July 20, 2023 • 9 mins
Home is where the heart is. And it's also frequently a curious place. But none can hold a candle to this pair of weird homesteads.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
iHeartRadio and Grimm 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 of Curiosities.
(00:36):
It's just sitting there, spinning in outer space as it
orbits the Earth two hundred and thirty nine thousand miles away.
It's a big, round rock that controls the tides and
moderates our planet's movements on its axis. And it's right
for the taking. At least that's what people have been
saying for decades. The Moon doesn't just represent one small
step from man, nor one giant leap for mankind. It
(00:58):
represents a new frontier, entirely real estate in space. Back
in nineteen sixty seven, over one hundred nations signed a
document known as the Outer Space Treaty, which basically outlined
the rules by which every country should explore and inhabit
outer space. There were a number of principles, including one
that stated outer space shall be free for exploration and
(01:21):
use by all states as well as the Moon and
other celestial bodies shall be used exclusively for peaceful purposes.
But one year earlier, a different governing body took it
upon themselves to draft its own document, one stating that
its people owned the Moon. It was called the Declaration
of Lunar Ownership, and it was signed by thirty five
(01:41):
citizens from the town of Geneva, Ohio. The declaration gave
the people of Geneva and I quote, full possession and
complete responsibility of the Moon, at least according to them,
And although everyone elsewhere was free to enjoy the moonlight
given off by the celestial body, Geneva was not responsible
for any issues incurred by people who moon bathed a
(02:04):
little too much. But the document had another component, one
that allowed the town to sell off one hundred plots
of land on the Moon's surface for one hundred dollars
a pop. And yet, the people of Geneva weren't the
only ones who would come up with the idea to
sell land on the Moon. About fourteen years earlier, a
man named Dennis Hope figured it out on his own.
Hope was a car salesman and a ventriloquist, and he
(02:27):
had hit a rough patch in his life. He and
his wife were getting divorced, and he'd been living paycheck
to paycheck. Mister Hope was well losing hope until one
day when he was driving down the road and looked
out the window toward the sky, and there it was
all that lunar land ripe for the taking. He did
a little digging at the local college library and found
the Outer Space Treaty from the mid sixties. As he
(02:49):
read through the document, he noticed something. Even though the
treaties stated that no nation could declare ownership over the Moon,
there was nothing in there that said a person couldn't
own it. Hope, believing that he had found a loophole,
filed the claim with his local county seat for the
whole of the Moon's surface, along with the surfaces of
every other planet in the Solar System except for the
(03:10):
Earth and the Sun. Nobody, of course, took him seriously,
but after consulting with three supervisors across two separate floors
in five hours, he finally got what he wanted, ownership
over the Moon and the planets. He then wrote to
the General Assembly of the United Nations as well as
the Russian government, letting them know that there was a
new sheriff in town, and that if anyone wanted to
(03:31):
sell land in space, they had to go through him first.
For those wondering, hope will sell anyone an acre of
moonland for about thirty five dollars. But Dennis and the
people of Ohio were not alone in believing the Moon
was up for grabs. Others had been declaring ownership of
it for years before Geneva. There was a science fiction
fan club in Berkeley, California, that had laid claim to
(03:53):
part of the Moon in nineteen fifty two. That same year,
the chairman of the Hayden Planetarium in New York planned
on selling parcels of land there for a dollar an acre,
And in nineteen fifty four, a Chilean lawyer named Gennaro
Gerada Veda published three separate announcements of his claim of
the Mood on the Official Diary of Chile. Even President
Richard Nixon acknowledged Veda's ownership, sending him a telegram via
(04:17):
the US embassy in nineteen sixty nine. Nixon requested permission
for his astronauts to land there. It doesn't matter how
far away it is or how expensive it is to
go there. For every person who gazes at the night
sky and sees the enormity of the universe, there will
always be someone who looks up and wonders, how much
could I get for that? And now for something a
(04:52):
bit lighter. Every day the world continues to plunge deeper
into darkness due to war, climate change, famine and other cateshts, fees,
And meanwhile, scholars, leaders and CEOs with too much money
having dreaming up ways to save humanity or at least themselves.
Some of their plans involve inhabiting other planets. Others believe
(05:12):
building big underground bunkers with their own ecosystems is the
way to go. But one man had another idea. It
just wasn't exactly feasible. Yet you could say he had
his head in the clouds. His name was Richard Buckminster Fuller,
the architect who made the Geodesic Dome popular. If you've
ever walked around Epcot at Disney World, you've undoubtedly seen
(05:34):
the giant golf ball shape sphere known as spaceship Earth,
a phrase that he also coined. Born in eighteen ninety five,
Fuller attended Harvard for a short time before he was
expelled for missing his exams and partying too much. He
then traveled to Canada, where he took a job at
a mill until re enrolling at Harvard again in nineteen fifteen,
(05:55):
but that didn't last long either. He was soon expelled
once again, ultimately joining the U the US Navy to
serve during World War One. In fact, Fuller didn't get
into architecture until the nineteen twenties, when he started working
on the Stockade Building System with his father in law.
