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: Time flies when you're having fun and also when you're not.
Speaker 1: Either way, the clot keeps ticking. That's never more apparent
Speaker 1: than on December thirty first, when we look back at
Speaker 1: the previous year and talk about how we can't believe
Speaker 1: it is already over. But there was one year, over
Speaker 1: two millennia ago when people did not feel like the
Speaker 1: time had slipped away. And that's because forty six BCE
Speaker 1: lasted a whopping four hundred in forty five days. You see,
Speaker 1: the calendar has always been a bit tricky to nail down.
Speaker 1: For most of human history, years were measured using the seasons,
Speaker 1: and having exact dates and times wasn't that important If
Speaker 1: you wanted to schedule an event, you wouldn't tell people
Speaker 1: to meet you on Saturday at seven pm, because the
Speaker 1: whole idea of a seven day week and a twenty
Speaker 1: four hour day didn't exist. Instead, you'd say something like
Speaker 1: meet me at sundown on the night of the full moon.
Speaker 1: And let's be honest here. That sounds way cooler than
Speaker 1: how we schedule things today. Of course, many ancient cultures
Speaker 1: had tools like sundials and lunar calendars. In the Roman Empire,
Speaker 1: for example, one year was made up of twelve lunar cycles,
Speaker 1: each lasted about twenty eight days. The problem was this
Speaker 1: resulted in a year that was slightly shorter than the
Speaker 1: four seasons. Roman officials viewed the calendar as malleable, so
Speaker 1: they would add days here and there to make up
Speaker 1: the difference, but the system was far from perfect. Problems
Speaker 1: arose anytime politics got in the way of managing the calendar.
Speaker 1: The years before Julius Caesar rose to power were so
Speaker 1: turbulent that adding random day into the mix wasn't anybody's priority.
Speaker 1: By the time he took the throne in forty nine BCE,
Speaker 1: April fell in the middle of the summer and the
Speaker 1: harvest festival was three months before the actual harvest. Everything
Speaker 1: was out of whack, so to get things back on tracks,
Speaker 1: Caesar called for forty six BCE to be a transitional
Speaker 1: year with ninety extra days packed into it. He named
Speaker 1: it the Ultima Annis Confusionists, that is, the final year
Speaker 1: of Confusion. When forty six BCE was finally over, Caesar
Speaker 1: instituted the Julian calendar. Rather than being based on the
Speaker 1: cycles of the moon, this one followed the movements of
Speaker 1: the sun. It's where we get thirty and thirty one
Speaker 1: day months, as well as leap years. The Julian calendar
Speaker 1: followed the seasons much more accurately, so it didn't need
Speaker 1: to be constantly altered, but still it wasn't perfect. Roman
Speaker 1: astronomers had miscalculated the solar year by a mere eleven minutes,
Speaker 1: and this might not seem like much, but it added up.
Speaker 1: For every one hundred and twenty eight years that passed,
Speaker 1: the calendar fell about one day behind the seasons. This
Speaker 1: meant that by fifteen eighty two, the world was more
Speaker 1: than ten days off. This problem came to the attention
Speaker 1: of Pope Gregory the thirteenth, who suggested a few changes. First,
Speaker 1: they needed to make up for lost time. Literally, those
Speaker 1: living in Catholic Europe went to sleep on October fourth
Speaker 1: of fifteen eighty two, but when they woke up the
Speaker 1: next morning it was in October fifth. It was the fifteenth.
Speaker 1: They had jumped ahead ten days, and to make sure
Speaker 1: the same thing didn't happen again, modern astronomers also needed
Speaker 1: to fix the Romans miscalculation. They changed how leap years
Speaker 1: work just slightly, making any numbers divisible by four hundred
Speaker 1: or four thousand exempt. This small alteration guaranteed that the
Speaker 1: Gregorian calendar would remain accurate for the next twenty thousand years,
Speaker 1: but not everyone was on board. The British government refused
Speaker 1: to institute the change for nearly two centuries until they
Speaker 1: had lagged eleven days behind the rest of Western Europe.
Speaker 1: In seventeen fifty two, British King George the Second had
Speaker 1: finally had enough that September lasted just nineteen days in
Speaker 1: the Briginish Empire, allowing the nation to get back in
Speaker 1: line with the seasons. These days, the Gregorian calendar is
Speaker 1: considered the international standard, but that doesn't mean that every
Speaker 1: country and culture embraces it. Even now. The way humans
Speaker 1: keep time is not an exact science, and not everyone
Speaker 1: is about to celebrate the beginning of twenty twenty four
Speaker 1: in Ethiopia, for example, people use a version of the
Speaker 1: ancient Coptic calendar, which has thirteen months. Because of this,
Speaker 1: the current year there is twenty sixteen. Iran and Afghanistan
Speaker 1: both use the Persian Solar his reclendar. In those countries
Speaker 1: it's technically fourteen forty five. Nepal uses a traditional Hindu
Speaker 1: calendar that puts them about fifty six years in the
Speaker 1: future in twenty eighty, but that's nothing compared to China.
