November 8, 2022 • 10 mins
Some of the most curious stories are found on the edge of society. These might be painful tales, but they are necessary as well.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcomed Aaron Mankey'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. The New York City skyline is iconic. It's
skyscrapers soaring over buildings of various sizes and time periods
make the city both modern and timeless. For example, there's
the Gothic Revival style of St. Patrick's Cathedral, the Neo
(00:50):
Gothic architecture of the Woolworth Building, and the more clinical
and angular style of the City Group Center, all of
which contribute to New York's eclectic and striking visual image.
But one building stands above them all. Not literally, of course.
While it may have been the tallest building in this
city and the world at one time, it has been
surpassed by many others in the years since its completion.
(01:13):
Still a few structures are as recognizable or as renowned
as the Empire State Building, built between March of nineteen
thirty and May of the following year, the Art Deco
wonder rises to a towering fourteen hundred and fifty four feet.
It's impressive stature wouldn't be surpassed until the completion of
the World Trade Center in ninety The Empire State Building
(01:35):
is located on Fifth Avenue between thirty third and thirty
fourth Streets in Manhattan, just down the road from the
famous Macy's Department store. The American Society of Civil Engineers
listed the Empire State Building as one of the seven
Wonders of the Modern World. This is a designation shared
by such structures as the Golden gate Bridge and the
Panama Canal, and for good reason. It has one hundred
(01:58):
and two stories and was the first building anywhere to
cross the one hundred floor threshold. Of those one and
two floors, by the way, the first eight five are
home to various offices and commercial entities. Take the elevator
to the eighty six floor and you'll enter one of
the buildings to observation decks, where you can look out
over the city, taking its breathtaking views, and watch yellow
(02:20):
cabs the size of ants drive up and down the street.
The observatory today is surrounded by a giant metal fence
measuring eight feet high. Now. This fence was put in
after numerous individuals either attempted to jump or succeeded in
jumping from the eighty six floor to the street below.
The number of attempted suicides from the top of the
(02:41):
Umpire State Building had been growing, and something had to
be done to stop people from ending their lives this way,
people like el Vida Adams. It was nine and the
twenty nine year old Adams had been living in New
York for some time with her ten year old son.
She had recently lost her job and her only income
was her regular one dollar welfare checks. They weren't enough
(03:02):
to pay for her rent, her groceries, clothes, and everything
else that she and her son needed to get by.
With her landlord demanding the rent and nowhere else to turn,
Elvida fell into a deep depression. She traveled from her
apartment to the Bronx all the way to the eighty
six floor of the Empire State Building in Midtown. The
fence had already been installed, and normally there would have
been several guards patrolling the observatory at that hour, but
(03:25):
somehow she had gotten past all of them and jumped
moments later, around eight fifteen pm, Elvida was discovered. Nobody screamed.
The sidewalk surrounding the building was clear. No throngs of
passers by had gathered around the place of impact because
there wasn't any. Elvida Adams hadn't reached the bottom somehow,
after she had jumped from the eighty six floor, she
(03:47):
landed twenty feet below onto a short ledge one floor down.
A guard named George Rees found her in severe pain
and called for an ambulance. She was taken to Bellevue Hospital,
where doctors diagnosed her with a fractured pelvis. The police
thought that she might have been pushed off the observation
decade first, but Elvida was adamant that she had done
the jumping herself. No one else was involved. In a
(04:10):
later interview, she said that she had gone out there
to see the city lights. Compelled by their beauty, Alvida
had tried to touch them by climbing the fence. She
wound up on the eighty five floor instead. But how
exactly did she survive? After all, jumping off the side
of the Empire State Building should have guaranteed her death,
as it had so many times before her. According to
(04:31):
the authorities on the scene, it was the wind that
saved her. You see, gusts of wind at that height
could have reached over one miles per hour, strong enough
to blow her body back toward the building after she
had jumped. It just so happened that the wind had
carried her onto an open ledge, saving her life. Elvida
supposedly went on to live into her seventies. Nobody really
(04:53):
knows for sure, though, because she led a very private
life in the aftermath of her fall. Rumor has it
that she went into stand up comedy sometime after the incident, though,
and that makes a bit of sense, after all, many
people use humor to get through the darkest moments of
their life. Although to be fair, what Elvida Adams experienced
that night back in nineteen seventy nine was no laughing matter.
