July 28, 2022 • 11 mins
Sometimes you can find what you're looking for, and sometimes you can't. Either way, the process can be a little curious.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcomed Aaron Manky'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. There is so much about our world we
still have yet to understand. The oceans of this planet,
for example, remain mostly unexplored, at least eighty percent of them,
and there are artifacts that have been discovered throughout history
that continue to defy explanation. The anti Cathera mechanism, which
(00:52):
has been called the oldest analog computing device ever found,
was discovered in an ancient shipwreck off the coast of
the Greek island of the same name. That isn't anything
else like it, especially from the era in which it
was made. There are also the Drop of Stones, ten
thousand year old discs found in Chinese caves in night.
They were analyzed and experimented on by experts from all
(01:13):
over the world, but no conclusion was ever drawn as
to the reason for their being there. But some unexplained
phenomena hit a little closer to home, like Dighton Rock.
Dighton Rocks existence was first recorded by Reverend John dan
Fourth back in sixteen eighty. Dan Fourth was a colonist
who sketched the carvings he found on the side of
the rock. The carvings, known as petroglyphs, were comprised various
(01:35):
lines and geometric shapes, although dan Forth's interpretation wasn't too
accurate when compared with other descriptions of the rock from
the same time period. Dighton Rock was a forty ton
sandstone boulder, measuring nine and a half feet wide by
eleven feet long and five feet tall. When it was
first discovered, the flat side bearing the petroglyphs had been
(01:55):
turned out towards the water, as if the symbols had
been intended as a greeting or maybe a warning for
ships sailing towards the shore. In the years since its discovery,
numerous theories about the symbols have been proposed for one
who wrote them in the first place. Petroglyphs had been
found carved onto the side of rocks and stone walls
by the indigenous peoples of the area before, so it
(02:18):
was assumed that they had done the same here. Meanwhile,
Brown University co founder Ezra Styles suggested in seventeen eighty
three that perhaps the ancient Phoenicians had come to America
and left behind a trace of their culture in the
form of carvings on the side of this rock, and
even as recently as two thousand and two, another theory
suggested that the Chinese had arrived in America before Columbus
(02:40):
and had carved the symbols into Dighton Rock. However, it
was Carl Christian Raffine of Denmark who put forth a
theory that stuck with the stone for nearly a hundred years.
Carl was a historian who had built his career on
the study of Norse culture and language. Like others, Carl
believed that someone else had beaten Columbus to the New World,
except that it wasn't the Chinese, it was the vikings.
(03:03):
Other scholars added on to his work in the following years,
helping to confirm and perpetuate Karl's theory as the truth. Unfortunately,
the whole premise fell apart in nineteen sixteen when Brown
University professor Edmund de la Bar examined the rock for
himself with the help of a camera. He photographed it
in different lighting scenarios to get a comprehensive view of
(03:24):
all the markings, especially those that had been hard to see.
He discovered the year fifteen eleven had been carved underneath
some of the other etchings, as well as the letters M, I,
G and you. Through careful analysis of the surroundings symbols,
De la Bar was able to make out the name
mcguel Courtoreal. Miguel had come from Portugal to North America
(03:47):
to search for his missing brother gas Bar. Neither man
returned home, but according to de la Bar, Miguel had
arrived in Massachusetts and carved his name into Dighton Rock.
He had also carved a bit of Latin, which translated
to the will of God, leader of the Indians. According
to Reverend John dan Forth, that first person to mention
the rock and recorded history, the indigenous people had told
(04:09):
stories about men from a far away land who had
killed their chief. They very well could have been talking
about Portuguese explorers like mcguel and gas Bar. Of course,
even such a thorough and thoughtful analysis would eventually find
its way to the debuncdal list. Journalist and historian Douglas
Hunter tore apart Delabar's theory in a book he published
in two thousand seventeen. So what's the truth behind Dighton Rock?
(04:33):
Who put it there? Who carved the symbols into its side?
The truth is nobody has the answer. All they have
our ideas and theories. But if anyone wants to check
it out for themselves, all they have to do is
head over to Berkeley, Massachusetts and the Dighton Rock State Park.
The boulder was moved from its original home on the
Taunton River to a tiny museum in the park in
(04:54):
nineteen sixty three. Today the public can view the petroglyphs
up close while they speculate to their hearts content. And
you know, rock out Inventors are no stranger to malfunction.
(05:20):
Edison famously told a reporter once that he didn't fail
ten thousand times in the creation of the light bulb.
He merely found ten thousand ways that it didn't work.