Speaker 1: Their traditional calendar puts them all the way in forty
Speaker 1: seven to twenty. So let this be a reminder. The
Speaker 1: time is an illusion, and the way that we measure
Speaker 1: it is curious. Indeed, as the new year approaches, you
Speaker 1: might be reaching into your fridge for a festive drink
Speaker 1: like eggnog or champagne. In Scotland, though, they're mixing up
Speaker 1: a different kind of holiday beverage, one with a very
Speaker 1: curious history. It's called athel Bros, and legends about this
Speaker 1: winter time brew go back over five hundred years. There
Speaker 1: are a couple of different versions of the story. The
Speaker 1: first one goes like this, there once was a giant
Speaker 1: who lived in the Scottish Highlands in a region called Ethel.
Speaker 1: The monster terrorized innocent people, spreading fear across the hills.
Speaker 1: A local hunter wanted to put a stop to the violence,
Speaker 1: but to defeat the beast, he had to be clever.
Speaker 1: Rather than attacking the giant outright, the hunter mixed up
Speaker 1: a vat of oatmeal, whiskey, cream, and honey and set
Speaker 1: it out for the monster to eat. The spiked porridge
Speaker 1: was so strong that it put the beast into a
Speaker 1: never ending stupor, thereby ending its reign of terror. Now
Speaker 1: the second and more slightly believable version of the tale
Speaker 1: begins like this. In the late fifteenth century, the British
Speaker 1: Isles were racked by a series of battles known as
Speaker 1: the Wars of the Roses. People were fighting to gain
Speaker 1: control of the British throne, and they were willing to
Speaker 1: do just about anything to get it. Enter Ian MacDonald,
Speaker 1: a Scottish earl. In fourteen seventy five, Ian signed a
Speaker 1: traitorous agreement with British King Edward the Fourth. The contract
Speaker 1: said that if England were to subdue Scotland, the earl
Speaker 1: would be granted partial rulership over his homeland, And just
Speaker 1: like that, Ian stopped fighting England and began plotting a
Speaker 1: rebellion against his own leader, the Scottish King. Unfortunately for Ian,
Speaker 1: his plans weren't exactly secret. There were spies everywhere. Soon enough,
Speaker 1: word got around to another Scotsman named John Stewart. He
Speaker 1: was the Earl of Athel of the Highlands, the same
Speaker 1: area where our fabled giant had lived. Angered by Ian's
Speaker 1: traitorous actions, John set out to squash the uprising before
Speaker 1: it could even begin, and the Scottish spies gave John
Speaker 1: some important intel. Ian and his men had a specific
Speaker 1: date in mind for the rebel. Until then, they were
Speaker 1: hiding out on a nearby hill, eating rations and getting
Speaker 1: water from one specific well, and that detail the well
Speaker 1: gave John an idea. The night before Ian's coup was
Speaker 1: scheduled to take place, John ordered his men to sneak
Speaker 1: into the enemy camp and sabotage their water supply by
Speaker 1: filling the well with oats, honey, and scotch. Apparently, Ian
Speaker 1: and his men didn't notice that their water had magically
Speaker 1: transformed into some kind of thick whiskey cocktail. I guess
Speaker 1: we're meant to suspend our disbelief at this point in history.
Speaker 1: That's or the stuff just tasted so good that they
Speaker 1: didn't want to question it. Regardless, legend has it that
Speaker 1: Ian and his troops ate so much that they all
Speaker 1: passed out in the morning. They were too exhausted to
Speaker 1: mount their rebellion, And there you have it. With nothing
Speaker 1: more than the power of a stiff drink, John had
Speaker 1: successfully stopped the uprising. Now in both stories, ethel Bros
Speaker 1: originates in the Highlands, is made in massive quantities, and
Speaker 1: has a nearly mythical ability to leave people staggeringly drunk.
Speaker 1: It's believed to be one of the world's first cock tales,
Speaker 1: and it's remained popular throughout history. Thankfully, though the recipe
Speaker 1: has since been refined. John Stewart's descendants made one big
Speaker 1: change in the early eighteen hundreds. They replaced the oatmeal
Speaker 1: with a mixture of blended oats and water, which was
Speaker 1: then strained to ensure a smooth, drinkable consistency. And this
Speaker 1: was arguably the first version of oat's milk. Who knew
Speaker 1: that our favorite lattes could be traced back to a
Speaker 1: fifteenth century Scottish cocktail? Right these days, ethel Bros is
Speaker 1: most often brewed during hogmen at which is the Scottish
Speaker 1: version of New Year's Eve, one of the country's most
Speaker 1: important holidays. Hogmen Ase celebrations feature torchlit parades, swinging fireballs
Speaker 1: and other ritualistic traditions. Plus there's plenty of athel bros
Speaker 1: to go around. And hey, I can't think of a
Speaker 1: better way to ring in the new year than with flames,
Speaker 1: toasts and strange stories. So cheers to twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1: In all the curious tales we've yet to discover, I
Speaker 1: hope 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.