Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Menkey's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world is
Speaker 1: full of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book,
Speaker 1: all of these amazing tales are right there on display,
Speaker 1: just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet
Speaker 1: of Curiosities. Nobody likes an overachiever, someone who shows up
Speaker 1: everyone else by going above and beyond the call of duty.
Speaker 1: They breed resentment and pettiness among those who are comfortable
Speaker 1: with things being good enough. But not Amo Koivunen. He
Speaker 1: went above and beyond what most people accomplished, but nobody
Speaker 1: hated him for it. They loved him. He was a hero.
Speaker 1: Koivunen was born in Finland in nineteen seventeen, eventually joining
Speaker 1: the military to fight the Soviet Union. Thirty years later,
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty nine, the Soviets invaded Finland in what
Speaker 1: was called the Winter War. After a year of fighting
Speaker 1: followed by the signing of a peace treaty between the
Speaker 1: two sides, the Soviets had taken eleven percent of the
Speaker 1: country for itself. Finished, soldiers saw a chance to get
Speaker 1: their territory back The following year, as Hitler's German soldiers
Speaker 1: moved in, they joined forces with the Nazis. Though they
Speaker 1: wanted no part in the Holocaust. All they wanted was
Speaker 1: their land back. Unfortunately, even with the Germans behind them,
Speaker 1: the Finns weren't strong enough to fend off the Soviets.
Speaker 1: The Nazis retreated and Finland was left to face the
Speaker 1: Red Army on its own. Most soldiers saw the writing
Speaker 1: on the wall. There was no way they would survive
Speaker 1: another war against the Soviet Union, but some men pressed
Speaker 1: on despite the odds. One such soldier was twenty seven
Speaker 1: year old Amo Koivunen. A March eighteenth of nineteen forty four,
Speaker 1: Koivunen was making some for his units. He and his
Speaker 1: men had settled in for a cup to warm themselves
Speaker 1: amid the freezing winter air when gunshots rang out around them. Koivunen,
Speaker 1: who had been placed on ski patrol that day, sped
Speaker 1: away from the Soviet incursion. Gaining on his tail, he
Speaker 1: skied for hours, keeping his distance until he could find
Speaker 1: safer ground, but they kept coming. Luckily, he had a
Speaker 1: secret weapon in his pockets. It was a little pill
Speaker 1: called pervtten German soldiers were known to take it for
Speaker 1: an energy boost to keep fighting. There were downsides, however,
Speaker 1: those who took the drug off and experienced wild hallucinations.
Speaker 1: Some even died from the side effects. Pervten was less
Speaker 1: like adrenaline and more like a primitive version of crystal meth.
Speaker 1: Kai Unan hesitated. He had never taken this stuff before,
Speaker 1: but as enemy soldiers encroached on his position, he was
Speaker 1: left with fewer options for survival. Someone called out for
Speaker 1: him to keep going. Don't slow down, they said, so
Speaker 1: he shoved his mittened hand into his pocket and pulled
Speaker 1: out the bottle. He couldn't grab us a single pill
Speaker 1: with his hand restricted by his mitten, so he dumped
Speaker 1: the bottle out into his palm and swallowed everything that
Speaker 1: fell out, thirty pills. The effects were almost immediate. He
Speaker 1: raced ahead, his exhaustion a thing of the past. Koivunen
Speaker 1: had never felt better. In fact, he was so hopped
Speaker 1: up on pervidden that he didn't notice the Russians shooting
Speaker 1: at him as he skied past them in the wrong direction.
Speaker 1: He also didn't notice the landmine that blew him off
Speaker 1: his skis and obliterated his foot With the pervodden still
Speaker 1: racing through him. He crawled over two feet to a ditch,
Speaker 1: where he waited for backup, but it never came. Koivunen
Speaker 1: expected that he would die from many number of things,
Speaker 1: the plummeting temperatures, his gaping wounds, or from the lethal
Speaker 1: dose of pervdten raging through his system. He spent nearly
Speaker 1: a week in that dugout, subsisting on pine nuts and
Speaker 1: a bird that he caught, which he ate raw. Days later,
Speaker 1: he pulled himself out of the ditch and set off
Speaker 1: on foot, with no idea where he was going. Two
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty miles later, he stumbled into a finished hospital,
Speaker 1: which took him in and assessed his condition. He had
Speaker 1: lost considerable weight and his heart was still racing, but
Speaker 1: he'd made it. Amo koi Vennon had ingested thirty times
Speaker 1: the recommended dose of a dangerous drug, escaped Soviet soldiers
Speaker 1: on skis, survived a landmine explosion, spent a week in
Speaker 1: a ditch in the freezing cold, and then walked two
Speaker 1: fifty miles to reach safety. By all measures, he shouldn't
Speaker 1: have survived at all, but Amo koi Vennon lived to
Speaker 1: be seventy two years old. I guess what didn't kill
Speaker 1: him only made him stronger. In New York City, you
Speaker 1: don't build out, you build up. Real estate is at
Speaker 1: such a premium. On the small island, stores tend to
Speaker 1: be not much larger than shoe boxes. Office buildings, on
Speaker 1: the their hand, source so high they can pierce the
Speaker 1: clouds no matter the size. Though one thing is certain,
Speaker 1: New York is always changing. Old buildings are torn down
Speaker 1: to make way for new ones, while mom and pop
Speaker 1: stores of days gone by become the chain coffee shops
Speaker 1: of today. For example, the historic Pennsylvania Station, which had
Speaker 1: been the boa arts fixture of Midtown Manhattan since nineteen ten,
Speaker 1: was demolished in nineteen sixty six so a newer, more
Speaker 1: cost efficient train station could be built in its place.
