Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild.
Speaker 2: Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history
Speaker 2: is an open book, all of these amazing tales are
Speaker 2: right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. It's hard to comprehend
Speaker 2: what we see. Sometimes what might seem like something strange
Speaker 2: or of their worldly could be nothing more than a
Speaker 2: trick of the lights or a clear and obvious hoax.
Speaker 2: For example, that famous nineteen thirty four photograph of the
Speaker 2: Lockness Monster. It's nothing but a picture of a children's
Speaker 2: toy cast in shadow. And all over social media, a
Speaker 2: computer stabilized version of the infamous Bigfoot foot has been circulating.
Speaker 2: Except it doesn't look like a mythical creature trapesing through
Speaker 2: the forest anymore. It looks like a guy in a costume.
Speaker 2: But for a pair of Ohio police officers, what they
Speaker 2: saw one early morning in April of nineteen sixty six
Speaker 2: was not a hoax, and it wasn't their eyes playing
Speaker 2: tricks on them either. It was real, and it ruined
Speaker 2: their lives. It was around five am when Deputy Dale
Speaker 2: Spower and Wilbert Barney Neff noticed something odd on the
Speaker 2: side of Route two two four. It was a car,
Speaker 2: seemingly abandoned. Spower got out to investigate, his flashlights illuminating
Speaker 2: his path. Except once he got to the car, all
Speaker 2: he saw were piles of walkie talkies and radios inside,
Speaker 2: as though the owner had been hoarding them. This was
Speaker 2: a strange enough sight on its own, but then Spower
Speaker 2: pointed his flashlights a little lower, and that's when he
Speaker 2: saw the markings on the side. Someone had painted the
Speaker 2: words seven steps to Hell, along with a picture of
Speaker 2: a lightning bolt inside a triangle. This could have ballooned
Speaker 2: into something interesting, a true mystery for these two officers
Speaker 2: to solve. But then Spower heard the buzzing. It was
Speaker 2: a distant hum that he couldn't ignore. Suddenly, from behind
Speaker 2: a cluster of trees rose an enormous silver object. It
Speaker 2: flew high into the air before bathing the surrounding area
Speaker 2: in a blinding light. He radioed in and informed his
Speaker 2: dispatcher about the UFO floating overhead, and then it took off.
Speaker 2: Spower and ne F were told to go after it.
Speaker 2: Their car hit one hundred miles per hour as they
Speaker 2: craned their necks to keep the object in their sights.
Speaker 2: According to an article in The Times, Spower later described
Speaker 2: it as and I quote, like the head of a flashlight,
Speaker 2: about forty feet wide and twenty feet tall. Another officer
Speaker 2: named h Wayne Houston had been listening to the radio
Speaker 2: chatter and he took to the pursuit as well. Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: police Chief Gerald Buckert had also heard about the ensuing
Speaker 2: chase and decided to grab his camera from home and
Speaker 2: hopefully snap a photo of whatever it was. They watched
Speaker 2: as it zigged and zagged above them, clearly being operated
Speaker 2: by someone or something inside, but after a short time,
Speaker 2: the officers lost visual contact with the craft. They met
Speaker 2: up with it again in Conway, Pennsylvania. It just floated
Speaker 2: there in mid air, like it was something that was
Speaker 2: waiting for them. Spower flagged down a local cop to
Speaker 2: ask for assistance, and.
Speaker 1: The officer radioed for help. Finally, after a chase lasting
Speaker 1: almost an hour and a half, spour Nef and Houston
Speaker 1: got word that United States Air Force jets were on
Speaker 1: the way, and that's when the UFO zoomed off. Leaving
Speaker 1: everyone on the ground dumbfounded. It wasn't just the officers either,
Speaker 1: a few hundred people had also claimed to have seen
Speaker 1: something flying overhead. A major from the US government soon
Speaker 1: arrived to take statements. He was in charge of a
Speaker 1: program called Project Bluebook, which was responsible for looking into
Speaker 1: possible UFO sightings. He quickly dismissed the officer's claims, alleging
Speaker 1: that all they had seen was a satellites or maybe
Speaker 1: the planet Venus. He told them that there had been
Speaker 1: nothing up there that morning, and no jets had been
Speaker 1: to investigates either. As for Buchert's pictures, they weren't enough
Speaker 1: to convince the major of anything except the chief's poor
Speaker 1: photography skills. But even though everyone else eventually moved on
Speaker 1: and left the incident alone, Spower refused to stay silent.
