Speaker 1: Welcomed Aaron Mankey's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world is full
Speaker 1: of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book,
Speaker 1: all of these amazing tales are right there on display,
Speaker 1: just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet
Speaker 1: of Curiosities. The New York City skyline is iconic. It's
Speaker 1: skyscrapers soaring over buildings of various sizes and time periods
Speaker 1: make the city both modern and timeless. For example, there's
Speaker 1: the Gothic Revival style of St. Patrick's Cathedral, the Neo
Speaker 1: Gothic architecture of the Woolworth Building, and the more clinical
Speaker 1: and angular style of the City Group Center, all of
Speaker 1: which contribute to New York's eclectic and striking visual image.
Speaker 1: But one building stands above them all. Not literally, of course.
Speaker 1: While it may have been the tallest building in this
Speaker 1: city and the world at one time, it has been
Speaker 1: surpassed by many others in the years since its completion.
Speaker 1: Still a few structures are as recognizable or as renowned
Speaker 1: as the Empire State Building, built between March of nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty and May of the following year, the Art Deco
Speaker 1: wonder rises to a towering fourteen hundred and fifty four feet.
Speaker 1: It's impressive stature wouldn't be surpassed until the completion of
Speaker 1: the World Trade Center in ninety The Empire State Building
Speaker 1: is located on Fifth Avenue between thirty third and thirty
Speaker 1: fourth Streets in Manhattan, just down the road from the
Speaker 1: famous Macy's Department store. The American Society of Civil Engineers
Speaker 1: listed the Empire State Building as one of the seven
Speaker 1: Wonders of the Modern World. This is a designation shared
Speaker 1: by such structures as the Golden gate Bridge and the
Speaker 1: Panama Canal, and for good reason. It has one hundred
Speaker 1: and two stories and was the first building anywhere to
Speaker 1: cross the one hundred floor threshold. Of those one and
Speaker 1: two floors, by the way, the first eight five are
Speaker 1: home to various offices and commercial entities. Take the elevator
Speaker 1: to the eighty six floor and you'll enter one of
Speaker 1: the buildings to observation decks, where you can look out
Speaker 1: over the city, taking its breathtaking views, and watch yellow
Speaker 1: cabs the size of ants drive up and down the street.
Speaker 1: The observatory today is surrounded by a giant metal fence
Speaker 1: measuring eight feet high. Now. This fence was put in
Speaker 1: after numerous individuals either attempted to jump or succeeded in
Speaker 1: jumping from the eighty six floor to the street below.
Speaker 1: The number of attempted suicides from the top of the
Speaker 1: Umpire State Building had been growing, and something had to
Speaker 1: be done to stop people from ending their lives this way,
Speaker 1: people like el Vida Adams. It was nine and the
Speaker 1: twenty nine year old Adams had been living in New
Speaker 1: York for some time with her ten year old son.
Speaker 1: She had recently lost her job and her only income
Speaker 1: was her regular one dollar welfare checks. They weren't enough
Speaker 1: to pay for her rent, her groceries, clothes, and everything
Speaker 1: else that she and her son needed to get by.
Speaker 1: With her landlord demanding the rent and nowhere else to turn,
Speaker 1: Elvida fell into a deep depression. She traveled from her
Speaker 1: apartment to the Bronx all the way to the eighty
Speaker 1: six floor of the Empire State Building in Midtown. The
Speaker 1: fence had already been installed, and normally there would have
Speaker 1: been several guards patrolling the observatory at that hour, but
Speaker 1: somehow she had gotten past all of them and jumped
Speaker 1: moments later, around eight fifteen pm, Elvida was discovered. Nobody screamed.
Speaker 1: The sidewalk surrounding the building was clear. No throngs of
Speaker 1: passers by had gathered around the place of impact because
Speaker 1: there wasn't any. Elvida Adams hadn't reached the bottom somehow,
Speaker 1: after she had jumped from the eighty six floor, she
Speaker 1: landed twenty feet below onto a short ledge one floor down.
Speaker 1: A guard named George Rees found her in severe pain
Speaker 1: and called for an ambulance. She was taken to Bellevue Hospital,
Speaker 1: where doctors diagnosed her with a fractured pelvis. The police
Speaker 1: thought that she might have been pushed off the observation
Speaker 1: decade first, but Elvida was adamant that she had done
Speaker 1: the jumping herself. No one else was involved. In a
Speaker 1: later interview, she said that she had gone out there
Speaker 1: to see the city lights. Compelled by their beauty, Alvida
Speaker 1: had tried to touch them by climbing the fence. She
Speaker 1: wound up on the eighty five floor instead. But how
Speaker 1: exactly did she survive? After all, jumping off the side
Speaker 1: of the Empire State Building should have guaranteed her death,
Speaker 1: as it had so many times before her. According to
Speaker 1: the authorities on the scene, it was the wind that
Speaker 1: saved her. You see, gusts of wind at that height
Speaker 1: could have reached over one miles per hour, strong enough
Speaker 1: to blow her body back toward the building after she
Speaker 1: had jumped. It just so happened that the wind had
Speaker 1: carried her onto an open ledge, saving her life. Elvida
Speaker 1: supposedly went on to live into her seventies. Nobody really
Speaker 1: knows for sure, though, because she led a very private
Speaker 1: life in the aftermath of her fall. Rumor has it
Speaker 1: that she went into stand up comedy sometime after the incident, though,
Speaker 1: and that makes a bit of sense, after all, many
Speaker 1: people use humor to get through the darkest moments of
Speaker 1: their life. Although to be fair, what Elvida Adams experienced
Speaker 1: that night back in nineteen seventy nine was no laughing matter.
