April 21, 2022 • 9 mins
For our 400th episode, we take you on a fun and bizarre tour of hidden things. Trust us, though...it's not what you think. Thanks for listening, and stay curious!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcomed Aaron Mankey's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of iHeart
Radio and Grim 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):
World War Two saw the use of numerous deception tactics
from both sides. For example, British forces used playing cards
that peeled the way to reveal escape maps. They also
hid pistols in everyday objects like pens and smoking pipes,
while hiding knives in things like pencils. And of course,
there were coded messages, falsified communic case and countless other
(00:57):
methods for fooling the enemy overseas. But back home in
the United States things were trickier. Everyone knows about the
rubber and scrap drives to collect the necessary material for
building planes and other supplies, while war bond sales helped
finance operations in the first place, but when it came
to building the planes themselves, America needed to keep things
on the down low, far from the prying eyes of
(01:19):
the enemy, and to do that they constructed the aircraft
in Seattle, Washington. Now Seattle is situated on the Puget Sound,
an estuary leading out into the Pacific Ocean. It's not
exactly safe from battleships, submarines, or fighter planes, but that
was where aerospace Corporation Boeing had set up shop in
nineteen o six. They were responsible for building B fifty
(01:41):
two s and B seventeen bombers, producing as many as
three hundred of the ladder each month by NINT. But
in order to keep up with the demand of the
United States military, Boeing needed to expand its first plant,
creatively called Plant One. Was a bit behind the times,
so the company old out twenty six acres of land
(02:01):
in Seattle to accommodate a brand new production facility, as
well as a town for its workers to live in.
The new plant, called Plant To, incorporated more modern amenities
with state of the art assembly lines to keep things
moving smoothly and efficiently, and the town itself was also
quite impressive, with well manicured lawns and monitored houses. The
(02:22):
streets even had tongue in cheek names like synthetic streets,
and from a distance it looked like any other town.
And that was the point, because despite its unassuming appearance,
it was never meant to be lived in. In fact,
if anyone got close to it, they might have noticed
that the houses were a bit too small and unfinished,
the streets were a little too narrow, and the trees, well,
(02:43):
they didn't really have any leaves on their branches. You see,
Boeing hadn't actually built a suburb for its workers. It
was just a clever disguise for an airplane plant which
resided forty ft below. MGM Art director John Debtley had
been hired in nineteen forty who to help the company
fabricated town to hide their operations. Debtlely had worked on
(03:04):
films like Another Thin Man starring William Powell and Myrna Loyd,
as well as the Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney film
Strike Up the Band. He was very familiar with building
convincing movie sets, and this would be his best and
most important work. Yet. He and his team got to
work mocking the houses just over half the size of
normal homes, and he only built their shells. The dwellings
(03:26):
weren't furnished or even finished. They were shaped like suburban
homes and that was enough. The grass was made of
burlap and canvas, which was also used to rig up
some three trees. To make the canopies of those trees,
he covered chicken wire and tar, and then coated the
wire with chicken feathers to give the tree tops the
appearance of being leaf covered. They were then spray painted green. Meanwhile,
(03:48):
below the faux streets of Wonderland, as it was called,
thirty thousand men and women kept things running, working tirelessly
to produce B seventeens, B twenty nine super fortresses, B
forty ovens, and more. And the event that enemy planes
managed to reach the West coast looking to attack the plant,
the only thing pilots would see was just another quaint
(04:08):
American suburb, all thanks to debt Le's Hollywood handiwork. Luckily,
the fake town was never attacked. Boeing continued to produce
planes there throughout the duration of the war without interruption. Afterward,
the false houses and trees were dismantled, while the plant
below them continued to be used through the Cold War.
It was finally all torn down in two thousand ten,
(04:30):
and for the fake town and the factory it sat upon, that,
as they say in Hollywood, was a rap. Some traditions
(04:50):
have logical origins. For example, we put candles on birthday
cakes because the ancient Greeks did it. Their cakes, though,
were made as an offering to Artemis, the god a
of hunting and the moon. One theory was that the
lip candles gave the kek a hazy glow like a
full moon in the night sky. Another idea was that
the smoke from the blown out candles would carry a
(05:11):
person's wishes up to heaven, where Artemis would be able
to hear them. But not all traditions are like those
of the ancient Greeks. Some just can't be explained no
matter how much we try, and one such custom happens
to be one of the most bafflingly wild activities ever conceived.
No one is exactly sure how it started. Some claim
that coal miners in the nineteen seventies invented it, while
(05:34):
some historians believe it was developed by hunters way back
in the fifth century. You see, back then, rabbits, moles,
and other critters would hide in underground burrows, making it
difficult for the hunters to find them, so they would
send another animal into the tunnels to root them out
a ferret. In fact, that's how we get the modern
phrase to ferret something out. But by the Middle Ages,
(05:55):
ferreting had become illegal. Now, of course, illegal activities back then,
just as they are today, were only illegal to those
who couldn't get away with them. So in order to
keep using ferrets, hunters would sneak them past the game wardens.
