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: Parents will do anything for their children, especially if they're
Speaker 1: sick or in danger. A child in need triggers a
Speaker 1: fight response in mothers and fathers that is not to
Speaker 1: be trifled with. We see it all the time in nature.
Speaker 1: When an animal feels its offspringer threatened, it will attack,
Speaker 1: whether it's an alligator or an angry goose, and human
Speaker 1: parents are no different. Just ask Liam Neeson what happens
Speaker 1: when a parent can't fight the enemy hurting their child?
Speaker 1: Where do they turn over? Fifteen thousand children each year
Speaker 1: are diagnosed with cancer in the United States. Another eighteen
Speaker 1: hundred die from unknown causes. It's up to doctors and
Speaker 1: specialists to help them fight what's killing them. But sometimes
Speaker 1: even doctors need a little help. And in nineteen seventy seven,
Speaker 1: one little girl got the treatment she needed from a
Speaker 1: very unexpected place someone's attempted murder. The girl was from Qatar,
Speaker 1: only nineteen months old. Her parents had taken her to London.
Speaker 1: They were desperate for answers. Their daughter was barely conscious
Speaker 1: and suffering from a number of symptoms, including numbness, lethargy,
Speaker 1: random blackouts, and loss of hair. In other words, she
Speaker 1: seemed like she was dying, and yet her mother and
Speaker 1: father were at a loss for a reason why, as
Speaker 1: were her doctors back home. Her symptoms were indicative of
Speaker 1: a number of other ailments, including epilepsy and encephalitis, but
Speaker 1: tests revealed none of those to be the culprit. They
Speaker 1: had to act fast, or else this poor girl would
Speaker 1: perish before their very eyes. The London doctors eventually ran
Speaker 1: out of options, and then, almost miraculously, a nurse stepped
Speaker 1: forward with a suggestion perhaps the young patient was suffering
Speaker 1: from thallium poisoning. Thallium is a metal that is naturally
Speaker 1: a blue white hue until it's exposed to air, at
Speaker 1: which point it turns gray. It was first discovered in
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty one by British chemist Sir William Crooks, and
Speaker 1: was once used as a household pest killer until its
Speaker 1: ban in nineteen seventy two. Thallium also occurs naturally in
Speaker 1: the Earth's crust, but when ingested via the stomach or
Speaker 1: the lungs, it can cause all kinds of symptoms, including
Speaker 1: numbness and hair loss. And as it turns out, the
Speaker 1: nurse was right. The little girl had been suffering from
Speaker 1: thallium poisoning. The nurse had remembered a case where an
Speaker 1: english woman named Ginger Corrigan had exhibited many of the
Speaker 1: same symptoms. She'd lost much of her hair and had
Speaker 1: been hospitalized with flu like symptoms. Her doctor had died
Speaker 1: ghosed her with bronchio pneumonia, despite the unusual symptoms she
Speaker 1: presented that didn't quite correspond with his assessment. She wasn't
Speaker 1: responding to antibiotics either. It wasn't until one of her acquaintances,
Speaker 1: a historian named Mark Easterbrook, connected the dots that she
Speaker 1: received the care that she needed. Ginger had been poisoned
Speaker 1: with thallium. Mark realized it after remembering an article on
Speaker 1: thallium poisoning that he had read while traveling abroad in America.
Speaker 1: It had been a story about a factory where the
Speaker 1: workers started dying of mysterious causes such as paratyphoid, bulber paralysis,
Speaker 1: and epilepsy. There was also the presence of numbness in
Speaker 1: the limbs as well as hair loss. Eventually, it was
Speaker 1: discovered that the factory workers had been subjected to high
Speaker 1: levels of the metallic substance, eventually succumbing to its effects,
Speaker 1: and Ginger would have met a similar fate had it
Speaker 1: not been for Mark's quick thinking. The nurse in London
Speaker 1: had a similar Eureka moment as well. She'd read all
Speaker 1: about Mark and Ginger, but not in a police file
Speaker 1: or in the news. Mark and Ginger weren't real peace people.
Speaker 1: They were characters in the detective novel The Pale Horse
Speaker 1: by Agatha Christie, first published in nineteen sixty one. Christy
Speaker 1: went into specific detail on the symptoms of thallium poisoning
Speaker 1: in her novel, as well as the other diseases. It
Speaker 1: can appear to be the nurse had been reading The
Speaker 1: Pale Horse at the time the young Katari girl came
Speaker 1: into the emergency room and she recognized the same symptoms
Speaker 1: as in the book. Doctor Victor Dubowitz, the physician assigned
Speaker 1: to the girl's case, consulted Scotland yard, who put him
Speaker 1: in touch with a particular thallium expert, a convicted criminal
Speaker 1: who had used it to poison his pets, coworkers and family.
