Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of
Speaker 1: the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all
Speaker 1: of these amazing tales are right there on display, just
Speaker 1: waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
Speaker 1: Nothing brings people together quite like a sports game. Football, soccer, tennis.
Speaker 1: Each one of those has the ability to thrill and
Speaker 1: liven up a day. For a brief few hours, we
Speaker 1: experience community with total strangers as we scream and yell
Speaker 1: encouragement at the players on the field. It's a tradition
Speaker 1: that goes back as far as any inhuman history. But
Speaker 1: going to a game isn't only about team spirit. It's
Speaker 1: also about conflict. Nothing is quite like a good rivalry
Speaker 1: between teams. Just ask any New England or how they
Speaker 1: feel about the New York Yankees and you'll see what
Speaker 1: I mean. It's like having a nemesis in your hometown.
Speaker 1: These rivalries are engaging and powering and occasionally even deadly.
Speaker 1: To understand what I mean, let's take a look at
Speaker 1: the oldest college football rivalry in United States history between
Speaker 1: USC Berkeley and Stanford College, first played in eighteen ninety two.
Speaker 1: This rivalry has become known as the Big Game. These
Speaker 1: two colleges have played each other one hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: six times, and they're showing no sign of stopping. With
Speaker 1: each new generation of students, there's a new wave of
Speaker 1: enthusiasm for continuing the competition. This rivalry is so popular
Speaker 1: that many forget its ties to one of the greatest
Speaker 1: tragedies in sports history. It was Thanksgiving Day nineteen hundred
Speaker 1: in San Francisco. There had only been nine Big Games
Speaker 1: so far, but each was larger than the last. Football
Speaker 1: fans flocked to the Mission District, a field known as
Speaker 1: the sixteenth and fulsome grounds. It stood near the industrial site.
Speaker 1: The far end of the field was dominated by the
Speaker 1: shape of a new factory, and this was a bottle
Speaker 1: manufacturing facility that just opened by the San Francisco and
Speaker 1: Pacific Glass Works. By ten thirty that morning, the event
Speaker 1: managers were already struggling with the crowd size. The city
Speaker 1: of San Francisco had employed sixty police officers for crowd control.
Speaker 1: This was, to put it mildly, not enough. The number
Speaker 1: of attendees was soon in the tens of thousands. Tickets
Speaker 1: for the game were sold for a dollar now. That
Speaker 1: might seem cheap today, but with inflation that comes out
Speaker 1: to around thirty or forty bucks now. Most of the
Speaker 1: attendees were still willing to pay. University of Californian fans
Speaker 1: were eager to see col defeat Stanford again, and Stanford
Speaker 1: fans wanted to see Stanford regain her honor after the
Speaker 1: previous years devastating thirty to zero shutouts. Even those who
Speaker 1: couldn't afford the ticket price were still eager to see
Speaker 1: the game. It's estimated that several thousands tried to watch
Speaker 1: from the streets on top of the nineteen thousand in
Speaker 1: the stadium, but watching from the street was not a
Speaker 1: great view, so many sought a better vantage point, and
Speaker 1: on Fifteenth Street, the natural choice with a full view
Speaker 1: of the field was the glassworks factory. At least four
Speaker 1: hundred spectators climbed on top of the building in spite
Speaker 1: of the protests of the factory security. The building manager
Speaker 1: had been tasked with keeping people off the roof, but
Speaker 1: the watchmen he had hired were woefully unprepared for the task. Inside,
Speaker 1: only one furnace was active, manned by a skeleton crew.
