WEBVTT - How Did a Cat Make Aviation History?

0:00:01.920 --> 0:00:06.480
<v Speaker 1>Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio, Hey

0:00:06.600 --> 0:00:13.360
<v Speaker 1>Rain Stuff. Lauren Bogbaum. Here in nineteen sustained safe manned

0:00:13.400 --> 0:00:17.880
<v Speaker 1>flight was still a tantalizing dream, just off our fingertips,

0:00:17.920 --> 0:00:21.480
<v Speaker 1>notion that promised freedom and glory and the kind of

0:00:21.600 --> 0:00:24.600
<v Speaker 1>casting off of our earthly shackles that had lured in

0:00:24.720 --> 0:00:29.319
<v Speaker 1>romantics for ages. And so it was in October of

0:00:29.360 --> 0:00:32.239
<v Speaker 1>that year that the entire world, or at least a

0:00:32.240 --> 0:00:36.080
<v Speaker 1>good portion of the eastern United States, looked heavenward toward

0:00:36.159 --> 0:00:41.240
<v Speaker 1>the latest fantastical attempt at real sustained flight. All odds

0:00:41.320 --> 0:00:45.040
<v Speaker 1>were pointing toward New Jersey. Not exactly heavenward, granted, but

0:00:45.120 --> 0:00:48.239
<v Speaker 1>you get the idea where the airship America and its

0:00:48.280 --> 0:00:51.480
<v Speaker 1>crew aimed to be the first manned flight to cross

0:00:51.479 --> 0:00:55.279
<v Speaker 1>the Atlantic. For the article this episode is based on

0:00:55.400 --> 0:00:59.000
<v Speaker 1>how Stuff Works. Spoke with Thomas a museum specialist at

0:00:59.000 --> 0:01:02.680
<v Speaker 1>the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. He said, in

0:01:02.720 --> 0:01:07.320
<v Speaker 1>the early nine hundreds, there's this mystique about aviation. It's futuristic.

0:01:07.520 --> 0:01:10.720
<v Speaker 1>It's this incredible thing. You have the first powered heavier

0:01:10.720 --> 0:01:14.080
<v Speaker 1>than air aircraft with the Wright Brothers in nineteen o three.

0:01:14.400 --> 0:01:20.120
<v Speaker 1>Aviation is thrilling, and that excitement is building. And now

0:01:20.280 --> 0:01:23.840
<v Speaker 1>I've been saying manned, because flight in nineteen ten was

0:01:23.920 --> 0:01:28.760
<v Speaker 1>still mostly the provenance of men, and as it turned out,

0:01:28.840 --> 0:01:35.520
<v Speaker 1>with the airship America one unruly tabbycat in nineteen ten,

0:01:35.600 --> 0:01:38.400
<v Speaker 1>there were those who thought that if long distance multi

0:01:38.400 --> 0:01:42.120
<v Speaker 1>passenger flight were to become a reality, if those longing

0:01:42.160 --> 0:01:44.200
<v Speaker 1>eyes on the ground in New Jersey were to have

0:01:44.280 --> 0:01:46.959
<v Speaker 1>a real chance to fly to Europe, it would be

0:01:47.040 --> 0:01:50.240
<v Speaker 1>on lighter than air Airships like the America or the

0:01:50.320 --> 0:01:54.040
<v Speaker 1>rigid framed German Zeppelins. Both got their lift from either

0:01:54.120 --> 0:01:58.360
<v Speaker 1>hydrogen or helium. Both had small engines to propel the crafts.

0:01:58.760 --> 0:02:01.280
<v Speaker 1>The difference was that the Zeppelin had a large frame

0:02:01.400 --> 0:02:05.280
<v Speaker 1>that held up the fabric that surrounded it. The America,

0:02:05.400 --> 0:02:09.120
<v Speaker 1>in contrast, was basically a big balloon, some two hundred

0:02:09.160 --> 0:02:12.639
<v Speaker 1>feet that's sixty long. First built in France in an

0:02:12.639 --> 0:02:16.320
<v Speaker 1>attempt to reach the North Pole. Its owner was American

0:02:16.320 --> 0:02:20.760
<v Speaker 1>newspaper publisher Walter Wellman, a self defined explorer and ario

0:02:20.800 --> 0:02:24.600
<v Speaker 1>knot a. Wellman's try for the North Pole failed miserably,

0:02:24.880 --> 0:02:27.919
<v Speaker 1>but undaunted, he brought his ship to the US, built

0:02:27.919 --> 0:02:32.560
<v Speaker 1>it bigger, and set his sights on the Atlantic. Wellman

0:02:32.639 --> 0:02:35.200
<v Speaker 1>and his crew took off from Atlantic City a small

0:02:35.240 --> 0:02:38.840
<v Speaker 1>passenger cabin and a wooden lifeboat attached to the bottom.

