March 2, 2021 • 10 mins
Both stories today involve crossing the Atlantic, but they couldn't be any different after that. Well, other than both being more than a little curious, of course.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Aaron Benky'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):
Diego was a smuggler, or at least that was one
small part of his family business. In fact, he was
a Spanish banker working in international trade from the Basque
city of bill Bao. He hadn't started the business, though, No,
that was the work of his father, Jose, a savvy trader.
Jose did all kinds of legitimate business and built up
a company big enough to keep his children busy as
(00:58):
they grew up. So Diego, the second of Jose's eight children,
was among them. But he didn't just learn on the job.
Jose sent Diego to London to study economics and trade,
and Diego did just that and plenty more. He learned
English and made friends who would give him the idea
for his smuggling empire. Because along the way he came
(01:19):
to see that if there's one thing big, international shipping
companies like It's making money hand over fist while dodging
government oversight and government tax collectors. And in that business,
Diego was about to become an international superstar. In fact,
he had a plan to do some club or dealing
that would see him set up a smuggling network that
criss crossed the Atlantic. After Diego wrapped up five years
(01:41):
of studying business in London and arrived back home in Spain,
he saw his competitors making quite a pretty penny all
under the table. He saw wealthy American buyers paying big
money for illegal Spanish oil and wine on the black market.
If Diego was really dialed into just how much smuggling
was going on, he would have known that other shipping
companies were dodging taxes and pocketing profits not just on
(02:05):
wine and oil, but on all kinds of Spanish merchandise,
even cloth and raisins. And Diego wanted in on that game.
So after his father Jose died, Diego rallied his brothers
and set his plan in motion. First, he helped some
businesses across the pond find new ways to sell their
own products, like lumber and even prefabricated houses. Those were
(02:27):
shipped to Spain. Diego even set up a successful gambit
to smuggle American wheat flour from Philadelphia to northern Spain
and then back across the Atlantic to Cuba. It dodged
authorities and kept things out of sight. The documents aren't
quite clear, after all, smugglers don't usually want a paper trail,
but we can easily guess that the shipping lanes from
(02:48):
Spain to Havannah were a little more open than the
lanes from Philadelphia to Cuba. And that wasn't all. There
were also luxury goods going the other way. To working
with the family business in Massachu Sits, Diego and his
brothers shipped across fine European silk in unprecedented amounts wealthy
Americans with a taste for the opulence of distant shores.
(03:09):
We're getting a little something special and all under the radar,
and American money was getting back to Diego's Spanish bank
just the way he wanted. But then things took a
turn because other orders started to come in and they
weren't just for silk. Now, Diego's smuggling partners wanted something
far darker. Guns you see his American contacts had been
(03:33):
shipping in weapons from other places in Europe, not least
the Dutch city of Amsterdam, but a recent crackdown had
dried that up. It sent them looking for a new
contact to get weapons of war into their hands, and
Diego's contacts in Boston realized that he had a talent
for doing business while ducking the law. They offered Diego
and his brothers an enormous sum of money to become
(03:54):
merchants of death. We don't know whether or not this
made Diego feel guilty, but we do know that he
was the and for the job. He hesitated at first.
He told his Massachusetts contacts that guns in Spain, while
they were only made for the government. Even so, he
didn't want to lose the deal. He told them that
he had found a stockpile of over one thousand handguns
(04:14):
and three hundred rifles that had just been manufactured for
the Spanish army. If his American buyers wanted them, they
could probably get them out of the country. And of course,
this sounded just like what Diego's contact wanted, so he
got his hands on the weapons with ammunition to follow.
He was now officially a gun runner. It didn't take
long for his guns to be put to use, though
(04:35):
in fact, the same year he sent that first shipment,
there was an open gun battle in Massachusetts. Even without
his name in the headlines, Diego's illegal firearms were all
over the international news. That didn't stop him, though. Over
the next few years his family trading company would ship
across thirty thousand rifles, five hundred thousand bullets, and twelve
thousand grenades, and more than two hundred pieces of artillery.
