1 00:00:04,080 --> 00:00:07,480 Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Menkey's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of 2 00:00:07,480 --> 00:00:13,840 Speaker 1: I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world is 3 00:00:13,960 --> 00:00:17,960 Speaker 1: full of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, 4 00:00:18,280 --> 00:00:21,640 Speaker 1: all of these amazing tales are right there on display, 5 00:00:22,000 --> 00:00:27,600 Speaker 1: just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet 6 00:00:27,840 --> 00:00:40,159 Speaker 1: of Curiosities. Throughout history, wartime has brought countless innovations that 7 00:00:40,240 --> 00:00:43,960 Speaker 1: have trickled down into our daily lives. When metallurgist Harry 8 00:00:44,000 --> 00:00:47,240 Speaker 1: Brearley coated iron and chromium to keep guns from rusting 9 00:00:47,280 --> 00:00:51,760 Speaker 1: in World War One, he inadvertently created stainless steel. Years later, 10 00:00:51,920 --> 00:00:55,240 Speaker 1: Nestley used the same technology that made penicillin possible during 11 00:00:55,280 --> 00:00:58,040 Speaker 1: World War Two to bring its freeze dried coffee to 12 00:00:58,120 --> 00:01:01,240 Speaker 1: store shelves everywhere. If we get to enjoy many of 13 00:01:01,280 --> 00:01:05,240 Speaker 1: today's conveniences thanks to the discoveries of military scientists and 14 00:01:05,280 --> 00:01:09,959 Speaker 1: engineers from all over the world, however, that door swings 15 00:01:10,000 --> 00:01:13,440 Speaker 1: both ways, quite a few civilian inventions have also gone 16 00:01:13,480 --> 00:01:16,959 Speaker 1: on to revolutionize how wars are fought. In one, for example, 17 00:01:17,040 --> 00:01:19,840 Speaker 1: barbed wire was created to keep cattle from wandering off, 18 00:01:19,959 --> 00:01:23,320 Speaker 1: long before it was used to impede enemy movement. Cameras 19 00:01:23,400 --> 00:01:26,080 Speaker 1: also made the jump from family portraits to the front 20 00:01:26,080 --> 00:01:28,440 Speaker 1: lines during World War One, when they were fastened to 21 00:01:28,560 --> 00:01:32,839 Speaker 1: planes and used to gather photographs of enemy territories. In fact, 22 00:01:32,959 --> 00:01:35,280 Speaker 1: one average citizen did quite a lot to change the 23 00:01:35,280 --> 00:01:38,760 Speaker 1: face of war all on his own. During his sixty 24 00:01:38,840 --> 00:01:40,880 Speaker 1: seven years on earth. He became known as one of 25 00:01:40,920 --> 00:01:44,320 Speaker 1: the most brilliant engineers in the world, drafting vehicle and 26 00:01:44,360 --> 00:01:47,600 Speaker 1: weapon designs he expected to be used by the militaries 27 00:01:47,640 --> 00:01:51,280 Speaker 1: of his time. His tank concept, for example, bore a 28 00:01:51,400 --> 00:01:54,400 Speaker 1: cone shape and was made of wood. Inside. Eight men 29 00:01:54,440 --> 00:01:56,840 Speaker 1: would crank gears to turn the wheels, which would then 30 00:01:56,920 --> 00:02:00,440 Speaker 1: carry them across the battlefield. The angled exterior your meant 31 00:02:00,560 --> 00:02:03,720 Speaker 1: arrows and other projectiles would simply deflect off the sides 32 00:02:03,840 --> 00:02:07,400 Speaker 1: or fall away. Portholes along the sides allowed for the 33 00:02:07,440 --> 00:02:10,880 Speaker 1: tanks operators to fire at enemies without putting themselves in danger. 