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. There is so much about our world we
Speaker 1: still have yet to understand. The oceans of this planet,
Speaker 1: for example, remain mostly unexplored, at least eighty percent of them,
Speaker 1: and there are artifacts that have been discovered throughout history
Speaker 1: that continue to defy explanation. The anti Cathera mechanism, which
Speaker 1: has been called the oldest analog computing device ever found,
Speaker 1: was discovered in an ancient shipwreck off the coast of
Speaker 1: the Greek island of the same name. That isn't anything
Speaker 1: else like it, especially from the era in which it
Speaker 1: was made. There are also the Drop of Stones, ten
Speaker 1: thousand year old discs found in Chinese caves in night.
Speaker 1: They were analyzed and experimented on by experts from all
Speaker 1: over the world, but no conclusion was ever drawn as
Speaker 1: to the reason for their being there. But some unexplained
Speaker 1: phenomena hit a little closer to home, like Dighton Rock.
Speaker 1: Dighton Rocks existence was first recorded by Reverend John dan
Speaker 1: Fourth back in sixteen eighty. Dan Fourth was a colonist
Speaker 1: who sketched the carvings he found on the side of
Speaker 1: the rock. The carvings, known as petroglyphs, were comprised various
Speaker 1: lines and geometric shapes, although dan Forth's interpretation wasn't too
Speaker 1: accurate when compared with other descriptions of the rock from
Speaker 1: the same time period. Dighton Rock was a forty ton
Speaker 1: sandstone boulder, measuring nine and a half feet wide by
Speaker 1: eleven feet long and five feet tall. When it was
Speaker 1: first discovered, the flat side bearing the petroglyphs had been
Speaker 1: turned out towards the water, as if the symbols had
Speaker 1: been intended as a greeting or maybe a warning for
Speaker 1: ships sailing towards the shore. In the years since its discovery,
Speaker 1: numerous theories about the symbols have been proposed for one
Speaker 1: who wrote them in the first place. Petroglyphs had been
Speaker 1: found carved onto the side of rocks and stone walls
Speaker 1: by the indigenous peoples of the area before, so it
Speaker 1: was assumed that they had done the same here. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: Brown University co founder Ezra Styles suggested in seventeen eighty
Speaker 1: three that perhaps the ancient Phoenicians had come to America
Speaker 1: and left behind a trace of their culture in the
Speaker 1: form of carvings on the side of this rock, and
Speaker 1: even as recently as two thousand and two, another theory
Speaker 1: suggested that the Chinese had arrived in America before Columbus
Speaker 1: and had carved the symbols into Dighton Rock. However, it
Speaker 1: was Carl Christian Raffine of Denmark who put forth a
Speaker 1: theory that stuck with the stone for nearly a hundred years.
Speaker 1: Carl was a historian who had built his career on
Speaker 1: the study of Norse culture and language. Like others, Carl
Speaker 1: believed that someone else had beaten Columbus to the New World,
Speaker 1: except that it wasn't the Chinese, it was the vikings.
Speaker 1: Other scholars added on to his work in the following years,
Speaker 1: helping to confirm and perpetuate Karl's theory as the truth. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: the whole premise fell apart in nineteen sixteen when Brown
Speaker 1: University professor Edmund de la Bar examined the rock for
Speaker 1: himself with the help of a camera. He photographed it
Speaker 1: in different lighting scenarios to get a comprehensive view of
Speaker 1: all the markings, especially those that had been hard to see.
Speaker 1: He discovered the year fifteen eleven had been carved underneath
Speaker 1: some of the other etchings, as well as the letters M, I,
Speaker 1: G and you. Through careful analysis of the surroundings symbols,
Speaker 1: De la Bar was able to make out the name
Speaker 1: mcguel Courtoreal. Miguel had come from Portugal to North America
Speaker 1: to search for his missing brother gas Bar. Neither man
Speaker 1: returned home, but according to de la Bar, Miguel had
Speaker 1: arrived in Massachusetts and carved his name into Dighton Rock.
