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. We've all mailed a
Speaker 1: letter or two in our lifetime. Most of us understand
Speaker 1: that sending a letter has certain costs attached to it,
Speaker 1: like paying the mail carriers and the people whose sort
Speaker 1: and organize it all. So there's a fee attached to
Speaker 1: each letter literally. In fact, since the forties, people have
Speaker 1: paid for the privilege to mail a letter by purchasing stamps.
Speaker 1: One beautiful spring morning, a man named Bill Robbie left
Speaker 1: the post office with a sheet of stamps. There were
Speaker 1: one hundred of them altogether, and he'd paid a whopping
Speaker 1: twenty four hours for the lot of them. They were
Speaker 1: pretty too, with a bright red border on a background
Speaker 1: of sky blue, and right there in the middle of
Speaker 1: the frame, flanked by the value of the stamp and
Speaker 1: a large US Postage banner across the top was an airplane.
Speaker 1: They were hot off the presses and were sort of
Speaker 1: a commemorative stamp, so to speak. You see the airplane
Speaker 1: featured in the artwork was meant to represent a historic
Speaker 1: flight that was about to take place that very same day.
Speaker 1: The Postal Service was about to enter the era of airmail,
Speaker 1: transporting mail over hundreds of miles with the help of airplanes.
Speaker 1: It was a very big deal. In fact, when the
Speaker 1: flight took place the next day, President Woodrow Wilson showed
Speaker 1: up to watch it. The plane was flown from Washington,
Speaker 1: d c. All the way to New York, and despite
Speaker 1: some early engine troubles, the flight finally took off under
Speaker 1: the guidance of Lieutenant George Boyle. The plane, by the way,
Speaker 1: was a Curtis Model j N four. J N of course,
Speaker 1: sounds a lot like jen which is why most people
Speaker 1: called them Jenny's, and that Jenny took off. It vanished
Speaker 1: over the horizon anyway. The day before, when Bill Robbie
Speaker 1: took those stamps home, he noticed something odd about them.
Speaker 1: The entire sheet appeared to have been printed incorrectly. The
Speaker 1: plane in the middle of each tiny frame was flying
Speaker 1: upside down, the product of a simple printing error involving
Speaker 1: a reversed plate. Most importantly, though they were rare. In fact,
Speaker 1: only nine of those upside down sheets were printed before
Speaker 1: the mistake was fixed, making them extremely valuable. I think
Speaker 1: most people have seen them before too. These stamps are
Speaker 1: a textbook example of how manufacturing errors can turn a
Speaker 1: common object into something that's incredibly desired to collectors. And
Speaker 1: let me tell you, these things were desirable. Bill ended
Speaker 1: up selling his twenty four dollar sheet a week later
Speaker 1: four fifteen thousand dollars. The man who bought it sold
Speaker 1: it a week later for twenty tho dollars. From there,
Speaker 1: the prices just skyrocketed over the years. The sheet was
Speaker 1: separated into blocks to sell off one or two stamps
Speaker 1: at a time, and by the nineteen sixties, a single
Speaker 1: stamp price was in the tens of thousands of dollars.
Speaker 1: By the nineteen eighties, one stamp would run you nearly
Speaker 1: two hundred thousand dollars. In May of two thousand sixteen,
Speaker 1: the old Inverted Jenny set a new record with a
Speaker 1: single stamp selling at auction for nearly one point two
Speaker 1: million dollars. And honestly, I can't help but wonder at
Speaker 1: the power of rarity and time to make something as
Speaker 1: small as a postage stamp become worth more than a
Speaker 1: million bucks. It's crazy for sure, but it's not the
Speaker 1: craziest part of this story. These stamps were released on
Speaker 1: May tenth of nineteen eighteen, just a few days ahead
Speaker 1: of the flight they were meant to commemorate. On May fifteenth.
Speaker 1: The crowd gathered to watch the plane take off and
Speaker 1: then watched it slowly disappear in the distance, except headed
Speaker 1: in the wrong direction. It was supposed to fly north,
Speaker 1: but instead headed south. The pilot, George Boyle, blamed it
Speaker 1: on a broken compass when he called his boss for help.
Speaker 1: You see, it turns out he had landed somewhere in
Speaker 1: Maryland and needed someone to come and get him and
Speaker 1: the plane, and not just landed, Boyle actually crashed landed
Speaker 1: that jenny, which was a bit more embarrassing. The plane
Speaker 1: had crashed in a cornfield, and to be honest, it
Speaker 1: was a miracle that Boile survived to talk about it later.
Speaker 1: And that's because of the position the plane ended up in.
