October 7, 2021 • 10 mins
Transformation is a curious thing, and these stories certain grew into something more.
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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. The greatest minds and talents in history all
had to start somewhere. Albert Einstein worked as a patent clerk,
fashion designer. Ralph Lauren joined the army as a young
man before working as a salesman for the Brooks Brothers
(00:48):
clothing store. But Juju McWilliams may have had the strangest
start of all. McWilliams was born in Pasadena, California. In
Her father was a successful Massachusetts politician and her mother
the heiress to a paper company. McWilliams grew into quite
the accomplished team. For one, she was tall for her age,
(01:09):
standing over her high school classmates at a whopping six
ft two inches. Her height helped on the basketball court
as well. After graduating high school, she attended college, where
she continued her athletic trajectory until she took a job
in New York, working at an advertising firm as a copywriter,
but her life in the big city eventually ended as
the war effort came calling. McWilliams enlisted in ninety two
(01:32):
to serve her country. Unfortunately, the military deemed her too
tall for service. However, she was able to secure a
spot with the Office of Strategic Services or o s S,
where she served as a research assistant. She spent most
of her time typing up little white cards with the
names and addresses of government operatives. It wasn't glamorous, but
(01:53):
it did put her on the radar of OSS top brass.
Before long, they moved her from behind a desk to
behind a lab table. You see, the OSS had a
problem one they believed that McWilliams might be able to
help them solve. There was work being done in the
OSS Emergency Sea Rescue Equipment section on stopping sharks. They
(02:14):
didn't want to kill any sharks, but the curious creatures
had a troublesome habit of accidentally setting off underwater mines
that were meant for German u boats. There had also
been several reports of shark attacks over the previous three years,
inciting fear among many sea bound soldiers. The os S
tasked Captain Harold J. Coolidge with developing a shark repellent
(02:34):
to keep them away from the minds and the men.
Coolidge had come from the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology,
and his partner Dr. Henry Field was brought in from
a natural history museum in Chicago. McWilliams was assigned to
Coolidge as an assistant. Together with Field and chemical technicians
Stewart Springer. The team ran a battery of tests on
(02:55):
various substances to see how well they kept sharks away,
and their test subject a small shark called the spiny dogfish.
They put dead shark meat, acids, nicotine, pine oils, and
about a hundred other chemicals in the water before settling
on a combination of copper sulfate, copper acetate, maleic acid,
(03:16):
and dead shark extract. The spiny dogfish found the mixture
repulsive and stayed away about sixty of the time. McWilliams
was awarded for her work with the o s S
and even met her future husband, Paul while working there.
In fact, it was Paul who helped her find her
footing after the war too. He had lived in France
when he was younger and had developed a taste for
(03:37):
fine food. After joining the US Foreign Service in ninety eight,
he and Juju moved to the City of Lights, where
she experienced one of the most incredible and important meals
of her life. It was at a restaurant called La
Corone in the city of Ruan. Mc williams had enjoyed
oysters followed by a main course of sulmoniere, a French
(03:58):
fish dish often prepared heard with a savory brown butter sauce.
She described the experience as an opening up of the
soul and spirit, and inspired her to enroll in French
culinary school, from which she graduated in nineteen fifty one.
McWilliams eventually met two other chefs, Simone Beck and Louisette Bertoli,
who had been working together on a cookbook of French cuisine.
(04:20):
Beck suggested McWilliams joined them as a third author, considering
she was an American who had developed a love for
French cooking, her insight might help the book reach an
American audience as well. The publisher originally turned the book down,
claiming it was too long and boring to be of
interest to anyone, but the three women persevered, and in
nineteen sixty one, their seven hundred page love letter to
(04:41):
French cooking was published. Too great to claim. McWilliams herself
went on to become a successful newspaper columnist and cookbook author,
as well as the host of a very popular cooking
show on public television. And none of it would have
happened without two major events in her life or work
with the oss on shark repellent and meeting her husband,
(05:02):
Paul Cushing Child. The world at large never knew Juju McWilliams.
