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. Listen, pay attention, tune your
Speaker 1: ear to the world around you, and you'll hear music everywhere.
Speaker 1: In the rhythm of a footstep on its hile floor,
Speaker 1: or in the chime of an elevator in the lobby,
Speaker 1: a baby's cry, a squeaky break, anything can become a
Speaker 1: song with a keen ear and a little imagination. A
Speaker 1: stonemason from Keswick, England, possessed such an ear, and it
Speaker 1: took him quite far. In eighteen forty, Joseph Richardson had
Speaker 1: been wandering around near a mountain five miles from his
Speaker 1: home when he struck one of the rocks along the
Speaker 1: mountain side. Surprisingly, it rang out with a clear, crisp tone,
Speaker 1: and it gave Joseph an idea. He took the rock
Speaker 1: home and stored it away. It had been the first
Speaker 1: step in a journey that would take him thirteen years
Speaker 1: to complete. He returned to the mountain over the course
Speaker 1: of those thirteen years, over and over again. In search
Speaker 1: of more rocks, known as horn fells. Just like the first,
Speaker 1: he hit each one to hear its tone, and he
Speaker 1: did this until he had amassed over sixty of them.
Speaker 1: His goal was to compile them into a musical instrument
Speaker 1: known as a lithophone. Now, the lithophone wasn't too different
Speaker 1: from a xylophone. It consisted of carefully assembled tiers of
Speaker 1: rocks arranged like piano keys. When struck, each rock elicited
Speaker 1: a specific tone on the musical scale. His first lithophone
Speaker 1: had too small, arranged to play most songs of the time,
Speaker 1: but a second version was so large it could reach
Speaker 1: eight octaves, and Joseph was obsessed with building the instrument,
Speaker 1: spending most of his time and money on its construction.
Speaker 1: The effort nearly bankrupted his family, but don't worry, he
Speaker 1: had a plan to earn it all back. With a
Speaker 1: special set of mallets and his children by his side,
Speaker 1: Joseph took his lithophone on a European tour. He and
Speaker 1: his sons toured Germany, France, Italy and other European countries,
Speaker 1: playing for all kinds of crowds. Audiences were in awe
Speaker 1: of the unique sound of his lithophone. The concerts proved
Speaker 1: so successful, in fact, that the Richardson's didn't return home
Speaker 1: for three years. He even performed for the Queen at
Speaker 1: Buckingham Palace. The papers reported that his Stones sounded like
Speaker 1: the warble of a lark at its upper register, and
Speaker 1: like the bellowing toll of a funeral bell at the
Speaker 1: lower end. Others described the music as haunting. It sounded
Speaker 1: like a relic from an ancient era, not a modern
Speaker 1: musical instrument. As Joseph traveled and put war into are
Speaker 1: on his creation, he modified it with steel bars for reinforcements.
Speaker 1: He also added bells and other pieces to produce additional
Speaker 1: sounds during performances. However, all that travel had exacted a
Speaker 1: heavy toll on his children too. They'd grown tired, and
Speaker 1: his youngest son had caught pneumonia. On the night before
Speaker 1: a plan trip to America. The boy passed away. Grief
Speaker 1: was too much for Joseph and his two other children,
Speaker 1: and so they ended the tour, and that was the
Speaker 1: end of the Richardson family band. It's not known whether
Speaker 1: Joseph ever performed with the Stones again after that, but
Speaker 1: we do know that they stayed in the family. In
Speaker 1: nineteen seventeen, more than sixty years after Joseph's death, his
Speaker 1: great grandson donated the lithophone to the Keswick Museum and
Speaker 1: Art Gallery in his hometown, where it still resides today.
Speaker 1: Its sound has been recorded and converted digitally too, so
Speaker 1: today's musicians can incorporate its ethereal notes into their modern compositions.
