February 25, 2021 • 10 mins
Some of the things we take for granted actually came about it a really unusual way, and that means they should be on display in the Cabinet. Here are two for your enjoyment.
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Episode Transcript
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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 right there on display, just
waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
(00:36):
Thor had a problem. He had too many fish. In particular,
he had too many salmon. But it wasn't just Thor,
it was his whole country, Norway. The thing is that
in the nineteen seventies fishermen in Norway had turned from
traditional fishing methods to something new, the fish farm. The
newly minted fish farmers had become very good at their jobs,
(00:57):
and when they started raising fish in net pen in
the sea itself, it took fish farming to a different level,
and soon they were harvesting fish like never before. But
even as Norwegians were farming more fish, the numbers of
fish they were eating we're going down. Maybe that wouldn't
have been Thor's problem, except that in nineteen eighty one
he was appointed to a new job with a title,
(01:19):
Norwegian Minister of Fisheries. So all of a sudden, all
the fish that were being put away in freezer storage
were precisely his problem. The freezers were industrial size, but
they were getting full. Thor needed to help Norway's fish
farmers figure out a way to sell all that frozen stock. Fortunately, though,
Thor remembered an idea that had come to him after
(01:40):
he had been elected to Norway's parliament in nineteen seventy three.
As a member of the Government Committee on Shipping and Fisheries.
Thor had visited another nation to build a relationship with them, Japan,
and on that visit he had seen a nation where
people ate a lot of fish. He thought that maybe
they would be interested in buying fish from Norway. But
for a while that idea swam in circles. That is,
(02:03):
until ten years later, with the Norwegian fisheries on the
brink of collapse, selling Norway's fish became a bit more pressing,
so as the new Minister of Fisheries, Thor pulled together
a team and started what they called Project Japan, a
mission to sell Norway's fish to restaurants, markets and families
who were serving up fish every day. This might have
(02:24):
been a tough sell, because, of course, Japan was also
a fishing nation, but Thora's idea came back at just
the right time. Japan's population was booming and Japanese fishermen
were struggling to keep up because in some places the
waters where they fished were going dead, and the U
n had just ruled the Japanese fishermen needed to stick
closer to home. For a people who had been eating
(02:45):
sushi since the eighth century, this was a disaster. Even
before refrigeration, salted fish had been wrapped and fermented rice
and preserved as a delicacy. In fact, that's where the
name comes from. In English, the Japanese word sushi could
translate to it's sour, something like the sushi we know today.
Raw Fish wrapped in rice was being served up in
(03:06):
the middle of the fift hundreds. With fish getting more scarce, though,
there were a lot of people ready to look for
new currents to bring fish to Japanese meals. So when
Thor arrived back in Japan in the nineteen eighties, he
saw a match made in heaven. Fish went flying from
Norway to Japan. Sales doubled and then nearly tripled. It
all seemed to be going well but there was one
(03:27):
fish that didn't interest Japanese chefs very much. They said
it had the wrong color, it had a bad smell.
They even said its head had the wrong shape. Sure
they would eat it sometimes, but definitely not in sushi,
and it definitely wouldn't be eaten uncooked. And there was
a good reason for that too. When it was cought
in the waters around Japan, it was usually infected by
(03:48):
a parasitic nematode and a sakis, So as far as
the Japanese were concerned, it wasn't safe to eat raw.
But thor knew that there was one place where they
had been eating it raw safely, the Norwegian embassy. Plus
he and his team had lots of this bad fish
to sell farmed in the waters around Norway and the
North Sea, so they set out on a marketing campaign
(04:09):
to convince a whole nation to buy their fish, put
it on rice, and eat it raw. The story was
loud and proud. The bad fish wasn't bad if it
came from Norway. The water of the North Sea was cleaner,
the fish were fattier, and there were no parasites to
be found. At first, though Japanese eaters stayed skeptical, and
no matter how hard Thor and his team pushed, they
(04:30):
just wouldn't buy it. That is until he offered one
of Japan's biggest frozen food companies, Nietzsche Ray, five thousand
metric tons of the bad fish for almost nothing. They
couldn't pass it up, and that was Thor's step one.
Step two was to have a celebrity chef start to
repeat the company line. The color wasn't wrong, just different.
