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Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Benky's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of

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Speaker 1: I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world is

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Speaker 1: full of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book,

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Speaker 1: all of these amazing tales are right there on display,

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Speaker 1: just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet

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Speaker 1: of Curiosities. According to legend, every year, for over one

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Speaker 1: thousand years, riders and their horses would gather in the

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Speaker 1: Middle East for a race. It was a test of

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Speaker 1: endurance known as the Ocean of Fire, and it spanned

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Speaker 1: three thousand miles of desert. Frank T. Hopkins wrote a

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Speaker 1: detailed account of his participation in that race, which he

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Speaker 1: had competed in toward the end of the nineteenth century.

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Speaker 1: While many don't remember Hopkins today, they certainly were member

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Speaker 1: his horse hid I'll go. Today, the Ocean of Fire

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Speaker 1: has been deemed nothing more than a tall tale. Hopkins

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Speaker 1: and his brave steed probably never traversed the Middle Eastern desert,

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Speaker 1: but similar tests of endurance are still run to this day.

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Speaker 1: One such competition was held in the French city of

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Speaker 1: Nant back in Racers gathered from all over Europe to

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Speaker 1: show the world, Who was the best, who had the stamina,

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Speaker 1: the drive, the determination to get back to England and

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Speaker 1: take home the gold. The racist motto translated to English

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Speaker 1: as at dawn we go, and at six thirty in

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Speaker 1: the morning on June, that's what they did. The racers

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Speaker 1: took off, making their way across the English Channel with gusto.

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Speaker 1: Some hit top speeds of fifty miles per hour out

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Speaker 1: the gate. One such racer was Champion white Tail. White

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Speaker 1: Tail had thirteen wins under his belt by the time

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Speaker 1: he'd reached not that day. He made this trip over

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Speaker 1: a dozen times. White Tail's owner, Tom Rodin went home

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Speaker 1: to Manchester, England, knowing his prized racer would find its

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Speaker 1: way back eventually. White Tail should have arrived a week

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Speaker 1: later on the afternoon of June, but by two pm

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Speaker 1: he was nowhere to be seen. In fact, thousands of

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Speaker 1: racers up and disappeared after the event started. A few

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Speaker 1: of them ever made it home, and there was no

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Speaker 1: explanation for it. Five years passed without a sign of

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Speaker 1: the champion white Tail. Apparently he was gone for good.

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Speaker 1: Then one day, after Rodin had leashed up his dog

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Speaker 1: for a walk, he opened the door to see a

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Speaker 1: familiar sight. Standing there, Champion white Tail had found his

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Speaker 1: way home. Tom knew it was him because of his

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Speaker 1: white tail feathers and the identification ring around his leg.

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Speaker 1: You see, Champion white Tail hadn't participated in a horse race.

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Speaker 1: He was a pigeon. They all were. The incident had

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Speaker 1: become known as the Great Pigeon Disaster of n So

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Speaker 1: what had caused all those pigeons to vanish, leaving only

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Speaker 1: one to find its way home? According to some scientists,

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Speaker 1: it's possible that the birds heard the rumble of a

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Speaker 1: storm way off in the distance that sent them scattering. However,

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Speaker 1: the weather hadn't been rough that week. There had been

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Speaker 1: no fog or heavy winds. But there had been a

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Speaker 1: plane flying straight across the pigeons path. And not just

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Speaker 1: any plane. It was a Concord Supersonic Transports or SST

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Speaker 1: that had been soaring overhead way overhead. The concorde was

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Speaker 1: able to reach speeds of over thirteen hundred miles per hour,

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Speaker 1: faster than the speed of sound, and flew so high

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Speaker 1: that passengers who looked up could glimpse where Earth ended

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Speaker 1: and space began. When the s s T broke, the

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Speaker 1: sound barrier. It left in its wake a sonic boom

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Speaker 1: that sent a shock wave straight toward the pigeons. Disoriented,

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Speaker 1: the animals abandoned their race for safer ground. Weeks after

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Speaker 1: Whitetail's miraculous reappearance, Tom Rodin came home to find a

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Speaker 1: letter waiting for him. It had come from a man

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Speaker 1: named Jean Bouchard, who happened to live in Nuts, where

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Speaker 1: the race had started. He told Tom that he'd stumbled

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Speaker 1: upon an exhausted pigeon in his garden and took it

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Speaker 1: in to help it regain its strength. He'd even built

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Speaker 1: a cage or to keep it safe from his neighbor's cats.

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Speaker 1: He noticed the ring around the bird's ankle with a

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Speaker 1: number on it, which he used to track down Tom.

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Speaker 1: Once white Tail was strong enough to fly, Bouchard took

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Speaker 1: him to the Natural History Museum in town. He had

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Speaker 1: been unaware of the race and thought this was where

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Speaker 1: the pigeon had been released. He opened the cage out

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Speaker 1: flew champion white Tail, who was set free in two

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Speaker 1: different locations, disappeared for five years, and eventually found his

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Speaker 1: way home. A true test of endurance and a true

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Speaker 1: test of the bond between a man at his bird.

