Looking Up

Are you curious about the sky? Today's tour involves a series of unusual sightings, as well as the very model of aerodynamic perfection.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
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. On November, the night sky

(00:32):
above Sacramento, California, was a source of fear and dread.
It had already been a miserable night, with the skies
filled with dark clouds and a steady wind. But as
some of the more observant residents looked up, they were
startled to see something else. There were lights in the
sky and they were moving. Now, before you jump straight

(00:53):
to assuming this was a UFO, let me give you
more of the details. When you hear the whole story,
it feels a lot less like an episode of the
X Files and a lot more like something out of
a Jewels Vern novel. And we have a man named
George Scott to thank for that. He was an assistant
to Louis H. Brown, California's Secretary of State at the time.

(01:13):
With access to the Capitol building there in Sacramento, He
and a few friends climbed up to the roof for
a better look and discovered something more mysterious than lights.
According to him, it was a set of three lights.
They seemed to bob slightly as they moved, almost like
a ship on the water. Above the lights, all of
the observers could make out the dark shape of something

(01:35):
long and curved. Another local claims he heard people up
above him where the lights were, calling out orders for
guiding the vessel. He said he could make out the
full shape of the object above the lights, calling it
a cigar shaped balloon with wheels at the side like
a steamboat. But let's step back for a moment and
let that soak in. This man was claiming to see

(01:58):
a paddle wheeled boat in the sky over his community.
More than unlikely, this theory seemed practically impossible. For context.
Hot air balloons had been around for a while. The
first aerial photos of Boston were taken by a photographer
by the name of James Wallace Black in eighteen sixty.

(02:19):
He climbed into the basket of a balloon owned by
Samuel King and let it take him over a thousand
feet into the sky above the city where he took
his photos. It was a new use for a technology
that had been around since the seventeen eighties. No one though,
had managed to find a way to power and control
those flights. Remember the reported hot air balloon steamboat contraption

(02:42):
thing over Sacramento happened in eighteen ninety six, a whole
seven years prior to the first recorded powered flight by
the Right Brothers, So if the reports were true and
this was a powered flight, it could rewrite the history books.
Over the months that followed, the un identified aircraft was
seen hundreds of times. For a while, it seemed to

(03:04):
stick to the Pacific coast, flying down to San Francisco
before heading north to Washington State. It vanished again for
a while before reappearing near Omaha, Nebraska in February, which
seems to have been part of a larger journey eastward.
On April eleven, witnesses reported that the airship had finally
reached Chicago. There's an old photo of it online, like

(03:28):
a dark cigar against the pale, white, cloudy sky, but
most historians think it's fake. Still, people saw it, and,
just like in Sacramento, they wondered what it could be.
Even though later reports claimed the mysterious airship had crashed,
rumors about it continued to fly all over the country
for some time, no pun intended. I swear whatever it was,

(03:52):
we may never know. In a culture that was deeply
in love with the idea of Jules Verne's captain Nemo,
who sailed the oceans in a highly advanced submarine, anything
was possible, and it spoke to the deep hunger most
people have for answers to the mysteries of this world
that we call home. If anything, perhaps the story should
serve as a lesson to all of us today. Keep

(04:14):
your eyes on the sky. You never know what you
might be missing. The model was meant to be a glider,
but committee was certain of that. They were a collection

(04:36):
of aeronautical engineers and experts in flight, so for them
to look at the small, wooden model and see its
potential was a huge relief. There are certain elements that
help an airplane fly through the air, and this model
glider seemed to have nailed all of them. The wings
had that perfect curve built into them for generating lift,
what engineers referred to as the cambering. Those wings also

(04:59):
bent downward toward or the tips, another key element of
aeronautical design, and the shape of the entire model craft
was exactly what you might expect a pair of main
wings that extended away from the body and a raised
tail fin with two protruding stabilizer wings. The committee could
immediately see the usefulness of the design. With a small
engine at the rear, they suggested this glider might be

(05:21):
perfect for low speed flight, maybe even cargo transport. It
was brilliant, and that was the problem. You see. This
model was brought to the committee in nineteen six one
after having been found in storage where it had been
for decades. In fact, it had first been discovered five
years before the Right Brothers made their historic flight at

(05:43):
Kitty Hawk in North Carolina. It was a problem because
it predated powered flight, something modern men and women have
taken a lot of pride in. The box it had
been rediscovered in was part of a collection of artifacts
removed from a tomb in Sakara, which had been the
burial ound for the ancient Egyptian capital of Memphis, a
tomb that had been opened in eight and dated back

(06:06):
over two thousand years. And the glider model wasn't a
one off either. Archaeologists had found over a dozen others
just like it, all of which are brilliantly designed for
powered flight. We tend to view history as a never
ending slope upward, where each new century places us farther
up the technological ladder. We believe we're always gaining altitude,

(06:31):
climbing to new heights, and soaring over our ancestors. It
turns out we might be wrong. In the end, our
pride might be nothing more than a flight of fancy.
I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet
of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn

(06:54):
more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com.
The show is 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
World of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.