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. War requires a lot
Speaker 1: from a soldier, intuition, dedication, and resourcefulness. From medic to mcgever.
Speaker 1: A soldier's role can change from one moment to the next,
Speaker 1: and oftentimes the only tools they have to work with
Speaker 1: are the objects on their person at the time. You
Speaker 1: might not think you could patch up a wound with
Speaker 1: only a rifle, a knife, and some leaves you found
Speaker 1: on the ground, but when you're under enemy fire, you
Speaker 1: find a way. And the United States military had to
Speaker 1: find a way when they ran a foul of the
Speaker 1: Chinese army during the Korean War. The chan Jin Mountain Reservoir,
Speaker 1: known by American forces as the Chosen Reservoir, became a
Speaker 1: hotbed of action during the Chinese Second Defensive of nineteen fifty.
Speaker 1: The war appeared to be over as U N forces
Speaker 1: advanced into North Korea in order to unite the two sides.
Speaker 1: A reunification wasn't going to happen if the People's Republic
Speaker 1: of China had anything to say about it. One hundred
Speaker 1: twenty thousand Chinese soldiers infiltrated North Korea in an effort
Speaker 1: to stop the U n's advancement. They reached the reservoir first,
Speaker 1: while a special group of United States soldiers known as
Speaker 1: the ex Corps approached from the coast. I know they
Speaker 1: sound like characters out of a Marvel comic book, but
Speaker 1: trust me, they were real superheroes. Fifteen thousand men from
Speaker 1: the Marines and the U. S Army were ready to
Speaker 1: end the war once and for all and bring stability
Speaker 1: to the region. You might be wondering why only fifteen
Speaker 1: thousand if the Chinese had deployed eight times that amount
Speaker 1: into the area, And that's because the United States forces
Speaker 1: had no idea the Chinese army was waiting for them.
Speaker 1: They snuck in and fortified their position, waiting for the
Speaker 1: Americans to arrive. The X Corps held their own for
Speaker 1: over two weeks against the Chinese military, but the harsh,
Speaker 1: terragn and brutal fighting had left them all but defeated.
Speaker 1: Stuck in freezing temperatures and outgunned. The X Corp the
Speaker 1: best of the best. We're running out out of AMMO,
Speaker 1: out of food, and out of time. They were surrounded.
Speaker 1: The enemy was closing in on thousands of US soldiers,
Speaker 1: many of whom had nothing to defend themselves with except
Speaker 1: broken guns and equally broken spirits. Worst of all, the
Speaker 1: mortar shelves they used to beat back the Chinese forces
Speaker 1: had run dry, so they called in for an air drop.
Speaker 1: Tutsi rolls they called them. It sounds silly, but code
Speaker 1: names like that were necessary to prevent the other side
Speaker 1: from knowing what was coming in case someone happened to
Speaker 1: be listening in. Unfortunately, who ever took the air drop
Speaker 1: order didn't understand the code name. The X Corps got
Speaker 1: their supplies, boxes and boxes of what they thought were
Speaker 1: mortar shells, ready to launch. What they received, however, was
Speaker 1: far less explosive. Their pleas for tutsie rolls had gotten
Speaker 1: them exactly what they'd asked for, tutsie rolls, little chocolate
Speaker 1: candies wrapped up in wax paper. This might have signaled
Speaker 1: the end for the U S forces, now without an
Speaker 1: escape plan and their chances of survival dwindling. After all,
Speaker 1: you can't win a war with chocolate as your only
Speaker 1: supply unless you're the x core. The men were quickly
Speaker 1: revitalized by the sugar rush bestowed upon them from overhead,
Speaker 1: and they quickly realized that their little candies, although hardened
Speaker 1: by the reservoirs freezing winds, became soft and pliable when
Speaker 1: warmed up in their mouths. They chewed them into a
Speaker 1: putty like substance, which they then spread over the holes
Speaker 1: in their weapons, letting the wind freeze them in place.
