November 19, 2019 • 11 mins
Objects are always a great addition to the Cabinet of Curiosities. Some aren't what they claim to be, while others don't even exist. But their stories are amazing.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
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 of Curiosities. We've all taken a
(00:28):
joke too far. Maybe it was a mistimed zinger or
a prank gone awry. We knew it was wrong, but
by the time it was over, it was too late.
That's the problem with some jokes. They tend to take
on a life of their own. In Sir Francis Drake's
at sail for the Strait of Anian, a way of
reaching the Atlantic Ocean from the fabled Northwest Passage over
(00:50):
the top of North America. Instead, he reached the shores
of northern California and began exploring. Unlike other adventurers who
might have left behind a lasting t tomitt to their presence,
Drake left only a small brass plate or plaque. Upon
it had been inscribed the declaration from Drake claiming the
land in the name of Queen Elizabeth. It was signed
(01:10):
with his name and the day he landed. The plates
existence was noted by English diarist Francis Pretty, who had
detailed his travels with Drake as they circumnavigated the globe
over three d Fifty years later, a chauffeur named William
Caldera discovered the small brass artifact in northern California while
his employer and a friend were hunting. Caldera held onto
(01:33):
the plate so that he could research its origins on
his own, but accidentally tossed it out during a routine
cleaning of his employer's car. It sat on the side
of the road in San Rafael for three years before
another young man named Beryl Shinn found it and rushed
it over to historian Herbert Eugene Bolton. Bolton was an
expert on Spanish American history. He knew exactly what Shinn possessed.
(01:55):
He checked the plate and its inscription against Francis Pretty's
diary entry. It was exactly as Pretty had described. Elevated
at the discovery, he contacted the president of the California
Historical Society, Alan Chickering, as well as Robert Gordon Sprowl,
president of the University of California. They confirmed that Shin
had indeed found Sir Francis Drake's long lost brass plate.
(02:18):
Bolton together with Chickering, pulled their resources to buy the
plate from Shin for a hefty sum at the time,
but Shin wasn't quite ready to part with it just yet.
He disappeared for four days, claiming he wanted to have
his uncle examined the plate before he sold it. Bolton
panicked when he didn't hear from him and upped his
(02:38):
bid to thirty That seemed to do the trick, and
not long after, Herbert Bolton was the proud owner of
Sir Francis Drake's brass plate. He and Chickering announced their
acquisition to the California Historical Society in ninety seven, before
donating the plate to the University of California's Bancroft Library. Bolton,
incredulous at his good fortune, had finally fulfilled a decade's
(03:01):
long dream of finding one of the most elusive totems
in history. But not everyone was as enthralled with their discovery.
Critics pointed out a whole host of problems with the plate.
For example, the spelling of certain words were not historically accurate,
they were too modern. Also, the queen was referred to
as Queen Elizabeth when the common form of her title
(03:22):
during Drake's time was Elizabeth, by the Grace of God,
Queen of England, France and Ireland, Defender of the Faith.
There were also the physical attributes of the brass itself.
It didn't look old or aged enough, but Bolton and
Chickering were not dissuaded. They had explanations for every supposed
flaw pointed out to them. Unfortunately, even the president of
(03:45):
the university, Robert Spraul, who had encouraged their purchase of
the plates, came to doubt its origins. Bolton sought out
a third party to help confirm its authenticity. So he
solicited the services of Colin Fink, professor at Columbia univer Versity,
who specialized in electro chemistry. Fink tested the plate and
no doubt about it, it was the real deal. The
(04:07):
plates was authentic, and that was the final word on it.
For over forty years, photos of Drake's plate of brass
found their way into textbooks and onto posters. Replicas were
made and presented to Queen Elizabeth the Second Though despite
the authoritative stance of Dr Fink, something never quite sat
right with the other academics. By the nineteen seventies, technology
(04:31):
had come so far as to allow researchers to dig
even deeper into the plates chemical and physical makeups. The
four Anniversity of Drake's Landing in California was coming up,
and it seemed like the perfect time to reanalyze the plate.
Scientists bombarded it with all kinds of X rays and
gamma rays, and the results came back much different than
(04:52):
Dr Fink's. One clue they noticed was that the plate
hadn't been hammered flat as it would have in the
fift hundreds. Instead, it had been old out, which was
a much more modern technique. Also, its edges had been
precisely cut with power tools, and its chemical composition showed
that it was made up of too much zinc to
be from the time period. In short, it was a fake.