Speaker 1: He had also carved a bit of Latin, which translated
Speaker 1: to the will of God, leader of the Indians. According
Speaker 1: to Reverend John dan Forth, that first person to mention
Speaker 1: the rock and recorded history, the indigenous people had told
Speaker 1: stories about men from a far away land who had
Speaker 1: killed their chief. They very well could have been talking
Speaker 1: about Portuguese explorers like mcguel and gas Bar. Of course,
Speaker 1: even such a thorough and thoughtful analysis would eventually find
Speaker 1: its way to the debuncdal list. Journalist and historian Douglas
Speaker 1: Hunter tore apart Delabar's theory in a book he published
Speaker 1: in two thousand seventeen. So what's the truth behind Dighton Rock?
Speaker 1: Who put it there? Who carved the symbols into its side?
Speaker 1: The truth is nobody has the answer. All they have
Speaker 1: our ideas and theories. But if anyone wants to check
Speaker 1: it out for themselves, all they have to do is
Speaker 1: head over to Berkeley, Massachusetts and the Dighton Rock State Park.
Speaker 1: The boulder was moved from its original home on the
Speaker 1: Taunton River to a tiny museum in the park in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty three. Today the public can view the petroglyphs
Speaker 1: up close while they speculate to their hearts content. And
Speaker 1: you know, rock out Inventors are no stranger to malfunction.
Speaker 1: Edison famously told a reporter once that he didn't fail
Speaker 1: ten thousand times in the creation of the light bulb.
Speaker 1: He merely found ten thousand ways that it didn't work.
Speaker 1: The act of invention is one of trial and error
Speaker 1: and takes extensive planning and testing before the final product
Speaker 1: is ready to be received by the public. But sometimes
Speaker 1: no amount of testing can prepare an invention for the
Speaker 1: real world, and nobody learned that lesson harder than Alexander
Speaker 1: Graham Bell. Bell had started inventing when he was still
Speaker 1: a child growing up in Scotland. He built a d
Speaker 1: husking machine for a neighbor's flour mill when he was
Speaker 1: only twelve years old, followed by a way to communicate
Speaker 1: with his deaf mother using a series of finger taps
Speaker 1: and gestures. It was actually his mother's loss of hearing
Speaker 1: that influenced his later work in studying the travel of
Speaker 1: sound and ultimately the creation of the telephone. But while
Speaker 1: Belle is known today for helping to connect people by
Speaker 1: voice all over the world, he also invented early versions
Speaker 1: of some pretty powerful tools, one of which was put
Speaker 1: to use. In eighteen eighty one, during a rough time
Speaker 1: in American political history, a man by the name of
Speaker 1: Charles had made a name for himself as a terrible
Speaker 1: lawyer and a thief. After being chased out of Chicago
Speaker 1: for stealing from his clients and not paying his bills,
Speaker 1: he settled down in New York City with his wife,
Speaker 1: where he started focusing on national politics. There he got
Speaker 1: involved with the Democratic Party and supported candidate Horace Greeley
Speaker 1: over the current Republican President Ulysseses Grant, but his support
Speaker 1: came at a price. Charles started believing strange things throughout
Speaker 1: the campaign, like how if Greeley was elected, that he
Speaker 1: would make Charles the ambassador to Chile. Things only got
Speaker 1: weirder from there. Charles published a just text, much of
Speaker 1: which was plagiarized from the work of radical American preacher
Speaker 1: John Humphrey Noyse. He was the founder of a utopian
Speaker 1: commune called the Oneida Community, of which Charles had been
Speaker 1: a follower. After that, Charles spent years traveling and preaching,
Speaker 1: going from Boston to Washington, d c. Until finally winding
Speaker 1: up back in New York. And as the Republican Party
Speaker 1: began to split into two in eighteen eighty, Charles chose
Speaker 1: to back the Stalwarts, conservative minded Republicans who supported the
Speaker 1: civil rights of African Americans against the moderate liberals on
Speaker 1: the other side of the party. The Stalwarts wanted Grant
Speaker 1: to be the Republican nominee, and Charles threw his full
Speaker 1: support behind him, a stark change from his backing of
