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. Science fiction author Isaac Asimov once noted that
Speaker 1: people are entirely too disbelieving of coincidence. Faced with a
Speaker 1: strange intersection of unrelated events, we tend to react in
Speaker 1: one of two ways. We either shrug these coincidences off
Speaker 1: and move on, or we study them obsessively. The crew
Speaker 1: of the s S St. Paul had no reason to
Speaker 1: believe in coincidences when they encountered the h M S. Gladiator,
Speaker 1: at least not yet A Gladiator was a warship of
Speaker 1: the British Royal Navy. It had been launched in eighteen
Speaker 1: ninety six out of Portsmouth, England, and boasted a crew
Speaker 1: of two D fifty officers. On the afternoon of April
Speaker 1: nineteen o eight, the Gladiator was steaming into ports off
Speaker 1: the Isle of Wight at a speed of roughly three
Speaker 1: knots were just over three and a half miles per hour.
Speaker 1: The crew couldn't see much with a snow storm blowing outside,
Speaker 1: including other ships. As the Gladiator headed up the Solent,
Speaker 1: a channel between the northern coast of the Isle of
Speaker 1: Wight and the southern coast of England, a fog horn
Speaker 1: blared out in the distance. It wasn't uncommon for ships
Speaker 1: to pass through this area. However, there was no way
Speaker 1: to see what was approaching until it was too late.
Speaker 1: In this case, it was an American ocean liner named
Speaker 1: the St. Paul. The St. Paul hailed from Philadelphia and
Speaker 1: had been built as a passenger liner before being repurposed
Speaker 1: as an auxiliary navy cruiser for the US. On the
Speaker 1: day of its launch, it had been christened with the
Speaker 1: customary bottle of champagne fastened to a rope. The glass
Speaker 1: shattered against the bow as expected, but when it came
Speaker 1: time for St. Paul to move, it didn't. Not at
Speaker 1: first a bad sign, well for the superstitious, it might
Speaker 1: have been. As the Gladiator was pulling into port, the St.
Speaker 1: Paul was on its way back to the States. Each
Speaker 1: ship's lookout saw the other one approaching. Both captains began
Speaker 1: evasive maneuvers. Immediately. The St. Paul turned to pass on
Speaker 1: Gladiator's port side, but the British ship didn't have the
Speaker 1: room to allow for a wide enough berth. As a result,
Speaker 1: the two ships collided and gashes were torn along their
Speaker 1: hulls in the process. The Gladiator took on water while
Speaker 1: it's captain attempted to steer it toward a sand bank.
Speaker 1: Crewmen dropped anchors, hoping to slow its movements, but all
Speaker 1: their efforts were in vain. The vessel slowly sank. Someone
Speaker 1: shouted abandoned ship, and men jumped into the water, with
Speaker 1: some cliin at the capsizing hull, desperately trying to hang on.
Speaker 1: Once the water reached the engine room, the boilers exploded.
Speaker 1: Sailors who had been trapped inside were instantly killed. The
Speaker 1: ones who tried to swim toward land found the icy
Speaker 1: water too rough, As men on shore launched a small
Speaker 1: rescue boat, which couldn't break past the choppy waves. The
Speaker 1: crew who had jumped for their lives soon found themselves
Speaker 1: being swept out to see where they met their end,
Speaker 1: and the few who stood on the overturned whole of
Speaker 1: the Gladiator were only left to shiver and wait for
Speaker 1: help to come. The collision took place at two thirty
Speaker 1: pm on April nineteen o eight, and twenty seven men
Speaker 1: died as a result, but the American ship, the Saint Paul,
Speaker 1: only suffered minor damage to its bow and returned to
Speaker 1: Southampton for repairs. The St. Paul continued to travel over
Speaker 1: the next several years. When the United States entered World
Speaker 1: War One in nineteen seventeen, many large ships were chartered
Speaker 1: by the U. S. Navy to serve their country. For example,
Speaker 1: banking giant JP. Morgan even watched as his yacht was
Speaker 1: taken by the military, becoming an armed ship called the Corsair.
Speaker 1: The St. Paul was no exception. They made a dozen
Speaker 1: trips between the United States and England for a year
Speaker 1: until nineteen eighteen, when it was sent to New York,
Speaker 1: where it was to be overhauled into a troop ship.
