November 6, 2018 • 10 mins
Science is on full display in the Cabinet of Curiosities today. Whether its the creation of something new, or the reevaluation of something old, it's amazing what can come out of the laboratory.
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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. Livestock never fares well
(00:29):
in a tornado. I think many of us remember that
iconic scene in the movie Twister when a cow moves
across the screen as it's carried away in a funnel
of wind and debris. But tornadoes and the creature is
caught up within them can teach us a few things
about the wind and the way it moves. That was
the thought mathematician Elias Loomis had in eighteen forty two,
(00:53):
after hearing reports about naked chickens. Yeah you heard me right,
naked chickens. Farmers in Ohio had noticed their poultry walking
around without their feathers following a tornado that tore through
their town, and it happened enough that folks didn't really
think anything about it. Loomis saw the featherless foul as
(01:13):
an opportunity to measure a tornado's wind speeds, a feat
previously thought impossible. Keep in mind this was the forties,
well before animal rights organizations monitored how scientists use living
creatures in their studies. Elias Loomis had a hypothesis and
almost no oversight. I'm sure you can see where this
(01:35):
is going. Loomis killed a chicken and launched its body
out of a small cannon, clocking in at a top
speed of over three forty miles per hour. The bird
flew high and far, leaving in its wake a cloud
of feathers and enough meat to make a few chicken nuggets.
Tornadoes must spin at a slower rate, he thought, and
(01:56):
continued his research unfod Sinately, his test proved unsuccessful. The
technology being what it was at the time, he was
unable to gather enough data on just how quickly tornadoes turned,
nor their effects on the local livestock. It wasn't until
over a century later when Bernard, an atmospheric scientist at
(02:17):
Suny Albany, took a closer look. Bernard had spent his
early career at General Electric researching the atmosphere. He discovered
the effects of what happened when silver iodide was injected
into clouds. They formed ice crystals, and Bernard thought he
might be able to use this to control precipitation. In fact,
his work is still used today by cloud seeding companies
(02:39):
that can produce rain on demand in drought stricken areas.
After he left ge Bernard went on to work for
Arthur D. Little, the company that helped create the word
processor and the Nasdaq stock exchange, which eventually led him
to the University of Albany. It was there where he
learned about Elias Loomis's research on wind speed and naked chickens.
(03:02):
Bernard wasn't sure Loomis had been on the right track,
but technology had advanced to the point where new research
wouldn't need to harm animals in the process, so he
took a crack at it himself. He dropped some chickens
into a wind tunnel, the kind they used to test aircraft,
and then turned it on and it worked well, sort of.
(03:23):
The chickens lost plenty of feathers, but inconsistently, and not
enough to classify them as naked. They were honestly just
sort of patchy and ran around clucking angrily. It didn't
take long for Bernard to realize that chickens made terrible
gauges of wind speed, but that didn't stop him from
earning an ig Nobel Prize. In no not a Nobel Prize,
(03:46):
an ig Nobel Prize ignoble get it. It's a satirical
award given to ten bizarre or benign achievements in scientific research.
Bernard one for his paper Chicken Plucking as measure of
tornado windspeeds. Bernard's work also found its way into popular culture.
His research of ice crystal formations and clouds became the
(04:09):
basis for the substance ice nine in Kurt Vonnegut's nineteen
sixty three novel Cat's Cradle. It turns out Vonnegut had
worked as a publicist for General Electric in the late forties,
so he knew all about Bernard's work. Even though he
didn't have a college degree himself. Ge hired Kurt to
help advertise the company's scientific breakthroughs. To be honest, any
(04:32):
other applicant as unqualified as Kurt Vonnegut would have been
turned away at the door. But he had two things
working in his favor. First, he lied. He told Ge
that he held a master's degree in anthropology from the
University of Chicago, which he most certainly did not. His
other advantage was that he had a little help from
(04:53):
the inside. It turns out that his brother already worked
for Ge where he worked as an atmosphere scientist. His
brother Bernard Vonnegut. Before Atkins, before South Beach, before jazz Er,
(05:21):
Size and Soul Cycle and Tibot, there was Battle Creek Sanitarium,
founded in eighteen sixty six in Battle Creek, Michigan. The
sanitarium wasn't a mental health facility like we're used to
seeing today. Back then, the word sanitarium was a variation
on the word sanatorium, which came to define a health
resort for injured soldiers. It had been owned and operated
(05:45):
by the Seventh day Adventists, the denomination of Protestants who
believed in healthy living straight from the Good Book. No meat,
no shellfish, and definitely no alcohol or tobacco were allowed.
It was strict, but some people believed it was also beneficial.
