Downpour

Some truths are too odd to believe, and some beliefs aren't rooted entirely in truth.

 

Order the official Cabinet of Curiosities book by clicking here today, and get ready to enjoy some curious reading!

 

 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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):
It was a clear spring day in eighteen seventy six,
and Missus Crouch was outside in the front yard of
her home making soap. She took a gray scoop of
lye from the barrel to her right and added it
to the kettle over a fire in front of her,
And then she reached over to her left and cut
off a big white piece of hog fat from the
block she had placed there. She then added this to

(00:57):
the kettle as well, and then started to stir. And
as she watched the solution boil, she thought that it
looked like it could use a bit more animal fat.
She reached her hand back over to the table, but
was shocked when a mysterious red, gelatinous substance suddenly splattered
against the top of her hand, staining the white animal
fat beneath. Now, at first she thought that she might

(01:18):
have been injured somehow, or that someone, maybe her husband,
was throwing some sort of food at her. When she
looked around, though, there was nobody in sight. But what
she did see made her stomach churn more. Red globs
of mysterious substance were falling all over her yard. They
smacked against the fence, the porch, and the roof with
a sickening squelch. And they weren't being thrown, No, they

(01:41):
were falling from the sky. Now I have to pause
for a moment, for just a little bit of housekeeping.
In a turn that was sadly really typical for her era,
missus Crouch's first name was never recorded, so just for today,
for this story, to lend her a bit more humanity,
let's call her Margaret. It was a very common name
at the time, and if her husband can have a

(02:03):
first name, well then so can she. Right, So back
to the strange shower. It only lasted a few seconds
and it was over before Margaret could even think to
run inside. As soon as the red globs stopped falling, though,
she called out for her husband Alan, because honey, he
was not going to believe this, But the red globs
were too many and too large, about two to four

(02:25):
inches across to ignore. Alan called up some of his friends,
and soon enough there were several people from town in
their yard trying to identify the mysterious substance. Most people
thought that it looked like red meat. In fact, two
young men there were brave enough to even eat some
of it, and they said that it tasted a bit
like venison. Of course, Margaret and Alan weren't about to

(02:46):
go that far. Instead, they preserve some of the substance
in a jar, and they sent it off to a
man named Leopold brandeis Now his credentials are lost to time,
but it seems that he was somehow a member of
the scientific community. He analyzed the substance, which at this
point had turned a dark color, and put forth the
explanation that it was nostoc, a type of bacteria that

(03:07):
blooms when it rains. The only problem with this explanation
is that it hadn't been raining at the time of
the event. The stuff literally was raining down by itself.
It was also reddish when it first fell before drying out.
Gnostic is always a dark green, and it doesn't fall
from the sky. Although that was a common misconception in
ancient times. Basically, Leopold Brandeis was providing an easy explanation

(03:32):
from an unrelated phenomenon, but he still did play an
important role in the story because he sent samples of
the substance to two different histologists, which is a type
of doctor that studies tissue. According to them, the samples
were definitely animal remains. However, the odd thing was that
the different samples appeared to be from different animals and
different body parts. There was lung tissue, cartilage, muscle, fiber.

(03:56):
Some was probably from a horse, but it was hard
to tell. But that was enough for one of the
doctors to reach a different conclusion. He believed the substance
was partially digested meat regurgitated from an animal's stomach, and
since it had come from the sky, his theory was
that it had been regurgitated by a vulture. Now, for
those of you who love weird niche facts that are

(04:18):
fun to bring out at parties, this one is a
doozy is he. Vultures are known to spit up their
food when they're startled or when they need to become
lighter for flight. They're also sympathetic vomitters, meaning that if
the group sees one vomit, the others will follow suit.
Looking back, it seems that Margaret simply got really lucky
that day out in the yard. There was apparently a

(04:39):
group of vultures flying overhead, and they all sympathetically vomited
on her after eating a big meal of dead horse.
And yes, that also means that those two neighbors of
hers sampled vulture vomit. Today the event is known as
the Kentucky meat Shower, quite possibly the single most descriptively
gross title in all of history, all because a few

(05:01):
vultures happened to lose their lunch. I guess what they
say is true. What goes up must come down in
more ways than one. It was November twenty second of

