July 28, 2020 • 10 mins
Whether their origins are accidental or by design, there are some very curious items on our tour today.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Aaron Manky's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world is
full of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book,
all of these amazing tales are right there on display,
just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet
(00:27):
of Curiosities. We tend not to think about the objects
we encounter each day and where they came from. We've
always used short plastic sticks with nylon bristles to brush
our teeth, or washed our hands in porcelain basins, or
(00:48):
enjoyed our morning cup of coffee in a ceramic mug.
But who were the first people to brush their teeth
that way, or wash their hands in a sink, or
use a mug to hold hot beverages. For the most part,
we don't think about those things because we don't really
care as long as they work the way that they're
supposed to. But one man cared, and he let everyone
know it. Henry was upset. On December twenty, nineteen seventeen,
(01:13):
he penned an article in the New York Evening Mail
about an anniversary that seemed to have slipped by without
any attention paid. There was no fanfare or fireworks, not
even a short write up in the local papers. What
had everyone forgotten the bathtub? December twenty of that year
marked the seventy fifth anniversary of the bathtub's introduction to
(01:34):
the United States. A party had been in the works
months earlier when a surgeon stumbled upon the date while
researching the origins of public hygiene. Unfortunately, the event was
going to be held in Washington, d c. Which had
recently banned alcohol. As a result, the party was canceled.
Henry dove deep into the history of the bathtub in America,
which had gotten its starts in Cincinnati in eighteen forty two.
(01:57):
A salesman named Adam Thompson used to try owl to
England on business and had gotten accustomed to visiting the
baths there. Though the bathtub had been introduced years earlier,
it was an uncommon practice even there. Early bathtubs were
much smaller than they are today, not large enough to
accommodate the full sized person. The act of bathing actually
(02:18):
required the tub to be emptied and refilled by a
servant until the process was complete. Thompson, however, saw a
way to make it much easier. His version was enlarged
so that he could sit inside it, and instead of
having someone fetch water from another location and bring it
to him, he hooked up pipes that filled the tub
from the well in his garden. Six men would pump
(02:38):
the water into a tank in the attic of his house.
Pipes from the tank would then carry the water to
the tub below. One line brought cold water straight from
the tank, while another coiled around the chimney, which then
heated it on the way down. The tub itself didn't
look much like today's modern bathing vessels. Rather than being
made out of cast iron or acrylic like more more
(03:00):
are in tubs, Thompson's was hand built out of Nicaraguan mahogany,
and it was massive, seven ft long by four ft wide,
and it was lined with leads so that the water
wouldn't leak out. It was so heavy that they had
to have extra beams installed in the floor beneath it
to support its weight. Thompson's tubs soon became a main
topic of conversation when company came to visit. He demonstrated
(03:23):
it to friends on Christmas Day and even invited them
to take a dip if they liked. After that, news
of the bathtub spread across Cincinnati. While the wealthy elite
embraced it, several medical professionals came out against it, warning
that frequent baths would cause fever and respiratory issues. News
of the tub made it as far east as Pennsylvania.
(03:44):
The Philadelphia Common Council went so far as to try
to ban all bathing between the months of November and March,
but couldn't get the motion to pass. Cities in Delaware
couldn't keep the tubs from being installed, either, but water
rates skyrocketed for those who owned them. Eventually, cheaper materials
and construction made the bathtub a common sight in homes everywhere.
(04:04):
All the medical debates and political outrage started to die
down when it was clear that there was no way
of stopping them. Vice President Millard Fillmore even visited the
late Adam Thompson's home in eighteen fifty and bathed in
his original mahogany tub. Later, when he became president, he
ordered one to be installed in the White House. The
trend took off from there, and bathtubs became a mainstay
(04:26):
in homes, hotels, prisons, and other dwellings across the United States.
Henry's article was reprinted in newspapers all over the country.
Members of Congress cited it in legislation, encyclopedias included it
in their entries on the bathtub. Clearly, the article was
a viral hit, and then eight years later Henry followed
(04:47):
it up with a new piece, one he titled Melancholy Reflections.
