May 25, 2023 • 11 mins
Today's tour through the Cabinet is all about women who did curious things to make the world a better place.
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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 right there on display, just waiting
for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
(00:36):
Anyone who's had a bad boss or a coworker has
probably felt the sting of having their hard work stolen.
They spend all weekend on a report or a spreadsheets,
only to have the credit go to someone else. Back
in the nineteen seventies, five women did a job that
nobody else would or could do, and their research led
to some pretty incredible results, results that were ultimately attributed
(00:58):
to the men of their field. But Alina Schmantz and Heartline,
doctor Sylvia Earl Mead, doctor Renata True, and Peggy Lucas
Bond did more for the United States Space program than
we will ever know. In nineteen seventy, both NASA and
the US Department of the Interior put out a call
they were looking for scientists to head up the next
(01:19):
initiative at a special facility called tech Tight two. Tech
Tight two was a special kind of base comprised of
two metal capsules measuring eighteen feet tall and conducted by
a narrow passage. The capsules held a small kitchen with
the refrigerator, a microwave, a small table, and a bathroom,
as well as bunks and a laboratory. Tech Tight two
(01:40):
had been used four times previously by other teams of five,
with four scientists and one engineer on each mission. The
goal was to study how scientific teams worked together when
isolated in small spaces, similar to what they experienced while
in space, and for this new experiment, NASA and the
US government wanted five women, as the first four experiments
(02:02):
had been conducted by all male teams. But tech Tite
II wasn't located in the middle of the desert or
even in a top secret underground facility. It was located
forty three feet under the Atlantic Ocean in the Virgin Islands.
Several of the women were graduate students at Scrip's Institution
of Oceanography, while doctor True taught biological oceanography at Tulane
(02:24):
University in New Orleans. Peggy Lucas Bond came from Villanueva
as an electrical engineer The men who had done the
previous tech type missions ate frozen dinners every night and
had regular contact with the outside world. They weren't so
much isolated as they were on vacation. But Schmanson, the
other women of Missions six point fifty wouldn't be so lucky.
(02:45):
They would live and work together in close quarters for
fourteen days studying the behavior of small coral reef fish
while NASA and the DOI studied them. The women were
deep enough that they could not surface without getting the bends.
NASA had built to facility that could not be escaped
so as to better study the psychological effects of being
down there for longer periods of time. Once they were selected,
(03:09):
the media had a field day with the fact that
five young, attractive women were going to be doing what
was considered men's work. Articles and TV reports discussed everything
from their heights and weights to how they had allegedly
requested a hair dryer in the capsule, which by the way,
they hadn't, and the men in charge of the program
also bombarded them with sexist remarks and behaviors, an unfortunate
(03:31):
but not unexpected consequence of doing their jobs in a
man's world. For example, the higher ups didn't think the
women would be able to lift or maneuver their breathing
tanks without a man there to help them. Mission six
point fifty was led by Sylvia Earl Meade, while Bond
maintained the life support systems. The five of them often
explored the nearby coral reefs two at a time, with
(03:52):
one person staying back at the base. They also got
to use rebreathers on their excursions, a new technology that
let the women read their own air using special tanks,
allowing them to stay out of the base for hours
on end. When they weren't observing the sea life outside
of tech Tite, too, they relaxed inside, observing the sea
life through the station's bubble shaped windows. There was also
(04:15):
a television and radio on board in case they wanted
to entertain themselves with something other than fish. Anne Heartline
was quoted in the New York Times article saying, there
was no claustrophobia, and we got along unbelievably well. The
only time we had any disagreement was when we all
wanted to go out swimming at the same time. After
it was over, Smonson the others published several academic papers
(04:38):
on their findings and NASA got the inside kneaded into
the aquanat's mental states Throughout the experiment, The women were
also given a ticker tape parade in Chicago and had
a special lunch with First Lady Pat Nixon at the
White House. As for tech Tite, it hosted several more
all male missions through the nineteen seventies until it was
finally decommissioned, but NASA still uses underwater habitats to both
(05:02):
train and study astronauts before they head into space above
all else, Mission six point fifty proved that women were
just as capable of men, if not more so, at
being astronauts. The work of Elina sch Monts and Heartline
Sylvia Earl Mead were not a true and Peggy Lucas
bond led to NASA eventually training women to go into space.