(04:51):
The texture of the fish was smooth, the fat was tasty,
and it didn't hurt that Sushi chefs across the Pacific
in Los Angeles were also experiment with the fish that
would never be served on a roll at home in Japan.
It took time, but eventually it worked. The reputation of
the fish with the bad color and the bad smell
turned around. In fact, if you've ever eaten at a
(05:12):
sushi restaurant any time in the past twenty years, you
might be surprised to learn that the fish listed at
the top of the menu is something of a recent innovation,
because even in Japan, one of the most popular fish
to eat with sushi today is the one that Thor
worked the hardest to sell the fatty and delicious Atlantic salmon.
(05:44):
Some people are just really good at holding things together.
The Beatles wouldn't have been the Beatles without Ringo keeping
steady rhythm on the drums. King Arthur defeated the Saxons
and ruled over England with the help of his knights
at the round Table. Abraham Lincoln united a country ravaged
by war, and it cost him everything. And then there
was Harry. Harry's full name was Harry Coover. He didn't
(06:06):
play in a rock supergroup or carry a legendary sword,
nor did he wear a stovepipe hat. But he did
change the world, and he did it with chemistry. Coover
was born in Newark, Delaware, in nineteen seventeen, where he
lived until he was a teenager. A passing train hit
his car while he was driving and nearly killed him,
putting him in a coma for almost two months. After
(06:28):
he recovered, his family moved to upstate New York and
he was able to finish high school. Coover had a
brilliant mind even at a young age, and went on
a major in chemistry at Hobart College. Then he continued
on to get his master's degree and then a doctorate
in organic chemistry at Cornell. All he really wanted to
do was help people. He had written a dissertation on
commercial synthesis of vitamin B six research that was commandeered
(06:51):
by the U. S. Military. From there, he started working
with plastics. Polymers were a far cry from pharmaceuticals, but
the American soldiers fighting over season World War Two needed
inexpensive and accurate sites for their guns. Harry believed the
plastics were the future for military warfare, and in ninety
two he began development on a clear plastic gun site
to be affixed to Allied rifles. Among his trials and errors,
(07:15):
he tried one formula, which he scrapped. Early on. He'd
been working with chemicals known as cianoac relates. However, during
his tests he found that they couldn't be molded or
shaped easily. The slightest bit of moisture caused them to
polymerize and become quite sticky. Since there was moisture in everything,
they could stick to literally anything they touched. Harry didn't
(07:35):
think much about the substance and continued with his work,
eventually taking his talents to Eastman Kodak in the early
nineteen fifties, he didn't work on cameras. Though Harry had
been put in charge of a group of scientists who
were developing heat resistant polymers to be used in the
canopies of jet airplanes. He thought back to his work
on the gun sights and remembered the cianoac relates he'd
(07:56):
given up on six years earlier. It seemed like they
might work in this instant. He tested his theory by
spreading the clear, viscous liquid between two refractometer prisms and
pressing them together. There was just one problem. He couldn't
pull him apart, no matter how hard he tried. Harry
and his fellow researchers then began testing his cyanoac relate
(08:16):
formula all over the lab, applying it to random objects
and pushing the limits of its strength. And while they
didn't think it would work too well on jet planes,
it seemed to have a great future as a commercial product.
Harry patented it, while Eastman Kodak boxed and branded it
as Eastman number nine ten. They put it on store
shelves shortly after. Over time, it was licensed out to
(08:38):
various manufacturers who changed its name to everything from quick
Set number four oh four to super bonder. Harry Coover
even went on popular game show I've Got a Secret
to show it off by lifting the host right off
the floor with only one drop. According to one urban legend,
it was believed that the World War Two soldiers themselves
had stumbled upon the sticky stuff and started using it
(09:00):
to patch themselves up on the battlefield. That story wasn't true,
but it did find a use during the Vietnam War
as a makeshift bandage until injured soldiers could get to
a hospital for stitches. It's also used by hobbyists in
assembling model miniatures, and thanks to its water repellent ability,
it's a favorite tool among home aquarium enthusiasts. Today. The
(09:20):
product is known by two simple words, regardless of who
makes it or how it's marketed, superglue and adhesive so
nice it was accidentally invented twice. 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
(09:41):
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 of Lore.
