August 4, 2020 • 11 mins
Some of the most fascinating things in the world might or might not really exist. Today's tour should demonstrate that idea nicely.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Aaron Menkey'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. Kids are resourceful, especially when it comes to
having a good time. They can take any object like
a ball, a stick, or even a can and turn
it into a fun way to pass time. But back
in the sixties, a new kind of pastime had developed
(00:49):
into a full blown epidemic, one that put an entire
country on watch and had everyone wondering are the kids
all right? It was in Chicago in the fall all
of nineteen sixty nine when the American Academy of Pediatrics
held its annual conference. Ernest Caribia Jr. Was one of
two government officials in attendance that day. He worked at
the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, while Frank Gulich worked for
(01:12):
the Chicago Narcotics Bureau. Ernest and Frank had come with
a shocking warning for the medical community. There was something
causing hundreds, maybe thousands of hospitalizations and deaths across the country.
The two officials released their findings at a press conference
where they explain how America's youth had discovered a dangerous
new drug which they were injecting into their bodies at
(01:34):
an alarming rate. That drug was called peanut butter. Now
this wasn't a clever name for some new designer drug.
Ernest and Frank claimed that the kids everywhere were actually
injecting themselves with real peanut butter and in some cases
mayonnaise too, just to get high. This sharp rise in
food based drug use, they claimed, was due to the
(01:56):
popularity of an underground recipe book making the rounds for
dollar apiece. Now, obviously they were more than a little concerned.
Injecting any kind of food product into one's veins would
result in death anyway, not because of hallucinogetic side effects,
but because they would literally block the flow of blood
throughout the body. The Associated press ran with the story,
(02:18):
which was then published in the San Francisco Chronicle in
an article titled kids Shooting peanut butter in Chicago. It
ran under the headline peanut butter mayonnaise used as drug substitutes.
Each piece stated that the act of tripping out on
such culinary items was new and that several deaths had
occurred as a result of it, but none of the
articles offered any evidence to actually support such effect. One
(02:42):
narcotics expert who worked for the Ohio Attorney General was
quoted in one article as having handled a case where
a teenager had injected himself with peanut butter. As the
story spread, information and anecdotes changed. Authorities in some states
alleged to have known of cases where children had died
from peanut butter and mayonnaise use, while others made it
clear that even though the use was documented, no deaths
(03:04):
had occurred. Still, the headlines caused quite a scare wherever
they were published. Richard Nixon even noted the crisis in
his public papers, published in October of nineteen sixty nine,
But by nineteen seventy, the peanut butter and mayo panic
had died out, which begs the question had there ever
really been an epidemic of intravenous food highs to begin with?
(03:28):
Years later, experts believe the whole thing stemmed from a
combination of governmental paranoia and gross misunderstanding. You see as
the sixties were coming to a close. Drugs like marijuana
and L s D were becoming harder to find. In
some places, anti drug groups were worried that young people
would start looking inside and outside the home for legal replacements.
(03:48):
These included industrial substances like glue and paint, as well
as food products such as peanut butter. However, according to
medical journals and other sources, no cases of inappropriate peanut
butter use was ever documented. There had been only a
small handful of recorded anecdotes in news and magazine articles.
For example, the director of a school for troubled youths
(04:10):
in Arizona spoke to a reporter in April of nineteen
sixty nine about the rampant drug use in his school.
The boys he watched over, he claimed, would do anything
to get high. They'd sniff glue, drink cough syrup, and yes,
even inject themselves with peanut butter. The other reason for
the scare most likely came from mistaking slang terms for
drugs as the actual products. On occasion, peanut butter was
(04:32):
the name given to brown colored methamphetamine, while heroin and
cocaine used to be referred to as mayonnaise. These misunderstandings,
combined with the stories from exhausted educators, eventually spiraled into
a full blown imaginary epidemic. It had grown so rampant
that the federal government decided to step in and make
a formal statement to the press, but clearly that only
(04:54):
made things worse. In the end, there had been nothing
to be afraid of. American kids weren't injecting themselves with
peanut butter and mayonnaise to get high. Most, however, did
have a condition that most parents today are highly aware
of a very bad case of the munchies. Oftentimes, when
(05:26):
we set out to look for a missing object, we
wind up finding something entirely different. A hunt for a
pair of lost eyeglasses might yield the discovery of a
pair of headphones that had fallen behind the night stand
weeks earlier. Or, if you're lucky, that glorious little green
rectangle that turns out to be a folded twenty dollar bill.
