February 4, 2025 • 10 mins
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Aaron Nke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. 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.
(00:36):
In fifteen ninety three, a strange figure entered Buckingham Palace.
It was a woman from Ireland of around sixty years
of age, appearing in London for an audience with the
Queen Elizabeth. I greeted this woman, and although the pair
of them were about the same age, the stranger seemed
much older. She was weather beaten, her skin showing the
evidence of many years spent at sea. The two women
(00:59):
spoke in Latin, which is the only tongue that they shared.
The visitor had a petition to bring before the Queen.
Her son and her half brother were both captured by
Sir Richard Bingham, and she had come to implore Elizabeth
to spare their lives. If legends are to be believed,
this visitor refused to bow before the Queen, and, in
open defiance to British authority. She had a dagger at
(01:20):
her side. This defiant irishwoman was Grunia Nullia, but she's
best known to us as Grace O'Malley. Her most famous
name is her nickname in Irish folk history, Granule, the
Pirate Queen of Connacht. Her meeting with Queen Elizabeth the
First would become the stuff of legends, but it was
only a small part of an already legendary career. Born
(01:43):
to the chief of Clan O'Malley in County Mayo, she
displayed a taste for adventure from an early age. According
to legend, as a child, she wanted to accompany her
father on a voyage to Spain. He refused, making the
excuse that her long hair would get caught in the
ship's rigging, so the young grace Es promptly cut off
her hair. Her name ever since, Grannual translates to Grace
(02:06):
of the chopped hair. Like many daughters of powerful men,
she would be married off to another chief son for
political reasons, but Grannual was never going to be content
merely raising children and tending the homestead. She took the
reins of her husband's clan and set sail, literally displaying
a mastery of seafaring. She established trading routes with Spain
(02:27):
and Portugal, and would become famous for leading raids on
enemy ships herself. Her power was diminished slightly upon her
husband's death in the mid fifteen sixties. By Irish law,
a widow was entitled to only a third of her
husband's property. She resettled on Claire Island with two hundred
followers and a small fleet of three galleys, enough of
(02:47):
a force to maintain influence on her nearby shipping lanes
and charge a toll for anyone who dared pass through
her territory. By fifteen sixty six, most of Klue Bay
on the eastern coast of Ireland was under her control.
She became known as a pirate queen and would fiercely
defend her territory against the British and rival Irish clans alike.
(03:08):
A legend during this time tells of how she found
a shipwrecked sailor and fell in love. When he was
slain by the McMahons, she personally led an assault on
the McMahon castle of Duna, slaughtering those responsible. She married
again in the late fifteen sixties, but once again refused
to settle down. In fifteen seventy four, the British captain
William Martin laid siege to her castle with a fleet
(03:31):
of ships. To his surprise, what he thought would be
an easy victory turned into a resounding defeat as the Irish,
led by Granywall, repelled his forces. The tide turn for
Ireland in the fifteen seventies, with clan leaders forced to
submit to the British monarchy, and grannu All followed suit.
But this did not mean that she was retiring, nor
(03:51):
that she would not come into conflict with the Empire.
When her second husband died in fifteen eighty three, she
took command of his remaining followers, claiming her rights as
a widow. She would not be cheated again. Years of
fighting on and off with various English governors appointed to
Ireland led her to that fateful meeting in fifteen ninety three. Granuall,
(04:12):
after decades of violence, at heartbreak, sought the Queen's pardon
for her own family and compensation for the losses that
she had incurred against the English. To the court's surprise,
she was granted everything she asked for. Her son and
half brother would be spared, she would be left in peace,
and in return, she would only attack England's enemies. From
(04:33):
then on, the two queens parted in mutual respect, allowing
Grannuall to live out her days in the home she
fought so hard to protect. Records of her life dwindled
towards the beginning of the seventeenth century, and in the
following centuries she became a strange figure in history, half legend,
half truth, a real woman who commands mythic respect from
(04:54):
her people. To this day. It's widely believed that she
passed away in sixteen o three, which, if true, would
be a remarkable coincidence, because that was the very same
year that saw the death of Queen Elizabeth the First,
the woman who ruled the world, the one who grann
you All faced as an equal. Chester didn't know what
(05:28):
to expect when he was recruited to the Marine Corps
in nineteen forty two, but it certainly wasn't this. He
and twenty eight other Navajo men had made it through
basic training together. They had crawled through trenches, zeroed in
on targets, and trained with all kinds of weapons. But
now sitting in a conference room Chester had just learned
that they were about to face their toughest mission yet.
