WEBVTT - Lucky Charm 0:00:04.080 --> 0:00:07.440 Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of 0:00:07.480 --> 0:00:14.440 iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of 0:00:14.480 --> 0:00:18.400 the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all 0:00:18.480 --> 0:00:22.159 of these amazing tales are right there on display, just 0:00:22.200 --> 0:00:28.840 waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. 0:00:36.280 --> 0:00:40.400 A healthy diet is a deceptively complex concept. Many of 0:00:40.479 --> 0:00:43.400 us spend our entire lives trying to find combinations of 0:00:43.479 --> 0:00:48.440 foods that work for our specific lifestyles and metabolisms. Calorie counts, 0:00:48.560 --> 0:00:51.960 vitamins and fats, all the chemistry that goes into food. 0:00:52.440 --> 0:00:55.120 We understand so much of it, and yet that makes 0:00:55.120 --> 0:00:58.800 it an incredibly daunting task to optimize. And that's without 0:00:58.840 --> 0:01:03.880 even mentioning missin information and quack medicine. This may seem 0:01:03.880 --> 0:01:06.880 like a purely modern problem, and it is, don't get 0:01:06.880 --> 0:01:09.680 me wrong, But like many parts of society, we have 0:01:09.800 --> 0:01:12.839 been struggling with diet almost as long as we've known 0:01:12.840 --> 0:01:16.280 about different types of food groups, and when medical knowledge 0:01:16.360 --> 0:01:19.319 was in its infancy, guess work was all we had. 0:01:20.040 --> 0:01:22.520 In New York in the middle of the nineteenth century, 0:01:22.640 --> 0:01:25.560 a man named James Caleb Jackson was suffering from a 0:01:25.600 --> 0:01:29.200 series of untreatable health issues. He was likely someone that 0:01:29.240 --> 0:01:34.040 we would refer to today as immunocompromised. An abolitionist newspaperman, 0:01:34.440 --> 0:01:37.440 His frequent sicknesses forced him to sell his share in 0:01:37.440 --> 0:01:41.440 the newspaper, essentially taking retirement at the age of thirty six. 0:01:42.080 --> 0:01:45.840 Things were not looking good for Jackson. He visited doctors 0:01:45.880 --> 0:01:48.440 throughout his entire life, and none of them had been 0:01:48.480 --> 0:01:52.160 able to help him. But he did survive spoiler alerts, 0:01:52.200 --> 0:01:54.560 and part of the reason why is that he finally 0:01:54.600 --> 0:01:57.600 found a medicinal regimen that worked for him. It was 0:01:57.600 --> 0:02:02.080 called hydrotherapy, essentially a series of baths in mineral waters. 0:02:02.480 --> 0:02:05.800 After visiting a spa in the eighteen forties, he felt 0:02:05.800 --> 0:02:08.920 completely restored. The treatment didn't just give him a new 0:02:09.000 --> 0:02:11.600 lease on life, it gave him something to devote his 0:02:11.680 --> 0:02:16.440 life too, and so he became a diehard advocate for hydrotherapy, 0:02:16.840 --> 0:02:20.520 helping to found an institution called glen Haven Water Cure 0:02:20.919 --> 0:02:25.440 in eighteen forty seven. This place ironically burned down, but 0:02:25.520 --> 0:02:28.640 it didn't slow down his new career. In eighteen fifty 0:02:28.680 --> 0:02:31.600 he obtained a medical degree and eight years after that, 0:02:32.000 --> 0:02:34.639 he moved to Dansville, New York, where he founded Our 0:02:34.720 --> 0:02:37.600 Home on the Hillside, a facility that he would run 0:02:37.680 --> 0:02:40.760 for the rest of his life. His patients were like 0:02:40.880 --> 0:02:45.079 himself a decade earlier, desperate people who had exhausted everything 0:02:45.120 --> 0:02:48.240 that traditional medicine could do for them and were seeking 0:02:48.280 --> 0:02:52.440 out alternate cures, and James Caleb Jackson was a reassuring 0:02:52.520 --> 0:02:55.120 presence to these sort of people. He was promising a 0:02:55.160 --> 0:02:58.880 miracle cure, but he was also no showy snake oil salesman. 0:02:59.240 --> 0:03:02.160 He was someone for whom his cure was a lifesaver. 0:03:03.120 --> 0:03:06.600 Now under his supervision, Our Home on the Hillside became 0:03:06.680 --> 0:03:10.480 an incredible success, serving as many as twenty thousand patients. 