Rather than expand on his history of the bathtub, the
author penned something else, entirely a confession his original article, Well,
it had been a hoax. Any truth it might have
held was done by accident. Despite his admission, Henry L.
(05:07):
Mankins piece is still quoted as fact today in published
articles and essays. It seems that it's a stain that
no amount of washing will ever be able to remove,
(05:32):
no matter how are'd we try. Sometimes we can't help
but find ourselves in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The security guard who was supposed to be watching the
i g R learned that the hard way, although not
as hard as some others. The i g R was
a radiotherapy clinic at a hospital in Brazil. The hospital
(05:52):
closed and the clinic moved to a new location. Technicians
left some old equipment behind, including a teletherapy machine used
for aviation therapy, and a legal fight broke out between
I g R. And the group that owned the old location,
the Society of St. Vincent de Paul. For months, they
battled over the contents that remained inside the building, and
(06:13):
while both parties worked to sort things out, the court
appointed a security guard to watch over the location to
prevent items from being stolen. Two years later, on September seven,
the security guard didn't show up for work. In his absence,
to scavengers looking for scrap to sell slipped inside the
abandoned hospital. As luck would have it, Roberto and his
(06:36):
partner Wagner, stumbled upon the old teletherapy machine. Believing that
they hit the big time, they started taking it apart
and loading pieces into a cart. That night, they noticed
something was wrong. They were very sick, vomiting frequently. As
they broke their haul down even further, their symptoms grew worse.
The following day, they dealt with diarrhea and dizziness, and
(06:59):
Wagner himself suffered a burn on his hand that caused
it to swell. It got so bad that he ended
up losing several fingers. While he recovered, Roberto kept at it,
finally breaking through to the core of the device. He
jammed a screwdriver into the capsule to pry it open
and saw a blue glow coming from inside. Unable to
get the strange substance to react to fire or other materials,
(07:22):
he decided to sell the lot to a local scrap
yard owned by a man named d vere Alvez Ferreira.
Ferrara was captivated by the blue light, believing that he
was in possession of something valuable, possibly even holy. He
brought it inside his home and invited friends to come
and see it. He sold the rest of the salvage
medal to a rival scrapyard. One visitor managed to pull
(07:44):
a few rice sized grains of the substance from the capsule,
which were then passed out as tokens of good luck.
Ferreira's brother, Ivo took one home to show his wife
and six year old daughter. The little girl was eating
lunch when her father placed the material on their concrete floor.
She picked it up it smeared it on her face
like makeup. Some of it even made it into her sandwich.
(08:06):
Everyone who had come in contact with Ferrara and the
glowing blue grains started to get sick. Ivo's wife was
the first to show symptoms. She quickly realized that their
illnesses hadn't started until the blue stuff inside had entered
their lives. She got the scrap metal back from the
other yard and brought everything to a local hospital. Dr
Paolo Roberto recognized her symptoms as well. Roberto, Wagner, and
(08:29):
the Ferrara family had all been exposed to caesium chloride,
the radioactive fuel that made the teletherapy machine work. Within hours,
the authorities were at work on containment while the media
alerted the public to the situation. Hospitals were immediately overrun
with panic stricken people believing that they had been contaminated.
Out of almost one thirty thousand patients, two hundred fifty
(08:52):
showed signs of exposure. Of those, twenty required treatment for
radiation sickness. Sadly, though many survived the ordeal, several did not.
Two of Ferraira's employees at the scrapyard suffered from oregon
damage due to their handling of the radioactive material and
died just weeks after exposure. Ferreira's wife also passed away
from exposure to the substance. In fact, she died on
(09:14):
the same day as her niece, the young girl who
thought the blue substance was makeup. And all of this
tragedy could have been avoided if the state hired security
guard had been at his post. For whatever reason, he
happened to be in the wrong place at the very
wrong time. Rather than protecting radioactive materials from falling into
the wrong hands, the guard had taken his family, who
(09:36):
was screening of Herbie Goes Bananas, a poorly received entry
in the Herbie the love Bug film series. Thanks to
the guard, Herbie Goes Bananas went from a box office
bomb to a bomb of a very different kind. I
hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities.
