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. Charlie was tired of
Speaker 1: selling sewing machines. Charlie wanted to get rich, and walking
Speaker 1: door to door in the hot summer sun fingers crossed
Speaker 1: for a sail every few days was not going to
Speaker 1: get it done. Charlie wanted to make it rain, so
Speaker 1: he did. He'd been born in Kansas in but his
Speaker 1: Quaker family packed up and moved to southern California. Five
Speaker 1: years later. They settled in on their dusty ranch about
Speaker 1: thirty five miles north of San Diego, and then life
Speaker 1: just sort of kept going. By four, Charlie was a
Speaker 1: twenty nine year old sewing machine salesman who was frustrated
Speaker 1: with his lot in life. He still lived with his parents, and,
Speaker 1: judging by how hard they had both worked just to
Speaker 1: stay afloat all these years, Charlie's own future was far
Speaker 1: from bright and sunny. Charlie was a smart guy, though
Speaker 1: he'd been paying attention, and he noticed something about the
Speaker 1: weather as far as he could tell, rain storms had
Speaker 1: a way of following big battles that involved cannons and rifles.
Speaker 1: He wondered if there was a chemical reason why, and
Speaker 1: started to dig into the field of pluviculture, literally the
Speaker 1: science of making rain. Charlie got busy testing out his ideas.
Speaker 1: He began to experiment with different chemicals, mixing them inside
Speaker 1: a large wooden tub. When he was sure he had
Speaker 1: the recipe right, he covered it and let it sit
Speaker 1: for a while before carefully pushing the lid off from
Speaker 1: some distance with a long pole. The resulting steam drifted
Speaker 1: up into the sky and then caused rain to fall
Speaker 1: on his father's bone dry ranch. He'd done it. The
Speaker 1: first place he took his services was north to Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: They agreed to pay Charlie a thousand dollars if he
Speaker 1: could give them eighteen inches of rain, and that was
Speaker 1: a lot of money to a poor sewing machine salesman,
Speaker 1: close to twenty eight thousand dollars in modern American currency
Speaker 1: in fact. So Charlie built himself a small tower near
Speaker 1: ruby O Canyon, put his big wooden vat on top
Speaker 1: of it, and let the chemicals get to work. And
Speaker 1: it was a success. Charlie gave Los Angeles over eighteen
Speaker 1: inches of rain and took home a big, fat paycheck.
Speaker 1: With success under his belt and the testimony of a
Speaker 1: happy city, he started going elsewhere. In the decade between
Speaker 1: nineteen o five and nineteen fifteen, Charlie worked on as
Speaker 1: many as seventeen contract jobs. Sometimes they were cities, other
Speaker 1: times they were groups of farmers looking for a little help.
Speaker 1: And then San Diego called. They were in the middle
Speaker 1: of a big drought, and after hearing about Charlie's services,
Speaker 1: they decided to give the rainmaker a try. They asked
Speaker 1: him to fill their depleted reservoir, and he agreed. The
Speaker 1: city council met and voted on the project and agreed
Speaker 1: to pay him ten thousand dollars if he could deliver
Speaker 1: on his promise. The first thing he did was build
Speaker 1: another of his towers about sixty miles to the east
Speaker 1: of the city, right on the edge of the Moraina River.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure how moving his chemicals twenty feet higher
Speaker 1: was supposed to help a process that involves sending fumes
Speaker 1: into the clouds to agitate them and create rain, but
Speaker 1: Charlie insisted on it. That was January one of nineteen sixteen.
Speaker 1: Four days later, the rain arrived. The local newspaper reported
Speaker 1: on a light sprinkle that day, but it was certainly
Speaker 1: not enough to fill the local reservoir. But it rained
Speaker 1: the next day as well, and the next after that.
Speaker 1: In fact, it wasn't stopping. The ranges seemed to keep coming,
Speaker 1: pouring from the sky day night. In those first five days,
Speaker 1: the city recorded at least seventeen inches of rain. It
Speaker 1: was wonderful, but also a bit troubling. The rain had
Speaker 1: filled the San Diego River and it was beginning to
Speaker 1: spill over into the land around it. Reports of flooding
Speaker 1: and mud slides began to pour in, as was the
Speaker 1: news that homes were being swept away. It was still
Speaker 1: raining on January when the reservoirs dam broke. A torrent
Speaker 1: of water at least forty ft high, crashed down from
Speaker 1: the hills towards the city, destroying buildings and taking lives
Speaker 1: along the way. It was pure and utter destruction, all
Speaker 1: because of the rain. The January nineteen sixteen rain storm
Speaker 1: brought thirty inches of rain into San Diego, but it
Speaker 1: was also a disaster for Charlie. The city was so
Speaker 1: upset over the destruction his rain had caused that they
Speaker 1: refused to pay him. The resulting legal battle took two
Speaker 1: decades to fizzle out, but Charlie never saw a dime
Speaker 1: or it. He did well elsewhere for a while. He
Speaker 1: apparently signed a contract in nine up in Canada and
Speaker 1: received offers from Cuba, but when the Great Depression arrived,
Speaker 1: cities no longer had the funds to pay for something
Speaker 1: as frivolous as rainmaking. He eventually closed up shop and
Speaker 1: went back to selling sewing machines. Charlie Hadfield never wrote
Speaker 1: his recipe down. He repeated it dozens and dozens of times,
Speaker 1: and we have accounts from witnesses about what he did
Speaker 1: with his mixture or what it smelled like, but never
Speaker 1: what the ingredients were. So when Charlie died in nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty eight, he took his secret formula with him to
Speaker 1: the grave. His recipe might be forgotten, but the catastrophe
Speaker 1: he delivered certainly hasn't been. San Diego still remembers Hatfield's flood,
Speaker 1: although folks are still divided on how it all really happened. Either.
