Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Benky's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world is
Speaker 1: full of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book,
Speaker 1: all of these amazing tales are right there on display,
Speaker 1: just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet
Speaker 1: of Curiosities. A regular at the station, he had witnessed
Speaker 1: the scene before hundreds of Union soldiers marched to the
Speaker 1: train station in Indianapolis, ready to serve the North in
Speaker 1: the Civil War. As those trains would depart, others would arrive,
Speaker 1: this time full of the dead, the dying, and the
Speaker 1: seriously injured. There had to be a better way, he
Speaker 1: often thought. If fewer men went off to fight, there
Speaker 1: would be less death and fewer men returning with such
Speaker 1: serious injuries equally horrific. He noticed more men died from
Speaker 1: disease than gunshots. Wars, in his opinion, were futile. Perhaps
Speaker 1: the answer was to create something so formidable that maybe
Speaker 1: wars wouldn't be fought at all. He'd been inventing practically
Speaker 1: all his life. His first foray into engineering had been
Speaker 1: well working with his father processing cotton in his home
Speaker 1: state of North Carolina. There he'd improved on cotton thinning machines.
Speaker 1: In eighteen thirty nine, he improved on propeller screws for
Speaker 1: steamboats on the Mississippi. Later, he adapted his cotton thinning
Speaker 1: machines to so crops like wheat and other grains. In
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty, he created a machine that broke apart tempt.
Speaker 1: His inventions had helped revolutionize agriculture over the years, though
Speaker 1: he improved on other inventions as well, the bicycle, steam
Speaker 1: cleaners for raw wool, and even a better flushing toilet.
Speaker 1: But now he was faced with a new dilemma, how
Speaker 1: to end wars faster, and he'd come up with a solution.
Speaker 1: After pondering on the idea, in eighteen sixty one, he
Speaker 1: drafted a prototype of a new gun. The gun, which
Speaker 1: held up to ten magazines surrounded by a barrel, was
Speaker 1: housed on an axis between two large wheels. Turning the crank,
Speaker 1: fired off two hundred rounds per minute, depending on the
Speaker 1: speed of the gunner. Later versions fired off even more
Speaker 1: three fifty rounds per minute. He quickly filed for a
Speaker 1: patent in eighteen sixty one and set up a factory,
Speaker 1: paying for the first six prototypes from his own funds.
Speaker 1: The factory, though, burned down, destroying everything. Determined as ever,
Speaker 1: he set about building thirteen more. When he was done,
Speaker 1: the military practically ignored him and his new rapid fire gun,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't until eighteen sixty three before the Washington
Speaker 1: Naval Yard tested it for themselves. Even though they gave
Speaker 1: the gun glowing reviews, only twelve of the guns were purchased,
Speaker 1: and not by the government. Union commanders bought them with
Speaker 1: their own funds. After success in the trenches during the
Speaker 1: Siege of Petersburg, Virginia, eight more guns were purchased and
Speaker 1: fitted onto gunboats. Still, the army didn't widely accept its
Speaker 1: use until after a gun company representative provided a demonstration
Speaker 1: during combat in eighteen sixty five. Oddly enough, right at
Speaker 1: the very end of the war the gun had been
Speaker 1: designed to end. This inventor never anticipated where the weapon
Speaker 1: would find its first heavy use. Sadly, the U. S.
Speaker 1: Army employed the machine guns in the campaign against Native
Speaker 1: American tribes throughout the eighteen seventies. In fact, the gun
Speaker 1: became most well known for not being used during a
Speaker 1: famous battle. General George Armstrong Custer decided against bringing the
Speaker 1: guns to the Battle of Little Big Horn. While it's
Speaker 1: difficult to look back on the history of that event
Speaker 1: and wish Custer more success, he was, after all, slaughtering
Speaker 1: Native peoples so that Americans could spread farther west, it
Speaker 1: is easy to see the flaw in his decision. In
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy, the inventor sold his most famous creation to
Speaker 1: firearms manufacturer Cult. The weapon had done just the opposite
Speaker 1: of what he had set out to do. The gun
Speaker 1: had been dreamed up to save lives, but had become
Speaker 1: a weapon of mass destruction, which stood in direct opposition
Speaker 1: to its inventors real profession. You see, Richard Gatling, the
Speaker 1: father of the Gatling Gun, wasn't an engineer by trade.
Speaker 1: He was a doctor. The world can be a cruel place.
