Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of
Speaker 1: the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all
Speaker 1: of these amazing tales right there on display, just waiting
Speaker 1: for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
Speaker 1: January fifteenth of two thousand and nine seemed like a
Speaker 1: normal day to everyone flying out of New York's LaGuardia Airport,
Speaker 1: except that their flights were actually leaving on time, and
Speaker 1: one of those flights was US Airways Flight fifteen forty nine.
Speaker 1: It was headed towards Seattle, Washington, with a stopover in Charlotte,
Speaker 1: North Carolina. Its captain was a former Air Force pilot
Speaker 1: with almost twenty thousand flight hours under his belt. This
Speaker 1: was going to be a cakewalk, and then, only minutes
Speaker 1: after it had taken off, the plane struck a flock
Speaker 1: of geese, which took out its engines. The pilot radioed
Speaker 1: the control tower with details of the incident and said
Speaker 1: he was going back to La Guardia, but realized that
Speaker 1: he would never make it in time. With no other choice,
Speaker 1: he landed the massive airbus in the middle of the
Speaker 1: Hudson River. Chesley Sully. Sullenberger and his co pilot, Jeffrey
Speaker 1: Skiles had saved everyone on board in what came to
Speaker 1: be known as the Miracle on the Hudson. But this
Speaker 1: was not the only dangerous episode to take place on
Speaker 1: the Hudson River. In fact, in eighteen fifty two, the
Speaker 1: Hudson was the venue of one of the deadliest maritime
Speaker 1: disasters ever reported. But it wasn't a war or a
Speaker 1: bombing or anything like that. It was a race between steamboats.
Speaker 1: The advent of the steam engine revolutionized travel and shipping.
Speaker 1: Before we had steam power, which could push a boat
Speaker 1: against a river's current without breaking a sweat, sailors would
Speaker 1: use disposable flatboats to train support people in goods downriver.
Speaker 1: They would send them along the current to their destination,
Speaker 1: where they'd be torn apart so that the wood could
Speaker 1: be used for something else. Steamboats could also be bigger
Speaker 1: and carry more cargo than non powered vessels. That meant
Speaker 1: more passengers and more goods crammed onto each ship. But
Speaker 1: these boats and ships all had the same basic flaw.
Speaker 1: They're boilers. The boilers which created the steam used to
Speaker 1: power the boats were notorious for blowing up, and since
Speaker 1: much of the non human cargo packed on these vessels
Speaker 1: was flammable, such as cotton and gunpowder, explosions caused a
Speaker 1: lot of damage. The early to mid eighteen hundred saw
Speaker 1: thousands of deaths and injuries caused by boiler explosions, so
Speaker 1: it was only a matter of time until people came
Speaker 1: up with ways to push these volatile engines to their
Speaker 1: limits for the public's entertainment, because what could possibly go
Speaker 1: wrong with that? The first official race kicked off on
Speaker 1: New York's Hudson River in July of eighteen eleven. It
Speaker 1: ended in a draw when both boats crashed into each
Speaker 1: other at the breakneck speed of five miles an hour.
Speaker 1: Nobody was hurts and the accident did nothing to curtails
Speaker 1: people's interest in the sport. It soon spread out to
Speaker 1: places like Mississippi, Kentucky, and even the Great Lakes. Despite
Speaker 1: the snail like speeds achieved by these steamboats, their captains
Speaker 1: didn't seem to care about the war and tear the
Speaker 1: races would put on them. The wooden decks would buckle,
Speaker 1: and the boilers would overheat to the point of failure
Speaker 1: loud explosive failure, which leads us to what is perhaps
Speaker 1: the worst steamboat race in recorded history. It was between
Speaker 1: the Henry Clay, captain by James Isaac Smith, and the Armenia,
Speaker 1: captain by John Tollman. Both vessels had been constructed by
Speaker 1: famed steamship builder Thomas Collier. The fact that they had
Speaker 1: come from the same shop meant that the loser couldn't
Speaker 1: blame the quality of the ship on their luss. They
Speaker 1: were both of equal prestige and provedance. On the morning
Speaker 1: of July twenty eighth of eighteen fifty two, the Henry
Speaker 1: Clay and the Armenia took off down the Hudson. As
Speaker 1: they raised, the Henry Clay built up a healthy lead
Speaker 1: of several miles, which it maintained for a number of hours.
