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Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Nke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of

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Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of

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Speaker 1: the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all

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Speaker 1: of these amazing tales right there on display, just waiting

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Speaker 1: for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.

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Speaker 1: In fifteen ninety three, a strange figure entered Buckingham Palace.

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Speaker 1: It was a woman from Ireland of around sixty years

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Speaker 1: of age, appearing in London for an audience with the

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Speaker 1: Queen Elizabeth. I greeted this woman, and although the pair

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Speaker 1: of them were about the same age, the stranger seemed

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Speaker 1: much older. She was weather beaten, her skin showing the

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Speaker 1: evidence of many years spent at sea. The two women

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Speaker 1: spoke in Latin, which is the only tongue that they shared.

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Speaker 1: The visitor had a petition to bring before the Queen.

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Speaker 1: Her son and her half brother were both captured by

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Speaker 1: Sir Richard Bingham, and she had come to implore Elizabeth

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Speaker 1: to spare their lives. If legends are to be believed,

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Speaker 1: this visitor refused to bow before the Queen, and, in

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Speaker 1: open defiance to British authority. She had a dagger at

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Speaker 1: her side. This defiant irishwoman was Grunia Nullia, but she's

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Speaker 1: best known to us as Grace O'Malley. Her most famous

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Speaker 1: name is her nickname in Irish folk history, Granule, the

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Speaker 1: Pirate Queen of Connacht. Her meeting with Queen Elizabeth the

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Speaker 1: First would become the stuff of legends, but it was

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Speaker 1: only a small part of an already legendary career. Born

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Speaker 1: to the chief of Clan O'Malley in County Mayo, she

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Speaker 1: displayed a taste for adventure from an early age. According

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Speaker 1: to legend, as a child, she wanted to accompany her

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Speaker 1: father on a voyage to Spain. He refused, making the

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Speaker 1: excuse that her long hair would get caught in the

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Speaker 1: ship's rigging, so the young grace Es promptly cut off

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Speaker 1: her hair. Her name ever since, Grannual translates to Grace

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Speaker 1: of the chopped hair. Like many daughters of powerful men,

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Speaker 1: she would be married off to another chief son for

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Speaker 1: political reasons, but Grannual was never going to be content

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Speaker 1: merely raising children and tending the homestead. She took the

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Speaker 1: reins of her husband's clan and set sail, literally displaying

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Speaker 1: a mastery of seafaring. She established trading routes with Spain

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Speaker 1: and Portugal, and would become famous for leading raids on

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Speaker 1: enemy ships herself. Her power was diminished slightly upon her

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Speaker 1: husband's death in the mid fifteen sixties. By Irish law,

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Speaker 1: a widow was entitled to only a third of her

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Speaker 1: husband's property. She resettled on Claire Island with two hundred

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Speaker 1: followers and a small fleet of three galleys, enough of

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Speaker 1: a force to maintain influence on her nearby shipping lanes

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Speaker 1: and charge a toll for anyone who dared pass through

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Speaker 1: her territory. By fifteen sixty six, most of Klue Bay

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Speaker 1: on the eastern coast of Ireland was under her control.

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Speaker 1: She became known as a pirate queen and would fiercely

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Speaker 1: defend her territory against the British and rival Irish clans alike.

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Speaker 1: A legend during this time tells of how she found

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Speaker 1: a shipwrecked sailor and fell in love. When he was

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Speaker 1: slain by the McMahons, she personally led an assault on

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Speaker 1: the McMahon castle of Duna, slaughtering those responsible. She married

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Speaker 1: again in the late fifteen sixties, but once again refused

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Speaker 1: to settle down. In fifteen seventy four, the British captain

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Speaker 1: William Martin laid siege to her castle with a fleet

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Speaker 1: of ships. To his surprise, what he thought would be

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Speaker 1: an easy victory turned into a resounding defeat as the Irish,

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Speaker 1: led by Granywall, repelled his forces. The tide turn for

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Speaker 1: Ireland in the fifteen seventies, with clan leaders forced to

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Speaker 1: submit to the British monarchy, and grannu All followed suit.

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Speaker 1: But this did not mean that she was retiring, nor

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Speaker 1: that she would not come into conflict with the Empire.

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Speaker 1: When her second husband died in fifteen eighty three, she

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Speaker 1: took command of his remaining followers, claiming her rights as

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Speaker 1: a widow. She would not be cheated again. Years of

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Speaker 1: fighting on and off with various English governors appointed to

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Speaker 1: Ireland led her to that fateful meeting in fifteen ninety three. Granuall,

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Speaker 1: after decades of violence, at heartbreak, sought the Queen's pardon

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Speaker 1: for her own family and compensation for the losses that

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Speaker 1: she had incurred against the English. To the court's surprise,

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Speaker 1: she was granted everything she asked for. Her son and

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Speaker 1: half brother would be spared, she would be left in peace,

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Speaker 1: and in return, she would only attack England's enemies. From

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Speaker 1: then on, the two queens parted in mutual respect, allowing

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Speaker 1: Grannuall to live out her days in the home she

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Speaker 1: fought so hard to protect. Records of her life dwindled

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Speaker 1: towards the beginning of the seventeenth century, and in the

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Speaker 1: following centuries she became a strange figure in history, half legend,

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Speaker 1: half truth, a real woman who commands mythic respect from

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Speaker 1: her people. To this day. It's widely believed that she

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Speaker 1: passed away in sixteen o three, which, if true, would

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Speaker 1: be a remarkable coincidence, because that was the very same

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Speaker 1: year that saw the death of Queen Elizabeth the First,

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Speaker 1: the woman who ruled the world, the one who grann

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Speaker 1: you All faced as an equal. Chester didn't know what

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Speaker 1: to expect when he was recruited to the Marine Corps

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Speaker 1: in nineteen forty two, but it certainly wasn't this. He

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Speaker 1: and twenty eight other Navajo men had made it through

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Speaker 1: basic training together. They had crawled through trenches, zeroed in

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Speaker 1: on targets, and trained with all kinds of weapons. But

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Speaker 1: now sitting in a conference room Chester had just learned

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Speaker 1: that they were about to face their toughest mission yet.

