October 24, 2023 • 9 mins
Some curiosities will keep you up all night, while others will lull you to sleep. Enjoy the show!
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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):
When we're little, the idea of a midday nap can
launch us into a tantrum. We don't want to sleep.
We want to stay up so that we don't miss anything.
As we get older, that desire to remain awake bleeds
into the nighttime hours, until we find ourselves welcoming the
sunrise with a crowd of drunken revelers we met the
night before. Then we hit adulthood and the only thing
we want to do is lay in bed and sleep,
(00:58):
or watch reruns of the Office until we nod off.
But one woman allegedly got to live the dream in
more ways than one, so to speak. Her name was
Carolina Olson born in eighteen sixty one in Sweden. She
was the second oldest of five children, but didn't attend
school like her four other brothers. Her mother took care
of the house and felt Carolina should learn to help
(01:19):
as well, so missus Olsen kept her at home On
top of the household chores, she also taught her how
to read and write. When Carolina was fourteen, she finally
started attending school like the other children. Things were going
smoothly for about a month until one day she came
home in immense pain. Her tooth hurt, but her mother
didn't believe that that was the cause of her ailment.
(01:40):
She felt that Carolina was under the influence of witchcraft
or an evil spirit, so she told her to sleep
it off. What her mother didn't realize, though, was that
the toothache would be the least of the girl's problems.
Carolina tucked herself in and fell asleep. The next morning,
she was still asleep. No matter what her parents tried,
they could not wake her up. She hadn't died, she
(02:01):
was simply unconscious and sadly, they didn't have enough money
to send for the doctor, but the town banded together
to pay for one instead. In his opinion, Carolina had
fallen into a coma. Her mother tended to her around
the clock, feeding her two glasses of milk each day. Meanwhile,
her doctor was taking matters into his own hands. He
penned a letter to the editor of the Scandinavian Medical
(02:23):
Journal for advice. Soon, other doctors began writing back with
several pain Carolina visits of their own. They remarked that
her fingernails, toenails, and hair didn't seem to be growing,
and one doctor in particular, a guy named Johann amel Almblod,
transferred Carolina to his hospital in eighteen ninety two for observation.
He watched her for a month, during which time he
(02:45):
conducted a number of tests to verify the severity of
her condition. He poked her skin with sharp instruments, sent
small jolts of electricity through her body, and even altered
her diet, but nothing worked. When the thirty days were over,
he sent her home with a diagnosis of dementia paralytica,
a neurological disorder typically seen in people suffering from syphilis.
(03:07):
But Carolina didn't have syphilis. She simply slept and slept
and slept, although her father claimed to have seen her
crawling around on her hands and knees a few times
before scuttling back to bed. Otherwise, she slumbered as her
mother took care of her every need, feeding her, changing
her clothes, and bathing her, and after that years went by. Sadly,
(03:28):
missus Olsen passed away in nineteen oh four, and Carolina
lost one of her brothers in nineteen oh seven. She
was then taken care of by a maid, but one day,
without warning, she finally woke up in nineteen oh eight.
She had been out for a total of thirty two years.
Her maid had walked in on her, jumping up and
down and crying. She was emaciated and sensitive to light
(03:49):
for a short time, but Carolina also didn't recognize her
remaining brothers who came to see her, nor could she
speak to them easily. She hadn't uttered a word in years.
It was as though she had been reborn, but luckily
she still knew how to read and write. In fact,
she retained much of what she had learned before her coma.
In the weeks following her awakening, Carolina was visited by
(04:10):
scores of reporters looking for a story. They came from
the United States and Europe to find out everything they
could about the miracle girl who had slept for three decades.
She also underwent a battery of psychiatric tests to gauge
her facilities, and was found to be completely healthy. Mentally speaking,
she was the same girl she had been all those
years before. Carolina Olsen managed to live another forty two
(04:34):
years after that, dying from an inter cranial hemorrhage in
nineteen fifty at the age of eighty eight, finally slipping
into a slumber that none of us ever come back from.
(04:59):
This story starts with a bit of a personal anecdote.
The other weekend, I went to the movies and I
did what you have to do when you're at the movies.
I spent way too much money on a massive bag
of popcorn, And as I sat in my seats, eating
one delicious kernel after another, I started to wonder, how
did popcorn become the movie theater snack. That was so
curious that I went home and I did a little research,
(05:19):
and it turns out the story behind movie theater popcorn
is actually pretty amazing. You see America's first movie theater
open in nineteen o five in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It was
called the Nickelodeon. You'll probably recognize that is the name
of a modern children's TV network, But this is where
the word originated. The price of admission was a nickel,
and the ancient Greek word for theater was odeon, hence nickelodeon.
(05:44):
The Nickelodeon was a classy place too. The goal was
to emulate the experience of seeing a live theater performance,
so thick curtains surrounded the movie screen and the floors
were lined with expensive carpet. The first movie ever screened
there was a drama called The Great Rain Robbery. It
was just ten minutes long and it was totally silent,
(06:04):
and it was also a huge hit. After this movie,
theaters started springing up all over the country, but they
had pretty strict rules, the most shocking among them no
snacking allowed. There were a couple of reasons for this.
