June 12, 2025 • 10 mins
Big pranks and even bigger mistakes have left us with a pair of curious tales for today's trip through the Cabinet.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
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.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Today we take the stock market as a given. Every
developed nation has one, and anyone with extra cash sees
it as a good idea to invest. It allows startup
companies to grow quickly, and it allows the middle class
to have a retirement fund. But at the end of
the day, it's all about perceived value. How much the
market aka human beings thinks something is worth. And when
(00:58):
that perceived value it proves to be way off from
the actual value of a stock, well, then we call
that a bubble. One of the first examples of this
happened over three hundred years ago, and when it burst,
it almost took all of England with it. In the
early seventeen hundreds, England already wasn't doing so great. The
monarchs of Europe conducted wars like they were a regular
(01:20):
part of doing business, and England had racked up quite
a bit of debt from all the fighting. On top
of all of this, there was still quite a bit
of fighting over the English monarchy itself. Politician John Aisleby,
along with several of his fellow politicians, formed a committee
to address the national debt. At first, they conducted several lotteries,
just like the ones we have today, where participants pay
(01:41):
a small amount on the tiny chance that they'll win
a huge sum. The government takes some of the profits
and then uses them how it sees fit, such as
paying off the national debt. But this was too slow
a solution for England's significant financial woes, and so the
politicians turned to another scheme. You see, large private banks
were a relatively new development in England. They were sometimes
(02:03):
still called companies back then, and it was around this
time that members of Parliament decided to create a company
of their own, the South Sea Company, which would take
advantage of a new peace agreement signed with Spain in
seventeen thirteen. And what would their investment be well, human trafficking.
The company purchased an agreement from the English Crown granting
them exclusive rights to the slave trade with Spanish colonies
(02:27):
in Central and South America. They expected this to be
hugely profitable, and so they would sell shares in the
company in order to consolidate the national debt. In other words,
they paid investors who England was indebted to with shares
in the south Sea company, promising them shares that would
grow in value over time. To be even more clear,
here Parliament was betting the entire national debt on their
(02:50):
ability to sell human beings to Spain. They were very
literally putting the country's burden on the backs of African slaves.
It was a new wrinkle in a century's long pat
of horrific abuse. The members of Parliament were so lacking
in empathy that they didn't see anything wrong with pay
off the debt from endless, pointless wars by transferring it
(03:10):
to the labor of innocent Africans who had nothing to
do with any of it. Over the next few years,
they managed to sell around thirty thousand enslaved people to
the Spanish, which is already an incomprehensible amount of pain
and suffering. And yet despite all of that, it wasn't
actually enough to make the company profitable. You see, Spain
limited England to just one ship, a year, and when
(03:33):
that ship arrived in the New World, the human traffickers
were often met with bureaucracy and logistical difficulties that kept
them from turning a profit. And so the south Sea
Company was a failure, but no one seemed willing to
admit it. The company had practically become a money printing machine.
People from all over Europe and all social classes invested
(03:54):
their money and used their shares to inflate their own wealth.
And that's when John Aisleby, the English politician first tasked
with eliminating the debt, joined with other politicians to make
the problem even worse. They proposed a new scheme to
Parliament to have the south Sea Company take over even
more of the national debt. They wanted to inflate their
own wealth by inflating the stock price of the company,
(04:16):
and people went along with it for a few reasons.
For one, many of the members of Parliament were bribed
by aisle B and his cohorts, and for another, aisle
B had made King George the first honorary governor of
the company, giving everyone false confidence. By spring of seventeen twenty,
the stock price for the south Sea Company had inflated
to an incredibly high number, but by September investors began
(04:39):
to realize how worthless the stock really was. The bubble
burst and the price of the stock plummeted. Many members
of the nobility lost a substantial amount of their wealth,
Some even took their own lives as a result, and
there were other consequences as well. As leb was imprisoned,
but only for five months. Of course, the king was
(04:59):
held blame in all of this. He was the first
monarch of the Hanover dynasty, a stable line that had
persisted all the way to the modern day. Parliament wasn't
going to risk another civil war by calling him into question.