Speaker 1: It was upside down. Alan was born in Scotland in
Speaker 1: the early eight hundreds and from the very beginning life
Speaker 1: was rough. His neighborhood in Glasgow was known for its
Speaker 1: poverty and crime, making it very difficult to break outside
Speaker 1: of that pattern, but Alan tried. His father passed away
Speaker 1: before he turned ten, causing him to enter the workforce
Speaker 1: to help support his family. As he grew and worked
Speaker 1: over the years, though, he encountered new ideas and movements,
Speaker 1: one of which was known as chartis Um. It was
Speaker 1: a mid nineteenth century reform movement in Britain that called
Speaker 1: for better rights for the working class. It wasn't a
Speaker 1: bad thing. At its core. The Chartist movement was demanding
Speaker 1: better voting rights and representation in a government that had
Speaker 1: been a bit too inaccessible for a very long time.
Speaker 1: But like all big movements, there were some who took
Speaker 1: things too far. Violent protests and demonstrations led to arrest
Speaker 1: warrants for a number of Chartists, and Alan's name was
Speaker 1: among them. To avoid arrest, Alan hit out at the
Speaker 1: home of friends for months. In April of eighteen forty two,
Speaker 1: though those friends managed to sneak him aboard a ship
Speaker 1: that was headed to the United States. For a long while,
Speaker 1: he seemed to be safe until that is, the ship
Speaker 1: was wrecked off the coast of Nova Scotia. Thankfully, though
Speaker 1: Alan survived. He eventually made his way to the Chicago area,
Speaker 1: where he set up life in a Scottish community known
Speaker 1: as Dundee. Alan was safe there. He had left his
Speaker 1: troubled past behind anovated the authorities. He might have had
Speaker 1: a price on his head back home, but in America
Speaker 1: he was a freeman. All he needed to do now
Speaker 1: was keep a low profile and everything would be all right.
Speaker 1: Five years after moving to Dundee, though, something happened to
Speaker 1: change that. Alan had rode out to a small island
Speaker 1: in the middle of the Fox River to cut some
Speaker 1: timber and encountered evidence of a large campsite. It was
Speaker 1: unusual enough that Alan returned to town and told the
Speaker 1: sheriff about it, and together they set up watch to
Speaker 1: see who might be using the island and for what.
Speaker 1: When they discovered who it was, the sheriff was astounded.
Speaker 1: All known counterfeit operation had been using the island for
Speaker 1: gatherings in between crimes, and thanks to Alan, all of
Speaker 1: them were captured and taken to jail. The sheriff was
Speaker 1: more than grateful for Alan's help and made the young
Speaker 1: man a deputy as a reward. Within two years, Alan
Speaker 1: had moved to Chicago, where he joined the police force.
Speaker 1: There he was good at his job and had an
Speaker 1: eye for details that no one else seemed to have.
Speaker 1: Before long, he became Chicago's first official detective. His career
Speaker 1: would become something of a legend. Hated by criminals, he
Speaker 1: was plagued by assassination attempts for years. A decade after
Speaker 1: arriving in Chicago, though, it was another man's assassination that
Speaker 1: Alan managed to stop. A group of people had planned
Speaker 1: to kill newly elected President Abraham Lincoln as he was
Speaker 1: traveling to Washington, d C. For his inauguration. Alan managed
Speaker 1: to stop it. Though he went on to build a
Speaker 1: business around his skills. He of the official police force
Speaker 1: and became a freelancer, offering his private investigation services to
Speaker 1: anyone who needed them. His reputation became so great that
Speaker 1: when the Department of Justice needed to supplement their team
Speaker 1: of investigators in eighteen seventy one, they hired Allen's company.
Speaker 1: It's all a bit ironic, isn't it. A man who
Speaker 1: fled his homeland to avoid arrest for criminal activities ended
Speaker 1: up becoming the premier detective of the nineteenth century. His
Speaker 1: team helped track down the notorious serial killer H. H. Holmes.
Speaker 1: They toppled the largest New York crime syndicate of the
Speaker 1: day and did battle with the outlaw Jesse James. Most
Speaker 1: people today would recognize Alan's company if they heard the name,
Speaker 1: because it's so unusual. And that's not Allan's fault though,
Speaker 1: because as far back as he was concerned, he did
Speaker 1: the logical thing and named the business after himself. As
Speaker 1: a result, his surname has become synonymous with the concept
Speaker 1: of a detective agency, the Pinkerton's. I hope you've enjoyed
Speaker 1: today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for
Speaker 1: free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show
Speaker 1: by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created
Speaker 1: by me Aaron Manky 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.