Speaker 1: Welcomed Aaron Manky's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world is full
Speaker 1: 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. It's important to take pride in one's home,
Speaker 1: from the lush green grass on the front lawn to
Speaker 1: the crumb free carpet in the living room. Our houses
Speaker 1: and apartments are reflections of ourselves. No one wants to
Speaker 1: live in a place with holes in the roof and
Speaker 1: dirt everywhere. The people of kit Salt no better than anyone.
Speaker 1: Kit Salt is a remote town located on the north
Speaker 1: coast of British Columbia, only a puddle jump away from
Speaker 1: the shores of Alaska. Uh In nineteen seventy nine, the
Speaker 1: town was officially established to provide homes for the miners
Speaker 1: working in the nearby molybdenum mines. The area was no
Speaker 1: stranger to the mining business. Since nineteen eighteen, mines opened
Speaker 1: near kit Salt had produced a variety of metals such
Speaker 1: as silver, lead, copper and zinc. This new one, though
Speaker 1: molybdenum was an element used in producing steel alloys to
Speaker 1: make them harder and more corrosion resistant. It was a
Speaker 1: lucrative business, so much so that the town attracted twelve
Speaker 1: hundred residents to live and work there. The town also
Speaker 1: became a major opportunity for construction companies from all over
Speaker 1: North America. They flocked to kit Salt to build everything
Speaker 1: from single family homes to apartment buildings, even a hospital
Speaker 1: and a shopping center. Locals lacked for nothing. They had
Speaker 1: a library, several restaurants, a post office, banks, everything a
Speaker 1: modern suburban enclave needed to keep its residents happy. Heck,
Speaker 1: the sewage treatment plant was so advanced. Kit Salt had
Speaker 1: the cleanest water in the province, and from the street level,
Speaker 1: it looked like any other suburb, with well manicured lawns,
Speaker 1: simple homes, and trees and greenery surrounding the town. This
Speaker 1: little corner of Canada was a slice of heaven on
Speaker 1: earth for just two years. Around After eighteen months or so,
Speaker 1: the molybdenum market collapsed. The mines were forced to close,
Speaker 1: and the town's folk had no choice but to uproot
Speaker 1: their lives once again and find steady work elsewhere. The
Speaker 1: company behind that mine, American Metal Company, evacuated everyone fairly quickly.
Speaker 1: The people living there took almost all of their belongings,
Speaker 1: save for the furniture and large appliances like television sets. Now,
Speaker 1: when we think of ghost towns, we usually pictured dilapidated
Speaker 1: homes and buildings covered in graffiti, with caved in roofs,
Speaker 1: shattered windows, and ruins claimed by the elements. Kits Sold, however,
Speaker 1: was different. American Metal Company didn't think the malebdenum crash
Speaker 1: would last forever. It hired a caretaker to watch over
Speaker 1: the town until it was able to welcome everyone back. Well,
Speaker 1: that time never came, and Kits Salt sat vacant for
Speaker 1: over twenty years. In two thousand five, the town was
Speaker 1: purchased by an entrepreneur from India named Krishnan Sutan Theoren.
Speaker 1: He spent seven million dollars to own what has become
Speaker 1: something of a time capsule of a lost era the
Speaker 1: early nineteen eighties. Since he bought it, Krishnan has spent
Speaker 1: at least twenty five million dollars sprucing up the grounds
Speaker 1: and maintaining each property he's hired a fleet of cleaners
Speaker 1: and caretakers to make sure the grass stays mode and
Speaker 1: the streets stay clean up. Until recently, the public could
Speaker 1: tour Kit Salt and walk through the buildings. Old TV
Speaker 1: sets in wooden frames still sit against living room walls.
Speaker 1: The carpet and furniture are all original, as is the
Speaker 1: wallpaper in rooms that still have it. The grocery store
Speaker 1: shelves are empty, but the registers and the shopping carts
Speaker 1: are still intact. Books even sit on the library shelves,
Speaker 1: and the hospital's various medical equipment is right where it
Speaker 1: was left forty years ago. A gymnasium stands empty, it's
Speaker 1: hardwood flooring waiting for the scuffs and squeaks of sneakers
Speaker 1: during a pickup game of basketball, and the red upholstered
Speaker 1: seats in the abandoned theater patiently wait for viewers who
Speaker 1: will never come back. The shopping center boasts would paneling
Speaker 1: and signs for stores like Sears with painted window designs
Speaker 1: still intact. And it may not seem like it given
Speaker 1: how modern it is, but Kit Salt is a historic village.
