Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Grimm 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: John was sweating in his stiff uniform under the hot
Speaker 1: studio lights. It was October fourth of nineteen fifty seven,
Speaker 1: and all that morning he'd been focusing on music. This
Speaker 1: wasn't unusual for John. As a test pilot, his mind
Speaker 1: was usually on popular mechanics, not popular songs. Today, however,
Speaker 1: he was turning in his pilot's license for a chance
Speaker 1: to compete on a game show called Name That Tune.
Speaker 1: As the cameras started rolling and the orchestra played, the
Speaker 1: host of the show introduced John and Eddie, the ten
Speaker 1: year old boy who'd be his partner on the show
Speaker 1: that night. Noting that John was a military pilot, the
Speaker 1: host went slightly off script to ask him a question
Speaker 1: that the entire audience was probably wondering. What did he
Speaker 1: think of the Russian satellite that was circling the globe
Speaker 1: at that very moment. Beyond this being John's debut in
Speaker 1: game show Stardom, October fourth of nineteen fifty seven was
Speaker 1: the day that Russia launched Sputnik, the first man made satellite,
Speaker 1: into orbit. John smiled and responded that this marked the
Speaker 1: beginning of a new age of space travel, one that
Speaker 1: perhaps his co contestant, Eddie, would participate in someday. John
Speaker 1: didn't know it yet, but it was he, not Eddie,
Speaker 1: that was about to shoot for the stars. Growing up
Speaker 1: in Ohio, John had a fascination with planes from a
Speaker 1: young age. After taking his first flight with his father
Speaker 1: at eight years old, he spent hours making model planes
Speaker 1: and imagining flying them through the clouds. As he grew older,
Speaker 1: imagination turned into action. John obtained a private pilot's license
Speaker 1: in college in nineteen forty one, clocking hundreds of hours
Speaker 1: in the air. By the time the United States entered
Speaker 1: World War II in December of forty one, John knew
Speaker 1: what he wanted to do. He wanted to be a
Speaker 1: fighter pilot for the US military. He served in the
Speaker 1: Pacific as a marine pilot, flying fifty seven missions against
Speaker 1: Japanese planes. By the time the Korean War rolled around
Speaker 1: in the early nineteen fifties, John was known as a
Speaker 1: fearless flyer who didn't hesitate to hunt down the Communist
Speaker 1: forces faster, better equipped MiG fifteen jets. While he was
Speaker 1: patrolling the skies over Korea, he had his first brush
Speaker 1: with fame in the form of his wingman, Boston red
Speaker 1: Sox Hall of Fame hitter Ted Williams, but in a
Speaker 1: few short years it would be John and not Ted
Speaker 1: making the headlines. After the war, John began working as
Speaker 1: a test pilot for the Navy, and as the years
Speaker 1: went on, John found himself behind a desk more often
Speaker 1: than he was in the cockpit. Knowing if he didn't
Speaker 1: act soon that he would be relegated to paperwork forever.
Speaker 1: He came up with a scheme, one that would show
Speaker 1: off the Navy's latest technology and cement his status as
Speaker 1: a flying star. On July sixteenth of nineteen fifty seven,
Speaker 1: John made the first ever supersonic transcontinental flight. He flew
Speaker 1: from California to New York in just three hours and
Speaker 1: twenty three seconds, a full twenty two minutes less than
Speaker 1: the standing record. The moment he exited the cockpit in
Speaker 1: New York. He entered a new world where he was
Speaker 1: a celebrity. He was profiled in The New York Times
Speaker 1: and invited to compete on the game show Name That Tune.
Speaker 1: On that game show, he won twenty five thousand dollars,
Speaker 1: which he used for his children's college fund. But the
Speaker 1: money wasn't the biggest impact from the game show. John's
Speaker 1: taping of Name That Tune just so happened to coincide
Speaker 1: with the launching of Sputnik, Russia's first satellite, and while
Speaker 1: Sputnik was a huge human achievement, it also spiked anxiety
Speaker 1: across the globe. The US was terrified that if Russia
Speaker 1: controlled space, it would control the world, and so the
Speaker 1: race was on to master the final frontier. John shared
Speaker 1: these fears. He had spent his whole career fighting America's
Speaker 1: enemies in the sky, and if the fight was going
Speaker 1: even higher than he wanted to join it. So once
Speaker 1: the United States announced that they were recruiting astronauts for
Speaker 1: its space program, he was one of the first to
Speaker 1: apply and the first to make the cut. On February
Speaker 1: twentieth of nineteen sixty two, John's dreams finally came true.
