Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild.
Speaker 2: Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history
Speaker 2: is an open book, all of these amazing tales are
Speaker 2: right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. The area outside Panama
Speaker 2: City was sweltering and packed with people. A train pulled
Speaker 2: into the depot, disgorging multitudes into the hot station at
Speaker 2: La Sienega. Men and women flocked to the Ocean House
Speaker 2: Hotel and the Pacific House Hotel to pay for cheap lodgings.
Speaker 2: Those that weren't planning to stay gathered by the station
Speaker 2: or at the beach. There was a steamship, the John L. Stevens,
Speaker 2: to take these people to San Francisco that it was
Speaker 2: currently aground until the tide rolled in that evening. The
Speaker 2: situation left many Americans with nothing to do but sweat
Speaker 2: and wait. It was April fifteenth of eighteen fifty nine.
Speaker 2: The California gold Rush was at its peak, and in
Speaker 2: the aftermath of the Mexican American War, plenty of American
Speaker 2: colonists were eager to grab California land while it was cheap,
Speaker 2: and traveling through Central America was a faster and often
Speaker 2: less perilous way of going west compared to the Oregon Trail. However,
Speaker 2: at this point, the Panama Canal didn't exist, so it
Speaker 2: was still a haphazard route passing through the Republic of
Speaker 2: New Grenada, and as a result, Panama City got extremely congested.
Speaker 2: Jack Oliver, an American man, stepped out of the Golden
Speaker 2: Eagles Saloon at around five thirty PM. He was one
Speaker 2: of many foreigners who were passing through Panama City far
Speaker 2: slower than he would like. It was already very drunk,
Speaker 2: trailed by several friends in similar states of intoxication the way.
Speaker 2: He grabbed a slice of watermelon from a street vendor,
Speaker 2: which he ate as he walked along. The vendor, understandably
Speaker 2: annoyed that the American had stolen the watermelon without pain,
Speaker 2: pursued him. That man's name was Jose Luna. He insisted
Speaker 2: that Oliver pay him ten cents for that slice. Oliver
Speaker 2: brushed him off, telling him to get lost. Luna insisted,
Speaker 2: following Oliver further and further down main street. Oliver in
Speaker 2: a fit of rage, drew a pistol and pointed it
Speaker 2: at Luna's face. Luna defensively drew a knife, but before
Speaker 2: either of them could do anything, a local grabbed Oliver's
Speaker 2: pistol and attempted to wrestle it from his hands. The
Speaker 2: gun went off, fortunately hitting no one. Knowing better than
Speaker 2: to press his luck, Luna quietly vanished into the crowd.
Speaker 1: The man who had grabbed the pistol, though, Miguel Abraham,
Speaker 1: broke and run the gun still in his hands. Oliver
Speaker 1: and the other Americans chased after him, shouting angrily. They
Speaker 1: even brandished more weapons, and soon the locals were ready
Speaker 1: with weapons of their own. More gunshots went off, and
Speaker 1: the pack streets of Panama City descended into chaos. It
Speaker 1: was an explosion of tension that had already existed in
Speaker 1: the area. Locals, primed and angry toward the arrogant Americans,
Speaker 1: took to American run businesses with clubs and other improvised weapons.
Speaker 1: Both hotels, The Ocean and the Pacific were trashed in
Speaker 1: the ensuing riot. The main group of Americans, including the
Speaker 1: ones who had incited it all to begin with, fled
Speaker 1: to the train station, where they barricaded themselves inside. The
Speaker 1: Panama police arrived shortly after and attempted to control the scene,
Speaker 1: but when a stray bullet from the station struck a policeman,
Speaker 1: any attempts to calm things down died a quick death.