(05:29):
So much of humanity's evolution is the result of cross
pollenization of knowledge and experiences from different cultures. Today's entertainment,
especially live theater, can trace its roots back to the
ancient Greek dramas. Costumes, the use of satire, and special
effects were all first witnessed in productions of Greek plays.
(05:49):
Prehistoric objects such as rocks and spears eventually became the
tools and weapons that we use today, like hammers and knives. Oftentimes,
cultures are subsumed or worse obliterated by colonization, and their
contributions are forgotten, even though those same contributions might be
used by the groups that take over. Still, in many cases,
(06:10):
time and exposure to other societies allow everyone to move ahead,
little by little, improving what came before. Except for the
Sentinelli Located in the Indian Ocean in the Bay of
Bengal is a series of islands. They're called the Andaman Islands,
and they have been inhabited for at least sixty thousand
years by different ethnic groups, including the Bamar, Jarrawa and
(06:33):
the one. The native populations on several islands were all
but wiped out during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when
the British took them over and turned them into penal colonies.
Many of these and Demonese were killed either for not
cooperating or they died from foreign diseases brought to the
islands by the British ships. But one indigenous tribe set
themselves apart from the rest due to how they chose
(06:55):
to live their lives in shorts. They rejected the arrival
of the English and everyone else violently. They're called the
Sentinellies or Sentinelli, and they live on the appropriately named
North Sentinel Island. Their homeland is only about twenty three
square miles in size and lush with tropical forests. Dive
into the waters off at shores and you'll be met
(07:17):
with miles of beautiful coral reefs below the waves. Unfortunately,
it's almost impossible to know the exact population size of
the Sentinelli due to their isolated nature. However, estimates placed
their numbers somewhere between fifty and two hundred people today.
A British research ship passing by first documented the islands
inhabitants in seventeen seventy one, but it would be another
(07:39):
one hundred years before anyone would set foot on its beaches.
An Indian merchant ship had run aground on a nearby reef,
and the one hundred six passengers and crew made it
to the island thanks to one of the lifeboats. They
remained there for just over two days until they were
attacked on the third. The captain made haste, rowing himself
away from danger in the only lifeboats and leaving everyone
(07:59):
else to be killed by the Sentinelli. After he was
rescued several days later, he described his attackers in great details,
saying the wild were completely undressed, he said, with short
hair and nose painted red, and their arrows had a
metal tip. It was believed that the native people had
salvaged metal from other ships that had crashed or sunk
(08:21):
in the waters off the coast. Thirty years later, an
Indian prisoner had been living in the Penal colony on
one of the other islands and managed to escape. He'd
built a makeshift raft and floated the fifty miles to
North Sentinel Island. Thinking that he had gotten away scott free,
a recovery team found his body with arrows embedded all
over it. Several days later. Nobody set foot on North
(08:44):
Sentinel Island again. After that, the Centineli did not adopt
any modern technology brought over by the British or the Indians.
What scraps they did use were only meant to reinforce
their rudimentary weapons, such as bows and arrows and spears.
Some anthropologists believe that they still live the only true
paleo lifestyle on the planet to this day, and all
(09:06):
their food comes from the island, including fruits and vegetables
they picked themselves, as well as the fish and animals
they hunt. They don't grow anything deliberately. They merely eat
what freely grows on trees and in bushes around them.
No one outside the tribe is capable of speaking or
understanding their language either, and their manner of dress is limited.
(09:27):
Men and women wear bark strings around their waists, but
are otherwise naked. And Indian anthropologist named Truluck Nath Pandit
landed on the island with a team of researchers on
a mission of peace. It was the first successful visit
to the Centinelli that didn't end in bloodshed. They welcomed Pandit,
(09:47):
accepted his gifts, and allowed him to interact with the
tribe unharmed. He was the only person to ever make
friendly contact with the reclusive tribe. Though the British didn't
believe that it could be done, but Pandit of them
wrong by showing them that great things could actually be
achieved when colonization wasn't the goal. I hope you've enjoyed
(10:11):
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
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
(10:33):
learn all about it over at the World of Lore
dot com. And until next time, stay curious. Ye
Welcomed Aaron Mankey'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. The New York City skyline is iconic. It's
skyscrapers soaring over buildings of various sizes and time periods
make the city both modern and timeless. For example, there's
the Gothic Revival style of St. Patrick's Cathedral, the Neo
(00:50):
Gothic architecture of the Woolworth Building, and the more clinical
and angular style of the City Group Center, all of
which contribute to New York's eclectic and striking visual image.
