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Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Benky's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of

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Speaker 1: I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world is

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Speaker 1: full of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book,

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Speaker 1: all of these amazing tales are right there on display,

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Speaker 1: just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet

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Speaker 1: of Curiosities. A regular at the station, he had witnessed

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Speaker 1: the scene before hundreds of Union soldiers marched to the

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Speaker 1: train station in Indianapolis, ready to serve the North in

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Speaker 1: the Civil War. As those trains would depart, others would arrive,

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Speaker 1: this time full of the dead, the dying, and the

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Speaker 1: seriously injured. There had to be a better way, he

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Speaker 1: often thought. If fewer men went off to fight, there

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Speaker 1: would be less death and fewer men returning with such

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Speaker 1: serious injuries equally horrific. He noticed more men died from

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Speaker 1: disease than gunshots. Wars, in his opinion, were futile. Perhaps

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Speaker 1: the answer was to create something so formidable that maybe

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Speaker 1: wars wouldn't be fought at all. He'd been inventing practically

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Speaker 1: all his life. His first foray into engineering had been

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Speaker 1: well working with his father processing cotton in his home

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Speaker 1: state of North Carolina. There he'd improved on cotton thinning machines.

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Speaker 1: In eighteen thirty nine, he improved on propeller screws for

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Speaker 1: steamboats on the Mississippi. Later, he adapted his cotton thinning

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Speaker 1: machines to so crops like wheat and other grains. In

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Speaker 1: eighteen fifty, he created a machine that broke apart tempt.

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Speaker 1: His inventions had helped revolutionize agriculture over the years, though

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Speaker 1: he improved on other inventions as well, the bicycle, steam

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Speaker 1: cleaners for raw wool, and even a better flushing toilet.

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Speaker 1: But now he was faced with a new dilemma, how

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Speaker 1: to end wars faster, and he'd come up with a solution.

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Speaker 1: After pondering on the idea, in eighteen sixty one, he

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Speaker 1: drafted a prototype of a new gun. The gun, which

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Speaker 1: held up to ten magazines surrounded by a barrel, was

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Speaker 1: housed on an axis between two large wheels. Turning the crank,

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Speaker 1: fired off two hundred rounds per minute, depending on the

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Speaker 1: speed of the gunner. Later versions fired off even more

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Speaker 1: three fifty rounds per minute. He quickly filed for a

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Speaker 1: patent in eighteen sixty one and set up a factory,

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Speaker 1: paying for the first six prototypes from his own funds.

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Speaker 1: The factory, though, burned down, destroying everything. Determined as ever,

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Speaker 1: he set about building thirteen more. When he was done,

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Speaker 1: the military practically ignored him and his new rapid fire gun,

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Speaker 1: and it wasn't until eighteen sixty three before the Washington

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Speaker 1: Naval Yard tested it for themselves. Even though they gave

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Speaker 1: the gun glowing reviews, only twelve of the guns were purchased,

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Speaker 1: and not by the government. Union commanders bought them with

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Speaker 1: their own funds. After success in the trenches during the

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Speaker 1: Siege of Petersburg, Virginia, eight more guns were purchased and

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Speaker 1: fitted onto gunboats. Still, the army didn't widely accept its

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Speaker 1: use until after a gun company representative provided a demonstration

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Speaker 1: during combat in eighteen sixty five. Oddly enough, right at

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Speaker 1: the very end of the war the gun had been

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Speaker 1: designed to end. This inventor never anticipated where the weapon

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Speaker 1: would find its first heavy use. Sadly, the U. S.

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Speaker 1: Army employed the machine guns in the campaign against Native

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Speaker 1: American tribes throughout the eighteen seventies. In fact, the gun

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Speaker 1: became most well known for not being used during a

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Speaker 1: famous battle. General George Armstrong Custer decided against bringing the

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Speaker 1: guns to the Battle of Little Big Horn. While it's

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Speaker 1: difficult to look back on the history of that event

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Speaker 1: and wish Custer more success, he was, after all, slaughtering

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Speaker 1: Native peoples so that Americans could spread farther west, it

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Speaker 1: is easy to see the flaw in his decision. In

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Speaker 1: eighteen seventy, the inventor sold his most famous creation to

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Speaker 1: firearms manufacturer Cult. The weapon had done just the opposite

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Speaker 1: of what he had set out to do. The gun

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Speaker 1: had been dreamed up to save lives, but had become

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Speaker 1: a weapon of mass destruction, which stood in direct opposition

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Speaker 1: to its inventors real profession. You see, Richard Gatling, the

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Speaker 1: father of the Gatling Gun, wasn't an engineer by trade.

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Speaker 1: He was a doctor. The world can be a cruel place.