(05:26):
seventeen eighteen on an island off the coast of North Carolina.
The sounds of cannon and musket fire filled the air.
Within a small inlet, a pirate ship called the Adventure
was beset by a pair of Royal Navy sloops. The
skirmish that followed would be one of the most iconic
and pirate history. The captain of the Adventure, a guy
named Edward Teach was slain on deck along with around

(05:49):
a dozen of his men. Now, those that were not
killed during the fight would stand trial for piracy. Their leader,
who went by the name Blackbeard, was infamous for taking parts,
would be steep among the men put on trial with
someone whose existence still frustrates historians to this day, a
sailor of African descent who went by the name Caesar.

(06:12):
According to Captain Charles Johnson's book A General History of
the Pirates, Caesar was left in the hold by Teach
during the fighting, and he was given a match and
told to ignite the ship's gunpowder stores if they lost
the battle. Prisoners kept nearby in the Adventures brig implored
Caesar to stay his hand, and so he did. It

(06:33):
seems that Caesar was not the sort of man who
threw his life away on the orders of his captain.
No matter how fearsome Blackbeard might have been, he was
a legend in his own right, one that would be
memorialized in Florida folklore centuries after his death. He was
known by the moniker Black Caesar, and it said that
he left a vast trove of silver in the area

(06:54):
that is now Biscayne National Park. One of the rivers,
Caesar Creek, was named for him, as was Caesar Rock
and imposing boulder at the end of the creek. According
to history, Caesar was once a chiefs in back in Africa.
Like many of his family, he found himself captured by
slave traders during the voyage across the Atlantic. However, his

(07:14):
ship was struck by a storm off the coast of Florida,
which provided Caesar the opportunity to escape on a longboat.
He and one other man were the only survivors. Using
weapons they'd taken from the ship, the two men started
a career of piracy. They would pretend to be shipwrecked
sailors and then break out their muskets and cutlasses when
a ship attempted to rescue them. Carried out in this

(07:37):
small Florida channel, it was less like the daring scenes
that we might imagine in pirate fiction and more like
basic highway robbery. Over the many years, their wealth began
to grow, and so too did their ambitions. More men
joined their enterprise and their ship became a bigger one.
In turn, Caesar and his original partner in piracy would
have a falling out some years later, leaving Caesar to

(07:59):
go to a lie for many years to come. But
if Florida lore is to be believed, he did very
well by himself. He had a whole island as well,
where he eventually buried his treasure. So how did such
an enterprising, successful pirate wind up in the bottom of
Edward Teach's hold in seventeen eighteen. Well, that's the thing
that Vex's historians. It's very likely that he didn't. There

(08:22):
is no historical evidence to corroborate the existence of Black
Caesar as a fearsome solo pirate who had escaped enslavement.
The man who joined Blackbeard's crew was most likely a
slave himself whose enslaver happened to join up with Teacher's
crew out of curiosity. He was in the wrong place
at the wrong time. Fortunately, by the time the rest

(08:43):
of Blackbeard's crew was sentenced to hang, this man, whatever
his real name was, was acquitted of piracy. He subsequently
vanishes from the historical record, and the name Black Caesar
would then later appear in early twentieth century as the
hero of a pirate novel. Trust spots in Florida began
spreading the legend, and soon it overtook the lack of facts.

(09:05):
The Golden Age of piracy was in some ways a
reflection of how we want to see history. Most of
the men who became household names led extremely short careers
and died in disgrace. It would take centuries for brief
criminal conspiracies to turn into the stuff of legend. Black Caesar,
even if he did or did not exist, represents an

(09:27):
aspirational view of this period of time. Many African men
could not go home after they'd been taken by enslavers,
and thus had to find the best circumstances they could.
Service on a pirate ship meant that they could vote,
had an equal share of treasure and a certain degree
of protection in the form of a common enemy. Sadly,
most of these men's names are lost to time. But

(09:49):
if history leaves us gaps, it's the role of folklore
to fill those in. It's a common human impulse yearning
for underdog stories that we can root for, swashbuck tales
that ignites our imaginations and remind us that empires do
not rule our hearts, even when they control the Seven Seas.

(10:13):
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
with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show
called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show,

(10:35):
and you can learn all about it over at the
Worldoflore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.