If you're explorer Robert Peery, though the search for the
(05:48):
North Pole could drop a whole new island in your lap.
Pierry had set out on an expedition to find the
North Pole in nineteen oh six. He'd already made five
trips to the Arctic Circle, but he'd always dreamt of
being the first person to a step foot on the
North Pole. His dream, however, hadn't been realized just yet.
He returned home and wrote a book called Nearest the
(06:08):
Pole about his almost successful trip. But it hadn't been
a total loss. Peery might not have found the poll,
he said, but he had located something else that no
one had ever seen before, an entirely new land. He
called it Crocker Land, which he named after a wealthy
businessman named George Crocker in hopes that the man would
fund his next attempt at the North Pole. And Crocker
(06:30):
was on board, at least he would have been, had
he not promised to allocate that money to another worthwhile project,
rebuilding San Francisco after the devastating nineteen o six earthquake.
No problem, thought Peery. He'd just find another benefactor, one
with a passion for exploration, so he asked the National
Geographic Society for help, which they happily provided. In nineteen
(06:52):
o nine, the fully funded Peery and his team set
out for Crocker Land and not only made it, but
were then able to push onto in North Pole as well.
Peary was elated, as you might imagine, after almost twenty
five years of trying, he had finally done it. He
had become the first man to reach the North Pole
before anyone else. He returned home a hero, or so
(07:14):
he thought. According to Frederick Cook, a man who had
been a crew member on a previous, unrelated expedition, Peary
was only the second person to have reached the pole. Cook,
you see, claimed that he had done it a year earlier.
Peery's new rival had also read the man's memoir and
noted how the journeys had been eerily similar. Yet Cook
had not seen any trace of crocker Land as he
(07:36):
had made his way to the pole. Peary was incensed.
Of course, crocker Land was real. Perhaps Cook just wasn't
as skilled an explorer as he was. Along for the
trip to the pole had been Peery's assistant, Donald McMillan,
who stepped up in defense of his friend and mentor.
He vowed to lead his own expedition to crocker Land
and proved everyone, especially to Cook, that the land mass
(07:59):
was real. The trip was doubly important because crocker Land
represented the last bit of land on Earth that had
not been touched by humanity. Three different organizations funded McMillan's trip,
including the American Museum of Natural History in New York,
the American Geographical Society, and the University of Illinois. If
(08:20):
only McMillan had planned a little better, as captain had
a nasty habit of drinking while sailing, which caused the ship,
the Diana, to crash on the way to Greenland. The
crew chartered a new ship called the Eric and continued on,
but the weather was starting to turn cold, and pretty
soon they wouldn't be able to make it through the
icy waters to Crocker Land. For four years, the explorers
(08:42):
searched for the island, yet no matter how many times
they scanned the horizon, they came up empty. They began
to wonder maybe Peery had been wrong all along. Whatever
he had seen wasn't an untouched land mass, Perhaps it
had all just been a mirage. But Peery swore that
Crocker Land had been real. Numerous expeditions were conducted to
(09:03):
verify its existence over the years, but none of them
ever found it, and in night, a pilot flew his
plane over the area where Peery Clain crocker Land was
located and saw nothing. Either the island had disappeared or
Peary had been wrong in what he'd seen. Of course,
there could have always been a third reason for Pery's claims.
(09:23):
He'd really just wanted the money, with no viable prospects
to provide him with the funding for his next North
Pole expedition. Peery had tried to scam George Crocker with
an offer of immortality in exchange for fifty thou dollars,
it wouldn't be out of the question. Peery is also
the same explorer who visited Greenland in seven and, in
(09:43):
true colonial fashion, stole three massive meteorites from the local Inuits,
meteor RTEs that had been their only source of iron,
and then he sailed his plunder to New York City
along with six of the Inuit he enticed with promises
of warm homes and good hunting. Instead, he put them
on display and charged admission to the crowds. So yeah,
(10:05):
shady dealings were well within the realm of possibility for
Robert Pierry. There's no denying his endurance and toughness, as
his truck to the North Pole demonstrated to the world,
but it's easy to understand why some might doubt his
more unusual claims. Had it been real, crocker Land would
have been added to every map and textbook for eternity,
a perfect gift for a man who, like George Crocker,
(10:29):
had just about everything. Unfortunately, the whole thing turned out
to be exactly what it sounded like, a croc. 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
(10:52):
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. Yeah,
Welcome to Aaron Menkey'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. Kids are resourceful, especially when it comes to
having a good time. They can take any object like
a ball, a stick, or even a can and turn
it into a fun way to pass time. But back
in the sixties, a new kind of pastime had developed
(00:49):
into a full blown epidemic, one that put an entire
country on watch and had everyone wondering are the kids
all right? It was in Chicago in the fall all
of nineteen sixty nine when the American Academy of Pediatrics
held its annual conference. Ernest Caribia Jr. Was one of
two government officials in attendance that day. He worked at
the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, while Frank Gulich worked for
(01:12):
the Chicago Narcotics Bureau. Ernest and Frank had come with
a shocking warning for the medical community. There was something
causing hundreds, maybe thousands of hospitalizations and deaths across the country.
