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: All of history's biggest events have hidden dimensions, from achievements
Speaker 1: in art and literature, to great scientific discoveries to the
Speaker 1: founding and fall of nations. There are stories behind the
Speaker 1: stories we tell. I love digging deeper into historical events
Speaker 1: and finding tales that go beyond the headlines. That's the
Speaker 1: kind of story I want to share with you today.
Speaker 1: It starts on a chilly afternoon in Massachusetts in the
Speaker 1: mid night nineteen sixties. A thirty something woman named Margaret
Speaker 1: knew she was going to have to stay late at work.
Speaker 1: Her husband was busy taking law classes at Harvard, so
Speaker 1: Margaret had no choice but to bring their young daughter, Lauren,
Speaker 1: up to the office with her. While Margaret worked, Lauren
Speaker 1: played astronaut. She toddled around Margaret's office pretending to be
Speaker 1: wearing a spacesuit. Lauren took huge bounding steps, like she
Speaker 1: was walking in zero gravity. Then she ran over to
Speaker 1: Margaret's computer and did what kids do. She started pressing
Speaker 1: random buttons. Suddenly, Margaret's computer short circuited the simulation she'd
Speaker 1: been running crashed, But she wasn't upset with her daughter.
Speaker 1: She was actually grateful because Lauren had just helped her
Speaker 1: identify a flaw in her system. You see, Margaret was
Speaker 1: a computer software engineer, one of the very first in
Speaker 1: the world. She actually coined the term software engineer decades
Speaker 1: before Silicon Valley was a wash with tech startups. Margaret
Speaker 1: was doing pioneering work at MIT's Instrumentation Laboratory, overseeing tea
Speaker 1: team of engineers working on writing and debugging computer software.
Speaker 1: Her young daughter, Lauren had just helped her realize something important.
Speaker 1: No matter how perfect a computer seemed to be, there
Speaker 1: was always room for error. Someone could press the wrong
Speaker 1: button accidentally or on purpose, and throw everything into chaos,
Speaker 1: which made Margaret think computers should be well smarter. Now,
Speaker 1: this was way before the idea of smartphones or artificial intelligence.
Speaker 1: The computers at MIT were huge and clunky. They took
Speaker 1: up entire rooms, and a lot of them didn't even
Speaker 1: have screens. Margaret and her team couldn't just type their
Speaker 1: software code onto a keyboard. They had to put software
Speaker 1: information onto paper punch cards, which they then ran physically
Speaker 1: into the giant room sized computing machines they worked on.
Speaker 1: It was some serious, rudimentary stuff by today's standards, but
Speaker 1: back in the nineteen sixties it was cutting edge technology.
Speaker 1: So after her daughter crashed the system, Margaret focused on
Speaker 1: creating a software program that would be able to self
Speaker 1: identify and self correct errors. If someone clicked the wrong button,
Speaker 1: the computer could fix itself without human intervention. If something
Speaker 1: went disastrously wrong, the computer could shut down some parts
Speaker 1: of itself while keeping the most vital parts up and running. Basically,
Speaker 1: it could prioritize certain tasks and make sure one small
Speaker 1: mistake didn't blow the whole thing up. It took years,
Speaker 1: not to mention, thousands of pages of handwritten and hand
Speaker 1: punched software code, but Margaret's program worked, and it came
Speaker 1: in handy in a big way. You see. The lab
Speaker 1: that Margaret worked at in MIT had a contract with NASA.
Speaker 1: Their software was used on board spacecrafts. During one NASA mission,
Speaker 1: Margaret and her team were standing in the monitoring room
Speaker 1: at MIT when they got an emergency error message. The
Speaker 1: computer on board the spacecraft was overloaded. If it couldn't
Speaker 1: be fixed, the craft would crash. But Margaret and her
Speaker 1: team didn't need to panic. The software she pioneered worked perfectly.
Speaker 1: The spacecraft's computer was able to shut down the parts
Speaker 1: of the system that were malfunctioning while keeping the rest
Speaker 1: up and running. And that's spacecraft well. On July twentieth
Speaker 1: of nineteen sixty nine, it landed on the Moon. Neil
Speaker 1: Armstrong stepped out of the ship, put a foot on
Speaker 1: the lunar surface and said the quote we probably all
Speaker 1: know by heart. That's one small step for man, one
Speaker 1: giant leap for mankind. Too bad he didn't mention women.
Speaker 1: Margaret was in charge of the software for the Apollo
Speaker 1: eleven mission. Her full name was Margaret Hamilton, and you
Speaker 1: might have seen a picture of her in her sixty
Speaker 1: style dress standing next to a stack of paperwork that
Speaker 1: is taller than she is. That's the software code that
Speaker 1: she wrote, the same code that sent astronauts to the moon.