(05:49):
Chester looked up as an unknown major stepped into the room.
He glanced around the table, sizing up the Navajo recruits,
and then he spoke. His orders were shorts and to
the point. The group was to create a code in
their native language. And then he left the room, locking
them all in together. Chester and the others stared at
each other. They were brand new recruits. They had barely
(06:12):
had any cryptography training. How on earth were they supposed
to develop a code. The Navajo code Talkers were a
group of nearly four hundred Native Navajo speakers who used
their native language to encrypt messages for marines during World
War II. At the time, all radio broadcasts could be
easily picked up by enemies listening in, so every important
(06:33):
piece of information had to be sent via code. While
probably the most famous, the Navajo were far from the
first Native American soldiers to use their language for espionage.
In World War One, American troops from the Comanche, Choctaw, Hope,
and Cherokee nations used their native languages to send messages
that their enemies couldn't translate. After the war ended, Germany
(06:56):
and Japan sent students to the US to study these languages,
and this may have looked like an innocent cultural exchange,
but really these nations were preparing in case they needed
to decode those languages in future wars. And for this reason,
when the United States was drawn into World War II
in nineteen forty one, the military was reluctant to use
native code talkers again, at least until a Los Angeles
(07:19):
engineer named Philip Johnston spoke up. Johnston was born and
raised on the Navajo reservation, the son of Christian missionaries,
and spoke the language fluently. In fact, he'd even acted
as a translator when Navajo leaders negotiated a new treaty
with President Theodore Roosevelt. He knew the language was incredibly complex.
(07:39):
It was tonal, people spoke multiple dialects of it, and
the language had no written alphabet. It was practically impossible
for anyone to learn apart from growing up with Native speakers.
If the military was looking for a code, Navajo was perfect,
and the military agreed. By nineteen forty two, Chesternz and
twenty eight other Natives speakers were the first Navajo code
(08:01):
talkers working for the military. Although initially surprised by their mission,
these Navajo soldiers quickly got to work, creating a complex
system of codewords and descriptors, making it so even another
Native speaker wouldn't be able to understand their transmissions. Part
of the code was giving Navajo names to military vehicles,
many of which did not have a word already in
(08:22):
the Navajo language. So submarine became beschloh, which means iron fish,
and Dahi tihi, meaning hummingbird, became the code term for
a fighter plane. These Navajo code talkers were present at
every major marine operation in the Pacific starting in nineteen
forty two. They were widely credited with helping the Americans
(08:42):
take Iwajima, a strategic island in the South Pacific. Over
the course of the war, more than four hundred Navajo
code talkers served in the Pacific theater. Their encyclopedic knowledge
of the Navajo language and their own developed code let
them receive a message, decrypt it in cryptosc sponts, and
send it over the radio in just over two minutes.
(09:03):
For a non native speaker, that same task would have
taken hours. While the code talkers were treated like heroes
by their fellow servicemen. The wider public had no idea
what they had done for the war effort. The entire
operation remained classified until nineteen sixty eight, twenty three years
after the war. Finally, in nineteen eighty two, the code
talkers were recognized nationally when President Ronald Reagan declared August
(09:27):
fourteenth to be National Navajo Code Talker Day, and in
two thousand and one, President George W. Bush gave gold
Congressional Medals of Honor to the original twenty nine code talkers.
After the war, the Japanese Chief of Intelligence admitted that
one of the only codes they were never able to
break was the Navajo one. Not bad for a bunch
(09:48):
of fresh Marines who had never made a code before.
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 Mankey in partnership
(10:09):
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 Worldoflore.
Dot com and until next time, stay curious,
Welcome to Aaron Nke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. 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.