Speaker 1: In late April of that year, the liner was moored
Speaker 1: at Pier sixty one in New York undergoing its conversion
Speaker 1: when it suddenly capsized. It simply rolled over on its side,
Speaker 1: just as The Gladiator had done ten years earlier. Most
Speaker 1: accounts note the dates of the sinking is April nineteen eighteen. However,
Speaker 1: according to some records, the incident was actually said to
Speaker 1: have occurred on April at two thirty pm, ten years
Speaker 1: to the minute since the sinking of the h MS Gladiator.
Speaker 1: It was business for the little fellows, but not just
Speaker 1: the fruits in vegetables he sold to the local grocers.
Speaker 1: I'm Adeo Giannini had succeeded in that already, but he
Speaker 1: also saw that his neighbors in the Italian immigrant community
Speaker 1: where he had grown up, we're facing another challenge. The
Speaker 1: banks in San Francisco wouldn't loan the money. I'madeo knew
Speaker 1: that they were good for it. Though he knew his
Speaker 1: friends and neighbors, his family. He knew how hard they
Speaker 1: worked and how many of them were already really trying
Speaker 1: to make it in their new American home. After all,
Speaker 1: many of them were already making good money from their jobs,
Speaker 1: but as usual, banks were turning them away. And it
Speaker 1: wasn't just home and business loans. Amadeo knew some immigrant
Speaker 1: families who couldn't even open a savings account, so he
Speaker 1: set about to change that. After being told that they
Speaker 1: had no business in a bank, I'm Adeo's Italian neighbors
Speaker 1: kept their stacks of coins stashed at home under mattresses.
Speaker 1: But since he was married to the daughter of the
Speaker 1: neighborhood's richest man, i'm Adeo had an insider's view on
Speaker 1: the favoritism that kept immigrant families or anything that wasn't
Speaker 1: already rich from opening accounts. He also had an insider's
Speaker 1: view on the way that money in the bank earned interest,
Speaker 1: and Amadeo wanted to bring that advantage to others. But
Speaker 1: the question was how to convince people to trust a
Speaker 1: bank after they had been burned by the sneers of
Speaker 1: others in the past. It all starts with a name,
Speaker 1: of course, and Amadeo knew just the thing when he
Speaker 1: opened his first accounts in nineteen o four. He hung
Speaker 1: his banner from a saloon, a banner designed to give
Speaker 1: his neighbors a sense of security in something familiar. He
Speaker 1: called it Bank of Italy, and it worked. Soon enough,
Speaker 1: Amadeo had the bartender working as a bank teller. Of course,
Speaker 1: he had to start by going door to door and
Speaker 1: even talking with people on the street. He pounded the
Speaker 1: pavement to make the case that an immigrants business could
Speaker 1: thrive with the help of a local bank, and his
Speaker 1: campaign paid off. Within a year, he was managing over
Speaker 1: seven hundred thousand dollars for his community. In today's money,
Speaker 1: that would be roughly twenty million. I'm a day understood
Speaker 1: the enormity of the trust that his neighbors had placed
Speaker 1: in him. He even issued shares of stock in the
Speaker 1: bank so that the business itself was majority owned by
Speaker 1: the fish dealers, grocers, house painters, and barbers who left
Speaker 1: their money with him. So when disaster struck two years later,
Speaker 1: he took action. Six was the year of the massive
Speaker 1: San Francisco earthquake. It tore through the city, and what
Speaker 1: wasn't destroyed by the shaking earth in the early morning
Speaker 1: hours was torched by the raging fires that followed. More
Speaker 1: than three thousand people died. Over eighty percent of the
Speaker 1: city was wiped off the map. It was a scene
Speaker 1: of destruction that brought hell to earth. Almost nothing downtown
Speaker 1: was spared, and all the big money in the banks
Speaker 1: couldn't hold back those fires. Titans of finance and corner
Speaker 1: grocers alike saw their livelihoods go up and smoke. Amadeo
Speaker 1: borrowed a cart from the local garbage collector and rushed
Speaker 1: into the rubble. Somehow he was able to scrape together
Speaker 1: about eighty thousand dollars in coins and pile them in
Speaker 1: his cart. One story says that he covered them with
Speaker 1: crates of oranges from his days as a produce broker.