(05:13):
What Bolton never realized at the time was that he
had been meant to find it. It had been made
for him. Members of a fraternal history organization known as
e Clampus Vitis or e c v knew all about
Bolton's obsession with the plate. As a joke, they used
Francis Pretty's description of it as a recipe to make
their own. They had planted it in a popular area
(05:36):
known to other California Historical Society members, expecting one of
them to find it and bring it to Bolton. When
the chauffeur lost it, the prank fizzled out until it
was rediscovered several years later. Unfortunately, by the time it
was announced to the public, it was too late for
the pranksters to come forward without seriously damaging the credibilities
and careers of everyone involved, so they simply let it go.
(06:01):
But even though the plate is fake, it's journey and
origin story have cemented it as a new kind of artifact,
one that is part of two separate histories and is
a testament to the lengths people will go to to
confirm their obsessions. Or maybe the whole thing was just
e clampus vitas in a nutshell. After all, their motto
(06:21):
translates into something pretty clear. I believe it because it's absurd.
Where do we go when we die? Is there an afterlife?
(06:42):
Do our souls get left behind? Or is there another
plane of existence for the human spirits after these physical
vessels have expired? We ask ourselves these questions because for
the most part, we fear death. More importantly, we fear
what we don't know. About death. It's not like those
who have experienced it can tell us what it's like,
although one man thought he could find out. Thomas Edison
(07:06):
is known to history as the inventor of the phonograph,
the movie camera, and the practical electric light bulb. He's
often portrayed as a shrewd, cold businessman, a man who
valued proof above belief and who had no patience for
philosophy or existentialism. Yet he was fascinated by the afterlife,
particularly in how one reached it. While many people believe
(07:28):
in the concept of heaven or hell, where one soul
would end up depending on how they behaved in life,
Edison theorized something else entirely. He believed life was like energy,
and that there was a set amount of it available
and it could not be created or destroyed. What we
consider to be a soul was actually a bunch of
microscopic consciousness that monitored what was going on inside our bodies.
(07:51):
When they got along, they kept us alive. When they argued,
we died, and the consciousness either passed on to another
host or they began to create new life in which
to inhabit, and if they could be rearranged back into
their original state back when they got along in the
previous host, that person could be resurrected to some degree.
For example, a deceased person's personality could find its way
(08:13):
into another living human, or a newborn baby might be
someone else's second chance at a new life. Edison's ideas
weren't typical, as I'm sure you've noticed. Even still, he
searched for a way to find these particles to validate
that his theory was correct. Test after test, he built
prototypes of devices he thought would detect the personalities of
(08:35):
the dead, but had no luck. Not even the teams
of scientists he had working for him could figure it out.
So he did what he did best. He went to
the media. In the fall of ninety Edison announced to
the world that he had been hard at work on
a new invention, one that would allow him to communicate
with the dead. He called it the spirit phone. Interestingly,
(08:57):
something as spiritual as talking to the dead did not
affect him on a spiritual level. He refused to acknowledge
the public's interest in the occult or seances. This was
a scientific endeavor, he said, and one meant to yield proof,
not further muddy the waters. He reached out to another inventor,
Sir William Crooks in England, who had allegedly taken photographs
(09:19):
of ghosts that he encountered. Edison was inspired by the
visual proof he'd gathered that ghosts were in fact susceptible
to man made gadgets, and it wasn't long before he
set to work on his spirit phone. Allegedly, after his
public announcement, Edison didn't speak about the project again, nor
did he show anyone what he might have been working on. Unfortunately,
(09:40):
the famous inventor died in one taking the paranormal telephone
with him. No one has found proof that he ever
actually worked on such a device. Some believe the whole
thing had been a hoax to keep his name in
the papers, while others swear to this day that there
are blueprints and even a prototype somewhere evidence of his
dedication to his claims. A decade after his death, a
(10:05):
seance was conducted and contact was allegedly made with Edison's ghost.
He was asked about the spirit phone and whether it
had been real. According to the entity, not only was
it real, but the blueprints for it had been left
in the possession of three of his former assistants. Sadly, though,
that's where the story ends. As you might expect, Edison's
(10:26):
assistants have all passed away and it couldn't be reached
for comment. 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 by me Aaron Manky
(10:48):
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 Come and until
next time, stay curious. H
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 of Curiosities. We've all taken a
(00:28):
joke too far. Maybe it was a mistimed zinger or
a prank gone awry. We knew it was wrong, but
by the time it was over, it was too late.
