Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Benky's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world is
Speaker 1: full of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book,
Speaker 1: all of these amazing tales are right there on display,
Speaker 1: just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet
Speaker 1: of Curiosities. Funerals are normally somber affairs. Attendees were black.
Speaker 1: Kind words are spoken about the deceased from loved ones
Speaker 1: and cherished friends. People cry and embrace one another during
Speaker 1: one of the most difficult times of their lives. Therefore,
Speaker 1: it would be inappropriate to say, stand up and shout
Speaker 1: a string of swear words among the grieving crowd. But
Speaker 1: that's exactly what happened at President Andrew Jackson's funeral. Before
Speaker 1: he became president, Andrew Jackson was a lawyer from the
Speaker 1: Waxhaw Settlement, right on the border between North and South Carolina.
Speaker 1: He served as a courier with his older brother during
Speaker 1: the Revolutionary War before going on to become a general
Speaker 1: in the War of eighteen twelve. Though he had served
Speaker 1: his country several times during his life, Jackson's reputation as
Speaker 1: a patriot has become tarnished today by a lifetime of
Speaker 1: racism and support for white supremacy. He was a staunch
Speaker 1: defender of slavery and the central player in the upheaval
Speaker 1: of Native Americans from their lands. It can be argued
Speaker 1: that Jackson's genocidal tactics undermined any of the good he
Speaker 1: managed to do as a soldier or as a president,
Speaker 1: even something like paying off the entire national debt, which
Speaker 1: he did in eighteen thirty five. But he was also
Speaker 1: notoriously tough, surviving two attempted assassinations and even beating his
Speaker 1: would be assassin within an inch of his life. There's
Speaker 1: a reason his nickname was Old Hickory, and it followed
Speaker 1: him until his death. Jackson passed away at his home
Speaker 1: in June of eighteen forty five, surrounded by family and
Speaker 1: close friends. According to one story, as his children cried
Speaker 1: that day, he looked up and asked them what the
Speaker 1: matter was and if he had alarmed them. He told
Speaker 1: them to be good and that he would see them
Speaker 1: in heaven. His heart gave out moments later, providing no
Speaker 1: one a chance to respond or say goodbye. Jackson was
Speaker 1: laid to rest at his Tennessee home the Hermitage on Sunday,
Speaker 1: June eighth. His funeral was attended by three thousand mourners
Speaker 1: who had come to pay their respects to the man
Speaker 1: they revered despite his many moral failings. Parades were even
Speaker 1: held in his honor. Presbyterian minister Reverend William Menaphee Normant
Speaker 1: presided over the services. At least he was supposed to.
Speaker 1: Another mourner named Paul, had chosen that particular moment to
Speaker 1: unleash a series of vulgarities, offending everyone within earshot. It
Speaker 1: wasn't as though people hadn't heard them before. Jackson himself
Speaker 1: was known to curse up a storm when upset or frustrated. However,
Speaker 1: a funeral was no place for such sentiments, even for
Speaker 1: a man as colorful as Andrew Jackson. After several minutes
Speaker 1: of interruption, Paul was escorted from the service to another room.
Speaker 1: According to Normant, he had grown excited by the number
Speaker 1: of people gathered and couldn't help himself. You see, Paul
Speaker 1: had grown up in the Jackson home, having been adopted
Speaker 1: in eighteen twenty seven, and became like another child to
Speaker 1: Rachel Jackson. Andrew's wife, Rachel died a year later in
Speaker 1: eighteen twenty eight. Paul was then left in the care
Speaker 1: of the rest of the family. After mister Jackson's inauguration
Speaker 1: in eighteen twenty nine, the president never forgot about him, though,
Speaker 1: and often asked how Paul was doing in his letters home.
Speaker 1: Once Jackson returned home after being president, he spent much
Speaker 1: more time with young Paul, who picked up on every
Speaker 1: word that came out of the man's mouth. Eventually, Paul
Speaker 1: took to repeating everything he heard, and oftentimes that included
Speaker 1: swearing like a soldier to anyone and everyone inside the house.
Speaker 1: It's not clear how long Paul lived after that. In
Speaker 1: the wild, they tend to have a lifespan of twenty
Speaker 1: three years. In captivity, however, African gray parrots can live
Speaker 1: as old as sixty. That's right, Paul was the only
Speaker 1: parrot ever forced to leave a president's funeral for hurling
Speaker 1: offensive words at the guests. Now that's what I call
Speaker 1: foul language. It's called the Roxbury Conglomerate. Now, if you
Speaker 1: ask me, that sounds like a nefarious corporation that's about
Speaker 1: to be taken down by a superhero. But the truth
Speaker 1: is that the Roxbury conglomerate is less conglomerates and more rocks.
