Speaker 1: Hey, folks, erin here. I have some exciting news to
Speaker 1: share with you, so please don't skip this message. We'll
Speaker 1: get to our new stories in just a moment. Don't worry.
Speaker 1: This podcast has been delivering stories to you for roughly
Speaker 1: five years now, with today's episode featuring stories numbered eleven
Speaker 1: sixty nine and eleven seventy. It's wild to think that
Speaker 1: we've crafted so many little journeys for you to enjoy.
Speaker 1: But I also know that that means that finding older
Speaker 1: ones can often be a challenge. Well, I might have
Speaker 1: a solution for you. On November twelfth, we're publishing our
Speaker 1: very first cabinet of Curiosity's Book with our partners over
Speaker 1: at Saint Martin's Press. As of today, the cover has
Speaker 1: been revealed and the pre order page has gone live,
Speaker 1: So you know what I'm going to ask for next, right,
Speaker 1: Every single pre order that we get will go into
Speaker 1: a bucket that counts toward the book's release week sales,
Speaker 1: which means that you find, folks, have a great shot
Speaker 1: at making this a New York Times bestseller, and knowing
Speaker 1: how amazing all of you are, I feel pretty good
Speaker 1: about those odds. This book will be a collection of
Speaker 1: hundreds of Cabinet stories that you know and love, plus
Speaker 1: a handful of new ones. And best of all, they'll
Speaker 1: be sorted topically, making it really easy for you to
Speaker 1: pick your favorite category to read or to look up
Speaker 1: a tale you remember but haven't been able to find before.
Speaker 1: And the book is gorgeous too, making it a great
Speaker 1: addition to any bookcase or bedside table. I've put the
Speaker 1: link to the official Cabinet of Curiosities book pre order
Speaker 1: page in the episode description, so just tap on that
Speaker 1: and let it take you to your favorite bookstore where
Speaker 1: you can pre order your very own copy, and now
Speaker 1: on with the show. You know, film has changed a
Speaker 1: lot over the last one hundred and thirty years. We
Speaker 1: went from short clips of only a few seconds long
Speaker 1: to three hour motion pictures. Silent films gave way to
Speaker 1: the talkies, and given the amount of computer generated effects
Speaker 1: in today's movies, it might be safe for referring to
Speaker 1: many of them as animated films instead of a life
Speaker 1: live action pictures. But when film was still in its infancy,
Speaker 1: as directors were learning how to fool the audience with
Speaker 1: tricks of the lens, actors were also on the hunt
Speaker 1: for new ways to keep everyone on the edge of
Speaker 1: their seats. Now, stunt doubles have been used since nineteen
Speaker 1: oh three's The Great Train Robbery, but some actors preferred
Speaker 1: to do their own stunts, and sure we still see
Speaker 1: that today. Just look at any film where Tom Cruise
Speaker 1: is running or hanging from an airplane, a mountain, or
Speaker 1: a building. But back in nineteen nineteen, one silent action
Speaker 1: star stood above the rest. Harold Lloyd born in Birchard, Nebraska,
Speaker 1: in eighteen ninety three. Harold walked a rocky path on
Speaker 1: the way to start them. After performing with Thomas Edison's
Speaker 1: Motion Picture Company early in his career, he had a
Speaker 1: west to try his luck with the burgeoning movie industry
Speaker 1: out there. After a series of rejections at a studio
Speaker 1: head who wouldn't give him a shot, he met his
Speaker 1: future collaborator, Hal Roach. Now Roach was in charge of
Speaker 1: his own studio, and together the pair made a series
Speaker 1: of silent shorts that drew in big crowds. Lloyd's lonesome
Speaker 1: Luke and Glass characters were often involved in chaotic, mad
Speaker 1: cap situations with a lot of slaps to humor and
Speaker 1: some pretty dangerous stunts. For example, in the nineteen fifteen
Speaker 1: short called Lonesome Luke Messenger, Lloyd and a fellow bike
Speaker 1: messenger get into a number of shenanigans. One scene has
Speaker 1: their bicycle knocking someone off a ladder before careening into
Speaker 1: a tree. These are the kind of stunts that he
Speaker 1: became known for, and they helped rocket him to the
Speaker 1: top of the box office, and so it was no
Speaker 1: surprise that Lloyd would find himself being courted by the media.