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Speaker 1: In five, a farmer in the English village of Silchester

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Speaker 1: was plowing his field when he spotted something shiny at

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Speaker 1: his feet. It was a large ring, the kind that

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Speaker 1: would fit comfortably over a thumb but fall off of

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Speaker 1: any other finger. Now, the area where it was found

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Speaker 1: had originally been a Roman occupied settlement until the seventh century,

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Speaker 1: and the ring showed a connection to that lost era,

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Speaker 1: having been crafted out of twelve grams of gold, with

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Speaker 1: the head of Venus etched into one of its ten sides.

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Speaker 1: Along the other nine sides was a Latin inscription that

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Speaker 1: translated as Senechianus live well in God. Now, if someone's

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Speaker 1: name was chiseled onto the side of a ring, it

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Speaker 1: might be safe to assume that they were the rings

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Speaker 1: original owner. However, the strange story of this ancient piece

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Speaker 1: of jewelry would only get stranger. Years later, a mysterious

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Speaker 1: curse tablet was discovered in the village of Lydney in Gloucestershire,

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Speaker 1: also known as Dwarfs Hill, roughly one miles away from Silchester. Now,

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Speaker 1: curse tablets were a common fixture of the Roman world.

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Speaker 1: Oftentimes they were nothing more than scraps of lead or

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Speaker 1: stone with a message scratched onto them. They were typically

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Speaker 1: tossed into wells or placed in temples as a way

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Speaker 1: of forming a contract with the gods. This particular tablet

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Speaker 1: was found in an old Pagan temple dedicated to a

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Speaker 1: Celtic deity called Nodens, and it read Sylvianis has lost

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Speaker 1: a ring among those who bear the name Senechianus to

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Speaker 1: none grant health until he bring back the ring to

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Speaker 1: the temple. What's amazing is that for almost a hundred

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Speaker 1: and fifty years these two artifacts remained separate, their connection

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Speaker 1: as yet undiscovered. Then, in the late nineteen twenties, archaeologist

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Speaker 1: Sir Mortimer Wheeler began to wonder about their story. However,

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Speaker 1: he needed confirmation from an expert on English etymology and history.

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Speaker 1: He invited his colleague John, who was a professor of

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Speaker 1: Anglo Saxon at Pembroke College in Oxford, to examine the

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Speaker 1: ring and tablet. Growing up, John had developed a passion

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Speaker 1: for subjects like botany and Latin. As he got older,

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Speaker 1: he explored other tongues such as Esperanto. He even constructed

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Speaker 1: alphabets of his own invention, which bloomed into full functioning languages.

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Speaker 1: At the start of World War One, John was shunned

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Speaker 1: by his family and community for not rushing to enlist,

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Speaker 1: but he valued his education above all else. He deferred

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Speaker 1: enlistment until he earned his degree, at which point he

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Speaker 1: joined a regiment, married his high school sweetheart, and fought

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Speaker 1: until he was too sick to fight. Once he was

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Speaker 1: discharged from the military, he found a job working for

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Speaker 1: the Oxford English Dictionary as an etymologist, someone who studies

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Speaker 1: the origins and histories of words, with his focus mainly

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Speaker 1: on Germanic words. From there he began a career in

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Speaker 1: academics that took him from the University of Leeds to

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Speaker 1: Pembroke College at Oxford University. So when Sir Mortimer Wheeler

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Speaker 1: pulled John into his mystery, the younger man was well

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Speaker 1: suited to examine the ring and tablets, and he saw

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Speaker 1: the connection right away. He deduced that a Christian man

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Speaker 1: named Senechianus had stolen the ring from its Roman owner

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Speaker 1: Silviannis sometime during the fourth century. Sylviannas then did what

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Speaker 1: he thought would help. He made a cursed tablet and

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Speaker 1: traveled to the temple, where he asked the pagan god

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Speaker 1: to bring illness upon the thief until they returned the

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Speaker 1: ring to its rightful home. Unfortunately, the ring never made

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Speaker 1: it back, and the thief solidified his new ownership by

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Speaker 1: having his own name inscribed around it. John helped put

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Speaker 1: the pieces together for his friend, but the story of

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Speaker 1: the Cursed Ring left him intrigued. Not long after, he

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Speaker 1: started working on a story, one that followed the adventures

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Speaker 1: of someone who finds their own cursed Golden Ring. And

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Speaker 1: while that old Roman ring and its associated cursed tablets

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Speaker 1: are pretty much forgotten by most today, the entire world

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Speaker 1: knows the stories that John wrote. They span a number

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Speaker 1: of novels, all of which have been adapted for the

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Speaker 1: big screen, and it formed much of the foundation of

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Speaker 1: modern fantasy literature. All thanks to John John Ronald Ruel

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Speaker 1: Token and his stories The Hobbit and The Lord of

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Speaker 1: the Rings. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of

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Speaker 1: the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts,

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Speaker 1: or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast

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Speaker 1: dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Mankey

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Speaker 1: in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award

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Speaker 1: winning show called Lore which is a podcast, book series,

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Speaker 1: and television show and you can learn all about it

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Speaker 1: over at the world of Lore dot com. And until

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Speaker 1: next time, stay curious. Yeah,