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Speaker 1: Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history

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Speaker 1: is an open book, all of these amazing tales are

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Speaker 1: right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.

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Speaker 1: Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. We've all taken a

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Speaker 1: joke too far. Maybe it was a mistimed zinger or

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Speaker 1: a prank gone awry. We knew it was wrong, but

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Speaker 1: by the time it was over, it was too late.

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Speaker 1: That's the problem with some jokes. They tend to take

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Speaker 1: on a life of their own. In Sir Francis Drake's

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Speaker 1: at sail for the Strait of Anian, a way of

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Speaker 1: reaching the Atlantic Ocean from the fabled Northwest Passage over

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Speaker 1: the top of North America. Instead, he reached the shores

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Speaker 1: of northern California and began exploring. Unlike other adventurers who

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Speaker 1: might have left behind a lasting t tomitt to their presence,

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Speaker 1: Drake left only a small brass plate or plaque. Upon

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Speaker 1: it had been inscribed the declaration from Drake claiming the

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Speaker 1: land in the name of Queen Elizabeth. It was signed

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Speaker 1: with his name and the day he landed. The plates

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Speaker 1: existence was noted by English diarist Francis Pretty, who had

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Speaker 1: detailed his travels with Drake as they circumnavigated the globe

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Speaker 1: over three d Fifty years later, a chauffeur named William

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Speaker 1: Caldera discovered the small brass artifact in northern California while

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Speaker 1: his employer and a friend were hunting. Caldera held onto

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Speaker 1: the plate so that he could research its origins on

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Speaker 1: his own, but accidentally tossed it out during a routine

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Speaker 1: cleaning of his employer's car. It sat on the side

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Speaker 1: of the road in San Rafael for three years before

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Speaker 1: another young man named Beryl Shinn found it and rushed

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Speaker 1: it over to historian Herbert Eugene Bolton. Bolton was an

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Speaker 1: expert on Spanish American history. He knew exactly what Shinn possessed.

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Speaker 1: He checked the plate and its inscription against Francis Pretty's

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Speaker 1: diary entry. It was exactly as Pretty had described. Elevated

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Speaker 1: at the discovery, he contacted the president of the California

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Speaker 1: Historical Society, Alan Chickering, as well as Robert Gordon Sprowl,

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Speaker 1: president of the University of California. They confirmed that Shin

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Speaker 1: had indeed found Sir Francis Drake's long lost brass plate.

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Speaker 1: Bolton together with Chickering, pulled their resources to buy the

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Speaker 1: plate from Shin for a hefty sum at the time,

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Speaker 1: but Shin wasn't quite ready to part with it just yet.

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Speaker 1: He disappeared for four days, claiming he wanted to have

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Speaker 1: his uncle examined the plate before he sold it. Bolton

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Speaker 1: panicked when he didn't hear from him and upped his

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Speaker 1: bid to thirty That seemed to do the trick, and

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Speaker 1: not long after, Herbert Bolton was the proud owner of

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Speaker 1: Sir Francis Drake's brass plate. He and Chickering announced their

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Speaker 1: acquisition to the California Historical Society in ninety seven, before

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Speaker 1: donating the plate to the University of California's Bancroft Library. Bolton,

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Speaker 1: incredulous at his good fortune, had finally fulfilled a decade's

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Speaker 1: long dream of finding one of the most elusive totems

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Speaker 1: in history. But not everyone was as enthralled with their discovery.

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Speaker 1: Critics pointed out a whole host of problems with the plate.

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Speaker 1: For example, the spelling of certain words were not historically accurate,

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Speaker 1: they were too modern. Also, the queen was referred to

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Speaker 1: as Queen Elizabeth when the common form of her title

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Speaker 1: during Drake's time was Elizabeth, by the Grace of God,

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Speaker 1: Queen of England, France and Ireland, Defender of the Faith.

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Speaker 1: There were also the physical attributes of the brass itself.

