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

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Speaker 1: I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world is

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

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Speaker 1: all of these amazing tales are right there on display,

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Speaker 1: just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet

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Speaker 1: of Curiosities. Dreams can tell us a lot about ourselves,

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Speaker 1: our fears, are worries, and our hopes for the future.

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Speaker 1: In fact, the link between dreams and the future is

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Speaker 1: stronger than we might think. Before a landslide of coal

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Speaker 1: waste buried a school in Wales in nineteen sixty six,

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Speaker 1: the students had reported dreaming about dying just days before

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Speaker 1: it happened on Sixteen children and twenty eight adults were

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Speaker 1: lost in that disaster. Perhaps the most famous precognitive dream

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Speaker 1: occurred in eighteen sixty five. President Abraham Lincoln told his

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Speaker 1: wife and some associates about a dream he'd recently had

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Speaker 1: where he'd seen his own dead body laying before him

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Speaker 1: in the White House. Two weeks later, the casket holding

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Speaker 1: his real corpse was placed in the exact same spot.

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Speaker 1: But dreams don't always tell us when we're going to die,

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Speaker 1: sometimes they can spark inspiration, likely did for Elias. How

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Speaker 1: Elias's legacy is far more generous than he probably deserves.

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Speaker 1: He's often described as a Civil War hero, a brilliant inventor,

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Speaker 1: and a cherished native of Connecticut. In reality, he was

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Speaker 1: a Union private at the age of forty who lost

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Speaker 1: credit on many of his inventions, and was actually born

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Speaker 1: in Massachusetts. But he never considered himself a failure, nor

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Speaker 1: did he let his shortcomings stop him from continuing to

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Speaker 1: pursue his goals. One of his main focuses had been

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Speaker 1: to improve the mechanical sewing machine, which had been growing

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Speaker 1: in popularity during the mid nineteenth century. Now, others before

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Speaker 1: him had iterated on the device, dating all the way

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Speaker 1: back to Charles Frederick Wisenthal in seventeen fifty five, and

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Speaker 1: Thomas Saint, an English inventor, was said to have designed

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Speaker 1: the sewing machine as we know it today, but it's

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Speaker 1: not clear if he ever built a working model. Over

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Speaker 1: the years, numerous other inventors took a stab at enhancing

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Speaker 1: the sewing machine, changing everything from the types of stitches

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Speaker 1: they made to the variety of fabrics one could pass

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Speaker 1: through them. However, Alias didn't get complacent. He innovated in

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Speaker 1: his own ways and was awarded a patent in eighteen

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Speaker 1: forty six for his version that used a lock stitch design.

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Speaker 1: In fact, Alias's design included three additions that are still

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Speaker 1: found on sewing machines today. A shuttle that passed back

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Speaker 1: and forth beneath the fabric to accomplish the lock stitch,

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Speaker 1: and he also added an automatic feeder too. Then the

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Speaker 1: third and final feature was a bit of a miracle

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Speaker 1: that least to Alias. He'd been trying to figure out

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Speaker 1: how to improve the needle of his machine, wondering where

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Speaker 1: to place the eye. It's usual position at the rear

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Speaker 1: of the shaft wouldn't do, so he went back to

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Speaker 1: the drawing board. Well, actually, he went to sleep. One night,

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Speaker 1: Alias dreamed that he had been captured by a mysterious tribe.

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Speaker 1: Their king had tasked him with building a sewing machine

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Speaker 1: in the span of just twenty four hours. I guess

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Speaker 1: even in his dream, he was faced with the same

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Speaker 1: problem where to put the eye of the needle, except

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Speaker 1: this time if he couldn't complete the machine on schedule,

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Speaker 1: he'd be killed. Twenty four hours passed in his dream

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Speaker 1: at least, and he'd still gotten no closer to figuring

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Speaker 1: out the needle conundrum. The king was displeased and ordered

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Speaker 1: Elias to be executed. But as the inventor was being

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Speaker 1: escorted to his fate, he caught a glimpse of the

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Speaker 1: spears being carried by the warriors around him. All of

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Speaker 1: them had holes near the spear points in his dream.

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Speaker 1: Alias begged for just a little more time to finish

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Speaker 1: his machine, but by then it was too late. He

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Speaker 1: woke up grateful although he hadn't been killed by his captors,

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Speaker 1: he had been struck with a brilliant new idea. He

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Speaker 1: immediately got out of bed and headed into his workshop.

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Speaker 1: Five hours later he was done with it. Elias Howe

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Speaker 1: had created a sewing machine needle with an eye in

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Speaker 1: its point. Unfortunately, the dream had failed to inspire him

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Speaker 1: to change his poor sales and marketing tactics. His revolutionary

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Speaker 1: new machine did not perform well in the marketplace. He

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Speaker 1: got caught up in defending his patent and tried charging

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Speaker 1: an exorbitant licensing fee that no one wanted to pay. Meanwhile,

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Speaker 1: other inventors were moving ahead with their own sewing machine designs.

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Speaker 1: Leaving Alias and his holy needle in the dust. It's

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Speaker 1: possible his failure to sell his brilliant new idea hindered

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Speaker 1: his future inventions as well. In eighteen fifty one, Alias

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Speaker 1: filed a patent for what he called an automatic continuous

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Speaker 1: clothing enclosure. It's a shame he didn't try harder to

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Speaker 1: mark at it. Had he done so, it might be

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Speaker 1: his name listed as the inventor of something else we

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Speaker 1: all find helpful, the zipper. We've all had a bad day.