(00:36):
In fifteen ninety three, a strange figure entered Buckingham Palace.
It was a woman from Ireland of around sixty years
of age, appearing in London for an audience with the
Queen Elizabeth. I greeted this woman, and although the pair
of them were about the same age, the stranger seemed
much older. She was weather beaten, her skin showing the
evidence of many years spent at sea. The two women
(00:59):
spoke in Latin, which is the only tongue that they shared.
The visitor had a petition to bring before the Queen.
Her son and her half brother were both captured by
Sir Richard Bingham, and she had come to implore Elizabeth
to spare their lives. If legends are to be believed,
this visitor refused to bow before the Queen, and, in
open defiance to British authority. She had a dagger at
(01:20):
her side. This defiant irishwoman was Grunia Nullia, but she's
best known to us as Grace O'Malley. Her most famous
name is her nickname in Irish folk history, Granule, the
Pirate Queen of Connacht. Her meeting with Queen Elizabeth the
First would become the stuff of legends, but it was
only a small part of an already legendary career. Born
(01:43):
to the chief of Clan O'Malley in County Mayo, she
displayed a taste for adventure from an early age. According
to legend, as a child, she wanted to accompany her
father on a voyage to Spain. He refused, making the
excuse that her long hair would get caught in the
ship's rigging, so the young grace Es promptly cut off
her hair. Her name ever since, Grannual translates to Grace
(02:06):
of the chopped hair. Like many daughters of powerful men,
she would be married off to another chief son for
political reasons, but Grannual was never going to be content
merely raising children and tending the homestead. She took the
reins of her husband's clan and set sail, literally displaying
a mastery of seafaring. She established trading routes with Spain
(02:27):
and Portugal, and would become famous for leading raids on
enemy ships herself. Her power was diminished slightly upon her
husband's death in the mid fifteen sixties. By Irish law,
a widow was entitled to only a third of her
husband's property. She resettled on Claire Island with two hundred
followers and a small fleet of three galleys, enough of
(02:47):
a force to maintain influence on her nearby shipping lanes
and charge a toll for anyone who dared pass through
her territory. By fifteen sixty six, most of Klue Bay
on the eastern coast of Ireland was under her control.
She became known as a pirate queen and would fiercely
defend her territory against the British and rival Irish clans alike.
(03:08):
A legend during this time tells of how she found
a shipwrecked sailor and fell in love. When he was
slain by the McMahons, she personally led an assault on
the McMahon castle of Duna, slaughtering those responsible. She married
again in the late fifteen sixties, but once again refused
to settle down. In fifteen seventy four, the British captain
William Martin laid siege to her castle with a fleet
(03:31):
of ships. To his surprise, what he thought would be
an easy victory turned into a resounding defeat as the Irish,
led by Granywall, repelled his forces. The tide turn for
Ireland in the fifteen seventies, with clan leaders forced to
submit to the British monarchy, and grannu All followed suit.
But this did not mean that she was retiring, nor
(03:51):
that she would not come into conflict with the Empire.
When her second husband died in fifteen eighty three, she
took command of his remaining followers, claiming her rights as
a widow. She would not be cheated again. Years of
fighting on and off with various English governors appointed to
Ireland led her to that fateful meeting in fifteen ninety three. Granuall,
(04:12):
after decades of violence, at heartbreak, sought the Queen's pardon
for her own family and compensation for the losses that
she had incurred against the English. To the court's surprise,
she was granted everything she asked for. Her son and
half brother would be spared, she would be left in peace,
and in return, she would only attack England's enemies. From
(04:33):
then on, the two queens parted in mutual respect, allowing
Grannuall to live out her days in the home she
fought so hard to protect. Records of her life dwindled
towards the beginning of the seventeenth century, and in the
following centuries she became a strange figure in history, half legend,
half truth, a real woman who commands mythic respect from
(04:54):
her people. To this day. It's widely believed that she
passed away in sixteen o three, which, if true, would
be a remarkable coincidence, because that was the very same
year that saw the death of Queen Elizabeth the First,
the woman who ruled the world, the one who grann
you All faced as an equal. Chester didn't know what
(05:28):
to expect when he was recruited to the Marine Corps
in nineteen forty two, but it certainly wasn't this. He
and twenty eight other Navajo men had made it through
basic training together. They had crawled through trenches, zeroed in
on targets, and trained with all kinds of weapons. But
now sitting in a conference room Chester had just learned
that they were about to face their toughest mission yet.