0:02:38.880 --> 0:02:43.000
<v Speaker 1>Among those on board were Wellman, engineer Melvin Vannomen, navigator F.

0:02:43.160 --> 0:02:48.560
<v Speaker 1>Murray Simon, and a radio operator, Jack Irwin. The flight

0:02:48.680 --> 0:02:52.160
<v Speaker 1>struggled from the start, fighting bad weather and bulky engines

0:02:52.240 --> 0:02:54.880
<v Speaker 1>that apparently had been infected with sand from the New

0:02:54.960 --> 0:02:58.960
<v Speaker 1>Jersey shore off of New England. The engines failed and

0:02:59.040 --> 0:03:02.440
<v Speaker 1>the ship began to drift southward. The trip seemed doomed

0:03:02.480 --> 0:03:05.679
<v Speaker 1>at that point. Even before then, though, the crew had

0:03:05.720 --> 0:03:09.799
<v Speaker 1>to deal with that darned cat. This is the story

0:03:10.120 --> 0:03:14.520
<v Speaker 1>of Kiddo. How Stuff Works also spoke by email with

0:03:14.560 --> 0:03:17.720
<v Speaker 1>Alan Janis, a museum specialist in the Archives department at

0:03:17.720 --> 0:03:21.720
<v Speaker 1>the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. He said, I'm

0:03:21.760 --> 0:03:25.000
<v Speaker 1>not sure whose cat Kiddo was. He may have been Astray,

0:03:25.040 --> 0:03:28.320
<v Speaker 1>who was adopted by America's crew, though Wellman said he

0:03:28.440 --> 0:03:31.960
<v Speaker 1>was the pet of one of the crew. Whatever the case,

0:03:32.200 --> 0:03:36.240
<v Speaker 1>it's unclear why Kiddo as he later became known, was

0:03:36.320 --> 0:03:40.000
<v Speaker 1>included on the flight, but he was definitely not initially

0:03:40.320 --> 0:03:44.360
<v Speaker 1>thrilled to be part of the historic voyage. Later, the

0:03:44.440 --> 0:03:48.040
<v Speaker 1>navigator Simon gave this account to The New York Times quote,

0:03:48.480 --> 0:03:50.440
<v Speaker 1>all the time we have been told to see, I

0:03:50.440 --> 0:03:53.400
<v Speaker 1>am chiefly worried by our cat, which is rushing around

0:03:53.400 --> 0:03:55.880
<v Speaker 1>the airship like a squirrel in a cage. I was

0:03:55.920 --> 0:03:58.480
<v Speaker 1>at the wheel, and jack Erwin, the wireless man, who

0:03:58.520 --> 0:04:00.520
<v Speaker 1>was seated in the lifeboats spended from the car of

0:04:00.560 --> 0:04:03.600
<v Speaker 1>the airship, cried out to me, this cat is raising hell.

0:04:03.880 --> 0:04:08.600
<v Speaker 1>I believe it's going mad. Kitto, notably, was the subject

0:04:08.640 --> 0:04:12.720
<v Speaker 1>of the first wireless transmission from an aircraft. Either Irwin

0:04:12.960 --> 0:04:17.160
<v Speaker 1>or Vanamin wired and said, I quote Roy, come and

0:04:17.200 --> 0:04:22.200
<v Speaker 1>get this damn cat. The crew was so distressed by

0:04:22.200 --> 0:04:24.640
<v Speaker 1>the cat's antics early in the flight that they thought

0:04:24.680 --> 0:04:27.520
<v Speaker 1>to relieve Kiddo of his duties. He was put in

0:04:27.560 --> 0:04:30.600
<v Speaker 1>a bag and lowered toward a trailing boat of newspaperman

0:04:30.839 --> 0:04:34.600
<v Speaker 1>as the America was being towed to see. The handoff

0:04:34.640 --> 0:04:38.000
<v Speaker 1>couldn't be completed, though, and Kiddo was brought back on board.