Strangely enough, not a whole lot of people went for
that sort of thing. Battle Creek started small, with no
(06:08):
more than a hundred patients in the beginning, but when
Dr John Harvey arrived at the turn of the century,
he wanted to change all of that. Under Dr John's leadership,
he quickly grew the sanitarium's meager attendants from one hundred
to over seven thousand patients, with a staff of over
eight hundred assisting at any given time. He turned Battle
Creek into a well oiled machine dedicated to making lives
(06:32):
better for a nominal fee. Of course, John was himself
a Seventh day Adventist, and as part of his theology,
believed strongly in the churches, pushed towards vegetarianism and away
from sin. In order to achieve the latter, he developed
what was referred to as a bland diet, consisting mostly
(06:52):
of yogurt's, nuts, peanut butter, and starches. A bland diet
was the key to abstinence in his mind, brought on
by the lack of stimulation of the taste buds. Patients
at Battle Creek were also encouraged to take part in
various activities to aid in their recoveries, in light therapy,
afternoon marches around the premises to assist with digestion, and
(07:16):
even regular enemus. John believed the root of all evil
in the body was bacterial toxins, and his combination of
a bland diet with rigorous exercise was meant to help
clear all of that nastiness right out. While he ran
Battle Creek, John filed patents for several inventions that would
help those who stayed there, including a radiant heat bath,
(07:38):
massage tools, and exercise equipment. He made numerous strides and
medical devices under what he called physiotherapy, but there was
something missing, something from the other side of the equation.
He'd done all he could for the patients physically, but
now he needed to revolutionize their diets. The idea had
(07:59):
come to him in a dream one night. It was
for a new kind of bread, one that would be
easier to chew at breakfast when people had just woken up.
The following day, John walked down to the kitchen and
mixed a dough made of wheat, oats, and corn. What
came out wasn't very appetizing, and he left it there
for a few days while attending to sanitarium business. When
(08:21):
he came back, the mixture had hardened and John almost
threw it out, But then he had another idea. Rather
than waste all of that food, he rolled it out
and baked it, and what he ended up with were
crispy little flakes. John had stumbled onto something big here.
So big it would go on to spawn an entire
new category of food, the breakfast cereal. It just so
(08:45):
happened that John Harvey Kellogg had invented corn flakes. But
the story doesn't end there. Just when Kellogg's corn flakes
had hit the sanitarium's breakfast tables, a down on his
luck businessman sought out Dr Kelly to help cure his
chronic health problems. This businessman, inspired by the doctor's delicious
(09:06):
new breakfast cereal, returned home with ambitions of his own.
While his first product, a serial beverage called post Them,
didn't do so well, his sophomore endeavor was a huge hit.
It was called grape Nuts, named for the fruity aroma
given off during the manufacturing process, and its creator C. W.
(09:27):
Post had inadvertently kicked off what would be known for
decades as the serial wars. 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
(09:50):
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 learn all
about it over at the world of Lore dot com.
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. Livestock never fares well
(00:29):
in a tornado. I think many of us remember that
iconic scene in the movie Twister when a cow moves
across the screen as it's carried away in a funnel
of wind and debris. But tornadoes and the creature is
caught up within them can teach us a few things
about the wind and the way it moves. That was
the thought mathematician Elias Loomis had in eighteen forty two,
(00:53):
after hearing reports about naked chickens. Yeah you heard me right,
naked chickens. Farmers in Ohio had noticed their poultry walking
around without their feathers following a tornado that tore through
their town, and it happened enough that folks didn't really
think anything about it. Loomis saw the featherless foul as
(01:13):
an opportunity to measure a tornado's wind speeds, a feat
previously thought impossible. Keep in mind this was the forties,
well before animal rights organizations monitored how scientists use living
creatures in their studies. Elias Loomis had a hypothesis and
almost no oversight. I'm sure you can see where this
(01:35):
is going. Loomis killed a chicken and launched its body
out of a small cannon, clocking in at a top
speed of over three forty miles per hour. The bird
flew high and far, leaving in its wake a cloud
of feathers and enough meat to make a few chicken nuggets.
Tornadoes must spin at a slower rate, he thought, and
(01:56):
continued his research unfod Sinately, his test proved unsuccessful. The
technology being what it was at the time, he was
unable to gather enough data on just how quickly tornadoes turned,
nor their effects on the local livestock. It wasn't until
over a century later when Bernard, an atmospheric scientist at
(02:17):
Suny Albany, took a closer look. Bernard had spent his
early career at General Electric researching the atmosphere. He discovered
the effects of what happened when silver iodide was injected
into clouds. They formed ice crystals, and Bernard thought he
might be able to use this to control precipitation. In fact,
his work is still used today by cloud seeding companies
(02:39):
that can produce rain on demand in drought stricken areas.
After he left ge Bernard went on to work for
Arthur D. Little, the company that helped create the word
processor and the Nasdaq stock exchange, which eventually led him
to the University of Albany. It was there where he
learned about Elias Loomis's research on wind speed and naked chickens.
(03:02):
Bernard wasn't sure Loomis had been on the right track,
but technology had advanced to the point where new research
wouldn't need to harm animals in the process, so he
took a crack at it himself. He dropped some chickens
into a wind tunnel, the kind they used to test aircraft,
and then turned it on and it worked well, sort of.
