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. It rises over the
Speaker 1: Colorado River, a concrete protector for the areas below. It
Speaker 1: irrigates more than one point five million acres of land
Speaker 1: in the United States and Mexico, where much of our
Speaker 1: fruit and cotton are grown, and it supplies water and
Speaker 1: hydro electric power to Nevada, Arizona, and California without fail.
Speaker 1: The Hoover Dam is truly a wonder of the modern world.
Speaker 1: Built in ninety three, it took one thousand men, five years,
Speaker 1: and four point four million cubic yards of concrete to
Speaker 1: finish it, and like all great structures, it started out
Speaker 1: as little more than an idea. As families began moving
Speaker 1: out west in the late eighteen hundreds, they found themselves
Speaker 1: at the mercy of all sorts of things, including the
Speaker 1: local wildlife, harsh weather conditions, and the most dangerous natural
Speaker 1: phenomenon of all, the Colorado River. People living in the
Speaker 1: lower River Valley often lost their homes and sometimes even
Speaker 1: their lives during the time is when the Colorado flooded,
Speaker 1: so in a group of surveyors decided to do something
Speaker 1: about it. They saw what could be possible if a
Speaker 1: dam was built in just the right spot on the river,
Speaker 1: and what it could do for the neighboring territories. No
Speaker 1: more devastating floods. Instead, they could provide electric power for
Speaker 1: thousands and a feather in America's cap as an agricultural innovator.
Speaker 1: They considered blasting the walls of nearby Boulder Canyon, collapsing
Speaker 1: it into a sort of natural dam, but the met
Speaker 1: it was untested and there were no guarantees that would
Speaker 1: save money in the long run. Instead, on December twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: five days before Christmas, the surveyors set out to find
Speaker 1: the perfect spot to build their damn from scratch. It
Speaker 1: was during this hunt when the Colorado River experienced a
Speaker 1: flash flood. No one saw it coming, especially not John
Speaker 1: Gregory Tierney, who was caught in the rush and washed
Speaker 1: away in the river. Though his remains were never found,
Speaker 1: John was presumed to be dead. He became the first
Speaker 1: of almost one casualties of the Hoover Dam, both before
Speaker 1: and during its construction. John left behind a son, Patrick
Speaker 1: William Tierney, who learned to get by without his father
Speaker 1: there to guide him. Before the damn's completion, however, Patrick
Speaker 1: experienced the second worst thing to happen to his family
Speaker 1: since his father is untimely death, the Great Depression. Everyone
Speaker 1: was out of work, and without his father there to
Speaker 1: help make ends meet, it was up to Patrick to
Speaker 1: support the rest of the family. He sought work wherever
Speaker 1: he could. Unfortunately, Patrick had no notable skills and jobs
Speaker 1: were hard to come by. Then one day he came
Speaker 1: across an open position as an electrician's helper on a
Speaker 1: major construction project out west. You can probably guess what
Speaker 1: that project was too. That's right, the Hoover Dam. The
Speaker 1: wild endeavor his father never got to see get off
Speaker 1: the ground was now his Patrick worked on the enormous
Speaker 1: intake towers, responsible for moving water throughout the dam for
Speaker 1: irrigation and hydro electric power. It was a good job
Speaker 1: and he earned a lot of money doing it. But
Speaker 1: then the unthinkable happened. In nineteen thirty five, three months
Speaker 1: after President Franklin Roosevelt dedicated the dam in front of
Speaker 1: the American public, a freak accident sent Patrick falling off
Speaker 1: one of the intake towers on the Arizona side of
Speaker 1: the dam. He pomittedt to his death below. Patrick was
Speaker 1: officially listed as the final casualty of the Hoover Damn's construction.
Speaker 1: The date of his death December, exactly fourteen years to
Speaker 1: the day his father, the very first casualty, was swept
Speaker 1: away by the Colorado River. It was a tragedy, for sure,
Speaker 1: but you know what they say, like father, like son.
Speaker 1: Long before we were shaking polaroids and our phones became
Speaker 1: our primary camera, we looked at photography through a different lens.
Speaker 1: It required large, specialized equipment to shoot photos. The process
Speaker 1: was slow, expensive, and the results were hit or miss.