So what does it all mean for us? Well, it
goes to show how disastrous it can be when politicians
and financiers neglect their responsibility to the public, and it
(05:21):
showcases the curious tendency of humans to fall victim to
a herd mentality, continuing to invest in something they know
is worthless. It seems that whether you are a peasant
or a king, no one is immune to the lure
of a get rich quick scheme. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
(05:52):
or MIT, is known for a lot of things. World
class professors, cutting edge technology, and some of the best
science engineers and mathematics programs in the world. Want to
go to space or the depths of the ocean, or
get inside an atom, then MIT is the place to be.
But aside from its academics, MIT is also known for
(06:13):
another characteristic. With world class students come world class pranks,
called hacks by the student body. They range from the
whimsical to the wild. Many hacks include the Great Dome,
a neoclassical building topped by, of course, a very large dome.
Over the years, a firetruck, a lunar lander, and an
(06:33):
MIT campus police car have all made their way onto
the top of the building. Other hacks are lighthearted, like
how in two thousand and seven, MIT students dressed the
statue of their rival Harvard University's founder in armour from
the Halo video game series. And sometimes they can get
downright dangerous, like how in the nineteen thirties, five MIT
(06:55):
students set off thermite bombs under a Boston streetcar, welding
the wheels to the rails. Notably, one of those pranksters
later became an MIT dean. Perhaps the most famous hack
at MIT, though, began as a fraternity hazing ritual and
left a lasting mark on the school. It was a
cool October night in nineteen fifty eight when seven Lambda
(07:17):
Kai Alpha pledges arrived at the Harvard Bridge armed with chalk.
They were there for a simple task to put down
markers along the half mile overpass that spanned the Charles
River from Cambridge to Boston. The whole thing was their
pledge master's idea. He, like many MIT students, lived in
Boston proper nearly every day he had crossed the bridge
(07:39):
to get to the MIT campus in Cambridge. He wanted
the markers so that he could easily see how far
he had left to walk, but he didn't want them
to measure in feet or yards. Instead, they would measure
in smoots. What exactly is a smoot, Well, a smoot
is a person Oliver Smoot, to be exact. Oliver was
one of the pledges that and as the shortest member
(08:01):
of the group at five foot seven inches tall, the
pledge master chose him to make measuring the bridge more
labor intensive. On top of that, he reasoned Smoot's name
sounded scientific and ampere measures electrical current, a watt total
power and a smoot distance across the Harvard Bridge, so
that evening these seven pledges set out to measure the bridge.
(08:23):
They had Oliver Smoot lay down, marked the length of
his body, and then moved on. And at first Smoot
was jumping up and moving on to the next spot
on his own, but as the smoot lengths reached into
the hundreds, he grew too tired to do that. His
brothers started picking him up and carrying him to the
next chalk mark. Part Way through, the brothers were forced
to run off the bridge and hide when a Boston
(08:46):
police car rolled by. Once the police lost interest, they
returned to their task. After over an hour and a half,
the brothers made their final chalk mark at Smoot's feet. Together,
they found that the Harvard Bridge stretched three hundred and
sixty four point four smoots long, plus or minus one year. Now.
Even though the measurement known as smoots originated as a
(09:08):
fraternity prank, over the years, they became part of the
city Landakai Alpha repaints the Smoot marks every year. When
the bridge was rebuilt in the nineteen eighties, the contractor
added smoot marks to the sidewalk, and today you can
convert any distance on the Google calculator into Smoots. As
for Oliver himself, his foray into measurement marked the beginning
(09:29):
of a career. He became head of the International Organization
of Standardization, which is the group that sets standard measurements
for scientific research. With each new hack MIT, students hope
to make their mark on history, but after nearly seventy years,
none quite measure up to Oliver Smoot. I hope you've
(09:51):
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, and you can
(10:13):
learn all about it over at the Worldoflore dot com.