Speaker 1: He confirmed their suspicions, and after a few more tests,
Speaker 1: the results were clear. The little girl had been poisoned,
Speaker 1: but not on purpose. She'd gotten into a stash of
Speaker 1: rat poison in the family's home. Although thallium had been
Speaker 1: banned for use as a pesticide in several Western countries,
Speaker 1: there were other places around the world where it was
Speaker 1: still in use, including Qatar. The girl was quickly treated
Speaker 1: and really at least without further incident. As for the nurse,
Speaker 1: they should have added the letters MD to her name,
Speaker 1: not because she was a doctor of medicine, but because
Speaker 1: of her impromptu role as medical detective. Firefighters around the
Speaker 1: world rely on fire hydrants to provide a source of
Speaker 1: water to extinguish fires. It's hard to imagine a world
Speaker 1: without them. But did you know that the patent for
Speaker 1: the fire hydrants was actually lost. Our story begins in
Speaker 1: the eighteen hundreds in the United States, where there was
Speaker 1: a growing need for an efficient way to supply water
Speaker 1: to firefighting crews. At the time, water mains were being
Speaker 1: installed beneath the streets of major cities, but there was
Speaker 1: no easy way for firefighters to tap into them. Firefighters
Speaker 1: had to rely on water pumped from wells or cisterns,
Speaker 1: and as you might imagine, the process was a slow
Speaker 1: and inefficient one, which was bad news for the owners
Speaker 1: of the burning buildings. Then came the invention of the
Speaker 1: fire hydrant. But here's where it gets complicated. We're not
Speaker 1: sure who invented it. It could be Birdsill Holly Junior,
Speaker 1: an inventor and engineer, or it could be Frederick Graft Senior,
Speaker 1: the chief engineer of the Philadelphia Waterworks, who created the
Speaker 1: first pillar style fire hydrant in eighteen oh one. Experts
Speaker 1: say Graft is the original inventor, but that Holly made improvements.
Speaker 1: Both men filed patents decades apart. Graft created a type
Speaker 1: of pillar fire hydrant that is referred to as a
Speaker 1: wet barrel. It resembles a barrel with a faucet and
Speaker 1: a valve on top. Holly was an inventor and engineer
Speaker 1: who had already made a name for himself by developing
Speaker 1: a revolutionary steam engine in eighteen sixty nine. He turned
Speaker 1: his attention to the problem of supplying water to firefighters,
Speaker 1: and it came up with a design for a new
Speaker 1: type of fire hydrant. Holly's version of the hydrant was
Speaker 1: unlike anything that had ever been seen before. It featured
Speaker 1: a top mounted valve could be turned on and off
Speaker 1: with a simple wrench, and it had a system of
Speaker 1: underground pipes that allowed water to flow directly to the
Speaker 1: fire hydrant from the water main. Holly knew that his
Speaker 1: invention was going to be in high demand. He immediately
Speaker 1: set up a company to produce the hydrants, and within
Speaker 1: a few years his invention had become the industry standard.
Speaker 1: Over time, Holly's hydrants were installed in cities and towns
Speaker 1: across the United States, and they saved countless lives and
Speaker 1: millions of dollars in property damage by providing firefighters with
Speaker 1: a reliable source of water. So why is it that
Speaker 1: we don't know who to credit? Because decades before Holly
Speaker 1: filed for his patent, something odd happened with Graft's patent.
Speaker 1: He lost it. If an inventor couldn't prove that they
Speaker 1: were the inventor, it left them vulnerable to competitors who
Speaker 1: might take the idea as their own. Without a patent,
Speaker 1: Graft couldn't prove the fire hydrant was his idea and
Speaker 1: had no legal protection, not that he would have taken
Speaker 1: Holly to court Graft had died in eighteen forty seven.
Speaker 1: Holly went on to manufacture his hydrant and sell them
Speaker 1: throughout the country. But how to Graft lose his patent?
Speaker 1: Oddly enough? By fire. The blaze broke out in the
Speaker 1: early morning hours of December fifteenth of eighteen thirty six
Speaker 1: in the old Blodget's Hotel building in Washington, DC. The
Speaker 1: fire raged for hours, and when the smoke cleared, all
Speaker 1: of the nine thousand, nine hundred and fifty seven documents
Speaker 1: and seven thousand other items relating to those documents were
Speaker 1: destroyed by the fire. Graft's patent for the fire hydrants
Speaker 1: was among those documents. You see, the building was the
Speaker 1: US Patent Office. Ever since, there have been many articles
Speaker 1: written on the invention of the fire hydrant, causing some
Speaker 1: to say that the question of which inventor to give
Speaker 1: credit to just might be a hot topic. 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. This show
Speaker 1: was created by me Aaron Mankey 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 Worldoflore
Speaker 1: dot com. And until next time, stay curious.