November 18, 2021 • 9 mins
Old traditions and new ways of thinking are both excellent sources of curious stories.
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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 are right there on display,
just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet
(00:27):
of Curiosities. War is a time of action where men
and women serve their country by putting their lives on
the line. But wars are not won by fighting alone.
Winning a war takes cunning and planning. It is a
test of strategy as much as it is a test
(00:50):
of metal on the battlefield. In fact, during World War Two,
one division works so well as a team they didn't
even have to use guns to succeed. The group wasn't
formed until nine when men were hand picked to serve
as part of a new unit. It was called the
twenty third Headquarters Special Troop or Ghost Army, and it
was tasked with some of the most difficult missions of
(01:12):
the war. For example, in September of ninety, a couple
of American divisions in France had been moving toward Germany
for an assault. As they drove to Mets, a French
city near the border. They found themselves vastly outnumbered against
the German forces waiting for them, But they had a
backup plan in the form of the sixth Armored Division,
who had spent the night moving twelve M four tanks
(01:34):
in a position along the tree line. Lieutenant Dick Syracuse's
platoon listened to the sounds of their treads moving over
the terrain for hours. The next morning, Syracuse woke up
to a U. S. Cavalry colonel screaming about tanks among
the trees. Syracuse asked the colonel to elaborate, just as
the man had been saying, there was an array of
M four tanks lined up several hundred feet away. The
(01:55):
lieutenant pulled him aside and explained the truth of the situation.
Those weren't the sixth Armored Division at all. Those tanks
had been rolled in by the twenty three Headquarters Special Troop.
Well rolled is a bit of an understatement. It was
more likely that they had been picked up and dropped
into place because they were made of rubber and had
been inflated like balloons. You see, the twenty third Headquarters
(02:17):
Special Troops weren't normal soldiers. They had specific talents the
other divisions lacked. For one, the group was made up
of artists and creative types recruited from ad agencies and
art schools. They weren't expected to fight. They were expected
to put their heads together to deceive the enemy, which
they did. The sounds that the platoon had heard the
night before were pumped in through a speaker system that
(02:38):
had been mounted on a military transport. The noise itself
had been recorded and mixed together to form the sound
effects track meant to trick the enemy into thinking the
Special Troops were much larger than they actually were. It
was a technique known as sonic deception. Throughout the latter
days of the war, the Ghost Army developed several ways
of fooling the Germans, many of which looked like something
(02:59):
one might have seen on an episode of The A
Team decades later. They generated fake radio traffic they knew
would get intercepted, providing the Nazis with fake positions for
American troops. They also used their limited resources to inflate
their presence as well. Along with their specially made sound effects,
the Ghost Army would drive two to three real tanks
around in a loop to make it look like they
(03:20):
had a full convoy. They completed the deception by painting
specific insignia on buildings and having some soldiers wear different
uniforms to create what they called atmosphere. It was to
give the illusion that there was more than one unit
nearby at any given time. This was demonstrated in March
of nine when the twenty three deployed a fleet of
(03:41):
inflatable aircraft carriers along the Rhine River valley. Thanks to
some fake radio transmissions broadcast over open channels, the Germans
were convinced that the Allies were preparing to attack a
particular spot in a valley at a particular time. They
pulled all nearby troops and sent them to that location
to prepare for battle. Instead, the Allies were six miles away,
(04:02):
crossing the Rhine with ease, since the Nazi defense posts
were now all but abandoned. Meanwhile, the twenty third had
inflated over six hundred rubber tanks and dressed up a
bunch of mannekins and uniforms from varying units. They wanted
to show that they were not a small outfit of troops,
but rather two separate divisions of thirty thousand Allied soldiers.
(04:22):
The sounds of rolling tanks and bombers flying overhead rang
out from giant speakers as well. The Germans bought it
and attacked with full force. Countless mannekins lost their lives
that day, but it was believed that tens of thousands
of actual Allied soldiers were saved thanks to the efforts
of the Ghost Army. They were the unsung heroes of
World War Two, using their brains to overcome German braun.
(04:46):
I love it when a plan comes together. There's an
old story told in executive leadership meetings everywhere. A young
girl is in the kitchen with her mother watching her
(05:08):
bake a ham for a big dinner. The mother cuts
off the ends of the ham before sliding it into
the oven. Why do you cut the ends off the
ham before you put it in the oven, the girl asks,
because that's the way my mother always did it, the
mother says, So, the girl calls up her grandmother and
asks the same question, why did you cut off the
ends of the ham before putting it in the oven,
And the grandmother responds with a familiar answer, that's the
(05:30):
way my mother always did it. So finally, the girl
calls up her great grandmother and asks why she used
to cut the ends off the ham before she put
it in the oven. The great grandmother says, because my
pan was too small to fit the whole ham. Some
traditions exist simply because their traditions small ceremonies that have
gone on so long it seems strange to stop them now,
(05:52):
because we've always done it. That way doesn't fly in
a fast moving corporate environment. But traditions aren't always meant
to be stopped or changed. They also connect us to
our past, helping us feel closer to those who have
left us and to a time gone by. Perhaps that's
why the City of London still feels obligated to pay
the Queen rent for two plots of land at first
(06:14):
least eight hundred years ago. They're known as quit rents,
and they are upheld by a person called a remembrance er.