Speaker 1: When the spaceship Friendship seven launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida,
Speaker 1: John navigated several malfunctions and technical failures, forcing him to
Speaker 1: take over manual operation of the spacecraft. Despite that, just
Speaker 1: five hours later, they splashed down safely in the Pacific Ocean,
Speaker 1: and just like that, John Glenn became the first American
Speaker 1: astronaut to safely orbit our planet, an achievement that wasn't
Speaker 1: just incredible, it was literally out of this world. The
Speaker 1: dawn of the twentieth century saw the invention of many
Speaker 1: staples of our modern life. The motion picture was slowly
Speaker 1: gaining ground as a popular entertainment rather than as a novelty.
Speaker 1: The automobile was growing increasingly popular, and in the realm
Speaker 1: of cuisine, sweetened carbonated soft drinks were becoming more and
Speaker 1: more ubiquitous. While soft drinks had been around for over
Speaker 1: one hundred years, the late eighteen hundreds saw the formation
Speaker 1: of both Coca Cola and Pepsi Cola companies that would
Speaker 1: define the market to the present day. Their immediate popularity
Speaker 1: would also inspire a gold rush of food chemists and
Speaker 1: entrepreneurs trying to gain a foothold in that market. Among
Speaker 1: those was Charles Leiper Grigg, an ad man who saw
Speaker 1: the value in creating a distinct drink to counter program
Speaker 1: coke and pepsi. You see, both of those drinks were
Speaker 1: Cola's extremely high in sugar. Greg believed that he could
Speaker 1: invent a so called on coola, a soft drink that
Speaker 1: would be just as appealing, but based on an entirely
Speaker 1: different set of flavors and ingredients. His first experiment was
Speaker 1: with an orange flavor profile, which led to the creation
Speaker 1: of a soft drink called Whistle in nineteen nineteen. However,
Speaker 1: disputes with the co founder of that company caused him
Speaker 1: to disown the invention and strike out on his own.
Speaker 1: He attempted to launch another orange drink independently, which he
Speaker 1: called Howdy. However, this particular drink never took off. The
Speaker 1: market was already being dominated by orange crush, an invention
Speaker 1: of the nineteen tens. Greg soon realized that any future
Speaker 1: success he might have with soft drinks would not be
Speaker 1: among the oranges. He began exploring drinks that were based
Speaker 1: not on an orange flavor but lemon. There were many
Speaker 1: lemon drinks at the time, but they varied widely by
Speaker 1: region and none had properly been franchised. There was no
Speaker 1: lemon crush to steal his thunder. He tested a number
Speaker 1: of different combinations of flavors around eleven most say, and
Speaker 1: eventually settled on a formula that he thought would be
Speaker 1: a runaway success. The formula included something called lithium citrate.
Speaker 1: Lithium at the time was a popular mood stabilizer, and
Speaker 1: it would become a central part of the SODA's marketing
Speaker 1: campaign once it hit the shelves in nineteen twenty nine,
Speaker 1: two weeks before the stock market crash that triggered the
Speaker 1: Great Depression. A cheap beverage that made people feel better
Speaker 1: would be in high demand as fortunes plummeted and millions
Speaker 1: faced financial ruin. The drink was internally known as BIB
Speaker 1: Label Lithiated Lemon Lime Carbonated Soda, but this name would
Speaker 1: be a bit of a mouthful, no pun intended. The
Speaker 1: marketers who were working with Griggs said that it would
Speaker 1: need to be shortened to lithiated Lemon Soda in order
Speaker 1: to fit more comfortably on advertisements, but that was not
Speaker 1: a particularly catchy name either, not like whistle or the
Speaker 1: name they settled on would be much catchier. But to
Speaker 1: this day, historians are uncertain exactly where it came from.
Speaker 1: It was either the atomic mass of lithium, the size
Speaker 1: of the bottles in ounces, or a reference to the
Speaker 1: number of ingredients in Grigg's final formula. But whatever the
Speaker 1: truth is, we all know what they settled on. Here's
Speaker 1: an early advertisement. It reads, seven surprises await you. Seven
Speaker 1: natural flavors blended into a new drink. Delight you get
Speaker 1: the intensified flavor resulting from the blending of flavors known
Speaker 1: to you an invented sugar drink ninety six to one
Speaker 1: hundred and four calories per bottle, and this drink, of course,
Speaker 1: would be seven up. Almost a century later, it is
Speaker 1: still regarded as one of the giants of the soda world,
Speaker 1: although in the years since its invention certain adjustments have
Speaker 1: needed to be made. Lithium citrate, for instance, is no
Speaker 1: longer part of the recipe, but it still occupies the
Speaker 1: same unique spot in the soda world that Grig carved
Speaker 1: out six years ago. Not bad for a drink that
Speaker 1: was once known as litheated lemon. 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 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 Worldoflore dot com.
Speaker 1: And until next time, stay curious.