April 9, 2024 • 10 mins
The two tales on display in the Cabinet today are sure to inspire curiosity—one due to wonder, and another because of mystery.
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
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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):
Walk around New York City today and you're surrounded by
a feast for the senses. You might hear sidewalk conversations
or a subway car rumbling underfoot. You might also smell
peanuts roasting on the stand on the corner, and you'll
definitely see massive buildings reaching towards the sky overhead. Oh
and cars, lots of cars, spewing exhaust into the air
(00:58):
and honking at all hours while the eats clog up.
New York City today can feel almost clustrophobic with everything
going on around us. But it wasn't always like this.
Once upon a time, it looked a lot different. Eighteen
hundreds of New York was just becoming the hustling, bustling
metropolis it is today. The streets were packed with horse
drawn carriages and pedestrians. Stores lined the avenues, selling all
(01:21):
kinds of goods before long chain coffee shops and fast
food places took over. But even though the city was
growing and evolving, it still faced the same problem as
every city in America. The weather. Summers were blisteringly hot,
and winters in New York were especially hard to face.
Feet of snow would bring everything to a halt, but
(01:42):
New Yorkers didn't let flurries and blizzards slow them down.
If anything, they got faster. In January of eighteen thirty,
the bitter cold had led to inches of snow coating
the ground, trees, and storefronts. Over the following days, that
blanket of white would get crushed and compacted until it
was hard and flatten to walk on, but most of
the time people would use another means of transportation to
(02:04):
get around. That month, Scottish politician James Stewart came to
visit and saw firsthand how the locals dealt with the snow.
The New York Carnival began and the beautiful, light looking
slaves made their appearance. He wrote, he watched as people
strapped horses to their slaves and took to the streets,
zooming through Manhattan, and I quote at the rate of
(02:26):
ten or twelve miles an hour. You see, until the
end of the nineteenth century, men, women and children took
advantage of the otherwise harsh conditions, making the best of them.
These carnivals lasted for hours, but most people ventured out
between three and five PM. During those times, thousands of
Manhattan residents would steer their slaves through the city. Central
(02:47):
Park was one of the most popular locations, and people
used whatever they had available to dash through the snow.
There were even public slaves like buses that would pull
groups of people all at a time. But eventually New
York realized that the carnivals needed a little friendly competition.
In the late eighteen hundreds, the city's streets were transformed
into racetracks for sleigh races. Small models called cutters would
(03:11):
fly through the upper avenues with the wind whipping the
faces of the people handling them. But despite the dangerous
speeds achieved by racers, the press called these contests something
deceptively calm, trotting races, which doesn't sound fast or furious.
In December of eighteen sixty nine, dozens of racers set
out to prove themselves after a major snowstorm. An article
(03:34):
in the New York Herald described them as and I quote,
Roman chariots spitting flakes of snow in their wake as
they careened across Harlem. Local businesses also got in on
the action. McGowan's Pass Tavern on one hundred and fourth
Street held a yearly race for anyone who wanted to participate.
Winners were given a bottle of champagne every year until
the tavern was torn down in nineteen fifteen. Unfortunately, as
(03:58):
New York continued to expand and formalized throughout the nineteenth century,
both the carnivals and the sleigh races faded out of fashion.
These events had helped city dwellers past the dreary winter
months with ease. After all, it was hard to stay
sad when every fresh snow meant another chance to beat
your neighbor to the finish line. The advent of the automobile, though,
(04:18):
brought all of that to an end, because it was
hard to navigate a sleigh through Boston around all of
those cars. Today, tourists and couples can take a horse
drawn carriage ride on demand, enjoying a scenic trot through
Central Park, but little do they know that over one
hundred years before, that peaceful outing might have looked and
sounded very different with a lot more snow and a
(04:39):
lot less traffic. Lighthouses are contradictory places for lost ships.
They signal the safety a home shore at the same
(05:01):
time they warn of dangers hidden beneath the seas. Their
symbols of civilization on a deserted sea. And yet, for
the lighthouse keepers on the remote Flannin Isles off of Scotland,
their job kept them far away from the rest of society.