The two officials released their findings at a press conference
where they explain how America's youth had discovered a dangerous
new drug which they were injecting into their bodies at
(01:34):
an alarming rate. That drug was called peanut butter. Now
this wasn't a clever name for some new designer drug.
Ernest and Frank claimed that the kids everywhere were actually
injecting themselves with real peanut butter and in some cases
mayonnaise too, just to get high. This sharp rise in
food based drug use, they claimed, was due to the
(01:56):
popularity of an underground recipe book making the rounds for
dollar apiece. Now, obviously they were more than a little concerned.
Injecting any kind of food product into one's veins would
result in death anyway, not because of hallucinogetic side effects,
but because they would literally block the flow of blood
throughout the body. The Associated press ran with the story,
(02:18):
which was then published in the San Francisco Chronicle in
an article titled kids Shooting peanut butter in Chicago. It
ran under the headline peanut butter mayonnaise used as drug substitutes.
Each piece stated that the act of tripping out on
such culinary items was new and that several deaths had
occurred as a result of it, but none of the
articles offered any evidence to actually support such effect. One
(02:42):
narcotics expert who worked for the Ohio Attorney General was
quoted in one article as having handled a case where
a teenager had injected himself with peanut butter. As the
story spread, information and anecdotes changed. Authorities in some states
alleged to have known of cases where children had died
from peanut butter and mayonnaise use, while others made it
clear that even though the use was documented, no deaths
(03:04):
had occurred. Still, the headlines caused quite a scare wherever
they were published. Richard Nixon even noted the crisis in
his public papers, published in October of nineteen sixty nine,
But by nineteen seventy, the peanut butter and mayo panic
had died out, which begs the question had there ever
really been an epidemic of intravenous food highs to begin with?
(03:28):
Years later, experts believe the whole thing stemmed from a
combination of governmental paranoia and gross misunderstanding. You see as
the sixties were coming to a close. Drugs like marijuana
and L s D were becoming harder to find. In
some places, anti drug groups were worried that young people
would start looking inside and outside the home for legal replacements.
(03:48):
These included industrial substances like glue and paint, as well
as food products such as peanut butter. However, according to
medical journals and other sources, no cases of inappropriate peanut
butter use was ever documented. There had been only a
small handful of recorded anecdotes in news and magazine articles.
For example, the director of a school for troubled youths
(04:10):
in Arizona spoke to a reporter in April of nineteen
sixty nine about the rampant drug use in his school.
The boys he watched over, he claimed, would do anything
to get high. They'd sniff glue, drink cough syrup, and yes,
even inject themselves with peanut butter. The other reason for
the scare most likely came from mistaking slang terms for
drugs as the actual products. On occasion, peanut butter was
(04:32):
the name given to brown colored methamphetamine, while heroin and
cocaine used to be referred to as mayonnaise. These misunderstandings,
combined with the stories from exhausted educators, eventually spiraled into
a full blown imaginary epidemic. It had grown so rampant
that the federal government decided to step in and make
a formal statement to the press, but clearly that only
(04:54):
made things worse. In the end, there had been nothing
to be afraid of. American kids weren't injecting themselves with
peanut butter and mayonnaise to get high. Most, however, did
have a condition that most parents today are highly aware
of a very bad case of the munchies. Oftentimes, when
(05:26):
we set out to look for a missing object, we
wind up finding something entirely different. A hunt for a
pair of lost eyeglasses might yield the discovery of a
pair of headphones that had fallen behind the night stand
weeks earlier. Or, if you're lucky, that glorious little green
rectangle that turns out to be a folded twenty dollar bill.