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Speaker 1: Chester looked up as an unknown major stepped into the room.

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Speaker 1: He glanced around the table, sizing up the Navajo recruits,

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Speaker 1: and then he spoke. His orders were shorts and to

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Speaker 1: the point. The group was to create a code in

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Speaker 1: their native language. And then he left the room, locking

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Speaker 1: them all in together. Chester and the others stared at

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Speaker 1: each other. They were brand new recruits. They had barely

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Speaker 1: had any cryptography training. How on earth were they supposed

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Speaker 1: to develop a code. The Navajo code Talkers were a

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Speaker 1: group of nearly four hundred Native Navajo speakers who used

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Speaker 1: their native language to encrypt messages for marines during World

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Speaker 1: War II. At the time, all radio broadcasts could be

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Speaker 1: easily picked up by enemies listening in, so every important

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Speaker 1: piece of information had to be sent via code. While

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Speaker 1: probably the most famous, the Navajo were far from the

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Speaker 1: first Native American soldiers to use their language for espionage.

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Speaker 1: In World War One, American troops from the Comanche, Choctaw, Hope,

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Speaker 1: and Cherokee nations used their native languages to send messages

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Speaker 1: that their enemies couldn't translate. After the war ended, Germany

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Speaker 1: and Japan sent students to the US to study these languages,

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Speaker 1: and this may have looked like an innocent cultural exchange,

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Speaker 1: but really these nations were preparing in case they needed

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Speaker 1: to decode those languages in future wars. And for this reason,

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Speaker 1: when the United States was drawn into World War II

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Speaker 1: in nineteen forty one, the military was reluctant to use

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Speaker 1: native code talkers again, at least until a Los Angeles

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Speaker 1: engineer named Philip Johnston spoke up. Johnston was born and

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Speaker 1: raised on the Navajo reservation, the son of Christian missionaries,

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Speaker 1: and spoke the language fluently. In fact, he'd even acted

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Speaker 1: as a translator when Navajo leaders negotiated a new treaty

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Speaker 1: with President Theodore Roosevelt. He knew the language was incredibly complex.

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Speaker 1: It was tonal, people spoke multiple dialects of it, and

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Speaker 1: the language had no written alphabet. It was practically impossible

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Speaker 1: for anyone to learn apart from growing up with Native speakers.

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Speaker 1: If the military was looking for a code, Navajo was perfect,

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Speaker 1: and the military agreed. By nineteen forty two, Chesternz and

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Speaker 1: twenty eight other Natives speakers were the first Navajo code

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Speaker 1: talkers working for the military. Although initially surprised by their mission,

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Speaker 1: these Navajo soldiers quickly got to work, creating a complex

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Speaker 1: system of codewords and descriptors, making it so even another

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Speaker 1: Native speaker wouldn't be able to understand their transmissions. Part

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Speaker 1: of the code was giving Navajo names to military vehicles,

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Speaker 1: many of which did not have a word already in

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Speaker 1: the Navajo language. So submarine became beschloh, which means iron fish,

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Speaker 1: and Dahi tihi, meaning hummingbird, became the code term for

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Speaker 1: a fighter plane. These Navajo code talkers were present at

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Speaker 1: every major marine operation in the Pacific starting in nineteen

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Speaker 1: forty two. They were widely credited with helping the Americans

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Speaker 1: take Iwajima, a strategic island in the South Pacific. Over

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Speaker 1: the course of the war, more than four hundred Navajo

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Speaker 1: code talkers served in the Pacific theater. Their encyclopedic knowledge

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Speaker 1: of the Navajo language and their own developed code let

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Speaker 1: them receive a message, decrypt it in cryptosc sponts, and

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Speaker 1: send it over the radio in just over two minutes.

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Speaker 1: For a non native speaker, that same task would have

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Speaker 1: taken hours. While the code talkers were treated like heroes

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Speaker 1: by their fellow servicemen. The wider public had no idea

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Speaker 1: what they had done for the war effort. The entire

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Speaker 1: operation remained classified until nineteen sixty eight, twenty three years

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Speaker 1: after the war. Finally, in nineteen eighty two, the code

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Speaker 1: talkers were recognized nationally when President Ronald Reagan declared August

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Speaker 1: fourteenth to be National Navajo Code Talker Day, and in

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Speaker 1: two thousand and one, President George W. Bush gave gold

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Speaker 1: Congressional Medals of Honor to the original twenty nine code talkers.

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Speaker 1: After the war, the Japanese Chief of Intelligence admitted that

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Speaker 1: one of the only codes they were never able to

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Speaker 1: break was the Navajo one. Not bad for a bunch

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Speaker 1: of fresh Marines who had never made a code before.

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Speaker 1: I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet

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Speaker 1: of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn

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Speaker 1: more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com.

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Speaker 1: The show was created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership

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Speaker 1: with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show

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Speaker 1: called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show,

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Speaker 1: and you can learn all about it over at the Worldoflore.

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Speaker 1: Dot com and until next time, stay curious,