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. Dreams can tell us a lot about ourselves,
Speaker 1: our fears, are worries, and our hopes for the future.
Speaker 1: In fact, the link between dreams and the future is
Speaker 1: stronger than we might think. Before a landslide of coal
Speaker 1: waste buried a school in Wales in nineteen sixty six,
Speaker 1: the students had reported dreaming about dying just days before
Speaker 1: it happened on Sixteen children and twenty eight adults were
Speaker 1: lost in that disaster. Perhaps the most famous precognitive dream
Speaker 1: occurred in eighteen sixty five. President Abraham Lincoln told his
Speaker 1: wife and some associates about a dream he'd recently had
Speaker 1: where he'd seen his own dead body laying before him
Speaker 1: in the White House. Two weeks later, the casket holding
Speaker 1: his real corpse was placed in the exact same spot.
Speaker 1: But dreams don't always tell us when we're going to die,
Speaker 1: sometimes they can spark inspiration, likely did for Elias. How
Speaker 1: Elias's legacy is far more generous than he probably deserves.
Speaker 1: He's often described as a Civil War hero, a brilliant inventor,
Speaker 1: and a cherished native of Connecticut. In reality, he was
Speaker 1: a Union private at the age of forty who lost
Speaker 1: credit on many of his inventions, and was actually born
Speaker 1: in Massachusetts. But he never considered himself a failure, nor
Speaker 1: did he let his shortcomings stop him from continuing to
Speaker 1: pursue his goals. One of his main focuses had been
Speaker 1: to improve the mechanical sewing machine, which had been growing
Speaker 1: in popularity during the mid nineteenth century. Now, others before
Speaker 1: him had iterated on the device, dating all the way
Speaker 1: back to Charles Frederick Wisenthal in seventeen fifty five, and
Speaker 1: Thomas Saint, an English inventor, was said to have designed
Speaker 1: the sewing machine as we know it today, but it's
Speaker 1: not clear if he ever built a working model. Over
Speaker 1: the years, numerous other inventors took a stab at enhancing
Speaker 1: the sewing machine, changing everything from the types of stitches
Speaker 1: they made to the variety of fabrics one could pass
Speaker 1: through them. However, Alias didn't get complacent. He innovated in
Speaker 1: his own ways and was awarded a patent in eighteen
Speaker 1: forty six for his version that used a lock stitch design.
Speaker 1: In fact, Alias's design included three additions that are still
Speaker 1: found on sewing machines today. A shuttle that passed back
Speaker 1: and forth beneath the fabric to accomplish the lock stitch,
Speaker 1: and he also added an automatic feeder too. Then the
Speaker 1: third and final feature was a bit of a miracle
Speaker 1: that least to Alias. He'd been trying to figure out
Speaker 1: how to improve the needle of his machine, wondering where
Speaker 1: to place the eye. It's usual position at the rear
Speaker 1: of the shaft wouldn't do, so he went back to
Speaker 1: the drawing board. Well, actually, he went to sleep. One night,
Speaker 1: Alias dreamed that he had been captured by a mysterious tribe.
Speaker 1: Their king had tasked him with building a sewing machine
Speaker 1: in the span of just twenty four hours. I guess
Speaker 1: even in his dream, he was faced with the same
Speaker 1: problem where to put the eye of the needle, except
Speaker 1: this time if he couldn't complete the machine on schedule,
Speaker 1: he'd be killed. Twenty four hours passed in his dream
Speaker 1: at least, and he'd still gotten no closer to figuring
Speaker 1: out the needle conundrum. The king was displeased and ordered
Speaker 1: Elias to be executed. But as the inventor was being
Speaker 1: escorted to his fate, he caught a glimpse of the
Speaker 1: spears being carried by the warriors around him. All of
Speaker 1: them had holes near the spear points in his dream.
Speaker 1: Alias begged for just a little more time to finish
Speaker 1: his machine, but by then it was too late. He
Speaker 1: woke up grateful although he hadn't been killed by his captors,
Speaker 1: he had been struck with a brilliant new idea. He
Speaker 1: immediately got out of bed and headed into his workshop.
Speaker 1: Five hours later he was done with it. Elias Howe
Speaker 1: had created a sewing machine needle with an eye in
Speaker 1: its point. Unfortunately, the dream had failed to inspire him
Speaker 1: to change his poor sales and marketing tactics. His revolutionary
Speaker 1: new machine did not perform well in the marketplace. He
Speaker 1: got caught up in defending his patent and tried charging
Speaker 1: an exorbitant licensing fee that no one wanted to pay. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: other inventors were moving ahead with their own sewing machine designs.
Speaker 1: Leaving Alias and his holy needle in the dust. It's
Speaker 1: possible his failure to sell his brilliant new idea hindered
Speaker 1: his future inventions as well. In eighteen fifty one, Alias
Speaker 1: filed a patent for what he called an automatic continuous
Speaker 1: clothing enclosure. It's a shame he didn't try harder to
Speaker 1: mark at it. Had he done so, it might be
Speaker 1: his name listed as the inventor of something else we
Speaker 1: all find helpful, the zipper. We've all had a bad day.
Speaker 1: Some of us experienced days or even weeks that just
Speaker 1: feel darker and more hopeless as time goes by. It's normal,
Speaker 1: and if that's you, you're not alone. However much you
Speaker 1: might feel like that right now. I can't guarantee when
Speaker 1: it will get better, but it does. But what I
Speaker 1: can guarantee is that Willem would have sympathized with you. Why, well,
Speaker 1: he was having a really bad time. Honestly, by our
Speaker 1: modern standards, he was pretty much a complete failure. And
Speaker 1: however depressing it might be. I want to tell you why.