(05:22):
In nineteen seventy four, these five women managed to do
the impossible. They broke the glass ceiling while living in
an underwater metal tube. Some people believe that if you
(05:48):
want something done right, you have to do it yourself.
For a woman named Mary Jane, though, it wasn't that
she wanted things done right, it's that if she didn't
do them herself. They wouldn't have gotten done at all.
Mary was born in Brooklyn, New York, in eighteen ninety three.
Her mother was a model, and her father had been
a boxer before becoming a private investigator. She also had
a brother and two sisters, one of whom died as
(06:10):
an infant. Mary got the acting bug early after performing
for her local church when she was only five. By
the time she was a teenager, she was on the
vaudeville circuit as a member of the Hall Clarendon Stock Company.
In fact, Mary was an early dragstar, performing under the
name Jane Mast and playing the part of a male impersonator.
She eventually worked her way up to Broadway in nineteen eleven,
(06:32):
performing alongside big stars like ed Wynn, perhaps best remembered
as the voice of the Mad Hatter in Disney's Alice
in Wonderland. But being on stage wasn't enough for Mary.
She wanted more. She wanted to do it all, write, direct,
produce all of the jobs that men were doing, and
she knew that if she didn't take the initiative, she
would never get the chance. So she got to work
(06:55):
writing her own plays. Her first was a nineteen twenty
six show simply titled Sex. Mary had written the script,
directed it, and produced it all on her own, and
audiences loved it, but critics and the authorities did not.
After several religious groups complained about the content of the show,
Mary and the rest of the cast were arrested and
(07:15):
brought up on morals charges. She spent ten days locked up,
refusing to pay the fine because she knew that her
play could get a huge boost from the notoriety Anna did.
Mary didn't do too badly in jail either. She only
served eight days, getting two days off for good behavior,
and often ate her meals with the warden and his wife.
She returned to the stage with a new show called
(07:37):
The Drag, which cast gay actors that she had known
from a club in Greenwich Village. Mary was a staunch
supporter of gay rights and often butted heads with the
New York City police, who persecuted gay men and brutalized
them simply for existing. It's no surprise that after testing
her show in New Jersey and Connecticut, she was blocked
from bringing it to the Broadway stage. By the nineteen thirties,
(07:59):
Mary had found her way to Hollywood, where she became
the talk of the town, but not only because of
her acting. She hadn't just broken into the business. She
had broken the mold. Mary wrote much of her own material,
and although she went uncredited for the work that she
did on her first few films, she received sole or
partial credit for almost all of the movies that she
made between nineteen thirty three and nineteen seventy eight. Her
(08:22):
success allowed her to do many things that women of
that era were not allowed to do or even expected
to do. For example, she had a clause in her
contract that gave her the right to kick her co
star W. C. Fields off the set if he ever
showed up drunk, which was apparently not all that uncommon.
She also allegedly opened a bank account for herself using
(08:43):
a man's name. You see, until the nineteen sixties, women
were not allowed to have their own accounts in the
United States. But perhaps most impressive of all was her
willingness to stand up to hate, especially where her friends
were concerned. Mary had a chauffeur and bodyguard named William
Landon Jones, better known to BAK fans as Gorilla Jones.
He was also her lover, and he was black, and
(09:04):
that would have been scandalous enough in the nineteen thirties,
but Mary didn't exactly hide their relationship. One day, Jones
arrived at the Ravenswood Apartments in Los Angeles where she lived.
He approached the door, at which point he was told
that he could not go up to see her. They
had put a rule in place banning people of color
from entering the building. Mary found out and immediately made
(09:25):
two phone calls. The first was to the front desk
telling them to allow him up to her room, and
the other was to the owners of the apartment building.
Rumor had it that Mary actually bought the ravens Wood
and then changed the rules to allow Jones to come
and go as he pleased, but the real story was
only slightly less dramatic. You see, she found out that
the owners were on the verge of losing the building
(09:46):
due to lack of funds. They asked Mary for help,
which she happily gave. She loaned them the money with
the understanding that mister Jones could enter the building with
no more problems. She then told Jones, I was so
disgusted with what happened to to you, I bought the
Ravenswood In other words, she spread the rumor herself. Mary
Jane was an iconoclast. She was an ally to a
(10:09):
number of minority communities, and she was someone who did
not tolerate hatred towards her friends or family. And that's
why she's still revered to this day, but not as
Mary Jane, but as May her stage name May West.