Speaker 1: Margaret is a living legend, but the contributions that she
Speaker 1: made to software engineering are often overlooked. Maybe that's because
Speaker 1: even though her code was fundamental to the creation of
Speaker 1: computer technology, it's considered pretty basic these days. And those
Speaker 1: room sized computers that sent astronauts to the moon there
Speaker 1: are millions of times less powerful than the phones that
Speaker 1: we all carry in our pockets today. If you've ever
Speaker 1: studied world history, you know that civilizations tend to pop
Speaker 1: up along waterways like oceans, lakes, and rivers. Water is
Speaker 1: central to life, and that's never more apparent when we
Speaker 1: can't get enough of it. Take the summer of twenty eighteen,
Speaker 1: for example, Central Europe experienced the most severe drought in
Speaker 1: decades and have the highest temperatures ever recorded in the region.
Speaker 1: The water levels of various lakes and rivers decreased, and
Speaker 1: the lack of humidity caused extremely dry air conditions. This
Speaker 1: had measurable negative impacts on wildlife populations, trade routes, and
Speaker 1: the ability to grow food and access water. So droughts
Speaker 1: are not fun to say the least, but the effects
Speaker 1: of that twenty eighteen droughts actually revealed some fascinating historical artifacts.
Speaker 1: You see, there's this waterway in Central Europe called the
Speaker 1: Elbe River. It runs from the mountains of Czech down
Speaker 1: through Germany and into the North Sea. Historically, the river
Speaker 1: has been an important resource for people along its shores.
Speaker 1: During that dry summer, though, water levels in the Elbe
Speaker 1: River lowered drastically. Locals in the Czech town of Dutchin
Speaker 1: were exploring sections of the dried up riverbed when they
Speaker 1: stumbled upon a rock, or more accurately, a boulder. It
Speaker 1: was large, kind of brownish gray, and its edges had
Speaker 1: been worn smooth by centuries of erosion, and carved into
Speaker 1: the surface was a message that said, if you see me,
Speaker 1: weep and to make things even creepier. This rock was
Speaker 1: just one of many. Another said and I quote we cried,
Speaker 1: we cry, and you will cry now. Many of these
Speaker 1: rocks had dates carved into them. Some were from as
Speaker 1: recent as eighteen ninety three, and some went back as
Speaker 1: far as the fifteenth century. The oldest year referenced came
Speaker 1: from a rock carved with this message, if you will
Speaker 1: again see the stone, so you will weep. So shallow
Speaker 1: was the water in the U fourteen seventeen. These rocks
Speaker 1: are what historians call hunger stones. They're actually somewhat common
Speaker 1: throughout Central Europe. And specifically in the Elbe River. They
Speaker 1: offer important insight into the history of droughts in the
Speaker 1: region because they mark where the shoreline was at certain
Speaker 1: times throughout history. The further the shoreline went out, the
Speaker 1: worst the drought was. So these stones are a very
Speaker 1: tangible historical record of European water levels, which is really
Speaker 1: cool in a way, but it's also kind of unsettling
Speaker 1: because ideally we wouldn't be seeing hunger stones at all.
Speaker 1: They're harbingers of drought and suffering warnings from people who
Speaker 1: lived four, five, six hundred years ago that when the
Speaker 1: water levels get this low, bad things happen. There's only
Speaker 1: so much that we can do to counteract droughts, though
Speaker 1: anthropogenic climate change is a factor, but it's not the
Speaker 1: only one. If these hunger stones teach us anything, it's
Speaker 1: that people have suffered through extreme conditions for centuries and
Speaker 1: that people today are fascinated by the messages our ancestors
Speaker 1: left behind. You see some hunger stones in the Elb
Speaker 1: River are permanently visible due to dams in the area.
Speaker 1: A few are actually macab tourist attractions. You can walk
Speaker 1: right out and touch the carvings that were made hundreds
Speaker 1: of years ago. They attract thousands of visitors every year.
Speaker 1: But not all of these stones are quite what they seem.
Speaker 1: The one, which was carved in the nineteen thirties says,
Speaker 1: don't cry, girl, don't whine, spray when the field is dry,
Speaker 1: which sounds like a nice encouraging message for when your
Speaker 1: crops are getting thirsty, right. Well, it would be except
Speaker 1: for the fact that this was actually the slogan for
Speaker 1: Sigma Lutine, a check brand that sold water pumps to farmers.
Speaker 1: Apparently whoever headed up advertising for the business thought that
Speaker 1: it would be a good idea to make a hunger
Speaker 1: stone billboard. That hey, maybe it was, because here we
Speaker 1: are today talking about it, almost one hundred years later.
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: Worldoflore dot com and Until next time, stay curious,