Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Menkey's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world is
Speaker 1: full 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 greatest minds and talents in history all
Speaker 1: had to start somewhere. Albert Einstein worked as a patent clerk,
Speaker 1: fashion designer. Ralph Lauren joined the army as a young
Speaker 1: man before working as a salesman for the Brooks Brothers
Speaker 1: clothing store. But Juju McWilliams may have had the strangest
Speaker 1: start of all. McWilliams was born in Pasadena, California. In
Speaker 1: Her father was a successful Massachusetts politician and her mother
Speaker 1: the heiress to a paper company. McWilliams grew into quite
Speaker 1: the accomplished team. For one, she was tall for her age,
Speaker 1: standing over her high school classmates at a whopping six
Speaker 1: ft two inches. Her height helped on the basketball court
Speaker 1: as well. After graduating high school, she attended college, where
Speaker 1: she continued her athletic trajectory until she took a job
Speaker 1: in New York, working at an advertising firm as a copywriter,
Speaker 1: but her life in the big city eventually ended as
Speaker 1: the war effort came calling. McWilliams enlisted in ninety two
Speaker 1: to serve her country. Unfortunately, the military deemed her too
Speaker 1: tall for service. However, she was able to secure a
Speaker 1: spot with the Office of Strategic Services or o s S,
Speaker 1: where she served as a research assistant. She spent most
Speaker 1: of her time typing up little white cards with the
Speaker 1: names and addresses of government operatives. It wasn't glamorous, but
Speaker 1: it did put her on the radar of OSS top brass.
Speaker 1: Before long, they moved her from behind a desk to
Speaker 1: behind a lab table. You see, the OSS had a
Speaker 1: problem one they believed that McWilliams might be able to
Speaker 1: help them solve. There was work being done in the
Speaker 1: OSS Emergency Sea Rescue Equipment section on stopping sharks. They
Speaker 1: didn't want to kill any sharks, but the curious creatures
Speaker 1: had a troublesome habit of accidentally setting off underwater mines
Speaker 1: that were meant for German u boats. There had also
Speaker 1: been several reports of shark attacks over the previous three years,
Speaker 1: inciting fear among many sea bound soldiers. The os S
Speaker 1: tasked Captain Harold J. Coolidge with developing a shark repellent
Speaker 1: to keep them away from the minds and the men.
Speaker 1: Coolidge had come from the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology,
Speaker 1: and his partner Dr. Henry Field was brought in from
Speaker 1: a natural history museum in Chicago. McWilliams was assigned to
Speaker 1: Coolidge as an assistant. Together with Field and chemical technicians
Speaker 1: Stewart Springer. The team ran a battery of tests on
Speaker 1: various substances to see how well they kept sharks away,
Speaker 1: and their test subject a small shark called the spiny dogfish.
Speaker 1: They put dead shark meat, acids, nicotine, pine oils, and
Speaker 1: about a hundred other chemicals in the water before settling
Speaker 1: on a combination of copper sulfate, copper acetate, maleic acid,
Speaker 1: and dead shark extract. The spiny dogfish found the mixture
Speaker 1: repulsive and stayed away about sixty of the time. McWilliams
Speaker 1: was awarded for her work with the o s S
Speaker 1: and even met her future husband, Paul while working there.
Speaker 1: In fact, it was Paul who helped her find her
Speaker 1: footing after the war too. He had lived in France
Speaker 1: when he was younger and had developed a taste for
Speaker 1: fine food. After joining the US Foreign Service in ninety eight,
Speaker 1: he and Juju moved to the City of Lights, where
Speaker 1: she experienced one of the most incredible and important meals
Speaker 1: of her life. It was at a restaurant called La
Speaker 1: Corone in the city of Ruan. Mc williams had enjoyed
Speaker 1: oysters followed by a main course of sulmoniere, a French
Speaker 1: fish dish often prepared heard with a savory brown butter sauce.
Speaker 1: She described the experience as an opening up of the
Speaker 1: soul and spirit, and inspired her to enroll in French
Speaker 1: culinary school, from which she graduated in nineteen fifty one.
Speaker 1: McWilliams eventually met two other chefs, Simone Beck and Louisette Bertoli,
Speaker 1: who had been working together on a cookbook of French cuisine.
Speaker 1: Beck suggested McWilliams joined them as a third author, considering
Speaker 1: she was an American who had developed a love for
Speaker 1: French cooking, her insight might help the book reach an
Speaker 1: American audience as well. The publisher originally turned the book down,
Speaker 1: claiming it was too long and boring to be of
Speaker 1: interest to anyone, but the three women persevered, and in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty one, their seven hundred page love letter to
Speaker 1: French cooking was published. Too great to claim. McWilliams herself
Speaker 1: went on to become a successful newspaper columnist and cookbook author,
Speaker 1: as well as the host of a very popular cooking
Speaker 1: show on public television. And none of it would have
Speaker 1: happened without two major events in her life or work
Speaker 1: with the oss on shark repellent and meeting her husband,
Speaker 1: Paul Cushing Child. The world at large never knew Juju McWilliams.
