January 3, 2023 • 11 mins
Two tragic scientific endeavors, two curious stories. Enjoy!
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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. Everyone has a dream when you're young. It
might be to become an astronaut or a firefighter, or
to play in a rock band in front of thousands
of screaming fans. We live with our heads in the
clouds because we don't want to face what's waiting back
(00:50):
for us on Earth. Reality. Reality has a nasty way
of knocking down our dreams, sometimes for good, but not
for all. Brook Burbley, whenever his dreams were squatted out
of the sky, he simply aimed higher. Albert Burblinger, let's
call him AL for short, was born in the city
of Ulm in seventeen seventy in the Kingdom of Prussia
(01:12):
now part of Germany. The youngest of seven children, Al's
parents were poor. His father worked in the city's armory,
which Al would often visit when he was younger. As
a result, he got a good look at the kinds
of tools and machines that his father worked with. They
might have been the inspiration for Al's dream of becoming
a watchmaker. However, when he was thirteen years old, his
(01:33):
father passed away. It's unclear what had become of his mother,
although it's probably safe to say that she was also gone,
because Al was sent to an orphanage until he became
an adult. He never let go of his love of mechanics, though,
but his new guardians had other plans. He was forced
to apprentice with a local tailor, with the goal of
one day establishing him as a tailor in his own right.
(01:56):
But Al didn't want that. He wanted to build things,
and not just watches. In his spare time, he tinkered
with various inventions, such as they prosthetic device meant for
those who had suffered from foot amputations. In fact, in
eighteen o eight, he created the first ever jointed leg prosthesis.
But soon Al began setting his sights higher, much higher.
(02:18):
He grew a preoccupation with the concept of human flight.
It all happened when he started watching how owls soared
through the sky. He noted the shapes of their wings
and how they spread out when the owls took flight.
And then he got to work. He built something akin
to a hang glider, which would allow him to fly
short distances from the tops of vineyard walls and cottages.
(02:39):
There and Ulm. Others in town didn't think that he
could do it, though. The Guild of Tailor's even tried
to expel him for his lack of focus on his trade.
He was fined for wasting his time on his inventions,
but Al refused to give up. King Frederick, the first
of Rtemburg even promised him funding if he could prove
that his idea worked now. That original plan was to
(03:01):
leap from the all ministers one meter high roof, but
few people believed that he would be successful. Instead, he
was instructed to jump from a seven meter tall scaffold
that had been constructed on top of a thirteen meter
high wall overlooking the Danube River. His goal was to
land on the other side of the river, a distance
of about forty and so on May eighteen eleven, Al
(03:24):
strapped into his glider as the King, his sons, and
the Crown Prince of Bavaria looked on Al. However, I
couldn't do it. He told everyone his glider had broken
and that the flights would have to wait until the
next day. But the King was leaving then to attend
some royal business. His brother, Duke Heinrich, stayed to watch
that event the following afternoon. So finally, on May thirty one,
(03:46):
the time had come. Hours went by as Al waited
for the winds to die down enough for him to
safely launch himself. He had planned to jump at four pm,
but one hour later, everyone, including the Duke, felt that
they had waited long enough. A police officer, also sick
of the delay, shoved Al off the wall, and the
rest was history, but not in a way that aspiring
(04:07):
aviator had hoped for. He dropped like a stone into
the river below and had to be fished out by
actual fisherman, and he was booed and jeered. His reputation
was irreparably tarnished, and he not only lost the public's goodwill,
but he also lost their business. He was no longer
a tailor nor an inventor. Albrook Berblinger died without a
(04:28):
single sent to his name at the young age of
fifty eight. Hundreds of years later, however, his work was
eventually vindicated. For one, experts realized that there was little
to no chance that he would have ever gotten the
glider in the air so close to the Danube, as
the river created a down draft that would have kept
his wings grounded. And second, researchers inspected his design and
(04:50):
found no flaws. In fact, had he taken off from
a more appropriate location, he most likely would have succeeded.
All he needed was a better launching spot and some
in urgement from his neighbors a little wind beneath his wings.