Speaker 1: Police and locals stormed the train station, breaking down the
Speaker 1: doors and forcing their way inside. The riots lasted hours
Speaker 1: well into the night. By the end, the train station
Speaker 1: was destroyed, the telegraph lines had been severed, and even
Speaker 1: sections of train track had been torn up. There were
Speaker 1: over sixty injuries and seventeen people died, fifteen Americans and
Speaker 1: two Panamanians. And what about Jack Oliver, the arrogant American
Speaker 1: who thought stealing fruit from a poor vendor was a
Speaker 1: good idea Well. Retellings of the riot tend to lose
Speaker 1: track of his story, but at least one account claims
Speaker 1: that he just sat the riot out. The tide came in,
Speaker 1: so he boarded the ship along with the other tourists,
Speaker 1: and while the violence raged on, he slept in steerage,
Speaker 1: waiting to be taken back to America. To some a
Speaker 1: riot like this was inevitable, though the governments of America
Speaker 1: and Panama might have had an agreement, but intense racial
Speaker 1: and economic disparities between the populations were very well documented. Predictably,
Speaker 1: the business owners who lost money in the riot blamed
Speaker 1: the locals like Miguel Abrahan, rather than Jack Oliver, who
Speaker 1: had drawn his gun in the first place. The conflicts
Speaker 1: between nations, individuals, and businesses became inextricably tied up together
Speaker 1: in the riot, leaving everyone frustrated. Traveling from one end
Speaker 1: of a continent to another is always going to provoke
Speaker 1: some sort of stress. Even as technology improves, we accept
Speaker 1: a certain amount of discomfort if it gets us where
Speaker 1: we're going. Only when your plane has a layover, it
Speaker 1: rarely ends with the airport burning to the ground. They
Speaker 1: say that you can't outrun fate, but as this story proves,
Speaker 1: you may be able to outswim it. On the morning
Speaker 1: of November twenty one of nineteen sixteen, a young stewardess
Speaker 1: walk through the dining room of the HMHS Britannic. The
Speaker 1: Britannic was originally built as a passenger liner, but when
Speaker 1: World War One broke out, it was requisitioned for use
Speaker 1: as a hospital ship. On this particular November morning, it
Speaker 1: was sailing through the Kia Channel on its way to
Speaker 1: pick up sick and wounded British sailors from the Greek
Speaker 1: island of Lemnos. Our young stewardess, a woman named Violet,
Speaker 1: squeeze past the dining tables where doctors and nurses were
Speaker 1: chatting over breakfast. She made her way to the kitchen
Speaker 1: to pick up breakfast for a sick nurse that she
Speaker 1: was caring for. But just as she picked up a
Speaker 1: teapot from the pantry, a deafening roar shook the Britannic. Instantly,
Speaker 1: the men in the kitchen dropped their pans and spoons
Speaker 1: and sprinted toward the deck, but Violet stayed calm. She
Speaker 1: was no stranger to chaos at sea. She'd been a
Speaker 1: stewardess on the supposedly unsinkable Titanic when it hit an
Speaker 1: iceberg four years earlier. A year before that, she'd been
Speaker 1: working on another luxury liner, the RMS Olympic, when it
Speaker 1: collided with a British warship. Whatever was happening on the
Speaker 1: Britannic that morning, it wouldn't rattle Violet jessup, so she
Speaker 1: took the pot of tea to her patient in sick
Speaker 1: Bay and calmly helped her get dressed and ready, and
Speaker 1: then Violet strolled down the deserted hallways to her own cabin,
Speaker 1: gathered up her toothbrush and her prayer book, and made
Speaker 1: her way up to the deck. As she did, a
Speaker 1: startled officer ran up to Violet and told her that
Speaker 1: there had been an explosion and the ship was sinking fast.
Speaker 1: All of the other women had already been evacuated, and
Speaker 1: so she was hurried into a lifeboat, and as it
Speaker 1: was lowered into the water, something caught Violet's eye. Another
Speaker 1: lifeboat that had already set sail was drifting along the
Speaker 1: side of the ship and being pulled into the churning
Speaker 1: water by the ship's propellers. She watched in horror as
Speaker 1: the other lifeboat was sucked into the propellers. One by one,
Speaker 1: its occupants jumped overboard into the water, barely making it
Speaker 1: out before the lifeboat was shredded. Violet realized that if
Speaker 1: she was going to survive, she was going to have
Speaker 1: to jump overboard as well. There was only one problem,
Speaker 1: Violet couldn't swim. Pushing down her first pangs of fear,
Speaker 1: she held her breath and plunged into the icy water.
Speaker 1: She was tossed around by the waves, sinking further and further,
Speaker 1: and then bobbing back to the surface. She smacked her
Speaker 1: head on something hard, and as she choked and saltwater
Speaker 1: filled her lungs, she felt a hand clutch her arm.
Speaker 1: Mere moments before she would have drowned, she was pulled
Speaker 1: to safety. All told, twenty eight lives were lost in
Speaker 1: the sinking of the Britannic, but Violet Jessup survived and
Speaker 1: made a full recovery, and the news got out that
Speaker 1: the stewardess had lived through a third major disaster on
Speaker 1: the ocean. She earned the new nickname Miss Unsinkable. After
Speaker 1: taking a short break to reevaluate her life choices, she
Speaker 1: decided to go back to work as a stewardess, and
Speaker 1: she worked at sea for another three decades, thankfully without
Speaker 1: another accident, before finally taking her well deserved retirement at
Speaker 1: the age of sixty one. Fates can be a curiously
Speaker 1: powerful force, but for Violet Jessup, it couldn't match the
Speaker 1: pull of the ocean. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided
Speaker 1: tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by visiting
Speaker 1: Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by me
Speaker 1: Aaron Mankie in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make
Speaker 1: another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast,
Speaker 1: book series, and television show, and you can learn all
Speaker 1: about it over at Theworldoflore dot com. And until next time,
Speaker 1: stay curious.