Juju had been a childhood nickname of hers. Instead, they
fell in love with Julia Caroline McWilliams, better known to
aspiring chefs everywhere as Julia Child. In a deadly outbreak
(05:33):
of diphtheria hit the residence of Nome, Alaska. It's a
highly contagious bacterial infection with a mortality rate of ten percent,
and for children untreated and without vaccinations, the death rate
jumps even higher. It's rare and developed countries due to vaccination,
but in the early nineteen hundreds gnomes Lone doctor noticed
a one percent mortality rate among children even with treatment.
(05:57):
It was often fatal in young children. To save them,
he needed a special serum, one that he didn't have.
Alaska is known for some unforgiving wilderness, and that January
winter prevented getting the life saving serum to the town.
Thick ice prevented ships from making passage to a nearby harbor.
Alaskan winds and subzero temperatures rendered planes useless. Neither plane
(06:19):
nor pilot would survive the trip, even if the handful
of planes weren't in storage, too far away to even
consider the dangerous attempt without treatment. Though the entire town
was in peril, children were the most vulnerable, and every
day more fell ill, wheezing and gasping for breath. Despite
his best efforts, all the doctor could do was watch
them die at an alarming rate. The bacteria produced a
(06:40):
deadly toxin that built up in the bloodstream, causing organ failure.
He ordered a quarantine, though he knew that was just
borrowed time. Without the serum, the children of Nome would die.
So telegraphs flew and Anchorage said they had the life
saving serum. Although the closest they could ship the precious
cargo was by railway to Ninana. There was only one
(07:01):
thing left to do. Use the winter time mail carriers. No,
these weren't special vehicles equipped for snow. These were sled dogs.
There was a problem, though the dogs were used for
short distances. Humans and animals would have to travel seven
hundred miles in a particularly harsh winter with little to
no protection from the elements, much less defend themselves against
(07:22):
dangerous wildlife, and with new cases of diphtheria appearing daily.
They were up against the clock. Still, running the dogs
too hard and fast would frost their lungs, effectively killing them.
The conditions that winter were terrible even for Alaska. Each
team that had the serum would face similar conditions for
their thirty mile run. Pushing harder would put the team
(07:43):
at risk. The governor put out request for volunteers. They
need the bravest of men and the hardiest of dogs.
He didn't sugarcoat it either. They'd have to travel across
frozen lakes with ice that may not hold their weights,
navigate through dense forests, and travel in near white out
conditions across the undra in January. There wouldn't be a
lot of daylight either. Most of the teams would be
(08:05):
running in the dark. A ragged crew of locals stepped
up to the challenge, mostly Athabaskans and Inuit who were
familiar with the terrain. Short on enough volunteers, they would
have to travel farther than others, and, as if they
needed one more thing to worry about, the serum would
be rendered useless if it reached below freezing temperatures. The
(08:25):
first team left at night on January, making the first
leg of the journey in sixty below weather and traveling
fifty two miles. To save his dogs from the strain,
the musher frequently ran beside them. When he finally met
up with the next team, he had suffered from hypothermia
and frost bite. The last team encountered white out conditions.
Snow crusted the dog's fur as they ran against strong winds.
(08:48):
An eighty mile per hour gust hit the team, flipping
the sled, the cargo, and the dogs upside down in
the snow. In an instant, musher gunner Cason dove into
the snow after the serum, but he couldn't find it
with his mits on. After digging with his bare hands,
he scooped up the fur covered package. Then he righted
the sled and pushed onto the meeting point for the
(09:09):
next team, but his relief team never showed up. He
had to ask his tired dogs to make the next
leg of the journey. Finally, at five thirty in the
morning on February second, Casson's lead dog, Balto, barked as
they stopped in front of the doctor's office. The Sierum
safe and sound Man's best friend had saved the town.
(09:29):
Forty eight years later, in nineteventy three, the race became
immortalized in another way. The I did a rod sled race.
As you might have already guessed, It's run every year
in March, not January though. Oh and one last thing.