Speaker 1: So much of humanity's evolution is the result of cross
Speaker 1: pollenization of knowledge and experiences from different cultures. Today's entertainment,
Speaker 1: especially live theater, can trace its roots back to the
Speaker 1: ancient Greek dramas. Costumes, the use of satire, and special
Speaker 1: effects were all first witnessed in productions of Greek plays.
Speaker 1: Prehistoric objects such as rocks and spears eventually became the
Speaker 1: tools and weapons that we use today, like hammers and knives. Oftentimes,
Speaker 1: cultures are subsumed or worse obliterated by colonization, and their
Speaker 1: contributions are forgotten, even though those same contributions might be
Speaker 1: used by the groups that take over. Still, in many cases,
Speaker 1: time and exposure to other societies allow everyone to move ahead,
Speaker 1: little by little, improving what came before. Except for the
Speaker 1: Sentinelli Located in the Indian Ocean in the Bay of
Speaker 1: Bengal is a series of islands. They're called the Andaman Islands,
Speaker 1: and they have been inhabited for at least sixty thousand
Speaker 1: years by different ethnic groups, including the Bamar, Jarrawa and
Speaker 1: the one. The native populations on several islands were all
Speaker 1: but wiped out during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when
Speaker 1: the British took them over and turned them into penal colonies.
Speaker 1: Many of these and Demonese were killed either for not
Speaker 1: cooperating or they died from foreign diseases brought to the
Speaker 1: islands by the British ships. But one indigenous tribe set
Speaker 1: themselves apart from the rest due to how they chose
Speaker 1: to live their lives in shorts. They rejected the arrival
Speaker 1: of the English and everyone else violently. They're called the
Speaker 1: Sentinellies or Sentinelli, and they live on the appropriately named
Speaker 1: North Sentinel Island. Their homeland is only about twenty three
Speaker 1: square miles in size and lush with tropical forests. Dive
Speaker 1: into the waters off at shores and you'll be met
Speaker 1: with miles of beautiful coral reefs below the waves. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: it's almost impossible to know the exact population size of
Speaker 1: the Sentinelli due to their isolated nature. However, estimates placed
Speaker 1: their numbers somewhere between fifty and two hundred people today.
Speaker 1: A British research ship passing by first documented the islands
Speaker 1: inhabitants in seventeen seventy one, but it would be another
Speaker 1: one hundred years before anyone would set foot on its beaches.
Speaker 1: An Indian merchant ship had run aground on a nearby reef,
Speaker 1: and the one hundred six passengers and crew made it
Speaker 1: to the island thanks to one of the lifeboats. They
Speaker 1: remained there for just over two days until they were
Speaker 1: attacked on the third. The captain made haste, rowing himself
Speaker 1: away from danger in the only lifeboats and leaving everyone
Speaker 1: else to be killed by the Sentinelli. After he was
Speaker 1: rescued several days later, he described his attackers in great details,
Speaker 1: saying the wild were completely undressed, he said, with short
Speaker 1: hair and nose painted red, and their arrows had a
Speaker 1: metal tip. It was believed that the native people had
Speaker 1: salvaged metal from other ships that had crashed or sunk
Speaker 1: in the waters off the coast. Thirty years later, an
Speaker 1: Indian prisoner had been living in the Penal colony on
Speaker 1: one of the other islands and managed to escape. He'd
Speaker 1: built a makeshift raft and floated the fifty miles to
Speaker 1: North Sentinel Island. Thinking that he had gotten away scott free,
Speaker 1: a recovery team found his body with arrows embedded all
Speaker 1: over it. Several days later. Nobody set foot on North
Speaker 1: Sentinel Island again. After that, the Centineli did not adopt
Speaker 1: any modern technology brought over by the British or the Indians.
Speaker 1: What scraps they did use were only meant to reinforce
Speaker 1: their rudimentary weapons, such as bows and arrows and spears.
Speaker 1: Some anthropologists believe that they still live the only true
Speaker 1: paleo lifestyle on the planet to this day, and all
Speaker 1: their food comes from the island, including fruits and vegetables
Speaker 1: they picked themselves, as well as the fish and animals
Speaker 1: they hunt. They don't grow anything deliberately. They merely eat
Speaker 1: what freely grows on trees and in bushes around them.
Speaker 1: No one outside the tribe is capable of speaking or
Speaker 1: understanding their language either, and their manner of dress is limited.
Speaker 1: Men and women wear bark strings around their waists, but
Speaker 1: are otherwise naked. And Indian anthropologist named Truluck Nath Pandit
Speaker 1: landed on the island with a team of researchers on
Speaker 1: a mission of peace. It was the first successful visit
Speaker 1: to the Centinelli that didn't end in bloodshed. They welcomed Pandit,
Speaker 1: accepted his gifts, and allowed him to interact with the
Speaker 1: tribe unharmed. He was the only person to ever make
Speaker 1: friendly contact with the reclusive tribe. Though the British didn't
Speaker 1: believe that it could be done, but Pandit of them
Speaker 1: wrong by showing them that great things could actually be
Speaker 1: achieved when colonization wasn't the goal. 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 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. Ye