(09:59):
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 over at the World
(10:19):
of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious. Yeah,
Welcome to Aaron Manky's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world is
full of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book,
all of these amazing tales are right there on display,
just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet
(00:27):
of Curiosities. We tend not to think about the objects
we encounter each day and where they came from. We've
always used short plastic sticks with nylon bristles to brush
our teeth, or washed our hands in porcelain basins, or
(00:48):
enjoyed our morning cup of coffee in a ceramic mug.
But who were the first people to brush their teeth
that way, or wash their hands in a sink, or
use a mug to hold hot beverages. For the most part,
we don't think about those things because we don't really
care as long as they work the way that they're
supposed to. But one man cared, and he let everyone
know it. Henry was upset. On December twenty, nineteen seventeen,
(01:13):
he penned an article in the New York Evening Mail
about an anniversary that seemed to have slipped by without
any attention paid. There was no fanfare or fireworks, not
even a short write up in the local papers. What
had everyone forgotten the bathtub? December twenty of that year
marked the seventy fifth anniversary of the bathtub's introduction to
(01:34):
the United States. A party had been in the works
months earlier when a surgeon stumbled upon the date while
researching the origins of public hygiene. Unfortunately, the event was
going to be held in Washington, d c. Which had
recently banned alcohol. As a result, the party was canceled.
Henry dove deep into the history of the bathtub in America,
which had gotten its starts in Cincinnati in eighteen forty two.
(01:57):
A salesman named Adam Thompson used to try owl to
England on business and had gotten accustomed to visiting the
baths there. Though the bathtub had been introduced years earlier,
it was an uncommon practice even there. Early bathtubs were
much smaller than they are today, not large enough to
accommodate the full sized person. The act of bathing actually
(02:18):
required the tub to be emptied and refilled by a
servant until the process was complete. Thompson, however, saw a
way to make it much easier. His version was enlarged
so that he could sit inside it, and instead of
having someone fetch water from another location and bring it
to him, he hooked up pipes that filled the tub
from the well in his garden. Six men would pump
(02:38):
the water into a tank in the attic of his house.
Pipes from the tank would then carry the water to
the tub below. One line brought cold water straight from
the tank, while another coiled around the chimney, which then
heated it on the way down. The tub itself didn't
look much like today's modern bathing vessels. Rather than being
made out of cast iron or acrylic like more more
(03:00):
are in tubs, Thompson's was hand built out of Nicaraguan mahogany,
and it was massive, seven ft long by four ft wide,
and it was lined with leads so that the water
wouldn't leak out. It was so heavy that they had
to have extra beams installed in the floor beneath it
to support its weight. Thompson's tubs soon became a main
topic of conversation when company came to visit. He demonstrated
(03:23):
it to friends on Christmas Day and even invited them
to take a dip if they liked. After that, news
of the bathtub spread across Cincinnati. While the wealthy elite
embraced it, several medical professionals came out against it, warning
that frequent baths would cause fever and respiratory issues. News
of the tub made it as far east as Pennsylvania.
(03:44):
The Philadelphia Common Council went so far as to try
to ban all bathing between the months of November and March,
but couldn't get the motion to pass. Cities in Delaware
couldn't keep the tubs from being installed, either, but water
rates skyrocketed for those who owned them. Eventually, cheaper materials
and construction made the bathtub a common sight in homes everywhere.
(04:04):
All the medical debates and political outrage started to die
down when it was clear that there was no way
of stopping them. Vice President Millard Fillmore even visited the
late Adam Thompson's home in eighteen fifty and bathed in
his original mahogany tub. Later, when he became president, he
ordered one to be installed in the White House. The
trend took off from there, and bathtubs became a mainstay
(04:26):
in homes, hotels, prisons, and other dwellings across the United States.
Henry's article was reprinted in newspapers all over the country.
Members of Congress cited it in legislation, encyclopedias included it
in their entries on the bathtub. Clearly, the article was
a viral hit, and then eight years later Henry followed
(04:47):
it up with a new piece, one he titled Melancholy Reflections.
Rather than expand on his history of the bathtub, the
author penned something else, entirely a confession his original article, Well,
it had been a hoax. Any truth it might have
held was done by accident. Despite his admission, Henry L.