Yes that's a real word. Their whole job is literally
to remember important things on behalf of the King or Queen,
usually involving taxes and debts. It was a title first
created by King Henry the Second in eleven fifty four.
(06:35):
The remembrance or wears a judicial wig beneath a black
tricorn hat a sign that they are a judge of
the ex Checker Court. The ex Checker Court dealt with
payments of rent and debt settlements. In fact, the name
ex checker came from the checkered cloth covering the table
behind which that remembrance or sat. He would use the
squares in the pattern to keep track of the payments
(06:57):
made and the debts that were still owed, sort of
a cloth spreadsheet well ahead of its time. Of course,
London has changed a lot over the last eight hundred years,
and so the locations of the original properties have been lost,
but what hasn't changed are the rents. One of the
properties is known as the Moor's, a on acre plot
(07:17):
located about two and a half hours northwest of London
in Shropshire. It was leased back in twelve eleven, possibly earlier,
and occupied by a man named Nicholas Damore, who paid
the hefty sum of two knives for it, one sharp
and one blunt. Eventually, the City of London became the
tenants of the land and so were then forced to
pay the two knife fee to maintain the rights, although
(07:39):
these days, rather than the knives, the city pays using
a curved farming knife known as a bill hook, as
well as a sharpened axe, which are both taken possession
of by the remembrance Sir. To verify the payment is correct,
the blades are tested against a pile of sticks. If
the bill hook is unable to cut through them, it
is accepted. The axe must then slice through the same
number of dicks with little effort in order for it
(08:01):
to also be approved, at which point the remembrance as
says good service and takes them. The other property used
to be home to a blacksmith forage in the city
of Westminster around twelve thirty five. The rent for this
location total sixty one nails and six horseshoes For this payment,
the City of London actually uses the same nails and
horse shoes each year. Once the rent is paid, the
(08:24):
remembrance or talies up the objects, says good number, and
the items are loaned back to London until they're due
again the following year. And best of all, folks today
can witness the quit rent ceremony. It's open to the public,
although it isn't highly publicized, not for any secretive reason,
mind you, only because it's old news after all. It's
(08:45):
been going on for over eight centuries, you know, because
they've always done it that way. I hope you've enjoyed
today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for
me on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show
by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created
(09:07):
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 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. War is a time of action where men
and women serve their country by putting their lives on
the line. But wars are not won by fighting alone.
Winning a war takes cunning and planning. It is a
test of strategy as much as it is a test
(00:50):
of metal on the battlefield. In fact, during World War Two,
one division works so well as a team they didn't
even have to use guns to succeed. The group wasn't
formed until nine when men were hand picked to serve
as part of a new unit. It was called the
twenty third Headquarters Special Troop or Ghost Army, and it
was tasked with some of the most difficult missions of
(01:12):
the war. For example, in September of ninety, a couple
of American divisions in France had been moving toward Germany
for an assault. As they drove to Mets, a French
city near the border. They found themselves vastly outnumbered against
the German forces waiting for them, But they had a
backup plan in the form of the sixth Armored Division,
who had spent the night moving twelve M four tanks
(01:34):
in a position along the tree line. Lieutenant Dick Syracuse's
platoon listened to the sounds of their treads moving over
the terrain for hours. The next morning, Syracuse woke up
to a U. S. Cavalry colonel screaming about tanks among
the trees. Syracuse asked the colonel to elaborate, just as
the man had been saying, there was an array of
M four tanks lined up several hundred feet away. The
(01:55):
lieutenant pulled him aside and explained the truth of the situation.
Those weren't the sixth Armored Division at all. Those tanks
had been rolled in by the twenty three Headquarters Special Troop.
