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 are right there on display, just
Speaker 1: waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. Nightingale, lark, falcon, crow, snipe, loon, seagull, heron, turtle, dove, magpie.
Speaker 1: What do these birds all have in common? Well, here's
Speaker 1: a hint in the form of a quote. The cuckoo,
Speaker 1: then on every tree mocks married men, for thus sings
Speaker 1: he cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo. That's right. All these birds appear
Speaker 1: in the works of William Shakespeare, which is perhaps a
Speaker 1: fancy way of saying that they were all common knowledge
Speaker 1: in Elizabethan England. Throughout the Bard's works, birds are a
Speaker 1: flexible metaphor, their symbols for pining love, for men and women,
Speaker 1: behaving like fools, for the devastation wrought by war. More
Speaker 1: than sixty species of birds come up this way. Romeo
Speaker 1: and Juliet famously argue over the call of a nightingale
Speaker 1: or a Lark, an argument that stands for the fear
Speaker 1: that dawn has come and Romeo must flee for his life.
Speaker 1: Over the years, Shakespeare's work has been viewed through various
Speaker 1: cultural lenses and experience growing pains when it traveled from
Speaker 1: England to America. As the new cultural identity of the
Speaker 1: United States emerged, British actors looked down on Americans trying
Speaker 1: to perform the Bard's greatest works. Different acting styles emerged,
Speaker 1: and arguments within the theatrical world began that continue to
Speaker 1: this present day. But did you know that Shakespeare's influence
Speaker 1: on the New World was a little more than cultural.
Speaker 1: There was even an environmental impact as well. In eighteen
Speaker 1: ninety fifty one, years after the Macbeth inspired Astor Place
Speaker 1: riots that we've already covered on this show, a man
Speaker 1: named Eugene Shefflin stepped out into New York's Central Park.
Speaker 1: As the story goes, he was a huge fan of
Speaker 1: William Shakespeare and also an amateur ornithologist. This man just
Speaker 1: loved birds, and when he traveled to Central Park that day,
Speaker 1: he brought with him sixty European starlings that he had
Speaker 1: imported with some help. You see, he was an influential
Speaker 1: member of the American Acclimization Society, a group that sought
Speaker 1: to introduce European flora and fauna to America. They had
Speaker 1: previously introduced European sparrows and blackbirds to Central Park and
Speaker 1: were eager to see how successful starlings would be. Shefflin
Speaker 1: first released sixty starlings and then came back with forty more.
Speaker 1: They eagerly found home amongst the hollows in the trees,
Speaker 1: muscling out the other birds. Unlike a ten to introduce
Speaker 1: the nightingale, bullfinches, and skylarks, this one was a success,
Speaker 1: for better or for worse. Over the following decades, the
Speaker 1: United States realized that as a group, starlings were something
Speaker 1: of a menace. They proliferated madly across the country, eventually
Speaker 1: reaching a population of two hundred million in the US alone,
Speaker 1: and when commercial aviation took off, starlings were their biggest problem.
Speaker 1: The most deadly bird strike of all time occurred in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty when starlings brought down an airplane as it
Speaker 1: took off from Boston. Despite their size, their bodies are
Speaker 1: extremely dense, making them a hazard for aircraft of all types.
Speaker 1: And damage they do to farmers crops numbers in the
Speaker 1: billions of dollars, stealing grain and produce. Experts have pointed
Speaker 1: out that declining numbers of woodpeckers and bluebirds could be
Speaker 1: attributed to how many starlings live in the continental us.
Speaker 1: Whether this is true or not, the result is a startling.
Speaker 1: One European starling, one of the few bird species that
Speaker 1: are unprotected by law. Hunters and trappers can kill as
Speaker 1: many as they like without consequence, as could farmers who
Speaker 1: want to protect their crops from these creatures. Of course,
Speaker 1: they are so small that they evade most natural predators,
Speaker 1: and the same is true for human hunters. They're just
Speaker 1: too little and too many to fully control. And all
Speaker 1: of this because of Shakespeare and a single line in
Speaker 1: Henry the fourth Part one, Act one, Scene three. In
Speaker 1: the scene, one of the characters reflects on the king's
Speaker 1: attitude toward one of his enemies, and I quote he
Speaker 1: said he would not ransom Mortimer, forbade my tongue to
Speaker 1: speak of Mortimer. But I will find him when he
Speaker 1: lies asleep, and in his ear, I'll hollow Mortimer. Nay,
Speaker 1: I'll have a starling shall be taught to speak nothing
Speaker 1: but Mortimer, and give it to him to keep his
Speaker 1: anger still in motion. And it makes you wonder if
Speaker 1: Shakespeare had not chosen this particular metaphor for the rant,
Speaker 1: the entire landscape of North America might be different. It
Speaker 1: feels like, in discussing the trajectory of the European starlings,
Speaker 1: we've discovered a new version of the butterfly effect. Maybe
Speaker 1: we should call it the Starling effect. Now that's something
Speaker 1: that would be worth writing a play about. In nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty five, Soviet newspapers were awash with stories on the
Speaker 1: future of space exploration. Humankind was not destined to remain
Speaker 1: on Earth. They insisted, our future lay in the stars,
Speaker 1: and the charge into that great unknown would be led
Speaker 1: not by the West but by the Russians. And cementing
Speaker 1: these bold proclamations was a somewhat mundane development. Moscow had
Speaker 1: just approved the formation of a new commission to study
Speaker 1: interplanetary space. In other words, nothing had been built yet.
