Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of
Speaker 1: the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all
Speaker 1: of these amazing tales are right there on display, just
Speaker 1: waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
Speaker 1: Monsters are an interesting concept. They're supposed to be terrifying,
Speaker 1: yet they can also be reductive. Humans love to put
Speaker 1: labels on things that scare us, and after thousands of years,
Speaker 1: those labels have taxonomies as complex as any given mammal. Nowadays,
Speaker 1: it's easy to mock things like zombies, vampires, and werewolves
Speaker 1: because they become cliches devoid of mystery. But what was
Speaker 1: our relationship with the dead like before those cliches, before
Speaker 1: universal studios? Boris Karloff bel Lagosi, Well, I'll tell you
Speaker 1: it was no laughing matter. This story comes from a
Speaker 1: collection of Prussian folklore placed in the year fifteen ninety one,
Speaker 1: the twentieth of September to be precise. It begins, as
Speaker 1: so many horror stories do, with death. A shoemaker from
Speaker 1: the city of Breslau in Celesia, Central Europe, cut his
Speaker 1: own throats and bled to death, to the shock and
Speaker 1: horror of his family. His wife, in particular, was devastated.
Speaker 1: At the time, it was considered a great shame to
Speaker 1: take one's own life, so with the help of her sisters,
Speaker 1: she concealed the act from their neighbors. Instead, the story
Speaker 1: she told was that a stroke had taken the shoemaker.
Speaker 1: His widow turned away mourners from their doors and hired
Speaker 1: help to clean and dress the neck wound. The dead
Speaker 1: man was promptly buried three days after he had taken
Speaker 1: his own life. No one but the family knew what
Speaker 1: had befallen him, and yet these things rarely do stay quiet.
Speaker 1: Rumors began to circulate, perhaps due to the haste of
Speaker 1: the burial, perhaps due to the widow refusing to show
Speaker 1: people her husband's corpse, and people whispered that the shoemaker
Speaker 1: had died by his own hand. Eventually, the rumor became
Speaker 1: so prevalent that the Breslau City council questioned the widow
Speaker 1: about her husband's fate. She told them that he had
Speaker 1: fallen and cut his throat on a sharp stone. She
Speaker 1: refused to let them dig up the body for evidence,
Speaker 1: as it would be a further disgrace. It was during
Speaker 1: this investigation, though, that the haunting started. Locals in breslaus
Speaker 1: started seeing the shoemaker around town. He would wake people
Speaker 1: at night with startling noises, terrorizing them in their homes,
Speaker 1: sometimes even while the sun was still up. Laborers claimed
Speaker 1: that they would come home from a hard day's work
Speaker 1: only to be awakened by a horrible form pressing down
Speaker 1: on them, a dead man trying to smother the life
Speaker 1: out of their bodies. They presented bruises and finger marks
Speaker 1: as evidence. The panic built to a fever pitch, some
Speaker 1: even saying that they ought to take this story to
Speaker 1: the Kaiser. Eventually, the town council ruled that the body
Speaker 1: would be exhumed, and on April eighteenth of fifteen ninety two,
Speaker 1: that was done. The body was dug back up, a
Speaker 1: body that had laid in the ground for eight months.
Speaker 1: All of Breslau was there to witness the exhumation, and
Speaker 1: to the horror of everyone, the body in the grave
Speaker 1: was bloated, its limbs still flexible and free of rigor mortis.
Speaker 1: The dead skin had peeled away, revealing fresh new skin beneath.
Speaker 1: It was as if the dead man had new life
Speaker 1: in his veins. The body was put on display, as
Speaker 1: was custom with suicides, but the hauntings continued. The sightings
Speaker 1: of the dead shoemaker only grew more aggressive. They tried
Speaker 1: reburying the corpse, but it didn't work. They tried placing
Speaker 1: it beneath the gallows, and that didn't help either. In fact,
Speaker 1: the corpse seemed fresher and fresher by the day, and
Speaker 1: its spirits mocked them at night. Finally, the city council
Speaker 1: gave permission to the hangman to dispose of the body.
Speaker 1: He removed the head, the hands, and the feet, before
Speaker 1: cutting open its back and taking out its heart. All
Speaker 1: of these things were burned, and finally the shoemaker walked
Speaker 1: no more. The story retold so many times that it
Speaker 1: became as vague as folklore contains wisps of truth within it.
Speaker 1: Corpses often shed skin so that they appear fresher after death,
Speaker 1: which is also aided by post mortem swelling. To an
Speaker 1: untrained eye, it looks as if the body is not
Speaker 1: decomposing as normal. And like I said earlier, people like
Speaker 1: to put labels on things so the villagers of Breslau
Speaker 1: referred to this being that haunted them as a guest
Speaker 1: penst or simply a ghost. But as you can tell,
Speaker 1: it doesn't square with our modern idea of ghosts. It's
Speaker 1: a corporeal, physical presence that assaults the people that it haunts.
Speaker 1: It was probably called this because a better name for
Speaker 1: this sort of undead creature didn't exist yet. You see, Eventually,
Speaker 1: these sorts of hauntings would gain another name, as army
Speaker 1: doctors of the Habsburg Empire collected similar stories from Central
Speaker 1: and Eastern Europe of dead men supposedly coming back from
Speaker 1: the grave. More than one hundred years after this shoemaker
Speaker 1: supposedly died, his kind would finally become known as vampires.