0:04:40.000 --> 0:04:42.800
<v Speaker 1>The cat eventually settled down as the hours passed and

0:04:42.800 --> 0:04:46.880
<v Speaker 1>the ship drifted from its target. Some seventy two hours later,

0:04:47.120 --> 0:04:50.039
<v Speaker 1>after a thousand and eight miles that's one thousand, six

0:04:50.360 --> 0:04:52.960
<v Speaker 1>d and twenty two kilometers in the air. The America

0:04:53.160 --> 0:04:56.640
<v Speaker 1>was abandoned at sea near Bermuda. The ship was never

0:04:56.680 --> 0:04:59.520
<v Speaker 1>to be seen again, and its crew was rescued by

0:04:59.520 --> 0:05:03.200
<v Speaker 1>a pass steamship. The wooden lifeboat is now among the

0:05:03.279 --> 0:05:07.320
<v Speaker 1>artifacts at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. I'm

0:05:07.360 --> 0:05:10.200
<v Speaker 1>back in New York. The crew was welcomed as heroes.

0:05:10.760 --> 0:05:13.800
<v Speaker 1>Photos were snapped for The Times, with Kiddo front and center,

0:05:14.440 --> 0:05:17.359
<v Speaker 1>and Janice said for a time he was displayed at

0:05:17.400 --> 0:05:21.680
<v Speaker 1>Gimbal's department store in a gilded cage. Afterward, he retired

0:05:21.680 --> 0:05:25.040
<v Speaker 1>from aviation and lived with Wellman's daughter in Washington, d c.

0:05:27.520 --> 0:05:30.960
<v Speaker 1>The last flight of the airship America was not technically

0:05:31.040 --> 0:05:35.120
<v Speaker 1>a successful one, but no airship had ever traveled so far,

0:05:35.520 --> 0:05:38.880
<v Speaker 1>albeit in the wrong direction. The America brought the dream

0:05:38.920 --> 0:05:41.839
<v Speaker 1>of flight, of crossing oceans and a human made flying

0:05:41.880 --> 0:05:46.560
<v Speaker 1>machine closer to reality than it ever had been. Simon

0:05:46.600 --> 0:05:50.159
<v Speaker 1>wrote after the voyage, we sacrificed our airship, but we

0:05:50.400 --> 0:05:53.719
<v Speaker 1>saved our lives. And above all, as Mr Wellman and

0:05:53.839 --> 0:05:56.640
<v Speaker 1>Mr Vanamon will show when they write their technical reports,

0:05:56.960 --> 0:05:59.640
<v Speaker 1>we have gathered a vast amount of useful knowledge which

0:05:59.640 --> 0:06:02.800
<v Speaker 1>will help largely in the solution of big problems relating

0:06:02.839 --> 0:06:06.120
<v Speaker 1>to the navigation of the air and we also saved

0:06:06.160 --> 0:06:11.720
<v Speaker 1>the cat As an epilogue, the first successful transatlantic airship

0:06:11.800 --> 0:06:14.839
<v Speaker 1>voyage was completed about nine years after the America was

0:06:14.920 --> 0:06:18.960
<v Speaker 1>lost in July by the British airship Are thirty four.

0:06:20.040 --> 0:06:22.680
<v Speaker 1>The ship, over three times the size of the America,

0:06:23.080 --> 0:06:32.080
<v Speaker 1>carried a stowaway kitten named whoop See. Today's episode is

0:06:32.080 --> 0:06:35.159
<v Speaker 1>based on the article how a Frisky Feline made aviation

0:06:35.240 --> 0:06:38.040
<v Speaker 1>history on how stuff works dot Com, written by John Donovan.

0:06:38.560 --> 0:06:40.240
<v Speaker 1>Brain Stuff is a production of I Heart Radio and

0:06:40.320 --> 0:06:42.520
<v Speaker 1>partnership with how stuff Works dot Com, and is produced

0:06:42.520 --> 0:06:45.359
<v Speaker 1>by Tyler Clay. Four more podcasts to my heart Radio,

0:06:45.560 --> 0:06:48.159
<v Speaker 1>visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever

0:06:48.200 --> 0:06:49.600
<v Speaker 1>you listen to your favorite shows.