If you're explorer Robert Peery, though the search for the
(05:48):
North Pole could drop a whole new island in your lap.
Pierry had set out on an expedition to find the
North Pole in nineteen oh six. He'd already made five
trips to the Arctic Circle, but he'd always dreamt of
being the first person to a step foot on the
North Pole. His dream, however, hadn't been realized just yet.
He returned home and wrote a book called Nearest the
(06:08):
Pole about his almost successful trip. But it hadn't been
a total loss. Peery might not have found the poll,
he said, but he had located something else that no
one had ever seen before, an entirely new land. He
called it Crocker Land, which he named after a wealthy
businessman named George Crocker in hopes that the man would
fund his next attempt at the North Pole. And Crocker
(06:30):
was on board, at least he would have been, had
he not promised to allocate that money to another worthwhile project,
rebuilding San Francisco after the devastating nineteen o six earthquake.
No problem, thought Peery. He'd just find another benefactor, one
with a passion for exploration, so he asked the National
Geographic Society for help, which they happily provided. In nineteen
(06:52):
o nine, the fully funded Peery and his team set
out for Crocker Land and not only made it, but
were then able to push onto in North Pole as well.
Peary was elated, as you might imagine, after almost twenty
five years of trying, he had finally done it. He
had become the first man to reach the North Pole
before anyone else. He returned home a hero, or so
(07:14):
he thought. According to Frederick Cook, a man who had
been a crew member on a previous, unrelated expedition, Peary
was only the second person to have reached the pole. Cook,
you see, claimed that he had done it a year earlier.
Peery's new rival had also read the man's memoir and
noted how the journeys had been eerily similar. Yet Cook
had not seen any trace of crocker Land as he
(07:36):
had made his way to the pole. Peary was incensed.
Of course, crocker Land was real. Perhaps Cook just wasn't
as skilled an explorer as he was. Along for the
trip to the pole had been Peery's assistant, Donald McMillan,
who stepped up in defense of his friend and mentor.
He vowed to lead his own expedition to crocker Land
and proved everyone, especially to Cook, that the land mass
(07:59):
was real. The trip was doubly important because crocker Land
represented the last bit of land on Earth that had
not been touched by humanity. Three different organizations funded McMillan's trip,
including the American Museum of Natural History in New York,
the American Geographical Society, and the University of Illinois. If
(08:20):
only McMillan had planned a little better, as captain had
a nasty habit of drinking while sailing, which caused the ship,
the Diana, to crash on the way to Greenland. The
crew chartered a new ship called the Eric and continued on,
but the weather was starting to turn cold, and pretty
soon they wouldn't be able to make it through the
icy waters to Crocker Land. For four years, the explorers
(08:42):
searched for the island, yet no matter how many times
they scanned the horizon, they came up empty. They began
to wonder maybe Peery had been wrong all along. Whatever
he had seen wasn't an untouched land mass, Perhaps it
had all just been a mirage. But Peery swore that
Crocker Land had been real. Numerous expeditions were conducted to
(09:03):
verify its existence over the years, but none of them
ever found it, and in night, a pilot flew his
plane over the area where Peery Clain crocker Land was
located and saw nothing. Either the island had disappeared or
Peary had been wrong in what he'd seen. Of course,
there could have always been a third reason for Pery's claims.
(09:23):
He'd really just wanted the money, with no viable prospects
to provide him with the funding for his next North
Pole expedition. Peery had tried to scam George Crocker with
an offer of immortality in exchange for fifty thou dollars,
it wouldn't be out of the question. Peery is also
the same explorer who visited Greenland in seven and, in
(09:43):
true colonial fashion, stole three massive meteorites from the local Inuits,
meteor RTEs that had been their only source of iron,
and then he sailed his plunder to New York City
along with six of the Inuit he enticed with promises
of warm homes and good hunting. Instead, he put them
on display and charged admission to the crowds. So yeah,
(10:05):
shady dealings were well within the realm of possibility for
Robert Pierry. There's no denying his endurance and toughness, as
his truck to the North Pole demonstrated to the world,
but it's easy to understand why some might doubt his
more unusual claims. Had it been real, crocker Land would
have been added to every map and textbook for eternity,
a perfect gift for a man who, like George Crocker,
(10:29):
had just about everything. Unfortunately, the whole thing turned out
to be exactly what it sounded like, a croc. 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
(10:52):
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. Yeah,
Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities News
Host
Aaron Mahnke
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