But one building stands above them all. Not literally, of course.
While it may have been the tallest building in this
city and the world at one time, it has been
surpassed by many others in the years since its completion.
(01:13):
Still a few structures are as recognizable or as renowned
as the Empire State Building, built between March of nineteen
thirty and May of the following year, the Art Deco
wonder rises to a towering fourteen hundred and fifty four feet.
It's impressive stature wouldn't be surpassed until the completion of
the World Trade Center in ninety The Empire State Building
(01:35):
is located on Fifth Avenue between thirty third and thirty
fourth Streets in Manhattan, just down the road from the
famous Macy's Department store. The American Society of Civil Engineers
listed the Empire State Building as one of the seven
Wonders of the Modern World. This is a designation shared
by such structures as the Golden gate Bridge and the
Panama Canal, and for good reason. It has one hundred
(01:58):
and two stories and was the first building anywhere to
cross the one hundred floor threshold. Of those one and
two floors, by the way, the first eight five are
home to various offices and commercial entities. Take the elevator
to the eighty six floor and you'll enter one of
the buildings to observation decks, where you can look out
over the city, taking its breathtaking views, and watch yellow
(02:20):
cabs the size of ants drive up and down the street.
The observatory today is surrounded by a giant metal fence
measuring eight feet high. Now. This fence was put in
after numerous individuals either attempted to jump or succeeded in
jumping from the eighty six floor to the street below.
The number of attempted suicides from the top of the
(02:41):
Umpire State Building had been growing, and something had to
be done to stop people from ending their lives this way,
people like el Vida Adams. It was nine and the
twenty nine year old Adams had been living in New
York for some time with her ten year old son.
She had recently lost her job and her only income
was her regular one dollar welfare checks. They weren't enough
(03:02):
to pay for her rent, her groceries, clothes, and everything
else that she and her son needed to get by.
With her landlord demanding the rent and nowhere else to turn,
Elvida fell into a deep depression. She traveled from her
apartment to the Bronx all the way to the eighty
six floor of the Empire State Building in Midtown. The
fence had already been installed, and normally there would have
been several guards patrolling the observatory at that hour, but
(03:25):
somehow she had gotten past all of them and jumped
moments later, around eight fifteen pm, Elvida was discovered. Nobody screamed.
The sidewalk surrounding the building was clear. No throngs of
passers by had gathered around the place of impact because
there wasn't any. Elvida Adams hadn't reached the bottom somehow,
after she had jumped from the eighty six floor, she
(03:47):
landed twenty feet below onto a short ledge one floor down.
A guard named George Rees found her in severe pain
and called for an ambulance. She was taken to Bellevue Hospital,
where doctors diagnosed her with a fractured pelvis. The police
thought that she might have been pushed off the observation
decade first, but Elvida was adamant that she had done
the jumping herself. No one else was involved. In a
(04:10):
later interview, she said that she had gone out there
to see the city lights. Compelled by their beauty, Alvida
had tried to touch them by climbing the fence. She
wound up on the eighty five floor instead. But how
exactly did she survive? After all, jumping off the side
of the Empire State Building should have guaranteed her death,
as it had so many times before her. According to
(04:31):
the authorities on the scene, it was the wind that
saved her. You see, gusts of wind at that height
could have reached over one miles per hour, strong enough
to blow her body back toward the building after she
had jumped. It just so happened that the wind had
carried her onto an open ledge, saving her life. Elvida
supposedly went on to live into her seventies. Nobody really
(04:53):
knows for sure, though, because she led a very private
life in the aftermath of her fall. Rumor has it
that she went into stand up comedy sometime after the incident, though,
and that makes a bit of sense, after all, many
people use humor to get through the darkest moments of
their life. Although to be fair, what Elvida Adams experienced
that night back in nineteen seventy nine was no laughing matter.