The governor who put out the call for the bravest
of men and the hardiest of dogs. His name was
Scott c. Bone. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour
(09:56):
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 was created by me Aaron Mankey
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
(10:18):
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. The greatest minds and talents in history all
had to start somewhere. Albert Einstein worked as a patent clerk,
fashion designer. Ralph Lauren joined the army as a young
man before working as a salesman for the Brooks Brothers
(00:48):
clothing store. But Juju McWilliams may have had the strangest
start of all. McWilliams was born in Pasadena, California. In
Her father was a successful Massachusetts politician and her mother
the heiress to a paper company. McWilliams grew into quite
the accomplished team. For one, she was tall for her age,
(01:09):
standing over her high school classmates at a whopping six
ft two inches. Her height helped on the basketball court
as well. After graduating high school, she attended college, where
she continued her athletic trajectory until she took a job
in New York, working at an advertising firm as a copywriter,
but her life in the big city eventually ended as
the war effort came calling. McWilliams enlisted in ninety two
(01:32):
to serve her country. Unfortunately, the military deemed her too
tall for service. However, she was able to secure a
spot with the Office of Strategic Services or o s S,
where she served as a research assistant. She spent most
of her time typing up little white cards with the
names and addresses of government operatives. It wasn't glamorous, but
(01:53):
it did put her on the radar of OSS top brass.
Before long, they moved her from behind a desk to
behind a lab table. You see, the OSS had a
problem one they believed that McWilliams might be able to
help them solve. There was work being done in the
OSS Emergency Sea Rescue Equipment section on stopping sharks. They
(02:14):
didn't want to kill any sharks, but the curious creatures
had a troublesome habit of accidentally setting off underwater mines
that were meant for German u boats. There had also
been several reports of shark attacks over the previous three years,
inciting fear among many sea bound soldiers. The os S
tasked Captain Harold J. Coolidge with developing a shark repellent
(02:34):
to keep them away from the minds and the men.
Coolidge had come from the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology,
and his partner Dr. Henry Field was brought in from
a natural history museum in Chicago. McWilliams was assigned to
Coolidge as an assistant. Together with Field and chemical technicians
Stewart Springer. The team ran a battery of tests on
(02:55):
various substances to see how well they kept sharks away,
and their test subject a small shark called the spiny dogfish.
They put dead shark meat, acids, nicotine, pine oils, and
about a hundred other chemicals in the water before settling
on a combination of copper sulfate, copper acetate, maleic acid,
(03:16):
and dead shark extract. The spiny dogfish found the mixture
repulsive and stayed away about sixty of the time. McWilliams
was awarded for her work with the o s S
and even met her future husband, Paul while working there.
In fact, it was Paul who helped her find her
footing after the war too. He had lived in France
when he was younger and had developed a taste for
(03:37):
fine food. After joining the US Foreign Service in ninety eight,
he and Juju moved to the City of Lights, where
she experienced one of the most incredible and important meals
of her life. It was at a restaurant called La
Corone in the city of Ruan. Mc williams had enjoyed
oysters followed by a main course of sulmoniere, a French
(03:58):
fish dish often prepared heard with a savory brown butter sauce.
She described the experience as an opening up of the
soul and spirit, and inspired her to enroll in French
culinary school, from which she graduated in nineteen fifty one.
McWilliams eventually met two other chefs, Simone Beck and Louisette Bertoli,
who had been working together on a cookbook of French cuisine.
(04:20):
Beck suggested McWilliams joined them as a third author, considering
she was an American who had developed a love for
French cooking, her insight might help the book reach an
American audience as well. The publisher originally turned the book down,
claiming it was too long and boring to be of
interest to anyone, but the three women persevered, and in
nineteen sixty one, their seven hundred page love letter to
(04:41):
French cooking was published. Too great to claim. McWilliams herself
went on to become a successful newspaper columnist and cookbook author,
as well as the host of a very popular cooking
show on public television. And none of it would have
happened without two major events in her life or work
with the oss on shark repellent and meeting her husband,
(05:02):
Paul Cushing Child. The world at large never knew Juju McWilliams.