Well rolled is a bit of an understatement. It was
more likely that they had been picked up and dropped
into place because they were made of rubber and had
been inflated like balloons. You see, the twenty third Headquarters
(02:17):
Special Troops weren't normal soldiers. They had specific talents the
other divisions lacked. For one, the group was made up
of artists and creative types recruited from ad agencies and
art schools. They weren't expected to fight. They were expected
to put their heads together to deceive the enemy, which
they did. The sounds that the platoon had heard the
night before were pumped in through a speaker system that
(02:38):
had been mounted on a military transport. The noise itself
had been recorded and mixed together to form the sound
effects track meant to trick the enemy into thinking the
Special Troops were much larger than they actually were. It
was a technique known as sonic deception. Throughout the latter
days of the war, the Ghost Army developed several ways
of fooling the Germans, many of which looked like something
(02:59):
one might have seen on an episode of The A
Team decades later. They generated fake radio traffic they knew
would get intercepted, providing the Nazis with fake positions for
American troops. They also used their limited resources to inflate
their presence as well. Along with their specially made sound effects,
the Ghost Army would drive two to three real tanks
around in a loop to make it look like they
(03:20):
had a full convoy. They completed the deception by painting
specific insignia on buildings and having some soldiers wear different
uniforms to create what they called atmosphere. It was to
give the illusion that there was more than one unit
nearby at any given time. This was demonstrated in March
of nine when the twenty three deployed a fleet of
(03:41):
inflatable aircraft carriers along the Rhine River valley. Thanks to
some fake radio transmissions broadcast over open channels, the Germans
were convinced that the Allies were preparing to attack a
particular spot in a valley at a particular time. They
pulled all nearby troops and sent them to that location
to prepare for battle. Instead, the Allies were six miles away,
(04:02):
crossing the Rhine with ease, since the Nazi defense posts
were now all but abandoned. Meanwhile, the twenty third had
inflated over six hundred rubber tanks and dressed up a
bunch of mannekins and uniforms from varying units. They wanted
to show that they were not a small outfit of troops,
but rather two separate divisions of thirty thousand Allied soldiers.
(04:22):
The sounds of rolling tanks and bombers flying overhead rang
out from giant speakers as well. The Germans bought it
and attacked with full force. Countless mannekins lost their lives
that day, but it was believed that tens of thousands
of actual Allied soldiers were saved thanks to the efforts
of the Ghost Army. They were the unsung heroes of
World War Two, using their brains to overcome German braun.
(04:46):
I love it when a plan comes together. There's an
old story told in executive leadership meetings everywhere. A young
girl is in the kitchen with her mother watching her
(05:08):
bake a ham for a big dinner. The mother cuts
off the ends of the ham before sliding it into
the oven. Why do you cut the ends off the
ham before you put it in the oven, the girl asks,
because that's the way my mother always did it, the
mother says, So, the girl calls up her grandmother and
asks the same question, why did you cut off the
ends of the ham before putting it in the oven,
And the grandmother responds with a familiar answer, that's the
(05:30):
way my mother always did it. So finally, the girl
calls up her great grandmother and asks why she used
to cut the ends off the ham before she put
it in the oven. The great grandmother says, because my
pan was too small to fit the whole ham. Some
traditions exist simply because their traditions small ceremonies that have
gone on so long it seems strange to stop them now,
(05:52):
because we've always done it. That way doesn't fly in
a fast moving corporate environment. But traditions aren't always meant
to be stopped or changed. They also connect us to
our past, helping us feel closer to those who have
left us and to a time gone by. Perhaps that's
why the City of London still feels obligated to pay
the Queen rent for two plots of land at first
(06:14):
least eight hundred years ago. They're known as quit rents,
and they are upheld by a person called a remembrance er.
Yes that's a real word. Their whole job is literally
to remember important things on behalf of the King or Queen,
usually involving taxes and debts. It was a title first
created by King Henry the Second in eleven fifty four.
(06:35):
The remembrance or wears a judicial wig beneath a black
tricorn hat a sign that they are a judge of
the ex Checker Court. The ex Checker Court dealt with
payments of rent and debt settlements. In fact, the name
ex checker came from the checkered cloth covering the table
behind which that remembrance or sat. He would use the
squares in the pattern to keep track of the payments
(06:57):
made and the debts that were still owed, sort of
a cloth spreadsheet well ahead of its time. Of course,
London has changed a lot over the last eight hundred years,
and so the locations of the original properties have been lost,
but what hasn't changed are the rents. One of the
properties is known as the Moor's, a on acre plot
(07:17):
located about two and a half hours northwest of London
in Shropshire. It was leased back in twelve eleven, possibly earlier,
and occupied by a man named Nicholas Damore, who paid
the hefty sum of two knives for it, one sharp
and one blunt. Eventually, the City of London became the
tenants of the land and so were then forced to
pay the two knife fee to maintain the rights, although
(07:39):
these days, rather than the knives, the city pays using
a curved farming knife known as a bill hook, as
well as a sharpened axe, which are both taken possession
of by the remembrance Sir. To verify the payment is correct,
the blades are tested against a pile of sticks. If
the bill hook is unable to cut through them, it
is accepted. The axe must then slice through the same
number of dicks with little effort in order for it
(08:01):
to also be approved, at which point the remembrance as
says good service and takes them. The other property used
to be home to a blacksmith forage in the city
of Westminster around twelve thirty five. The rent for this
location total sixty one nails and six horseshoes For this payment,
the City of London actually uses the same nails and
horse shoes each year. Once the rent is paid, the
(08:24):
remembrance or talies up the objects, says good number, and
the items are loaned back to London until they're due
again the following year. And best of all, folks today
can witness the quit rent ceremony. It's open to the public,
although it isn't highly publicized, not for any secretive reason,
mind you, only because it's old news after all. It's
(08:45):
been going on for over eight centuries, you know, because
they've always done it that way. I hope you've enjoyed
today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for
me on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show
by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created
(09:07):
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 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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