Danger, Will Robinson

The best thing to do in a dangerous situation is to stay cool. Together, today's tales will give you all that and more.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Aaron Manke'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 are right there on display, just
waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.

(00:36):
The world is full of danger. That much is undeniable.
Some human beings are actually drawn to risk, skydiving, free climbing,
chasing tornadoes. The list goes on and on. There's an
excitement to putting yourself at risk, an adrenaline joke that
reminds someone of what it's like to be alive. And then,
of course, there are people who feel the opposite impulse

(00:57):
to minimize risk at every opportunity, unity, to whom the
simple act of leaving the house is a decision fraught
with considerations. What either category of person might not understand, though,
is that we have tools to measure danger that are
extremely specific. Just like how we measure earthquake intensity or
measure radioactivity, there are also tools that have been developed

(01:18):
specifically to measure general peril. One such tool is known
as the Duckworth Scale. Frank Duckworth began his career as
a scientist in the nuclear power industry, but that's not
where his passions lay. His passions were in statistics. After
the Chernobyl disaster in the mid nineteen eighties, he devised
a scale for measuring this sort of catastrophe, officially called

(01:41):
the International Nuclear Event Scale. This measures nuclear disasters on
a scale of one to seven, one being an anomaly
and seven being a major accident. Now, the purpose of
the scale was actually to calibrate media response and to
help prevent news outlets from overreacting should a minor anomaly occur.
He took early retirement in nineteen ninety two, but he

(02:03):
would continue to develop formulas to apply statistics to everyday life.
As a side note, five years later, in nineteen ninety seven,
he would become famous for co developing the Duckworth Lewis method,
a mathematical formula to calculate ideal cricket scores. It's still
used today by cricket statisticians. But after cricket, he began
to turn his mathematical skills to something a bit more universal,

(02:27):
risk assessment. Using data taken from the British Medical Journal
the man who developed the criterion for nuclear disaster severity,
developed the scale of his own for measuring general danger.
Similar to the Richter scale for earthquakes. The Duckworth scale
is logarithmic in nature, essentially a scale based on orders
of magnitude. The Duckworth scale measures a given activity over

(02:49):
time and how likely it'll be to cause death. The
scale measures each activity from a zero to an eight.
For instance, Russian roulette with six bullets is an as
on the Duckworth scale, meaning certain death. A train journey
of one hundred miles lands very low on the scale
at a point three. This leads to some curious statistical oddities, though,

(03:10):
like the fact that vacuum cleaning and washing up carries
a higher Duckworth's scale number five point five than the
average risk of getting murdered four point six. So what
do we do with these numbers now that we have them? Well,
humans are pattern seeking creatures, but we aren't earthquakes. After all,
the usefulness of this scale has likely faded over time.

(03:30):
After all, the statistics that doctor Duckworth pulled from likely
aren't still accurate over twenty five years later. They're mostly
useful as a reminder, human beings are more than just
statistics of their most common activities. And while you could
become intimidated by the high numbers of smoking cigarettes or
a lifetime of rock climbing six point nine and six

(03:51):
point three, respectively, these numbers provide more than just reasons
to never leave your house. After all, it can be
strangely comforting to see how low certain activities. A flight
of over one hundred miles ranks at a mere one
point seven lower than driving the same distance, or even
lower than taking an average fairground ride, which scores a
solid two point zho. And look, people die every day,

(04:13):
and they are always doing something when they pass away,
whether it's something as mundane is going for a walk,
or as thrilling as deep sea diving. The Duckworth scale
shows us that the possibilities are nearly endless, not just
in how people die, but in how people live. And
as always, it's much more curious to be a statistical anomaly.