Speaker 1: He spoke to newspapers and anyone else who would listen,
Speaker 1: and that destroyed his life. His wife left him, he
Speaker 1: quit the force, and he wound up homeless. As for
Speaker 1: the Pennsylvania cop who helped him, he had to rip
Speaker 1: out his phone line. While Officer Houston moved to Seattle
Speaker 1: and started driving a bus. But one funny thing did
Speaker 1: come out of this incident. Two months after the first sighting,
Speaker 1: Spower was cruising down I eighty when he looked up
Speaker 1: and saw the saucer once again, except he'd been prepared.
Speaker 1: Not wanting to face any further ridicule or attention, he
Speaker 1: gave the object a code name, something he could speak
Speaker 1: over the radio without worry. So he named it Floyd.
Speaker 1: And so when he spotted the UFO this second time,
Speaker 1: he told the dispatcher Floyd's here with me. A short
Speaker 1: time later, it had flown off for good. As for
Speaker 1: the car with the lightning bolt on it, well, that
Speaker 1: lead dried up too. By the time the officers got
Speaker 1: back to the scene, it was already gone. History is
Speaker 1: marked with mistakes, some big and some small. Sometimes those
Speaker 1: small mistakes get swept under the rug and we never
Speaker 1: realize how one tiny force set off a chain reaction.
Speaker 1: And I mean that metaphorically. Today's story isn't about chemistry,
Speaker 1: but it is about a chance event that took the
Speaker 1: scientific world by storm. In eighteen seventy nine, a French
Speaker 1: microbiologist named Charles prepared to go on holiday. He closed
Speaker 1: down his lab and locked the door behind him. Charles
Speaker 1: was going to be gone for weeks. He probably looked
Speaker 1: forward to some much needed rest. He and his lab
Speaker 1: partner have been working diligently on their latest project. They
Speaker 1: were trying to cure cholera in chickens. The disease wiped
Speaker 1: out whole flocks, which took a significant toll on farmers
Speaker 1: and consumers alike. But at some point between turning the
Speaker 1: key to the lab door and putting his feet up
Speaker 1: in front of a fire, Charles panicked. He realized that
Speaker 1: he had forgotten to perform one final step in their experiment.
Speaker 1: His partner, Louis, had left for the holiday break before him,
Speaker 1: so Charles was supposed to inject some chickens with their
Speaker 1: experimental concoction. Then when the men returned, they would see
Speaker 1: how the chickens were doing, and Charles didn't want to
Speaker 1: let his partner down. Louis was kind of a big deal.
Speaker 1: He'd already made huge strides in their field, and people
Speaker 1: from all over the world had heard about him. This
Speaker 1: project was just as paramount. It could change the course
Speaker 1: of French society and the world. So one month later,
Speaker 1: when Charles returned to the lab, he quickly injected the
Speaker 1: chickens with that concoction, which had been sitting out while
Speaker 1: the scientists were away. At some point, Louis returned and
Speaker 1: Charles broke the news of his blunder. But Louis didn't
Speaker 1: seem upset with Charles. That's because Charles may have inadvertently
Speaker 1: cracked the code. Now to understand how, we need to
Speaker 1: go back about one hundred years, smallpox ravaged the planets,
Speaker 1: and a practice known as variolation developed in parts of
Speaker 1: Asia and Africa to combat the disease. That involved taking
Speaker 1: a sample of one's personal smallpox sores and transferring it
Speaker 1: to a healthy person. Healers did this either with a
Speaker 1: needle or by drying and grinding up smallpox scabs for
Speaker 1: a healthy person to breathe in through their nose. As
Speaker 1: a result, the person who received the sample would come
Speaker 1: down with a mild case of smallpox, nowhere near as
Speaker 1: severe as the cases people contracted naturally. In seventeen sixteen,
Speaker 1: enslaved people brought this knowledge to the American colonies, as
Speaker 1: it had long been practiced in West Africa, and in
Speaker 1: seventeen twenty one, Lady Mary Whortley Montague brought variolation back
Speaker 1: to Europe after learning about it in the Ottoman Empire,
Speaker 1: and finally, in seventeen ninety six, English physician doctor Edward
Speaker 1: Jenner brought a new form of variolation to the mainstream.