Speaker 1: He often appeared in magazines and on posters advertising his films,
Speaker 1: and in August of nineteen nineteen, several months after signing
Speaker 1: a new contract with the Pathe Distribution Company, he was
Speaker 1: invited to WHITSL Photography Studio in Los Angeles for a
Speaker 1: photo shoot. But it wasn't just him. He also had
Speaker 1: his fellow co stars and a box of props at
Speaker 1: his side to help sell his adventurous escapades. Among the
Speaker 1: various odds inside that box were some paper mache bombs,
Speaker 1: completely harmless and not filled with explosives at all. And
Speaker 1: that's when one of Harold's gagmen, a guy named Frank Terry,
Speaker 1: lit one of the fake bombs and handed it to
Speaker 1: the actor. Harold had been holding a cigarette which he
Speaker 1: had tried to light using the wick from the prop.
Speaker 1: Plumes of smoke began to pour out from the top
Speaker 1: of the bomb, and he knew that so much smoke
Speaker 1: would ruin the shoot, so he went to place the
Speaker 1: object on a nearby table, and that's when the worst
Speaker 1: thing happened. It blew up in his face. Apparently, Pathay
Speaker 1: had been planning on a scene in an upcoming film
Speaker 1: not starring Lloyd, and it involved the use of some
Speaker 1: very real bombs. One of these explosive devices found its
Speaker 1: way into the prop box at the studio, and of
Speaker 1: all the ones that Terry could have handed him, he
Speaker 1: picked the only real one to do so. The explosion
Speaker 1: nearly blew the roof off, leaving a gaping hole sixteen
Speaker 1: feet above their heads. It also fractured Terry's upper dental
Speaker 1: plate into two pieces while rendering the foot potographer unconscious,
Speaker 1: but Harold Lloyd was still standing despite being closest to
Speaker 1: the blast. Sure he suffered burns across his chest and
Speaker 1: face and nearly lost his eye. Thankfully, he wound up
Speaker 1: saving his sight. Unfortunately, he did lose one thing, well
Speaker 1: two really, his thumb and forefinger on his right hand.
Speaker 1: Once he had healed and got back to work, though
Speaker 1: hal Roach and producer Sam Goldwyn invented a prosthetic device
Speaker 1: for him to wear. Goldwyn had been a glove salesman
Speaker 1: before founding his own studio, so he put that knowledge
Speaker 1: to work and took a rubber mold of Lloyd's complete
Speaker 1: left hand, and then, according to silent film historian Annette
Speaker 1: the Gastino, Lloyd no relation by the way, the mold
Speaker 1: was reversed to simulate the incomplete right hand. The missing
Speaker 1: fingers were then removed from the mold and inserted into
Speaker 1: a leather glove, which slipped over Lloyd's right hand, giving
Speaker 1: him the appearance of having all five fingers intact. He
Speaker 1: only ever wore it while on the camera. When walking
Speaker 1: about town, he simply kept his hand jammed inside his pocket,
Speaker 1: and if he had to greet anyone, he shook their
Speaker 1: hand with his left. Harold Lloyd was one of the
Speaker 1: most talented stars of the silent era. He pulled off
Speaker 1: some of the wildest stunts ever captured on film, including
Speaker 1: hanging from a giant clock, and he did it all
Speaker 1: after surviving a bomb blast and losing two of his fingers,
Speaker 1: and for that we should give that man a hand.