Speaker 1: There was no way the Armenia could catch it in time,
Speaker 1: especially as each ship bounded toward the finish line in
Speaker 1: New York City. But just as the Henry Clay's crew
Speaker 1: thought that they had victory in the bag, someone noticed something.
Speaker 1: The engine was on fire, and no matter how hard
Speaker 1: they tried, the crew couldn't contain the blaze, which soon
Speaker 1: took over the entire ship. The captain steered her toward
Speaker 1: the shoreline, hoping to get close enough for people to
Speaker 1: abandon ship and swim to safety, and the crew and
Speaker 1: passengers who had been close to the bow at the
Speaker 1: time of the fire did just that. But there were
Speaker 1: also wealthy first class passengers toward the stern who were
Speaker 1: blocked from the front of the ship by towering flames
Speaker 1: before them. Many jumped into the churning waters below, while
Speaker 1: others were consumed by the fire. Architect Andrew Jackson Downing,
Speaker 1: for example, was burned alive. Others drowned as the ship's
Speaker 1: spinning paddle blades pushed them away from the shore. Those
Speaker 1: who were too close to the vessel and hadn't drowned
Speaker 1: wound up dying from an enormous steam blast that erupted
Speaker 1: after the boilers finally gave out. In total, roughly eighty
Speaker 1: of the Henry Clay's passengers died that day, a tragedy
Speaker 1: that led to widespread change in the steamship industry. Laws
Speaker 1: were passed in New York to prevent these races from
Speaker 1: ever occurring again, and steamships once again became safe for
Speaker 1: travel and transport. For the next several decades, of course,
Speaker 1: that is, until another famed vessel was pushed a bit
Speaker 1: too hard by one Captain Smith in nineteen twelve. Many
Speaker 1: of its first class passengers died as well. But you
Speaker 1: don't need me to tell you about the Titanic. Walk
Speaker 1: through the streets of any major city and you're likely
Speaker 1: to hear a cacophony of sounds. Horns, honking engines, sputtering,
Speaker 1: people shouting at each other. No wonder so many of
Speaker 1: us put in earphones before we step outside each day.
Speaker 1: But things weren't much quieter one hundred and fifty years
Speaker 1: ago either. We may not have had automobiles or jackhammers,
Speaker 1: but we certainly had the clumping of horse hoofs on
Speaker 1: cobblestone streets. Shop Owners yelled from their storefronts as crowds
Speaker 1: of people hustled and bustled while carrying on conversations. Noise
Speaker 1: has been a part of a city's DNA since the
Speaker 1: beginning of time, but one particular noise seemed to plague
Speaker 1: an Englishman named Thomas James Rawlins so much that he
Speaker 1: practically spent his whole life trying to sue it out
Speaker 1: of existence. Rawlins was born in Lambeth, England, in eighteen
Speaker 1: oh two. Before settling north in Bloomsbury, he did a
Speaker 1: bit of traveling on behalf of his employer, the East
Speaker 1: India Company, working as an artist in Calcutta. Eventually he
Speaker 1: returned to England, where he became a professor of drawing
Speaker 1: at a few local universities, as well as an illustrator.
Speaker 1: But despite his passion for art, he didn't exactly love
Speaker 1: of all arts, specifically music. Well, that's not entirely true.
