Creature Feature

Sometimes stories are powerful because of the yarns they spin, and sometimes they're powerful because of how they are told. Today's tour features one of each.

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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. It's a jungle out there.

(00:29):
Dangers lurk around every corner. Lions, tigers, and yes, bears
can be hiding when we least expect them, even outside
of the actual jungle. Of course, it's not supposed to
be that way. But in New York in eighteen seventy four,
the city was gripped by a panic unlike they'd ever
seen before. It was first reported on the front page
of the New York Herald. The animals at the Central

(00:50):
Park Zoo had gotten loose, and we're now running free
through Manhattan. It had all started with a rhinoceros, which
gored its keeper before freeing itself and its fellow actives.
A panther soon found its way into a church on
West fifty three Street, terrorizing worshippers. Donkeys, apes, and elephants
were on the prowl, taking out anyone in their path.

(01:11):
According to initial reports, forty people had been killed one
day after the escape. Two more had been injured. The
Herald referred to that day as another Sunday of horror.
The police worked tirelessly to corral the various beasts and
quell the bloodshed. Rhino that had kicked everything off eventually
fell into the New York sewer system, where it flought

(01:32):
a sea lion, and anaconda found its next meal in
a giraffe. A lioness evaded hunters on Broadway. There was
also a polar bear, some hyenas, and a Bengal tiger
the last of which boarded a ferry boat in search
of some well, let's just call it seafood. It would
be a busy several days following the escape, but soon

(01:52):
enough the police managed to capture an account for every
animal that had gone missing from the zoo. Walk through
Central Park today, and you might not even re lies
that anything had happened at all. Now, if you had
read the original article in the New York Herald all
the way to the end, you would have realized the
shocking truth about the whole thing, that it hadn't actually happened.
The story had been conceived by editor Thomas Connery, who

(02:15):
had allegedly gotten permission to run it by the paper's owner,
James Gordon Bennett Jr. Connery, had been strolling through Central
Park when he saw a leopard being moved from its
carriage to its cage at the zoo. In that time,
it had nearly managed to break free from its captors.
The story sat with him, and he considered writing a
serious piece for the paper to shame them for their
lack security. But then he got a better idea. He

(02:39):
asked one of the writers, Joseph Clark, to pen the article,
which came in at a round ten thousand words. Since
it had been published on the front page accompanied by
such a stark headline as awful calamity A shocking Sabbath
Carnival of death, readers assumed it all to be true.
Almost nobody read all the way to the end, where
the final paragraph let every one in on the joke.

(03:01):
It was the Victorian era equivalent of only reading the
headline on social media. As a result, those who saw
the headline and skim the peace behaved about as well
as could be expected of them. Men grabbed their rifles
and revolvers and headed out into the city, prepared to
take down any non human creature they saw. It's even
said that the editor of The New York Times was

(03:22):
among them. Other papers sent out reporters for witness statements
and information on the remaining animals that had yet to
be caught. Even the police increased their patrol numbers, eager
to bring an end to the carnage. Once everyone realized
that there was nothing to worry about, the Herald came
under fire for its role in terrifying the city. The
Times and other newspapers attacked the Herald for its irresponsibility.

(03:46):
A few papers used the opportunity to address the original
underline issue of weak security at the Central Park Zoo,
but perhaps the most notable story about the hoax came
actually one week before it was ever published. At the time,
the Herald did many op eds against President Ulysses S.
Grant and his grasp for power. Grant, a Republican, had

(04:06):
considered seeking a third term in office, even though tradition
dictated that presidents should never serve more than two. The
paper referred to this power grab as Caesarism. Political cartoonist
Thomas Nast, also a Republican, put his own spin on
the rumors by using The Herald's hoax as inspiration his
cartoon was published in Harper's Weekly. In it, he represented

(04:28):
the Herald as a donkey dressed in a lion's skin
with the word Caesarism written across the side. As the
donkey ran through the zoo, it scared the other animals,
one of which was tagged as the Republican Vote. Nast
referred to the Republican vote as the same animal again
some weeks later, a trend that took off among political
cartoonists all over the country. According to the legend, it

(04:50):
was this new parade of animals that inspired Connery to
publish that infamous hoax in the New York Herald, and
Thomas Nast's depiction of the Republican Vote as a zoo
animal has stuck around today. You'll see it on television,
campaign posters and on the pages of countless newspapers across
the country. In fact, it's now considered by most to

(05:11):
be the mascot of the Republican Party, the elephant. We
fill our days on this floating rock, chasing ambitions and aspirations.

