1
00:00:03,760 --> 00:00:08,000
Speaker 1: Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history

2
00:00:08,039 --> 00:00:11,200
Speaker 1: is an open book, all of these amazing tales are

3
00:00:11,320 --> 00:00:14,680
Speaker 1: right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.

4
00:00:16,200 --> 00:00:29,200
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. Few rulers stick out

5
00:00:29,240 --> 00:00:33,120
Speaker 1: from the pages of history like Queen Victoria. She was

6
00:00:33,159 --> 00:00:36,320
Speaker 1: almost larger than life, so much so that the time

7
00:00:36,320 --> 00:00:38,920
Speaker 1: period she lived in took on her own name, the

8
00:00:39,000 --> 00:00:43,400
Speaker 1: Victorian Era, and what a time it was. During her

9
00:00:43,440 --> 00:00:47,519
Speaker 1: sixty two year reign, the world changed dramatically. The British

10
00:00:47,520 --> 00:00:51,640
Speaker 1: Empire expanded around the globe, and the modern constitutional monarchy

11
00:00:51,720 --> 00:00:54,640
Speaker 1: as we know it today took shape and matured. The

12
00:00:54,720 --> 00:00:58,320
Speaker 1: world saw the first powered flight, the invention of the telephone,

13
00:00:58,560 --> 00:01:03,160
Speaker 1: and went from paintings and restrawn carriages to photography and automobiles.

14
00:01:04,840 --> 00:01:08,480
Speaker 1: Queen Victoria impacted Europe in a very particular way too.

15
00:01:08,959 --> 00:01:12,400
Speaker 1: She and Prince Albert had nine children and between them

16
00:01:12,440 --> 00:01:17,320
Speaker 1: were forty two grandchildren, and that family tree spread wide Today.

17
00:01:17,480 --> 00:01:21,200
Speaker 1: Five European countries have monarchs that are descended from Victoria,

18
00:01:21,440 --> 00:01:25,479
Speaker 1: including Queen Elizabeth the Second. Clearly, she left her mark

19
00:01:25,560 --> 00:01:30,800
Speaker 1: on the world. Victoria and Albert were a beloved couple,

20
00:01:31,160 --> 00:01:33,000
Speaker 1: and it was hard to blame the public for that.

21
00:01:33,520 --> 00:01:36,040
Speaker 1: Prince Albert was a man that leaned toward the progressive

22
00:01:36,080 --> 00:01:39,440
Speaker 1: side of the political scale. He helped influence reforms in

23
00:01:39,480 --> 00:01:43,319
Speaker 1: the areas of welfare, slavery, and education, along with the

24
00:01:43,360 --> 00:01:47,880
Speaker 1: ever expanding world of manufacturing. And of course, what royal

25
00:01:47,960 --> 00:01:51,600
Speaker 1: family would be complete without multiple palatial homes to live in.

26
00:01:52,080 --> 00:01:55,960
Speaker 1: There was Kensington, of course, and everyone knows Buckingham Palace.

27
00:01:56,400 --> 00:01:59,200
Speaker 1: But in eighteen fifty one the Queen added one more

28
00:01:59,240 --> 00:02:02,240
Speaker 1: house to that list, down on the northern tip of

29
00:02:02,280 --> 00:02:05,200
Speaker 1: the Isle of Wight. They called it the Osborne House,

30
00:02:05,600 --> 00:02:10,280
Speaker 1: and it served as a summer home, but summer turned

31
00:02:10,320 --> 00:02:13,520
Speaker 1: to winter. In eighteen sixty two, at the age of

32
00:02:13,560 --> 00:02:17,960
Speaker 1: just forty two, Prince Albert died, leaving Victoria all alone.

