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: There's nothing like kicking back after a long day of
Speaker 1: work with the good book and a hot cup of tea.
Speaker 1: The taste of delicate herbs and fruit flavors help to
Speaker 1: warm the body and the soul, melting away the day's problems. Today,
Speaker 1: tea is as accessible as the water you steep it in.
Speaker 1: But that wasn't always the case. In nineteenth century Ireland,
Speaker 1: the idea of regular people drinking tea nearly ruined society.
Speaker 1: That's what the rich nobility would have you believe, you see.
Speaker 1: Tea was mostly an Asian commodity until the Portuguese and
Speaker 1: the Dutch started bringing it to Europe in the mid
Speaker 1: sixteen hundreds. In sixteen sixty two, Catherine of Braganza, daughter
Speaker 1: of John the fourth of Portugal, married King Charles the Second.
Speaker 1: Catherine traveled from Portugal to the United Kingdom for her
Speaker 1: nuptials and brought along her must have items, namely trunks
Speaker 1: and trunks of Chinese tea. Once her new husband got
Speaker 1: a taste, tea became a certified hit. In fact, Catherine
Speaker 1: of Braganza was credited as the person who made tea
Speaker 1: popular in Britain. Most people who experienced the beverage praised
Speaker 1: it for its seemingly endless uses. They claimed that it
Speaker 1: could do everything from amplifying one's intelligence to giving a
Speaker 1: person more energy throughout the day, but not to everyone
Speaker 1: liked it. There were skeptics who believed that tea was
Speaker 1: harmful to European complexions and their sensitive digestive tracks, and
Speaker 1: many of their complaints had more to do with where
Speaker 1: the tea had come from than the drink itself. By
Speaker 1: the mid eighteenth century, anti tea rhetoric was rife with
Speaker 1: racist innuendos about the beverages country of origin. That sentiment
Speaker 1: found its way into numerous writings of the time too.
Speaker 1: British traveler Jonas Hanway wrote in seventeen fifty seven that
Speaker 1: to what heights of folly must a nation be arrived
Speaker 1: when common people are not satisfied with wholesome food at home,
Speaker 1: but must go to the remotest regions to please a
Speaker 1: vicious palate. But as time went on, voices, like handways,
Speaker 1: fell away to the side. Eventually tea drinking took on
Speaker 1: a life of its own. The eighteen hundreds saw Ireland
Speaker 1: adopt a new custom, a mid afternoon tea time. Wealthy
Speaker 1: Dublin women would host tea parties to show off their
Speaker 1: status as well as their etiquette to their equally posh peers.
Speaker 1: There were certain rules to be abided by during these parties,
Speaker 1: of course, lest you wanted to look uncivilized. For one,
Speaker 1: the tea had to be of an appropriate quality and
Speaker 1: only one cup was to be consumed by each guest. Also,
Speaker 1: all stacks were required to be presented upon a silver tray.
Speaker 1: Oh and certain topics were forbidden from discussion to avoid
Speaker 1: those uncomfortable arguments or silences. Tea time was meant to
Speaker 1: be a light break in the day, but only for
Speaker 1: people of means. You see, even though the poor also
Speaker 1: had access to tea, their consumption of it was frowned upon.
Speaker 1: The upper class felt that those of lesser means could
Speaker 1: not properly prepare it. The reason they thought that was
Speaker 1: because that poor folks often left tea brewing for hours
Speaker 1: on the flame, so that there was always a pot
Speaker 1: ready to pour for unexpected guests. Doctors, on the other hand,
Speaker 1: believed that steeping tea leaves for so long would remove
Speaker 1: all of their tannins, making the drink more toxic to
Speaker 1: the body and causing stomach aches as well as hallucinations.
Speaker 1: The rich, on the other hand, only steeped their tea
Speaker 1: for a short amount of time prior to consuming it.
Speaker 1: But medical professionals and the wealthy weren't really concerned with
Speaker 1: the health of people on the bottom of the social ladder.
Speaker 1: They were worried about those people I mean that ladder.
Speaker 1: Members of the lower class wanted better lives for themselves,
Speaker 1: and one way they saw of achieving such a thing
Speaker 1: was in drinking what the upper class was drinking. It
Speaker 1: also allowed poor women to exert some control over their
Speaker 1: own lives. The wealthy elite did not approve of how
Speaker 1: these poor women would get together regularly and enjoy a
Speaker 1: cup of tea rather than endlessly tend to the housework
Speaker 1: that was expected of them. What would happen next? Demanding
Speaker 1: the right to vote, and that was actually a great
Speaker 1: fear that poor women who congregated over tea would become
Speaker 1: politically active and discuss all the ways they were being
Speaker 1: mistreated by the upper class. Well, the rich couldn't allow that,
Speaker 1: could they. Tea was their beverage and the poor needed
Speaker 1: to know their place. So the elites started spinning narratives
Speaker 1: warning young poor women that drinking tea would make them
Speaker 1: addicted to the point where they would steal from loved
Speaker 1: ones and throw their families into bankruptcy, anything to make
Speaker 1: them second guess their choice in a beverage. Fortunately, those
Speaker 1: tactics didn't really work. Tea time became a common practice
Speaker 1: across class lines, and just as the wealthy had feared,
Speaker 1: it did help jumpstart the women's liberation movement. Today, we
Speaker 1: regularly enjoy tea and are even more aware now of
Speaker 1: its health benefits such as antioxidants boosting our immune systems.