Speaker 1: William was born in the early eighteen fifties and what
Speaker 1: would one day become a large family. His father was
Speaker 1: a minister, and over the years, more and more siblings
Speaker 1: were added to his daily life. Sometimes that pushes the
Speaker 1: oldest child to become a leader or at the very
Speaker 1: least dominant. Other times it forces them to retreat from
Speaker 1: the chaos. For Willem, it was certainly the letter. His
Speaker 1: early years are a bit of a fog to historians,
Speaker 1: but we do know that he hopped around for a bit,
Speaker 1: from one school to another, and then around the age
Speaker 1: of sixteen, he landed his first job. A family connection
Speaker 1: earned him a place inside a retail business of sorts,
Speaker 1: and for a while it seemed like maybe the work
Speaker 1: would stick. The job ended up giving him a much
Speaker 1: broader view of the world too. In eighteen seventy three
Speaker 1: he followed the work to London, and then two years
Speaker 1: later it was Paris. But Willem wasn't in love with
Speaker 1: his job. He felt a calling that his father had
Speaker 1: and began to throw himself deeper and deeper into religious studies,
Speaker 1: so deep, in fact, that he was fired from the
Speaker 1: store in eighteen seventy six. A few months later, he
Speaker 1: settled into a place in Holland and gave his religious
Speaker 1: pursuits one percent of his attention In fact, his own
Speaker 1: sister would later describe him as daffy with piety. It
Speaker 1: seems young Willem was a bit of an outsider, although
Speaker 1: he couldn't care less about what others thought of him.
Speaker 1: In eighteen seventy eight, at the age of just twenty five,
Speaker 1: he left for a school that would train him for evangelism,
Speaker 1: certain that he had found his place in the world finally.
Speaker 1: Yet just three months later he failed out, and there
Speaker 1: he was a man who had been fired from his
Speaker 1: job and kicked out of school. It seems that poor
Speaker 1: young Willem was really only good at one thing, failing,
Speaker 1: but his passion for religious work was a fire that
Speaker 1: couldn't be extinguished. Later on, in eighteen seventy eight, he
Speaker 1: packed up and headed to Belgium with plans to work
Speaker 1: as a lay preacher minister without the proper training, in
Speaker 1: a sense, hoping his enthusiasm would make up for his
Speaker 1: lack of education. Now, the place he headed to was
Speaker 1: a poor coal mining area. Lie if there was rough
Speaker 1: for the people around him, and that filled his heart
Speaker 1: with compassion. He helped buy them food and clothing. And
Speaker 1: when there is an accident in one of the near
Speaker 1: my mind shortly after he arrived. Willem was one of
Speaker 1: the first people there to help, putting himself in danger
Speaker 1: to care for those who were hurt, and it was
Speaker 1: that event that earned him the acceptance of the people
Speaker 1: around him. They had seen his compassion for them in
Speaker 1: their darkest hour, and so they decided his spiritual message
Speaker 1: was worth listening to. Despite his complete lack of training
Speaker 1: and the language barrier, he became their shepherd. But even
Speaker 1: that wouldn't last long. In July of eighteen seventy nine,
Speaker 1: just a few months after arriving and earning the trust
Speaker 1: of a community, the regional religious authority sent a representative
Speaker 1: to see how he was doing. What they found was
Speaker 1: a young man with barely a penny to his name,
Speaker 1: dressed in rough clothing sewn from sackcloth, and when this
Speaker 1: representative asked him where all his money had gone, Willem
Speaker 1: shyly admitted that he had spent it all on the
Speaker 1: miners around him. Furious that Willem hadn't followed the typical
Speaker 1: example of the church at the time, that is to
Speaker 1: live well and stay clean from the filth around him,
Speaker 1: he was fired from his position, and with that, I
Speaker 1: think all those years of failure finally caught up with him.
Speaker 1: Here he was just twenty six years old and a
Speaker 1: complete and total failure. It wasn't long after that, however,
Speaker 1: when Willem saw something that inspired him. It was an
Speaker 1: old miner straining under the weight of a sack full
Speaker 1: of coal, and he felt a deep desire to capture
Speaker 1: that image. So he pulled an old envelope out of
Speaker 1: his pocket and quickly sketched out the shape and form
Speaker 1: of the laboring man. It was the first step out
Speaker 1: of darkness, and it also hearkened back to his days
Speaker 1: in retail, working as a dealer of goods for his uncle,
Speaker 1: a dealer of art. Over the years to come, Willem
Speaker 1: would devote himself to his art with as much passion
Speaker 1: as he had his work as a preacher, and in
Speaker 1: the process he carved his name into the page is
Speaker 1: of history as one of the greatest there ever was.
Speaker 1: Of course, you know his work, but not his earliest stories.
Speaker 1: Because Willem was actually his middle name, most people both
Speaker 1: then and now, just called him Vincent Vincent van Gogh.
Speaker 1: I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet
Speaker 1: of Curiosities, subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn
Speaker 1: more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com.
Speaker 1: The show was created by me Aaron Manky in partnership
Speaker 1: with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show
Speaker 1: called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show,
Speaker 1: and you can learn all about it over at the
Speaker 1: World of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.
Speaker 1: Ye