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Curiosity does not always prevent us from seeing the truth. For many, it's just another way to sell a lie. Let's see how this works on today's tour through the Cabinet.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Aaron Manky's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
iHeartRadio 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):
We don't often think about the impacts our jobs have
on the wider world around us. A truck driver delivering
meat to a grocery store isn't aware that she might
be contributing to the inhumane factory farming industry. The oil
rig worker doesn't understand his role in climate change either.
It's not their fault. They aren't to blame for these things.
It's just the nature of the world in which we live.

(00:58):
Every choice we make comes with sequences, no matter how
big or small. The Cauldron Girls of Oak Ridge, Tennessee,
couldn't begin to fathom what their work would eventually lead to.
All they wanted to do was help the war effort.
When America entered World War Two, many men of fighting
age were sent overseas. They left their homes and families

(01:18):
behind to take on an immensely evil power, and that
meant their partners were left to take care of themselves
and make ends meet. And so in nineteen forty four,
thousands of young women in need of work flocked to
the city of oak Ridge, Tennessee. A new facility had
recently opened up, called the Y twelve Electromagnetic Isotopes Separation Plant,

(01:38):
run by the Tennessee Eastman Company. The women were trained
to do very specific tasks while working there. They would
turn dials, monitor gauges, and keep tabs on mass spectrometers
called cauldrons, which had been specifically developed for the separation
of uranium two thirty five from uranium two thirty eight,
which had been mined out of the ground. Cauldrons combined

(02:01):
uranium and chlorine, creating a new compound called uranium tetrac chloride.
That compound was then ionized and placed inside a special
vacuum chamber where it was surrounded by a magnetic field.
In other words, the women employed at Y twelve were
responsible for enriching uranium. None of them had any extensive

(02:21):
education in physics or chemistry, and not a single one
ever laid eyes on a mass spectrometer before they were there.
For one reason and one reason, only because they were
not scientists. You see, these young women were better suited
to the task of enriching uranium because of their lack
of expertise. They had been trained only to watch the
meters and adjust the dials accordingly. At the time, most

(02:44):
of the men were off fighting, so scientists were scarce.
But also it was believed that if the male scientists
had been put in charge of the cauldrons, they would
have spent their time trouble shooting errors and messing with
the dials, rather than focusing on the enrichment of the
uranium itself. Of course, there was also quite a bit
of misogyny behind this thinking. The women who were hired
were often farm girls, chosen because they were believed to

(03:07):
follow directions without question, and that was the most difficult
part of the whole operation. Separating uranium isotopes was easy.
Keeping an inquisitive mind at bay that was hard. Many
women wanted to know why they were adjusting the dials
and watching the gauges, and those who asked too many
questions were removed without hesitation. One woman who had tried

(03:29):
to find out more about her role at oak Ridge
was disappeared without hesitation. The Tennessee Eastman Company told the
other girls in her dorm that she had and I
quote died from drinking some poisoned moonshine. And so the
less they knew about their jobs, the better off they'd be.
That was probably a good thing, too, because if the
women had known why they were enriching uranium, they might

(03:52):
have quit anyway. The uranium harvested from Y twelve was
eventually inserted into a special kind of device, the kind
that reigned death and destruction on whatever it touched. This
device was then loaded onto a Boeing B twenty nine
super fortress named Enola Gay, which was flown over the
Japanese city of Hiroshima on August sixth, nineteen forty five.

(04:14):
The Cauldron Girls had no idea their work was instrumental
in creating the Little Boy atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima
and killed over seventy thousand people. All they wanted to
do was support the war efforts overseas. They just didn't
count on what that support would cost. It's something a

(04:46):
few of us have probably thought about, the idea that
we can start over, change who we are, and begin
a new chapter in our lives. Or more accurately, begin
our lives over again. It's happened before. In the sixt century,
there lived a French peasant by the name of Martin Gere.
He'd been married with a son when he suddenly vanished
in fifteen forty eight. Eight years later, gare reappeared ready

(05:09):
to be welcomed back by the family that he had
left behind. Except this wasn't actually gare It was an impostor,
and he was eventually hanged for his deceit. The story
of Martin Gere has inspired films, books, and even a musical,
but his story was surprisingly not unique. Something similar happened
again several hundred years later in Victorian England. It started

