October 1, 2024 • 9 mins
It's often difficult to tell of stories are curious because of the people who inhabit them, or the wild deeds those people performed. We'll let you be the judge today.
Pre-order the official Cabinet of Curiosities book by clicking here today, and get ready to enjoy some curious reading this November!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Aaron Menke'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 Halls of American History team with legendary folk heroes
from Johnny Appleseed to Paul Bunyan and John Henry. But
for the people of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, one figure
stands above the rest. His name was Snowshoe Thompson, a
Norwegian American postman who delivered mail in the Sierra Nevadas
during the mid nineteenth century. During that period of Western expansion,
(00:59):
hundreds of thousands of Americans crossed the mountains to seek
their fortunes in California, but virtually all of those pioneers
only made the journey once, and many, like the infamous
Donner Party, never even made it to their destination at all.
Snowshoe Thompson, though, crossed the Sierras more often than anyone
could count. As a mail carrier for the US Post Office,
(01:22):
he braved remote mountain passes unreachable by freight train and
too dangerous for the pony Express. He looked like a
hero straight out of a Norse myth, six feet tall,
with a thick blonde beard and striking blue eyes. He
could often be seen streaking through the mountains on his
massive skis, way down by a sack of letters. His
(01:42):
friends knew that Snowshoe's story was as American as they come.
He was born in Norway in eighteen twenty seven and
emigrated to America with his mother when he was ten.
They lived in a Norwegian immigrant settlement, first in Illinois
and then in Missouri, and then in eighteen fifty one,
at the age of twenty four, he headed west to California,
where he briefly tried his hand at prospecting gold mining,
(02:06):
though frustrated him, and four years later he was starting
to despair that he would never be a success. Then
one day he read a story in a Sacramento newspaper.
The US Post Office wanted to establish a mail delivery
line through the mountains, but was struggling to find anyone
brave and athletic enough to do the work involved. Thompson
(02:26):
headed straight there and applied for the job. He made
his first trek as a postman in eighteen fifty six
during the dead of winter, and he never looked back.
Navigating these Sierra Nevadas was difficult, but it seemed like
Snowshoe had been born for it. To make travel easier,
he crafted long, wooden skis, similar to the kind that
he would use in Norway back as a boy. Like
(02:48):
John Henry's hammer, These skis soon gained legendary status. People
said that they were ten feet long, six inches wide,
and weighed twenty five pounds apiece. Meanwhile, stories about the
mail carrying the Northmen proliferated throughout the mountains. According to
his most famous tale, Snowshoe once encountered a prospector trapped
inside a snow covered cabin. The man's feet were frozen
(03:10):
solid with frostbites, leaving him in excruciating pain and unable
to walk. The mail would have to wait. Snowshoe quickly
gathered some firewood and built a fire in the cabin's hearth.
Once the injured man was as comfortable as could be expected,
he set off for Genoa, a mountain town near Lake Tahoe.
Once there, he gathered a team of six men and
(03:31):
raced back to the cabin. The fire had started to
dwindle by then, but the prospector was still alive. Snowshoe
and his companions loaded him onto a makeshift sled and
hurried back to Genoa. Doctors examined the prospector's feet and
concluded that there was no saving them. The frost bite
was severe and they had to be amputated before ganggreen
set in. There was just one problem. No doctor in
(03:55):
the area had the chloroform they needed to perform the surgery.
It was another job for Snowshoe Thompson. The mailman hopped
on his skis and raced a Sacramento for the chloroform,
then hurried back to Genoa in time to save the
prospector's life. By the time all was said and done,
he had traveled over four hundred miles on skis through
(04:15):
mountainous terrain in the dead of winter, and he wasn't
done just yet. Saving the prospector had cost him a
few days, which meant that Snowshoe Thompson now had a
lot of lost time to make up before the prospector
or the doctor has got the chance to even thank him.
He took a skiz and his mail bag and headed
back out into the freshly falling snow. Standing in an
(04:51):
airfield in Guymon, Oklahoma, William mcboyle scanned the skies. It
was nineteen twenty six, and he was waiting anxiously for
the sign that his grand scheme was going according to plan.
And then suddenly he saw it, a smudge on the
horizon growing closer. Just minutes later, he smiled as his
pilot landed the small plane safely on the airstrip. Phase
(05:13):
one of their plan had worked. William's pilot had taken
a passenger plane from an airfield in Ottawa, Illinois, nearly
nine hundred miles away without getting caught. Now it was
time for phase two, make the swap. William went over
his instructions with the pilot as the man climbed into
another plane. This one was similar to the first, but
(05:34):
much worse for wear. All the pilot had to do
was fly back to Ottawa's airfield, leave this inferior plane
on the airstrip, and the plane's owners would never be
the wiser, or at least by the time they discovered
what had happened. Both pilot and plane would be long gone.
William watched as the decoy plane raced down the runway
and climbed high into the sky. It was the perfect crime,
(05:56):
at least it would have been if William's pilot hadn't crashed.