The act of invention is one of trial and error
and takes extensive planning and testing before the final product
is ready to be received by the public. But sometimes
no amount of testing can prepare an invention for the
(05:41):
real world, and nobody learned that lesson harder than Alexander
Graham Bell. Bell had started inventing when he was still
a child growing up in Scotland. He built a d
husking machine for a neighbor's flour mill when he was
only twelve years old, followed by a way to communicate
with his deaf mother using a series of finger taps
and gestures. It was actually his mother's loss of hearing
(06:02):
that influenced his later work in studying the travel of
sound and ultimately the creation of the telephone. But while
Belle is known today for helping to connect people by
voice all over the world, he also invented early versions
of some pretty powerful tools, one of which was put
to use. In eighteen eighty one, during a rough time
in American political history, a man by the name of
(06:24):
Charles had made a name for himself as a terrible
lawyer and a thief. After being chased out of Chicago
for stealing from his clients and not paying his bills,
he settled down in New York City with his wife,
where he started focusing on national politics. There he got
involved with the Democratic Party and supported candidate Horace Greeley
over the current Republican President Ulysseses Grant, but his support
(06:47):
came at a price. Charles started believing strange things throughout
the campaign, like how if Greeley was elected, that he
would make Charles the ambassador to Chile. Things only got
weirder from there. Charles published a just text, much of
which was plagiarized from the work of radical American preacher
John Humphrey Noyse. He was the founder of a utopian
(07:07):
commune called the Oneida Community, of which Charles had been
a follower. After that, Charles spent years traveling and preaching,
going from Boston to Washington, d c. Until finally winding
up back in New York. And as the Republican Party
began to split into two in eighteen eighty, Charles chose
to back the Stalwarts, conservative minded Republicans who supported the
(07:28):
civil rights of African Americans against the moderate liberals on
the other side of the party. The Stalwarts wanted Grant
to be the Republican nominee, and Charles threw his full
support behind him, a stark change from his backing of
the Democratic candidates just ten years prior. However, the Republicans
wound up nominating someone else, James Garfield, and so Charles
(07:49):
shifted his support to the new nominee almost immediately, and
Garfield won the election, and Charles believed that he had
been responsible for the man's success. He moved to Washington
and started writing letters to the President demanding a consuleship
position in Paris. Unfortunately, Garfield ignored his pleas Charles was
nobody and the new president had more important things to
(08:11):
do than entertain the wild fancies of one of his
more troublesome constituents. Well, Charles didn't like that. He felt
that without his help, Garfield would have lost, and the
more he thought about it, the more he found issue
with several of Garfield's policies. As a result, his adoration
of the man turned into animosity. He thought the country
would be better off if Vice President Chester A. Arthur
(08:33):
was president instead, and so on July two one, Charles
Guiteau waited for Garfield to arrive at the Baltimore and
Potomac Railroad station in Washington, d C. The President was
headed out for a summer trip when Charles stepped out
of the shadows and shot him twice in the back.
He was arrested immediately on his way out of the station,
and Garfield was transported to the White House for care.
(08:56):
Doctors were summoned, as was inventor Alexander Graham Bell, who
was living in Washington and had invented a new kind
of device to locate the bullet. It had come about
as part of his development of the telephone. Bell had
been trying to eliminate static in the device when he
noticed that the closer he brought a metal object to
the receiver, the louder the buzz it created. Bell's new
(09:18):
invention utilized some fairly simple materials too, one coil connected
to a battery and a buzzer, while another coil was
fastened to an earpiece. As he passed one coil over
Garfield's body, Bell would listen for the clicking in the earpiece,
indicating that one of the metal bullets had been located. Unfortunately,
he ran into a few problems. For one, the new
(09:39):
addition to the machine that was meant to improve performance
actually resulted in even more interference than before. He took
the whole thing back to his lab and made a
few adjustments before returning to the White House to try again.
It failed a second time, though Dr Willard Bliss, the
president's personal physician, swore that the bullets was on the
right side of Garfield's body, a point that he kept
(10:01):
impressing upon Bell, so that's where the inventor focused all
of his efforts. He heard the clicks in his earpiece,
a sure sign that he had found something, but there
was nothing there. The presidents eventually succumbed to infections caused
by his wounds two months later, on September nineteenth one.
What Bell didn't know at the time, though, was that
(10:21):
his machine had worked perfectly. There had been metal on
the right side of Garfield's body, but not inside him. Rather,
it had been underneath him. Bell was detecting the bedsprings.
The bullets, on the other hand, was found during the
late President's autopsy on his left hand side, not his right,
as the doctor had insisted. In order to help the
(10:43):
twentie President of the United States, Alexander Graham, Bell had
whipped up a little thing called a metal detector. Sadly,
even after two attempts, Bell couldn't get it to do
what he had hoped, and so he had to bite
the bullet and accept his loss. But his creation would
eventually go on to help soldiers locate land mines during
wartime and assist beachgoers in their search for buried treasure.
(11:05):
So it wasn't a complete failure. It was simply a
bellweather of what was to come. 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 dot com. The show was created
(11:28):
by me Aaron Manky 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.