0:03:10.840 --> 0:03:13.959 Progressive thinkers from around the country even came to give 0:03:14.040 --> 0:03:19.040 lectures there, including Frederick Douglass. When he wasn't looking after patients, 0:03:19.200 --> 0:03:22.800 Jackson spent his time developing his ideas and strategies for 0:03:22.919 --> 0:03:26.440 healthy living. And that's how, in eighteen sixty three, he 0:03:26.520 --> 0:03:29.360 came to introduce a special breakfast that would provide a 0:03:29.400 --> 0:03:33.000 healthy and nutritious start to the day. You see, the 0:03:33.080 --> 0:03:36.240 man had been a farmer before he started his newspaper, 0:03:36.520 --> 0:03:39.280 and so, along with his wife Lucretia, he developed a 0:03:39.320 --> 0:03:43.120 bland but nutritious combination of wheat and grains. It was 0:03:43.160 --> 0:03:45.080 served in the form of cubes that had to be 0:03:45.120 --> 0:03:49.240 soaked in milk overnight to become edible. They called it granula. 0:03:49.640 --> 0:03:52.280 Sold that the affordable price of twenty cents a pound. 0:03:52.440 --> 0:03:55.080 It was a hit with both his patients and New 0:03:55.200 --> 0:03:58.080 York at large. At its peak, our home on the 0:03:58.160 --> 0:04:02.200 Hillside was producing and selling sixty thousand pounds a year 0:04:02.560 --> 0:04:05.720 just to keep up with demand. Over a decade after 0:04:05.760 --> 0:04:08.960 the invention of granula, a man from Michigan came to 0:04:09.000 --> 0:04:12.200 stay at Jackson's facility. A man who had a wellness 0:04:12.240 --> 0:04:15.000 facility of his own back in Battle Creek and was 0:04:15.040 --> 0:04:19.240 interested in studying Jackson's methods. His name was John, and 0:04:19.360 --> 0:04:22.960 by eighteen seventy seven, John was selling a cold cereal 0:04:23.040 --> 0:04:26.679 of his own, which he referred to as granola, legally 0:04:26.760 --> 0:04:30.760 distinguishing it from Jackson's invention in order to protect himself 0:04:30.800 --> 0:04:33.760 in court. Now some retellings of this story say that 0:04:33.920 --> 0:04:37.680 James Jackson sued John for stealing his idea, but the 0:04:37.720 --> 0:04:41.039 actual sourcing for that claim is vague at best, and 0:04:41.120 --> 0:04:43.880 If we know anything about Jackson, it's that he didn't 0:04:43.880 --> 0:04:46.000 seem like the sort of man who aspired to great 0:04:46.080 --> 0:04:49.839 influence over the new field of breakfast cereals, and yet 0:04:50.000 --> 0:04:53.560 in a way, that's what he created. Granula was the 0:04:53.600 --> 0:04:57.680 first cereal, and it grew into an industry worth billions, 0:04:57.680 --> 0:05:02.400 all thanks to John's influence. John Kellogg, So the next 0:05:02.480 --> 0:05:04.400 time you take a bite of cereal in the morning, 0:05:04.560 --> 0:05:07.520 remember that behind all the cartoon marketing, the sugar and 0:05:07.600 --> 0:05:10.520 the wheat products, there is a story of a nineteenth 0:05:10.520 --> 0:05:21.600 century hydrotherapist and his journey to create a healthy breakfast. 0:05:28.279 --> 0:05:31.760 September twenty fifth of nineteen fifty began like any other 0:05:31.880 --> 0:05:35.839 Sunday in Toronto, Canada. The stores were closed, the streets 0:05:35.880 --> 0:05:39.320 were quiet, and families trickled home from church to relax 0:05:39.400 --> 0:05:41.760 and get ready for the week ahead. But in the 0:05:41.800 --> 0:05:44.880 middle of the afternoon, the sunny sky began to darken. 0:05:45.279 --> 0:05:48.479 Massive storm clouds rolled in over the rooftops, and when 0:05:48.560 --> 0:05:51.960 residents squinted out their windows, they saw a pale blue 0:05:52.000 --> 0:05:55.719 disc peeking out from behind the clouds. At first, it 0:05:55.720 --> 0:05:58.680 looked like a full moon hanging in the afternoon sun, 0:05:59.040 --> 0:06:01.560 but in the brief moment when the clouds parted, the 0:06:01.640 --> 0:06:05.520 truth became obvious. That was not the moon, it was 0:06:05.560 --> 0:06:10.080 the Sun, hanging like a big blue circle amid purple clouds. 