Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Menke'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: Second chances are hard to come by in life. We
Speaker 1: don't usually get the opportunity to redo a terrible job interview,
Speaker 1: or make things right when we've wronged a partner. Life
Speaker 1: is oftentimes a one way trip with no stops, and
Speaker 1: we're just along for the ride. But one man achieved
Speaker 1: the unimaginable. After being involved in one of the most
Speaker 1: tragic events in history. He persevered. He received the second
Speaker 1: chance of all second chances, and refused to let his
Speaker 1: circumstances sink him. His name was Richard Norris Williams the Second,
Speaker 1: although he often went simply by Dick Williams. He was
Speaker 1: born in Geneva, Switzerland, to American parents from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1: He could trace his lineage directly back to Benjamin Franklin.
Speaker 1: After years of private tutelage at a Swiss boarding school,
Speaker 1: he decided to take up a new hobby, tennis. From
Speaker 1: the age of twelve, Williams trained and honed his skills
Speaker 1: on the court, leading to his victory at the Swiss
Speaker 1: Championship in nineteen eleven. The following year, he and his
Speaker 1: father traveled to Cherbourg, France, where they boarded a ship
Speaker 1: bound for America. Norris had been accepted at Harvard and
Speaker 1: planned to become a success both as a tennis star
Speaker 1: and as a student. Their trip started out fine, with
Speaker 1: nothing but blue skies above and a rich future ahead
Speaker 1: of them. They even dined with a captain for dinner
Speaker 1: one night, but then tragedy struck. Word quickly spread through
Speaker 1: the decks as guests panicked and filled the lifeboats. The
Speaker 1: show ship was sinking. It had apparently struck an iceberg.
Speaker 1: That's right, Richard Williams and his father were on board
Speaker 1: the Titanic, but the two men didn't abandon ship, at
Speaker 1: least not at first. Actually, they stayed back, helping others
Speaker 1: to pile into the lifeboats. They even gave away their
Speaker 1: life jackets to those who they felt needed them more.
Speaker 1: Williams then discovered someone was trapped in a room while
Speaker 1: the vessel was going under, so he ran back to
Speaker 1: free them. By the time he returned, there was nowhere
Speaker 1: for him to go. In a last ditch effort to
Speaker 1: save himself, Williams leaped from the Titanic's main deck into
Speaker 1: the frigid waters of the Atlantic. The shock of the
Speaker 1: cold nearly paralyzed him, but he fought to survive as
Speaker 1: long as possible. His father, on the other hand, was
Speaker 1: not so lucky. Apparently, he'd been hit by one of
Speaker 1: the ship's funnels as it fell into the water, killing
Speaker 1: him instantly. Meanwhile, Williams noticed that one of the collapsible
Speaker 1: lifeboats had taken on water but was still afloat. Over
Speaker 1: two dozen passengers were holding onto it for support. He
Speaker 1: swam over and took hold, hanging on along with them
Speaker 1: until help arride. Six hours later, he was one of
Speaker 1: thirteen surviving members of that group who'd been rescued and
Speaker 1: brought aboard the Carpathia for examination. Unfortunately, his time in
Speaker 1: the water had done extensive damage to his legs. They
Speaker 1: were frostbitten, and there was no other choice than to
Speaker 1: amputate both of them. Williams pleaded for an alternative. I'm
Speaker 1: going to need those legs, he said, and got to
Speaker 1: his feet, pacing around the deck, hoping to bring them
Speaker 1: back to life. In William's mind, taking his limbs would
Speaker 1: be the end of everything, his future, his tennis career,
Speaker 1: and maybe even his life, and so he walked. He
Speaker 1: got up every few hours and walked around the deck
Speaker 1: of the Carpathia, hoping the exercise would restore the feeling
Speaker 1: in his legs. Well. To his and everyone else's surprise,
Speaker 1: it worked mostly. Over the next three months, he did
Speaker 1: regain sensation in his legs, but not completely, and when
Speaker 1: he was on them for too long they caused him
Speaker 1: a great deal of pain. But twelve weeks after the
Speaker 1: Titanic sank and doctors told him he was going to
Speaker 1: lose his limbs, Richard Williams got back on the court.