And how do you smuggle a long furry rodent into
a restricted area Why in your pants. Of course, after
(06:16):
that the practice changed into something entirely different. How exactly well,
those details are a bit fuzzy, but it became a
sport called ferret legging. The rules are quite simple. A
competitor stands before a panel of judges with his pants
tied at the ankles. He then places two ferrets inside
his trousers and tightens his belt at the waist to
(06:36):
keep them from getting out. The goal, and yes, I
promise there is a goal here, is to last the
longest as the ferrets clamber from one leg to the other.
None of the ferrets may be sedated, and they must
have all of their teeth and claws intact. Oh, and
the competitors aren't allowed to wear underwear. Among the earliest
(06:57):
players of the game were coal miners in Yorkshire, England
are in the nineteen seventies. It also found popularity among
drunk patrons at pubs looking to gamble on absurd barroom shenanigans,
which honestly doesn't surprise me in the least now. At first,
contestants could only last about forty seconds before having to
remove the ferrets. Eventually they were able to stand the
(07:18):
sensation for over a minute and even go as long
as an hour and a half. But according to the
record books, the longest a person has been able to
last with ferrets in his pants a sentence even I
never thought I'd have to say out loud, is about
five and a half hours. That man's name was Regg
Miller from Barnsley, South Yorkshire. He had originally hoped for
(07:39):
six hours, having gotten used to keeping ferrets in his
pants as a child. He would catch them and store
them in his trousers while working outside in the rain
so that they stayed safe and warm. On July five,
one Red stood in front of an audience of twenty people.
Hour after hour, he calmly allowed the ferrets to travel
(07:59):
from one leg of his pants to the other in
search of an exit they would never find. It. Took
five and a half hours, but they finally gave up.
Not the ferrets, mind you, the audience. They got so
bored by his attempt they just got up and walked out.
The stage was torn down with Redge still standing there,
ferrets still in pantst until the record keepers just called it.
(08:22):
He had beaten the original time, but he hadn't reached
his goal of six hours, just shy of it at
five hours and twenty six minutes. As the years went on,
ferret legging, like the bell bottoms, the animals that had
been contained inside fell out of style. Although from two
thousand three to two thousand nine it was actually part
of the Richmond Highland Games and Celtic Festival in Richmond, Virginia,
(08:45):
it was a sports unlike any other and its existence
made no sense. But for those who played it, ferret
legging was a solid test of their endurance, their tolerance
for pain, and of course how much they'd had to drink.
Curious you better believe it. I hope you've enjoyed today's
(09:09):
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 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
(09:31):
about it over at the World of Lore dot com.
And until next time, stay curious.
Welcomed Aaron Mankey's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of iHeart
Radio and Grim 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):
World War Two saw the use of numerous deception tactics
from both sides. For example, British forces used playing cards
that peeled the way to reveal escape maps. They also
hid pistols in everyday objects like pens and smoking pipes,
while hiding knives in things like pencils. And of course,
there were coded messages, falsified communic case and countless other
(00:57):
methods for fooling the enemy overseas. But back home in
the United States things were trickier. Everyone knows about the
rubber and scrap drives to collect the necessary material for
building planes and other supplies, while war bond sales helped
finance operations in the first place, but when it came
to building the planes themselves, America needed to keep things
on the down low, far from the prying eyes of
(01:19):
the enemy, and to do that they constructed the aircraft
in Seattle, Washington. Now Seattle is situated on the Puget Sound,
an estuary leading out into the Pacific Ocean. It's not
exactly safe from battleships, submarines, or fighter planes, but that
was where aerospace Corporation Boeing had set up shop in
nineteen o six. They were responsible for building B fifty
(01:41):
two s and B seventeen bombers, producing as many as
three hundred of the ladder each month by NINT. But
in order to keep up with the demand of the
United States military, Boeing needed to expand its first plant,
creatively called Plant One. Was a bit behind the times,
so the company old out twenty six acres of land
(02:01):
in Seattle to accommodate a brand new production facility, as
well as a town for its workers to live in.
The new plant, called Plant To, incorporated more modern amenities
with state of the art assembly lines to keep things
moving smoothly and efficiently, and the town itself was also
quite impressive, with well manicured lawns and monitored houses. The
(02:22):
streets even had tongue in cheek names like synthetic streets,
and from a distance it looked like any other town.