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Speaker 1: War seems to be a constant plague as our famine, disease,

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Speaker 1: and poverty. On top of all of that, climate change

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Speaker 1: has already had a devastating effect on the planet and

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Speaker 1: will only get worse if we don't do something about it. Today,

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Speaker 1: natural disasters seemed to be getting stronger. Hurricanes seemed to

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Speaker 1: hit harder, bloods and earthquake are wiping out entire cities

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Speaker 1: and volcanoes. Well, just ask Ludgar sil Baris Silbars lived

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Speaker 1: on the island of Martinique in the Caribbean, working in

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Speaker 1: Saint Pierre as a day laborer. He'd been born in

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Speaker 1: June of eighteen seventy four on one of the many

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Speaker 1: plantations there. Just over five and a half miles away.

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Speaker 1: Saint Pierre was no stranger to the occasional disasters. In

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Speaker 1: seventeen eighty a great hurricane had brought with it at

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Speaker 1: twenty five foot storm search that flooded the city. Every

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Speaker 1: home was washed away. Over nine thousand people perished. Meanwhile,

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Speaker 1: looming over all of them was another catastrophe waiting to happen,

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Speaker 1: Mount Pale. Mount Pale wasn't so much a mountain as

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Speaker 1: it was an active volcano. It hadn't gone off in

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Speaker 1: thousands of years, and the people of Saint Pierre didn't

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Speaker 1: seem to think anything about it. Perhaps they should have.

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Speaker 1: It was the night of May seventh of nineteen o

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Speaker 1: two when sail Bars found himself in a local jail cell.

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Speaker 1: He had a bit of a reputation around town on

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Speaker 1: for getting into fights. According to a few people, he

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Speaker 1: had been arrested after murdering a man, though it was

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Speaker 1: more likely that he had gotten into a bar fight.

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Speaker 1: Whatever the case, so Baris was locked up for the night.

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Speaker 1: Several hours later, on May eight, Mount Paley erupted. Smoke

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Speaker 1: and rumbling had been emanating from the mountain for weeks,

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Speaker 1: warning everyone below, but nobody paid any attention. That morning,

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Speaker 1: the mountainside blew wide open and the sky turned dark

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Speaker 1: with smoke. No one could see a thing for fifty miles.

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Speaker 1: Two enormous clouds had formed in the blast. The first

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Speaker 1: came screaming out the side of the mountain. The second

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Speaker 1: blew straight up into the sky before falling back down

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Speaker 1: to earth across Saint Pierre. This wasn't a simple puff

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Speaker 1: of smoke like one that might billow out from your fireplace.

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Speaker 1: It was comprised of ash, rock and gas and had

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Speaker 1: reached a temperature of over eighteen hundred degrees fahrenheit's, a

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Speaker 1: phenomenon known as pyroclastic flow. The plume traveled at roughly

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Speaker 1: four hundred miles per hour, leveling everything in its path homes, buildings, trees,

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Speaker 1: and people all in under a minute. Villagers from nearby

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Speaker 1: towns had seen the warning signs and come to Saint

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Speaker 1: Pierre to hide from the blast, unaware that they had

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Speaker 1: placed themselves right in its path. Twenty eight thousand souls

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Speaker 1: died that day, almost the whole city's population. I say almost,

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Speaker 1: because three people managed to survive. One man lived so

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Speaker 1: far away that he was safe from the smoke's reach. Another,

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Speaker 1: a girl in a boat off the coast of the island,

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Speaker 1: was rendered unconscious by the explosion, which also pushed her

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Speaker 1: boat out to sea. Though the ash and debris did

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Speaker 1: burn her, she escaped with her life. But what about

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Speaker 1: Lugar Sibaris, who had been jailed for disorderly conduct the

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Speaker 1: night before. Everyone else in the building had been destroyed

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Speaker 1: by the volcano except for him. He hadn't been placed

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Speaker 1: in the main jail cell. Instead, he had been locked

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Speaker 1: away in solitary confinement. His small cell had been built

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Speaker 1: halfway underground, with thick stone walls, making it impervious to

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Speaker 1: bombs and other blasts. He was found days later by

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Speaker 1: a rescue crew who heard him calling for help. He

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Speaker 1: had suffered burns all over his body. He told his

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Speaker 1: rescuers that when the hot air started flowing into his cell,

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Speaker 1: he stripped out of his clothes and urinated on them

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Speaker 1: to keep them from catching fire. He then shoved them

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Speaker 1: into the single grating in the cell floor that had

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Speaker 1: provided him with any kind of fresh air prior to

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Speaker 1: the eruption. Blocking it up had kept the gases and

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Speaker 1: other particles from reaching his lungs. So Barrus is quick

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Speaker 1: thinking and his serendipitous lodgings had saved his life that day.

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Speaker 1: In fact, though the rest of the police station had

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Speaker 1: been reduced to rubble, his cell held up and still

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Speaker 1: stands to this day, a monument to one man's incredible

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Speaker 1: luck at being in the right place at the wrong time.

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Speaker 1: I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet

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Speaker 1: of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn

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Speaker 1: more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com.

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Speaker 1: The show was created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership

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Speaker 1: with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show

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Speaker 1: called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show,

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Speaker 1: and you can learn all about it over at the

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Speaker 1: World of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious. Yeah,