Speaker 1: the Democratic candidates just ten years prior. However, the Republicans
Speaker 1: wound up nominating someone else, James Garfield, and so Charles
Speaker 1: shifted his support to the new nominee almost immediately, and
Speaker 1: Garfield won the election, and Charles believed that he had
Speaker 1: been responsible for the man's success. He moved to Washington
Speaker 1: and started writing letters to the President demanding a consuleship
Speaker 1: position in Paris. Unfortunately, Garfield ignored his pleas Charles was
Speaker 1: nobody and the new president had more important things to
Speaker 1: do than entertain the wild fancies of one of his
Speaker 1: more troublesome constituents. Well, Charles didn't like that. He felt
Speaker 1: that without his help, Garfield would have lost, and the
Speaker 1: more he thought about it, the more he found issue
Speaker 1: with several of Garfield's policies. As a result, his adoration
Speaker 1: of the man turned into animosity. He thought the country
Speaker 1: would be better off if Vice President Chester A. Arthur
Speaker 1: was president instead, and so on July two one, Charles
Speaker 1: Guiteau waited for Garfield to arrive at the Baltimore and
Speaker 1: Potomac Railroad station in Washington, d C. The President was
Speaker 1: headed out for a summer trip when Charles stepped out
Speaker 1: of the shadows and shot him twice in the back.
Speaker 1: He was arrested immediately on his way out of the station,
Speaker 1: and Garfield was transported to the White House for care.
Speaker 1: Doctors were summoned, as was inventor Alexander Graham Bell, who
Speaker 1: was living in Washington and had invented a new kind
Speaker 1: of device to locate the bullet. It had come about
Speaker 1: as part of his development of the telephone. Bell had
Speaker 1: been trying to eliminate static in the device when he
Speaker 1: noticed that the closer he brought a metal object to
Speaker 1: the receiver, the louder the buzz it created. Bell's new
Speaker 1: invention utilized some fairly simple materials too, one coil connected
Speaker 1: to a battery and a buzzer, while another coil was
Speaker 1: fastened to an earpiece. As he passed one coil over
Speaker 1: Garfield's body, Bell would listen for the clicking in the earpiece,
Speaker 1: indicating that one of the metal bullets had been located. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: he ran into a few problems. For one, the new
Speaker 1: addition to the machine that was meant to improve performance
Speaker 1: actually resulted in even more interference than before. He took
Speaker 1: the whole thing back to his lab and made a
Speaker 1: few adjustments before returning to the White House to try again.
Speaker 1: It failed a second time, though Dr Willard Bliss, the
Speaker 1: president's personal physician, swore that the bullets was on the
Speaker 1: right side of Garfield's body, a point that he kept
Speaker 1: impressing upon Bell, so that's where the inventor focused all
Speaker 1: of his efforts. He heard the clicks in his earpiece,
Speaker 1: a sure sign that he had found something, but there
Speaker 1: was nothing there. The presidents eventually succumbed to infections caused
Speaker 1: by his wounds two months later, on September nineteenth one.
Speaker 1: What Bell didn't know at the time, though, was that
Speaker 1: his machine had worked perfectly. There had been metal on
Speaker 1: the right side of Garfield's body, but not inside him. Rather,
Speaker 1: it had been underneath him. Bell was detecting the bedsprings.
Speaker 1: The bullets, on the other hand, was found during the
Speaker 1: late President's autopsy on his left hand side, not his right,
Speaker 1: as the doctor had insisted. In order to help the
Speaker 1: twentie President of the United States, Alexander Graham, Bell had
Speaker 1: whipped up a little thing called a metal detector. Sadly,
Speaker 1: even after two attempts, Bell couldn't get it to do
Speaker 1: what he had hoped, and so he had to bite
Speaker 1: the bullet and accept his loss. But his creation would
Speaker 1: eventually go on to help soldiers locate land mines during
Speaker 1: wartime and assist beachgoers in their search for buried treasure.
Speaker 1: So it wasn't a complete failure. It was simply a
Speaker 1: bellweather of what was to come. 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.