That kind of isolation was hard to get used to.
As you might imagine, the keepers quickly found that when
something strange happened, there was no one they could tell,
(05:23):
and when something went terribly horribly wrong, there was no
one to hear them scream. On December twenty sixth of
nineteen hundred, the crew of the small ship Hesperus approached
the lighthouse on Alan Moore, the largest of the Flannin Isles.
The ship had been delayed several days by a storm,
but it had finally arrived to relieve the three lighthouse
keepers stationed on the island. The crew was surprised when
(05:45):
no one came out to greet them. The captain of
the Hesperus blew his ship's whistle and even fired off
a firecracker to alert the keepers, but James Duckett, Thomas Marshall,
and Donald MacArthur were nowhere to be seen. Inside the lighthouse,
it felt as if the three Missa keepers had only
just stepped out. Their beds weren't made, and there was
half eaten food left out in the kitchen. The door
(06:06):
was unlocked and a chair was found overturned. The oil
in the lamps was full, but the clock had stopped,
and while two of their heavy oilskin raincoats were missing,
the third was hanging right there by the door. The
clues the relief team found inside didn't offer much more enlightenment.
A box of supplies near the western boat landing had
been smashed and its contents were strewn about the shore.
(06:28):
Iron railings had been wrenched out of their concrete bases.
Even a one ton boulder had moved to a new
resting place. But most unusual were the last three entries
the keepers had left in the log book. On December twelfth,
fourteen days before the hespers had arrived, Keeper Thomas Marshall
had recorded a storm. According to him, there were and
I quote severe winds, the likes of which I have
(06:50):
never seen before in twenty years. He also noted that
keeper William MacArthur had been crying. This entry concerned the
crew of the Hespers for two reasons. For one thing,
William MacArthur had a reputation as a tough man who
loved to fight. Crying was out of the ordinary for him.
For another, according to reports from the nearby coast, the
logbook was wrong. There was no storm on December twelfth
(07:13):
of nineteen hundred. Thomas Marshall's entry the next day on
December thirteenth noted that the storm was still raging and
the three keepers had taken to praying for it to end. Finally,
on December fifteenth, he wrote the last entry in the
logbook storm ended. See calm God is over All. All
of this left the Northern Lights Board, which managed the
(07:34):
lighthouse there with a mystery. They had the pieces of
the puzzle, but no clear solution. As news of the
keeper's disappearance came to light, speculation ran rampant. Some people
familiar with William MacArthur's quick temper wondered whether he suffered
a violent outburst and murdered his two companions. Not wanting
to face the consequences of what he had done, he
(07:54):
somehow dumped the bodies in the sea and escaped or
jumped into the waves himself. Believed that the sea wasn't
to blame. They hadn't been taken by the natural world,
but by something supernatural. Flann and Isle was named after
Saint Flannin, a sixth century Irish bishop who built a
church on the island, and according to legend, even Saint
Flannin himself wouldn't stay there past nightfall due to the
(08:17):
evil spirits that ran amok after sundown. Superstitious people thought
that it must have been those dark forces that kidnapped
the three lighthouse keepers. Without evidence, these speculations were hard
to prove. It didn't help that investigators from the Northern
Lighthouse Board were missing their biggest clue, the lighthouse keepers themselves.
The three men's bodies had never been found. With the
(08:38):
facts they had on hand, the board came to the
following conclusion. During a storm on the island, strong winds
or waves must have caused extreme damage to the western
landy Duckett and Marshall had grabbed their oilskins and left
to go secure their supplies when a freak wave dragged
them into the sea. MacArthur grew worried and followed them,
going against lighthouse board rules to keep one keeper in
(08:59):
the lighthouse at all times. He must have been so
panicked he left his coat behind. When he reached the landing,
he too fell into the sea and was lost. We
may never discover what really happened in December of nineteen
hundred on that small isolated island. Searching for the answers
is a bit like holding up a lantern in a cave.