Speaker 1: It's a snapshot of a time period many people didn't
Speaker 1: live through and don't remember. For others, it's an eerie
Speaker 1: trip down memory lane. Will it's homes and businesses ever
Speaker 1: be filled with new tenants. No one knows except for
Speaker 1: the current owner. But I kind of hope it stays
Speaker 1: just like it is. We already have ghost towns from
Speaker 1: the Old West and the Turn of the century. But
Speaker 1: a ghost town that looks like it was plucked from
Speaker 1: the pages of a Stephen King novel. That's something you
Speaker 1: don't see every day. Few television shows hold up as
Speaker 1: well as the nineteen sixties anthology series The Twilight Zone.
Speaker 1: It was acclaimed for its brilliant writing, moralistic plot lines,
Speaker 1: and mind bending twists. Of its many timeless episodes, One
Speaker 1: of my favorites tells the story of Flight thirty three,
Speaker 1: a Boeing seven oh seven aircraft heading from London to
Speaker 1: New York in nineteen sixty one. After the airplane inexplicably accelerates,
Speaker 1: it appears over what should be New York City. Instead,
Speaker 1: the pilots looked down only to see dinosaurs roaming the earth.
Speaker 1: The plane has traveled back in time, hoping to make
Speaker 1: it back to nineteen sixty one. The pilots catched the
Speaker 1: same jet stream that brought them millions of years into
Speaker 1: the past and make it back to New York City
Speaker 1: of nineteen thirty nine. As far as the audience knows,
Speaker 1: the plane never returns to nineteen sixty one. Its crew
Speaker 1: and passengers are lost to time. Something similar happened in
Speaker 1: San Francisco in nineteen forty two, but this aircraft didn't
Speaker 1: go back in time, at least I don't think so.
Speaker 1: The Goodyear Company is known for two things, tires and blimps.
Speaker 1: Except before they were flying over football stadiums, the blimps,
Speaker 1: or airships as they were known, made by the Goodyear
Speaker 1: Aircraft Company, were being used by the United States military.
Speaker 1: They've been built as commercial vehicles, literally vehicles to be commercials,
Speaker 1: meant for advertising Goodyear's new range of tires. However, after
Speaker 1: the attack on Pearl Harbor, the U. S. Navy commandeered
Speaker 1: the fleets and designated them under the L class of
Speaker 1: military airships. One in particular, the L eight, was instrumental
Speaker 1: in the Doolittle raid of Tokyo in nineteen forty two.
Speaker 1: It had delivered modification parts for the B twenty five
Speaker 1: bomber to the USS Hornet aircraft carrier which was taking
Speaker 1: the Doolittle Raiders to their destination. That was in April
Speaker 1: of that year. Four months later, on August sixteen, the
Speaker 1: L eight airship was ordered to perform a routine patrol
Speaker 1: off the coast of San Francisco. It's two man crew,
Speaker 1: Lieutenant Ernest DeWitt Cody and Ensign Charles Ellis Adams, were
Speaker 1: tasked with searching for Japanese submarines, which had been taking
Speaker 1: out Allied ships in the area for some time. The
Speaker 1: L eight was outfitted with a thirty caliber machine gun,
Speaker 1: three hundred rounds of ammunition, and a pair of three
Speaker 1: D and twenty five pound depth charges to handle water
Speaker 1: bound enemies. Cody was a twenty seven year old senior
Speaker 1: aviator and Navy veteran. He didn't just know his way
Speaker 1: around that aircraft, he also knew how to keep a
Speaker 1: level head in tough situations. His commanding officer once referred
Speaker 1: to him as one of the most capable pilots and
Speaker 1: one of the most able officers that he had ever
Speaker 1: worked with. In fact, Lieutenant Cody had been the one
Speaker 1: flying the L A during the delivery mission to the U.