(03:23):
The chickens lost plenty of feathers, but inconsistently, and not
enough to classify them as naked. They were honestly just
sort of patchy and ran around clucking angrily. It didn't
take long for Bernard to realize that chickens made terrible
gauges of wind speed, but that didn't stop him from
earning an ig Nobel Prize. In no not a Nobel Prize,
(03:46):
an ig Nobel Prize ignoble get it. It's a satirical
award given to ten bizarre or benign achievements in scientific research.
Bernard one for his paper Chicken Plucking as measure of
tornado windspeeds. Bernard's work also found its way into popular culture.
His research of ice crystal formations and clouds became the
(04:09):
basis for the substance ice nine in Kurt Vonnegut's nineteen
sixty three novel Cat's Cradle. It turns out Vonnegut had
worked as a publicist for General Electric in the late forties,
so he knew all about Bernard's work. Even though he
didn't have a college degree himself. Ge hired Kurt to
help advertise the company's scientific breakthroughs. To be honest, any
(04:32):
other applicant as unqualified as Kurt Vonnegut would have been
turned away at the door. But he had two things
working in his favor. First, he lied. He told Ge
that he held a master's degree in anthropology from the
University of Chicago, which he most certainly did not. His
other advantage was that he had a little help from
(04:53):
the inside. It turns out that his brother already worked
for Ge where he worked as an atmosphere scientist. His
brother Bernard Vonnegut. Before Atkins, before South Beach, before jazz Er,
(05:21):
Size and Soul Cycle and Tibot, there was Battle Creek Sanitarium,
founded in eighteen sixty six in Battle Creek, Michigan. The
sanitarium wasn't a mental health facility like we're used to
seeing today. Back then, the word sanitarium was a variation
on the word sanatorium, which came to define a health
resort for injured soldiers. It had been owned and operated
(05:45):
by the Seventh day Adventists, the denomination of Protestants who
believed in healthy living straight from the Good Book. No meat,
no shellfish, and definitely no alcohol or tobacco were allowed.
It was strict, but some people believed it was also beneficial.
Strangely enough, not a whole lot of people went for
that sort of thing. Battle Creek started small, with no
(06:08):
more than a hundred patients in the beginning, but when
Dr John Harvey arrived at the turn of the century,
he wanted to change all of that. Under Dr John's leadership,
he quickly grew the sanitarium's meager attendants from one hundred
to over seven thousand patients, with a staff of over
eight hundred assisting at any given time. He turned Battle
Creek into a well oiled machine dedicated to making lives
(06:32):
better for a nominal fee. Of course, John was himself
a Seventh day Adventist, and as part of his theology,
believed strongly in the churches, pushed towards vegetarianism and away
from sin. In order to achieve the latter, he developed
what was referred to as a bland diet, consisting mostly
(06:52):
of yogurt's, nuts, peanut butter, and starches. A bland diet
was the key to abstinence in his mind, brought on
by the lack of stimulation of the taste buds. Patients
at Battle Creek were also encouraged to take part in
various activities to aid in their recoveries, in light therapy,
afternoon marches around the premises to assist with digestion, and
(07:16):
even regular enemus. John believed the root of all evil
in the body was bacterial toxins, and his combination of
a bland diet with rigorous exercise was meant to help
clear all of that nastiness right out. While he ran
Battle Creek, John filed patents for several inventions that would
help those who stayed there, including a radiant heat bath,
(07:38):
massage tools, and exercise equipment. He made numerous strides and
medical devices under what he called physiotherapy, but there was
something missing, something from the other side of the equation.
He'd done all he could for the patients physically, but
now he needed to revolutionize their diets. The idea had
(07:59):
come to him in a dream one night. It was
for a new kind of bread, one that would be
easier to chew at breakfast when people had just woken up.
The following day, John walked down to the kitchen and
mixed a dough made of wheat, oats, and corn. What
came out wasn't very appetizing, and he left it there
for a few days while attending to sanitarium business. When
(08:21):
he came back, the mixture had hardened and John almost
threw it out, But then he had another idea. Rather
than waste all of that food, he rolled it out
and baked it, and what he ended up with were
crispy little flakes. John had stumbled onto something big here.
So big it would go on to spawn an entire
new category of food, the breakfast cereal. It just so
(08:45):
happened that John Harvey Kellogg had invented corn flakes. But
the story doesn't end there. Just when Kellogg's corn flakes
had hit the sanitarium's breakfast tables, a down on his
luck businessman sought out Dr Kelly to help cure his
chronic health problems. This businessman, inspired by the doctor's delicious
(09:06):
new breakfast cereal, returned home with ambitions of his own.
While his first product, a serial beverage called post Them,
didn't do so well, his sophomore endeavor was a huge hit.
It was called grape Nuts, named for the fruity aroma
given off during the manufacturing process, and its creator C. W.
(09:27):
Post had inadvertently kicked off what would be known for
decades as the serial wars. 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
(09:50):
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 learn all
about it over at the world of Lore dot com.
And until next time, stay curious. H
Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities News
Host
Aaron Mahnke
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