Speaker 1: Welcomed Aaron Manky's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world is full
Speaker 1: of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book,
Speaker 1: all of these amazing tales right there on display, just
Speaker 1: waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
Speaker 1: What happens when a small group of people experience the
Speaker 1: same thing in different parts of the world, but nobody
Speaker 1: believes them. They find each other because it doesn't matter
Speaker 1: how much they protest or plead. Their spouses, children, and
Speaker 1: even their doctors refuse to accept that something is wrong.
Speaker 1: So this outspoken minority seeks others like them out. They
Speaker 1: scour social media and online forums for individuals who have
Speaker 1: been affected by similar phenomena. Individuals like forty six year
Speaker 1: old Shanna Turner in North Carolina. She'd been at a
Speaker 1: girls soccer game when it happened to her. Steve Marshburne
Speaker 1: was working at a bank when he was hit by
Speaker 1: it in nineteen nine. It forced him to undergo almost
Speaker 1: fifty back surgeries over the course of his life, and
Speaker 1: it happened to Gary Reynolds three times. All three of
Speaker 1: these people, and over twenty others were part of a
Speaker 1: very exclusive group of lightning strike survivors. When the human
Speaker 1: body is hit by lightning, it's riddled with three hundred
Speaker 1: million volts of electricity in an instant. We're not meant
Speaker 1: to endure that much power, and some victims die of
Speaker 1: cardiac arrest as a result, but many do survive, albeit
Speaker 1: with serious consequences. Their skin is burned, their bones are shattered,
Speaker 1: or their brains are fried. Shanna Turner suffered memory loss
Speaker 1: as a result of her brush with Zeus, while Steve
Speaker 1: Marshburn's back was broken when a bolt of lightning traveled
Speaker 1: through the speaker of his banks drive through window and
Speaker 1: struck him. And occasionally, lightning survivors are also graced with
Speaker 1: scars on their bodies called Lichtenburg figures. They're often shaped
Speaker 1: like the branches of a tree growing along the back, arms,
Speaker 1: and chest. But as I mentioned before, not everyone walks
Speaker 1: away from a power surge like that. It happened in
Speaker 1: October of n in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The
Speaker 1: area had been a battleground for some time, with a
Speaker 1: civil war raging on between rebels and government forces, but
Speaker 1: amidst all the fighting, there was a brief glimmer of
Speaker 1: levity in the form of a soccer game. The home team, Benishati,
Speaker 1: were up against the visiting Basanga team with a thaieh
Speaker 1: score of one to one. The game was going fine
Speaker 1: when out of nowhere, a bolt of lightning hit the
Speaker 1: ground in a flash. Such an incident would have frightened
Speaker 1: anyone close by. When everyone's eyes had adjusted and the
Speaker 1: smoke had cleared, the damage was evident. Thirty people who
Speaker 1: had been standing on the sidelines were hurt in the blast.
Speaker 1: They were taken to local hospitals to have their burns treated.
Speaker 1: The visiting team, though, was not affected at all. They
Speaker 1: walked away without injury, but the members of the Beneshatti
Speaker 1: team weren't so lucky. All eleven players, ranging in ages
Speaker 1: from twenty to thirty five years old, had died instantly.
Speaker 1: Many believed that witchcraft was the cause of the strike.
Speaker 1: It wasn't uncommon for African teams to use witch doctors
Speaker 1: to curse their adversaries. And what's worse is that this
Speaker 1: isn't the only time such an event has occurred. Days earlier,
Speaker 1: as the Morocco Swallows took on the Jumo Cosmos, seven
Speaker 1: players and the referee were hit by a bolt on
Speaker 1: the field. Two of the Swallow players were seriously injured. Sadly,
Speaker 1: Africa is no stranger to such acts of God. The
Speaker 1: continent is one of the biggest hot spots for lightning
Speaker 1: strikes in the entire world, with South Africa alone seen
Speaker 1: one deaths each year as a result, and the Democratic
Speaker 1: Republic of the Congo, where the Benishatti players were killed,
Speaker 1: can see as many as sixty flashes per square kilometer
Speaker 1: each year, and those flashes tend to land in indust
Speaker 1: real areas which are chock full of people just going
Speaker 1: about their daily lives. But not all hope is lost.
Speaker 1: Many office buildings are built with protective measures in place
Speaker 1: to mitigate the effects of a lightning strike, and being
Speaker 1: struck is not a death sentence in and of itself.
Speaker 1: Only one in ten who are hit by lightning will die,
Speaker 1: as proven by the folks like Shanna Turner and Gary Reynolds.
