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Today's tour will introduce you to a pair of exhibits that have been around a lot longer than you might first assume.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history
is an open book, all of these amazing tales right
there on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome
to the cabinet of curiosities. When it comes to the

(00:28):
invention of the telegraph, one name stands above the rest,
Giulielmo Marconi. Marconi was an inventor who revolutionized the wireless
telegraph and laid the foundation for the phones we hold
in our hands today. But another man had caught a
glimpse of the telegraph system long before Marconi, about three
thousand years before him. In fact, James Campbell Besley was

(00:50):
in shorts and explorer. However, one look at his accomplishments
and he starts to sound more like a myth than
a man. And yet he and his exploits seemed to
have faded into obscure rity. Bestley was born in London
in eighteen seventy four. At least that's what he liked
to tell people. He actually had been born in Australia.
But that was the thing about James Bestley. He enjoyed

(01:11):
a good story. He traveled to London later in life
to receive an Ivy League education, in metallurgy, but he
didn't finish, opting instead to travel the world and make
a little money along the way. By nineteen or three, however,
the only thing he'd seen was the inside of a cell.
He was arrested twice in the Yukon on several charges
of money fraud. He didn't let that keep him down, though.

(01:33):
He soon ventured to South Africa and Australia, where he
tried and failed to start several small businesses. Eventually, Bestly
made his fortune in mining for gold down Under before
packing up for Alaska and joining the military. After serving
in the Boer War in Africa, Bestly headed to Mexico
to mine for silver and copper when polo tournaments, and

(01:54):
run a massive cattle ranch. For anyone else, that would
have been quite a life, but Bestley still felt that
there was much more to do and more places to see,
so he booked a trip to Peru. He and eleven
other scientists and photographers fought disease and deadly wildlife, only
to uncover three Incan cities once thought lust and while

(02:15):
doing so, they used a relatively new technology called motion
pictures to capture the first footage of Machu Picchu After
his jaunt through the Amazon, Bestley and his team traveled
to New York, where the footage they shot was stolen.
Apparently someone had broken into the trunk where five thousand
feet of film was being stored for later review. He
couldn't rest knowing that all he'd worked for had suddenly

(02:38):
been ripped away from him, so Bestley took another trip
down south to reshoot his films and do something more.
That was when he realized something strange about his trip
through the Amazon. No matter how far or how quickly
he traveled, the native people in the next location always
knew that he'd be coming. Over the course of five months,
Bestley traveled from Lima to the Amazon River Delta. Every

(03:01):
time he came to a village, he realized that he
had been expected. When he asked how they knew about
his impending arrival, they pointed to a contraption made for
the purpose of letting neighboring villages know of incoming threats
or visitors. The transmitter was comprised of a hollow tree
trunk hung just above the ground. According to Besley, inside
the trunk had been arranged very much like our violins,

(03:25):
presumably with strings fashioned out of the innards from a
jungle cat. When someone hit the trunk with a small mallet,
the vibration would carry for miles to a receiver in
a neighboring village. That receiver was also made of a
hollowed out tree trunk, but instead of being suspended in
the air, it was mounted on a wooden platform. The
vibrations from the transmitter would result in a mild ringing

(03:48):
sound in the receiver. Vibrations of varying lengths would let
others know all sorts of news, similar to the dots
and dashes of Marconi's telegraph system. It was ancient and
revolutionary all at the same time. Besley's expedition proves something
that we're not always willing to admit. When a new
invention is unleashed on the world, that rarely are those

(04:10):
of us from so called civilized countries first to do anything.
Cultures of all kinds have been finding new and inventive
ways of communicating for millennia. Our communication devices are telegraphs
and telephones, and even our online chat applications have all
been based, whether consciously or not, on systems that existed

(04:32):
for thousands of years. We just hadn't heard about them yet.
Now that's what I call a bad connection. Everyone handles
faith in their own way. Some refuse to believe in

(04:55):
a higher power, while others embraced the notion that our
lives are on a path set in motion something or
someone we cannot see. Catherine Labour seemed drawn to religion
from the moment she and her striking blue eyes came
into the world. Born a Roman Catholic, she took her
baptismal name Zoe from St. Zoe, who was coincidentally celebrated

(05:17):
on Catherine's birthday each year. In eighteen fifteen, when she
was only nine years old, her mother passed away. However,
the young Labour quickly found a replacement when she picked
up a nearby statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary and said,
now you will be my mother. Catherine and her sister
Antoinette eventually moved out of their father's home and went

(05:38):
to live with his sister their aunt several miles away.
Her faith only grew stronger after a dream about St.
Vincent de Paul. For example, she joined the nursing order
that he'd founded in the sixteen hundreds. Her brushes with
the supernatural didn't stop there though. There was something special
about Catherine Labour, how the spirit of St. Vincent de
Paul seemed to always find its way to her, almost

(06:01):
as though it had chosen her for something special. When St.
Vincent de Paul's remains were moved to the Vatican Church
in Paris, Catherine experienced another vision, three in fact, all
within the convent chapel. She saw St. Vincent's heart poised
above the bone of his right arm. With each encounter,
the heart's color would change for white, to red, and

(06:22):
finally to black. To Catherine, these colors were messages about
the future of her community, but the chaplain wasn't convinced.
A few months later, Catherine was drawn to the chapel
again by the sound of a child, despite there not
being any children there at the time. She claimed to
have heard the Virgin Mary speak to her upon her arrival,
telling her that God had a plan for her and

(06:42):
that she needed to see it through, even though she
would be met with opposition. But that wouldn't be the
only time the Virgin Mary would speak with her. One night,
Catherine witnessed her appear within an oval picture frame, standing
upon the earth with light shooting out of her hands.
Twelve stars appeared, along with the letter M imposed over
the cross. Beneath it all, she saw the phrases Sacred

(07:04):
Heart of Jesus and Immaculate Heart of Mary before she departed.
Mary then told Catherine to place these images and words
on medallions so that people could wear them and receive
great graces. She said, with the help of her superiors,
the medallions were commissioned and distributed to the congregation. They
are still popular and still worn today. Catherine Labour continued

(07:27):
to work within the church, helping those who needed it
the most. She died on December thirty one of eighteen
seventy six, at the age of seventy. Whether she had
actually spoken to the Virgin Mary isn't for any one
of us to say. She'd believed when others had not,
and she had cared for the most vulnerable among us
and had lived a light of life. Catherine was interred

(07:48):
in the chapel's tomb until nineteen thirty three, when Paris
Cardinal Verdier decided to take a look inside one day,
and he was astounded. Fifty seven years had passed and
Catherine Labour still looked as pristine as the day she
had died. Even the blue of her eyes hadn't faded
after all that time. That very same year, Pope Pious
the eleventh beified her. Fourteen years later, she was canonized

(08:12):
by Pope Pious the twelfth, officially making her a saint.
Catherine's undecomposed body was moved into a glass coffin that
now sits at the altar of the Chapel of Our
Lady of the Miraculous Metal in Paris. Saint Catherine's incorruptibility
is said to have been a product of divine intervention,
where other supposedly incorruptible bodies were mummified or had decomposed

(08:33):
beyond recognition. This two d year old saint looks like
she might wake up at any moment. When she was alive,
she demonstrated the power of her faith by caring for
the elderly and the infirm. Today, she's still inspiring believers,
only this time from behind glass, herself a vision of
beauty and grace. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour

(08:59):
of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts,
or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast
dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Manky
in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award
winning show called Lore which is a podcast, book series,
and television show and you can learn all about it

(09:21):
over at the World of Lore dot com. And until
next time, stay curious, Ye