fearless leader. Engineers from both countries worked around
Speaker 1: the clock for months as ambitions around the aircraft carrier grew.
Speaker 1: It had to be bigger, they said. It had to
Speaker 1: travel for longer distances too. Its hull had to be
Speaker 1: over forty thick to withstand towering ocean waves and enemy torpedoes,
Speaker 1: and it would carry more than fighter planes. Bombers were
Speaker 1: added to the list, which meant its runway needed to
Speaker 1: be over two thousand feet long, and it also had
Speaker 1: to turn on a dime, so a one foot high
Speaker 1: rudder needed to be included. Unfortunately, no one had ever
Speaker 1: installed or controlled one that large before. They built three
Speaker 1: different models based on Pike's original design, but none of
Speaker 1: them managed to incorporate every requirement into a single one.
Speaker 1: Initial tests were successful, though the vessel moved much slower
Speaker 1: than the British had hoped. When it was all said
Speaker 1: and done, Winston Churchill and mount Batton gave the engineers
Speaker 1: the green light to build and launch a full size
Speaker 1: version as soon as possible, and they would have if
Speaker 1: they had had enough time. The researchers had been so
Speaker 1: scared of Churchill that they didn't have the heart to
Speaker 1: tell him that one ship would cost over seventy million
Speaker 1: dollars and take almost a year to build. Oh and
Speaker 1: it probably would have melted in the end. You see.
Speaker 1: Given the steel shortages due to the war effort, Pike
Speaker 1: and his scientists had to come up with another method
Speaker 1: for building an aircraft carrier capable of floating undetected into
Speaker 1: the far reaches of the Atlantic Ocean. The clear choice,
Speaker 1: quite literally was ice. Had Project Tobacic been complete did
Speaker 1: it would have been a six hundred foot long ship
Speaker 1: weighing two million tons and made entirely of ice, two
Speaker 1: hundred eighty thousand blocks of it to be exact well
Speaker 1: in ice based compound. At least. The first prototype built
Speaker 1: was originally made a solid ice, but it was too
Speaker 1: weak to withstand rough weather or gunfire. That's when Pike
Speaker 1: came up with a new kind of material he called
Speaker 1: Pike Creet. It was a mixture of ice and wood
Speaker 1: pulp that was stronger, more buoyant, and took longer to
Speaker 1: melt than regular ice. During one demonstration at a top
Speaker 1: secret conference in nineteen forty three, Lord Mount Benton set
Speaker 1: up a block of Pike Creek beside a block of ice.
Speaker 1: His audience Winston Churchill, Franklin, Delano Roosevelt, and several other
Speaker 1: high ranking military officials. He then unholstered his service pistol
Speaker 1: and fired a shot at the pure ice block, breaking
Speaker 1: it into a million small pieces. Then he fired a
Speaker 1: shot at the Pike Creet, which deflected the bullet, sending
Speaker 1: it whizzing past US Admiral Ernest King's leg. He wasn't hurt,
Speaker 1: but his pants got a quick lesson in the strength
Speaker 1: of Pike's new building material Sadly, Project Tobacco never made
Speaker 1: it past the prototype phase. Aside from the massive construction costs,
Speaker 1: newer technologies had arrived, which allowed British planes to fly
Speaker 1: farther distances for longer, canceling the need for a frozen
Speaker 1: floating runway. Baton eventually exited the project, leaving it um
Speaker 1: dead in the water. And there you go, A cool
Speaker 1: idea to help win the war that never really took
Speaker 1: off in the end. Curious, isn't it. I hope you've
Speaker 1: enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe
Speaker 1: for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the
Speaker 1: show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was
Speaker 1: created by me Aaron Manky in partnership with how Stuff Works.
Speaker 1: I make another award winning show called Lore, which is
Speaker 1: a podcast, book series, eas and television show and you
Speaker 1: can learn all about it over at the World of
Speaker 1: Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious. Yeah
Speaker 1: h