Speaker 1: Welcomed Aaron Manky'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. When you grow up on the Jurassic Coast,
Speaker 1: it seems written in the stars that you'll be spending
Speaker 1: your life among the bones of dinosaurs. Mary was born
Speaker 1: in just such a place. And while she was raised
Speaker 1: in a time of conflict, with the war between Napoleon
Speaker 1: and the British regiing, and her own family full of
Speaker 1: poor Protestant dissenters, she's still found time to dig, thanks
Speaker 1: in part to her father, a cabinet maker and amateur
Speaker 1: fossil elector who needed a sidekick. While most women her
Speaker 1: age were being raised to be delicate wives to future husbands,
Speaker 1: Mary was learning proper fossil cleaning techniques from her father
Speaker 1: as they dug along the beach for relics to sell
Speaker 1: alongside his cabinetree. However, when he died suddenly of tuberculosis
Speaker 1: in eighteen ten, those fossils became a means of helping
Speaker 1: meet her family's needs. It didn't take long for Mary
Speaker 1: to strike gold or strike bone, I guess. While digging
Speaker 1: with her brother Joseph, the two happened upon a skull.
Speaker 1: Joseph left Mary to unearth the rest of the fossil, and,
Speaker 1: through a painstakingly lung process that began to garner the
Speaker 1: attention of everyone in town, she revealed a seventeen foot
Speaker 1: skeleton that was referred to by scientists as a crocodile
Speaker 1: and by citizens as a monster today, though we know
Speaker 1: it as the Eccleosaurus. By eighteen twenty three, at just
Speaker 1: twenty four years old, she became the first human to
Speaker 1: discover a complete plesiosaurus, being that Mary was a woman.
Speaker 1: Though news began to spread that it was a fake,
Speaker 1: noted French naturalist George Cuvier disputed the discovery all on
Speaker 1: his own, and even held a meeting at the Geological
Speaker 1: Society of London, a meeting that Mary was not invited to,
Speaker 1: by the way, But that meeting didn't go Cuvier's way,
Speaker 1: and he ended up admitting his mistake. Yet, despite Mary's
Speaker 1: continuous breakthroughs, she remained severely unrecognized for her work. In
Speaker 1: order to support her family, she was often forced to
Speaker 1: sell the fossils that she had worked so hard to find, clean,
Speaker 1: set and identify, and the men who bought them rarely
Speaker 1: credited her with the find and even when scientific journals
Speaker 1: and articles cited her ichtheos or discovery at the right
Speaker 1: age of twelve, they did not cite her by name,
Speaker 1: and the reputed Geological Society of London, the very place
Speaker 1: that Cuvier had failed to convince of her reportedly fake fine,
Speaker 1: wouldn't admit her to their ranks. In fact, they wouldn't
Speaker 1: start admitting any women until nineteen o four. But Mary
Speaker 1: wasn't done breaking ground or barriers just yet. She began
Speaker 1: pioneering the study of copper lights or fossilized dinosaur droppings,
Speaker 1: and by eighty eight she had another first to add
Speaker 1: to her resume. After discovering a baffling collection of bones.
Speaker 1: The scientific world was a buzz from London to Paris
Speaker 1: discussing how they would all connect. Mary did the hard
Speaker 1: work for them, putting together the first pterodactyl ever discovered
Speaker 1: outside of Germany, the largest flying creature to have ever
Speaker 1: lived at a time when fossils were the talk of
Speaker 1: the scientific world, Mary was at the top, even if
Speaker 1: no one wanted to acknowledge her. Specimen shows popped up
Speaker 1: all over major cities, housing countless bones that Mary herself discovered,
Speaker 1: and still her name was purposely left out among Jurassic talks.