34 00:02:11,800 --> 00:02:14,400 Speaker 1: Another unique vehicle came in the form of a chariot. 35 00:02:14,720 --> 00:02:17,560 Speaker 1: Unlike the chariots of old, where horses pulled someone standing 36 00:02:17,600 --> 00:02:21,480 Speaker 1: in a carriage, these new designs featured interesting upgrades. For one, 37 00:02:21,520 --> 00:02:23,800 Speaker 1: the writer didn't stand in a carriage at the rear. 38 00:02:24,160 --> 00:02:26,720 Speaker 1: He rode atop the horse, which was situated in the 39 00:02:26,760 --> 00:02:30,040 Speaker 1: middle for whirling. Blades at the front would mow down 40 00:02:30,040 --> 00:02:33,800 Speaker 1: the opposing forces, while blades at the back prevented rear attacks. 41 00:02:34,280 --> 00:02:38,360 Speaker 1: He called it the scythed chariot. The engineer didn't limit 42 00:02:38,400 --> 00:02:42,000 Speaker 1: himself only to modes of transportation, though, he also invented 43 00:02:42,040 --> 00:02:45,560 Speaker 1: impressive weapons, such as an early machine gun. As with 44 00:02:45,600 --> 00:02:48,480 Speaker 1: all of his creations, this too was made of wood. 45 00:02:48,800 --> 00:02:52,360 Speaker 1: It boasted thirty three barrels arranged in a triangular frame. 46 00:02:52,760 --> 00:02:56,080 Speaker 1: While one side of eleven barrels filled, another side would 47 00:02:56,080 --> 00:02:58,960 Speaker 1: be loaded up as the third side cooled down. He 48 00:02:59,080 --> 00:03:01,560 Speaker 1: was a man ahead of his time, and his blueprints 49 00:03:01,560 --> 00:03:05,120 Speaker 1: proved it. His plans for a crossbow predated the handheld 50 00:03:05,120 --> 00:03:07,920 Speaker 1: models used today. It was designed to be rolled into 51 00:03:07,919 --> 00:03:10,240 Speaker 1: battle by two men who could cock it back with 52 00:03:10,280 --> 00:03:13,200 Speaker 1: a massive projectile loaded into the cradle before pulling a 53 00:03:13,280 --> 00:03:17,520 Speaker 1: release and letting it fly into a crowd. His notebooks 54 00:03:17,520 --> 00:03:20,320 Speaker 1: and files were full of plans for vehicles and weapons 55 00:03:20,320 --> 00:03:23,480 Speaker 1: no one had ever seen before. There was a cluster bomb, 56 00:03:23,520 --> 00:03:26,480 Speaker 1: designed to wipe out pockets of enemy soldiers. He also 57 00:03:26,520 --> 00:03:29,280 Speaker 1: invented a double hulled ship that could stay afloat if 58 00:03:29,320 --> 00:03:32,280 Speaker 1: the outer hall was ever punctured, a concept seen today 59 00:03:32,320 --> 00:03:35,440 Speaker 1: on oil tankers and submarines. And though he was so 60 00:03:35,480 --> 00:03:38,800 Speaker 1: skilled in the art of wartime weaponry, in reality he 61 00:03:38,920 --> 00:03:41,760 Speaker 1: hated it. He would rather have been building flying machines 62 00:03:41,880 --> 00:03:44,920 Speaker 1: or perpetual motion machines, or doing what he was known 63 00:03:44,960 --> 00:03:49,360 Speaker 1: best for, painting. This engineer and inventor was one of 64 00:03:49,360 --> 00:03:52,400 Speaker 1: the finest artists of the sixteenth century, and his works 65 00:03:52,400 --> 00:03:56,120 Speaker 1: are still studied in museums and classrooms to this day. 66 00:03:56,880 --> 00:03:59,120 Speaker 1: There's no proof that any of his designs for his 67 00:03:59,200 --> 