Speaker 1: Welcomed Aaron Mankey's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of iHeart
Speaker 1: Radio and Grim 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.
Speaker 1: World War Two saw the use of numerous deception tactics
Speaker 1: from both sides. For example, British forces used playing cards
Speaker 1: that peeled the way to reveal escape maps. They also
Speaker 1: hid pistols in everyday objects like pens and smoking pipes,
Speaker 1: while hiding knives in things like pencils. And of course,
Speaker 1: there were coded messages, falsified communic case and countless other
Speaker 1: methods for fooling the enemy overseas. But back home in
Speaker 1: the United States things were trickier. Everyone knows about the
Speaker 1: rubber and scrap drives to collect the necessary material for
Speaker 1: building planes and other supplies, while war bond sales helped
Speaker 1: finance operations in the first place, but when it came
Speaker 1: to building the planes themselves, America needed to keep things
Speaker 1: on the down low, far from the prying eyes of
Speaker 1: the enemy, and to do that they constructed the aircraft
Speaker 1: in Seattle, Washington. Now Seattle is situated on the Puget Sound,
Speaker 1: an estuary leading out into the Pacific Ocean. It's not
Speaker 1: exactly safe from battleships, submarines, or fighter planes, but that
Speaker 1: was where aerospace Corporation Boeing had set up shop in
Speaker 1: nineteen o six. They were responsible for building B fifty
Speaker 1: two s and B seventeen bombers, producing as many as
Speaker 1: three hundred of the ladder each month by NINT. But
Speaker 1: in order to keep up with the demand of the
Speaker 1: United States military, Boeing needed to expand its first plant,
Speaker 1: creatively called Plant One. Was a bit behind the times,
Speaker 1: so the company old out twenty six acres of land
Speaker 1: in Seattle to accommodate a brand new production facility, as
Speaker 1: well as a town for its workers to live in.
Speaker 1: The new plant, called Plant To, incorporated more modern amenities
Speaker 1: with state of the art assembly lines to keep things
Speaker 1: moving smoothly and efficiently, and the town itself was also
Speaker 1: quite impressive, with well manicured lawns and monitored houses. The
Speaker 1: streets even had tongue in cheek names like synthetic streets,
Speaker 1: and from a distance it looked like any other town.
Speaker 1: And that was the point, because despite its unassuming appearance,
Speaker 1: it was never meant to be lived in. In fact,
Speaker 1: if anyone got close to it, they might have noticed
Speaker 1: that the houses were a bit too small and unfinished,
Speaker 1: the streets were a little too narrow, and the trees, well,
Speaker 1: they didn't really have any leaves on their branches. You see,
Speaker 1: Boeing hadn't actually built a suburb for its workers. It
Speaker 1: was just a clever disguise for an airplane plant which
Speaker 1: resided forty ft below. MGM Art director John Debtley had
Speaker 1: been hired in nineteen forty who to help the company
Speaker 1: fabricated town to hide their operations. Debtlely had worked on
Speaker 1: films like Another Thin Man starring William Powell and Myrna Loyd,
Speaker 1: as well as the Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney film
Speaker 1: Strike Up the Band. He was very familiar with building
Speaker 1: convincing movie sets, and this would be his best and
Speaker 1: most important work. Yet. He and his team got to
Speaker 1: work mocking the houses just over half the size of
Speaker 1: normal homes, and he only built their shells. The dwellings
Speaker 1: weren't furnished or even finished. They were shaped like suburban
Speaker 1: homes and that was enough. The grass was made of
Speaker 1: burlap and canvas, which was also used to rig up
Speaker 1: some three trees. To make the canopies of those trees,
Speaker 1: he covered chicken wire and tar, and then coated the
Speaker 1: wire with chicken feathers to give the tree tops the
Speaker 1: appearance of being leaf covered. They were then spray painted green. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: below the faux streets of Wonderland, as it was called,
Speaker 1: thirty thousand men and women kept things running, working tirelessly
Speaker 1: to produce B seventeens, B twenty nine super fortresses, B
Speaker 1: forty ovens, and more. And the event that enemy planes
Speaker 1: managed to reach the West coast looking to attack the plant,
Speaker 1: the only thing pilots would see was just another quaint
Speaker 1: American suburb, all thanks to debt Le's Hollywood handiwork. Luckily,
Speaker 1: the fake town was never attacked. Boeing continued to produce
Speaker 1: planes there throughout the duration of the war without interruption. Afterward,
Speaker 1: the false houses and trees were dismantled, while the plant
Speaker 1: below them continued to be used through the Cold War.