And that was the point, because despite its unassuming appearance,
it was never meant to be lived in. In fact,
if anyone got close to it, they might have noticed
that the houses were a bit too small and unfinished,
the streets were a little too narrow, and the trees, well,
(02:43):
they didn't really have any leaves on their branches. You see,
Boeing hadn't actually built a suburb for its workers. It
was just a clever disguise for an airplane plant which
resided forty ft below. MGM Art director John Debtley had
been hired in nineteen forty who to help the company
fabricated town to hide their operations. Debtlely had worked on
(03:04):
films like Another Thin Man starring William Powell and Myrna Loyd,
as well as the Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney film
Strike Up the Band. He was very familiar with building
convincing movie sets, and this would be his best and
most important work. Yet. He and his team got to
work mocking the houses just over half the size of
normal homes, and he only built their shells. The dwellings
(03:26):
weren't furnished or even finished. They were shaped like suburban
homes and that was enough. The grass was made of
burlap and canvas, which was also used to rig up
some three trees. To make the canopies of those trees,
he covered chicken wire and tar, and then coated the
wire with chicken feathers to give the tree tops the
appearance of being leaf covered. They were then spray painted green. Meanwhile,
(03:48):
below the faux streets of Wonderland, as it was called,
thirty thousand men and women kept things running, working tirelessly
to produce B seventeens, B twenty nine super fortresses, B
forty ovens, and more. And the event that enemy planes
managed to reach the West coast looking to attack the plant,
the only thing pilots would see was just another quaint
(04:08):
American suburb, all thanks to debt Le's Hollywood handiwork. Luckily,
the fake town was never attacked. Boeing continued to produce
planes there throughout the duration of the war without interruption. Afterward,
the false houses and trees were dismantled, while the plant
below them continued to be used through the Cold War.
It was finally all torn down in two thousand ten,
(04:30):
and for the fake town and the factory it sat upon, that,
as they say in Hollywood, was a rap. Some traditions
(04:50):
have logical origins. For example, we put candles on birthday
cakes because the ancient Greeks did it. Their cakes, though,
were made as an offering to Artemis, the god a
of hunting and the moon. One theory was that the
lip candles gave the kek a hazy glow like a
full moon in the night sky. Another idea was that
the smoke from the blown out candles would carry a
(05:11):
person's wishes up to heaven, where Artemis would be able
to hear them. But not all traditions are like those
of the ancient Greeks. Some just can't be explained no
matter how much we try, and one such custom happens
to be one of the most bafflingly wild activities ever conceived.
No one is exactly sure how it started. Some claim
that coal miners in the nineteen seventies invented it, while
(05:34):
some historians believe it was developed by hunters way back
in the fifth century. You see, back then, rabbits, moles,
and other critters would hide in underground burrows, making it
difficult for the hunters to find them, so they would
send another animal into the tunnels to root them out
a ferret. In fact, that's how we get the modern
phrase to ferret something out. But by the Middle Ages,
(05:55):
ferreting had become illegal. Now, of course, illegal activities back then,
just as they are today, were only illegal to those
who couldn't get away with them. So in order to
keep using ferrets, hunters would sneak them past the game wardens.
And how do you smuggle a long furry rodent into
a restricted area Why in your pants. Of course, after
(06:16):
that the practice changed into something entirely different. How exactly well,
those details are a bit fuzzy, but it became a
sport called ferret legging. The rules are quite simple. A
competitor stands before a panel of judges with his pants
tied at the ankles. He then places two ferrets inside
his trousers and tightens his belt at the waist to
(06:36):
keep them from getting out. The goal, and yes, I
promise there is a goal here, is to last the
longest as the ferrets clamber from one leg to the other.
None of the ferrets may be sedated, and they must
have all of their teeth and claws intact. Oh, and
the competitors aren't allowed to wear underwear. Among the earliest
(06:57):
players of the game were coal miners in Yorkshire, England
are in the nineteen seventies. It also found popularity among
drunk patrons at pubs looking to gamble on absurd barroom shenanigans,
which honestly doesn't surprise me in the least now. At first,
contestants could only last about forty seconds before having to
remove the ferrets. Eventually they were able to stand the
(07:18):
sensation for over a minute and even go as long
as an hour and a half. But according to the
record books, the longest a person has been able to
last with ferrets in his pants a sentence even I
never thought I'd have to say out loud, is about
five and a half hours. That man's name was Regg
Miller from Barnsley, South Yorkshire. He had originally hoped for
(07:39):
six hours, having gotten used to keeping ferrets in his
pants as a child. He would catch them and store
them in his trousers while working outside in the rain
so that they stayed safe and warm. On July five,
one Red stood in front of an audience of twenty people.
Hour after hour, he calmly allowed the ferrets to travel
(07:59):
from one leg of his pants to the other in
search of an exit they would never find. It. Took
five and a half hours, but they finally gave up.
Not the ferrets, mind you, the audience. They got so
bored by his attempt they just got up and walked out.
The stage was torn down with Redge still standing there,
ferrets still in pantst until the record keepers just called it.
(08:22):
He had beaten the original time, but he hadn't reached
his goal of six hours, just shy of it at
five hours and twenty six minutes. As the years went on,
ferret legging, like the bell bottoms, the animals that had
been contained inside fell out of style. Although from two
thousand three to two thousand nine it was actually part
of the Richmond Highland Games and Celtic Festival in Richmond, Virginia,
(08:45):
it was a sports unlike any other and its existence
made no sense. But for those who played it, ferret
legging was a solid test of their endurance, their tolerance
for pain, and of course how much they'd had to drink.
Curious you better believe it. I hope you've enjoyed today's
(09:09):
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 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
(09:31):
about it over at the World of Lore dot com.
And until next time, stay curious.
Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities News
Host
Aaron Mahnke
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