Speaker 1: The factory workers tried to phone the police, but were
Speaker 1: redirected to the event managers instead. Fans settled in ready
Speaker 1: for the game. To the untrained eye, it must have
Speaker 1: looked like a sturdy roof with corrugated iron on top
Speaker 1: of a brand new factory. But early on people started
Speaker 1: to notice that things didn't feel quite right. The roof
Speaker 1: felt like it was straining already, and the game hadn't
Speaker 1: even begun. Lightheartedly teasing among the men and boys seemed
Speaker 1: to mask a deeper worry that something was about to
Speaker 1: go horribly wrong. Kickoff was at two thirty pm. Twenty
Speaker 1: minutes later, fans within the stadium would hear a loud
Speaker 1: crash coming from fifteenth Street. It drew a few concerned glances,
Speaker 1: but the game did not stop, and soon all eyes
Speaker 1: returned to the players on the field. Meanwhile, the roof
Speaker 1: of the glassworks factory had completely collapsed. In an instant,
Speaker 1: A hole opened up in the roof of the factory,
Speaker 1: swallowing around two hundred people. About one hundred of them
Speaker 1: plummeted four stories onto a solid brick floor. Another sixty
Speaker 1: to one hundred people fell directly on top of the
Speaker 1: furnace housing molten glass. The surface temperature would have been
Speaker 1: around five hundred degrees fahrenheit. As people rained down into
Speaker 1: the factory, fuel pipes broke, spraying hot oil onto the
Speaker 1: bodies that were already burning or broken. In the chaos,
Speaker 1: the factory workers hurried to save lives. They switched off
Speaker 1: the oil valves and tried desperately to retrieve the burning
Speaker 1: victims with tongs and pokers. Some of the luck year
Speaker 1: ones had managed to cling onto support beams or remaining
Speaker 1: sections of the roof to save themselves. The less lucky
Speaker 1: found themselves pinned to the furnace by support rods, burning
Speaker 1: to death before they could be saved. All told, there
Speaker 1: were twenty three deaths in what became known as the
Speaker 1: Thanksgiving Day disaster. Of those, sixteen were teens and younger
Speaker 1: boys who couldn't afford the one dollar ticket fee. The
Speaker 1: youngest was nine years old. The final victim survived in
Speaker 1: critical condition for over three years before succumbing to his injuries.
Speaker 1: As for the number of injuries, it's impossible to say.
Speaker 1: Newspaper reports from the following day list at least eighty injured,
Speaker 1: but the real number is likely much higher, and the
Speaker 1: more time passed, the more obscure the stories became. In fact,
Speaker 1: for a long time, it seemed like this event was
Speaker 1: doomed to be forgotten. There's no monument for it, and
Speaker 1: the big game continued the following year as if nothing
Speaker 1: ever happened. Stanford and Cal have played each other over
Speaker 1: one hundred times since the tragedy, and they will continue
Speaker 1: to do so in the future, so as their next
Speaker 1: rematch comes around, it's a good time for us to remember.
Speaker 1: We all have things that bring us joy, and being
Speaker 1: a fan of a college football team can be just
Speaker 1: as meaningful as anything else. But it's also too easy
Speaker 1: to let our enthusiasm get away from us. So check
Speaker 1: your footing every once in a while. It's best to
Speaker 1: make sure that you're standing on solid ground. A legacy
Speaker 1: is a curious thing. When we leave this world, we
Speaker 1: might live on in the faces of our children or
Speaker 1: the memories of our friends. What we leave behind could
Speaker 1: be as complicated as a family business or as simple
Speaker 1: as a family recipe. Legacies can also be complicated. In
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty one, one woman left behind a legacy that
Speaker 1: has touched nearly every person on earth, but it was
Speaker 1: taken right under the nose of the people who loved
Speaker 1: her best. Henrietta was a striking woman born in nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty to a family of working class tobacco farmers in Virginia.
Speaker 1: By nineteen fifty one, young Henrietta was living in Baltimore.
Speaker 1: She was a mother to five lively kids and was
Speaker 1: known for hosting huge dinners and never being seen without
Speaker 1: her trademark red nail polish. But in nineteen fifty one,
Speaker 1: the normally energetic Henrietta was starting to feel ill. She
Speaker 1: complained to relatives of feeling like she had a knot
Speaker 1: in her abdomen. When she finally went to Johns Hopkins
Speaker 1: Medical Center, the only nearby hospital that would even treat
Speaker 1: black patients, her worst fears were confirmed. She had cervical cancer.
Speaker 1: Henrietta immediately began radium treatments, but it was too late.