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Speaker 1: Some of us experienced days or even weeks that just

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Speaker 1: feel darker and more hopeless as time goes by. It's normal,

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Speaker 1: and if that's you, you're not alone. However much you

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Speaker 1: might feel like that right now. I can't guarantee when

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Speaker 1: it will get better, but it does. But what I

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Speaker 1: can guarantee is that Willem would have sympathized with you. Why, well,

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Speaker 1: he was having a really bad time. Honestly, by our

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Speaker 1: modern standards, he was pretty much a complete failure. And

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Speaker 1: however depressing it might be. I want to tell you why.

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Speaker 1: William was born in the early eighteen fifties and what

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Speaker 1: would one day become a large family. His father was

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Speaker 1: a minister, and over the years, more and more siblings

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Speaker 1: were added to his daily life. Sometimes that pushes the

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Speaker 1: oldest child to become a leader or at the very

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Speaker 1: least dominant. Other times it forces them to retreat from

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Speaker 1: the chaos. For Willem, it was certainly the letter. His

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Speaker 1: early years are a bit of a fog to historians,

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Speaker 1: but we do know that he hopped around for a bit,

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Speaker 1: from one school to another, and then around the age

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Speaker 1: of sixteen, he landed his first job. A family connection

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Speaker 1: earned him a place inside a retail business of sorts,

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Speaker 1: and for a while it seemed like maybe the work

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Speaker 1: would stick. The job ended up giving him a much

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Speaker 1: broader view of the world too. In eighteen seventy three

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Speaker 1: he followed the work to London, and then two years

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Speaker 1: later it was Paris. But Willem wasn't in love with

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Speaker 1: his job. He felt a calling that his father had

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Speaker 1: and began to throw himself deeper and deeper into religious studies,

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Speaker 1: so deep, in fact, that he was fired from the

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Speaker 1: store in eighteen seventy six. A few months later, he

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Speaker 1: settled into a place in Holland and gave his religious

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Speaker 1: pursuits one percent of his attention In fact, his own

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Speaker 1: sister would later describe him as daffy with piety. It

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Speaker 1: seems young Willem was a bit of an outsider, although

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Speaker 1: he couldn't care less about what others thought of him.

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Speaker 1: In eighteen seventy eight, at the age of just twenty five,

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Speaker 1: he left for a school that would train him for evangelism,

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Speaker 1: certain that he had found his place in the world finally.

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Speaker 1: Yet just three months later he failed out, and there

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Speaker 1: he was a man who had been fired from his

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Speaker 1: job and kicked out of school. It seems that poor

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Speaker 1: young Willem was really only good at one thing, failing,

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Speaker 1: but his passion for religious work was a fire that

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Speaker 1: couldn't be extinguished. Later on, in eighteen seventy eight, he

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Speaker 1: packed up and headed to Belgium with plans to work

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Speaker 1: as a lay preacher minister without the proper training, in

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Speaker 1: a sense, hoping his enthusiasm would make up for his

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Speaker 1: lack of education. Now, the place he headed to was

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Speaker 1: a poor coal mining area. Lie if there was rough

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Speaker 1: for the people around him, and that filled his heart

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Speaker 1: with compassion. He helped buy them food and clothing. And

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Speaker 1: when there is an accident in one of the near

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Speaker 1: my mind shortly after he arrived. Willem was one of

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Speaker 1: the first people there to help, putting himself in danger

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Speaker 1: to care for those who were hurt, and it was

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Speaker 1: that event that earned him the acceptance of the people

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Speaker 1: around him. They had seen his compassion for them in

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Speaker 1: their darkest hour, and so they decided his spiritual message

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Speaker 1: was worth listening to. Despite his complete lack of training

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Speaker 1: and the language barrier, he became their shepherd. But even

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Speaker 1: that wouldn't last long. In July of eighteen seventy nine,

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Speaker 1: just a few months after arriving and earning the trust

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Speaker 1: of a community, the regional religious authority sent a representative

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Speaker 1: to see how he was doing. What they found was

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Speaker 1: a young man with barely a penny to his name,

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Speaker 1: dressed in rough clothing sewn from sackcloth, and when this

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Speaker 1: representative asked him where all his money had gone, Willem

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Speaker 1: shyly admitted that he had spent it all on the

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Speaker 1: miners around him. Furious that Willem hadn't followed the typical

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Speaker 1: example of the church at the time, that is to

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Speaker 1: live well and stay clean from the filth around him,

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Speaker 1: he was fired from his position, and with that, I

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Speaker 1: think all those years of failure finally caught up with him.

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Speaker 1: Here he was just twenty six years old and a

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Speaker 1: complete and total failure. It wasn't long after that, however,

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Speaker 1: when Willem saw something that inspired him. It was an

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Speaker 1: old miner straining under the weight of a sack full

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Speaker 1: of coal, and he felt a deep desire to capture

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Speaker 1: that image. So he pulled an old envelope out of

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Speaker 1: his pocket and quickly sketched out the shape and form

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Speaker 1: of the laboring man. It was the first step out

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Speaker 1: of darkness, and it also hearkened back to his days

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Speaker 1: in retail, working as a dealer of goods for his uncle,

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Speaker 1: a dealer of art. Over the years to come, Willem

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Speaker 1: would devote himself to his art with as much passion

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Speaker 1: as he had his work as a preacher, and in

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Speaker 1: the process he carved his name into the page is

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Speaker 1: of history as one of the greatest there ever was.

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Speaker 1: Of course, you know his work, but not his earliest stories.

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Speaker 1: Because Willem was actually his middle name, most people both

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Speaker 1: then and now, just called him Vincent Vincent van Gogh.

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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 Manky 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

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Speaker 1: World of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.

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Speaker 1: Ye