(04:59):
In fact, Diego was so successful making business contacts for
selling illegal weapons in America that years later Spain would
make him the ambassador to the United States because the
people of Massachusetts in Philadelphia, well, they were fighting the
British government, and Diego de Gardoqui was the smuggler who
provided guns for the first battles of the American Revolutionary War.
(05:36):
According to some figures of speech, getting numerous people involved
in a project can spell doom for its completion. Too
many cooks spoil the broth, the more chickens in the coop,
the more poop, and the fewer the eggs. And of
course a camel is a horse designed by a committee.
All those phrases have some truth to them, and that
last idiom is particularly appropriate when discussing a project like
(05:57):
the Bristol Brabazon. As World War Two raged across England,
Germany and beyond, the British aircraft industry decided to put
all of its effort behind manufacturing combat planes, with their
focus dedicated to one pursuit that left a gaping hole
in another demographic civilians. After all, the war would end
one day, and without a commercial airline industry for public use,
(06:19):
Britain would fall behind the competition, especially the United States.
So the government formed a committee to be led by
a man named John Moore Brabazon, first Baron Brabazon Terra,
a name as large as the plane that would share it.
Under the Baron's leadership, the Brabazon Committee developed a report
in which five plane designs were studied and four were
(06:40):
recommended for construction. They varied in size and range, with
some being smaller puddle jumpers and others a bit larger
in scale. However, it was the Type one that captured
everyone's imagination. The Type one would be a massive transatlantic
airliner capable of carrying three passengers across the ocean, but
the committee was worried that first class travelers would dislike
(07:03):
flying for hours with little room to spread out. Instead,
they opted for sixty first class seats and plenty of room.
In fact. Comfort with such a priority, there were plans
to include a movie theater and a cocktail lounge as well.
The Bristol Brabazon, bearing the model name of Type one
six seven, boasted a few solage of one hundred eighty
(07:23):
feet long and an enormous wingspan of two hundred thirty
feet in length. For comparison, the Boeing seven forty seven
has ranged in wingspans from one d ninety feet to
two hundred twenty four and it was to be powered
by eight Bristol Centaurus eighteen cylinder radial engines capable of
producing over twenty six hundred horsepower each. This plane wasn't
(07:45):
just going to be the largest to ever take to
the skies, It was also going to be the most
technologically advanced. It featured servos and sensors to prevent the
wings from bending during turbulence. Engineers also outfitted it with
high pressured hydraulics and electric engine can trolls, a first
for modern aircraft at the time. But aaron you might
say that is a lot of airplane, and it was
(08:07):
probably heavy, and you wouldn't be wrong, but a unique
fabrication process was developed to use the least amount of
metal necessary all over the wings and body, thus reducing
its overall weight. The original plan had been to build
a total of eight of these planes. Little hangars were
even constructed to house them, but only one was ever
fully made. The Bristol Brabazon had its maiden flights in
(08:31):
early September of nine after working out some kinks with
the steering, It soared over Bristol, England for about twenty
five minutes at an altitude of three thousand feet and
the top speed of one sixty miles per hour. The
British press dubbed her the Queen of the Skies, and
that was just about the nicest thing anyone had or
(08:51):
ever would say about it. The Bristol Brabazon was heavy, slow,
and unresponsive. It was also costly to build, maintain and
operate at a time when airlines were focused less on
comfort and more on carrying as many passengers as possible
at one time. So when the Brabazon finally went on sale,
nobody bought it. Three point four million pounds mostly down
(09:15):
the drain, but all wasn't lost. Many of the new
technologies that had gone into building it were used on
more successful planes later on. Plus, John Moore Brabazon, a
pilot in his own right, had done the impossible. He'd
managed to get two pigs to fly during his lifetime.
There was the Type one six seven that bore his name,
and in nine he carried an actual live pig in
(09:38):
a basket tied to the wing strut of his own biplane.
And if that's not curious, I don't know what is.
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.