Speaker 1: S s. Hornet four months prior ensign Adams was older
Speaker 1: than Cody by eleven years and had survived the crash
Speaker 1: of the USS make An airship off the coast of
Speaker 1: California in nineteen thirty five. He'd just recently been commissioned
Speaker 1: as an officer and had twenty years of airship experience
Speaker 1: under his belt. The German government even decorated him after
Speaker 1: he helped rescue passengers from the Hindenburg disaster in nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty seven. On the morning of August sixteenth of nineteen
Speaker 1: forty two, at six oh three a m. Cody and
Speaker 1: Adams took off in the l A from Treasure Island
Speaker 1: in San Francisco. They were to travel to the Farallon Islands,
Speaker 1: followed by a fly by of the Golden gate Bridge,
Speaker 1: all in all a round trip within a fifty mile radius.
Speaker 1: Conditions were clear that morning for the Blimps one thousand
Speaker 1: and ninety third trip, with the previous trips all having
Speaker 1: been completed without incident. Roughly an hour and a half
Speaker 1: after takeoff, Cody and Adams radioed back to Treasure Island
Speaker 1: with reports of an oil slick. Not far from the
Speaker 1: Farallon Islands. The airship dropped down to thirty feet above
Speaker 1: the slick and circled it for a closer look before
Speaker 1: heading back up into the sky. Around eight fifty a m.
Speaker 1: A nearby Liberty cargo ship and fishing boat watched the
Speaker 1: L A do its inspection before it disappeared. For hours,
Speaker 1: no one knew what to make of it. The blimp's
Speaker 1: crew wasn't responding to calls from Treasure Island, nor could
Speaker 1: anyone see its bulbous frame hovering above. It had simply vanished.
Speaker 1: Navy planes went out looking for it to no avail. Then,
Speaker 1: at fifteen am, just over two hours after its last sighting,
Speaker 1: the L eight popped up again off the coast of
Speaker 1: Ocean Beach. Now it was floating low enough for two
Speaker 1: local fishermen to grab ahold of its tie lines and
Speaker 1: pull it down. They managed to hold it long enough
Speaker 1: to check the control car, and what they found shocked them.
Speaker 1: There was no one inside. Cody and Adams, we're gone. Eventually,
Speaker 1: the fishermen could no longer hold onto the blimp and
Speaker 1: let it go, at which point it hit a hill
Speaker 1: and damaged one of its propellers. One of the two
Speaker 1: depth charges even came loose as well, and wound up
Speaker 1: on a golf course nearby. Now even lighter, the ship
Speaker 1: ascended again until an automatic valve started releasing helium from
Speaker 1: the envelope, that giant bag of air that gives the
Speaker 1: blimp it's distinction shape. It drifted over parts of San
Speaker 1: Francisco for a while until it finally crashed in front
Speaker 1: of someone's house in the suburbs. Well, crashed isn't exactly
Speaker 1: the right word. Suffered. A bumpy landing is more like it.
Speaker 1: It had caused some scraped roofs and downed electrical wires
Speaker 1: by the time that police arrived on scene, but it
Speaker 1: was the kind of landing that wouldn't have killed or
Speaker 1: even seriously injured Cody or Adams had they been inside.
Speaker 1: Investigators noted that the control card doors were open, all
Speaker 1: three parachutes were still on board, as was an emergency
Speaker 1: life raft. Radios and engines were fully functional, and no
Speaker 1: one had sent out any distress calls. Whatever had happened
Speaker 1: to cause the two men to disappear, it had been sudden.
Speaker 1: The prevailing theory was that one of the men had
Speaker 1: opened the rear hatch and deployed a smoke marker over
Speaker 1: the oil slick, but had slipped the other crew member
Speaker 1: in an effort to help him back on board. Also
Speaker 1: must have fallen in the water, making the blimp light
Speaker 1: enough to rise back up on its own. Other of
Speaker 1: suggestions have come up over the years as well, that
Speaker 1: the men had deserted the Navy and defected to Japan,
Speaker 1: or that they had been captured, but nothing definitive could
Speaker 1: be proved. The truth was that nobody had any answers.
Speaker 1: Lieutenant Cody and Ensign Adams were declared legally dead in nineteen,
Speaker 1: one year after their disappearance. But who knows. Maybe they
Speaker 1: took a trip to the Twilight Zone and ended up
Speaker 1: in an ancient version of San Francisco. I hope you've
Speaker 1: enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe
Speaker 1: for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the
Speaker 1: show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was
Speaker 1: created by me Aaron Manky in partnership with how Stuff Works.
Speaker 1: I make another award winning show called Lore, which is
Speaker 1: a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can
Speaker 1: learn all about it over at the World of Lore
Speaker 1: dot com. And until next time, stay curious. Oh