Speaker 1: It was finally all torn down in two thousand ten,
Speaker 1: and for the fake town and the factory it sat upon, that,
Speaker 1: as they say in Hollywood, was a rap. Some traditions
Speaker 1: have logical origins. For example, we put candles on birthday
Speaker 1: cakes because the ancient Greeks did it. Their cakes, though,
Speaker 1: were made as an offering to Artemis, the god a
Speaker 1: of hunting and the moon. One theory was that the
Speaker 1: lip candles gave the kek a hazy glow like a
Speaker 1: full moon in the night sky. Another idea was that
Speaker 1: the smoke from the blown out candles would carry a
Speaker 1: person's wishes up to heaven, where Artemis would be able
Speaker 1: to hear them. But not all traditions are like those
Speaker 1: of the ancient Greeks. Some just can't be explained no
Speaker 1: matter how much we try, and one such custom happens
Speaker 1: to be one of the most bafflingly wild activities ever conceived.
Speaker 1: No one is exactly sure how it started. Some claim
Speaker 1: that coal miners in the nineteen seventies invented it, while
Speaker 1: some historians believe it was developed by hunters way back
Speaker 1: in the fifth century. You see, back then, rabbits, moles,
Speaker 1: and other critters would hide in underground burrows, making it
Speaker 1: difficult for the hunters to find them, so they would
Speaker 1: send another animal into the tunnels to root them out
Speaker 1: a ferret. In fact, that's how we get the modern
Speaker 1: phrase to ferret something out. But by the Middle Ages,
Speaker 1: ferreting had become illegal. Now, of course, illegal activities back then,
Speaker 1: just as they are today, were only illegal to those
Speaker 1: who couldn't get away with them. So in order to
Speaker 1: keep using ferrets, hunters would sneak them past the game wardens.
Speaker 1: And how do you smuggle a long furry rodent into
Speaker 1: a restricted area Why in your pants. Of course, after
Speaker 1: that the practice changed into something entirely different. How exactly well,
Speaker 1: those details are a bit fuzzy, but it became a
Speaker 1: sport called ferret legging. The rules are quite simple. A
Speaker 1: competitor stands before a panel of judges with his pants
Speaker 1: tied at the ankles. He then places two ferrets inside
Speaker 1: his trousers and tightens his belt at the waist to
Speaker 1: keep them from getting out. The goal, and yes, I
Speaker 1: promise there is a goal here, is to last the
Speaker 1: longest as the ferrets clamber from one leg to the other.
Speaker 1: None of the ferrets may be sedated, and they must
Speaker 1: have all of their teeth and claws intact. Oh, and
Speaker 1: the competitors aren't allowed to wear underwear. Among the earliest
Speaker 1: players of the game were coal miners in Yorkshire, England
Speaker 1: are in the nineteen seventies. It also found popularity among
Speaker 1: drunk patrons at pubs looking to gamble on absurd barroom shenanigans,
Speaker 1: which honestly doesn't surprise me in the least now. At first,
Speaker 1: contestants could only last about forty seconds before having to
Speaker 1: remove the ferrets. Eventually they were able to stand the
Speaker 1: sensation for over a minute and even go as long
Speaker 1: as an hour and a half. But according to the
Speaker 1: record books, the longest a person has been able to
Speaker 1: last with ferrets in his pants a sentence even I
Speaker 1: never thought I'd have to say out loud, is about
Speaker 1: five and a half hours. That man's name was Regg
Speaker 1: Miller from Barnsley, South Yorkshire. He had originally hoped for
Speaker 1: six hours, having gotten used to keeping ferrets in his
Speaker 1: pants as a child. He would catch them and store
Speaker 1: them in his trousers while working outside in the rain
Speaker 1: so that they stayed safe and warm. On July five,
Speaker 1: one Red stood in front of an audience of twenty people.
Speaker 1: Hour after hour, he calmly allowed the ferrets to travel
Speaker 1: from one leg of his pants to the other in
Speaker 1: search of an exit they would never find. It. Took
Speaker 1: five and a half hours, but they finally gave up.
Speaker 1: Not the ferrets, mind you, the audience. They got so
Speaker 1: bored by his attempt they just got up and walked out.
Speaker 1: The stage was torn down with Redge still standing there,
Speaker 1: ferrets still in pantst until the record keepers just called it.
Speaker 1: He had beaten the original time, but he hadn't reached
Speaker 1: his goal of six hours, just shy of it at
Speaker 1: five hours and twenty six minutes. As the years went on,
Speaker 1: ferret legging, like the bell bottoms, the animals that had
Speaker 1: been contained inside fell out of style. Although from two
Speaker 1: thousand three to two thousand nine it was actually part
Speaker 1: of the Richmond Highland Games and Celtic Festival in Richmond, Virginia,
Speaker 1: it was a sports unlike any other and its existence
Speaker 1: made no sense. But for those who played it, ferret
Speaker 1: legging was a solid test of their endurance, their tolerance
Speaker 1: for pain, and of course how much they'd had to drink.
Speaker 1: Curious you better believe it. I hope you've enjoyed today's
Speaker 1: guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities subscribe for free
Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by
Speaker 1: visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by
Speaker 1: me Aaron Manky in partnership with how Stuff Works. I
Speaker 1: make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast,
Speaker 1: book series, and television show, and you can learn all
Speaker 1: about it over at the World of Lore dot com.
Speaker 1: And until next time, stay curious.