Speaker 1: Joseph Richardson can tributed to the world of music in
Speaker 1: a powerful way over the course of thirteen years. He
Speaker 1: built his influence one stone at a time, with blood,
Speaker 1: sweat and a lot of tears, and even though the
Speaker 1: record books might not agree, one might say he also
Speaker 1: had a pretty big claim to fame. After all, he
Speaker 1: did create the world's first rock band. Plane crash survivors
Speaker 1: have told incredible stories of the fear they overcame when
Speaker 1: facing what they thought was certain death. A man who
Speaker 1: had been on a US Airways flight that crashed in
Speaker 1: two thousand nine discussed reading the emergency instructions while his
Speaker 1: plane was nose diving over water. A woman on a
Speaker 1: small chartered flight in found herself lost in the congo
Speaker 1: when the pilot lost control over a mountain range. She
Speaker 1: made it out of the wreckage, but eventually lost her
Speaker 1: legs to frostbite. We have their stories to help us
Speaker 1: understand what it's like to be part of an experience
Speaker 1: that most people do not survive. But what happens when
Speaker 1: those stories can't be told. I'm not talking about a
Speaker 1: lack of survivors. I'm talking about a lack of any
Speaker 1: evidence at all. What do you do when you know
Speaker 1: there's been a crash but there's no proof. It's hard
Speaker 1: to imagine such a thing happening. A large metal aircraft
Speaker 1: falling from the sky, the sound of the impact, an explosion,
Speaker 1: the smell of burning fuel. There would be pieces of
Speaker 1: the plane left over, or a crater, or down trees.
Speaker 1: And yet despite eyewitness reports of airplanes disappearing into wooded
Speaker 1: areas or over the ocean, there's no proof they ever happened.
Speaker 1: And the planes often seen are vintage models from the
Speaker 1: nineteen thirties and forties, usually aircraft used for bombings or
Speaker 1: personnel transport. For example, in the spring of nineteen Tony
Speaker 1: Ingle from Derbyshire, England, watched as a large airplane with
Speaker 1: enormous propellers silently fell into an open field where sheep
Speaker 1: had been grazing Tony hurried to the site, expecting death
Speaker 1: and destruction, hoping someone had radioed for help that would
Speaker 1: soon be on its way, but no help came. It
Speaker 1: wasn't needed. The sheep were still there, safely eating, without
Speaker 1: any trace of a crash. No smoke, no fire, and
Speaker 1: no plane. And that wasn't the only phantom crash seen
Speaker 1: over Derbyshire. One year earlier, the local police received hundreds
Speaker 1: of frantic calls about a World War Two bomber gliding
Speaker 1: at a dangerously low altitude. Many observers thought that it
Speaker 1: was moments away from crashing, so the authorities dispatched a
Speaker 1: full search team to hunt for the wreck, only to
Speaker 1: find nothing. The plane had just disappeared. Even as recently
Speaker 1: as two thousand eighteen, Derbyshire citizens took the social media
Speaker 1: with claims of another ghost plane cruising low overhead. Some
Speaker 1: had peg the vessel as a Douglas Dakota, a transport
Speaker 1: model that had crashed in the area during the war.
Speaker 1: It moved without making a sound, an impossible feat for
Speaker 1: something so large being powered by four giant propellers. It
Speaker 1: should come as no surprise that Derbyshire, England was an
Speaker 1: unfortunate victim of the Second World War. Having been subjected
Speaker 1: to countless bombings and attacks, much of the area was
Speaker 1: reduced to rubble. In fact, an old oak tree in
Speaker 1: the northeast Derbyshire town of Duckmanton is honored every year
Speaker 1: for taking a direct hit from a German parachute bomb
Speaker 1: in The bomb had been meant for the local railway station,
Speaker 1: but instead hit the tree, sparing not only the station
Speaker 1: but also hundreds of lives and a nearby school. That
Speaker 1: doesn't explain why phantom airplanes continue to plague the townspeople there, though,
Speaker 1: and Derbyshire isn't the only place where they've been seen.
Speaker 1: A loud roar startled the people of Berkshire, just west
Speaker 1: of London on the evening of October two thousand eleven.
Speaker 1: They ran to their win knows and into the street
Speaker 1: to check on the commotion. When they looked up, there
Speaker 1: was a commercial airliner streaking past them, headed for a
Speaker 1: nearby wooded area. The Civil Aviation Authority reported no distress
Speaker 1: calls that night from any passenger aircraft. The woods were
Speaker 1: also a dead end if the plane was real and
Speaker 1: hadn't made a hard landing or resulted in a crash,
Speaker 1: it's simply vanished in the end. Perhaps we shouldn't be
Speaker 1: asking where these planes come from or where they go
Speaker 1: when they vanish. Instead, maybe we should be asking ourselves
Speaker 1: a better question. If a plane falls in the woods
Speaker 1: and it doesn't leave a trace, was it ever really
Speaker 1: there at all? Either way, I'd call that curious. I
Speaker 1: hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities.
Speaker 1: Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about
Speaker 1: the show by visiting Curiosities podcast asked dot com. The
Speaker 1: show was created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership with
Speaker 1: how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore,
Speaker 1: which is a podcast, book series, and television show, and
Speaker 1: you can learn all about it over at the World
Speaker 1: of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.