Of course, first, the carpets right, theater managers didn't want
their nice rugs getting covered in crumbs. And second, snacks
(06:24):
that were already associated with entertainment, like potato chips and yes, popcorn,
were crunchy. But the movies didn't have any audio. Imagine
going to a silent film and all you can hear
in the background is people chewing their food. Definitely not ideal.
It wasn't until nineteen twenty seven, a full twenty two
years later that the first movie with sound debuted. This
(06:45):
led to a huge spike in ticket sales. The nineteen
thirty movie theaters in the US sold about ninety million
tickets per week. And now that the whole listening to
people chew thing wasn't a problem, you would think that
theater managers might be a little more lax about snacking. Right, well,
sort of. By this point, street vendors had noticed that
the outside of a movie theater was a great place
(07:06):
to find customers. Moviegoers would buy popcorn outside and then
sneak it into the theater in their coat pockets. Theater
managers realized that there really wasn't any way to get
around this, so rather than fight human's natural inclination to
smuggle snacks into a movie theater, they decided to go
directly to the street vendors. They gave the salesmen an
ultimatum either take the popcorn carts elsewhere or pay a
(07:28):
daily fee to do business outside the theater doors. For
the most part, the vendors agreed to give a cut
to the theaters, and the arrangement worked well. But then
in the early nineteen thirties, the Great Depression took hold
of the United States, entertainment became a luxury that people
weren't so quick to spend money on anymore. Those record
breaking ticket sales from just a few years before I'll
(07:49):
dried up. If the movie industry was going to make
it through the depression, theater owners needed a way to
increase profits, and popcorn was the perfect way to do it.
The ingredients were extremely cheap. A bag of popcorn kernels
that cost ten dollars could last a theater for years.
Small bags of cooked popcorn cost customers anywhere from five
(08:10):
to ten cents, which was a profit margin of about
eighty five percent. This was the point in history when
movie theaters began relying less on revenue from ticket sales
and more on the money they made from selling concessions.
Snacks had become their saving grace. Once outright banned from
the movies, theaters now played advertisements encouraging patrons to grab
(08:30):
a bag of popcorn and a soda before the film began.
By nineteen forty five, more than half the popcorn eaten
in America was enjoyed in front of the big screen.
So the next time you're at the movies, snacking on
some overpriced popcorn. Remember your purchase is part of a
larger story, one in which the humble popcorn Kernel saved
(08:50):
the American movie industry from financial collapse that I think
certainly qualifies as curious. 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
(09:11):
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 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):
When we're little, the idea of a midday nap can
launch us into a tantrum. We don't want to sleep.
We want to stay up so that we don't miss anything.
As we get older, that desire to remain awake bleeds
into the nighttime hours, until we find ourselves welcoming the
sunrise with a crowd of drunken revelers we met the
night before. Then we hit adulthood and the only thing
we want to do is lay in bed and sleep,
(00:58):
or watch reruns of the Office until we nod off.
But one woman allegedly got to live the dream in
more ways than one, so to speak. Her name was
Carolina Olson born in eighteen sixty one in Sweden. She
was the second oldest of five children, but didn't attend
school like her four other brothers. Her mother took care
of the house and felt Carolina should learn to help
(01:19):
as well, so missus Olsen kept her at home On
top of the household chores, she also taught her how
to read and write. When Carolina was fourteen, she finally
started attending school like the other children. Things were going
smoothly for about a month until one day she came
home in immense pain. Her tooth hurt, but her mother
didn't believe that that was the cause of her ailment.
(01:40):
She felt that Carolina was under the influence of witchcraft
or an evil spirit, so she told her to sleep
it off. What her mother didn't realize, though, was that
the toothache would be the least of the girl's problems.
Carolina tucked herself in and fell asleep. The next morning,
she was still asleep. No matter what her parents tried,
they could not wake her up. She hadn't died, she
(02:01):
was simply unconscious and sadly, they didn't have enough money
to send for the doctor, but the town banded together
to pay for one instead. In his opinion, Carolina had
fallen into a coma. Her mother tended to her around
the clock, feeding her two glasses of milk each day. Meanwhile,
her doctor was taking matters into his own hands. He
penned a letter to the editor of the Scandinavian Medical
(02:23):
Journal for advice. Soon, other doctors began writing back with
several pain Carolina visits of their own. They remarked that
her fingernails, toenails, and hair didn't seem to be growing,
and one doctor in particular, a guy named Johann amel Almblod,
transferred Carolina to his hospital in eighteen ninety two for observation.
He watched her for a month, during which time he
(02:45):
conducted a number of tests to verify the severity of
her condition. He poked her skin with sharp instruments, sent
small jolts of electricity through her body, and even altered
her diet, but nothing worked. When the thirty days were over,
he sent her home with a diagnosis of dementia paralytica,
a neurological disorder typically seen in people suffering from syphilis.