Speaker 1: A window into the past was shattered the day the
Speaker 1: old penn Station came down, a sign of progress and
Speaker 1: its costs. But New York City was changing even before that.
Speaker 1: Back in nineteen ten, buildings that had lined the streets
Speaker 1: of Granwich Village for years suddenly found themselves on the
Speaker 1: chopping block. The reason the city had become too crowded.
Speaker 1: It's narrow streets needed to be widened to accommodate a
Speaker 1: new subway line being built underneath. Properties spanning eleven blocks
Speaker 1: were slated for demolition, including storefronts, homes, and a five
Speaker 1: story apartment building called the Vorhees. The Vorhees lived at
Speaker 1: seventh Avenue in Christopher Street and had been owned by
Speaker 1: a Philadelphia landlord named David Hess. Hess's estate resented that
Speaker 1: the city was trying to do this, and they weren't
Speaker 1: the only ones. Landowners from all over New York fought
Speaker 1: tooth and nail to keep their buildings intact. Petitions were signed,
Speaker 1: lawsuits were filed, but the city officials declared eminent domain
Speaker 1: and the fight was over. If New York wanted to
Speaker 1: use the land for public projects, then it was well
Speaker 1: within their rights to do so. The land across those
Speaker 1: seven blocks was surveyed just before the buildings came down,
Speaker 1: with every square inch tallied up as part of the
Speaker 1: city's total. Well almost every square inch. Apparently the land
Speaker 1: surveyors had missed a small amount of Hess's property in
Speaker 1: their survey. The Vorhees apartment building was still demolished, but
Speaker 1: Hess's estate was entitled to the land. It's still owned,
Speaker 1: so the city asked them if they would be kind
Speaker 1: enough to donate that land so as not to break
Speaker 1: up the work already underway. Hessa's airs, bitter about how
Speaker 1: they'd been treated, said no. If New York wanted its
Speaker 1: new subway line, it was going to have to build
Speaker 1: it around a Lot fifty five, the remaining parcel of
Speaker 1: land it did not own, which it did. The Seventh
Speaker 1: Avenue subway line was eventually finished, despite the Hess's ownership
Speaker 1: of Lot fifty five. In the late nineteen thirties, after
Speaker 1: the estate had grown tired of paying taxes on such
Speaker 1: a tiny sliver of land, the property was sold for
Speaker 1: one thousand dollars to Village Cigars, owners of Lot fifty
Speaker 1: four next door. It was a paltry sum for a
Speaker 1: prime slice of New York real estate even then. Today,
Speaker 1: Village Cigars still occupies the corner of Seventh Avenue and
Speaker 1: Christopher Street, and the memory of the hess battle with
Speaker 1: the city lives on thanks to the small commemorative plaque
Speaker 1: on the sidewalk outside. It reads property of the Hess Estate,
Speaker 1: which has never been dedicated for public purposes. Village Cigars
Speaker 1: is not the smallest free standing in building in New York. No,
Speaker 1: that honor belongs to the square foot Greenwich Locksmith's a
Speaker 1: few blocks away, which can only accommodate one or two
Speaker 1: people inside at a time. However, the former Hess property
Speaker 1: is still technically the smallest piece of private land in
Speaker 1: the city, at only inches around. To see it's all
Speaker 1: one has to do is walk to the corner of
Speaker 1: Seventh Avenue and Christopher Streets in Greenwich Village and look
Speaker 1: down at the triangular plaque. And that's it. The plaque
Speaker 1: covers the entire property. That little active defiance marks what
Speaker 1: remains of the hessa State's former New York fuip print.
Speaker 1: You might not be able to build a house on it,
Speaker 1: but you can certainly admire what it represents. Ines of
Speaker 1: stubbornness from one New York City family that refused to
Speaker 1: be bullied around. Now that's what i'd call curious. I
Speaker 1: hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities,
Speaker 1: so suscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more
Speaker 1: about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The
Speaker 1: show was created by me Aaron Manky in partnership with
Speaker 1: how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called
Speaker 1: Lore which is a podcast, book series, and television show
Speaker 1: and you can learn all about it over at the
Speaker 1: World of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious. Yeah,