Speaker 1: Another says he just piled garbage on top of them.
Speaker 1: Either way, he used the garbage collector's cart to get
Speaker 1: his neighbor's money out of the downtown destruction. In exchange
Speaker 1: for the cart, Amadeo promised the garbage collector that he
Speaker 1: would give the man's son a job at the bank
Speaker 1: if it ever reopened. It didn't take long to learn
Speaker 1: how important that effort was, because news came that all
Speaker 1: the other big banks were devastated and fires still burned
Speaker 1: hot around their vaults. Anything that wasn't already destroyed would
Speaker 1: be turned to ash by the intense heat if they
Speaker 1: tried to open the doors. So Amadeo turned around and
Speaker 1: headed for the water front. He set up shop there.
Speaker 1: Legend goes that Amadeo's desk on the docks was two
Speaker 1: barrels with a board across the top, and right then
Speaker 1: and there he started to invest in the project to
Speaker 1: rebuild the city. The first step was to send two
Speaker 1: ships up the coast to Washington and Oregon to bring
Speaker 1: back lumber. Now more than ever, people needed somewhere safe
Speaker 1: to keep their money, and Amadeo had proven that he
Speaker 1: had the courage and quick thinking for that job. More
Speaker 1: people than ever came to him with deposits. People had
Speaker 1: fled the ruins of their homes with all the valuables
Speaker 1: they could carry, and we're living in relief camps around
Speaker 1: the circle of devastation. So words spread fast. All you
Speaker 1: needed to open an account with Almadeo Giannini was a
Speaker 1: signature and a handshake, and you could deposit your valuables
Speaker 1: in Amadeo's Bank of Italy. With the support, the Italian
Speaker 1: neighborhoods of North Beach were back on their feet faster
Speaker 1: than any other part of town. From that starting point,
Speaker 1: you might say Amadeo made bank so much so that
Speaker 1: he started opening up branches up and down California. And
Speaker 1: like he did in San Francisco, Amadeo insisted that his
Speaker 1: banking services be available to the immigrant communities everywhere he
Speaker 1: set up shop, working families in Yugoslavian, Russian, Mexican Portuguese, Chinese,
Speaker 1: and Greek communities suddenly had access to bank accounts. In
Speaker 1: later years, Amadeo would all eas make a habit of
Speaker 1: pointing out that the loans he made to working people
Speaker 1: were always paid back in full. Other banks made their
Speaker 1: money betting on the wealthy brokers and power tycoons. Amadeo
Speaker 1: launched his bank betting on the power of working class people.
Speaker 1: Out of the disaster in San Francisco, Amadeos soon found
Speaker 1: himself running the largest bank in the nation. Through war,
Speaker 1: the Great Depression, and waves of anti immigrant prejudice, Amadeo's
Speaker 1: bank survived to become the largest privately held bank in
Speaker 1: the world. It funded the rebuilding of San Francisco. It
Speaker 1: funded California vineyards. It funded the construction of the Golden
Speaker 1: Gate Bridge. It funded new projects like a little storytelling
Speaker 1: shop called the Walt Disney Company when they wanted to
Speaker 1: make a feature length animated film they called snow White.
Speaker 1: Through it all, Amadeo even earned himself a good reputation.
Speaker 1: Some people said he never took much money out of
Speaker 1: the bank for himself. It gave him the nickname the
Speaker 1: reluctant Millionaire. It seems he always followed the principle that
Speaker 1: you build from the bottom up. In fact, when he died,
Speaker 1: Amadeo Giannini's entire estate was worth less than a million dollars.
Speaker 1: Of course, his bank has changed a lot over time,
Speaker 1: and not always for the better, but the spirit of
Speaker 1: serving everyone, regardless of their background or whether they already
Speaker 1: had money for the Vault laid the groundwork for an
Speaker 1: institution that remade banking across the country and the world.
Speaker 1: Before long, Bank of Italy even changed its name to
Speaker 1: something we would recognize today, the Bank of America. I
Speaker 1: hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities.
Speaker 1: Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about
Speaker 1: the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show
Speaker 1: was created by me Aaron Manky in partnership with how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore,
Speaker 1: which is a podcast, book series, and television show and
Speaker 1: you can learn all about it over at the World
Speaker 1: of Lore dot com. And it's hill next time. Stay curious, Yeah,