Speaker 1: In fact, it's the bedrock under the city of Boston.
Speaker 1: It spreads out well beyond the neighborhood of Roxbury, though,
Speaker 1: forming the landmass under a lot of nearby neighborhoods and towns. Apparently,
Speaker 1: it's also sometimes called the Roxbury pudding stone, and while
Speaker 1: that makes me hungry, it gives an even less accurate
Speaker 1: impression of what it really is, unless you're a geologist
Speaker 1: who knows what a pudding stone is. That's not why
Speaker 1: the Roxbury Conglomerate has led to a misunderstanding, though far
Speaker 1: from it. In fact, in the middle of the eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: at a time when stone from the bedrock there was
Speaker 1: being used to build walls and foundations throughout the Boston area,
Speaker 1: there was a misconception that led to a hundred years
Speaker 1: of argument and debate. It started, as the paper said
Speaker 1: at the time, a few rods self of Reverend Hall's
Speaker 1: meeting house in Boston. They were blasting in the rock
Speaker 1: and collecting the stone fragments that flew away. It wasn't
Speaker 1: the safest way of clearing land and gathering stone, of course,
Speaker 1: but as the workmen were gathering the stone fragments, they
Speaker 1: saw something strange shining in the rubble. When they moved
Speaker 1: the stones aside and dusted them off, they were awestruck.
Speaker 1: What they had found was a metallic vessel broken into
Speaker 1: two parts. They guessed that, like the rock, it had
Speaker 1: been torn apart in the explosion. When they put it together,
Speaker 1: they saw the two pieces formed a silver bell shape
Speaker 1: about five inches high and six inches wide. As they
Speaker 1: showed it around, people started to make observations about it.
Speaker 1: The metal was clearly valuable, It looked like an alloy
Speaker 1: maybe of zinc and silver, and the craftsmanship shown was incredible,
Speaker 1: not just for the shaping of the object, but because
Speaker 1: it was highly decorated too. The sides were covered in
Speaker 1: silver scroll work, flowers lined in pure silver inlay, and
Speaker 1: wrapped in silver vines twisting around the contours of the bell.
Speaker 1: It was an incredible discovery, so incredible in fact, that
Speaker 1: its story was published in Scientific American that year, and
Speaker 1: they were just as befuddled as the men who discovered it.
Speaker 1: After all, the blasters told the magazine that it had
Speaker 1: been blown out of solid pudding stone fifteen feet below
Speaker 1: the surface. And here's the thing that formation of bedrock there.
Speaker 1: It's been dated to five d seventy million years old.
Speaker 1: If this little silver bell had somehow been caught in
Speaker 1: the flows of sediment that formed the Roxbury conglomerate, well
Speaker 1: then it was probably the oldest artifact ever discovered on Earth.
Speaker 1: The story was picked up in nineteen nineteen by writers
Speaker 1: looking for anomalies, and from there it's been told and
Speaker 1: retold from time to time. It's even been used as
Speaker 1: proof that aliens were around millions of years ago, or
Speaker 1: even that HP Lovecraft's Cathulu mythos was real. And as
Speaker 1: the story reappeared time after time, its reputation rested on
Speaker 1: its strangeness. No one who wrote about the silver bell
Speaker 1: shape in the eighteen fifties seemed to have seen anything
Speaker 1: like it, although people would end up calling it the
Speaker 1: Dorchester pot or Dorchester vessel, but none of the early
Speaker 1: discussions of the silver objects seemed to admit that it
Speaker 1: could have been something that mixed with the fragments of
Speaker 1: stone during the blasting and not before, especially when that
Speaker 1: blasting happened in the middle of an inhabited city. It
Speaker 1: was probably from the very beginning just a little misunderstanding.
Speaker 1: In the end, the biggest mystery is how the fragments
Speaker 1: of a tiny silver bell picked up in the rubble
Speaker 1: of the Roxbury conglomerate entertain speculators and storytellers for more
Speaker 1: than a hundred years. One thing I do know, though
Speaker 1: people ever since have had a blast trying to figure
Speaker 1: it out. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of
Speaker 1: the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast
Speaker 1: dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Manky
Speaker 1: in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award
Speaker 1: winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series,
Speaker 1: and television show, and you can learn all about it
Speaker 1: over at the World of Lore dot com. And until
Speaker 1: next time, stay curious. Ye