I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet
(10:30):
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 over at the
(10:52):
Worldolore dot com. And until next time, stay curious, Kay
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 right there on display, just waiting
for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
(00:36):
Anyone who's had a bad boss or a coworker has
probably felt the sting of having their hard work stolen.
They spend all weekend on a report or a spreadsheets,
only to have the credit go to someone else. Back
in the nineteen seventies, five women did a job that
nobody else would or could do, and their research led
to some pretty incredible results, results that were ultimately attributed
(00:58):
to the men of their field. But Alina Schmantz and Heartline,
doctor Sylvia Earl Mead, doctor Renata True, and Peggy Lucas
Bond did more for the United States Space program than
we will ever know. In nineteen seventy, both NASA and
the US Department of the Interior put out a call
they were looking for scientists to head up the next
(01:19):
initiative at a special facility called tech Tight two. Tech
Tight two was a special kind of base comprised of
two metal capsules measuring eighteen feet tall and conducted by
a narrow passage. The capsules held a small kitchen with
the refrigerator, a microwave, a small table, and a bathroom,
as well as bunks and a laboratory. Tech Tight two
(01:40):
had been used four times previously by other teams of five,
with four scientists and one engineer on each mission. The
goal was to study how scientific teams worked together when
isolated in small spaces, similar to what they experienced while
in space, and for this new experiment, NASA and the
US government wanted five women, as the first four experiments
(02:02):
had been conducted by all male teams. But tech Tite
II wasn't located in the middle of the desert or
even in a top secret underground facility. It was located
forty three feet under the Atlantic Ocean in the Virgin Islands.
Several of the women were graduate students at Scrip's Institution
of Oceanography, while doctor True taught biological oceanography at Tulane
(02:24):
University in New Orleans. Peggy Lucas Bond came from Villanueva
as an electrical engineer The men who had done the
previous tech type missions ate frozen dinners every night and
had regular contact with the outside world. They weren't so
much isolated as they were on vacation. But Schmanson, the
other women of Missions six point fifty wouldn't be so lucky.
(02:45):
They would live and work together in close quarters for
fourteen days studying the behavior of small coral reef fish
while NASA and the DOI studied them. The women were
deep enough that they could not surface without getting the bends.
NASA had built to facility that could not be escaped
so as to better study the psychological effects of being
down there for longer periods of time. Once they were selected,
(03:09):
the media had a field day with the fact that
five young, attractive women were going to be doing what
was considered men's work. Articles and TV reports discussed everything
from their heights and weights to how they had allegedly
requested a hair dryer in the capsule, which by the way,
they hadn't, and the men in charge of the program
also bombarded them with sexist remarks and behaviors, an unfortunate
(03:31):
but not unexpected consequence of doing their jobs in a
man's world. For example, the higher ups didn't think the
women would be able to lift or maneuver their breathing
tanks without a man there to help them. Mission six
point fifty was led by Sylvia Earl Meade, while Bond
maintained the life support systems. The five of them often
explored the nearby coral reefs two at a time, with
(03:52):
one person staying back at the base. They also got
to use rebreathers on their excursions, a new technology that
let the women read their own air using special tanks,
allowing them to stay out of the base for hours
on end. When they weren't observing the sea life outside
of tech Tite, too, they relaxed inside, observing the sea
life through the station's bubble shaped windows. There was also
(04:15):
a television and radio on board in case they wanted
to entertain themselves with something other than fish. Anne Heartline
was quoted in the New York Times article saying, there
was no claustrophobia, and we got along unbelievably well. The
only time we had any disagreement was when we all
wanted to go out swimming at the same time. After
it was over, Smonson the others published several academic papers
(04:38):
on their findings and NASA got the inside kneaded into
the aquanat's mental states Throughout the experiment, The women were
also given a ticker tape parade in Chicago and had
a special lunch with First Lady Pat Nixon at the
White House. As for tech Tite, it hosted several more
all male missions through the nineteen seventies until it was
finally decommissioned, but NASA still uses underwater habitats to both
(05:02):
train and study astronauts before they head into space above
all else, Mission six point fifty proved that women were
just as capable of men, if not more so, at
being astronauts. The work of Elina sch Monts and Heartline
Sylvia Earl Mead were not a true and Peggy Lucas
bond led to NASA eventually training women to go into space.
(05:22):
In nineteen seventy four, these five women managed to do
the impossible. They broke the glass ceiling while living in
an underwater metal tube. Some people believe that if you
(05:48):
want something done right, you have to do it yourself.