Juju had been a childhood nickname of hers. Instead, they
fell in love with Julia Caroline McWilliams, better known to
aspiring chefs everywhere as Julia Child. In a deadly outbreak
(05:33):
of diphtheria hit the residence of Nome, Alaska. It's a
highly contagious bacterial infection with a mortality rate of ten percent,
and for children untreated and without vaccinations, the death rate
jumps even higher. It's rare and developed countries due to vaccination,
but in the early nineteen hundreds gnomes Lone doctor noticed
a one percent mortality rate among children even with treatment.
(05:57):
It was often fatal in young children. To save them,
he needed a special serum, one that he didn't have.
Alaska is known for some unforgiving wilderness, and that January
winter prevented getting the life saving serum to the town.
Thick ice prevented ships from making passage to a nearby harbor.
Alaskan winds and subzero temperatures rendered planes useless. Neither plane
(06:19):
nor pilot would survive the trip, even if the handful
of planes weren't in storage, too far away to even
consider the dangerous attempt without treatment. Though the entire town
was in peril, children were the most vulnerable, and every
day more fell ill, wheezing and gasping for breath. Despite
his best efforts, all the doctor could do was watch
them die at an alarming rate. The bacteria produced a
(06:40):
deadly toxin that built up in the bloodstream, causing organ failure.
He ordered a quarantine, though he knew that was just
borrowed time. Without the serum, the children of Nome would die.
So telegraphs flew and Anchorage said they had the life
saving serum. Although the closest they could ship the precious
cargo was by railway to Ninana. There was only one
(07:01):
thing left to do. Use the winter time mail carriers. No,
these weren't special vehicles equipped for snow. These were sled dogs.
There was a problem, though the dogs were used for
short distances. Humans and animals would have to travel seven
hundred miles in a particularly harsh winter with little to
no protection from the elements, much less defend themselves against
(07:22):
dangerous wildlife, and with new cases of diphtheria appearing daily.
They were up against the clock. Still, running the dogs
too hard and fast would frost their lungs, effectively killing them.
The conditions that winter were terrible even for Alaska. Each
team that had the serum would face similar conditions for
their thirty mile run. Pushing harder would put the team
(07:43):
at risk. The governor put out request for volunteers. They
need the bravest of men and the hardiest of dogs.
He didn't sugarcoat it either. They'd have to travel across
frozen lakes with ice that may not hold their weights,
navigate through dense forests, and travel in near white out
conditions across the undra in January. There wouldn't be a
lot of daylight either. Most of the teams would be
(08:05):
running in the dark. A ragged crew of locals stepped
up to the challenge, mostly Athabaskans and Inuit who were
familiar with the terrain. Short on enough volunteers, they would
have to travel farther than others, and, as if they
needed one more thing to worry about, the serum would
be rendered useless if it reached below freezing temperatures. The
(08:25):
first team left at night on January, making the first
leg of the journey in sixty below weather and traveling
fifty two miles. To save his dogs from the strain,
the musher frequently ran beside them. When he finally met
up with the next team, he had suffered from hypothermia
and frost bite. The last team encountered white out conditions.
Snow crusted the dog's fur as they ran against strong winds.
(08:48):
An eighty mile per hour gust hit the team, flipping
the sled, the cargo, and the dogs upside down in
the snow. In an instant, musher gunner Cason dove into
the snow after the serum, but he couldn't find it
with his mits on. After digging with his bare hands,
he scooped up the fur covered package. Then he righted
the sled and pushed onto the meeting point for the
(09:09):
next team, but his relief team never showed up. He
had to ask his tired dogs to make the next
leg of the journey. Finally, at five thirty in the
morning on February second, Casson's lead dog, Balto, barked as
they stopped in front of the doctor's office. The Sierum
safe and sound Man's best friend had saved the town.
(09:29):
Forty eight years later, in nineteventy three, the race became
immortalized in another way. The I did a rod sled race.
As you might have already guessed, It's run every year
in March, not January though. Oh and one last thing.
The governor who put out the call for the bravest
of men and the hardiest of dogs. His name was
Scott c. Bone. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour
(09:56):
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 was created by me Aaron Mankey
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
(10:18):
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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