(09:59):
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 dot com. And until next time, stay curious. Yeah,
Welcome to Aaron Benky'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):
Diego was a smuggler, or at least that was one
small part of his family business. In fact, he was
a Spanish banker working in international trade from the Basque
city of bill Bao. He hadn't started the business, though, No,
that was the work of his father, Jose, a savvy trader.
Jose did all kinds of legitimate business and built up
a company big enough to keep his children busy as
(00:58):
they grew up. So Diego, the second of Jose's eight children,
was among them. But he didn't just learn on the job.
Jose sent Diego to London to study economics and trade,
and Diego did just that and plenty more. He learned
English and made friends who would give him the idea
for his smuggling empire. Because along the way he came
(01:19):
to see that if there's one thing big, international shipping
companies like It's making money hand over fist while dodging
government oversight and government tax collectors. And in that business,
Diego was about to become an international superstar. In fact,
he had a plan to do some club or dealing
that would see him set up a smuggling network that
criss crossed the Atlantic. After Diego wrapped up five years
(01:41):
of studying business in London and arrived back home in Spain,
he saw his competitors making quite a pretty penny all
under the table. He saw wealthy American buyers paying big
money for illegal Spanish oil and wine on the black market.
If Diego was really dialed into just how much smuggling
was going on, he would have known that other shipping
companies were dodging taxes and pocketing profits not just on
(02:05):
wine and oil, but on all kinds of Spanish merchandise,
even cloth and raisins. And Diego wanted in on that game.
So after his father Jose died, Diego rallied his brothers
and set his plan in motion. First, he helped some
businesses across the pond find new ways to sell their
own products, like lumber and even prefabricated houses. Those were
(02:27):
shipped to Spain. Diego even set up a successful gambit
to smuggle American wheat flour from Philadelphia to northern Spain
and then back across the Atlantic to Cuba. It dodged
authorities and kept things out of sight. The documents aren't
quite clear, after all, smugglers don't usually want a paper trail,
but we can easily guess that the shipping lanes from
(02:48):
Spain to Havannah were a little more open than the
lanes from Philadelphia to Cuba. And that wasn't all. There
were also luxury goods going the other way. To working
with the family business in Massachu Sits, Diego and his
brothers shipped across fine European silk in unprecedented amounts wealthy
Americans with a taste for the opulence of distant shores.
(03:09):
We're getting a little something special and all under the radar,
and American money was getting back to Diego's Spanish bank
just the way he wanted. But then things took a
turn because other orders started to come in and they
weren't just for silk. Now, Diego's smuggling partners wanted something
far darker. Guns you see his American contacts had been
(03:33):
shipping in weapons from other places in Europe, not least
the Dutch city of Amsterdam, but a recent crackdown had
dried that up. It sent them looking for a new
contact to get weapons of war into their hands, and
Diego's contacts in Boston realized that he had a talent
for doing business while ducking the law. They offered Diego
and his brothers an enormous sum of money to become
(03:54):
merchants of death. We don't know whether or not this
made Diego feel guilty, but we do know that he
was the and for the job. He hesitated at first.
He told his Massachusetts contacts that guns in Spain, while
they were only made for the government. Even so, he
didn't want to lose the deal. He told them that
he had found a stockpile of over one thousand handguns
(04:14):
and three hundred rifles that had just been manufactured for
the Spanish army. If his American buyers wanted them, they
could probably get them out of the country. And of course,
this sounded just like what Diego's contact wanted, so he
got his hands on the weapons with ammunition to follow.
He was now officially a gun runner. It didn't take
long for his guns to be put to use, though
(04:35):
in fact, the same year he sent that first shipment,
there was an open gun battle in Massachusetts. Even without
his name in the headlines, Diego's illegal firearms were all
over the international news. That didn't stop him, though. Over
the next few years his family trading company would ship
across thirty thousand rifles, five hundred thousand bullets, and twelve
thousand grenades, and more than two hundred pieces of artillery.
