Speaker 1: Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history
Speaker 1: is an open book, all of these amazing tales right
Speaker 1: there on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome
Speaker 1: to the cabinet of curiosities. Most of us have had
Speaker 1: a shocking experience before. Not a surprising or unexpected experience,
Speaker 1: but a shocking one. If you can remember your childhood,
Speaker 1: it probably involved a balloon, some shag carpet, and a
Speaker 1: pair of wool socks. All you had to do was
Speaker 1: drag your feet and then watch as that balloon magically
Speaker 1: stuck to your head until you zapped your friend with
Speaker 1: your finger. That is, but not everyone has been limited
Speaker 1: to tools such as carpet and balloons. You know, some
Speaker 1: people have had much more power at their disposal. And
Speaker 1: no one, it seems, had more than a fourteen year
Speaker 1: old French girl named Angelique. She was born in eighteen
Speaker 1: thirty one in the town of La Perier, and as
Speaker 1: far as I can tell, her early years were unremarkable.
Speaker 1: But in eighteen forty five something changed. She had been
Speaker 1: working with other women in a clothier that manufactured gloves
Speaker 1: on oak weaving frames, and for a very long while
Speaker 1: things were normal and safe But suddenly all of that
Speaker 1: changed when she reached for the oak frame and it
Speaker 1: moved away from her hand. Some of the women working
Speaker 1: near her claimed that even if she simply stood near
Speaker 1: the equipment, it would vibrate and rattle, as if an
Speaker 1: invisible hand were thrashing it around. Now, this was the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century in Europe, in a very deeply Catholic region,
Speaker 1: so what happened next makes a bit of sense. Her
Speaker 1: parents and employer all agreed that Angelique must be possessed
Speaker 1: by a demon. I mean, what else could produce those
Speaker 1: kinds of effects. So a priest was called for and
Speaker 1: an exorcism was performed. But when it was over, thing
Speaker 1: had changed. In fact, things seemed to be getting worse
Speaker 1: rather quickly. Once she entered a room and approached a
Speaker 1: large chair that witnesses estimated to have weighed at least
Speaker 1: sixty pounds, but the power inside her forced the chair
Speaker 1: across the floor and then up the opposite wall, as
Speaker 1: if it were repelled by a powerful magnet. There were
Speaker 1: medical tests, of course. One physician determined that when the
Speaker 1: unusual events like that were taking place, Angelique's heart rate
Speaker 1: would increase dramatically. Others noticed that one side of her
Speaker 1: body was warmer than the other. Good record keeping and
Speaker 1: a lot of experimenting also taught them that her powers
Speaker 1: were more active in the evening and would sometimes vanish
Speaker 1: altogether for a couple of days before returning unannounced. Eventually,
Speaker 1: Angelique was studied by the smartest people in the land,
Speaker 1: and they all had no idea what was happening inside
Speaker 1: her body. Finally, in eighteen forty six, French physicist Francois
Speaker 1: Arago published his findings in a scholarly journal, concluding that
Speaker 1: the girls simply suffered from an abundance of electromagnetism. There
Speaker 1: were more tests and more experiences, and all of them,
Speaker 1: I have to say, were more than a little shocking. Once,
Speaker 1: hoping that they could test the limits of her powers,
Speaker 1: two strong men were charged with holding down a chair
Speaker 1: while Angelique approached it to sit. Before she could reach it,
Speaker 1: though the chair splintered into dozens of pieces, Thankfully, the
Speaker 1: men weren't harmed by the accident. The life was becoming
Speaker 1: difficult for Angelique because furniture moved away from her. She
Speaker 1: was unable to sleep in a bed or sit in
Speaker 1: a chair. The best her parents could manage was a
Speaker 1: stone slab covered in cork, something her powers apparently couldn't affect.
Speaker 1: It seemed as though she was doomed to a life
Speaker 1: of difficulty and unintended accidents. Thankfully, all of that changed
Speaker 1: later in eighteen her parents finally decided that they could
Speaker 1: find answers in Paris, and so they packed her up
Speaker 1: as best they could and began the law difficult journey
Speaker 1: across France. Once there, though the greatest scientific minds were
Speaker 1: stumped by a different problem. Angelique's amazing magnetism seems to
Speaker 1: have vanished. What it was will never know, but it's
Speaker 1: clear that Angelique Cotine had a special gift, if even
Speaker 1: just for a little while. But looking back, I can't
Speaker 1: blame her or her family for being frightened and confused.
Speaker 1: She was doing things that no person should be able
Speaker 1: to do, and if that happened to you or me,
Speaker 1: I'm sure that we'd probably be more then a little shocked.
Speaker 1: Few things are truly limitless. Sure it might be fun
Speaker 1: to imagine winning the lottery and bringing home a check
Speaker 1: for a hundred million dollars, but depending on how you
Speaker 1: spend it, that well could run dry before you retire.
Speaker 1: It used to be thought that there was a nearly
Speaker 1: endless supply of buffalo in the American West. But human
Speaker 1: activity and over hunting put an end to that idea
Speaker 1: pretty quickly, and nearly put an end to the buffalo itself.