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Speaker 1: It didn't look old or aged enough, but Bolton and

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Speaker 1: Chickering were not dissuaded. They had explanations for every supposed

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Speaker 1: flaw pointed out to them. Unfortunately, even the president of

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Speaker 1: the university, Robert Spraul, who had encouraged their purchase of

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Speaker 1: the plates, came to doubt its origins. Bolton sought out

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Speaker 1: a third party to help confirm its authenticity. So he

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Speaker 1: solicited the services of Colin Fink, professor at Columbia univer Versity,

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Speaker 1: who specialized in electro chemistry. Fink tested the plate and

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Speaker 1: no doubt about it, it was the real deal. The

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Speaker 1: plates was authentic, and that was the final word on it.

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Speaker 1: For over forty years, photos of Drake's plate of brass

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Speaker 1: found their way into textbooks and onto posters. Replicas were

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Speaker 1: made and presented to Queen Elizabeth the Second Though despite

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Speaker 1: the authoritative stance of Dr Fink, something never quite sat

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Speaker 1: right with the other academics. By the nineteen seventies, technology

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Speaker 1: had come so far as to allow researchers to dig

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Speaker 1: even deeper into the plates chemical and physical makeups. The

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Speaker 1: four Anniversity of Drake's Landing in California was coming up,

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Speaker 1: and it seemed like the perfect time to reanalyze the plate.

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Speaker 1: Scientists bombarded it with all kinds of X rays and

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Speaker 1: gamma rays, and the results came back much different than

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Speaker 1: Dr Fink's. One clue they noticed was that the plate

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Speaker 1: hadn't been hammered flat as it would have in the

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Speaker 1: fift hundreds. Instead, it had been old out, which was

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Speaker 1: a much more modern technique. Also, its edges had been

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Speaker 1: precisely cut with power tools, and its chemical composition showed

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Speaker 1: that it was made up of too much zinc to

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Speaker 1: be from the time period. In short, it was a fake.

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Speaker 1: What Bolton never realized at the time was that he

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Speaker 1: had been meant to find it. It had been made

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Speaker 1: for him. Members of a fraternal history organization known as

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Speaker 1: e Clampus Vitis or e c v knew all about

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Speaker 1: Bolton's obsession with the plate. As a joke, they used

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Speaker 1: Francis Pretty's description of it as a recipe to make

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Speaker 1: their own. They had planted it in a popular area

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Speaker 1: known to other California Historical Society members, expecting one of

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Speaker 1: them to find it and bring it to Bolton. When

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Speaker 1: the chauffeur lost it, the prank fizzled out until it

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Speaker 1: was rediscovered several years later. Unfortunately, by the time it

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Speaker 1: was announced to the public, it was too late for

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Speaker 1: the pranksters to come forward without seriously damaging the credibilities

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Speaker 1: and careers of everyone involved, so they simply let it go.

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Speaker 1: But even though the plate is fake, it's journey and

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Speaker 1: origin story have cemented it as a new kind of artifact,

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Speaker 1: one that is part of two separate histories and is

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Speaker 1: a testament to the lengths people will go to to

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Speaker 1: confirm their obsessions. Or maybe the whole thing was just

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Speaker 1: e clampus vitas in a nutshell. After all, their motto

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Speaker 1: translates into something pretty clear. I believe it because it's absurd.

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Speaker 1: Where do we go when we die? Is there an afterlife?

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Speaker 1: Do our souls get left behind? Or is there another

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Speaker 1: plane of existence for the human spirits after these physical

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Speaker 1: vessels have expired? We ask ourselves these questions because for

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Speaker 1: the most part, we fear death. More importantly, we fear

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Speaker 1: what we don't know. About death. It's not like those

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Speaker 1: who have experienced it can tell us what it's like,

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Speaker 1: although one man thought he could find out. Thomas Edison

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Speaker 1: is known to history as the inventor of the phonograph,

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Speaker 1: the movie camera, and the practical electric light bulb. He's

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Speaker 1: often portrayed as a shrewd, cold businessman, a man who

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Speaker 1: valued proof above belief and who had no patience for

