Speaker 1: Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history
Speaker 1: is an open book, all of these amazing tales are
Speaker 1: right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. The Bubonic plague, also
Speaker 1: known as the Black Death, was a particularly devastating sickness
Speaker 1: in the hundreds that caused fevers, seizures, gang green and
Speaker 1: eventually death. When the plague tour through Europe, it killed
Speaker 1: millions across multiple countries as people fled from one contaminated
Speaker 1: area to another looking for safety. While the epidemic only
Speaker 1: lasted four years, it was known to crop up again
Speaker 1: in various cities later on. London, Vienna, Marseilles, Russia all
Speaker 1: saw recurrences of the disease throughout the sixteen and seventeen hundreds.
Speaker 1: It was during a particularly bad outbreak in sixteen thirty
Speaker 1: three when the residents of a small village in Bavaria
Speaker 1: were struggling. The plague had been ravaging the neighboring area
Speaker 1: and the villagers of Oberammergu were terrified of its spreading
Speaker 1: to their small town, so they turned to the only
Speaker 1: one they could think of for help. God. They prayed
Speaker 1: long and hard for salvation, and in the process they
Speaker 1: made a kind of deal with God. If he would
Speaker 1: spare them from the bubonic plague that had wiped out
Speaker 1: the nearby towns, they would put on a play about
Speaker 1: the life and Death of Jesus every ten years as
Speaker 1: a way of saying thanks. I know it might sound
Speaker 1: strange to do nothing but pray for help with such
Speaker 1: a threat looming over them. When the plague typically showed
Speaker 1: up in a town, it became a waiting game to
Speaker 1: see who would be taken next, and biotics wouldn't be
Speaker 1: developed for another three years. But the people needed help,
Speaker 1: and they had nowhere else to turn except to the
Speaker 1: one place where they had gone looking for peace so
Speaker 1: many times before. For some faith is a light that
Speaker 1: frightens away the darkness, and a certainly described these villagers.
Speaker 1: So they decided to shed a little light on their
Speaker 1: current problem. But they needed a sign. Only one person
Speaker 1: out of every thousand died from the plague in October
Speaker 1: of sixteen thirty two, but that number rose to twenty
Speaker 1: by March of sixty three, and the disease was spreading fast.
Speaker 1: The villagers put their plan to work and prayed for guidance.
Speaker 1: The following July, the number of deaths plummeted back down
Speaker 1: to just one out of a thousand. It seemed their
Speaker 1: prayers had been answered. Ober ahm ergu immediately went to
Speaker 1: work putting their play into production. The Passion Play, as
Speaker 1: it was called, took almost an entire day to perform
Speaker 1: all sixteen of its acts, beginning with Jesus driving the
Speaker 1: money changers from the temple and ending with his death
Speaker 1: and resurrection. It became such a spectacle that people started
Speaker 1: coming in from all over the world to see it.
Speaker 1: In seventeen ninety, the town began charging admission, also creating
Speaker 1: package deals that combined tickets with stays at local inns
Speaker 1: and hotels. The Passion Play had become a once in
Speaker 1: a decade event not to be missed. Through it all,
Speaker 1: the winds of rumor would often carry news to the
Speaker 1: villagers of a fresh outbreak of the plague each time
Speaker 1: it happened, though it would fade away before it ever
Speaker 1: reached their borders, and as the plague became less and
Speaker 1: less of a threat over the centuries, the need for
Speaker 1: that elaborate performance. The villager's end of the bargain so
Speaker 1: to speak became less and less over a Mergou hasn't
Speaker 1: seen the plague since the sixteen hundreds, so maybe their
Speaker 1: idea worked. Perhaps God really did honor their agreement, or
Speaker 1: maybe it just faded away on its own. Regardless of
Speaker 1: what stopped it, the town has continued to put on
Speaker 1: the Passion Play every decade for the last three hundred
Speaker 1: and seventy seven years. Over two thousand people now work
Speaker 1: to produce the show, which spans one hundred days of
Speaker 1: live performances. The number of visitors to the village has
Speaker 1: averaged half a million since nineteen and a special theater
Speaker 1: has even been constructed to house the production. For many,
Speaker 1: science and medicine have upstaged faith, while others believe their
Speaker 1: faith provided the best defense against the darkness. One thing
Speaker 1: is certain, though, when it comes to handling a deadly outbreak,
Speaker 1: it certainly takes a village. M NASA is known for
Speaker 1: making the impossible possible, from launching astronauts into space and
Speaker 1: landing on the Moon to sending a robot to Mars
Speaker 1: to gather data on the planet's soil. NASA is at