(05:07):
Mankins piece is still quoted as fact today in published
articles and essays. It seems that it's a stain that
no amount of washing will ever be able to remove,
(05:32):
no matter how are'd we try. Sometimes we can't help
but find ourselves in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The security guard who was supposed to be watching the
i g R learned that the hard way, although not
as hard as some others. The i g R was
a radiotherapy clinic at a hospital in Brazil. The hospital
(05:52):
closed and the clinic moved to a new location. Technicians
left some old equipment behind, including a teletherapy machine used
for aviation therapy, and a legal fight broke out between
I g R. And the group that owned the old location,
the Society of St. Vincent de Paul. For months, they
battled over the contents that remained inside the building, and
(06:13):
while both parties worked to sort things out, the court
appointed a security guard to watch over the location to
prevent items from being stolen. Two years later, on September seven,
the security guard didn't show up for work. In his absence,
to scavengers looking for scrap to sell slipped inside the
abandoned hospital. As luck would have it, Roberto and his
(06:36):
partner Wagner, stumbled upon the old teletherapy machine. Believing that
they hit the big time, they started taking it apart
and loading pieces into a cart. That night, they noticed
something was wrong. They were very sick, vomiting frequently. As
they broke their haul down even further, their symptoms grew worse.
The following day, they dealt with diarrhea and dizziness, and
(06:59):
Wagner himself suffered a burn on his hand that caused
it to swell. It got so bad that he ended
up losing several fingers. While he recovered, Roberto kept at it,
finally breaking through to the core of the device. He
jammed a screwdriver into the capsule to pry it open
and saw a blue glow coming from inside. Unable to
get the strange substance to react to fire or other materials,
(07:22):
he decided to sell the lot to a local scrap
yard owned by a man named d vere Alvez Ferreira.
Ferrara was captivated by the blue light, believing that he
was in possession of something valuable, possibly even holy. He
brought it inside his home and invited friends to come
and see it. He sold the rest of the salvage
medal to a rival scrapyard. One visitor managed to pull
(07:44):
a few rice sized grains of the substance from the capsule,
which were then passed out as tokens of good luck.
Ferreira's brother, Ivo took one home to show his wife
and six year old daughter. The little girl was eating
lunch when her father placed the material on their concrete floor.
She picked it up it smeared it on her face
like makeup. Some of it even made it into her sandwich.
(08:06):
Everyone who had come in contact with Ferrara and the
glowing blue grains started to get sick. Ivo's wife was
the first to show symptoms. She quickly realized that their
illnesses hadn't started until the blue stuff inside had entered
their lives. She got the scrap metal back from the
other yard and brought everything to a local hospital. Dr
Paolo Roberto recognized her symptoms as well. Roberto, Wagner, and
(08:29):
the Ferrara family had all been exposed to caesium chloride,
the radioactive fuel that made the teletherapy machine work. Within hours,
the authorities were at work on containment while the media
alerted the public to the situation. Hospitals were immediately overrun
with panic stricken people believing that they had been contaminated.
Out of almost one thirty thousand patients, two hundred fifty
(08:52):
showed signs of exposure. Of those, twenty required treatment for
radiation sickness. Sadly, though many survived the ordeal, several did not.
Two of Ferraira's employees at the scrapyard suffered from oregon
damage due to their handling of the radioactive material and
died just weeks after exposure. Ferreira's wife also passed away
from exposure to the substance. In fact, she died on
(09:14):
the same day as her niece, the young girl who
thought the blue substance was makeup. And all of this
tragedy could have been avoided if the state hired security
guard had been at his post. For whatever reason, he
happened to be in the wrong place at the very
wrong time. Rather than protecting radioactive materials from falling into
the wrong hands, the guard had taken his family, who
(09:36):
was screening of Herbie Goes Bananas, a poorly received entry
in the Herbie the love Bug film series. Thanks to
the guard, Herbie Goes Bananas went from a box office
bomb to a bomb of a very different kind. I
hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities.
(09:59):
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 over at the World
(10:19):
of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious. Yeah,
Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities News
Host
Aaron Mahnke
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