Speaker 1: Everybody makes mistakes. It's inevitable, really, but for the most part,
Speaker 1: calling your teacher mom or autopiloting to work on a
Speaker 1: weekend won't cost you much more than time and embarrassment.
Speaker 1: Back in nineteen forty three, however, the brand new crew
Speaker 1: of the USS William D Porter was making mistakes left
Speaker 1: and right, and with one little slip up, the Willie D,
Speaker 1: as it was called, nearly changed the course of history. Forever.
Speaker 1: The Willi D was a huge naval destroyer built in
Speaker 1: nineteen forty three. After several months of training, it was
Speaker 1: finally ready for its first ever mission, escorting a battleship
Speaker 1: called the USS Iowa to North Africa. The crew of
Speaker 1: the Willy D was excited. They had a hugely important task.
Speaker 1: The President of the Free World himself, Franklin Delanor Roosevelt,
Speaker 1: was secretly traveling aboard the Iowa while two outsiders. This
Speaker 1: trip appeared to be a training exercise. Really, the fleet
Speaker 1: was bringing Roosevelt to meet with Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin.
Speaker 1: This mission would determine the entire course of World War II.
Speaker 1: That was, if the Willy D didn't mess it up first.
Speaker 1: The first incident occurred before the ships even made it
Speaker 1: out of the harbor. On November twelfth of nineteen forty three.
Speaker 1: The ship was reversing in the Norfolk, Virginia Harbor when
Speaker 1: it caught its anchor on the side of another destroyer.
Speaker 1: The Willie D scraped alongside it, taking railings, life rafts,
Speaker 1: and valuable equipment with it. The battleship itself came away
Speaker 1: with just a scratched anchor the other ship and needed
Speaker 1: an entire facelift. And perhaps this should have been an
Speaker 1: omen for the trip to come. And yet the following day,
Speaker 1: November thirteenth, the Willie D left Norfolk, along with the
Speaker 1: Iowa and several other battleships. At this time, Nazi U
Speaker 1: boats were treating the Atlantic Ocean like their own private
Speaker 1: hunting ground. The American fleet was under orders of strict
Speaker 1: radio silence. One errant broadcast and it could be picked
Speaker 1: up on sonar and they could be blown to smithereens.
Speaker 1: So when an explosion ripped through the fleet, everyone's first
Speaker 1: thought was that the Nazis had found them. But when
Speaker 1: no further blast sounded, the sailors were confused, why weren't
Speaker 1: they attacking. It was then that the radios crackled to life.
Speaker 1: The captain of the Willi D broke radio silence to
Speaker 1: sheepishly admit that he was the cause of the explosion.
Speaker 1: A depth charge had fallen off the ship and exploded.
Speaker 1: There were no Nazis, it was just the Willi D.
Speaker 1: Yet another opportunity to maybe send the Willy D packing,
Speaker 1: But the fleet had a guest to impress, and he
Speaker 1: wanted to see what the Navy's brand new ships could do.
Speaker 1: On President Roosevelt's orders, the uss Iowa launched weather balloons
Speaker 1: so the ships in the fleet could fire at them
Speaker 1: with their anti aircraft guns. At the same time, each
Speaker 1: ship ran through their battle procedures. Over on the Willid,
Speaker 1: the torpedo crew were acting out a mock firing exercise.
Speaker 1: They loaded three torpedoes, and on the Chief Engineer's order,
Speaker 1: they fired. Now for a practice run. Standard procedure was
Speaker 1: to remove the primer from the torpedo chamber. The primer
Speaker 1: was the explosive device that launched the torpedo into the water,
Speaker 1: so when the crew fired a torpedo with no primer,
Speaker 1: nothing would actually happen. It was a test run, after all,
Speaker 1: at least that's the way it was supposed to go.
Speaker 1: But when the order was called, a loud whooshing noise
Speaker 1: came from torpedo tube number three. Someone had left the
Speaker 1: primer in the shoot, and a fully armed torpedo had
Speaker 1: been launched from the Willid and was heading straight toward
Speaker 1: President Roosevelt. Chaos reigned on the willi D. At first,
Speaker 1: the captain tried to signal the uss Iowa with lights
Speaker 1: as He had already been chastised for breaking radio silence,
Speaker 1: but instead of broadcasting a warning, he accidentally signaled that
Speaker 1: his ship was backing up. Realizing his mistake, the captain
Speaker 1: finally broke radio silence again to call the uss Iowa
Speaker 1: and tell them that he had fired a torpedo at
Speaker 1: the President. Reportedly, President Roosevelt, excited by the whole thing,
Speaker 1: asked for his wheelchair to be brought to the railing
Speaker 1: so that he could see the torpedo speeding towards them.
Speaker 1: Luckily for him, the uss Iowa was able to move
Speaker 1: in time. The torpedo hit the Iowa's wake and exploded
Speaker 1: safely away from the leader of the Free world. After
Speaker 1: determining the crew of the Willi D were not assassins,
Speaker 1: just deeply incompetent, the fleet arrested the entire crew. Thanks
Speaker 1: to Roosevelt's intervention, the captain and crew were let go
Speaker 1: without jail time, but were exiled to Alaska for the
Speaker 1: bulk of the war. The crew of the Willie D
Speaker 1: always wanted to make a splash, but in hindsight, perhaps
Speaker 1: plaps They should have avoided the explosives. 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 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 Worldoflore dot com.
Speaker 1: And until next time, stay curious.