Speaker 1: We've probably all had a situation at work where we're
Speaker 1: asked to do something we don't want to. Maybe someone
Speaker 1: left and now we have to take on their responsibilities
Speaker 1: as well, or a manager is trying to avoid hiring
Speaker 1: a new person, so they're just adding those old duties
Speaker 1: onto our own list. But even though we would love
Speaker 1: to say not my job and then walk away, we
Speaker 1: don't always get that satisfaction. The truth is if we
Speaker 1: want to stay employed, then sometimes we have to perform
Speaker 1: tasks that we were never meant to do. British marine
Speaker 1: biologist Jeffrey Tandy ran into something similar in nineteen forty one,
Speaker 1: except if he'd said not my job, then World War
Speaker 1: two might have gone a lot differently. Tandy was born
Speaker 1: in nineteen hundred and graduated from Oxford in nineteen twenty one.
Speaker 1: He then attended Burbeck College in London for a graduate
Speaker 1: school with a focus on marine biology. After his studies
Speaker 1: were over, he took a job at the Natural History
Speaker 1: Museum in London, where he worked for over twenty years
Speaker 1: studying cryptogams. Notice how I said cryptogams, which is a
Speaker 1: word used to describe plant like organisms that do not
Speaker 1: produce spores or flowers, not to be confused with cryptograms
Speaker 1: or puzzles involving encoded text. Basically, Tandy's line of work
Speaker 1: was algae, moss and fung guy, not word games. But
Speaker 1: during the war he found himself in the very strange
Speaker 1: position of an impromptu career change. He had joined the
Speaker 1: Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve and was sent to Bletchley Park,
Speaker 1: which happened to be a massive mansion. It was built
Speaker 1: during the nineteenth century, but after Admiral Sir Hugh Sinclair,
Speaker 1: the head of the Secret Intelligence Service, bought the estates
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty eight, it became home base for Allied codebreakers,
Speaker 1: and it was there that Tandy ran into a bit
Speaker 1: of a hiccup. You see, the Ministry of Defense was
Speaker 1: in need of someone with well to borrow a phrase
Speaker 1: from mister Liam Neeson a particular set of skills cryptography skills,
Speaker 1: to be exact. But Tandy wasn't a cryptogrammist. He was
Speaker 1: a cryptogamist, the foremost experts and algae in the reserve
Speaker 1: in fact. But those two similar words got confused and
Speaker 1: the Ministry of Defense came knocking, and Tandy was in
Speaker 1: no position to say no. So for two years he
Speaker 1: served in a secret code breaking group, biding his time
Speaker 1: as a member of one of the most important and
Speaker 1: covert units of the war. And then in nineteen forty
Speaker 1: one he got his big break. Some German U boats
Speaker 1: had been destroyed by Allied torpedoes, leaving behind a number
Speaker 1: of documents that had been salvaged from the recks. But
Speaker 1: this wasn't just any paperwork. Among the materials rescued from
Speaker 1: the bottom of the ocean were instructions on how to
Speaker 1: decipher enemy messages written using Germany's Enigma machine. In other words,
Speaker 1: the key to understanding what the Germans were saying to
Speaker 1: each other in secret. Unfortunately, those papers were unusable in
Speaker 1: their current state. They were soggy and hardly readable. They
Speaker 1: needed to be dried out and repaired before they could
Speaker 1: be used. Enter Jeffrey Tandy. His previous experience in handling
Speaker 1: water logged objects and organisms such as algae were finally
Speaker 1: being put to good use. He grabbed some supplies from
Speaker 1: the museum and he got to work. His skill set
Speaker 1: had come in quite handy as he dried out the
Speaker 1: documents Once they were in good enough condition to be
Speaker 1: read by his colleagues, they were passed along to the
Speaker 1: code breakers for further deciphering. The Allies now had a
Speaker 1: way to unlock intercepted German communicays, and of course it
Speaker 1: proved invaluable to the war effort. Thanks to Tandy's expertise,
Speaker 1: he shortened the length of World War II by his
Speaker 1: many as two to four years, and saved countless lives
Speaker 1: as well. Jeffrey Tandy didn't throw his hands up until
Speaker 1: the Ministry of Defense that it wasn't his job. He
Speaker 1: did what many of us do when thrust into occupations
Speaker 1: were unqualified for. He faked it until he made it.
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.