All Wrong

Two stories with more in common than you'd think. And that makes them more than a little curious.

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Episode Transcript

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. It's been argued that one of the only
jobs a person can get wrong and still keep is
that of a TV news meteorologist. If a weather person
said it was going to be sunny in seventy five,
but you should have brought your parka and a snow shovel,

(00:48):
you might think twice about believing them in the future.
That happens less and less these days, though, as modern
technology allows forecasters to better track weather patterns and storm
paths up to the minute. But back in eighteen thirty
eight that wasn't the case, and yet Irish astrologer and
meteorologist Patrick Murphy still managed to shock London with a

(01:09):
forecast nobody could have predicted, well, nobody except Patrick. He
had come to England from Cork, Ireland in eighteen twenty two.
A few years later he launched his first publication titled
An Inquiry into the Nature and Cause of my Asthma
of eighteen twenty five. My Asthma is defined as a
vapor or fume that causes disease, like those coming off

(01:31):
of a swamp. It's also used to describe an unsavory atmosphere.
Patrick followed up his first book with a new one
in eighteen thirty entitled Rudiments of the Primary Forces in Gravity,
Magnetism and Electricity. These two books were the start of
his foray into pseudo scientific, writing about the various phenomena

(01:52):
around us. Within his latest home, he expounded on a
multitude of topics, including the movement of the Sun and planets,
electrical forces, and the Earth's magnetic polls. These efforts all
led to his magnum opus and the volume for which
he has known to this day, Murphy's Weather Almanac for
eighteen thirty eight. Now. The word almanac is believed to

(02:13):
have come from the Greek word for calendar. It signifies
books that were published with calendar entries for every day
of the year, along with the various weather and astronomical
phenomena expected on those dates. Almanacs have existed since before
the thirteenth century, but they really picked up steam with
the printing press. Among the most famous ever printed were

(02:34):
the Poor Richard's Almanacs, published by Richard Saunders in seventeen
thirty two. Saunders, of course, was the pen name for
founding father Benjamin Franklin. Murphy's Weather Almanac of eighteen thirty
eight wasn't much different from the compendiums that had come before.
Each page was chock full of vital information designed to
help farmers and readers know what to expect for the

(02:57):
coming year. Now, even though almanacs have claimed to be
as high as eighty percent accurate, a study conducted by
the University of Illinois in nineteen eighty one found that
the popular Farmer's Almanac was only about fifty two accurate
in its forecasts. In other words, readers had just as
much of a chance of successfully guessing the weather by
pulling a prediction out of a hat. But Patrick thought

(03:19):
better of his powers of prognostication, and one date in
particular stuck out among all the others in his almanac, January.
You see, London winters were notoriously cold. In fact, as
we've discussed here before, the Thames was known to freeze
over every now and then, allowing locals to set up
shop on the ice and hold frost fares right on

(03:40):
the river. Patrick, however, didn't just predict that January would
be cold. He claimed that the weather that they would
be fair, with the lowest degree of winter temperature. When
the day finally came, temperatures dropped a whopping fifty six
degrees to a frigid negative fourteen point eight. It was
by far the coldest day in Courted London history, and

(04:02):
would be for some time. Patrick had been shockingly correct
in his forecast, and as a result, there was a
run on his almanac. He printed forty five editions to
keep up with demand. Police were even called to one
shop to help preserve order among the throngs of shoppers
demanding the book. Unfortunately, readers didn't bother to peruse his

(04:22):
publication before buying it. If they had, they would have
realized that he was about as accurate as every other
almanac out there. One hundred and sixty eight days were
half rights in their predictions, while one ninety seven were
all wrong. Demand dropped like a thermometer on January after that,
but Patrick Murphy had already earned his legacy In the

(04:42):
years following, those who had survived the freezing tempts of
eighteen thirty eight referred to that time as Murphy's Winter.
He was never that accurate in his predictions again, and
became something of a punchline later on. It seems that
being a one hit wonder in the almanac world was
something that Murphy I just couldn't weather Man plans and

(05:23):
God laughs, Expect the unexpected, or the old boy scout motto,
be prepared. We have plenty of sayings that all revolve
around the same idea, stuff happens, and Edward was only
too familiar with that concept. He was born in nineteen
eighteen in the Panama Canal Zone and Unincorporated Territory in
Central America. Edward and his family eventually made their way

(05:45):
north to New Jersey, where he lived for most of
his young life. After high school, Edward attended West Point,
which prepared him for entry into the United States Army
Air Corps just in time for World War Two. It
was in nineteen forty one when he was sent overseas
to serve even parts of China, India, and Burma. Edward
had always had something of a scientific mind, so when

(06:07):
the war was over and it came time for him
to get a job. He found one as a research
and development officer at Ohio's Right Patterson Air Force Base.
He stayed there for a short time until a special
project came a calling for him from the West coast.
Over at Edwards Air Force Base in California, a series
of rocket sled experiments were being managed by Colonel John Stapp.

(06:27):
Rocket sleds were elongated platforms that slid on tracks which
used actual rockets to propel them long distances at high speeds.
It was common belief among aerospace experts that the human
body could not withstand up to eighteen G forces before dying.
Staff didn't agree and set out to prove the theory wrong.
Previous test to disprove it had been performed using crash

(06:50):
test dummies. The goal was to track the effects of
rapid deceleration on a human body, and Staff, dissatisfied with
the results, started using a chimpanz in his experiments, but
even that proved unsatisfactory to the exacting kernel, so he
started testing the G forces of the sleds on himself.
He would strap himself onto the platform and let the

(07:12):
rockets take him for a ride. On his first test,
Staff reached ten g's over time. He was able to
get that up to thirty five gs and still survive.
Edward was tasked with analyzing the effects of these forces
on Staff's body. He'd done it before, having created a
series of sixteen censors and tools meant to gauge how
test pilots were affected during centrifugal training back in Ohio.

(07:36):
He suggested using modified versions of his sensors for the
rocket sled tests. Staff agreed, and a new experiment was planned. Originally,
the idea was to use another chimp as the test subject.
The Air Force didn't want to sacrifice one of its
own men in case something went wrong, but Staff knew
a human being had to be in the driver's seat,

(07:56):
so he switched places with the chimpanzee. Rolling with the change,
Edward told his assistance to rig up the sensors two
stabs safety harness while he tested the rest of the
equipment before takeoff. After several safety checks and clearances with
the sensors in place, Staff was given the green light.
The rockets fired up, and the Colonel flew along the
track like a bat out of hell. When he finally stopped,

(08:19):
Edward checked the readouts. Nothing, not a single piece of
evidence that Staff had ever been buckled in at all.
The experiment had failed. As it had turned out, Edwards
assistants had wired the sensors all wrong. They've been plugged
in upside down, and Edward, angry at one assistant in particular,
tossed off a short summation of his feelings, saying, if

(08:41):
that guy has any way of making a mistake, he will.
Staff took his words to heart and conveyed them to
a shared philosophy among the research team. During a press conference,
he explained the saying as a way of keeping his
men on task and solving problems before they occurred. Although
this being a press conference, the raise was shortened down
a bit. Edward's original wording was condensed to a simpler one.

(09:05):
If it can happen, it will happen. Today, however, we
say it even more different than that, because without Edward
a Murphy, we wouldn't have Murphy's law, which states anything
that can happen will happen, or, perhaps more accurately, anything
that can go wrong will go wrong. I hope you've

(09:28):
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 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

(09:51):
learn all about it over at the World of Lore
dot com. And until next time, stay curious.