For a woman named Mary Jane, though, it wasn't that
she wanted things done right, it's that if she didn't
do them herself. They wouldn't have gotten done at all.
Mary was born in Brooklyn, New York, in eighteen ninety three.
Her mother was a model, and her father had been
a boxer before becoming a private investigator. She also had
a brother and two sisters, one of whom died as
(06:10):
an infant. Mary got the acting bug early after performing
for her local church when she was only five. By
the time she was a teenager, she was on the
vaudeville circuit as a member of the Hall Clarendon Stock Company.
In fact, Mary was an early dragstar, performing under the
name Jane Mast and playing the part of a male impersonator.
She eventually worked her way up to Broadway in nineteen eleven,
(06:32):
performing alongside big stars like ed Wynn, perhaps best remembered
as the voice of the Mad Hatter in Disney's Alice
in Wonderland. But being on stage wasn't enough for Mary.
She wanted more. She wanted to do it all, write, direct,
produce all of the jobs that men were doing, and
she knew that if she didn't take the initiative, she
would never get the chance. So she got to work
(06:55):
writing her own plays. Her first was a nineteen twenty
six show simply titled Sex. Mary had written the script,
directed it, and produced it all on her own, and
audiences loved it, but critics and the authorities did not.
After several religious groups complained about the content of the show,
Mary and the rest of the cast were arrested and
(07:15):
brought up on morals charges. She spent ten days locked up,
refusing to pay the fine because she knew that her
play could get a huge boost from the notoriety Anna did.
Mary didn't do too badly in jail either. She only
served eight days, getting two days off for good behavior,
and often ate her meals with the warden and his wife.
She returned to the stage with a new show called
(07:37):
The Drag, which cast gay actors that she had known
from a club in Greenwich Village. Mary was a staunch
supporter of gay rights and often butted heads with the
New York City police, who persecuted gay men and brutalized
them simply for existing. It's no surprise that after testing
her show in New Jersey and Connecticut, she was blocked
from bringing it to the Broadway stage. By the nineteen thirties,
(07:59):
Mary had found her way to Hollywood, where she became
the talk of the town, but not only because of
her acting. She hadn't just broken into the business. She
had broken the mold. Mary wrote much of her own material,
and although she went uncredited for the work that she
did on her first few films, she received sole or
partial credit for almost all of the movies that she
made between nineteen thirty three and nineteen seventy eight. Her
(08:22):
success allowed her to do many things that women of
that era were not allowed to do or even expected
to do. For example, she had a clause in her
contract that gave her the right to kick her co
star W. C. Fields off the set if he ever
showed up drunk, which was apparently not all that uncommon.
She also allegedly opened a bank account for herself using
(08:43):
a man's name. You see, until the nineteen sixties, women
were not allowed to have their own accounts in the
United States. But perhaps most impressive of all was her
willingness to stand up to hate, especially where her friends
were concerned. Mary had a chauffeur and bodyguard named William
Landon Jones, better known to BAK fans as Gorilla Jones.
He was also her lover, and he was black, and
(09:04):
that would have been scandalous enough in the nineteen thirties,
but Mary didn't exactly hide their relationship. One day, Jones
arrived at the Ravenswood Apartments in Los Angeles where she lived.
He approached the door, at which point he was told
that he could not go up to see her. They
had put a rule in place banning people of color
from entering the building. Mary found out and immediately made
(09:25):
two phone calls. The first was to the front desk
telling them to allow him up to her room, and
the other was to the owners of the apartment building.
Rumor had it that Mary actually bought the ravens Wood
and then changed the rules to allow Jones to come
and go as he pleased, but the real story was
only slightly less dramatic. You see, she found out that
the owners were on the verge of losing the building
(09:46):
due to lack of funds. They asked Mary for help,
which she happily gave. She loaned them the money with
the understanding that mister Jones could enter the building with
no more problems. She then told Jones, I was so
disgusted with what happened to to you, I bought the
Ravenswood In other words, she spread the rumor herself. Mary
Jane was an iconoclast. She was an ally to a
(10:09):
number of minority communities, and she was someone who did
not tolerate hatred towards her friends or family. And that's
why she's still revered to this day, but not as
Mary Jane, but as May her stage name May West.
I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet
(10:30):
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 over at the
(10:52):
Worldolore dot com. And until next time, stay curious, Kay
Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities News
Host
Aaron Mahnke
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