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Speaker 1: philosophy or existentialism. Yet he was fascinated by the afterlife,

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Speaker 1: particularly in how one reached it. While many people believe

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Speaker 1: in the concept of heaven or hell, where one soul

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Speaker 1: would end up depending on how they behaved in life,

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Speaker 1: Edison theorized something else entirely. He believed life was like energy,

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Speaker 1: and that there was a set amount of it available

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Speaker 1: and it could not be created or destroyed. What we

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Speaker 1: consider to be a soul was actually a bunch of

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Speaker 1: microscopic consciousness that monitored what was going on inside our bodies.

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Speaker 1: When they got along, they kept us alive. When they argued,

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Speaker 1: we died, and the consciousness either passed on to another

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Speaker 1: host or they began to create new life in which

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Speaker 1: to inhabit, and if they could be rearranged back into

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Speaker 1: their original state back when they got along in the

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Speaker 1: previous host, that person could be resurrected to some degree.

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Speaker 1: For example, a deceased person's personality could find its way

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Speaker 1: into another living human, or a newborn baby might be

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Speaker 1: someone else's second chance at a new life. Edison's ideas

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Speaker 1: weren't typical, as I'm sure you've noticed. Even still, he

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Speaker 1: searched for a way to find these particles to validate

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Speaker 1: that his theory was correct. Test after test, he built

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Speaker 1: prototypes of devices he thought would detect the personalities of

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Speaker 1: the dead, but had no luck. Not even the teams

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Speaker 1: of scientists he had working for him could figure it out.

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Speaker 1: So he did what he did best. He went to

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Speaker 1: the media. In the fall of ninety Edison announced to

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Speaker 1: the world that he had been hard at work on

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Speaker 1: a new invention, one that would allow him to communicate

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Speaker 1: with the dead. He called it the spirit phone. Interestingly,

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Speaker 1: something as spiritual as talking to the dead did not

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Speaker 1: affect him on a spiritual level. He refused to acknowledge

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Speaker 1: the public's interest in the occult or seances. This was

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Speaker 1: a scientific endeavor, he said, and one meant to yield proof,

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Speaker 1: not further muddy the waters. He reached out to another inventor,

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Speaker 1: Sir William Crooks in England, who had allegedly taken photographs

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Speaker 1: of ghosts that he encountered. Edison was inspired by the

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Speaker 1: visual proof he'd gathered that ghosts were in fact susceptible

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Speaker 1: to man made gadgets, and it wasn't long before he

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Speaker 1: set to work on his spirit phone. Allegedly, after his

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Speaker 1: public announcement, Edison didn't speak about the project again, nor

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Speaker 1: did he show anyone what he might have been working on. Unfortunately,

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Speaker 1: the famous inventor died in one taking the paranormal telephone

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Speaker 1: with him. No one has found proof that he ever

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Speaker 1: actually worked on such a device. Some believe the whole

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Speaker 1: thing had been a hoax to keep his name in

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Speaker 1: the papers, while others swear to this day that there

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Speaker 1: are blueprints and even a prototype somewhere evidence of his

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Speaker 1: dedication to his claims. A decade after his death, a

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Speaker 1: seance was conducted and contact was allegedly made with Edison's ghost.

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Speaker 1: He was asked about the spirit phone and whether it

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Speaker 1: had been real. According to the entity, not only was

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Speaker 1: it real, but the blueprints for it had been left

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Speaker 1: in the possession of three of his former assistants. Sadly, though,

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Speaker 1: that's where the story ends. As you might expect, Edison's

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Speaker 1: assistants have all passed away and it couldn't be reached

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Speaker 1: for comment. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of

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Speaker 1: the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts,

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Speaker 1: or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast

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Speaker 1: dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Manky

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Speaker 1: in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award

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Speaker 1: winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series,

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Speaker 1: and television show, and you can learn all about it

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Speaker 1: over at the World of Lore dot Come and until

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Speaker 1: next time, stay curious. H