33
00:02:18,880 --> 00:02:21,960
Speaker 1: What happened over the next four decades has sometimes been

34
00:02:21,960 --> 00:02:25,240
Speaker 1: described as the birth of a culture of death. She

35
00:02:25,320 --> 00:02:27,639
Speaker 1: wore the black of mourning for the rest of her

36
00:02:27,680 --> 00:02:31,040
Speaker 1: life and made sure that the servants never stopped taking

37
00:02:31,040 --> 00:02:34,200
Speaker 1: care of Albert's daily needs, even though he was no

38
00:02:34,280 --> 00:02:39,520
Speaker 1: longer alive or even in the house. When her children

39
00:02:39,600 --> 00:02:42,920
Speaker 1: eventually married, each of them posed for wedding photographs that

40
00:02:43,000 --> 00:02:46,320
Speaker 1: included a bust of Albert. She never slept in a

41
00:02:46,360 --> 00:02:48,640
Speaker 1: bed that didn't have a photo of him beside it,

42
00:02:48,960 --> 00:02:51,560
Speaker 1: and kept a plaster cast of his hand so that

43
00:02:51,600 --> 00:02:54,440
Speaker 1: she could hold it. In fact, when she passed away

44
00:02:54,480 --> 00:02:58,120
Speaker 1: in nineteen o one, that hand was placed inside her coffin.

45
00:02:59,040 --> 00:03:02,760
Speaker 1: It's fair to say that Albert's death altered her completely,

46
00:03:03,360 --> 00:03:08,200
Speaker 1: and not in a healthy way. The most interesting obsession

47
00:03:08,320 --> 00:03:11,400
Speaker 1: of her later years, though, was not discovered until after

48
00:03:11,440 --> 00:03:14,400
Speaker 1: her death, when Osborne House fell into the hands of

49
00:03:14,440 --> 00:03:17,800
Speaker 1: her son and heir, King Edward the Seventh. He explored

50
00:03:17,840 --> 00:03:20,160
Speaker 1: the areas of the house that had been off limits

51
00:03:20,200 --> 00:03:24,480
Speaker 1: to anyone other than his mother, and there, behind locked doors,

52
00:03:25,080 --> 00:03:30,440
Speaker 1: he found an unusual display hundreds of photographs that covered

53
00:03:30,520 --> 00:03:34,839
Speaker 1: generations of people Victoria had known, portraits of people who

54
00:03:34,880 --> 00:03:37,680
Speaker 1: had been important to her, right there in the house,

55
00:03:37,720 --> 00:03:41,080
Speaker 1: where she could visit whenever she wanted. Despite the fact

56
00:03:41,160 --> 00:03:44,360
Speaker 1: that these photographs spanned decades and each one showed the

57
00:03:44,400 --> 00:03:47,440
Speaker 1: face of a different friend or family member, there was

58
00:03:47,520 --> 00:03:51,080
Speaker 1: one common feature tying them all together. None of the

59
00:03:51,120 --> 00:03:57,200
Speaker 1: subjects were alive. Queen Victoria's secret gallery was a morbid

60
00:03:57,320 --> 00:04:00,560
Speaker 1: tour of the most haunting and final moment months of

61
00:04:00,600 --> 00:04:19,760
Speaker 1: each person's life their funeral. Transatlantic ocean liners have been

62
00:04:19,800 --> 00:04:23,359
Speaker 1: around since the early nineteenth century. Back in those days,

63
00:04:23,400 --> 00:04:27,000
Speaker 1: they were powered by steam. It was the steamship S S.

64
00:04:27,000 --> 00:04:30,159
Speaker 1: Savannah that made the first steam powered Atlantic crossing in

65
00:04:30,320 --> 00:04:34,880
Speaker 1: eighteen nineteen, reaching Liverpool in just twenty seven days. The

66
00:04:34,920 --> 00:04:38,000
Speaker 1: trouble was they only used the steam engine for about

67
00:04:38,040 --> 00:04:41,279
Speaker 1: seventy two hours, managing the majority of the crossing with

68
00:04:41,320 --> 00:04:45,840
Speaker 1: their sales. In eighteen thirty three, the Royal Edward used