(05:18):
At the top of the world resides the North Pole,
comprised of the Arctic Ocean and numerous land masses, many
of which are covered in ice. In June seventy one,
the USS Polarists left New York to become the first
vessel to reach the North Pole. The expedition was led
by Arctic explorer Charles Francis Hall, with backing from the
United States government. The ship's crew included the sailing master,
(05:40):
engineers cook and astronomer, as well as chief scientist Amial
Vessels and Frederick Meyer, the ship's meteorologist. The two German
Men were highly educated and skilled, which made them valuable
assets on the voyage, but it also rendered them insufferable
to everyone else. Bessels and Meyer didn't think too highly
of most of their fellow crew, especially Commander Hall, who
(06:02):
they felt was not smart enough to lead them. With
half the crew being German and the other half being
made up of Americans, Swedes, and Danes, the ship was
a veritable melting pot, one that seemed to be getting
more heated by the day. Things started off okay, with
the ship chugging along on its way north. However, by October,
Commander Hall began to feel sick. He'd gotten a stomach
(06:23):
ache after drinking a cup of coffee, which grew into
delirium and partial paralysis. Dr Bessels tried to treat him,
but Hall wouldn't let him. He didn't trust him at all.
In fact, he believed that Vessels and the German side
of the crew were plotting against him. Specifically, he felt
that they had poisoned him, but there was no proof.
His condition had gotten so bad by early November that
(06:45):
he had no choice but to allow vessels to administer treatments,
but sadly it was too late. Hall succumbed to whatever
had been plaguing him on November eight. He was buried
in a small basin off the northwestern coast of Greenland
called Thank God Harbor. The crew still attempted to reach
the pole that June. Three of the Polaris's whale boats
were dispatched to navigate the icy waters, and one after
(07:08):
the other, each boat was destroyed by the ice. Even
the Polaris itself couldn't find a safe route to the pole,
and the main objective of the whole voyage was abandoned.
The ship eventually turned around and headed south back towards home,
but months had passed since their attempt at the pole,
and more ice had now moved into the waters they
were traveling through. The Polaris collided with a berg on
(07:31):
the evening of October fifteenth and began taking on water.
The new commander, sailing Master Sydney Buddington, told everyone to
toss cargo onto the nearby ice to reduce weight on
the ship. Nineteen crew members, including Inuit hunters who had
been on board, abandon the ship as well, and spent
the night huddled together on the ice, expecting the Polarist
(07:52):
to sink to the bottom of the ocean. The following morning, though,
they woke up to find that the Polarists was about
ten miles away and still a boat. It turned out
that the leak wasn't as bad as they had originally thought. Unfortunately,
this group was stranded and the Polarists wasn't coming back
for them. They had some food and a few small boats,
(08:12):
but little else to survive. Luckily, the Inuit hunters knew
how to keep everyone alive. They built igloos from the
ice and caught seals that kept everyone well fed for
some time. For months, they endured a harsh Arctic winter
as the ice drift itself. One of the boats was
broken down to create a fire. A crew member fashioned
a deck of cards from some paper so that people
(08:34):
could play games, and as time went on, animosity between
the Germans and the others increased, so much so that
it was believed that the armed Germans might kill one
of the hunters. The group also had to contend with
their ice flow breaking up beneath them. Sometime or on April,
all nineteen survivors piled into the one remaining lifeboat and
floated onward, hoping for a miracle, and on April eighteen
(08:58):
seventy three, it finally came when they caught sight of
a ceiling ship out in the distance. They were soon
picked up. After having drifted a total of eighteen hundred
miles over the course of six months, everyone had survived,
along with those who had remained on the Polarists. They
were eventually rescued by a whaling ship that July. Once
all parties were back on dry land and inquiry was
(09:19):
held to determine the truth behind Captain Hall's death, there
wasn't enough evidence to pinned on vessels, so it was
declared that Hall had died of a stroke instead, although
the accusations followed vessels around for the rest of his
life and probably for good reason. In nineteen sixty, almost
one years after the expedition, an author who had been
(09:39):
writing Hall's biography requested to travel to Thank God Harbor
and exhume the body. He wanted to see for himself
what had caused the captain's death. The corpse was in
very good condition due to the perma frost around the coffin,
and the writer was able to take samples of Hall's bone, hair,
and finger nails back for testing. The results revealed the
(10:00):
shocking truth behind the Captain's untimely demise arsenic and lots
of it too. Vessels suddenly became a prime suspect once again,
especially when it came out that both men had been
pursuing the same woman back in New York, a sculptor
named Vivey Reem. Vessels had most likely been jealous of
Captain Hall when it became clear that Realm had preferred
(10:21):
the latter's company to the not so good Doctors. But
Vessels was gone. He had died in eight when he
was only forty years old, ironically from a stroke, the
same cause that was declared by the inquiry committee investigating
Captain Hall's death. Some might call that karma, me I
just see it as a stroke of bad luck. I
(10:46):
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 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
(11:09):
you can learn all about it over at the World
of Lore dot com and until next time, stay curious,
ye
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. Everyone has a dream when you're young. It
might be to become an astronaut or a firefighter, or
to play in a rock band in front of thousands
of screaming fans. We live with our heads in the
clouds because we don't want to face what's waiting back
(00:50):
for us on Earth. Reality. Reality has a nasty way
of knocking down our dreams, sometimes for good, but not
for all. Brook Burbley, whenever his dreams were squatted out
of the sky, he simply aimed higher. Albert Burblinger, let's
call him AL for short, was born in the city
of Ulm in seventeen seventy in the Kingdom of Prussia
(01:12):
now part of Germany. The youngest of seven children, Al's
parents were poor. His father worked in the city's armory,
which Al would often visit when he was younger. As
a result, he got a good look at the kinds
of tools and machines that his father worked with. They
might have been the inspiration for Al's dream of becoming
a watchmaker. However, when he was thirteen years old, his
(01:33):
father passed away. It's unclear what had become of his mother,
although it's probably safe to say that she was also gone,
because Al was sent to an orphanage until he became
an adult. He never let go of his love of mechanics, though,
but his new guardians had other plans. He was forced
to apprentice with a local tailor, with the goal of
one day establishing him as a tailor in his own right.