And until next time, stay curious.
Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
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.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Today we take the stock market as a given. Every
developed nation has one, and anyone with extra cash sees
it as a good idea to invest. It allows startup
companies to grow quickly, and it allows the middle class
to have a retirement fund. But at the end of
the day, it's all about perceived value. How much the
market aka human beings thinks something is worth. And when
(00:58):
that perceived value it proves to be way off from
the actual value of a stock, well, then we call
that a bubble. One of the first examples of this
happened over three hundred years ago, and when it burst,
it almost took all of England with it. In the
early seventeen hundreds, England already wasn't doing so great. The
monarchs of Europe conducted wars like they were a regular
(01:20):
part of doing business, and England had racked up quite
a bit of debt from all the fighting. On top
of all of this, there was still quite a bit
of fighting over the English monarchy itself. Politician John Aisleby,
along with several of his fellow politicians, formed a committee
to address the national debt. At first, they conducted several lotteries,
just like the ones we have today, where participants pay
(01:41):
a small amount on the tiny chance that they'll win
a huge sum. The government takes some of the profits
and then uses them how it sees fit, such as
paying off the national debt. But this was too slow
a solution for England's significant financial woes, and so the
politicians turned to another scheme. You see, large private banks
were a relatively new development in England. They were sometimes
(02:03):
still called companies back then, and it was around this
time that members of Parliament decided to create a company
of their own, the South Sea Company, which would take
advantage of a new peace agreement signed with Spain in
seventeen thirteen. And what would their investment be well, human trafficking.
The company purchased an agreement from the English Crown granting
them exclusive rights to the slave trade with Spanish colonies
(02:27):
in Central and South America. They expected this to be
hugely profitable, and so they would sell shares in the
company in order to consolidate the national debt. In other words,
they paid investors who England was indebted to with shares
in the south Sea company, promising them shares that would
grow in value over time. To be even more clear,
here Parliament was betting the entire national debt on their
(02:50):
ability to sell human beings to Spain. They were very
literally putting the country's burden on the backs of African slaves.
It was a new wrinkle in a century's long pat
of horrific abuse. The members of Parliament were so lacking
in empathy that they didn't see anything wrong with pay
off the debt from endless, pointless wars by transferring it
(03:10):
to the labor of innocent Africans who had nothing to
do with any of it. Over the next few years,
they managed to sell around thirty thousand enslaved people to
the Spanish, which is already an incomprehensible amount of pain
and suffering. And yet despite all of that, it wasn't
actually enough to make the company profitable. You see, Spain
limited England to just one ship, a year, and when
(03:33):
that ship arrived in the New World, the human traffickers
were often met with bureaucracy and logistical difficulties that kept
them from turning a profit. And so the south Sea
Company was a failure, but no one seemed willing to
admit it. The company had practically become a money printing machine.
People from all over Europe and all social classes invested
(03:54):
their money and used their shares to inflate their own wealth.
And that's when John Aisleby, the English politician first tasked
with eliminating the debt, joined with other politicians to make
the problem even worse. They proposed a new scheme to
Parliament to have the south Sea Company take over even
more of the national debt. They wanted to inflate their
own wealth by inflating the stock price of the company,
(04:16):
and people went along with it for a few reasons.
For one, many of the members of Parliament were bribed
by aisle B and his cohorts, and for another, aisle
B had made King George the first honorary governor of
the company, giving everyone false confidence. By spring of seventeen twenty,
the stock price for the south Sea Company had inflated
to an incredibly high number, but by September investors began
(04:39):
to realize how worthless the stock really was. The bubble
burst and the price of the stock plummeted. Many members
of the nobility lost a substantial amount of their wealth,
Some even took their own lives as a result, and
there were other consequences as well. As leb was imprisoned,
but only for five months. Of course, the king was
(04:59):
held blame in all of this. He was the first
monarch of the Hanover dynasty, a stable line that had
persisted all the way to the modern day. Parliament wasn't
going to risk another civil war by calling him into question.