00:04:02,440 Speaker 1: machine gun or his tank were ever actually built, yet 68 00:04:02,440 --> 00:04:06,000 Speaker 1: their influence can be seen in today's modern equivalence. Had 69 00:04:06,040 --> 00:04:08,360 Speaker 1: they been brought to life, as he'd feared, he might 70 00:04:08,400 --> 00:04:11,160 Speaker 1: have been remembered as a monster, a man who chose 71 00:04:11,200 --> 00:04:15,600 Speaker 1: to celebrate violence rather than peace. Fortunately that's not the case. 72 00:04:15,960 --> 00:04:18,720 Speaker 1: The world instead associates him with the portrait of a 73 00:04:18,720 --> 00:04:22,080 Speaker 1: young woman smiling now displayed in the Louver, as well 74 00:04:22,120 --> 00:04:24,840 Speaker 1: as his painting of the final meal between Jesus and 75 00:04:24,920 --> 00:04:28,400 Speaker 1: his disciples. He's not known as a merchant of death, 76 00:04:28,920 --> 00:04:33,320 Speaker 1: but as the master artist behind the mona Lisa Leonardo 77 00:04:33,480 --> 00:04:50,920 Speaker 1: da Vinci Evan paid for the tower himself. It wasn't 78 00:04:50,920 --> 00:04:53,600 Speaker 1: really about him, though, No, the tower was a monument 79 00:04:53,600 --> 00:04:57,120 Speaker 1: to the Viking explorer Leif Ericsson. It wouldn't be strange 80 00:04:57,160 --> 00:04:59,159 Speaker 1: to build a monument to the man. He had been 81 00:04:59,160 --> 00:05:01,880 Speaker 1: celebrated in all kinds of ways since the year one 82 00:05:01,920 --> 00:05:05,240 Speaker 1: thousand when he was sailing the Atlantic. The strange thing 83 00:05:05,320 --> 00:05:08,760 Speaker 1: was where Evan built that. You see the tower cast 84 00:05:08,800 --> 00:05:12,000 Speaker 1: its long shadow over the Charles River, just inland from 85 00:05:12,040 --> 00:05:15,600 Speaker 1: the city of Boston. What's even stranger is the huge 86 00:05:15,640 --> 00:05:18,800 Speaker 1: inscription stretching across the front of the tower, saying that 87 00:05:18,839 --> 00:05:22,840 Speaker 1: the land was discovered by leaf ericson one thousand a d. 88 00:05:23,520 --> 00:05:26,320 Speaker 1: But there's more. It says that at this very spot 89 00:05:26,440 --> 00:05:29,640 Speaker 1: in what is now Massachusetts, there was once a Viking 90 00:05:29,760 --> 00:05:33,600 Speaker 1: city with docks and walls and dams that controlled the land, 91 00:05:33,640 --> 00:05:36,120 Speaker 1: stretching from Rhode Island to the south, all the way 92 00:05:36,200 --> 00:05:40,040 Speaker 1: up to St. Lawrence River up in Canada. Now, maybe 93 00:05:40,080 --> 00:05:42,479 Speaker 1: this would have been safely ignored when Evan built the 94 00:05:42,520 --> 00:05:46,000 Speaker 1: tower in eighty nine, but he wasn't a nobody quite 95 00:05:46,000 --> 00:05:49,840 Speaker 1: the opposite. In fact, Evan Horsford was a retired Harvard 96 00:05:49,880 --> 00:05:53,200 Speaker 1: professor the dean of Harvard's Science School and a very 97 00:05:53,279 --> 00:05:57,560 Speaker 1: successful businessman. And what's more, he wasn't the only Bostonian 98 00:05:57,560 --> 00:06:00,960 Speaker 1: who thought the city had once been the home of Vikings. Actually, 99 00:06:01,000 --> 00:06:02,760 Speaker 1: he was riding in the coat tails of some of 100 00:06:02,800 --> 00:06:08,200 Speaker 1: Boston's most famous and most powerful nineteenth century citizens. It 101 00:06:08,200 --> 00:06:11,440 Speaker 1: all started in the eighteen thirties when Boston's famous poet, 102 00:06:11,480 --> 00:06:15,640 Speaker 1: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, had traveled to Denmark. Someone convinced him 103 00:06:15,640 --> 00:06:18,440 Speaker 1: that Vikings had once landed in New England. When he 104 00:06:18,480 --> 00:06:21,080 Speaker 1: got home to Boston, he retold that story to anyone 105 00:06:21,120 --> 00:06:25,039 Speaker 1: who would listen for years. By the eighteen seventies, some 106 00:06:25,160 --> 00:06:27,600 Speaker 1: of the most important New England gentry had hatched a 107 00:06:27,640 --> 00:06:29,840 Speaker 1: plan to tell it to the world. They got together 108 00:06:29,880 --> 00:06:32,920 Speaker 1: and decided to build a statue in Boston of Leif Ericsson, 109 00:06:33,320 --> 00:06:35,479 Speaker 1: and then they put the word out to raise the money. 110 00:06:36,279 --> 00:06:39,360 Speaker 1: That's where Eben Horsford comes in. None of those Boston 111 00:06:39,440 --> 00:06:42,120 Speaker 1: gentlemen would live to see just how deeply Eban fell 112 00:06:42,160 --> 00:06:44,479 Speaker 1: in love with their plan, But if fall he did. 113 00:06:45,000 --> 00:06:48,120 Speaker 1: After their death, Eben Horsford carried their idea forward and 114 00:06:48,160 --> 00:06:51,720 Speaker 1: put everything he had into the project. He built their 115 00:06:51,720 --> 00:06:54,440 Speaker 1: statue of Leif Ericson in Boston, and you can still 116 00:06:54,440 --> 00:06:57,800 Speaker 1: see it today rising in the Back Bay neighborhood. After all, 117 00:06:58,040 --> 00:07:00,960 Speaker 1: Eban was no stranger to building in Boston. He was 118 00:07:01,040 --> 00:07:03,000 Speaker 1: part of the group that had planned for the defense 119 00:07:03,040 --> 00:07:06,279 Speaker 1: of Boston Harbor during the Civil War. But he did 120 00:07:06,320 --> 00:07:09,600 Speaker 1: a lot more too. Evan was so convinced that he 121 00:07:09,600 --> 00:07:14,360 Speaker 1: wrote seven books arguing that Leif Ericsson had discovered Massachusetts 122 00:07:14,400 --> 00:07:17,920 Speaker 1: before Columbus ever reached the hemisphere. Evan did his best 123 00:07:17,960 --> 00:07:20,360 Speaker 1: to survey the land and thought that he found the 124 00:07:20,360 --> 00:07:23,040 Speaker 1: spot where Leif Ericson's house had been. He had a 125 00:07:23,080 --> 00:07:27,280 Speaker 1: plaque installed there, and then in nine Evan built that 126 00:07:27,360 --> 00:07:31,960 Speaker 1: tower on the Charles River. Like the other Bostonians before him, 127 00:07:32,000 --> 00:07:34,480 Speaker 1: Evan was trying to convince the world that Boston was 128 00:07:34,520 --> 00:07:38,000 Speaker 1: the place where America began, complete with its first white 129 00:07:38,040 --> 00:07:41,880 Speaker 1: adventurers and even its first Christian bishop. It was, to 130 00:07:42,120 --> 00:07:45,320 Speaker 1: put it mildly, all about putting people like him on 131 00:07:45,360 --> 00:07:49,040 Speaker 1: a pedestal. Today we know that Leif Ericson actually landed 132 00:07:49,160 --> 00:07:51,920 Speaker 1: much farther north at lance All Meadows at the tip 133 00:07:51,960 --> 00:07:56,080 Speaker 1: of Newfoundland, at the Canadian site. Archaeologists have recently discovered 134 00:07:56,080 --> 00:07:59,880 