69
00:04:45,880 --> 00:04:49,480
Speaker 1: steam power for seventy of their crossing, but it wasn't

70
00:04:49,600 --> 00:04:52,760
Speaker 1: until four years later when the S. S Serious tried

71
00:04:52,800 --> 00:04:55,560
Speaker 1: to top the record. They made the crossing in just

72
00:04:55,720 --> 00:04:59,040
Speaker 1: eighteen days, which was amazing, but they used up all

73
00:04:59,080 --> 00:05:01,720
Speaker 1: of their coal in the process. In fact, they ran

74
00:05:01,760 --> 00:05:04,200
Speaker 1: out before they reached New York and had to break

75
00:05:04,240 --> 00:05:07,360
Speaker 1: up wooden furniture to burn to keep the engine running.

76
00:05:08,480 --> 00:05:12,560
Speaker 1: All of these were relatively small ships. They carried passengers,

77
00:05:12,600 --> 00:05:15,320
Speaker 1: just not a lot of them. But as the decades

78
00:05:15,360 --> 00:05:20,960
Speaker 1: ticked by, everything advanced the engines, the passenger capacity, even

79
00:05:20,960 --> 00:05:25,200
Speaker 1: the communication technology. By the eighteen seventies, companies like the

80
00:05:25,200 --> 00:05:30,920
Speaker 1: White Star Line were building massive ocean liners. That's about

81
00:05:30,920 --> 00:05:33,799
Speaker 1: the time when crossing the ocean became a luxury trip.

82
00:05:33,880 --> 00:05:37,400
Speaker 1: To those first white star liners were decked out with

83
00:05:37,520 --> 00:05:41,800
Speaker 1: first class cabins, running water, electricity, you name it. And

84
00:05:41,880 --> 00:05:44,239
Speaker 1: yet while there was a lot of promise and hope

85
00:05:44,240 --> 00:05:47,520
Speaker 1: for these growing palaces of the waves, there was also

86
00:05:47,560 --> 00:05:51,880
Speaker 1: a lot of risk. Oceans were unpredictable and temperamental. After all,

87
00:05:52,400 --> 00:05:57,240
Speaker 1: a lot could go wrong somewhere along the way. They

88
00:05:57,240 --> 00:05:59,719
Speaker 1: built the big One. Now I'm going to give you

89
00:05:59,800 --> 00:06:03,040
Speaker 1: some numbers so you can put it into perspective. This

90
00:06:03,080 --> 00:06:06,520
Speaker 1: ship was eight hundred feet long and had a displacement

91
00:06:06,680 --> 00:06:10,880
Speaker 1: of forty five tons. Those who bragged about her said

92
00:06:10,920 --> 00:06:14,080
Speaker 1: that she was unsinkable. And I get the hint behind

93
00:06:14,080 --> 00:06:17,120
Speaker 1: a claim like that. It's meant to give future passengers

94
00:06:17,200 --> 00:06:20,560
Speaker 1: ease of mind. But it's certainly smacks of hubrists, doesn't it.

95
00:06:20,920 --> 00:06:26,880
Speaker 1: I mean, no ship is truly unsinkable, maybe because of oversight,

96
00:06:27,240 --> 00:06:30,600
Speaker 1: or perhaps because of that grand claim of unsinkable nous

97
00:06:30,760 --> 00:06:34,360
Speaker 1: builders didn't outfit the ship with enough lifeboats. And that's

98
00:06:34,360 --> 00:06:36,159
Speaker 1: the sort of thing you do if you want to

99
00:06:36,240 --> 00:06:39,000
Speaker 1: tempt fate, isn't it. So it's going to come as

100
00:06:39,040 --> 00:06:42,880
Speaker 1: no surprise when I inform you that this unsinkable ship

101
00:06:43,279 --> 00:06:47,520
Speaker 1: didn't survive her maiden voyage. On a cold April night,

102
00:06:47,680 --> 00:06:50,760
Speaker 1: about four hundred miles off the coast of Newfoundland, the

103
00:06:50,800 --> 00:06:53,919
Speaker 1: ship was cruising through the dark Atlantic waters at about

104
00:06:54,000 --> 00:06:58,279
Speaker 1: twenty knots when it struck an iceberg. The massive block

105
00:06:58,320 --> 00:07:00,679
Speaker 1: of ice tore a hole in the side of the ship,

106
00:07:01,200 --> 00:07:05,479
Speaker 1: and then the unthinkable happened to the unsinkable It sank.