(04:46):
Imagine it's a sweltering summer day in the Victorian English countryside.
The air is hot and heavy, the bees are buzzing
in the heather, and you're sweating through your petticoats. Today
to cool down, you might reach for a tall, cool
glode of water. Back then, it was much the same.
The only difference there was the ice, specifically where the
ice came from. It wasn't like the Victorians could reach

(05:09):
into their ice maker and grab a few cubes instead.
Back then, ice was big business, and in the days
before refrigeration, most of the ice that chilled drinks and
preserve food from England to Australia all came from one
single lake. Before the early eighteen forties, ice was a
family affair across the United States and in England. When

(05:29):
local streams and ponds froze in the winter, people would
harvest ice from them and store it in special ice
houses packed in salt and straw. The ice would mostly
last until summer, when it was used to keep food
from spoiling in the heat. However, this hyper local way
of harvesting ice really only benefited the people who lived
near the source, and the quality of the ice depended

(05:52):
on the lake or the stream that it was harvested from.
Some bodies of water weren't exactly the cleanest, which could
cause problems as the contaminated ice melted and then got
into the food. Seeing an opportunity. Some ice companies sprang
up shipping their frozen goods to other countries, but the
ice business really didn't take off until eighteen forty two,
when two guys, Charles Lander and Henry Ropes, launched the

(06:15):
Wenham Lake Ice Company. Wenham Lake is a stream fed
body of water in northeastern Massachusetts. The ice produced by
the lake in the winter was so pure it was
thought to be able to last in high temperatures without melting.
With the lake's location close to the port of Boston,
Ropes and Landers saw an opportunity, so in eighteen forty
two they started building an ice empire. They crafted state

(06:39):
of the art ice houses and their own personal railroad
all to ferry those frosty blocks back and forth. And
when they launched their first ice ship into the sea,
they struck the jackpot. Sure, they lost a good portion
of their inventory along the way, but when the rest
of it reached England, France, and even Australia, the cold
cargo sold like hotcakes. Now part of this was branding.

(07:01):
Wenham Lake Ice built itself as pure while it insinuated
local British ice was dirty. The company had a display
in a London Street merchant's window with a two foot
solid block of ice sitting in front of a newspaper.
The ice was so clear that shoppers could read the
newsprint right through it. Local ice just couldn't compete. Within

(07:22):
a few short years, ice went from a finite local
luxury to a widespread necessity. It was used in hospitals
to keep milk from spoiling and to treat sunstroke. Butchers
and fishmongers used it to preserve their wares. Brewers used
it to make their beer, and it became a core
part of the home as well. People began putting ice
in drinks to cool them and using ice boxes to

(07:44):
keep butter and milk fresh. They began making iced desserts,
churning Wenham Lake ice with cream and sugar to make
ice cream, pudding, custard, and all sorts of frozen delicacies.
Ice wasn't just cool, it was a way of life,
and Wenham Lake was the ultimate name and luxury ice.
Queen Victoria even awarded the company a royal warrant to

(08:06):
supply ice to the palace. Of course, it wasn't long
before other companies tried to get in on the action.
While Wenham Lake ice was seen as the highest quality.
People also imported ice from other places in Boston and
from Norway, which led to a curious phenomenon. To get
in on the luxury ice market share, one company in
Norway did something drastic. They renamed Opaguard Lake near Oslo

(08:28):
to Lake Wenham so that they could export their own
Wenham Lake ice. Ice continued to be big business through
most of the Victorian era, with Wenham Lake and Boston
area ice seen as the best, but it finally came
to a halt with the rise of a new technology.
Beginning in the eighteen fifties, several different commercial methods for
creating ice took off. While people were still buying natural ice,

(08:51):
mass produced ice slowly became the main market. By nineteen thirteen,
the home refrigerator had been invented, and by the late
nineteen twenties it was popular enough that nearly everyone can
make ice in their own homes. Wennam Lake's name may
have melted into history, but the story of the Victorian's
favorite ice remains refreshingly cool. I hope you've enjoyed today's

(09:16):
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 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

(09:38):
about it over at the Worldoflore dot com. And until
next time, stay curious.