(05:29):
So much of humanity's evolution is the result of cross
pollenization of knowledge and experiences from different cultures. Today's entertainment,
especially live theater, can trace its roots back to the
ancient Greek dramas. Costumes, the use of satire, and special
effects were all first witnessed in productions of Greek plays.
(05:49):
Prehistoric objects such as rocks and spears eventually became the
tools and weapons that we use today, like hammers and knives. Oftentimes,
cultures are subsumed or worse obliterated by colonization, and their
contributions are forgotten, even though those same contributions might be
used by the groups that take over. Still, in many cases,
(06:10):
time and exposure to other societies allow everyone to move ahead,
little by little, improving what came before. Except for the
Sentinelli Located in the Indian Ocean in the Bay of
Bengal is a series of islands. They're called the Andaman Islands,
and they have been inhabited for at least sixty thousand
years by different ethnic groups, including the Bamar, Jarrawa and
(06:33):
the one. The native populations on several islands were all
but wiped out during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when
the British took them over and turned them into penal colonies.
Many of these and Demonese were killed either for not
cooperating or they died from foreign diseases brought to the
islands by the British ships. But one indigenous tribe set
themselves apart from the rest due to how they chose
(06:55):
to live their lives in shorts. They rejected the arrival
of the English and everyone else violently. They're called the
Sentinellies or Sentinelli, and they live on the appropriately named
North Sentinel Island. Their homeland is only about twenty three
square miles in size and lush with tropical forests. Dive
into the waters off at shores and you'll be met
(07:17):
with miles of beautiful coral reefs below the waves. Unfortunately,
it's almost impossible to know the exact population size of
the Sentinelli due to their isolated nature. However, estimates placed
their numbers somewhere between fifty and two hundred people today.
A British research ship passing by first documented the islands
inhabitants in seventeen seventy one, but it would be another
(07:39):
one hundred years before anyone would set foot on its beaches.
An Indian merchant ship had run aground on a nearby reef,
and the one hundred six passengers and crew made it
to the island thanks to one of the lifeboats. They
remained there for just over two days until they were
attacked on the third. The captain made haste, rowing himself
away from danger in the only lifeboats and leaving everyone
(07:59):
else to be killed by the Sentinelli. After he was
rescued several days later, he described his attackers in great details,
saying the wild were completely undressed, he said, with short
hair and nose painted red, and their arrows had a
metal tip. It was believed that the native people had
salvaged metal from other ships that had crashed or sunk
(08:21):
in the waters off the coast. Thirty years later, an
Indian prisoner had been living in the Penal colony on
one of the other islands and managed to escape. He'd
built a makeshift raft and floated the fifty miles to
North Sentinel Island. Thinking that he had gotten away scott free,
a recovery team found his body with arrows embedded all
over it. Several days later. Nobody set foot on North
(08:44):
Sentinel Island again. After that, the Centineli did not adopt
any modern technology brought over by the British or the Indians.
What scraps they did use were only meant to reinforce
their rudimentary weapons, such as bows and arrows and spears.
Some anthropologists believe that they still live the only true
paleo lifestyle on the planet to this day, and all
(09:06):
their food comes from the island, including fruits and vegetables
they picked themselves, as well as the fish and animals
they hunt. They don't grow anything deliberately. They merely eat
what freely grows on trees and in bushes around them.
No one outside the tribe is capable of speaking or
understanding their language either, and their manner of dress is limited.
(09:27):
Men and women wear bark strings around their waists, but
are otherwise naked. And Indian anthropologist named Truluck Nath Pandit
landed on the island with a team of researchers on
a mission of peace. It was the first successful visit
to the Centinelli that didn't end in bloodshed. They welcomed Pandit,
(09:47):
accepted his gifts, and allowed him to interact with the
tribe unharmed. He was the only person to ever make
friendly contact with the reclusive tribe. Though the British didn't
believe that it could be done, but Pandit of them
wrong by showing them that great things could actually be
achieved when colonization wasn't the goal. I hope you've enjoyed
(10:11):
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
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
(10:33):
learn all about it over at the World of Lore
dot com. And until next time, stay curious. Ye
Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities News
Host
Aaron Mahnke
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