(01:56):
But Al didn't want that. He wanted to build things,
and not just watches. In his spare time, he tinkered
with various inventions, such as they prosthetic device meant for
those who had suffered from foot amputations. In fact, in
eighteen o eight, he created the first ever jointed leg prosthesis.
But soon Al began setting his sights higher, much higher.
(02:18):
He grew a preoccupation with the concept of human flight.
It all happened when he started watching how owls soared
through the sky. He noted the shapes of their wings
and how they spread out when the owls took flight.
And then he got to work. He built something akin
to a hang glider, which would allow him to fly
short distances from the tops of vineyard walls and cottages.
(02:39):
There and Ulm. Others in town didn't think that he
could do it, though. The Guild of Tailor's even tried
to expel him for his lack of focus on his trade.
He was fined for wasting his time on his inventions,
but Al refused to give up. King Frederick, the first
of Rtemburg even promised him funding if he could prove
that his idea worked now. That original plan was to
(03:01):
leap from the all ministers one meter high roof, but
few people believed that he would be successful. Instead, he
was instructed to jump from a seven meter tall scaffold
that had been constructed on top of a thirteen meter
high wall overlooking the Danube River. His goal was to
land on the other side of the river, a distance
of about forty and so on May eighteen eleven, Al
(03:24):
strapped into his glider as the King, his sons, and
the Crown Prince of Bavaria looked on Al. However, I
couldn't do it. He told everyone his glider had broken
and that the flights would have to wait until the
next day. But the King was leaving then to attend
some royal business. His brother, Duke Heinrich, stayed to watch
that event the following afternoon. So finally, on May thirty one,
(03:46):
the time had come. Hours went by as Al waited
for the winds to die down enough for him to
safely launch himself. He had planned to jump at four pm,
but one hour later, everyone, including the Duke, felt that
they had waited long enough. A police officer, also sick
of the delay, shoved Al off the wall, and the
rest was history, but not in a way that aspiring
(04:07):
aviator had hoped for. He dropped like a stone into
the river below and had to be fished out by
actual fisherman, and he was booed and jeered. His reputation
was irreparably tarnished, and he not only lost the public's goodwill,
but he also lost their business. He was no longer
a tailor nor an inventor. Albrook Berblinger died without a
(04:28):
single sent to his name at the young age of
fifty eight. Hundreds of years later, however, his work was
eventually vindicated. For one, experts realized that there was little
to no chance that he would have ever gotten the
glider in the air so close to the Danube, as
the river created a down draft that would have kept
his wings grounded. And second, researchers inspected his design and
(04:50):
found no flaws. In fact, had he taken off from
a more appropriate location, he most likely would have succeeded.
All he needed was a better launching spot and some
in urgement from his neighbors a little wind beneath his wings.
