Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Menke'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 right there on display, just waiting
Speaker 1: for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
Speaker 1: For a certain part of the population, nothing says childhood
Speaker 1: nostalgia like Saturday Morning cartoons. Most of us have fond
Speaker 1: memories of pouring a big bowl of cereal, sitting in
Speaker 1: front of the TV, and watching our favorite shows. For
Speaker 1: many kids of the early sixties, that Saturday morning ritual
Speaker 1: was centered around a flying squirrel and his moose. Best friend.
Speaker 1: Rocky and Bullwinkle was a cartoon created by Ward that
Speaker 1: chronicled the exploits of Rocky, a flying squirrel, and the
Speaker 1: moronic moose Bullwinkle. The show was characterized by zeny humor
Speaker 1: and wordplay, poking fun at American politics and anti communist sensibilities. However,
Speaker 1: creator Jay Ward never expected his little show to land
Speaker 1: him in the middle of a real life Cold War crisis.
Speaker 1: In an early episode of the show, Bullwinkle takes Rocky
Speaker 1: to visit his home, a tiny island right on the
Speaker 1: Canadian border called Musylvania, damp, cold, and with no permanent population.
Speaker 1: Neither the US nor Canada wants to Claimmusylvania as their own,
Speaker 1: leaving Bullwinkle as its governor. After the episode aired, fan
Speaker 1: mail came in from across the country begging to visit
Speaker 1: the real Musylvania, which gave creator Jay Ward a great idea.
Speaker 1: In nineteen sixty two, Jay asked his publicist Howard Brandy
Speaker 1: for help with the scheme to drum up publicity for
Speaker 1: the next season of Rocky and Bullwinkle. Phase one, they
Speaker 1: would lease a small island in a lake on the
Speaker 1: Canadian border. Phase two, they would travel around the country
Speaker 1: gathering signatures and support. Phase three, they would petition President
Speaker 1: John F. Kennedy to annex the island from Canada and
Speaker 1: Makemosylvania America's fifty first state. Howard immediately said yes. Once
Speaker 1: the island was leased, Jay and Howard loaded into a
Speaker 1: multicolored van and set out on the campaign trail. At
Speaker 1: each stop, Jay and Howard rolled into town while blasting
Speaker 1: circus music. They would give grand speeches about how the
Speaker 1: residents of Musylvania, who need I remind you did not exist,
Speaker 1: were sick of being passed over for other territories like
Speaker 1: Alaska and Hawaii. They laid out some of the finer
Speaker 1: tenants of the Musylvania Manifesto, like how Musylvania demanded aid
Speaker 1: from the United States to the tune of exactly eighteen
Speaker 1: billion dollars and four cents. Then they would encourage residents
Speaker 1: to sign a petition for statehood to be delivered to
Speaker 1: the White House. After stopping in over fifty cities, driving
Speaker 1: thousands of miles, and collecting more signatures than they could count,
Speaker 1: the big day had finally arrived. On October twenty seventh
Speaker 1: of nineteen sixty two, Jay Ward and Howard Brandy arrived
Speaker 1: at the White House. Jay was in rare form, blasting
Speaker 1: silly music and dressed in a Napoleon costume. When he
Speaker 1: was stopped at the gate by Secret Service, he declared
Speaker 1: that they were there to see President Kennedy to petition
Speaker 1: him for Musylvania statehood. When he was asked to leave,
Speaker 1: he replied that he would not, as of course, he
Speaker 1: had diplomatic immunity. To Jay's surprise, this caused the Secret
Speaker 1: Service agent to pull out his gun. You see, what
Speaker 1: Jay and Howard didn't know is that they had picked
Speaker 1: the worst possible day to show up unannounced at the
Speaker 1: White House. Just a few days earlier, on October fourteenth
Speaker 1: of nineteen sixty two, an American spy plane had spotted
Speaker 1: nuclear missile sites hidden in Cuba. This had kicked off
Speaker 1: the Cuban Missile Crisis, thirteen of the tensest days in
Speaker 1: American history. At that very moment, moment, America was as
Speaker 1: close as it had ever been to a full scale
Speaker 1: nuclear war with Russia. What's worse, that very morning, an
Speaker 1: American pilot was shot down and killed over Cuba. As
Speaker 1: Jay and Howard rolled up to the White House gates
Speaker 1: to demand statehood for Musylvania, President Kennedy was weighing whether
Speaker 1: to declare war. The Secret Service sent Jay and Howard packing,
Speaker 1: much to Jay's disappointment, as he later said he thought
Speaker 1: that President Kennedy had a sense of humor. It wasn't
Speaker 1: until after they left that they learned just how serious
Speaker 1: the situation was. The crisis was resolved peacefully the next day,
Speaker 1: when the US promised to remove missiles from Turkey and
Speaker 1: the Soviets promised to do the same in Cuba. For
Speaker 1: their part, Jay and Howard never did get Mussylvania declared
Speaker 1: the fifty first state, and in all honesty, maybe it's
Speaker 1: better they didn't. The country had just survived the Cuban
Speaker 1: missile crisis. With j Ward's sense of humor, it wouldn't
Speaker 1: be long before he declared a musil crisis of his own.