107
00:07:07,240 --> 00:07:10,680
Speaker 1: The loss of life was devastating, perhaps made even more

108
00:07:10,720 --> 00:07:14,560
Speaker 1: painful in light of that prideful claim about the ship's safety.

109
00:07:14,760 --> 00:07:18,880
Speaker 1: But that wasn't the most surprising thing about this nautical tragedy. No,

110
00:07:19,200 --> 00:07:22,600
Speaker 1: that mantle falls to one other piece of information that will,

111
00:07:22,920 --> 00:07:27,800
Speaker 1: pardon the pun, sink your expectations. You see, this event

112
00:07:28,160 --> 00:07:32,240
Speaker 1: never happened in real life. That is because this ocean

113
00:07:32,280 --> 00:07:35,120
Speaker 1: liner was nothing more than the setting for a novella

114
00:07:35,320 --> 00:07:39,880
Speaker 1: written by an American author named Morgan Robertson, which probably

115
00:07:39,920 --> 00:07:42,800
Speaker 1: fooled you, didn't it, because you were assuming I was

116
00:07:42,840 --> 00:07:45,800
Speaker 1: talking about the Titanic this entire time. You know, the

117
00:07:46,000 --> 00:07:49,400
Speaker 1: unsinkable ocean liner that struck an iceberg in the North

118
00:07:49,440 --> 00:07:52,160
Speaker 1: Atlantic and sunk to the bottom of the ocean in

119
00:07:52,280 --> 00:07:56,760
Speaker 1: April of nineteen twelve. Nope, and now I fooled you

120
00:07:56,840 --> 00:07:59,920
Speaker 1: with the bit of fiction. But there's more, and it's

121
00:08:00,120 --> 00:08:03,280
Speaker 1: less funny than it is bizarre, because you need to

122
00:08:03,320 --> 00:08:08,120
Speaker 1: know two other things about Robertson's fictional ocean liner. First,

123
00:08:08,640 --> 00:08:13,480
Speaker 1: it was named the titan Crazy right. Second, though, and

124
00:08:13,680 --> 00:08:19,960
Speaker 1: most amazingly of all, his story was published in fourteen

125
00:08:20,040 --> 00:08:23,560
Speaker 1: years before the tragedy of the real ship called the Titanic.

126
00:08:25,280 --> 00:08:27,920
Speaker 1: I know it's cliche, but every now and then, even

127
00:08:27,920 --> 00:08:33,839
Speaker 1: the worst cliche proves itself true. Sometimes life really does

128
00:08:34,120 --> 00:08:41,080
Speaker 1: imitate art. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of

129
00:08:41,120 --> 00:08:45,080
Speaker 1: the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts,

130
00:08:45,160 --> 00:08:48,720
Speaker 1: or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast

131
00:08:48,920 --> 00:08:52,680
Speaker 1: dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Manky

132
00:08:53,040 --> 00:08:56,520
Speaker 1: in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award

133
00:08:56,520 --> 00:09:00,000
Speaker 1: winning show called Lore, which is a podcast book series,

134
00:09:00,080 --> 00:09:02,560
Speaker 1: is end television show and you can learn all about

135
00:09:02,640 --> 00:09:06,000
Speaker 1: it over at the World of Lore dot com. And

136
00:09:06,080 --> 00:09:10,959
Speaker 1: until next time, stay curious. H