Speaker 1: Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history
Speaker 1: is an open book, all of these amazing tales are
Speaker 1: right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. The humble farmer the
Speaker 1: backbone of the American way of life. They grow and
Speaker 1: harvest to provide not only for their own families, but
Speaker 1: ours as well. Everything from corn to potatoes to squash
Speaker 1: is cultivated across world farmland from coast to coast. However,
Speaker 1: in eighty nine, something else was unearthed in a farmer's field,
Speaker 1: something that didn't make sense, something that didn't belong there.
Speaker 1: Workers in Vermont were digging up land to build the
Speaker 1: first railroad between Burlington and Rutland. During the dig, one
Speaker 1: of the workers noticed something sticking up in the dirt, bones,
Speaker 1: quite a few of them. In fact, he didn't think
Speaker 1: much of them at the time, seeing as how horse
Speaker 1: skeletons had been spotted from time to time as they
Speaker 1: were pulling up the land. So they kept working, not
Speaker 1: caring too much about what happened to the former horse.
Speaker 1: They just unearthed. A local residents, Mr John G. Thorpe,
Speaker 1: had been passing by when he too saw the bones
Speaker 1: poking out from the dig site. There was something about
Speaker 1: them that struck him as odd, though he certainly didn't
Speaker 1: think they were horse bones, so he convinced the man
Speaker 1: in charge of the railroad project to move his workers
Speaker 1: to another plot of land so he could collect and
Speaker 1: analyze the bones. Naturalist ZADEK. Thompson was brought in for
Speaker 1: his expertise in identifying what kind of animal the bones
Speaker 1: had once belonged to. Thompson was a prolific author of
Speaker 1: many animal and nature guides. Despite serious limitations to his situation.
Speaker 1: No one else was working in his field, and he
Speaker 1: had no access to specimens or books to further his studies.
Speaker 1: He was charting new territory for the scientific community, but
Speaker 1: that didn't stop him from studying the various flora and
Speaker 1: fauna in his native Vermont, including the skeleton Mr. Thorpe
Speaker 1: had rescued from the railroad workers. After some consideration and examination,
Speaker 1: Mr Thompson identified it as having belonged to the ancient
Speaker 1: ancestor of the Beluga whale. While there was no way
Speaker 1: to determine its sex, its skull and teeth indicated the
Speaker 1: twelve foot long specimen had been a full grown adult
Speaker 1: before its death. It was a fascinating discovery, but there
Speaker 1: were two questions the men shared, as did everyone else
Speaker 1: who came across the specimen. First, how did a beluga
Speaker 1: whale wind up in the middle of a farmer's field
Speaker 1: in Vermont, one fifty miles from the closest shore. And second,
Speaker 1: how had it made its way so far down from
Speaker 1: the native Arctic waters of the North. Such a creature
Speaker 1: had no business being so far from its home. Well,
Speaker 1: it took a while for technology and environmental studies to
Speaker 1: catch up. The scientists eventually learned that the Charlotte whale,
Speaker 1: named for the town where it was discovered, had been
Speaker 1: stuck in Vermont for a very long time. The bones
Speaker 1: had been preserved under ten feet of blue clay sediments
Speaker 1: left over from the Champlain Sea, a temporary inlet that
Speaker 1: had formed when glaciers retreated at the end of the
Speaker 1: last glacial period. The sea had dried up thousands of
Speaker 1: years ago, leaving the whale and presumably other creatures in
Speaker 1: the middle of Vermont with no way out. Today, the
Speaker 1: Charlotte whale is the official state marine fossil of Vermont,
Speaker 1: and while it's certainly strange to find something as large
Speaker 1: as a dead whale so far from the ocean. It
Speaker 1: happens more than we realize. Discoveries like this teach us
Speaker 1: about how the Earth changes, how oceans shift over time,
Speaker 1: and even how those changes affect the migration of wildlife
Speaker 1: around the globe. The world around us is never constant.
Speaker 1: We may think we're fine, but if we sit still
Speaker 1: long enough, we might discover we've missed our window to
Speaker 1: get out, just like the Charlotte whale. While America is
Speaker 1: a relatively young country, the history of the land upon
Speaker 1: which it sits extends as far back as the beginning
Speaker 1: of time itself. Culture has lived and died for thousands
Speaker 1: of years before we got here, and we can still
Speaker 1: see remnants of their existence if we look hard enough.
Speaker 1: Drawings on cave walls and artifacts left behind offer insight
Speaker 1: into how they lived and what they cared about. Shards
Speaker 1: of ornate pottery can tell us how a culture might
Speaker 1: have valued craftsmanship as much as they valued practicality. But
Speaker 1: what about the artifacts that defy explanation, the ones that
Speaker 1: cannot be explained and in one case, shouldn't exist at all.