Do come, 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 right there on display, just
waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
(00:36):
Thor had a problem. He had too many fish. In particular,
he had too many salmon. But it wasn't just Thor,
it was his whole country, Norway. The thing is that
in the nineteen seventies fishermen in Norway had turned from
traditional fishing methods to something new, the fish farm. The
newly minted fish farmers had become very good at their jobs,
(00:57):
and when they started raising fish in net pen in
the sea itself, it took fish farming to a different level,
and soon they were harvesting fish like never before. But
even as Norwegians were farming more fish, the numbers of
fish they were eating we're going down. Maybe that wouldn't
have been Thor's problem, except that in nineteen eighty one
he was appointed to a new job with a title,
(01:19):
Norwegian Minister of Fisheries. So all of a sudden, all
the fish that were being put away in freezer storage
were precisely his problem. The freezers were industrial size, but
they were getting full. Thor needed to help Norway's fish
farmers figure out a way to sell all that frozen stock. Fortunately, though,
Thor remembered an idea that had come to him after
(01:40):
he had been elected to Norway's parliament in nineteen seventy three.
As a member of the Government Committee on Shipping and Fisheries.
Thor had visited another nation to build a relationship with them, Japan,
and on that visit he had seen a nation where
people ate a lot of fish. He thought that maybe
they would be interested in buying fish from Norway. But
for a while that idea swam in circles. That is,
(02:03):
until ten years later, with the Norwegian fisheries on the
brink of collapse, selling Norway's fish became a bit more pressing,
so as the new Minister of Fisheries, Thor pulled together
a team and started what they called Project Japan, a
mission to sell Norway's fish to restaurants, markets and families
who were serving up fish every day. This might have
(02:24):
been a tough sell, because, of course, Japan was also
a fishing nation, but Thora's idea came back at just
the right time. Japan's population was booming and Japanese fishermen
were struggling to keep up because in some places the
waters where they fished were going dead, and the U
n had just ruled the Japanese fishermen needed to stick
closer to home. For a people who had been eating
(02:45):
sushi since the eighth century, this was a disaster. Even
before refrigeration, salted fish had been wrapped and fermented rice
and preserved as a delicacy. In fact, that's where the
name comes from. In English, the Japanese word sushi could
translate to it's sour, something like the sushi we know today.
Raw Fish wrapped in rice was being served up in
(03:06):
the middle of the fift hundreds. With fish getting more scarce, though,
there were a lot of people ready to look for
new currents to bring fish to Japanese meals. So when
Thor arrived back in Japan in the nineteen eighties, he
saw a match made in heaven. Fish went flying from
Norway to Japan. Sales doubled and then nearly tripled. It
all seemed to be going well but there was one
(03:27):
fish that didn't interest Japanese chefs very much. They said
it had the wrong color, it had a bad smell.
They even said its head had the wrong shape. Sure
they would eat it sometimes, but definitely not in sushi,
and it definitely wouldn't be eaten uncooked. And there was
a good reason for that too. When it was cought
in the waters around Japan, it was usually infected by
(03:48):
a parasitic nematode and a sakis, So as far as
the Japanese were concerned, it wasn't safe to eat raw.
But thor knew that there was one place where they
had been eating it raw safely, the Norwegian embassy. Plus
he and his team had lots of this bad fish
to sell farmed in the waters around Norway and the
North Sea, so they set out on a marketing campaign
(04:09):
to convince a whole nation to buy their fish, put
it on rice, and eat it raw. The story was
loud and proud. The bad fish wasn't bad if it
came from Norway. The water of the North Sea was cleaner,
the fish were fattier, and there were no parasites to
be found. At first, though Japanese eaters stayed skeptical, and
no matter how hard Thor and his team pushed, they
(04:30):
just wouldn't buy it. That is until he offered one
of Japan's biggest frozen food companies, Nietzsche Ray, five thousand
metric tons of the bad fish for almost nothing. They
couldn't pass it up, and that was Thor's step one.
Step two was to have a celebrity chef start to
repeat the company line. The color wasn't wrong, just different.
(04:51):
The texture of the fish was smooth, the fat was tasty,
and it didn't hurt that Sushi chefs across the Pacific
in Los Angeles were also experiment with the fish that
would never be served on a roll at home in Japan.