So what does it all mean for us? Well, it
goes to show how disastrous it can be when politicians
and financiers neglect their responsibility to the public, and it
(05:21):
showcases the curious tendency of humans to fall victim to
a herd mentality, continuing to invest in something they know
is worthless. It seems that whether you are a peasant
or a king, no one is immune to the lure
of a get rich quick scheme. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
(05:52):
or MIT, is known for a lot of things. World
class professors, cutting edge technology, and some of the best
science engineers and mathematics programs in the world. Want to
go to space or the depths of the ocean, or
get inside an atom, then MIT is the place to be.
But aside from its academics, MIT is also known for
(06:13):
another characteristic. With world class students come world class pranks,
called hacks by the student body. They range from the
whimsical to the wild. Many hacks include the Great Dome,
a neoclassical building topped by, of course, a very large dome.
Over the years, a firetruck, a lunar lander, and an
(06:33):
MIT campus police car have all made their way onto
the top of the building. Other hacks are lighthearted, like
how in two thousand and seven, MIT students dressed the
statue of their rival Harvard University's founder in armour from
the Halo video game series. And sometimes they can get
downright dangerous, like how in the nineteen thirties, five MIT
(06:55):
students set off thermite bombs under a Boston streetcar, welding
the wheels to the rails. Notably, one of those pranksters
later became an MIT dean. Perhaps the most famous hack
at MIT, though, began as a fraternity hazing ritual and
left a lasting mark on the school. It was a
cool October night in nineteen fifty eight when seven Lambda
(07:17):
Kai Alpha pledges arrived at the Harvard Bridge armed with chalk.
They were there for a simple task to put down
markers along the half mile overpass that spanned the Charles
River from Cambridge to Boston. The whole thing was their
pledge master's idea. He, like many MIT students, lived in
Boston proper nearly every day he had crossed the bridge
(07:39):
to get to the MIT campus in Cambridge. He wanted
the markers so that he could easily see how far
he had left to walk, but he didn't want them
to measure in feet or yards. Instead, they would measure
in smoots. What exactly is a smoot, Well, a smoot
is a person Oliver Smoot, to be exact. Oliver was
one of the pledges that and as the shortest member
(08:01):
of the group at five foot seven inches tall, the
pledge master chose him to make measuring the bridge more
labor intensive. On top of that, he reasoned Smoot's name
sounded scientific and ampere measures electrical current, a watt total
power and a smoot distance across the Harvard Bridge, so
that evening these seven pledges set out to measure the bridge.
(08:23):
They had Oliver Smoot lay down, marked the length of
his body, and then moved on. And at first Smoot
was jumping up and moving on to the next spot
on his own, but as the smoot lengths reached into
the hundreds, he grew too tired to do that. His
brothers started picking him up and carrying him to the
next chalk mark. Part Way through, the brothers were forced
to run off the bridge and hide when a Boston
(08:46):
police car rolled by. Once the police lost interest, they
returned to their task. After over an hour and a half,
the brothers made their final chalk mark at Smoot's feet. Together,
they found that the Harvard Bridge stretched three hundred and
sixty four point four smoots long, plus or minus one year. Now.
Even though the measurement known as smoots originated as a
(09:08):
fraternity prank, over the years, they became part of the
city Landakai Alpha repaints the Smoot marks every year. When
the bridge was rebuilt in the nineteen eighties, the contractor
added smoot marks to the sidewalk, and today you can
convert any distance on the Google calculator into Smoots. As
for Oliver himself, his foray into measurement marked the beginning
(09:29):
of a career. He became head of the International Organization
of Standardization, which is the group that sets standard measurements
for scientific research. With each new hack MIT, students hope
to make their mark on history, but after nearly seventy years,
none quite measure up to Oliver Smoot. I hope you've
(09:51):
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, and you can
(10:13):
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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