Speaker 1: With their bellies full and their guns back in action,
Speaker 1: the ex Corps were once again a formidable threat. They
Speaker 1: managed to fight back just enough to get out of
Speaker 1: enemy territory and make their way to the nearest coast
Speaker 1: where they could regroup. It sounds almost too strange to
Speaker 1: be true, the idea that a simple chocolate candy saved
Speaker 1: the lives of so many American soldiers in Korea. But
Speaker 1: as it turns out, Tootsie rolls made as good a
Speaker 1: patching material as they did a candy. Now that I
Speaker 1: think about it, it's a good thing they didn't call
Speaker 1: in for an air drop of life. Savers Louis was
Speaker 1: born in Plymouth, England, to parents who dedicated their lives
Speaker 1: to helping others. His father was a surgeon in the
Speaker 1: Royal Navy, and his mother worked as a nurse in
Speaker 1: Queen Alexandra's Royal Naval Nursing Service. Lewis learned from a
Speaker 1: young age that the best use of anyone's gifts was
Speaker 1: to use them in service of others. The family moved
Speaker 1: to South Africa when Louis was ten, and that was
Speaker 1: where he found his true love the water. Louis hadn't
Speaker 1: had a real swimming lesson until late in high school,
Speaker 1: but it didn't take long for him to outpace the
Speaker 1: other students. A month after his first lesson, he swam
Speaker 1: four point three miles to Robin Island off the coast
Speaker 1: of Cape Town. That's the same island where Nelson Mandela
Speaker 1: was imprisoned for many years, and that gave Lewis an
Speaker 1: idea about what he would attempt next. Well after he
Speaker 1: finished his education at least, Louis took a break from
Speaker 1: his dairy nautical trials and went to college, studying law
Speaker 1: at the University of Cape Town, before eventually returning to
Speaker 1: England to practice maritime law. It seemed no matter where
Speaker 1: he went, he always managed to stay close to the water.
Speaker 1: Six years later, though, it was time to dive back in,
Speaker 1: so to speak, but he did not ease into things slowly.
Speaker 1: He swam across the English Channel in fourteen and a
Speaker 1: half hours and then moved on to colder, harsher challenges
Speaker 1: around the world. And maybe you've noticed, but Louis just
Speaker 1: couldn't sit still. He needed to push himself with each
Speaker 1: swim farther, faster, longer. Louis set a number of records
Speaker 1: along the way, becoming the first swimmer to swim around
Speaker 1: the Cape Peninsula, the southernmost point of Africa, and the
Speaker 1: Cape of Good Hope, the northernmost point in Europe. He
Speaker 1: even swam the length of the sun Ya Fjord, the
Speaker 1: longest of Norway's fiords. At one seven miles. It took
Speaker 1: him twenty one days to do it. Possibly his greatest
Speaker 1: feat came in achieving the Holy Grail of swimming by
Speaker 1: completing a long distance swim in all five of the
Speaker 1: world's oceans, four of which were accomplished over the course
Speaker 1: of only two years. Louis was an unstoppable force, and
Speaker 1: his achievements gained him a bit of notoriety, notoriety that
Speaker 1: he used to bring awareness to environmental issues all over
Speaker 1: the world, namely climate change. In fact, many of his
Speaker 1: record swims since then we're done in an effort to
Speaker 1: bring awareness to the effects of climate change on our ocean,
Speaker 1: seas and glaciers, including one such feat in a glacial
Speaker 1: lake on Mount Everest. To swim in such a frigid environment,
Speaker 1: most people would have needed a special wetsuit or equipment
Speaker 1: to regulate their body temperature, but there was something different
Speaker 1: about Louis, something almost superhuman. A professor from the University
Speaker 1: of Cape Town measured Louis's body temperature and found something astonishing.
Speaker 1: Louis could actually increase his core body temperature by two
Speaker 1: degrees just before a swim in cold waters, a phenomenon
Speaker 1: he called anticipatory thermogenesis. No one else on earth has
Speaker 1: been able to do it. All of this, compounded with
Speaker 1: his long distance swims in all seven seas, has cemented
Speaker 1: Louis Pew as an icon of environmental change. His act
Speaker 1: of is m has sparked actual legislation in the UK
Speaker 1: as well. That all happened in two thousand six when
Speaker 1: Louis decided to swim the length of the Thames River. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all two fifteen miles of it. All to raise awareness
Speaker 1: of the growing drought across England as a result of
Speaker 1: global warming. Louis dove into the water and took off
Speaker 1: a human torpedo on a mission. But he had just
Speaker 1: one stop to make first. He jumped out of the
Speaker 1: river and took a quick detour to ten Downing Street,
Speaker 1: the home of the Prime Minister at the time, Tony Blair.
Speaker 1: The two had a brief chat before Louis took his
Speaker 1: leave back to the frigid Thames to complete his journey.
Speaker 1: It might have been this herculean trial that convinced the
Speaker 1: Prime Minister, after all, two fifteen miles is a long
Speaker 1: way to swim to prove a point. Or it might
Speaker 1: have been something he said to convince him to take action.
Speaker 1: But one thing is certain. Not long after Louis's visit
Speaker 1: to ten Downing Street, Tony Blair introduced to Parliament what
Speaker 1: is now known as the Climate Change Act of two
Speaker 1: thousand eight. Louis Pew is still swimming for environmental causes today,
Speaker 1: one body of water at a time. His efforts are
Speaker 1: working too. Little by little. The awareness he's raising is
Speaker 1: helping clean up our oceans and rivers, so future generations
Speaker 1: might enjoy them. Sometimes if you want to make a change,
Speaker 1: you just have to dive right in. 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, 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.