Speaker 1: the forefront of space exploration. It's been that way ever
Speaker 1: since President Dwight D. Eisenhower formed the organization in with
Speaker 1: a goal of sending America's best and brightest out to
Speaker 1: explore the farthest reaches of space, and in order to
Speaker 1: perform such explorations, the people going up there were required
Speaker 1: to wear state of the art space suits to regulate
Speaker 1: pressure and temperature, allow them to communicate with mission control,
Speaker 1: and to collect surface samples. Space suits are complicated feats
Speaker 1: of engineering that need to be tested rigorously, otherwise one
Speaker 1: flaw can spell disaster for the person wearing it, and
Speaker 1: as we all know, in space, no one can hear
Speaker 1: you scream. NASA as all sorts of ways to test
Speaker 1: a space suit. The one such method is the vacuum test,
Speaker 1: where engineers wear the suit and enter a chamber that
Speaker 1: has all the air sucked out of it. The suits
Speaker 1: are hooked up to life support systems while the engineers
Speaker 1: monitor performance and stability. It's a great way to mimic
Speaker 1: the demands of space. Other tests are a little simpler,
Speaker 1: and they involve an astronaut simply wearing the suit and
Speaker 1: letting a team of scientists know how it feels. Can
Speaker 1: they move freely? Is there any resistance? Such a test
Speaker 1: depends on the person inside the suit and any number
Speaker 1: of factors, including how they feel on that particular day
Speaker 1: and their state of mind. An astronaut with a pulled
Speaker 1: muscle might unintentionally cause a change to the design that
Speaker 1: could fail at the worst possible moment. NASA doesn't want
Speaker 1: anecdotal data clogging up their research. If they miscalculate based
Speaker 1: on one person's experience, the rest of the suits may
Speaker 1: be compromised, so engineers have sought more objective methods and
Speaker 1: testing their suit designs. One such method is K six
Speaker 1: five zero one. Not really a catchy name, I know,
Speaker 1: but what else do you call a six ft tall
Speaker 1: robot designed by some of the best scientists in the world.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure a name like Phil would work in
Speaker 1: this situation. K six five zero one is a custom
Speaker 1: designed android that is able to grow from five ft
Speaker 1: five to six ft two and cover a wide range
Speaker 1: of body types. The wires and tubes that fill its
Speaker 1: body are like our own arteries, but instead of pumping blood,
Speaker 1: they pump electricity and hydraulic fluid in order to move
Speaker 1: its aluminum skeleton. K six five zero one is more
Speaker 1: than just a glorified mannequin. Though it can shake hands,
Speaker 1: lift small objects, and balance itself without any assistance, all
Speaker 1: of which comes in pretty handy when testing the viability
Speaker 1: of a suit designed without relying on a human subject. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: K six five zero one has one small problem. Well,
Speaker 1: it's more like a bunch of small problems that add
Speaker 1: up to one bigger problem. He leaks. At least he
Speaker 1: did when he was first built and tested, but it's
Speaker 1: been over fifty years since then built in NASA's Android
Speaker 1: was the first victim of the materials at the time.
Speaker 1: It's hydraulic system required ten thousand pounds of fluid force
Speaker 1: to move its arms and legs. The tubing couldn't take
Speaker 1: the pressure, and one leak had the ability to destroy
Speaker 1: a space suit that today would be worth three quarters
Speaker 1: of a million dollars. Imagine that. At a time when
Speaker 1: resources were strained as they worked to put a man
Speaker 1: on the Moon, NASA invented a metal man who could
Speaker 1: have helped them build the perfect space suit, But the
Speaker 1: risk was too great and the costs were too high,
Speaker 1: so NASA scrapped the project. They went back to their
Speaker 1: tried and true method of testing human guinea pigs for
Speaker 1: their space suits but don't work. You can still see
Speaker 1: K six five zero one on display at the National
Speaker 1: Aeronautics and Space Museum in Washington, d C. Or you
Speaker 1: can look up. If you squint hard enough, you just
Speaker 1: might see its descendant, robinot To, assisting the humans on
Speaker 1: board the International Space Station. It runs in the family,
Speaker 1: after all, Like father, like son. I hope you've enjoyed
Speaker 1: today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for
Speaker 1: free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show
Speaker 1: by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created
Speaker 1: by me Aaron Mankey in partnership with how Stuff Works.
Speaker 1: I make another award winning show called Lore, which is
Speaker 1: a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can
Speaker 1: learn all about it over at the World of Lore
Speaker 1: dot com. And until next time, stay curious.