(05:49):
Chester looked up as an unknown major stepped into the room.
He glanced around the table, sizing up the Navajo recruits,
and then he spoke. His orders were shorts and to
the point. The group was to create a code in
their native language. And then he left the room, locking
them all in together. Chester and the others stared at
each other. They were brand new recruits. They had barely
(06:12):
had any cryptography training. How on earth were they supposed
to develop a code. The Navajo code Talkers were a
group of nearly four hundred Native Navajo speakers who used
their native language to encrypt messages for marines during World
War II. At the time, all radio broadcasts could be
easily picked up by enemies listening in, so every important
(06:33):
piece of information had to be sent via code. While
probably the most famous, the Navajo were far from the
first Native American soldiers to use their language for espionage.
In World War One, American troops from the Comanche, Choctaw, Hope,
and Cherokee nations used their native languages to send messages
that their enemies couldn't translate. After the war ended, Germany
(06:56):
and Japan sent students to the US to study these languages,
and this may have looked like an innocent cultural exchange,
but really these nations were preparing in case they needed
to decode those languages in future wars. And for this reason,
when the United States was drawn into World War II
in nineteen forty one, the military was reluctant to use
native code talkers again, at least until a Los Angeles
(07:19):
engineer named Philip Johnston spoke up. Johnston was born and
raised on the Navajo reservation, the son of Christian missionaries,
and spoke the language fluently. In fact, he'd even acted
as a translator when Navajo leaders negotiated a new treaty
with President Theodore Roosevelt. He knew the language was incredibly complex.
(07:39):
It was tonal, people spoke multiple dialects of it, and
the language had no written alphabet. It was practically impossible
for anyone to learn apart from growing up with Native speakers.
If the military was looking for a code, Navajo was perfect,
and the military agreed. By nineteen forty two, Chesternz and
twenty eight other Natives speakers were the first Navajo code
(08:01):
talkers working for the military. Although initially surprised by their mission,
these Navajo soldiers quickly got to work, creating a complex
system of codewords and descriptors, making it so even another
Native speaker wouldn't be able to understand their transmissions. Part
of the code was giving Navajo names to military vehicles,
many of which did not have a word already in
(08:22):
the Navajo language. So submarine became beschloh, which means iron fish,
and Dahi tihi, meaning hummingbird, became the code term for
a fighter plane. These Navajo code talkers were present at
every major marine operation in the Pacific starting in nineteen
forty two. They were widely credited with helping the Americans
(08:42):
take Iwajima, a strategic island in the South Pacific. Over
the course of the war, more than four hundred Navajo
code talkers served in the Pacific theater. Their encyclopedic knowledge
of the Navajo language and their own developed code let
them receive a message, decrypt it in cryptosc sponts, and
send it over the radio in just over two minutes.
(09:03):
For a non native speaker, that same task would have
taken hours. While the code talkers were treated like heroes
by their fellow servicemen. The wider public had no idea
what they had done for the war effort. The entire
operation remained classified until nineteen sixty eight, twenty three years
after the war. Finally, in nineteen eighty two, the code
talkers were recognized nationally when President Ronald Reagan declared August
(09:27):
fourteenth to be National Navajo Code Talker Day, and in
two thousand and one, President George W. Bush gave gold
Congressional Medals of Honor to the original twenty nine code talkers.
After the war, the Japanese Chief of Intelligence admitted that
one of the only codes they were never able to
break was the Navajo one. Not bad for a bunch
(09:48):
of fresh Marines who had never made a code before.
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 Mankey in partnership
(10:09):
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 Worldoflore.
Dot com and until next time, stay curious,
Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities News
Host
Aaron Mahnke
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