Speaker 1: Juju had been a childhood nickname of hers. Instead, they
Speaker 1: fell in love with Julia Caroline McWilliams, better known to
Speaker 1: aspiring chefs everywhere as Julia Child. In a deadly outbreak
Speaker 1: of diphtheria hit the residence of Nome, Alaska. It's a
Speaker 1: highly contagious bacterial infection with a mortality rate of ten percent,
Speaker 1: and for children untreated and without vaccinations, the death rate
Speaker 1: jumps even higher. It's rare and developed countries due to vaccination,
Speaker 1: but in the early nineteen hundreds gnomes Lone doctor noticed
Speaker 1: a one percent mortality rate among children even with treatment.
Speaker 1: It was often fatal in young children. To save them,
Speaker 1: he needed a special serum, one that he didn't have.
Speaker 1: Alaska is known for some unforgiving wilderness, and that January
Speaker 1: winter prevented getting the life saving serum to the town.
Speaker 1: Thick ice prevented ships from making passage to a nearby harbor.
Speaker 1: Alaskan winds and subzero temperatures rendered planes useless. Neither plane
Speaker 1: nor pilot would survive the trip, even if the handful
Speaker 1: of planes weren't in storage, too far away to even
Speaker 1: consider the dangerous attempt without treatment. Though the entire town
Speaker 1: was in peril, children were the most vulnerable, and every
Speaker 1: day more fell ill, wheezing and gasping for breath. Despite
Speaker 1: his best efforts, all the doctor could do was watch
Speaker 1: them die at an alarming rate. The bacteria produced a
Speaker 1: deadly toxin that built up in the bloodstream, causing organ failure.
Speaker 1: He ordered a quarantine, though he knew that was just
Speaker 1: borrowed time. Without the serum, the children of Nome would die.
Speaker 1: So telegraphs flew and Anchorage said they had the life
Speaker 1: saving serum. Although the closest they could ship the precious
Speaker 1: cargo was by railway to Ninana. There was only one
Speaker 1: thing left to do. Use the winter time mail carriers. No,
Speaker 1: these weren't special vehicles equipped for snow. These were sled dogs.
Speaker 1: There was a problem, though the dogs were used for
Speaker 1: short distances. Humans and animals would have to travel seven
Speaker 1: hundred miles in a particularly harsh winter with little to
Speaker 1: no protection from the elements, much less defend themselves against
Speaker 1: dangerous wildlife, and with new cases of diphtheria appearing daily.
Speaker 1: They were up against the clock. Still, running the dogs
Speaker 1: too hard and fast would frost their lungs, effectively killing them.
Speaker 1: The conditions that winter were terrible even for Alaska. Each
Speaker 1: team that had the serum would face similar conditions for
Speaker 1: their thirty mile run. Pushing harder would put the team
Speaker 1: at risk. The governor put out request for volunteers. They
Speaker 1: need the bravest of men and the hardiest of dogs.
Speaker 1: He didn't sugarcoat it either. They'd have to travel across
Speaker 1: frozen lakes with ice that may not hold their weights,
Speaker 1: navigate through dense forests, and travel in near white out
Speaker 1: conditions across the undra in January. There wouldn't be a
Speaker 1: lot of daylight either. Most of the teams would be
Speaker 1: running in the dark. A ragged crew of locals stepped
Speaker 1: up to the challenge, mostly Athabaskans and Inuit who were
Speaker 1: familiar with the terrain. Short on enough volunteers, they would
Speaker 1: have to travel farther than others, and, as if they
Speaker 1: needed one more thing to worry about, the serum would
Speaker 1: be rendered useless if it reached below freezing temperatures. The
Speaker 1: first team left at night on January, making the first
Speaker 1: leg of the journey in sixty below weather and traveling
Speaker 1: fifty two miles. To save his dogs from the strain,
Speaker 1: the musher frequently ran beside them. When he finally met
Speaker 1: up with the next team, he had suffered from hypothermia
Speaker 1: and frost bite. The last team encountered white out conditions.
Speaker 1: Snow crusted the dog's fur as they ran against strong winds.
Speaker 1: An eighty mile per hour gust hit the team, flipping
Speaker 1: the sled, the cargo, and the dogs upside down in
Speaker 1: the snow. In an instant, musher gunner Cason dove into
Speaker 1: the snow after the serum, but he couldn't find it
Speaker 1: with his mits on. After digging with his bare hands,
Speaker 1: he scooped up the fur covered package. Then he righted
Speaker 1: the sled and pushed onto the meeting point for the
Speaker 1: next team, but his relief team never showed up. He
Speaker 1: had to ask his tired dogs to make the next
Speaker 1: leg of the journey. Finally, at five thirty in the
Speaker 1: morning on February second, Casson's lead dog, Balto, barked as
Speaker 1: they stopped in front of the doctor's office. The Sierum
Speaker 1: safe and sound Man's best friend had saved the town.
Speaker 1: Forty eight years later, in nineteventy three, the race became
Speaker 1: immortalized in another way. The I did a rod sled race.
Speaker 1: As you might have already guessed, It's run every year
Speaker 1: in March, not January though. Oh and one last thing.
Speaker 1: The governor who put out the call for the bravest
Speaker 1: of men and the hardiest of dogs. His name was
Speaker 1: Scott c. Bone. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour
Speaker 1: of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast
Speaker 1: dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Mankey
Speaker 1: in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award
Speaker 1: winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series
Speaker 1: and television show, and you can learn all about it
Speaker 1: over at the world of lore dot com. And until
Speaker 1: next time, stay curious. Yeah,