Welcomed Aaron Manky'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. There is so much about our world we
still have yet to understand. The oceans of this planet,
for example, remain mostly unexplored, at least eighty percent of them,
and there are artifacts that have been discovered throughout history
that continue to defy explanation. The anti Cathera mechanism, which
(00:52):
has been called the oldest analog computing device ever found,
was discovered in an ancient shipwreck off the coast of
the Greek island of the same name. That isn't anything
else like it, especially from the era in which it
was made. There are also the Drop of Stones, ten
thousand year old discs found in Chinese caves in night.
They were analyzed and experimented on by experts from all
(01:13):
over the world, but no conclusion was ever drawn as
to the reason for their being there. But some unexplained
phenomena hit a little closer to home, like Dighton Rock.
Dighton Rocks existence was first recorded by Reverend John dan
Fourth back in sixteen eighty. Dan Fourth was a colonist
who sketched the carvings he found on the side of
the rock. The carvings, known as petroglyphs, were comprised various
(01:35):
lines and geometric shapes, although dan Forth's interpretation wasn't too
accurate when compared with other descriptions of the rock from
the same time period. Dighton Rock was a forty ton
sandstone boulder, measuring nine and a half feet wide by
eleven feet long and five feet tall. When it was
first discovered, the flat side bearing the petroglyphs had been
(01:55):
turned out towards the water, as if the symbols had
been intended as a greeting or maybe a warning for
ships sailing towards the shore. In the years since its discovery,
numerous theories about the symbols have been proposed for one
who wrote them in the first place. Petroglyphs had been
found carved onto the side of rocks and stone walls
by the indigenous peoples of the area before, so it
(02:18):
was assumed that they had done the same here. Meanwhile,
Brown University co founder Ezra Styles suggested in seventeen eighty
three that perhaps the ancient Phoenicians had come to America
and left behind a trace of their culture in the
form of carvings on the side of this rock, and
even as recently as two thousand and two, another theory
suggested that the Chinese had arrived in America before Columbus
(02:40):
and had carved the symbols into Dighton Rock. However, it
was Carl Christian Raffine of Denmark who put forth a
theory that stuck with the stone for nearly a hundred years.
Carl was a historian who had built his career on
the study of Norse culture and language. Like others, Carl
believed that someone else had beaten Columbus to the New World,
except that it wasn't the Chinese, it was the vikings.
(03:03):
Other scholars added on to his work in the following years,
helping to confirm and perpetuate Karl's theory as the truth. Unfortunately,
the whole premise fell apart in nineteen sixteen when Brown
University professor Edmund de la Bar examined the rock for
himself with the help of a camera. He photographed it
in different lighting scenarios to get a comprehensive view of
(03:24):
all the markings, especially those that had been hard to see.
He discovered the year fifteen eleven had been carved underneath
some of the other etchings, as well as the letters M, I,
G and you. Through careful analysis of the surroundings symbols,
De la Bar was able to make out the name
mcguel Courtoreal. Miguel had come from Portugal to North America
(03:47):
to search for his missing brother gas Bar. Neither man
returned home, but according to de la Bar, Miguel had
arrived in Massachusetts and carved his name into Dighton Rock.
He had also carved a bit of Latin, which translated
to the will of God, leader of the Indians. According
to Reverend John dan Forth, that first person to mention
the rock and recorded history, the indigenous people had told
(04:09):
stories about men from a far away land who had
killed their chief. They very well could have been talking
about Portuguese explorers like mcguel and gas Bar. Of course,
even such a thorough and thoughtful analysis would eventually find
its way to the debuncdal list. Journalist and historian Douglas
Hunter tore apart Delabar's theory in a book he published
in two thousand seventeen. So what's the truth behind Dighton Rock?
(04:33):
Who put it there? Who carved the symbols into its side?
The truth is nobody has the answer. All they have
our ideas and theories. But if anyone wants to check
it out for themselves, all they have to do is
head over to Berkeley, Massachusetts and the Dighton Rock State Park.
The boulder was moved from its original home on the
Taunton River to a tiny museum in the park in
(04:54):
nineteen sixty three. Today the public can view the petroglyphs
up close while they speculate to their hearts content. And
you know, rock out Inventors are no stranger to malfunction.
(05:20):
Edison famously told a reporter once that he didn't fail
ten thousand times in the creation of the light bulb.
He merely found ten thousand ways that it didn't work.