Speaker 1: War seems to be a constant plague as our famine, disease,
Speaker 1: and poverty. On top of all of that, climate change
Speaker 1: has already had a devastating effect on the planet and
Speaker 1: will only get worse if we don't do something about it. Today,
Speaker 1: natural disasters seemed to be getting stronger. Hurricanes seemed to
Speaker 1: hit harder, bloods and earthquake are wiping out entire cities
Speaker 1: and volcanoes. Well, just ask Ludgar sil Baris Silbars lived
Speaker 1: on the island of Martinique in the Caribbean, working in
Speaker 1: Saint Pierre as a day laborer. He'd been born in
Speaker 1: June of eighteen seventy four on one of the many
Speaker 1: plantations there. Just over five and a half miles away.
Speaker 1: Saint Pierre was no stranger to the occasional disasters. In
Speaker 1: seventeen eighty a great hurricane had brought with it at
Speaker 1: twenty five foot storm search that flooded the city. Every
Speaker 1: home was washed away. Over nine thousand people perished. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: looming over all of them was another catastrophe waiting to happen,
Speaker 1: Mount Pale. Mount Pale wasn't so much a mountain as
Speaker 1: it was an active volcano. It hadn't gone off in
Speaker 1: thousands of years, and the people of Saint Pierre didn't
Speaker 1: seem to think anything about it. Perhaps they should have.
Speaker 1: It was the night of May seventh of nineteen o
Speaker 1: two when sail Bars found himself in a local jail cell.
Speaker 1: He had a bit of a reputation around town on
Speaker 1: for getting into fights. According to a few people, he
Speaker 1: had been arrested after murdering a man, though it was
Speaker 1: more likely that he had gotten into a bar fight.
Speaker 1: Whatever the case, so Baris was locked up for the night.
Speaker 1: Several hours later, on May eight, Mount Paley erupted. Smoke
Speaker 1: and rumbling had been emanating from the mountain for weeks,
Speaker 1: warning everyone below, but nobody paid any attention. That morning,
Speaker 1: the mountainside blew wide open and the sky turned dark
Speaker 1: with smoke. No one could see a thing for fifty miles.
Speaker 1: Two enormous clouds had formed in the blast. The first
Speaker 1: came screaming out the side of the mountain. The second
Speaker 1: blew straight up into the sky before falling back down
Speaker 1: to earth across Saint Pierre. This wasn't a simple puff
Speaker 1: of smoke like one that might billow out from your fireplace.
Speaker 1: It was comprised of ash, rock and gas and had
Speaker 1: reached a temperature of over eighteen hundred degrees fahrenheit's, a
Speaker 1: phenomenon known as pyroclastic flow. The plume traveled at roughly
Speaker 1: four hundred miles per hour, leveling everything in its path homes, buildings, trees,
Speaker 1: and people all in under a minute. Villagers from nearby
Speaker 1: towns had seen the warning signs and come to Saint
Speaker 1: Pierre to hide from the blast, unaware that they had
Speaker 1: placed themselves right in its path. Twenty eight thousand souls
Speaker 1: died that day, almost the whole city's population. I say almost,
Speaker 1: because three people managed to survive. One man lived so
Speaker 1: far away that he was safe from the smoke's reach. Another,
Speaker 1: a girl in a boat off the coast of the island,
Speaker 1: was rendered unconscious by the explosion, which also pushed her
Speaker 1: boat out to sea. Though the ash and debris did
Speaker 1: burn her, she escaped with her life. But what about
Speaker 1: Lugar Sibaris, who had been jailed for disorderly conduct the
Speaker 1: night before. Everyone else in the building had been destroyed
Speaker 1: by the volcano except for him. He hadn't been placed
Speaker 1: in the main jail cell. Instead, he had been locked
Speaker 1: away in solitary confinement. His small cell had been built
Speaker 1: halfway underground, with thick stone walls, making it impervious to
Speaker 1: bombs and other blasts. He was found days later by
Speaker 1: a rescue crew who heard him calling for help. He
Speaker 1: had suffered burns all over his body. He told his
Speaker 1: rescuers that when the hot air started flowing into his cell,
Speaker 1: he stripped out of his clothes and urinated on them
Speaker 1: to keep them from catching fire. He then shoved them
Speaker 1: into the single grating in the cell floor that had
Speaker 1: provided him with any kind of fresh air prior to
Speaker 1: the eruption. Blocking it up had kept the gases and
Speaker 1: other particles from reaching his lungs. So Barrus is quick
Speaker 1: thinking and his serendipitous lodgings had saved his life that day.
Speaker 1: In fact, though the rest of the police station had
Speaker 1: been reduced to rubble, his cell held up and still
Speaker 1: stands to this day, a monument to one man's incredible
Speaker 1: luck at being in the right place at the wrong time.
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: World of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious. Yeah,