Speaker 1: If you've spent any time with jigsaw puzzles, you know
Speaker 1: the satisfaction that comes from the last piece falling into place,
Speaker 1: and you may also have experienced that uniquely horrible frustration
Speaker 1: that comes when it doesn't, When you reach into the
Speaker 1: box and find that the final piece is missing. This
Speaker 1: discovery is usually followed by a frantic search. You check
Speaker 1: the floor, under the couch, inside the cushions, the pockets
Speaker 1: of your hoodie. You wonder if your dog ate it,
Speaker 1: or if some psychopath walked off with the final piece
Speaker 1: just to torment you. But in the end, the reason
Speaker 1: it's gone doesn't matter. The puzzle is incomplete, and from
Speaker 1: now on you will be too. Okay, maybe that's a
Speaker 1: bit dramatic, but it's hard to deny that there's something
Speaker 1: about the human mind that gravitates toward puzzles and hates
Speaker 1: leaving them unfinished. Well in nineteen twelve, that in distinct
Speaker 1: drove the German scientist Alfred Wigner to look at a
Speaker 1: model globe and see something no one else had. He
Speaker 1: realized that the continent's edges fit together, suggesting that they
Speaker 1: had once been part of a single land mass. Geologists
Speaker 1: now refer to this sea shaped super continent as Pangaea.
Speaker 1: In our planet's early history, it comprised virtually all of
Speaker 1: the land on Earth, but around two hundred million years ago,
Speaker 1: shifting tectonic plates caused the land mass to split apart
Speaker 1: into the continents that we have today. It's taken a
Speaker 1: lot of work, but geologists now have a pretty accurate
Speaker 1: picture of how it all fit together. This knowledge has
Speaker 1: ramifications for countless other fields, explaining things about the Earth's climate,
Speaker 1: biodiversity of plant and animal life, and where ore deposits exist.
Speaker 1: So it would seem that scientists have completed the puzzle,
Speaker 1: so to speak, But for decades there was one glaring problem,
Speaker 1: a missing piece. It seemed that there was a continent
Speaker 1: roughly the width of the United States that was nowhere
Speaker 1: to be found. You know, it existed due to a
Speaker 1: massive underwater basin off the northwestern shore of Australia. This
Speaker 1: basin is called the Argo Abyssle Plane, and it led
Speaker 1: geologists to dub the missing continent our Goland. They believe
Speaker 1: that around one hundred and fifty five million years ago,
Speaker 1: our Goland broke off from the super continent and drifted
Speaker 1: toward modern Southeast Asia. At that point, it seems to
Speaker 1: have vanished. And that's a massive problem because if continents
Speaker 1: can simply disappear, it undermines everything we know about Pangaea
Speaker 1: and plate tectonics. That's why around twenty sixteen, a team
Speaker 1: of Dutch researchers embarked on an expedition to find the
Speaker 1: lost continent. They initially wondered if the continent had sunk
Speaker 1: beneath the ocean. If that were true, they expected to
Speaker 1: find it beneath the islands of Southeast Asia, but it
Speaker 1: wasn't there. Next, they considered whether another continent could have
Speaker 1: slid on top of our Goland, burying it beneath the
Speaker 1: Earth's crust. That's what happened to Greater Adria, an ancient
Speaker 1: continent that now lies underneath the Europe, but based on
Speaker 1: the available evidence, it didn't seem to be the case
Speaker 1: for our Goland. The team didn't give up, though. For
Speaker 1: seven years they tested rock samples from around the world,
Speaker 1: and in twenty twenty three they announced a groundbreaking discovery.
Speaker 1: Our Goland didn't sink beneath the waves or into the
Speaker 1: Earth's mantle. Instead, it broke up into countless smaller fragments
Speaker 1: that eventually got folded in with other land masses. The
Speaker 1: team found pieces of the lost continent scattered throughout the
Speaker 1: jungles of Indonesia and Mayanmar, which means that the final
Speaker 1: puzzle piece has been found. We can all rest a
Speaker 1: bit easier knowing that the bedrock theories of modern geology
Speaker 1: are still in place. Scientists can still reasonably construct what
Speaker 1: the Earth looked like in the distant past, and ironically
Speaker 1: that knowledge can help them predict what it will look
Speaker 1: like in the future. Because the continents are still shifting.
Speaker 1: Instead of drifting apart, they're pulling closer together. Eventually they
Speaker 1: will reform into a new supercontinent, and like Pangaea, that
Speaker 1: future land masks will eventually break up all over again,
Speaker 1: although what happens after that is a puzzle for another day.
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 Mankey 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 show,
Speaker 1: and you can learn all about it over at the
Speaker 1: Worldoflore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.