Sometimes the brighter you shine the light, the deeper the
(09:22):
shadows grow. 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
(09:45):
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 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):
Walk around New York City today and you're surrounded by
a feast for the senses. You might hear sidewalk conversations
or a subway car rumbling underfoot. You might also smell
peanuts roasting on the stand on the corner, and you'll
definitely see massive buildings reaching towards the sky overhead. Oh
and cars, lots of cars, spewing exhaust into the air
(00:58):
and honking at all hours while the eats clog up.
New York City today can feel almost clustrophobic with everything
going on around us. But it wasn't always like this.
Once upon a time, it looked a lot different. Eighteen
hundreds of New York was just becoming the hustling, bustling
metropolis it is today. The streets were packed with horse
drawn carriages and pedestrians. Stores lined the avenues, selling all
(01:21):
kinds of goods before long chain coffee shops and fast
food places took over. But even though the city was
growing and evolving, it still faced the same problem as
every city in America. The weather. Summers were blisteringly hot,
and winters in New York were especially hard to face.
Feet of snow would bring everything to a halt, but
(01:42):
New Yorkers didn't let flurries and blizzards slow them down.
If anything, they got faster. In January of eighteen thirty,
the bitter cold had led to inches of snow coating
the ground, trees, and storefronts. Over the following days, that
blanket of white would get crushed and compacted until it
was hard and flatten to walk on, but most of
the time people would use another means of transportation to
(02:04):
get around. That month, Scottish politician James Stewart came to
visit and saw firsthand how the locals dealt with the snow.
The New York Carnival began and the beautiful, light looking
slaves made their appearance. He wrote, he watched as people
strapped horses to their slaves and took to the streets,
zooming through Manhattan, and I quote at the rate of
(02:26):
ten or twelve miles an hour. You see, until the
end of the nineteenth century, men, women and children took
advantage of the otherwise harsh conditions, making the best of them.
These carnivals lasted for hours, but most people ventured out
between three and five PM. During those times, thousands of
Manhattan residents would steer their slaves through the city. Central
(02:47):
Park was one of the most popular locations, and people
used whatever they had available to dash through the snow.
There were even public slaves like buses that would pull
groups of people all at a time. But eventually New
York realized that the carnivals needed a little friendly competition.
In the late eighteen hundreds, the city's streets were transformed
into racetracks for sleigh races. Small models called cutters would
(03:11):
fly through the upper avenues with the wind whipping the
faces of the people handling them. But despite the dangerous
speeds achieved by racers, the press called these contests something
deceptively calm, trotting races, which doesn't sound fast or furious.
In December of eighteen sixty nine, dozens of racers set
out to prove themselves after a major snowstorm. An article
(03:34):
in the New York Herald described them as and I quote,
Roman chariots spitting flakes of snow in their wake as
they careened across Harlem. Local businesses also got in on
the action. McGowan's Pass Tavern on one hundred and fourth
Street held a yearly race for anyone who wanted to participate.
Winners were given a bottle of champagne every year until
the tavern was torn down in nineteen fifteen. Unfortunately, as
(03:58):
New York continued to expand and formalized throughout the nineteenth century,
both the carnivals and the sleigh races faded out of fashion.
These events had helped city dwellers past the dreary winter
months with ease. After all, it was hard to stay
sad when every fresh snow meant another chance to beat
your neighbor to the finish line. The advent of the automobile, though,
(04:18):
brought all of that to an end, because it was
hard to navigate a sleigh through Boston around all of
those cars. Today, tourists and couples can take a horse
drawn carriage ride on demand, enjoying a scenic trot through
Central Park, but little do they know that over one
hundred years before, that peaceful outing might have looked and
sounded very different with a lot more snow and a
(04:39):
lot less traffic. Lighthouses are contradictory places for lost ships.
They signal the safety a home shore at the same
(05:01):
time they warn of dangers hidden beneath the seas. Their
symbols of civilization on a deserted sea. And yet, for
the lighthouse keepers on the remote Flannin Isles off of Scotland,
their job kept them far away from the rest of society.