(03:07):
But Carolina didn't have syphilis. She simply slept and slept
and slept, although her father claimed to have seen her
crawling around on her hands and knees a few times
before scuttling back to bed. Otherwise, she slumbered as her
mother took care of her every need, feeding her, changing
her clothes, and bathing her, and after that years went by. Sadly,
(03:28):
missus Olsen passed away in nineteen oh four, and Carolina
lost one of her brothers in nineteen oh seven. She
was then taken care of by a maid, but one day,
without warning, she finally woke up in nineteen oh eight.
She had been out for a total of thirty two years.
Her maid had walked in on her, jumping up and
down and crying. She was emaciated and sensitive to light
(03:49):
for a short time, but Carolina also didn't recognize her
remaining brothers who came to see her, nor could she
speak to them easily. She hadn't uttered a word in years.
It was as though she had been reborn, but luckily
she still knew how to read and write. In fact,
she retained much of what she had learned before her coma.
In the weeks following her awakening, Carolina was visited by
(04:10):
scores of reporters looking for a story. They came from
the United States and Europe to find out everything they
could about the miracle girl who had slept for three decades.
She also underwent a battery of psychiatric tests to gauge
her facilities, and was found to be completely healthy. Mentally speaking,
she was the same girl she had been all those
years before. Carolina Olsen managed to live another forty two
(04:34):
years after that, dying from an inter cranial hemorrhage in
nineteen fifty at the age of eighty eight, finally slipping
into a slumber that none of us ever come back from.
(04:59):
This story starts with a bit of a personal anecdote.
The other weekend, I went to the movies and I
did what you have to do when you're at the movies.
I spent way too much money on a massive bag
of popcorn, And as I sat in my seats, eating
one delicious kernel after another, I started to wonder, how
did popcorn become the movie theater snack. That was so
curious that I went home and I did a little research,
(05:19):
and it turns out the story behind movie theater popcorn
is actually pretty amazing. You see America's first movie theater
open in nineteen o five in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It was
called the Nickelodeon. You'll probably recognize that is the name
of a modern children's TV network, But this is where
the word originated. The price of admission was a nickel,
and the ancient Greek word for theater was odeon, hence nickelodeon.
(05:44):
The Nickelodeon was a classy place too. The goal was
to emulate the experience of seeing a live theater performance,
so thick curtains surrounded the movie screen and the floors
were lined with expensive carpet. The first movie ever screened
there was a drama called The Great Rain Robbery. It
was just ten minutes long and it was totally silent,
(06:04):
and it was also a huge hit. After this movie,
theaters started springing up all over the country, but they
had pretty strict rules, the most shocking among them no
snacking allowed. There were a couple of reasons for this.
Of course, first, the carpets right, theater managers didn't want
their nice rugs getting covered in crumbs. And second, snacks
(06:24):
that were already associated with entertainment, like potato chips and yes, popcorn,
were crunchy. But the movies didn't have any audio. Imagine
going to a silent film and all you can hear
in the background is people chewing their food. Definitely not ideal.
It wasn't until nineteen twenty seven, a full twenty two
years later that the first movie with sound debuted. This
(06:45):
led to a huge spike in ticket sales. The nineteen
thirty movie theaters in the US sold about ninety million
tickets per week. And now that the whole listening to
people chew thing wasn't a problem, you would think that
theater managers might be a little more lax about snacking. Right, well,
sort of. By this point, street vendors had noticed that
the outside of a movie theater was a great place
(07:06):
to find customers. Moviegoers would buy popcorn outside and then
sneak it into the theater in their coat pockets. Theater
managers realized that there really wasn't any way to get
around this, so rather than fight human's natural inclination to
smuggle snacks into a movie theater, they decided to go
directly to the street vendors. They gave the salesmen an
ultimatum either take the popcorn carts elsewhere or pay a
(07:28):
daily fee to do business outside the theater doors. For
the most part, the vendors agreed to give a cut
to the theaters, and the arrangement worked well. But then
in the early nineteen thirties, the Great Depression took hold
of the United States, entertainment became a luxury that people
weren't so quick to spend money on anymore. Those record
breaking ticket sales from just a few years before I'll
(07:49):
dried up. If the movie industry was going to make
it through the depression, theater owners needed a way to
increase profits, and popcorn was the perfect way to do it.
The ingredients were extremely cheap. A bag of popcorn kernels
that cost ten dollars could last a theater for years.
Small bags of cooked popcorn cost customers anywhere from five
(08:10):
to ten cents, which was a profit margin of about
eighty five percent. This was the point in history when
movie theaters began relying less on revenue from ticket sales
and more on the money they made from selling concessions.
Snacks had become their saving grace. Once outright banned from
the movies, theaters now played advertisements encouraging patrons to grab
(08:30):
a bag of popcorn and a soda before the film began.
By nineteen forty five, more than half the popcorn eaten
in America was enjoyed in front of the big screen.
So the next time you're at the movies, snacking on
some overpriced popcorn. Remember your purchase is part of a
larger story, one in which the humble popcorn Kernel saved
(08:50):
the American movie industry from financial collapse that I think
certainly qualifies as curious. 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
(09:11):
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 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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