Speaker 1: And being struck is still incredibly rare, even in a
Speaker 1: lightning prone place like Africa. But don't get your hopes
Speaker 1: up too high. You still have a better chance of
Speaker 1: being struck by lightning twice than you ever do of
Speaker 1: winning the lottery, and only one of those things leaves
Speaker 1: you with a really cool scar. Ours is a culture
Speaker 1: of change. Language, in particular, shifts with every generation. A
Speaker 1: word like bully used to mean great or excellent, whereas
Speaker 1: today it has come to signify someone who picks on others. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: scientific exploration and biological study have shed new light on
Speaker 1: old perceptions over the years. For example, before we knew
Speaker 1: what germs were, doctors thought that disease was caused by
Speaker 1: poisonous air coming from the ground, and up until the
Speaker 1: mid nineteenth century, farmers and even scientists thought that putting
Speaker 1: a pair of dirty underwear in a bucket of grains
Speaker 1: would create mice. It was a concept known as spontaneous generation,
Speaker 1: which suggested that non living objects could create life. But
Speaker 1: one person turned our preconceptions about the animal kingdom on
Speaker 1: their head back in nineteen forty and changed the course
Speaker 1: of the English language in the process. It all started,
Speaker 1: surprisingly with the Bible and one important figure. He was
Speaker 1: the son of Noah's grandson Cush, which made him know
Speaker 1: his great grandson. He was also a great hunter and
Speaker 1: a king who old over the land of Shinnar. Otherwise,
Speaker 1: known as Mesopotamia. In the Book of Genesis, this king
Speaker 1: was seen as having rebelled against God after ordering the
Speaker 1: construction of the Tower of Babel. Remember, according to the
Speaker 1: Babel story, everyone in the world spoke the same language,
Speaker 1: and eventually they began building the tower, a massive structure
Speaker 1: that was meant to reach the sky. But God saw
Speaker 1: this going on and changed all of their speech to
Speaker 1: different languages. Unable to understand one another, the builders were
Speaker 1: scattered to different places all over the globe. It was
Speaker 1: a story meant to explain, among many other things, why
Speaker 1: different languages were spoken in different countries, But it was
Speaker 1: also about the consequences of blind, unchecked pride, namely that
Speaker 1: of the great king and hunter Nimrod, which brings us
Speaker 1: to the modern age. You see, some kids these days
Speaker 1: leave out a healthy snack for the Easter Bunny the
Speaker 1: night before he set to arrive, and when they wake
Speaker 1: up they might find that a piece of carrot was
Speaker 1: left behind, along with eggs and candy, proof that their
Speaker 1: good deed had not gone unnoticed. Of course, carrots and
Speaker 1: rabbits go hand in hand like peanut, butter and jelly,
Speaker 1: at least we think they do. But the fact is
Speaker 1: that carrots hold very little nutritional value for rabbits. They
Speaker 1: don't normally eat them in the wild, So why do
Speaker 1: we think that they like them? And what does that
Speaker 1: have to do with the biblical hunter. Well, the answer
Speaker 1: might surprise you. It's all because of Bugs Bunny. When
Speaker 1: Bugs Bunny debuted in nineteen forty in an animated short
Speaker 1: called a Wild Hair, he popped up on screen chomping
Speaker 1: on a carrot. It was a blatant send off of
Speaker 1: Clark Gable's character in the nineteen thirty four film It
Speaker 1: Happened One Night. In one scene from that film, Gable
Speaker 1: could be seen munching on a carrot while talking to
Speaker 1: his co star Claudette Colbert. Bugs mannerisms, including how he
Speaker 1: ate the carrots, were a direct reference to gables performance
Speaker 1: in that specific film, and the audiences of nineteen forty
Speaker 1: knew it. But over time, those children, and then their
Speaker 1: children and even their children's children all grew up with
Speaker 1: Bugs Bunny cartoons, and that original Clark Gable connection faded away,
Speaker 1: leaving behind the image of a rabbit eating a carrot,
Speaker 1: and so pet owners and Easter celebrants grew up believing
Speaker 1: that rabbits eight carrots, a new cultural assumption that was
Speaker 1: all bugs Bunny's fault. But one other thing happened during
Speaker 1: a wild hair that altered our culture and you could
Speaker 1: see it or maybe hear it, and how we use
Speaker 1: a certain word today. In that ninety animated short, Bugs
Speaker 1: Bunny refers to his nemesis Elmer Fudd as a nim rod,
Speaker 1: and to be honest, it did make a lot of sense.
Speaker 1: Fudd was, after all, dressed and outfitted as a hunter.
Speaker 1: There was also a throwaway line, but the sarcasm turned
Speaker 1: the legendary name into a simple insult, and over time,
Speaker 1: calling someone a nimrod became a new way to suggest
Speaker 1: that they were bumbling, error prone buffoon. I think it's
Speaker 1: fair to say that car tunes can teach us a lot,
Speaker 1: like how to outsmart a coyote or how to evade
Speaker 1: being eaten by a cat, But they can also affect
Speaker 1: the way we see the world and alter the language
Speaker 1: we use in the process. Some folks say that cartoons
Speaker 1: will rot a person's brain. The truth, though it's a
Speaker 1: lot more curious. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour
Speaker 1: of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast
Speaker 1: dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Manky
Speaker 1: in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award
Speaker 1: winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series,
Speaker 1: and television show, and you can learn all about it
Speaker 1: over at the World of Lore dot com. And until
Speaker 1: next time, stay curious.