Speaker 1: But those who knew her understood what she was doing
Speaker 1: for the world. Mary's childhood friend, Harry de la Beesh,
Speaker 1: painted his famous A More Ancient Dorset, a painting inspired
Speaker 1: by her Ichtheosaur find. It was the first painting to
Speaker 1: use fossil evidence to create realistic representations of creatures from
Speaker 1: millennia past, and dear Harry sold Prince to a ravenous
Speaker 1: public in order to raise funds for Mary. At the
Speaker 1: time of her young death in eight Mary Anning was
Speaker 1: still in dire straits financially, despite the countless prehistoric species
Speaker 1: she had discovered, identified and shared with the world. It
Speaker 1: would take another century before her legacy was restored to
Speaker 1: its rightful place. Today, her finds can be seen proudly
Speaker 1: displayed at the Natural History Museum in London, and while
Speaker 1: it's still hotly debated among historians, there are some who
Speaker 1: believe that Mary is the she at the center of
Speaker 1: that famous old tongue twister. She sells seashells on the
Speaker 1: seashore a curious life. Indeed, everyone has problems, a bad boss,
Speaker 1: a noisy kid, or a train that's always late, and
Speaker 1: we deal with them the best we can. Sometimes all
Speaker 1: it requires is a candid conversation, sending the offending children
Speaker 1: to their room to settle down, or leaving for work
Speaker 1: a little earlier, or if you're a math professor. Alexander Abian,
Speaker 1: you just blow up the moon. Alexander was born in Tabriz,
Speaker 1: Iran in nineteen three. He grew up there, earning his
Speaker 1: undergraduate degree there before coming to the US to pursue
Speaker 1: his master's in nineteen fifty. From there, he went on
Speaker 1: to the University of Cincinnati for his PhD with a
Speaker 1: focus in mathematics. Alexander held a variety of teaching jobs
Speaker 1: all over the country, moving from Tennessee to New York,
Speaker 1: then to Pennsylvania, and finally to Ohio, before eventually taking
Speaker 1: a job as a math professor at Iowa States in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty seven, where he stayed for the rest of
Speaker 1: his career until retiring in nineteen Not much is known
Speaker 1: about his time at the university other than that it
Speaker 1: was uneventful for the twenty five years, at least when
Speaker 1: compared to what happened in that year. Alexander published a
Speaker 1: piece in the university's newspaper with a wild claim, one
Speaker 1: that eventually spread beyond the campuses, borders and into the
Speaker 1: mainstream press. The professor had been watching what was going
Speaker 1: on around the world forest fires, hurricanes, heat waves, and blizzards,
Speaker 1: all brought on by one common culprit, the Moon, and
Speaker 1: Alexander believed it had to go. He claimed that if
Speaker 1: the Moon was blown up, our seasons like summer and
Speaker 1: spring would disappear, taking almost all the natural disasters with them.
Speaker 1: How would he have accomplished this feat with nuclear weapons,
Speaker 1: of course. His plan was to drill a hole into
Speaker 1: the surface of the Moon, drop an atomic bomb inside,
Speaker 1: and detonate it remotely. The explosion would break the Moon apart,
Speaker 1: saving the Earth from the perils that have only gotten
Speaker 1: worse over the years with climate change. Unfortunately, not everyone
Speaker 1: agreed with his plan. A few NASA employees believed it
Speaker 1: was impossible, to say the least, for one, they knew
Speaker 1: that the Moon was responsible for many phenomena both on
Speaker 1: and around the Earth. The tides, for example, are controlled
Speaker 1: by the Moon, as is the tilt of the Earth.
Speaker 1: Without our Moon, our planet would tilt so severely it
Speaker 1: would leave one hemisphere in eternal darkness while the other
Speaker 1: burned beneath a blazing sun all day. Secondly, exploding the
Speaker 1: Moon would cause a worldwide extinction event as debris entered
Speaker 1: the Earth's atmosphere and increase the planet's temperature, not to
Speaker 1: mention the chance that a big chunk of it could
Speaker 1: hit the Earth with such force it would wipe out
Speaker 1: everyone on the planet. But all of those situations were hypothetical. Anyway,
Speaker 1: to destroy the Moon, a single atom bomb wasn't enough.
Speaker 1: Such an explosion would only damage the surface, but nothing below. Instead,
Speaker 1: miners would have to drill down hundreds of miles into
Speaker 1: the Moon's surface and deposit six hundred billion nuclear bombs
Speaker 1: in order to blow it all up. Alexander's idea was
Speaker 1: dismissed by many as a pipe dream, but the man
Speaker 1: himself wasn't so were He equated his detractors with the
Speaker 1: people who wrote off Galileo hundreds of years before, and
Speaker 1: as time moved on and the Internet took hold his
Speaker 1: theory exploded across the globe. No pun intended, I swear
Speaker 1: suddenly everyone was getting ideas of their own. Unfortunately, Alexander
Speaker 1: Abian died in nineteen nine. He never got to see
Speaker 1: his plan fully realized. That is, unless he happened to
Speaker 1: see a similar story occur. During the summer of nine
Speaker 1: that year, a team of experienced oil drillers took a
Speaker 1: shuttle into space to put Alexander's idea to the test.
Speaker 1: Except instead of drilling into the Moon, they drilled into
Speaker 1: an asteroid the size of Texas that was headed straight
Speaker 1: for the Earth. It took some doing, but the miners
Speaker 1: managed to blow up the asteroid before it reached the
Speaker 1: atmosphere using a nuclear bomb, a global extinction event had
Speaker 1: been avoided. Of course, this wasn't a real event. It
Speaker 1: was the action movie Armageddon, starring Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck,
Speaker 1: a film with the plot that was just as implausible
Speaker 1: as Alexander Abian's idea, but certainly a lot more entertaining.
Speaker 1: I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet
Speaker 1: of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts or learn
Speaker 1: more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com.
Speaker 1: The show was created by me Aaron Manky in partnership
Speaker 1: with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show
Speaker 1: called Lore which is a podcast, book series, and television
Speaker 1: show and you can learn all about it over at
Speaker 1: the World of Lore dot com. And until next time,
Speaker 1: stay curious. Ye