Speaker 1: In fact, he didn't just play. He played against a
Speaker 1: fellow Titanic survivor named Carl Howell. Bar Williams won the
Speaker 1: first two sets of their match, but Bear managed to
Speaker 1: outplay him in the end. Still, Richard kept going, and
Speaker 1: in nineteen twenty four he took home the gold at
Speaker 1: the Paris Olympics, winning in mixed doubles with his partner
Speaker 1: Hazel Hotchkiss Whiteman. Even though Richard Williams didn't take home
Speaker 1: the trophy against Bear, he arguably earned an even greater victory,
Speaker 1: an Olympic gold medal for one, but he also survived
Speaker 1: the sinking of the Titanic. He beat frostbite, and he
Speaker 1: managed to return to the game he loved when the
Speaker 1: odds were stacked against him, Game, Set, and match. George
Speaker 1: Wheeland carefully wiped the dirt from the strange little hunk
Speaker 1: of rock he had freed from the dusty ground. He'd
Speaker 1: been digging in the Black Hills of South Dakota for
Speaker 1: a few years now, and he'd found plenty of fossilized treasures,
Speaker 1: from tiny dinosaur bones to massive tortoises shells, but he'd
Speaker 1: never seen anything quite like this. As he used a
Speaker 1: small soft brush to carefully remove the dirt from its crevices,
Speaker 1: a pattern started to emerge. The rock was round, with
Speaker 1: regular divots that suggested a rough texture like a pineapple,
Speaker 1: but this plant had died millions of years before pineapples
Speaker 1: had ever existed. What George held in his hand was
Speaker 1: a psycatoid, an ancient plant that had once covered the
Speaker 1: Black Hills. But it was so much more than a
Speaker 1: simple plant. The fossil George held in his hand would
Speaker 1: become an all consuming obsession that would take over the
Speaker 1: rest of his life. Although George wasn't born until eighteen
Speaker 1: sixty five, this story starts much earlier. It began seventy
Speaker 1: million years ago, in the Cretaceous period, the time when
Speaker 1: triceratops and t rex's roamed what would be the United States,
Speaker 1: and the time when, one day, in that same area
Speaker 1: in South Dakota that he found himself in later, a
Speaker 1: landslide buried hundreds of psychatoids. They remained hidden for millions
Speaker 1: of years, the pressure and heat slowly turning their organic
Speaker 1: matter to hard rock. They would have stayed there too,
Speaker 1: if it wasn't for America's agricultural expansion. In the early
Speaker 1: eighteen nineties, ranchers that had settled in the area started
Speaker 1: to report what they called petrified pineapples. They began selling
Speaker 1: them as souvenirs, which eventually sparked the interest of the
Speaker 1: nation's early paleontologists, and so Yale sent a young grad
Speaker 1: student named George Wheeland to investigate in eighteen ninety eight,
Speaker 1: and well, you know, the rest. Beyond studying the psycatoids,
Speaker 1: George believed the first order of business was protecting them.
Speaker 1: The first fossil had been discovered in the area six
Speaker 1: years earlier, and already many of the specimens were gone,
Speaker 1: sold by ranchers, taken by collectors, and requisitioned by researchers.
Speaker 1: The rich trove of fossils was already being depleted, so
Speaker 1: George began a campaign to get the region protected. In
Speaker 1: nineteen oh six, when Teddy Roosevelt passed a law allowing
Speaker 1: the federal government to take over land regarded as a
Speaker 1: national monument, George knew that this was his chance. He
Speaker 1: wrote hundreds of letters petitioning that the cycadoid fields should
Speaker 1: be designated as a national monument. Despite his best efforts,
Speaker 1: though the government refused, so George would have to get creative.
Speaker 1: In nineteen twenty he acquired one hundred and sixty acres
Speaker 1: of land in the Black Hills, including that sycatoid site.
Speaker 1: Then he told the federal government that he would donate
Speaker 1: the land to them if and only if they made
Speaker 1: it into a national monument. They agreed, and in nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty two, President Warren G. Harding declared the area the
Speaker 1: Fossil Cycad National Monument. For the next decade, that National
Speaker 1: Monument had a quiet existence. It was established when the
Speaker 1: government was running into budget constraints, so it was never
Speaker 1: assigned a superintendent or staff like other national parks. Instead,
Speaker 1: it just got a small wooden sign and was monitored
Speaker 1: by local ranchers, the same ones who used to sell
Speaker 1: the fossils to tourists. So perhaps it wasn't a surprise
Speaker 1: when in nineteen thirty three the park was found to
Speaker 1: be almost completely empty. That year, a group of researchers
Speaker 1: headed to the National monument to collect fossils to display
Speaker 1: at the Chicago World's Fair. They weren't even able to
Speaker 1: find the site at first, and when they got there,
Speaker 1: there were no visible psychatoids anywhere. The wealth of the
Speaker 1: specimens had been stolen, and the biggest shock was who
Speaker 1: did the stealing. For years, George had been instrumental in
Speaker 1: protecting the psychatoids from tourists and resellers, but perhaps he
Speaker 1: should have been protecting the park from himself, because while
Speaker 1: visitors took occasional souvenirs, it was George who stole several
Speaker 1: thousand pounds of fossils from the national monuments he helped create.
Speaker 1: Ever since he started digging in a night, George had
Speaker 1: been taking samples back to Yale. Many were cataloged in
Speaker 1: the university, but some were just taken to decorate George's home.
Speaker 1: His obsession with the psychatioids led him to take cartfuls
Speaker 1: of the fossils away from their natural resting ground. Sadly,
Speaker 1: with all of George's efforts to preserve the National Monument,
Speaker 1: he was the author of its demise. Fossil Psycad National
Speaker 1: Monument never opened to the public. It never built a
Speaker 1: visitor center or established a museum, and in nineteen fifty seven,
Speaker 1: just four years after George's death, it became one of
Speaker 1: the few national monuments to lose its protected status. Today,
Speaker 1: you can still drive by the site to see what
Speaker 1: little is left. Beyond the old sign, you'll find the
Speaker 1: evidence of one man's a cover up that required a
Speaker 1: whole lot of digging. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided
Speaker 1: tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by visiting
Speaker 1: Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by me
Speaker 1: Aaron Manke in partnership with how Stuff Works, I make
Speaker 1: another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast,
Speaker 1: book series, and television show and you can learn all
Speaker 1: about it over at the Worldoflore dot com. And until
Speaker 1: next time, stay curious.