This was a construction system made using bricks of compressed
wood shavings with large vertical holes drilled down their centers.
(06:18):
The holes would then be filled with concrete so that
these stacked blocks couldn't move. After that company failed, though,
Fuller contemplated ending his life in nineteen twenty seven. That
is until he experienced a life changing event that turned
everything around for him. He felt as though a ball
of white light surrounded him and lifted him into the air,
and then a voice spoke telling him, you do not
(06:40):
have the right to eliminate yourself. You do not belong
to you. You belong to the universe. Fuller was transformed
by the experience and got back to work trying to
improve humanity by revolutionizing housing. He designed the Dimaxian house,
which was an inexpensive home that could be produced at
scale and dropped into place on a plot of the land.
(07:00):
There was also the geodesic dome, which came about in
nineteen fifty one. The dome was cheap, resilient, and easy
to assemble, making it ideal for housing, especially in lower
income areas and harsh climates, and that design led to
another creation, one that had the potential to change housing
all over the world. Japanese media mogul Matsutaro Shoriki had
(07:21):
challenged Fuller to create a community to accommodate Japan's growing population.
To do this, the houses would be required to float
on Tokyo Bay, linked together like a giant city, and
what Fuller came up with definitely did float, but not
on the bay. His homes were designed to rise into
the air like balloons instead. He called them spherical Tensegrity
(07:44):
Atmospheric Research Stations, or stars for short. They were also
known as cloud nines and were giant geodesic spheres filled
with air. Each dome was intended to be a half
mile in diameter, yet only way a fraction of the
weight of the air inside. Using a sustainable heat source
like solar energy or human movement inside, the one degree
(08:04):
fahrenheit increase of the internal temperature could cause the dome
to float. If a person wanted to remain in one spot,
they could tether their massive sphere to a mountain or
another anchor. Or if they wanted to travel the world,
they could drift freely throughout the sky. But Fuller didn't
just picture them as houses. He also anticipated using them
as impromptu emergency relief sites during disasters. Unfortunately, his dream
(08:29):
remained just that a dream. The technology didn't exist at
the time to make these cloud nines a reality. Fuller
himself believed that they wouldn't be feasible for another fifty years. Well,
that time has come and gone, and we're no closer
to living in floating spheres now than we were back then.
But if floods, wildfires, and heat waves continue to pummel
(08:50):
the planet, then we may be forced to find new
ways to live. And right now, a geodesic balloon doesn't
sound half bad. 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
(09:12):
dot com. This 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
over at the Worldoflore dot com. And until next time,
stay curious.
Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
iHeartRadio and Grimm 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 of Curiosities.
(00:36):
It's just sitting there, spinning in outer space as it
orbits the Earth two hundred and thirty nine thousand miles away.
It's a big, round rock that controls the tides and
moderates our planet's movements on its axis. And it's right
for the taking. At least that's what people have been
saying for decades. The Moon doesn't just represent one small
step from man, nor one giant leap for mankind. It
(00:58):
represents a new frontier, entirely real estate in space. Back
in nineteen sixty seven, over one hundred nations signed a
document known as the Outer Space Treaty, which basically outlined
the rules by which every country should explore and inhabit
outer space. There were a number of principles, including one
that stated outer space shall be free for exploration and
(01:21):
use by all states as well as the Moon and
other celestial bodies shall be used exclusively for peaceful purposes.
But one year earlier, a different governing body took it
upon themselves to draft its own document, one stating that
its people owned the Moon. It was called the Declaration
of Lunar Ownership, and it was signed by thirty five
(01:41):
citizens from the town of Geneva, Ohio. The declaration gave
the people of Geneva and I quote, full possession and
complete responsibility of the Moon, at least according to them,
And although everyone elsewhere was free to enjoy the moonlight
given off by the celestial body, Geneva was not responsible
for any issues incurred by people who moon bathed a
(02:04):
little too much. But the document had another component, one
that allowed the town to sell off one hundred plots
of land on the Moon's surface for one hundred dollars
a pop. And yet, the people of Geneva weren't the
only ones who would come up with the idea to
sell land on the Moon. About fourteen years earlier, a
man named Dennis Hope figured it out on his own.
Hope was a car salesman and a ventriloquist, and he
(02:27):
had hit a rough patch in his life. He and
his wife were getting divorced, and he'd been living paycheck
to paycheck. Mister Hope was well losing hope until one
day when he was driving down the road and looked
out the window toward the sky, and there it was
all that lunar land ripe for the taking. He did
a little digging at the local college library and found
the Outer Space Treaty from the mid sixties. As he
(02:49):
read through the document, he noticed something. Even though the
treaties stated that no nation could declare ownership over the Moon,
there was nothing in there that said a person couldn't
own it. Hope, believing that he had found a loophole,
filed the claim with his local county seat for the
whole of the Moon's surface, along with the surfaces of
every other planet in the Solar System except for the
(03:10):
Earth and the Sun. Nobody, of course, took him seriously,
but after consulting with three supervisors across two separate floors
in five hours, he finally got what he wanted, ownership
over the Moon and the planets. He then wrote to
the General Assembly of the United Nations as well as
the Russian government, letting them know that there was a
new sheriff in town, and that if anyone wanted to
(03:31):
sell land in space, they had to go through him first.