Speaker 1: and identified bronze cloak pins, iron nails and rivets, and 135 00:08:00,160 --> 00:08:03,120 Speaker 1: what may even be a kiln for smelting iron from 136 00:08:03,120 --> 00:08:05,880 Speaker 1: bog Ore. They are the kinds of things that Eban 137 00:08:06,000 --> 00:08:10,440 Speaker 1: searched for all around Boston but could never find. So 138 00:08:10,520 --> 00:08:12,880 Speaker 1: it's a good thing that the message of all Evan's 139 00:08:12,960 --> 00:08:16,679 Speaker 1: monuments has mostly been forgotten. After all, the story they're telling, 140 00:08:17,000 --> 00:08:19,840 Speaker 1: the history that they want to teach, it's just wrong. 141 00:08:20,240 --> 00:08:23,680 Speaker 1: But despite all that, Eban Horsford's legacy is still influencing 142 00:08:23,760 --> 00:08:26,800 Speaker 1: us today, and it keeps rising up in homes across 143 00:08:26,800 --> 00:08:31,240 Speaker 1: America because despite being quite a bad historian, Eban was 144 00:08:31,280 --> 00:08:34,600 Speaker 1: actually a great chemist, and in the late eighteen fifties 145 00:08:34,640 --> 00:08:39,040 Speaker 1: he started selling double acting baking powder. It's sold like hotcakes. 146 00:08:39,080 --> 00:08:41,200 Speaker 1: He even sold it to the Union Army during the 147 00:08:41,240 --> 00:08:43,640 Speaker 1: Civil War, which is where he really started to make 148 00:08:43,720 --> 00:08:48,640 Speaker 1: his fortune. Eban began by culling his invention, Horsford's Bread Preparation, 149 00:08:49,000 --> 00:08:51,760 Speaker 1: but when he died and his manufacturing company wanted to 150 00:08:51,800 --> 00:08:54,440 Speaker 1: give up their name, they rebranded it. In fact, they 151 00:08:54,520 --> 00:08:57,120 Speaker 1: named it after Evan's position at Harvard, where he was 152 00:08:57,160 --> 00:09:02,200 Speaker 1: the Rumford Professor for Applied Sciences, today, Evans Invention is 153 00:09:02,240 --> 00:09:05,600 Speaker 1: still in stores, proudly declaring that it has been trusted 154 00:09:05,679 --> 00:09:09,199 Speaker 1: since eighteen fifty nine. And if you've ever used Rumford 155 00:09:09,200 --> 00:09:13,400 Speaker 1: baking powder, then you've cooked with Evan's real discovery. And 156 00:09:13,480 --> 00:09:15,960 Speaker 1: even if you don't know it, you've seen him too. 157 00:09:16,440 --> 00:09:19,200 Speaker 1: The red container is marked with the black silhouette of 158 00:09:19,240 --> 00:09:22,600 Speaker 1: a man set in a white oval, the long shadow 159 00:09:22,679 --> 00:09:28,720 Speaker 1: cast by the man himself. I hope you've enjoyed today's 160 00:09:28,720 --> 00:09:32,360 Speaker 1: guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free 161 00:09:32,400 --> 00:09:35,080 Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by 162 00:09:35,160 --> 00:09:40,160 Speaker 1: visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by 163 00:09:40,200 --> 00:09:43,800 Speaker 1: me Aaron Manky in partnership with how Stuff Works. I 164 00:09:43,920 --> 00:09:47,720 Speaker 1: make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, 165 00:09:47,800 --> 00:09:50,760 Speaker 1: book series, and television show, and you can learn all 166 00:09:50,800 --> 00:09:54,320 Speaker 1: about it over at the World of Lore dot com. 167 00:09:54,360 --> 00:10:00,760 Speaker 1: And until next time, stay curious.