Speaker 1: Charlie Hatfield was the miracle worker he claimed to be,
Speaker 1: or he simply manage to arrive at the perfect time
Speaker 1: for an extraordinary act of God. I'll let you decide
Speaker 1: which option to believe. When Catherine the Great, the longest
Speaker 1: reigning Empress of Russia, passed away in seventeen ninety six,
Speaker 1: her son Paul the First, ascended to the throne. That's
Speaker 1: how things are done in a monarchy, after all, But
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean the people had to like it. Granted,
Speaker 1: the people of Russia had gotten used to Catherine, so
Speaker 1: Paul seemed like a small, cheap replacement for something so
Speaker 1: powerful and irreplaceable, which might explain why the conspiracies began
Speaker 1: almost immediately. Five years later, he was assassinated and his
Speaker 1: son Alexander the First took the throne. Now there's been
Speaker 1: debate for decades about that situation about whether or not
Speaker 1: Alexander had played a part in his father's death. Certainly,
Speaker 1: there isn't enough proof to make a solid case for it,
Speaker 1: but there's wiggle room in there for sure. Most of
Speaker 1: the reports from Alexander's life say that he was very
Speaker 1: remorseful about his father's death. Maybe it was guilt or
Speaker 1: maybe it was just grief. We'll never know, but It's
Speaker 1: important to keep that in mind when I tell you
Speaker 1: the rest of the story, because the next twenty four
Speaker 1: years were a roller coaster ride for him, and it
Speaker 1: didn't end well. There were victories, such as the eighteen
Speaker 1: twelve defeat of Napoleon, who had tried to invade Russia
Speaker 1: and marched to Moscow, only to be turned back, but
Speaker 1: he was plagued by attempts on his life and even
Speaker 1: a botched kidnapping plot. By the end of his life,
Speaker 1: he was incredibly distrusting of the people around him and
Speaker 1: wanted to escape at all. In eight he had his chance.
Speaker 1: His wife had been ill for some time, and they
Speaker 1: decided to take a journey to the southern city of
Speaker 1: tagg and Rock on the coast of the Sea of Azov.
Speaker 1: Along the way, he caught a cold and eventually died
Speaker 1: of typhus. His wife passed away while his body was
Speaker 1: being returned, and the throne passed on to his brother Nicholas.
Speaker 1: And that's the story we're all told. But there are
Speaker 1: rumors of something more bizarre. It said that Alexander, haunted
Speaker 1: by remorse for his father's assassination and driven by a
Speaker 1: desire to get out of the Spotlight hadn't died after all,
Speaker 1: but had actually stepped down from his position as emperor
Speaker 1: so he could remove himself from society. It would mean
Speaker 1: two things, though, first that his confid in St. Petersburg
Speaker 1: was empty, and second, the real Alexander lived on for
Speaker 1: many years elsewhere in Russia. It's a fantastic tale, but
Speaker 1: there might actually be some truth to it. In eighteen
Speaker 1: thirty six, someone in the mountains outside of perm claimed
Speaker 1: to see a man who looked exactly like the former emperor.
Speaker 1: He lived as a hermit in the area, and locals
Speaker 1: referred to him as Father Kuzmich. One tale in particular
Speaker 1: spoke of how a student of this monk had the
Speaker 1: chance to visit the city, where she had an opportunity
Speaker 1: to see a portrait of Emperor Alexander. Upon returning to
Speaker 1: her teacher, she told him that he was the spitting
Speaker 1: image of the dead ruler. Was Father Kuzmich really Alexander
Speaker 1: the first in a sort of self imposed exile. We'll
Speaker 1: never know for sure, but it's certainly fun to imagine
Speaker 1: it being true that a ruler as powerful as Alexander
Speaker 1: could simply step aside, fabricate his own death and then
Speaker 1: live out the rest of his life helping others in
Speaker 1: the mountains as a monk. Well, it's intriguing at the
Speaker 1: very least. Father Kuzmitch passed away in eighteen sixty four
Speaker 1: after a long life of serving and teaching. Over a
Speaker 1: century later, in nineteen eighty four, he was canonized by
Speaker 1: the Russian Orthodox Church. Whether he was an emperor or
Speaker 1: a hermit, the people of Russia have refused to forget him.
Speaker 1: And the coffin of Alexander, Well, it seems that it's
Speaker 1: been opened back up on more than one occasion. The
Speaker 1: most significant of those events took place in It said
Speaker 1: that the Soviet authorities were looking for valuables and had
Speaker 1: opened a number of tombs to see what they could
Speaker 1: find inside. When they reached the tomb of Alexander, they
Speaker 1: found the royal seals on his coffin still intact. Breaking
Speaker 1: it open, they peered inside, hoping for some lost treasure
Speaker 1: or priceless jewelry that might be used to raise money. Instead,
Speaker 1: they found something much less precious, lumps of lead weights.
Speaker 1: Alexander's body. Assuming it had been there in the first place,
Speaker 1: it was nowhere to be found. I hope you've enjoyed
Speaker 1: today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for
Speaker 1: free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show
Speaker 1: by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created
Speaker 1: by me Aaron Mankey in partnership with how Stuff Works.
Speaker 1: I make another award winning show called Lore, which is
Speaker 1: a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can
Speaker 1: learn all about it over at the World of Lore
Speaker 1: dot com. And until next time, stay curious.