Speaker 1: There's no need to worry about starting a revolution over
Speaker 1: a cup of tea every now and then, because, of course,
Speaker 1: that's what the Internet is for now. When it came
Speaker 1: to revolutionizing mass transit, the number one concern for inventors
Speaker 1: and innovators has always been speed. It's not enough to
Speaker 1: have the biggest cabin or the most luxurious seats. What
Speaker 1: matters most is getting from point A to point B
Speaker 1: in the least amount of time. The Wright Brothers first
Speaker 1: airplane only reached a top speed of about seven miles
Speaker 1: per hour. Today's commercial airplanes and travel seventy times that,
Speaker 1: taking people thousands of miles in only a few hours.
Speaker 1: And the same goes for trains. The first passenger steam
Speaker 1: locomotive took four hundred and fifty people a distance of
Speaker 1: twenty five miles, and it never broke fifteen miles an hour.
Speaker 1: Today's bullet trains can hit almost two hundred miles per hour.
Speaker 1: But around nineteen thirty one German engineer believed that faster
Speaker 1: speeds were possible. It's just a shame that he used
Speaker 1: a design that would come to symbolize tragedy six years later.
Speaker 1: His name was Franz Krukenberg from Ottersen, Germany. He graduated
Speaker 1: with a degree in naval engineering from the Technical University
Speaker 1: of Berlin in nineteen oh seven and went on to
Speaker 1: design various aircraft before World War One. After the war,
Speaker 1: France opened his own consulting firm, where he designed a
Speaker 1: new kind of hanging monorail. Unfortunately, despite his best efforts,
Speaker 1: he was never able to secure the money to build
Speaker 1: a prototype. But that didn't stop the engineer from moving
Speaker 1: on to his next great project, high speed railway transportation.
Speaker 1: It's got to Work in nineteen twenty nine, designing a
Speaker 1: new kind of railcar, one that would be aerodynamic, just
Speaker 1: like an airplane. Despite certain modern rail vehicles being called
Speaker 1: bullet trains today, this pre World War II creation was
Speaker 1: actually shaped like a bullet. He carried out a series
Speaker 1: of wind tunnel tests in November of that year before
Speaker 1: beginning construction. The final train measured almost eighty five feet
Speaker 1: long and just over ten feet high. Its lightweight aluminum
Speaker 1: frame sat on top of a steel chassis and two axles,
Speaker 1: and it was powered by a pair of BMWIV six
Speaker 1: cylinder airplane engines. But what set this train apart from
Speaker 1: the others of its time was the four bladed propeller
Speaker 1: at its rear. France famously criticized zeppelins. He hated the
Speaker 1: hydrogen inside of them and its explosive nature, so it
Speaker 1: was funny that his new train car was shaped just
Speaker 1: like one. Even the workers noticed, which is why they
Speaker 1: started calling it the Sheenen Zeppelin or the rail Zeppelin.
Speaker 1: But despite its minimus design, France put a lot of
Speaker 1: thought into its construction. For example, each of the Sheen
Speaker 1: and Zeppelin's wheels had an inner flange that was taller
Speaker 1: than on normal trains. This was meant to keep the
Speaker 1: car on the tracks at high speeds and reduce the
Speaker 1: possibility of derailments. The Sheen and Zeppelin was completed in
Speaker 1: the fall of nineteen thirty. It had been designed to
Speaker 1: shuttle a maximum of forty four passengers at one time.
Speaker 1: Upon its first test with the propeller, the train hit
Speaker 1: sixty two miles an hour in just over a minute,
Speaker 1: traveling a distance of three thousand, two hundred feet. After
Speaker 1: three minutes, the rail Zeppelin reached the top speed of
Speaker 1: one hundred and thirteen miles per hour, at which point
Speaker 1: the test was stopped. Unfortunately, braking was a major issue
Speaker 1: for the train. The vehicle required just over a mile
Speaker 1: of track to stop due to its lightweight and a
Speaker 1: problem with the rear axle. Still, despite its issues, the
Speaker 1: Sheen and Zeppelin was shown off to the press on
Speaker 1: October eighteenth of nineteen thirty, and it became quite a
Speaker 1: draw for crowds who wanted to see what it was
Speaker 1: capable of. The tests continued for another several months until
Speaker 1: June twenty first of nineteen thirty one. That was the
Speaker 1: day when the rail Zeppelin traveled from Karlstadt to Perleberg, Germany,
Speaker 1: with a car full of passengers and crew. It went
Speaker 1: seven and a half miles, setting a new speed record
Speaker 1: by reaching a whopping one hundred and forty three miles
Speaker 1: per hour. The sheen and Zeppelin was then displayed at
Speaker 1: the Renbaannstadian railway station in Berlin for the next several
Speaker 1: days before its crew got to work upgrading its brakes
Speaker 1: in the hopes of sending it back out again. Sadly,
Speaker 1: the train's journey ended there. Its design just wasn't conducive
Speaker 1: to transporting the masses. For one, it couldn't handle tight
Speaker 1: curves at high speed, and second, the rear propeller made
Speaker 1: coupling other cars to its a impossibility. Still, Franz Krukenberg
Speaker 1: had glimpsed the future of travel in more ways than one.
Speaker 1: His high speed train was shaped like a zeppelin and
Speaker 1: just as unfit for travel as one too, which reminds
Speaker 1: me of another infamous vehicle, the Hindenburg. The only difference
Speaker 1: between the Sheen and Zepplin and the Hindenburg, though, was
Speaker 1: that the train didn't blow up in more ways than one.
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 show,
Speaker 1: and you can learn all about it over at the
Speaker 1: Worldoflore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.