For those wondering, hope will sell anyone an acre of
moonland for about thirty five dollars. But Dennis and the
people of Ohio were not alone in believing the Moon
was up for grabs. Others had been declaring ownership of
it for years before Geneva. There was a science fiction
fan club in Berkeley, California, that had laid claim to
(03:53):
part of the Moon in nineteen fifty two. That same year,
the chairman of the Hayden Planetarium in New York planned
on selling parcels of land there for a dollar an acre,
And in nineteen fifty four, a Chilean lawyer named Gennaro
Gerada Veda published three separate announcements of his claim of
the Mood on the Official Diary of Chile. Even President
Richard Nixon acknowledged Veda's ownership, sending him a telegram via
(04:17):
the US embassy in nineteen sixty nine. Nixon requested permission
for his astronauts to land there. It doesn't matter how
far away it is or how expensive it is to
go there. For every person who gazes at the night
sky and sees the enormity of the universe, there will
always be someone who looks up and wonders, how much
could I get for that? And now for something a
(04:52):
bit lighter. Every day the world continues to plunge deeper
into darkness due to war, climate change, famine and other cateshts, fees,
And meanwhile, scholars, leaders and CEOs with too much money
having dreaming up ways to save humanity or at least themselves.
Some of their plans involve inhabiting other planets. Others believe
(05:12):
building big underground bunkers with their own ecosystems is the
way to go. But one man had another idea. It
just wasn't exactly feasible. Yet you could say he had
his head in the clouds. His name was Richard Buckminster Fuller,
the architect who made the Geodesic Dome popular. If you've
ever walked around Epcot at Disney World, you've undoubtedly seen
(05:34):
the giant golf ball shape sphere known as spaceship Earth,
a phrase that he also coined. Born in eighteen ninety five,
Fuller attended Harvard for a short time before he was
expelled for missing his exams and partying too much. He
then traveled to Canada, where he took a job at
a mill until re enrolling at Harvard again in nineteen fifteen,
(05:55):
but that didn't last long either. He was soon expelled
once again, ultimately joining the U the US Navy to
serve during World War One. In fact, Fuller didn't get
into architecture until the nineteen twenties, when he started working
on the Stockade Building System with his father in law.
This was a construction system made using bricks of compressed
wood shavings with large vertical holes drilled down their centers.
(06:18):
The holes would then be filled with concrete so that
these stacked blocks couldn't move. After that company failed, though,
Fuller contemplated ending his life in nineteen twenty seven. That
is until he experienced a life changing event that turned
everything around for him. He felt as though a ball
of white light surrounded him and lifted him into the air,
and then a voice spoke telling him, you do not
(06:40):
have the right to eliminate yourself. You do not belong
to you. You belong to the universe. Fuller was transformed
by the experience and got back to work trying to
improve humanity by revolutionizing housing. He designed the Dimaxian house,
which was an inexpensive home that could be produced at
scale and dropped into place on a plot of the land.
(07:00):
There was also the geodesic dome, which came about in
nineteen fifty one. The dome was cheap, resilient, and easy
to assemble, making it ideal for housing, especially in lower
income areas and harsh climates, and that design led to
another creation, one that had the potential to change housing
all over the world. Japanese media mogul Matsutaro Shoriki had
(07:21):
challenged Fuller to create a community to accommodate Japan's growing population.
To do this, the houses would be required to float
on Tokyo Bay, linked together like a giant city, and
what Fuller came up with definitely did float, but not
on the bay. His homes were designed to rise into
the air like balloons instead. He called them spherical Tensegrity
(07:44):
Atmospheric Research Stations, or stars for short. They were also
known as cloud nines and were giant geodesic spheres filled
with air. Each dome was intended to be a half
mile in diameter, yet only way a fraction of the
weight of the air inside. Using a sustainable heat source
like solar energy or human movement inside, the one degree
(08:04):
fahrenheit increase of the internal temperature could cause the dome
to float. If a person wanted to remain in one spot,
they could tether their massive sphere to a mountain or
another anchor. Or if they wanted to travel the world,
they could drift freely throughout the sky. But Fuller didn't
just picture them as houses. He also anticipated using them
as impromptu emergency relief sites during disasters. Unfortunately, his dream
(08:29):
remained just that a dream. The technology didn't exist at
the time to make these cloud nines a reality. Fuller
himself believed that they wouldn't be feasible for another fifty years. Well,
that time has come and gone, and we're no closer
to living in floating spheres now than we were back then.
But if floods, wildfires, and heat waves continue to pummel
(08:50):
the planet, then we may be forced to find new
ways to live. And right now, a geodesic balloon doesn't
sound half bad. 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
(09:12):
dot com. This 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
over at the Worldoflore dot com. And until next time,
stay curious.
Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities News
Host
Aaron Mahnke
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