Speaker 1: He hated one particular kind of music, street organs. A
Speaker 1: street organ is a box or barrel filled with pneumatic
Speaker 1: pipes that's when cranked plays music. The operator is called
Speaker 1: an organ grinder, and oftentimes the music is accompanied by
Speaker 1: a dancing animal, like a small monkey. Rollins didn't much
Speaker 1: care for street organ music. In fact, he downright loathed it,
Speaker 1: going so far as to take one street musician to
Speaker 1: courts in eighteen fifty seven. His name was Felice Onzie,
Speaker 1: and Rawins had told him to take his organ elsewhere,
Speaker 1: but a neighbor welcomed the performer inside to entertain them,
Speaker 1: and they left the door ajar too. Rollins still able
Speaker 1: to hear the pipes playing, had Onzie arrested. The neighbors
Speaker 1: then testified in court on the musician's behalf, claiming that
Speaker 1: Rollins was known around town for shoeing organ grinders away
Speaker 1: and depriving everyone else of their pleasant tunes. Onzie was
Speaker 1: released and threatened with a fine of forty shillings or
Speaker 1: prison if he was ever arrested again for playing music.
Speaker 1: Two years later, another organ grinder named Giovanni Fastinelli was
Speaker 1: harassed by Rollins's maid, who had been ordered by her
Speaker 1: employer to make him leave somebody's sick. She told him. Fastinelli,
Speaker 1: undeterred by her pleas told her to go away as well,
Speaker 1: which angered Rollins enough to come to her aid. Fascinelli
Speaker 1: didn't hesitate. He charged the ornery homeowner and called him
Speaker 1: a series of names before he was also arrested. According
Speaker 1: to Rollins, the music disacerbated a brain condition that he
Speaker 1: had received while abroad in India. It was also unpleasant
Speaker 1: enough to render one of his housemates both speechless and
Speaker 1: senseless as well. For his troubles, Fastinelli was ordered to
Speaker 1: pay twenty shillings. Then, in December of eighteen sixty, Rollins
Speaker 1: went after another organ grinder. This man's name was Giuseppe
Speaker 1: Marciani and he had come from Italy. He'd been visiting
Speaker 1: London when he suddenly found himself in the custody of
Speaker 1: the local police. Rollins let him know that he was
Speaker 1: the thirteenth street musician to face his wrath, and that
Speaker 1: all he wanted was to be left in peace. Instead,
Speaker 1: up to twenty organ grinders a day were dispatched to
Speaker 1: Rollin's home to annoy him until he would finally pay
Speaker 1: them a tip to leave him alone, and surprisingly enough,
Speaker 1: almost all of his neighbors agreed with his complaints. These
Speaker 1: street musicians had become a nuisance and a bother, and
Speaker 1: it continued like that for the next few years, with
Speaker 1: one grinder after another being dragged to court by a
Speaker 1: man who simply wanted to live a peaceful life away
Speaker 1: from the noise. An act was even passed in eighteen
Speaker 1: sixty four meant to restrict street performers to some degree,
Speaker 1: but it didn't do much to alleviate rollins headache. Then,
Speaker 1: in eighteen sixty five, after having dozens of street musicians
Speaker 1: taken to court for a noise complaints, he met his match,
Speaker 1: except it wasn't an organ grinder. It was a horse
Speaker 1: one that had been pulling a cab or carriage through tone.
Speaker 1: The accident left Rawlins with a number of injuries, including
Speaker 1: leaking abscesses and a ruptured bladder. He was forced to
Speaker 1: live out the rest of his life bedridden, and fate
Speaker 1: soon arrived at his door to rub salt in all
Speaker 1: of his wounds. Guilloum du Boy and his son had
Speaker 1: come to Rollins Street to perform. The pair were musicians,
Speaker 1: with the father grinding a barrel organ while his twelve
Speaker 1: year old boy banged a drum. Their show was a
Speaker 1: hit with the crowd. Everyone in town seemed to enjoy
Speaker 1: the music, well, everyone except Thomas Rollins. He died in
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy three, finally getting the peace in quiet that
Speaker 1: he'd always wanted. 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 Mankey
Speaker 1: in partnership with How Stuff Works. I make another award
Speaker 1: winning show called which is a podcast, book series, and
Speaker 1: television show, and you can learn all about it over
Speaker 1: at theworldoflore dot com, and until next time, stay curious.