Speaker 1: The tumor spread and metastasized, and on October thirty first
Speaker 1: of nineteen fifty one, Henrietta died at the age of
Speaker 1: just thirty one. For most people, that's where the whole
Speaker 1: story would end, but Henrietta was not Most people Johns
Speaker 1: Hopkins was a research hospital and in the same complex
Speaker 1: where Henrietta was being treated. Another researcher named George Guy
Speaker 1: was trying to solve a problem. He was the head
Speaker 1: of the tissue culture lab at Johns Hopkins. He wanted
Speaker 1: to use human cells to test new medications and therapies,
Speaker 1: but no matter what he did, he couldn't get human
Speaker 1: cells to survive outside their bodies. So George Guy wasn't
Speaker 1: expecting much when a new sample of cells from a
Speaker 1: cancer patient named Henrietta was sent to his lab, but
Speaker 1: all of that changed the following day when he put
Speaker 1: the sample under a microscope. Guy was expecting to see
Speaker 1: a collection of deteriorating cells, but to his surprise, there
Speaker 1: were new cells in the culture. Within twenty four hours,
Speaker 1: henrietta cell sample had doubled, and it would continue to
Speaker 1: do so for the next seventy years. Henrietta became the
Speaker 1: source of the first immortal human cell line ever discovered.
Speaker 1: Her cells thrived and replicated in lab conditions for over
Speaker 1: seven decades. Scientists don't totally know why exactly it did this.
Speaker 1: They just know that thanks to Henrietta, researchers have made
Speaker 1: great strides In medical technology, Henrietta cells nicknamed HeLa cells,
Speaker 1: have been used to test drugs, hormones, and even pioneer
Speaker 1: the polio vaccine. HeLa cells were sent into space to
Speaker 1: observe the effects of zero gravity on humans. They were
Speaker 1: at one of the cornerstones of pioneering in vitro fertilization
Speaker 1: and in mapping the human genome, and were instrumental in
Speaker 1: developing the COVID nineteen vaccines. And, perhaps most importantly and
Speaker 1: definitely most bittersweet, HeLa cells were used for advanced cancer treatments,
Speaker 1: the type of breakthroughs which might have saved Henrietta's life
Speaker 1: back in nineteen fifty one. Talk about a legacy, but
Speaker 1: Henrietta Lax never lived to see her impact. Back in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty one, she never consented to seeing her cells
Speaker 1: used for medical research. As they became a mainstay of
Speaker 1: new research, scientists gained accolades and even sold patents based
Speaker 1: on her cells. They also published sensitive medical and genet
Speaker 1: information about the Lax family. All of this was while
Speaker 1: the Lax themselves were kept in the dark. Henriette's family
Speaker 1: didn't even find out about what's going on until nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy five and naturally. Learning about Henrietta's legacy has caused
Speaker 1: mixed emotions for her family. The members are happy their
Speaker 1: mother and grandmother has had such a positive impact on
Speaker 1: the world, but they're angry the family wasn't informed and
Speaker 1: it's complicated to think about the financial aspect. For decades,
Speaker 1: Henrietta cells have generated millions benefiting pharmaceutical and biotech companies,
Speaker 1: but her family has never seen a cent. Today, the
Speaker 1: National Institute of Health has partnered with the Lax family
Speaker 1: to try to right this wrong. Anyone who wants to
Speaker 1: use HeLa cells today in their research must first be
Speaker 1: approved by a committee made up of the Lax family
Speaker 1: and the National Institute of Health. Multiple biomedical companies have
Speaker 1: announced donations to the Henrietta Lax Foundation, where their money
Speaker 1: will support families whose genetic material has been used without
Speaker 1: their consent. Henrietta Lax impacted a lot of people in
Speaker 1: her short life, and not just because of her remarkable cells,
Speaker 1: but also because of the lives that she touched while
Speaker 1: she was living. And yes, Henrietta cells may indeed live
Speaker 1: on forever, but with any luck, her memory will as well.
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 Mankey 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: Worldolore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.