Speaker 1: Jenner had cut wind that rural communities used samples from
Speaker 1: cowpox sores to protect against smallpox, the idea that cowpox
Speaker 1: was similar to smallpox, but far less deadly. Jenner tested
Speaker 1: this idea on an eight year old boy. He exposed
Speaker 1: the kid to a small amount of cowpox. The boy
Speaker 1: came down with mild symptoms, then eventually got better. Then
Speaker 1: Jenner exposed him to smallpox, and the boy didn't become sick.
Speaker 1: And this brings us back to Charles and Louis's lab
Speaker 1: in eighteen seventy nine. Louis was heavily inspired by doctor Jenner.
Speaker 1: He believed that if there was protection against smallpox, there
Speaker 1: could be protection against any disease. This was the whole
Speaker 1: reason he took on the challenge of preventing the spread
Speaker 1: of chicken cholera, and it was also why he wasn't
Speaker 1: mad at Charles for forgetting to inject the chickens. Prior
Speaker 1: to this point, Louis had identified the bacteria that caused
Speaker 1: chicken cholera. He and Charles had been injecting those chickens
Speaker 1: with fresh cultures of the bacteria. Under this method, the
Speaker 1: chickens died from the disease. Louis thought back to Jenner
Speaker 1: and the cowpox. He decided to inject the chickens with
Speaker 1: the old cultures. This time, the chickens came down with
Speaker 1: a mild form of cholera, but they all survived. Then
Speaker 1: the men injected the chickens with fresh cultures and they
Speaker 1: didn't get sick.
Speaker 2: Voila.
Speaker 1: The men had found a preventative measure against chicken cholera.
Speaker 1: This was the first time a live attenuated vaccine was
Speaker 1: successfully administered in a lab. Louis and Charles went on
Speaker 1: to help develop a similar vaccine for anthrax. These two
Speaker 1: vaccines are some of Louie's later recorded achievements. As I mentioned,
Speaker 1: Louis was already a big deal in the scientific world.
Speaker 1: He revolutionized medicine by developing germ theory, which states that
Speaker 1: many illnesses are caused by micro organisms that are invisible
Speaker 1: to the naked eye and can only be seen under
Speaker 1: a microscope. He'd also been credited with discovering that microscopic
Speaker 1: organisms caused the process of fermentation. This helped him disprove
Speaker 1: spontaneous generation and come up with a way to prevent
Speaker 1: bacteria growth in food. To this day we call this
Speaker 1: process pasteurization, which is named for you guessed it, Louis Pasture.
Speaker 1: But our story doesn't end here. In eighteen seventy eight,
Speaker 1: about ten years before he died, Pasteur told his son
Speaker 1: in law that he never wanted anyone to see his
Speaker 1: laboratory notebooks. His son in law agreed to never share them,
Speaker 1: but it seems like Louis's grandson didn't get the memo,
Speaker 1: or maybe he had other ideas. In nineteen sixty four,
Speaker 1: the grandson donated those notebooks, of which there were one
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty two, to the French National Library. Historians
Speaker 1: poured through them, and some came to the conclusion that
Speaker 1: Louis often took credit for others' work and was haphazard
Speaker 1: in his methodology. One thing is for sure, though, If
Speaker 1: Charles had remembered to vaccinate the chickens before he went
Speaker 1: on holiday, he and Louis may never have made a
Speaker 1: crucial discovery. So next time you forget to complete a
Speaker 1: task at work, don't be so hard on yourself. You
Speaker 1: never know how one small mistake can change the course
Speaker 1: of history. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of
Speaker 1: 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 Theworldolore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.