Speaker 1: In short, it needed time to develop. In eighteen twenty four,
Speaker 1: a process known as heliography allowed Joseph Nissa for Naps
Speaker 1: to take the first photograph. He would expose a plate
Speaker 1: of glass coated with a type of naturally occurring asphalt
Speaker 1: to the light in order for the asphalt to harden.
Speaker 1: After washing the plate with oil of lavender, the hardened
Speaker 1: areas stayed behind while the rest fell away, leaving Nieps
Speaker 1: with what we know today as a photograph. But the
Speaker 1: process was long and cumbersome. Exposure times took days, and
Speaker 1: the only subjects that would sit still long enough to
Speaker 1: have their pictures taken for trees. As the years went on,
Speaker 1: scientists worked to refine those early techniques. New materials such
Speaker 1: as silver I had died and mercury vapors were introduced,
Speaker 1: and exposure time shrunk from days two hours, and then
Speaker 1: two minutes. In eighteen forty one, almost twenty years after
Speaker 1: heliography's debut, one physicist realized that if he swapped silver
Speaker 1: I had died for silver bromide, he could shrink exposure
Speaker 1: times even more. What once took minutes now took seconds
Speaker 1: and made portraits of real life human beings possible. Add
Speaker 1: in the introduction of paper in eighty seven, and we
Speaker 1: start to get the picture of what would come to
Speaker 1: be recognized as modern photography. But before we started winding
Speaker 1: rolls of cellul Lloyd into the backs of our codax,
Speaker 1: amateur photos were still being taken on photographic plates, rectangular
Speaker 1: sheets of glass coated in light sensitive silver salts. Once used,
Speaker 1: these plates were taken to specialty shops where they were
Speaker 1: developed onto paper. This is what happened to a mother
Speaker 1: in Germany in nineteen fourteen. Like any camera toting parent
Speaker 1: of a young child, she wanted to preserve a moment
Speaker 1: in time of her little boy. She propped him up
Speaker 1: in his adorable white outfit and snapped a photo, burning
Speaker 1: the image into the glass plates ready to be developed.
Speaker 1: A Fortunately, the only thing developing in Germany in nineteen
Speaker 1: fourteen was War World War One, to be precise. The
Speaker 1: woman took the plate to a store in Strasburg, hoping
Speaker 1: she'd have the image back in time, but it was
Speaker 1: too late. War had broken out and the town grew
Speaker 1: too dangerous for her and her family to live in.
Speaker 1: The mother fled to Frankfort just after dropping off the
Speaker 1: plate to be developed. The photo of her bouncing baby
Speaker 1: boy stayed behind, lost forever. Two years later, the woman,
Speaker 1: safe from the tanks and guns and grenades, gave birth
Speaker 1: to another child, this time a daughter. She wanted to
Speaker 1: commemorate the newest addition to her family with you guessed
Speaker 1: it a photograph. This time would be different. They were
Speaker 1: not at risk of the war finding them again, so
Speaker 1: after a quick stroll to buy a new photographic plate,
Speaker 1: she did the same thing she had done two years
Speaker 1: earlier with her son. She propped her daughter up in
Speaker 1: front of the camera and click. There she was, her
Speaker 1: little girl, immortalized on glass. The woman dropped the plate
Speaker 1: at the nearest shop, and this time she was able
Speaker 1: to stick around long enough to pick up her prince.
Speaker 1: But when she saw the photo, something was wrong. There
Speaker 1: was someone else in the picture. The new plate she'd
Speaker 1: bought hadn't been new at all. It had been mislabeled
Speaker 1: when it was transferred from a shop in Strasburg all
Speaker 1: the way to Frankfurt during the war. Behind the image
Speaker 1: of her beautiful baby girl was another person, a little
Speaker 1: boy dressed in white. Her little boy the photographs she
Speaker 1: had left behind at the beginning of World War One,
Speaker 1: it found its way home, and the mother had somehow
Speaker 1: pulled off the impossible. She managed to get her two
Speaker 1: young children to sit still long enough or a picture together.
Speaker 1: I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet
Speaker 1: of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn
Speaker 1: more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com.
Speaker 1: The show was created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership
Speaker 1: with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show
Speaker 1: called Lore which is a podcast, book series, and television
Speaker 1: show and you can learn all about it over at
Speaker 1: the world of lore dot com. And until next time,
Speaker 1: stay curious.