The police showed up at his door. Soon after. William
discovered their foolproof plot wasn't so foolproof after all, He
and the pilot were under arrest. William mcboyle and his
pilot were tried and convicted in federal court for violating
the National Motor Vehicle Theft Act. According to the court,
(06:18):
William had knowingly transported a stolen motor vehicle over state lines.
It would have been an open and shut case too,
if not for a clever legal argument and a brand
new technology. You see, William's lawyers appealed with a bold
new tactic. Yes, they said William had taken a plane
that was not his, and yes he had transported it
(06:39):
across state lines, but none of that mattered because legally speaking,
a plane was not a motor vehicle and there was
no federal law against stealing planes. Now, you have to remember,
at this point in history, nineteen twenty six, airplanes were
a new technology. Just twenty three years earlier, Wilbur and
Orville Wright had made the first successful man and flight.
(07:00):
In the year since, people had just started to test
the limits of airplanes. Until nineteen twenty six, when this
theft occurred, planes were small and practical. They came into
play during World War One as fighters and spies. After
the war, planes were mainly used in air shows, where
pilots competed for speed and distance records. Most planes were
(07:20):
not large enough to transport much heavy cargo, and the
first commercial flights were still decades away. To put this
incident into context, William mcboyle stole this plane exactly one
year before Charles Lindberg became an international celebrity for completing
the first solo transatlantic flight. In light of this, mcboyle's
lawyers argued that the National Motor Vehicle Theft Act was
(07:44):
too narrowly written to include this new technology. The law
described a motor vehicle as I quote here automobile, motorcycle,
or any other self propelled vehicle not designed for running
on rails. This argument brought the case all the way
up to the Supreme Court, where, after much deliberation, the
justices actually agreed with mcboyle. According to Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes,
(08:08):
an airplane did not fit the definition of a motor
vehicle as stated by the National Motor Vehicle Theft Act.
Similar laws and cases had been decided on the assumption
that this dev vehicle had to be one that traveled
across land. Other laws specifically excluded planes as motor vehicles.
Since there was no other federal law expressly forbidding the
(08:30):
theft of planes, mcboyle could not be convicted. Technically speaking,
stealing a plane was not against federal law. Now that's
not to say that stealing in general was legal at
the time, but grand larceny, which might cover stealing, say,
a plane, is a state law. Mcboyle was charged federally,
and once he was free, neither Illinois nor Oklahoma really
(08:53):
wanted to charge him. Mcboyle gained his freedom through a
fluke of federal law. The law wouldn't be amended until
nineteen forty five, when the statute was changed to specifically
include airplanes. This became especially important as commercial passenger flights
became more common in the nineteen fifties, but none of
that mattered to mcboyle after pulling off a high flying
(09:16):
heist like that nothing could bring him down. 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
(09:38):
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 Menke'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 Halls of American History team with legendary folk heroes
from Johnny Appleseed to Paul Bunyan and John Henry. But
for the people of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, one figure
stands above the rest. His name was Snowshoe Thompson, a
Norwegian American postman who delivered mail in the Sierra Nevadas
during the mid nineteenth century. During that period of Western expansion,
(00:59):
hundreds of thousands of Americans crossed the mountains to seek
their fortunes in California, but virtually all of those pioneers
only made the journey once, and many, like the infamous
Donner Party, never even made it to their destination at all.
Snowshoe Thompson, though, crossed the Sierras more often than anyone
could count. As a mail carrier for the US Post Office,
(01:22):
he braved remote mountain passes unreachable by freight train and
too dangerous for the pony Express. He looked like a
hero straight out of a Norse myth, six feet tall,
with a thick blonde beard and striking blue eyes. He
could often be seen streaking through the mountains on his
massive skis, way down by a sack of letters. His
(01:42):
friends knew that Snowshoe's story was as American as they come.
He was born in Norway in eighteen twenty seven and
emigrated to America with his mother when he was ten.
They lived in a Norwegian immigrant settlement, first in Illinois
and then in Missouri, and then in eighteen fifty one,
at the age of twenty four, he headed west to California,
where he briefly tried his hand at prospecting gold mining,
(02:06):
though frustrated him, and four years later he was starting
to despair that he would never be a success. Then
one day he read a story in a Sacramento newspaper.
The US Post Office wanted to establish a mail delivery
line through the mountains, but was struggling to find anyone
brave and athletic enough to do the work involved. Thompson
(02:26):
headed straight there and applied for the job. He made
his first trek as a postman in eighteen fifty six
during the dead of winter, and he never looked back.
Navigating these Sierra Nevadas was difficult, but it seemed like
Snowshoe had been born for it. To make travel easier,
he crafted long, wooden skis, similar to the kind that
he would use in Norway back as a boy. Like
(02:48):
John Henry's hammer, These skis soon gained legendary status. People
said that they were ten feet long, six inches wide,
and weighed twenty five pounds apiece. Meanwhile, stories about the
mail carrying the Northmen proliferated throughout the mountains. According to
his most famous tale, Snowshoe once encountered a prospector trapped
inside a snow covered cabin. The man's feet were frozen
(03:10):
solid with frostbites, leaving him in excruciating pain and unable
to walk. The mail would have to wait. Snowshoe quickly
gathered some firewood and built a fire in the cabin's hearth.