0:06:10.960 --> 0:06:14.159 At that very moment, one of Canada's most famed astronomers, 0:06:14.279 --> 0:06:17.880 Helen Sawyer Hog, was passing through a park. The sky 0:06:17.960 --> 0:06:20.359 had grown so dark that she saw a gaggle of 0:06:20.440 --> 0:06:23.000 ducks sleeping in the middle of a pond, with their 0:06:23.040 --> 0:06:25.520 heads tucked under their wings, as if they thought that 0:06:25.560 --> 0:06:28.320 it was the dead of night. Helen knew that something 0:06:28.400 --> 0:06:31.599 highly unusual must be happening in the sky, but she 0:06:31.640 --> 0:06:34.960 had no idea what, and so she rushed to her lab. 0:06:35.520 --> 0:06:38.400 She hurried past rows of houses and apartment buildings with 0:06:38.440 --> 0:06:41.320 the lights on in every window, and then suddenly the 0:06:41.360 --> 0:06:45.760 whole streets went dark. Seconds later, a piercing alarm rang 0:06:45.800 --> 0:06:48.440 out in the distance. A police car raced down the 0:06:48.480 --> 0:06:51.919 street with its sirens blaring and lights flashing under the 0:06:51.960 --> 0:06:57.200 swirling purple sky. All across Toronto, the quiet streets devolved 0:06:57.240 --> 0:07:00.560 into pandemonium. The phone lines at the police stations were 0:07:00.640 --> 0:07:04.159 ringing off the hook with panicked residents wondering what was 0:07:04.200 --> 0:07:08.359 going on. Had the sun exploded. Was there a nuclear attack, 0:07:08.640 --> 0:07:13.000 an alien invasion, the apocalypse? But when Helen got to 0:07:13.040 --> 0:07:16.240 her lab, she and her colleagues quickly put together the truth. 0:07:16.600 --> 0:07:20.680 All of this terrifying chaos had a surprisingly mundane cause. 0:07:21.160 --> 0:07:23.800 It seems that the dark clouds were the result of 0:07:23.840 --> 0:07:26.880 a wildfire that was raging in the forests of British 0:07:26.880 --> 0:07:30.760 Columbia and Alberta, almost two thousand miles away from her. 0:07:31.040 --> 0:07:34.480 The smoke particles were unusually large and dense, and they 0:07:34.560 --> 0:07:38.120 scattered certain wavelengths of light from the sun, making it 0:07:38.160 --> 0:07:41.800 appear blue instead of its usual yellow. On top of that, 0:07:42.000 --> 0:07:45.680 as the sky had darkened that afternoon, everyone in Toronto 0:07:45.720 --> 0:07:48.160 had turned on their lights at the same time, and 0:07:48.200 --> 0:07:52.080 the sudden surge in electricity had overloaded the power lines, 0:07:52.120 --> 0:07:56.320 causing a blackout. The electrical failure, in turn, had accidentally 0:07:56.320 --> 0:07:59.240 triggered the alarms at banks all over the city, and 0:07:59.320 --> 0:08:02.480 the police had rushed out to respond to these false alarms, 0:08:02.760 --> 0:08:06.400 filling the darkened streets with a horrid cacophony of sirens. 0:08:06.800 --> 0:08:10.600 In short, the world wasn't ending, even though it sure 0:08:10.680 --> 0:08:13.600 did feel like it was. In the days that followed 0:08:13.640 --> 0:08:17.360 the wildfire, smoke moved eastward, turning the sky blue over 0:08:17.480 --> 0:08:20.720 northeastern United States, the British Isles, and even as far 0:08:20.800 --> 0:08:23.880 east as Denmark. It took another month for the autumn 0:08:23.960 --> 0:08:26.640 rain in the snow to finally put the fire out, 0:08:27.040 --> 0:08:30.680 and once it had stopped smoldering, the sky finally went 0:08:30.720 --> 0:08:37.560 back to normal. I hope you enjoyed today's guided tour 0:08:37.720 --> 0:08:41.120 through the Cabinet of Curiosities. This show was created by 0:08:41.160 --> 0:08:45.320 me Aaron Mankey in partnership with iHeart Podcasts, researched and 0:08:45.320 --> 0:08:47.920 written by the Grim and Mild team, and produced by 0:08:48.000 --> 0:08:50.760 Jesse Funk. Learn more about the show and the people 0:08:50.760 --> 0:08:54.880 who make it over at Grimandmild dot com slash Curiosities. 0:08:55.120 --> 0:08:57.480 You'll also find a link to the official Cabinet of 0:08:57.520 --> 0:09:01.480 Curiosity's hardcover book, available in book stores and online, as 0:09:01.480 --> 0:09:04.240 well as ebook and audiobook. And if you're looking for 0:09:04.280 --> 0:09:07.600 an ad free option, consider joining our Patreon. It's all 0:09:07.640 --> 0:09:10.680 the same stories, but without the interruption for a small 0:09:10.720 --> 0:09:13.840 monthly fee. Learn more and sign up over at patreon 0:09:13.920 --> 0:09:19.200 dot com, slash Grimandmild, and until next time, stay curious.