The act of invention is one of trial and error
and takes extensive planning and testing before the final product
is ready to be received by the public. But sometimes
no amount of testing can prepare an invention for the
(05:41):
real world, and nobody learned that lesson harder than Alexander
Graham Bell. Bell had started inventing when he was still
a child growing up in Scotland. He built a d
husking machine for a neighbor's flour mill when he was
only twelve years old, followed by a way to communicate
with his deaf mother using a series of finger taps
and gestures. It was actually his mother's loss of hearing
(06:02):
that influenced his later work in studying the travel of
sound and ultimately the creation of the telephone. But while
Belle is known today for helping to connect people by
voice all over the world, he also invented early versions
of some pretty powerful tools, one of which was put
to use. In eighteen eighty one, during a rough time
in American political history, a man by the name of
(06:24):
Charles had made a name for himself as a terrible
lawyer and a thief. After being chased out of Chicago
for stealing from his clients and not paying his bills,
he settled down in New York City with his wife,
where he started focusing on national politics. There he got
involved with the Democratic Party and supported candidate Horace Greeley
over the current Republican President Ulysseses Grant, but his support
(06:47):
came at a price. Charles started believing strange things throughout
the campaign, like how if Greeley was elected, that he
would make Charles the ambassador to Chile. Things only got
weirder from there. Charles published a just text, much of
which was plagiarized from the work of radical American preacher
John Humphrey Noyse. He was the founder of a utopian
(07:07):
commune called the Oneida Community, of which Charles had been
a follower. After that, Charles spent years traveling and preaching,
going from Boston to Washington, d c. Until finally winding
up back in New York. And as the Republican Party
began to split into two in eighteen eighty, Charles chose
to back the Stalwarts, conservative minded Republicans who supported the
(07:28):
civil rights of African Americans against the moderate liberals on
the other side of the party. The Stalwarts wanted Grant
to be the Republican nominee, and Charles threw his full
support behind him, a stark change from his backing of
the Democratic candidates just ten years prior. However, the Republicans
wound up nominating someone else, James Garfield, and so Charles
(07:49):
shifted his support to the new nominee almost immediately, and
Garfield won the election, and Charles believed that he had
been responsible for the man's success. He moved to Washington
and started writing letters to the President demanding a consuleship
position in Paris. Unfortunately, Garfield ignored his pleas Charles was
nobody and the new president had more important things to
(08:11):
do than entertain the wild fancies of one of his
more troublesome constituents. Well, Charles didn't like that. He felt
that without his help, Garfield would have lost, and the
more he thought about it, the more he found issue
with several of Garfield's policies. As a result, his adoration
of the man turned into animosity. He thought the country
would be better off if Vice President Chester A. Arthur
(08:33):
was president instead, and so on July two one, Charles
Guiteau waited for Garfield to arrive at the Baltimore and
Potomac Railroad station in Washington, d C. The President was
headed out for a summer trip when Charles stepped out
of the shadows and shot him twice in the back.
He was arrested immediately on his way out of the station,
and Garfield was transported to the White House for care.
(08:56):
Doctors were summoned, as was inventor Alexander Graham Bell, who
was living in Washington and had invented a new kind
of device to locate the bullet. It had come about
as part of his development of the telephone. Bell had
been trying to eliminate static in the device when he
noticed that the closer he brought a metal object to
the receiver, the louder the buzz it created. Bell's new
(09:18):
invention utilized some fairly simple materials too, one coil connected
to a battery and a buzzer, while another coil was
fastened to an earpiece. As he passed one coil over
Garfield's body, Bell would listen for the clicking in the earpiece,
indicating that one of the metal bullets had been located. Unfortunately,
he ran into a few problems. For one, the new
(09:39):
addition to the machine that was meant to improve performance
actually resulted in even more interference than before. He took
the whole thing back to his lab and made a
few adjustments before returning to the White House to try again.
It failed a second time, though Dr Willard Bliss, the
president's personal physician, swore that the bullets was on the
right side of Garfield's body, a point that he kept
(10:01):
impressing upon Bell, so that's where the inventor focused all
of his efforts. He heard the clicks in his earpiece,
a sure sign that he had found something, but there
was nothing there. The presidents eventually succumbed to infections caused
by his wounds two months later, on September nineteenth one.
What Bell didn't know at the time, though, was that
(10:21):
his machine had worked perfectly. There had been metal on
the right side of Garfield's body, but not inside him. Rather,
it had been underneath him. Bell was detecting the bedsprings.
The bullets, on the other hand, was found during the
late President's autopsy on his left hand side, not his right,
as the doctor had insisted. In order to help the
(10:43):
twentie President of the United States, Alexander Graham, Bell had
whipped up a little thing called a metal detector. Sadly,
even after two attempts, Bell couldn't get it to do
what he had hoped, and so he had to bite
the bullet and accept his loss. But his creation would
eventually go on to help soldiers locate land mines during
wartime and assist beachgoers in their search for buried treasure.
(11:05):
So it wasn't a complete failure. It was simply a
bellweather of what was to come. 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 dot com. The show was created
(11:28):
by me Aaron Manky 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.
Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities News
Host
Aaron Mahnke
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