That's the problem with some jokes. They tend to take
on a life of their own. In Sir Francis Drake's
at sail for the Strait of Anian, a way of
reaching the Atlantic Ocean from the fabled Northwest Passage over
(00:50):
the top of North America. Instead, he reached the shores
of northern California and began exploring. Unlike other adventurers who
might have left behind a lasting t tomitt to their presence,
Drake left only a small brass plate or plaque. Upon
it had been inscribed the declaration from Drake claiming the
land in the name of Queen Elizabeth. It was signed
(01:10):
with his name and the day he landed. The plates
existence was noted by English diarist Francis Pretty, who had
detailed his travels with Drake as they circumnavigated the globe
over three d Fifty years later, a chauffeur named William
Caldera discovered the small brass artifact in northern California while
his employer and a friend were hunting. Caldera held onto
(01:33):
the plate so that he could research its origins on
his own, but accidentally tossed it out during a routine
cleaning of his employer's car. It sat on the side
of the road in San Rafael for three years before
another young man named Beryl Shinn found it and rushed
it over to historian Herbert Eugene Bolton. Bolton was an
expert on Spanish American history. He knew exactly what Shinn possessed.
(01:55):
He checked the plate and its inscription against Francis Pretty's
diary entry. It was exactly as Pretty had described. Elevated
at the discovery, he contacted the president of the California
Historical Society, Alan Chickering, as well as Robert Gordon Sprowl,
president of the University of California. They confirmed that Shin
had indeed found Sir Francis Drake's long lost brass plate.
(02:18):
Bolton together with Chickering, pulled their resources to buy the
plate from Shin for a hefty sum at the time,
but Shin wasn't quite ready to part with it just yet.
He disappeared for four days, claiming he wanted to have
his uncle examined the plate before he sold it. Bolton
panicked when he didn't hear from him and upped his
(02:38):
bid to thirty That seemed to do the trick, and
not long after, Herbert Bolton was the proud owner of
Sir Francis Drake's brass plate. He and Chickering announced their
acquisition to the California Historical Society in ninety seven, before
donating the plate to the University of California's Bancroft Library. Bolton,
incredulous at his good fortune, had finally fulfilled a decade's
(03:01):
long dream of finding one of the most elusive totems
in history. But not everyone was as enthralled with their discovery.
Critics pointed out a whole host of problems with the plate.
For example, the spelling of certain words were not historically accurate,
they were too modern. Also, the queen was referred to
as Queen Elizabeth when the common form of her title
(03:22):
during Drake's time was Elizabeth, by the Grace of God,
Queen of England, France and Ireland, Defender of the Faith.
There were also the physical attributes of the brass itself.
It didn't look old or aged enough, but Bolton and
Chickering were not dissuaded. They had explanations for every supposed
flaw pointed out to them. Unfortunately, even the president of
(03:45):
the university, Robert Spraul, who had encouraged their purchase of
the plates, came to doubt its origins. Bolton sought out
a third party to help confirm its authenticity. So he
solicited the services of Colin Fink, professor at Columbia univer Versity,
who specialized in electro chemistry. Fink tested the plate and
no doubt about it, it was the real deal. The
(04:07):
plates was authentic, and that was the final word on it.
For over forty years, photos of Drake's plate of brass
found their way into textbooks and onto posters. Replicas were
made and presented to Queen Elizabeth the Second Though despite
the authoritative stance of Dr Fink, something never quite sat
right with the other academics. By the nineteen seventies, technology
(04:31):
had come so far as to allow researchers to dig
even deeper into the plates chemical and physical makeups. The
four Anniversity of Drake's Landing in California was coming up,
and it seemed like the perfect time to reanalyze the plate.
Scientists bombarded it with all kinds of X rays and
gamma rays, and the results came back much different than
(04:52):
Dr Fink's. One clue they noticed was that the plate
hadn't been hammered flat as it would have in the
fift hundreds. Instead, it had been old out, which was
a much more modern technique. Also, its edges had been
precisely cut with power tools, and its chemical composition showed
that it was made up of too much zinc to
be from the time period. In short, it was a fake.