Speaker 1: Near a small town in Minnesota, in a Swedish resident
Speaker 1: named Olaf Omen had recently purchased a plot of land
Speaker 1: needing some clean up. The trees and old stumps had
Speaker 1: to be pulled out so he could start plowing. As
Speaker 1: he was working with his ten year old son Edward
Speaker 1: at his side, it came across a poplar tree with
Speaker 1: something tangled in its roots. It was large and gray
Speaker 1: and heavy, a slab of rock weighing over two hundred pounds.
Speaker 1: While unusual for something so large to be found at
Speaker 1: the base of a tree, Olaf didn't think much of
Speaker 1: it until his son mentioned the strange markings all over
Speaker 1: its sides and face. He had assumed they'd found an
Speaker 1: old Native American almanac, a record of past and future
Speaker 1: events as predicted by the local native population from hundreds
Speaker 1: of years ago. Olaf had a copy of the inscriptions
Speaker 1: sent to several universities for analysis, and the results weren't
Speaker 1: what he'd expected. It spoke of a mixed group of
Speaker 1: Norwegians and Germans setting out on a journey from Vinland
Speaker 1: to America in thirteen sixty two, on thirty years before
Speaker 1: Columbus would set foot in the New World. According to
Speaker 1: the historians and linguistic experts at the time the stone
Speaker 1: was a forgery, a fake. The symbols weren't Native American
Speaker 1: but modern Scandinavian in origin, and while the stone itself
Speaker 1: was many centuries old, the tree that it had supposedly
Speaker 1: been buried beneath was only about thirty years old. Olaff
Speaker 1: later sold the stone to historian Yalmar Holland for ten
Speaker 1: dollars and walked away from his discovery. Holland, however, wanted
Speaker 1: the world to know about it. He believed in its
Speaker 1: authenticity and wrote an article that went about as viral
Speaker 1: as an article could get. Back in the nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: he took the Kensington Ruined Stone, named for the town
Speaker 1: it was found in, on a tour across Europe, struggling
Speaker 1: for forty years to convince the smartest people in the
Speaker 1: world that what he possessed was a truly unique historical artifact. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: historians and x where It's concurred that despite the stone
Speaker 1: itself being quiet ancient, the language and the carvings found
Speaker 1: on it were no more than a hundred years old.
Speaker 1: It didn't help that in nineteen seventy six, an interview
Speaker 1: with the son of a man who had known olaf
Speaker 1: Omen came to light, wherein he confessed that Omen himself
Speaker 1: had carved the inscriptions, and that seemed to be the
Speaker 1: end of the story. The Ruined Stone had been nothing
Speaker 1: more than an elaborate hoax, to what end no one knows.
Speaker 1: But in night two a professor at Cornell University named
Speaker 1: Robert Hall decided to take another crack at it. He
Speaker 1: re examined the ruins, eventually publishing a book on his findings.
Speaker 1: He took issue with how the stones critics had conducted
Speaker 1: their research and claimed that the bizarre mix of ancient
Speaker 1: and modern Scandinavian could have been due to the Swedish
Speaker 1: language starting to change at the time. Two distinct groups
Speaker 1: from different regions in the world traveling together for so
Speaker 1: long might have resulted in the linguistic equivalent of cross pollination.
Speaker 1: In addition, a letter written by Dutch cartog or for
Speaker 1: gerardis Mercator to the mathematician John d referred to a
Speaker 1: man who had received word of eight men traveling to
Speaker 1: the Arctic Islands from Norway in the mid thirt hundreds.
Speaker 1: Journeys from Scandinavia to North America at the time, we're
Speaker 1: apparently not unheard of today. The Kensington Ruined Stone is
Speaker 1: the centerpiece of the aptly named Ruinstone Museum in Alexandria, Minnesota,
Speaker 1: and its influence extends far beyond its questionable origin story.
Speaker 1: The stone and its alleged Viking heritage have inspired the
Speaker 1: state's official football team, the Minnesota Vikings, as well as
Speaker 1: countless other buildings and businesses with similarly themed names. What
Speaker 1: began as a curious discovery in an empty field transformed
Speaker 1: an entire state's identity. The debate over the Kensington Runestone
Speaker 1: continues to this day, but it's authenticity might not even
Speaker 1: matter anymore. It's not the reality that people have lashed onto,
Speaker 1: but the belief in what it could be, who we are,
Speaker 1: It's names is never set in stone. I hope you've
Speaker 1: enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe
Speaker 1: for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the
Speaker 1: show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was
Speaker 1: created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership with how Stuff Works.
Speaker 1: I make another award winning show called Lore, which is
Speaker 1: a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can
Speaker 1: learn all about it over at the World of Lore
Speaker 1: dot com, and until next time, stay curious.