Speaker 1: Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history
Speaker 1: is an open book, all of these amazing tales right
Speaker 1: there on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome
Speaker 1: to the Cabinet of Curiosities. It's a jungle out there.
Speaker 1: Dangers lurk around every corner. Lions, tigers, and yes, bears
Speaker 1: can be hiding when we least expect them, even outside
Speaker 1: of the actual jungle. Of course, it's not supposed to
Speaker 1: be that way. But in New York in eighteen seventy four,
Speaker 1: the city was gripped by a panic unlike they'd ever
Speaker 1: seen before. It was first reported on the front page
Speaker 1: of the New York Herald. The animals at the Central
Speaker 1: Park Zoo had gotten loose, and we're now running free
Speaker 1: through Manhattan. It had all started with a rhinoceros, which
Speaker 1: gored its keeper before freeing itself and its fellow actives.
Speaker 1: A panther soon found its way into a church on
Speaker 1: West fifty three Street, terrorizing worshippers. Donkeys, apes, and elephants
Speaker 1: were on the prowl, taking out anyone in their path.
Speaker 1: According to initial reports, forty people had been killed one
Speaker 1: day after the escape. Two more had been injured. The
Speaker 1: Herald referred to that day as another Sunday of horror.
Speaker 1: The police worked tirelessly to corral the various beasts and
Speaker 1: quell the bloodshed. Rhino that had kicked everything off eventually
Speaker 1: fell into the New York sewer system, where it flought
Speaker 1: a sea lion, and anaconda found its next meal in
Speaker 1: a giraffe. A lioness evaded hunters on Broadway. There was
Speaker 1: also a polar bear, some hyenas, and a Bengal tiger
Speaker 1: the last of which boarded a ferry boat in search
Speaker 1: of some well, let's just call it seafood. It would
Speaker 1: be a busy several days following the escape, but soon
Speaker 1: enough the police managed to capture an account for every
Speaker 1: animal that had gone missing from the zoo. Walk through
Speaker 1: Central Park today, and you might not even re lies
Speaker 1: that anything had happened at all. Now, if you had
Speaker 1: read the original article in the New York Herald all
Speaker 1: the way to the end, you would have realized the
Speaker 1: shocking truth about the whole thing, that it hadn't actually happened.
Speaker 1: The story had been conceived by editor Thomas Connery, who
Speaker 1: had allegedly gotten permission to run it by the paper's owner,
Speaker 1: James Gordon Bennett Jr. Connery, had been strolling through Central
Speaker 1: Park when he saw a leopard being moved from its
Speaker 1: carriage to its cage at the zoo. In that time,
Speaker 1: it had nearly managed to break free from its captors.
Speaker 1: The story sat with him, and he considered writing a
Speaker 1: serious piece for the paper to shame them for their
Speaker 1: lack security. But then he got a better idea. He
Speaker 1: asked one of the writers, Joseph Clark, to pen the article,
Speaker 1: which came in at a round ten thousand words. Since
Speaker 1: it had been published on the front page accompanied by
Speaker 1: such a stark headline as awful calamity A shocking Sabbath
Speaker 1: Carnival of death, readers assumed it all to be true.
Speaker 1: Almost nobody read all the way to the end, where
Speaker 1: the final paragraph let every one in on the joke.
Speaker 1: It was the Victorian era equivalent of only reading the
Speaker 1: headline on social media. As a result, those who saw
Speaker 1: the headline and skim the peace behaved about as well
Speaker 1: as could be expected of them. Men grabbed their rifles
Speaker 1: and revolvers and headed out into the city, prepared to
Speaker 1: take down any non human creature they saw. It's even
Speaker 1: said that the editor of The New York Times was
Speaker 1: among them. Other papers sent out reporters for witness statements
Speaker 1: and information on the remaining animals that had yet to
Speaker 1: be caught. Even the police increased their patrol numbers, eager
Speaker 1: to bring an end to the carnage. Once everyone realized
Speaker 1: that there was nothing to worry about, the Herald came
Speaker 1: under fire for its role in terrifying the city. The
Speaker 1: Times and other newspapers attacked the Herald for its irresponsibility.
Speaker 1: A few papers used the opportunity to address the original
Speaker 1: underline issue of weak security at the Central Park Zoo,
Speaker 1: but perhaps the most notable story about the hoax came
Speaker 1: actually one week before it was ever published. At the time,
Speaker 1: the Herald did many op eds against President Ulysses S.
Speaker 1: Grant and his grasp for power. Grant, a Republican, had
Speaker 1: considered seeking a third term in office, even though tradition
Speaker 1: dictated that presidents should never serve more than two. The
Speaker 1: paper referred to this power grab as Caesarism. Political cartoonist
Speaker 1: Thomas Nast, also a Republican, put his own spin on
Speaker 1: the rumors by using The Herald's hoax as inspiration his
Speaker 1: cartoon was published in Harper's Weekly. In it, he represented
Speaker 1: the Herald as a donkey dressed in a lion's skin
Speaker 1: with the word Caesarism written across the side. As the
Speaker 1: donkey ran through the zoo, it scared the other animals,
Speaker 1: one of which was tagged as the Republican Vote. Nast
Speaker 1: referred to the Republican vote as the same animal again
Speaker 1: some weeks later, a trend that took off among political
Speaker 1: cartoonists all over the country. According to the legend, it
Speaker 1: was this new parade of animals that inspired Connery to
Speaker 1: publish that infamous hoax in the New York Herald, and
Speaker 1: Thomas Nast's depiction of the Republican Vote as a zoo
Speaker 1: animal has stuck around today. You'll see it on television,
Speaker 1: campaign posters and on the pages of countless newspapers across
Speaker 1: the country. In fact, it's now considered by most to
Speaker 1: be the mascot of the Republican Party, the elephant. We
Speaker 1: fill our days on this floating rock, chasing ambitions and aspirations.