(05:31):
with a family, a very wealthy and well known family
known as the Titchbourn's. They had been a part of Hampshire,
England since at least the eleventh century, and for the
most part had stayed loyal to the British Crown, although
one family member did go rogue in the sixteenth century
and plotted to assassinate the Queen. Despite that one hiccup, though,
Benjamin Titchbourne was made a baronet in sixteen twenty one

(05:53):
and the family enjoyed the perks of nobility from then on.
In eighteen twenty nine, Benjamin's descendant, Roger Tichbourne, was born.
He was raised in Paris and enjoyed a childhood in
the lap of luxury, studying at the finest schools across
Europe and growing up with a French accent despite speaking
fluent English. When he was twenty four years old, Roger
embarked on a voyage to South America by himself. He

(06:16):
landed in Valparaiso on the Chilean coast in eighteen fifty three.
Several months after the start of his trip, he received
a communication that his uncle had passed away, allowing his
father to succeed to the baronetcy. Following this news, Roger
spent the next ten months traveling throughout South America, eventually
crossing the Andes Mountains in eighteen fifty four. But his

(06:38):
travels would soon be cut short because in April of
that year, Roger was met with an unfortunate twist of fate.
He had a book passage to Jamaica on a ship
called the Bella. It set sail on the twentieth of April,
but its capsized remains were discovered only four days later.
There was no one on board. It was presumed that
Roger Tichbourne had died in the wreck. There was a

(07:00):
possibility that survivors had been scooped out of the water
by another ship, but that was nothing more than a rumor,
a taste of hope in a hopeless situation. The family
was told that Roger had perished. Several years later, his father,
Sir James, also passed away. Roger was meant to take
over the baronetcy, but the title went to his younger
brother Alfred instead. Alfred hemorrhaged the family's fortune, nearly bankrupting

(07:24):
them in a handful of years. While their mother consulted
with clairvoyance for a sign that Roger might still be alive.
She took out newspaper ads all over the world, hoping
that someone somewhere might know something. While in October of
eighteen sixty five she got her answer, three years after
Roger had been declared dead, an Australian man named Arthur

(07:45):
Cubitt informed her that her son was actually alive. He
was a rotund butcher working down under going by the
name of Thomas Castro. It didn't matter that his hair
was different, that he couldn't speak French, and that his
accent was gone. This man could be her son, so
she arranged to have him sent to London in eighteen
sixty six. Castro got to know the Titchborns and their

(08:08):
associates quite well, many of whom vouched for his identity.
After spending some time with them. His mother, Lady Titchborne,
was no different. She and the rest of the family
welcomed him in with Oakland arms, and Castro made good
use of his time with them. He asked them all
kinds of questions about the family, Roger's upbringing, and other
details that he could use to jog his memory, well,

(08:30):
not really jog his memory, but rather pad his portfolio
of lies to feed the Titchborns. You see. Some of
those in the family's inner circle weren't convinced by Castro's performance,
so they did some digging, and they found out that
Thomas Castro was actually London born Arthur Orton. Orton had
been in Chile just like Roger, and knew enough to

(08:51):
tell Lady Titchborne all about his adventures as though he
were her son. After the matriarch's death in eighteen sixty eight,
Orton went to court to prove his identity and claimed
the Titchborne Fortune, and despite all the evidence to convince
them that he was not, in fact, Roger Tichborne, Orton
managed to get nearly one hundred people to testify on
his behalf. His story, though, fell apart when he was

(09:14):
asked to speak French. The real Roger could speak it fluently,
this impostor could not. After a year long trial, Orton's
case was tossed out and he was subsequently arrested for perjury,
of which he was found guilty. The trial was so
newsworthy Mark Twain himself came to court a few times
to watch as well. Orton served ten years in prison

(09:35):
for his crimes and died penniless. But that wasn't the
end of his story, because even though his tale of
identity theft inspired films like The Titchborne Claimant, it also
influenced one of the most notable episodes of television ever crafted.
It aired in nineteen ninety seven and told the story
of a stranger arriving at Springfield Elementary with a bold

(09:56):
claim that he was the real principal, Seymour Skinner. Over
the course of the episode, it was revealed that the
principal Skinner that audiences and his mother had come to
love over the eight previous seasons was in fact a
man named Arman Tamsarian, proving yet again that art often
imitates life, even when that art is The Simpsons. I

(10:23):
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 Mank in partnership with how
Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore,
which is a podcast, book series, and television show, and

(10:45):
you can learn all about it over at the World
of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.