(05:13):
What Bolton never realized at the time was that he
had been meant to find it. It had been made
for him. Members of a fraternal history organization known as
e Clampus Vitis or e c v knew all about
Bolton's obsession with the plate. As a joke, they used
Francis Pretty's description of it as a recipe to make
their own. They had planted it in a popular area
(05:36):
known to other California Historical Society members, expecting one of
them to find it and bring it to Bolton. When
the chauffeur lost it, the prank fizzled out until it
was rediscovered several years later. Unfortunately, by the time it
was announced to the public, it was too late for
the pranksters to come forward without seriously damaging the credibilities
and careers of everyone involved, so they simply let it go.
(06:01):
But even though the plate is fake, it's journey and
origin story have cemented it as a new kind of artifact,
one that is part of two separate histories and is
a testament to the lengths people will go to to
confirm their obsessions. Or maybe the whole thing was just
e clampus vitas in a nutshell. After all, their motto
(06:21):
translates into something pretty clear. I believe it because it's absurd.
Where do we go when we die? Is there an afterlife?
(06:42):
Do our souls get left behind? Or is there another
plane of existence for the human spirits after these physical
vessels have expired? We ask ourselves these questions because for
the most part, we fear death. More importantly, we fear
what we don't know. About death. It's not like those
who have experienced it can tell us what it's like,
although one man thought he could find out. Thomas Edison
(07:06):
is known to history as the inventor of the phonograph,
the movie camera, and the practical electric light bulb. He's
often portrayed as a shrewd, cold businessman, a man who
valued proof above belief and who had no patience for
philosophy or existentialism. Yet he was fascinated by the afterlife,
particularly in how one reached it. While many people believe
(07:28):
in the concept of heaven or hell, where one soul
would end up depending on how they behaved in life,
Edison theorized something else entirely. He believed life was like energy,
and that there was a set amount of it available
and it could not be created or destroyed. What we
consider to be a soul was actually a bunch of
microscopic consciousness that monitored what was going on inside our bodies.
(07:51):
When they got along, they kept us alive. When they argued,
we died, and the consciousness either passed on to another
host or they began to create new life in which
to inhabit, and if they could be rearranged back into
their original state back when they got along in the
previous host, that person could be resurrected to some degree.
For example, a deceased person's personality could find its way
(08:13):
into another living human, or a newborn baby might be
someone else's second chance at a new life. Edison's ideas
weren't typical, as I'm sure you've noticed. Even still, he
searched for a way to find these particles to validate
that his theory was correct. Test after test, he built
prototypes of devices he thought would detect the personalities of
(08:35):
the dead, but had no luck. Not even the teams
of scientists he had working for him could figure it out.
So he did what he did best. He went to
the media. In the fall of ninety Edison announced to
the world that he had been hard at work on
a new invention, one that would allow him to communicate
with the dead. He called it the spirit phone. Interestingly,
(08:57):
something as spiritual as talking to the dead did not
affect him on a spiritual level. He refused to acknowledge
the public's interest in the occult or seances. This was
a scientific endeavor, he said, and one meant to yield proof,
not further muddy the waters. He reached out to another inventor,
Sir William Crooks in England, who had allegedly taken photographs
(09:19):
of ghosts that he encountered. Edison was inspired by the
visual proof he'd gathered that ghosts were in fact susceptible
to man made gadgets, and it wasn't long before he
set to work on his spirit phone. Allegedly, after his
public announcement, Edison didn't speak about the project again, nor
did he show anyone what he might have been working on. Unfortunately,
(09:40):
the famous inventor died in one taking the paranormal telephone
with him. No one has found proof that he ever
actually worked on such a device. Some believe the whole
thing had been a hoax to keep his name in
the papers, while others swear to this day that there
are blueprints and even a prototype somewhere evidence of his
dedication to his claims. A decade after his death, a
(10:05):
seance was conducted and contact was allegedly made with Edison's ghost.
He was asked about the spirit phone and whether it
had been real. According to the entity, not only was
it real, but the blueprints for it had been left
in the possession of three of his former assistants. Sadly, though,
that's where the story ends. As you might expect, Edison's
(10:26):
assistants have all passed away and it couldn't be reached
for comment. 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 by me Aaron Manky
(10:48):
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 Come and until
next time, stay curious. H
Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities News
Host
Aaron Mahnke
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