Speaker 1: So many of us try to follow our dreams and
Speaker 1: fall short. We slip or stumble, and before we know
Speaker 1: it's it's all over, or maybe not it takes resilience
Speaker 1: and an iron will to reach out and put ourselves
Speaker 1: up to finish what we started. That's what John Gadsby
Speaker 1: did many moons ago in his own city. No, not
Speaker 1: Gatsby with T and that's a different story. This man's
Speaker 1: name was Gadsby with a D. He lived in Branton Hills,
Speaker 1: a tiny town in a bit of a bind. John
Speaker 1: Gadsby had seen it for himself. Criminals were everywhere, driving
Speaker 1: the quality of life in his hometown way down. Having
Speaker 1: grown tired of watching the place he loved fall apart
Speaker 1: all around him, Gadsby organized the local kids to form
Speaker 1: a group a means to build everything back up into
Speaker 1: a shining city on a hill. Once the group got
Speaker 1: to work, Branton Hills population skyrocketed from two thousand inhabitants
Speaker 1: up to sixty thou with boosts and weddings and berths,
Speaker 1: And with all of that growth came improvement to the
Speaker 1: conditions in town. John Gadsby had done such a good
Speaker 1: job at making Branton Hills better his neighbors elected him
Speaker 1: as their mayor, and with Gadsby at the helm, Branton
Speaker 1: Hills thrived. It was widely regarded as his stunning victory
Speaker 1: for the power of grassroots activism. In fact, his story
Speaker 1: was so inspirational an author thought that it would make
Speaker 1: for a decent book. However, this writer told the story
Speaker 1: using a strange approach known as a lipogram. A lipogram
Speaker 1: is a story where a particular element of the language
Speaker 1: is eliminated or a boundary of some kind is put
Speaker 1: in place. In his book about Gadsby, the author manipulated
Speaker 1: the language using such tools as circumlocation or a roundabout
Speaker 1: way of making a particular point. It was how the
Speaker 1: author was able to stay within his predetermined boundary. All told,
Speaker 1: the book wasn't too thrilling and had difficulty finding a
Speaker 1: publisher willing to print it. But the author believed in
Speaker 1: his story and did what any headstrong writer would have done.
Speaker 1: He printed Gadsby through a vanity distributor. Sadly, most hardbacks
Speaker 1: burned in a fire at the printing facility, so not
Speaker 1: many people were able to get their hands on one. However,
Speaker 1: a rare volume did eventually sell at auction for four
Speaker 1: thousand dollars. An Oshkosh Daily critic at the time called
Speaker 1: Gadsby's amazingly smooth with no halting parts. It was difficult
Speaker 1: for the author to pull off his language trick for
Speaker 1: as long as he did, and in succeeding, Gadsby became
Speaker 1: one of a handful of books over the years that
Speaker 1: has utilized a lipogram to tell its story. Sadly, Gadsby
Speaker 1: was not a work of non fiction. Branson Hills never existed,
Speaker 1: and John Gadsby himself also completely made up. There had
Speaker 1: been no grassroots activism, no jump in population, and no
Speaker 1: financial victory. John gadsby story had been entirely fictional, told
Speaker 1: by a man named Ernest Vincent Wright over the course
Speaker 1: of fifty words. It bore a striking resemblance to another
Speaker 1: book called A Void, published in nineteen sixty nine by
Speaker 1: George Perick. It was a novel about a group of
Speaker 1: people looking for a man named Anton Val. Part comedy,
Speaker 1: part horror, the story contained twists and numerous subplots in
Speaker 1: an effort to both confuse the reader and show off
Speaker 1: the author's ability in spinning a tail his hand tied
Speaker 1: behind his back by a self imposed constraint. Right and
Speaker 1: Perik shared a common love for lippogrammatic storytelling. They had
Speaker 1: a knack for telling stories in some of the most
Speaker 1: difficult ways imaginable. Nobody made them do it, and it
Speaker 1: had been a challenge, but in many regards it worked.
Speaker 1: They had, by all objective measures, told their story the
Speaker 1: way that they had intended. It also wild critics with
Speaker 1: their ingenuity. After all, it took dedicated writers and a
Speaker 1: whole lot of talent to pull off what they did.
Speaker 1: You see, the novels written by Ernest Wright and George
Speaker 1: Perrock lacked one important thing, the letter E. I hope
Speaker 1: you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities.
Speaker 1: Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about
Speaker 1: the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show
Speaker 1: was created by me Aaron Manky in partnership with how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore,
Speaker 1: which is a podcast, book series, and television show, and
Speaker 1: you can learn all about it over at the World
Speaker 1: of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.
Speaker 1: Ye