Speaker 1: And it's that search for the limitless that's at the
Speaker 1: root of so many of histories, great quests too, the
Speaker 1: philosopher's stone that so many alchemists were looking for. It
Speaker 1: would have dispensed limitless life, the recipe that finally would
Speaker 1: transform led to gold. You guessed it, limitless wealth. But
Speaker 1: at the beginning of the eighteenth century, Johan was looking
Speaker 1: for something different. For him, the ultimate pursuit was unlimited energy.
Speaker 1: To be more specific, he dreamed of a device that
Speaker 1: could generate more energy than he put into it. It's
Speaker 1: one of the holy grails of physics and has been
Speaker 1: for centuries. And you've heard of it too. They referred
Speaker 1: to it as a perpetual motion machine. Well as it
Speaker 1: happened in late seventeen seventeen, Johan believed that he had
Speaker 1: cracked it. He was working under the patronage of a
Speaker 1: wealthy count in what is now modern Germany, and after
Speaker 1: a handful of less successful attempts. He had finally built
Speaker 1: a machine that he kept locked in a room, safe
Speaker 1: from prying eyes and mettlesome hands, and if he was correct,
Speaker 1: he had made history. His first attempt at perpetual motion
Speaker 1: took place in seventeen twelve at the young age of
Speaker 1: just thirty two. His device resembled a large wheel about
Speaker 1: three feet in diameter and four inches thick. But Johan
Speaker 1: was a paranoid sort of guy. Yes, he wanted to
Speaker 1: demonstrate his efforts, but he was also worried about all
Speaker 1: the other scientists who came to inspect it. The following year,
Speaker 1: he displayed a new and improved version of the device
Speaker 1: in Leipzig. This one was also a wheel, but over
Speaker 1: six feet in diameter. All one needed to do was
Speaker 1: give the wheel a gentle spin and the mechanism inside
Speaker 1: would take over, increasing the speed over time. It could
Speaker 1: even be connected to gears that would allow the rotational
Speaker 1: force to raise and lower heavy objects, all without slowing
Speaker 1: down or needing another wish. In seventeen fifteen, that wheel
Speaker 1: was tested by a group of experts, much to Johann's
Speaker 1: chagrin when they were done, though their report was glowing,
Speaker 1: Johan's perpetual motion machine was real, but the response from
Speaker 1: others in the scientific community was less than encouraging. People
Speaker 1: who had never examined the device made fun of Johan,
Speaker 1: calling him a crackpots and a fraud. Naturally, that didn't
Speaker 1: sit well with him. Still, he had enough success to
Speaker 1: convince him that it was a good idea to change
Speaker 1: his name to something that sounded a lot more like
Speaker 1: a Greek philosopher and began referring to himself as or Furious.
Speaker 1: And then he retreated to Germany and took funding from
Speaker 1: that wealthy count that I mentioned earlier. After building his
Speaker 1: third and final perpetual motion device in a gardening shed
Speaker 1: on the count's property, he moved the contraption indoors, where
Speaker 1: it could be locked up and guarded around the clock.
Speaker 1: When he finally felt that his masterpiece was ready, he
Speaker 1: sent out new invitations to have it inspected just as before,
Speaker 1: and a number of scientists took him up on the offer.
Speaker 1: Sometime in the winter of seventeen seventeen to seventeen eighteen,
Speaker 1: those investigators arrived, Johan unlocked the door to the room
Speaker 1: where his magical device awaited them, and then let the
Speaker 1: men get to work. And needless to say, they were impressed.
Speaker 1: One of the men, Willem Jacob Graveshand, actually wrote up
Speaker 1: his findings and sent them to the English mathematician Sir
Speaker 1: Isaac Newton. As far as everyone who witnessed it was concerned,
Speaker 1: Johan had done it. Of course, everyone wanted to know
Speaker 1: how it all worked, but Johan was a stubborn guy.
Speaker 1: These were smart men, and they could very easily take
Speaker 1: his explanation and go make their own. No, he wanted
Speaker 1: payment for access to their inner workings, and he named
Speaker 1: his sum an exorbitant amount of money. From what I've read,
Speaker 1: no one took the bait. In fact, no one even nibbled,
Speaker 1: and with no payment offered, Johan decided that if he
Speaker 1: couldn't sell the devices secrets, then no one should ever
Speaker 1: scovered them for free. So that night he locked himself
Speaker 1: in the machines room with nothing more than his distraught
Speaker 1: mental state and a large axe, and proceeded to chop
Speaker 1: the device to pieces. As you might imagine, Johan's wealthy
Speaker 1: patron didn't like what the inventor had done. How could
Speaker 1: he get a return on his investment if the machine
Speaker 1: was in pieces. A short while later Johan found himself
Speaker 1: out on the street. Poor Johan Bessler would be an
Speaker 1: aimless wanderer for another twenty seven years, finally passing away
Speaker 1: in seventeen. Then all of that effort, all that time
Speaker 1: and money and energy that he poured into his device, well,
Speaker 1: in the end, it netted him nothing in return, quite
Speaker 1: the opposite of what his device was designed to accomplish.
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: World of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious. Yeah,