(05:18):
At the top of the world resides the North Pole,
comprised of the Arctic Ocean and numerous land masses, many
of which are covered in ice. In June seventy one,
the USS Polarists left New York to become the first
vessel to reach the North Pole. The expedition was led
by Arctic explorer Charles Francis Hall, with backing from the
United States government. The ship's crew included the sailing master,
(05:40):
engineers cook and astronomer, as well as chief scientist Amial
Vessels and Frederick Meyer, the ship's meteorologist. The two German
Men were highly educated and skilled, which made them valuable
assets on the voyage, but it also rendered them insufferable
to everyone else. Bessels and Meyer didn't think too highly
of most of their fellow crew, especially Commander Hall, who
(06:02):
they felt was not smart enough to lead them. With
half the crew being German and the other half being
made up of Americans, Swedes, and Danes, the ship was
a veritable melting pot, one that seemed to be getting
more heated by the day. Things started off okay, with
the ship chugging along on its way north. However, by October,
Commander Hall began to feel sick. He'd gotten a stomach
(06:23):
ache after drinking a cup of coffee, which grew into
delirium and partial paralysis. Dr Bessels tried to treat him,
but Hall wouldn't let him. He didn't trust him at all.
In fact, he believed that Vessels and the German side
of the crew were plotting against him. Specifically, he felt
that they had poisoned him, but there was no proof.
His condition had gotten so bad by early November that
(06:45):
he had no choice but to allow vessels to administer treatments,
but sadly it was too late. Hall succumbed to whatever
had been plaguing him on November eight. He was buried
in a small basin off the northwestern coast of Greenland
called Thank God Harbor. The crew still attempted to reach
the pole that June. Three of the Polaris's whale boats
were dispatched to navigate the icy waters, and one after
(07:08):
the other, each boat was destroyed by the ice. Even
the Polaris itself couldn't find a safe route to the pole,
and the main objective of the whole voyage was abandoned.
The ship eventually turned around and headed south back towards home,
but months had passed since their attempt at the pole,
and more ice had now moved into the waters they
were traveling through. The Polaris collided with a berg on
(07:31):
the evening of October fifteenth and began taking on water.
The new commander, sailing Master Sydney Buddington, told everyone to
toss cargo onto the nearby ice to reduce weight on
the ship. Nineteen crew members, including Inuit hunters who had
been on board, abandon the ship as well, and spent
the night huddled together on the ice, expecting the Polarist
(07:52):
to sink to the bottom of the ocean. The following morning, though,
they woke up to find that the Polarists was about
ten miles away and still a boat. It turned out
that the leak wasn't as bad as they had originally thought. Unfortunately,
this group was stranded and the Polarists wasn't coming back
for them. They had some food and a few small boats,
(08:12):
but little else to survive. Luckily, the Inuit hunters knew
how to keep everyone alive. They built igloos from the
ice and caught seals that kept everyone well fed for
some time. For months, they endured a harsh Arctic winter
as the ice drift itself. One of the boats was
broken down to create a fire. A crew member fashioned
a deck of cards from some paper so that people
(08:34):
could play games, and as time went on, animosity between
the Germans and the others increased, so much so that
it was believed that the armed Germans might kill one
of the hunters. The group also had to contend with
their ice flow breaking up beneath them. Sometime or on April,
all nineteen survivors piled into the one remaining lifeboat and
floated onward, hoping for a miracle, and on April eighteen
(08:58):
seventy three, it finally came when they caught sight of
a ceiling ship out in the distance. They were soon
picked up. After having drifted a total of eighteen hundred
miles over the course of six months, everyone had survived,
along with those who had remained on the Polarists. They
were eventually rescued by a whaling ship that July. Once
all parties were back on dry land and inquiry was
(09:19):
held to determine the truth behind Captain Hall's death, there
wasn't enough evidence to pinned on vessels, so it was
declared that Hall had died of a stroke instead, although
the accusations followed vessels around for the rest of his
life and probably for good reason. In nineteen sixty, almost
one years after the expedition, an author who had been
(09:39):
writing Hall's biography requested to travel to Thank God Harbor
and exhume the body. He wanted to see for himself
what had caused the captain's death. The corpse was in
very good condition due to the perma frost around the coffin,
and the writer was able to take samples of Hall's bone, hair,
and finger nails back for testing. The results revealed the
(10:00):
shocking truth behind the Captain's untimely demise arsenic and lots
of it too. Vessels suddenly became a prime suspect once again,
especially when it came out that both men had been
pursuing the same woman back in New York, a sculptor
named Vivey Reem. Vessels had most likely been jealous of
Captain Hall when it became clear that Realm had preferred
(10:21):
the latter's company to the not so good Doctors. But
Vessels was gone. He had died in eight when he
was only forty years old, ironically from a stroke, the
same cause that was declared by the inquiry committee investigating
Captain Hall's death. Some might call that karma, me I
just see it as a stroke of bad luck. I
(10:46):
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 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
(11:09):
you can learn all about it over at the World
of Lore dot com and until next time, stay curious,
ye
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