(04:59):
In fact, Diego was so successful making business contacts for
selling illegal weapons in America that years later Spain would
make him the ambassador to the United States because the
people of Massachusetts in Philadelphia, well, they were fighting the
British government, and Diego de Gardoqui was the smuggler who
provided guns for the first battles of the American Revolutionary War.
(05:36):
According to some figures of speech, getting numerous people involved
in a project can spell doom for its completion. Too
many cooks spoil the broth, the more chickens in the coop,
the more poop, and the fewer the eggs. And of
course a camel is a horse designed by a committee.
All those phrases have some truth to them, and that
last idiom is particularly appropriate when discussing a project like
(05:57):
the Bristol Brabazon. As World War Two raged across England,
Germany and beyond, the British aircraft industry decided to put
all of its effort behind manufacturing combat planes, with their
focus dedicated to one pursuit that left a gaping hole
in another demographic civilians. After all, the war would end
one day, and without a commercial airline industry for public use,
(06:19):
Britain would fall behind the competition, especially the United States.
So the government formed a committee to be led by
a man named John Moore Brabazon, first Baron Brabazon Terra,
a name as large as the plane that would share it.
Under the Baron's leadership, the Brabazon Committee developed a report
in which five plane designs were studied and four were
(06:40):
recommended for construction. They varied in size and range, with
some being smaller puddle jumpers and others a bit larger
in scale. However, it was the Type one that captured
everyone's imagination. The Type one would be a massive transatlantic
airliner capable of carrying three passengers across the ocean, but
the committee was worried that first class travelers would dislike
(07:03):
flying for hours with little room to spread out. Instead,
they opted for sixty first class seats and plenty of room.
In fact. Comfort with such a priority, there were plans
to include a movie theater and a cocktail lounge as well.
The Bristol Brabazon, bearing the model name of Type one
six seven, boasted a few solage of one hundred eighty
(07:23):
feet long and an enormous wingspan of two hundred thirty
feet in length. For comparison, the Boeing seven forty seven
has ranged in wingspans from one d ninety feet to
two hundred twenty four and it was to be powered
by eight Bristol Centaurus eighteen cylinder radial engines capable of
producing over twenty six hundred horsepower each. This plane wasn't
(07:45):
just going to be the largest to ever take to
the skies, It was also going to be the most
technologically advanced. It featured servos and sensors to prevent the
wings from bending during turbulence. Engineers also outfitted it with
high pressured hydraulics and electric engine can trolls, a first
for modern aircraft at the time. But aaron you might
say that is a lot of airplane, and it was
(08:07):
probably heavy, and you wouldn't be wrong, but a unique
fabrication process was developed to use the least amount of
metal necessary all over the wings and body, thus reducing
its overall weight. The original plan had been to build
a total of eight of these planes. Little hangars were
even constructed to house them, but only one was ever
fully made. The Bristol Brabazon had its maiden flights in
(08:31):
early September of nine after working out some kinks with
the steering, It soared over Bristol, England for about twenty
five minutes at an altitude of three thousand feet and
the top speed of one sixty miles per hour. The
British press dubbed her the Queen of the Skies, and
that was just about the nicest thing anyone had or
(08:51):
ever would say about it. The Bristol Brabazon was heavy, slow,
and unresponsive. It was also costly to build, maintain and
operate at a time when airlines were focused less on
comfort and more on carrying as many passengers as possible
at one time. So when the Brabazon finally went on sale,
nobody bought it. Three point four million pounds mostly down
(09:15):
the drain, but all wasn't lost. Many of the new
technologies that had gone into building it were used on
more successful planes later on. Plus, John Moore Brabazon, a
pilot in his own right, had done the impossible. He'd
managed to get two pigs to fly during his lifetime.
There was the Type one six seven that bore his name,
and in nine he carried an actual live pig in
(09:38):
a basket tied to the wing strut of his own biplane.
And if that's not curious, I don't know what is.
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.
(09:59):
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 dot com. And until next time, stay curious. Yeah,
Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities News
Host
Aaron Mahnke
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