(05:32):
So many of us try to follow our dreams and
fall short. We slip or stumble, and before we know
it's it's all over, or maybe not it takes resilience
and an iron will to reach out and put ourselves
up to finish what we started. That's what John Gadsby
did many moons ago in his own city. No, not
Gatsby with T and that's a different story. This man's

(05:54):
name was Gadsby with a D. He lived in Branton Hills,
a tiny town in a bit of a bind. John
Gadsby had seen it for himself. Criminals were everywhere, driving
the quality of life in his hometown way down. Having
grown tired of watching the place he loved fall apart
all around him, Gadsby organized the local kids to form
a group a means to build everything back up into

(06:16):
a shining city on a hill. Once the group got
to work, Branton Hills population skyrocketed from two thousand inhabitants
up to sixty thou with boosts and weddings and berths,
And with all of that growth came improvement to the
conditions in town. John Gadsby had done such a good
job at making Branton Hills better his neighbors elected him

(06:36):
as their mayor, and with Gadsby at the helm, Branton
Hills thrived. It was widely regarded as his stunning victory
for the power of grassroots activism. In fact, his story
was so inspirational an author thought that it would make
for a decent book. However, this writer told the story
using a strange approach known as a lipogram. A lipogram
is a story where a particular element of the language

(06:59):
is eliminated or a boundary of some kind is put
in place. In his book about Gadsby, the author manipulated
the language using such tools as circumlocation or a roundabout
way of making a particular point. It was how the
author was able to stay within his predetermined boundary. All told,
the book wasn't too thrilling and had difficulty finding a

(07:19):
publisher willing to print it. But the author believed in
his story and did what any headstrong writer would have done.
He printed Gadsby through a vanity distributor. Sadly, most hardbacks
burned in a fire at the printing facility, so not
many people were able to get their hands on one. However,
a rare volume did eventually sell at auction for four
thousand dollars. An Oshkosh Daily critic at the time called

(07:41):
Gadsby's amazingly smooth with no halting parts. It was difficult
for the author to pull off his language trick for
as long as he did, and in succeeding, Gadsby became
one of a handful of books over the years that
has utilized a lipogram to tell its story. Sadly, Gadsby
was not a work of non fiction. Branson Hills never existed,

(08:02):
and John Gadsby himself also completely made up. There had
been no grassroots activism, no jump in population, and no
financial victory. John gadsby story had been entirely fictional, told
by a man named Ernest Vincent Wright over the course
of fifty words. It bore a striking resemblance to another
book called A Void, published in nineteen sixty nine by

(08:25):
George Perick. It was a novel about a group of
people looking for a man named Anton Val. Part comedy,
part horror, the story contained twists and numerous subplots in
an effort to both confuse the reader and show off
the author's ability in spinning a tail his hand tied
behind his back by a self imposed constraint. Right and
Perik shared a common love for lippogrammatic storytelling. They had

(08:49):
a knack for telling stories in some of the most
difficult ways imaginable. Nobody made them do it, and it
had been a challenge, but in many regards it worked.
They had, by all objective measures, told their story the
way that they had intended. It also wild critics with
their ingenuity. After all, it took dedicated writers and a
whole lot of talent to pull off what they did.

(09:11):
You see, the novels written by Ernest Wright and George
Perrock lacked one important thing, the letter E. I hope
you've enjoyed today's guided tour 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

(09:34):
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 over at the World
of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.
Ye