Speaker 1: The science still had to be done, but the so
Speaker 1: Soviet Union was ready to spend the rubles to make
Speaker 1: it happen. The news was picked up by the American media.
Speaker 1: Sources setting off alarm bells in Washington, DC. In July,
Speaker 1: the Eisenhower administration announced plans to launch a satellite into
Speaker 1: orbit by nineteen fifty eight, and thus the spark had
Speaker 1: been lit, thrusters primed and ready, all systems go. The
Speaker 1: space race had begun. But here's the thing. Though Soviet
Speaker 1: articles that stirred the US into action, they were a lie,
Speaker 1: or at least a massive exaggeration. The man behind them
Speaker 1: was a scientist named Sergei Korlev, who had spent the
Speaker 1: last decade building missiles for the Soviet Union. Korlev was
Speaker 1: convinced that his rockets had greater purposes than just blowing
Speaker 1: people up, and had recently lobbied the Soviet government to
Speaker 1: create a satellite program. The response had been lukewarm at best.
Speaker 1: Moscow wasn't interested in throwing away money on science without
Speaker 1: a clear military purpose. But Korlev wasn't to give up.
Speaker 1: He rewrote the proposal for a less expensive program and
Speaker 1: then got to work drumming up enthusiasm. He put out
Speaker 1: speculative articles that first got Russians and then Americans hyped
Speaker 1: about the possibilities of space travel, and then, when Washington
Speaker 1: took the bait, Korlov knew his gambit had paid off.
Speaker 1: Soviet leadership reversed course, embracing the program that he had
Speaker 1: asked for, and suddenly he had everything he needed, permission, funding,
Speaker 1: and the authority to move forward. And move forward he did.
Speaker 1: Korlev personally oversaw the design and construction of the world's
Speaker 1: first artificial satellite, Sputnik I. The polished metal sphere equipped
Speaker 1: with four and ten I was small, simple, and built
Speaker 1: in record time. On October fourth of nineteen fifty seven,
Speaker 1: it was launched into orbit with an R seven intercontinental
Speaker 1: ballistic missile, the first rocket of its kind engineered by
Speaker 1: Korlev himself. The launch of Sputnik ignited a frenzy in
Speaker 1: the West, spurrying the US government to accelerate its own
Speaker 1: space program. Meanwhile, Korlev's bosses in Moscow were over the moon.
Speaker 1: No pun intended with his splashy success and gave him
Speaker 1: the green light for even more ambitious projects. Korlev didn't
Speaker 1: let the momentum go to waste either. Just a month
Speaker 1: after Sputnik one, he launched Sputnik two, carrying the first
Speaker 1: living passenger into orbit, a dog named Laika. Then in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty one, he achieved the unthinkable. He put the
Speaker 1: first human, Yuri Gagarin, into space aboard the vostok Ie.
Speaker 1: Every major Soviet space milestone of the era bore his fingerprints.
Speaker 1: Yet despite all he had done for the Soviet Union,
Speaker 1: Moscow kept the identity of Sputnik's creator a secret until
Speaker 1: after his death, almost like they were ashamed of their
Speaker 1: greatest rocket scientists. And maybe they were. You see, at
Speaker 1: the time Korlev started his space program, he was technically
Speaker 1: a political prisoner. In nineteen thirty eight, during Stalin's purges,
Speaker 1: he was arrested on falsified charges of anti Soviet activities
Speaker 1: and sent to the Gulag, where he nearly died of
Speaker 1: malnutrition and abuse. Only the desperate need for missile engineers
Speaker 1: during World War II saved his life. He was quietly
Speaker 1: pulled from the camps and forced to work under strict
Speaker 1: supervision designing weapons for a regime that had nearly killed him.
Speaker 1: Even after his later rehabilitation, Korlev remained under constant surveillance,
Speaker 1: unable to travel abroad or even be publicly named as
Speaker 1: the leader of the Soviet space program. But there was
Speaker 1: an even more damning reason Moscow might have wanted to
Speaker 1: keep his identity under wraps one that undermines the Soviet
Speaker 1: Union's early claim to superiority in the space race, because
Speaker 1: the man who created Sputnik didn't even call the Soviet
Speaker 1: Union home. That's right, Sergei Korlov wasn't Russian. He was
Speaker 1: born in Ukraine. 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 Lore, which is a podcast, book series,
Speaker 1: and television show, and you can learn all about it
Speaker 1: over at the Worldoflore dot com. And until next time,
Speaker 1: stay curious.