Once the injured man was as comfortable as could be expected,
he set off for Genoa, a mountain town near Lake Tahoe.
Once there, he gathered a team of six men and
(03:31):
raced back to the cabin. The fire had started to
dwindle by then, but the prospector was still alive. Snowshoe
and his companions loaded him onto a makeshift sled and
hurried back to Genoa. Doctors examined the prospector's feet and
concluded that there was no saving them. The frost bite
was severe and they had to be amputated before ganggreen
set in. There was just one problem. No doctor in
(03:55):
the area had the chloroform they needed to perform the surgery.
It was another job for Snowshoe Thompson. The mailman hopped
on his skis and raced a Sacramento for the chloroform,
then hurried back to Genoa in time to save the
prospector's life. By the time all was said and done,
he had traveled over four hundred miles on skis through
(04:15):
mountainous terrain in the dead of winter, and he wasn't
done just yet. Saving the prospector had cost him a
few days, which meant that Snowshoe Thompson now had a
lot of lost time to make up before the prospector
or the doctor has got the chance to even thank him.
He took a skiz and his mail bag and headed
back out into the freshly falling snow. Standing in an
(04:51):
airfield in Guymon, Oklahoma, William mcboyle scanned the skies. It
was nineteen twenty six, and he was waiting anxiously for
the sign that his grand scheme was going according to plan.
And then suddenly he saw it, a smudge on the
horizon growing closer. Just minutes later, he smiled as his
pilot landed the small plane safely on the airstrip. Phase
(05:13):
one of their plan had worked. William's pilot had taken
a passenger plane from an airfield in Ottawa, Illinois, nearly
nine hundred miles away without getting caught. Now it was
time for phase two, make the swap. William went over
his instructions with the pilot as the man climbed into
another plane. This one was similar to the first, but
(05:34):
much worse for wear. All the pilot had to do
was fly back to Ottawa's airfield, leave this inferior plane
on the airstrip, and the plane's owners would never be
the wiser, or at least by the time they discovered
what had happened. Both pilot and plane would be long gone.
William watched as the decoy plane raced down the runway
and climbed high into the sky. It was the perfect crime,
(05:56):
at least it would have been if William's pilot hadn't crashed.
The police showed up at his door. Soon after. William
discovered their foolproof plot wasn't so foolproof after all, He
and the pilot were under arrest. William mcboyle and his
pilot were tried and convicted in federal court for violating
the National Motor Vehicle Theft Act. According to the court,
(06:18):
William had knowingly transported a stolen motor vehicle over state lines.
It would have been an open and shut case too,
if not for a clever legal argument and a brand
new technology. You see, William's lawyers appealed with a bold
new tactic. Yes, they said William had taken a plane
that was not his, and yes he had transported it
(06:39):
across state lines, but none of that mattered because legally speaking,
a plane was not a motor vehicle and there was
no federal law against stealing planes. Now, you have to remember,
at this point in history, nineteen twenty six, airplanes were
a new technology. Just twenty three years earlier, Wilbur and
Orville Wright had made the first successful man and flight.
(07:00):
In the year since, people had just started to test
the limits of airplanes. Until nineteen twenty six, when this
theft occurred, planes were small and practical. They came into
play during World War One as fighters and spies. After
the war, planes were mainly used in air shows, where
pilots competed for speed and distance records. Most planes were
(07:20):
not large enough to transport much heavy cargo, and the
first commercial flights were still decades away. To put this
incident into context, William mcboyle stole this plane exactly one
year before Charles Lindberg became an international celebrity for completing
the first solo transatlantic flight. In light of this, mcboyle's
lawyers argued that the National Motor Vehicle Theft Act was
(07:44):
too narrowly written to include this new technology. The law
described a motor vehicle as I quote here automobile, motorcycle,
or any other self propelled vehicle not designed for running
on rails. This argument brought the case all the way
up to the Supreme Court, where, after much deliberation, the
justices actually agreed with mcboyle. According to Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes,
(08:08):
an airplane did not fit the definition of a motor
vehicle as stated by the National Motor Vehicle Theft Act.
Similar laws and cases had been decided on the assumption
that this dev vehicle had to be one that traveled
across land. Other laws specifically excluded planes as motor vehicles.
Since there was no other federal law expressly forbidding the
(08:30):
theft of planes, mcboyle could not be convicted. Technically speaking,
stealing a plane was not against federal law. Now that's
not to say that stealing in general was legal at
the time, but grand larceny, which might cover stealing, say,
a plane, is a state law. Mcboyle was charged federally,
and once he was free, neither Illinois nor Oklahoma really
(08:53):
wanted to charge him. Mcboyle gained his freedom through a
fluke of federal law. The law wouldn't be amended until
nineteen forty five, when the statute was changed to specifically
include airplanes. This became especially important as commercial passenger flights
became more common in the nineteen fifties, but none of
that mattered to mcboyle after pulling off a high flying
(09:16):
heist like that nothing could bring him down. 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
(09:38):
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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