It took time, but eventually it worked. The reputation of
the fish with the bad color and the bad smell
turned around. In fact, if you've ever eaten at a
(05:12):
sushi restaurant any time in the past twenty years, you
might be surprised to learn that the fish listed at
the top of the menu is something of a recent innovation,
because even in Japan, one of the most popular fish
to eat with sushi today is the one that Thor
worked the hardest to sell the fatty and delicious Atlantic salmon.
(05:44):
Some people are just really good at holding things together.
The Beatles wouldn't have been the Beatles without Ringo keeping
steady rhythm on the drums. King Arthur defeated the Saxons
and ruled over England with the help of his knights
at the round Table. Abraham Lincoln united a country ravaged
by war, and it cost him everything. And then there
was Harry. Harry's full name was Harry Coover. He didn't
(06:06):
play in a rock supergroup or carry a legendary sword,
nor did he wear a stovepipe hat. But he did
change the world, and he did it with chemistry. Coover
was born in Newark, Delaware, in nineteen seventeen, where he
lived until he was a teenager. A passing train hit
his car while he was driving and nearly killed him,
putting him in a coma for almost two months. After
(06:28):
he recovered, his family moved to upstate New York and
he was able to finish high school. Coover had a
brilliant mind even at a young age, and went on
a major in chemistry at Hobart College. Then he continued
on to get his master's degree and then a doctorate
in organic chemistry at Cornell. All he really wanted to
do was help people. He had written a dissertation on
commercial synthesis of vitamin B six research that was commandeered
(06:51):
by the U. S. Military. From there, he started working
with plastics. Polymers were a far cry from pharmaceuticals, but
the American soldiers fighting over season World War Two needed
inexpensive and accurate sites for their guns. Harry believed the
plastics were the future for military warfare, and in ninety
two he began development on a clear plastic gun site
to be affixed to Allied rifles. Among his trials and errors,
(07:15):
he tried one formula, which he scrapped. Early on. He'd
been working with chemicals known as cianoac relates. However, during
his tests he found that they couldn't be molded or
shaped easily. The slightest bit of moisture caused them to
polymerize and become quite sticky. Since there was moisture in everything,
they could stick to literally anything they touched. Harry didn't
(07:35):
think much about the substance and continued with his work,
eventually taking his talents to Eastman Kodak in the early
nineteen fifties, he didn't work on cameras. Though Harry had
been put in charge of a group of scientists who
were developing heat resistant polymers to be used in the
canopies of jet airplanes. He thought back to his work
on the gun sights and remembered the cianoac relates he'd
(07:56):
given up on six years earlier. It seemed like they
might work in this instant. He tested his theory by
spreading the clear, viscous liquid between two refractometer prisms and
pressing them together. There was just one problem. He couldn't
pull him apart, no matter how hard he tried. Harry
and his fellow researchers then began testing his cyanoac relate
(08:16):
formula all over the lab, applying it to random objects
and pushing the limits of its strength. And while they
didn't think it would work too well on jet planes,
it seemed to have a great future as a commercial product.
Harry patented it, while Eastman Kodak boxed and branded it
as Eastman number nine ten. They put it on store
shelves shortly after. Over time, it was licensed out to
(08:38):
various manufacturers who changed its name to everything from quick
Set number four oh four to super bonder. Harry Coover
even went on popular game show I've Got a Secret
to show it off by lifting the host right off
the floor with only one drop. According to one urban legend,
it was believed that the World War Two soldiers themselves
had stumbled upon the sticky stuff and started using it
(09:00):
to patch themselves up on the battlefield. That story wasn't true,
but it did find a use during the Vietnam War
as a makeshift bandage until injured soldiers could get to
a hospital for stitches. It's also used by hobbyists in
assembling model miniatures, and thanks to its water repellent ability,
it's a favorite tool among home aquarium enthusiasts. Today. The
(09:20):
product is known by two simple words, regardless of who
makes it or how it's marketed, superglue and adhesive so
nice it was accidentally invented twice. 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
(09:41):
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 of Lore.
Do come, and until next time, stay curious. Yeah,
Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities News
Host
Aaron Mahnke
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