That kind of isolation was hard to get used to.
As you might imagine, the keepers quickly found that when
something strange happened, there was no one they could tell,
(05:23):
and when something went terribly horribly wrong, there was no
one to hear them scream. On December twenty sixth of
nineteen hundred, the crew of the small ship Hesperus approached
the lighthouse on Alan Moore, the largest of the Flannin Isles.
The ship had been delayed several days by a storm,
but it had finally arrived to relieve the three lighthouse
keepers stationed on the island. The crew was surprised when
(05:45):
no one came out to greet them. The captain of
the Hesperus blew his ship's whistle and even fired off
a firecracker to alert the keepers, but James Duckett, Thomas Marshall,
and Donald MacArthur were nowhere to be seen. Inside the lighthouse,
it felt as if the three Missa keepers had only
just stepped out. Their beds weren't made, and there was
half eaten food left out in the kitchen. The door
(06:06):
was unlocked and a chair was found overturned. The oil
in the lamps was full, but the clock had stopped,
and while two of their heavy oilskin raincoats were missing,
the third was hanging right there by the door. The
clues the relief team found inside didn't offer much more enlightenment.
A box of supplies near the western boat landing had
been smashed and its contents were strewn about the shore.
(06:28):
Iron railings had been wrenched out of their concrete bases.
Even a one ton boulder had moved to a new
resting place. But most unusual were the last three entries
the keepers had left in the log book. On December twelfth,
fourteen days before the hespers had arrived, Keeper Thomas Marshall
had recorded a storm. According to him, there were and
I quote severe winds, the likes of which I have
(06:50):
never seen before in twenty years. He also noted that
keeper William MacArthur had been crying. This entry concerned the
crew of the Hespers for two reasons. For one thing,
William MacArthur had a reputation as a tough man who
loved to fight. Crying was out of the ordinary for him.
For another, according to reports from the nearby coast, the
logbook was wrong. There was no storm on December twelfth
(07:13):
of nineteen hundred. Thomas Marshall's entry the next day on
December thirteenth noted that the storm was still raging and
the three keepers had taken to praying for it to end. Finally,
on December fifteenth, he wrote the last entry in the
logbook storm ended. See calm God is over All. All
of this left the Northern Lights Board, which managed the
(07:34):
lighthouse there with a mystery. They had the pieces of
the puzzle, but no clear solution. As news of the
keeper's disappearance came to light, speculation ran rampant. Some people
familiar with William MacArthur's quick temper wondered whether he suffered
a violent outburst and murdered his two companions. Not wanting
to face the consequences of what he had done, he
(07:54):
somehow dumped the bodies in the sea and escaped or
jumped into the waves himself. Believed that the sea wasn't
to blame. They hadn't been taken by the natural world,
but by something supernatural. Flann and Isle was named after
Saint Flannin, a sixth century Irish bishop who built a
church on the island, and according to legend, even Saint
Flannin himself wouldn't stay there past nightfall due to the
(08:17):
evil spirits that ran amok after sundown. Superstitious people thought
that it must have been those dark forces that kidnapped
the three lighthouse keepers. Without evidence, these speculations were hard
to prove. It didn't help that investigators from the Northern
Lighthouse Board were missing their biggest clue, the lighthouse keepers themselves.
The three men's bodies had never been found. With the
(08:38):
facts they had on hand, the board came to the
following conclusion. During a storm on the island, strong winds
or waves must have caused extreme damage to the western
landy Duckett and Marshall had grabbed their oilskins and left
to go secure their supplies when a freak wave dragged
them into the sea. MacArthur grew worried and followed them,
going against lighthouse board rules to keep one keeper in
(08:59):
the lighthouse at all times. He must have been so
panicked he left his coat behind. When he reached the landing,
he too fell into the sea and was lost. We
may never discover what really happened in December of nineteen
hundred on that small isolated island. Searching for the answers
is a bit like holding up a lantern in a cave.
Sometimes the brighter you shine the light, the deeper the
(09:22):
shadows grow. 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
(09:45):
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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