Note by Note

Politics often seem pretty boring, but if you look deep enough, there are always curious notes to them.

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Episode Transcript

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 right there on display, just waiting
for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.

(00:36):
The year was nineteen fifty six, and the West African
city of Accras was alive with music. As the plane
touched down on the tarmac, jubilant crowds began to cheer
and sing the name of the American ambassador. This was
no ordinary diplomat. He was Louis Armstrong, the famous jazz musician.
The US government had recently recruited him to its Jazz

(00:57):
Ambassador program, which aimed to fight the spread out of
communism through music. By sending famous American artists on tours
around the world. They sought to spread America's values and hopefully,
the popularity of its politics. Jazz had been chosen for
two reasons. First, the genre was incredibly popular, and second,
many of the musicians were black. The burgeoning civil rights

(01:19):
movement was causing lots of bad press for America and
the government hoped that promoting black artists might help rehabilitate
its image abroad. Louis Armstrong wasn't particularly interested in that
second part, but he'd never been to Africa before and
saw the trip as an opportunity to connect with his roots.
While he didn't know which part of the continent his
enslaved ancestors came from, he hoped that visiting might spark

(01:42):
some feeling of connection. Meanwhile, Acron was experiencing a unique
cultural moment of its own. In nineteen fifty six. It
was the capital city of the British Gold Coast Colony,
which had been under imperialist rules since the fifteenth century.
Now the country seemed to be on the brink of independence.
The peace could sense change on the horizon, and there

(02:02):
was a strange, jubilant excitement in the air. A visit
from an American musician as popular as Louis Armstrong offered
a much needed opportunity to celebrate, so the moment he
stepped off the plane, the crowd exploded. Thirteen bands played
on trucks around the tarmac. The mood was so raucous
that Louis picked up his own trumpet and joined in

(02:23):
with them. Over the next forty eight hours, he played
a number of shows around the city, one at the
old Polo Grounds in front of one hundred thousand celebratory spectators,
another at the Opera, and a third at the Paramount Club,
where he was joined on stage by some of the
country's most famous musicians. With all the excitement, it certainly
felt like a homecoming. But for Louis Armstrong, the connection

(02:45):
he'd been looking for came during a quiet moment backstage.
He met a dancer who bore a striking resemblance to
his mother, who had just died a few years earlier,
and according to Louis, seeing this woman convinced him that
his ancestors came from that area. He stated, and I quote,
I came from here way back. At least my people did.
Now I know this is my country too. By the

(03:07):
time he left Acra two days later, it seemed that
everyone was a little different. Just a year later, the
Gold Coast achieved its independence, becoming the nation of Ghana. Today,
the country has a vibrant, stable democracy, and its most
popular music genre is called highlife, a fusion of African
Caribbean music and traditional jazz. In a sense Louis Armstrong's

(03:29):
visit to Acra was a homecoming for his music as
much as it was for him. After all, jazz was
heavily influenced by traditional West African songs, which enslave peoples
brought with them to the United States. That music had
now come full circle, inspiring a fresh generation of West
African artists. It seems that the Jazz Ambassador program had

(03:50):
been a success, subtly steering a fledgling country toward democracy,
but it had also changed Louis Armstrong, making him more
convinced than ever that the American government had their own
work to do back home. Soon after returning home, he
dropped out of the program as an act of protest.
When questioned on the matter, he gave reporters a simple explanation,

(04:11):
the way they're treating my people down south, the government
can go to hell. Nestled in the Alleghany Mountain County

(04:32):
of Greenbrier, West Virginia, is the Greenbrier Resort. Since opening
in the seventeen hundreds, the resort has attracted high profile clientele,
including politicians, celebrities, and even royalty. The palatial resort sits
on eleven hundred acres and offers its visitors five hundred
rooms to choose from. It's got plenty of space for
long held secrets, and it's loaded with wartime history. For one,

(04:56):
this expansive property served as a hospital and enemy prison
during w World War Two. For this reason, it has
long been a source of local pride, but it wasn't
until after the war that the Greenbrier became a source
of mystery. In nineteen fifty eight, the iconic venue gave
locals some much needed zeal. At the time, the country
was in the midst of the Cold War, and people

(05:17):
all across the US sought distraction from fear and uncertainty.
So when ground broke on a new wing at the Greenbrier,
residents felt a sense of hopefulness. The expansion symbolized optimism
for the future, but the excitement soon turned to confusion.
You see, locals looked on as construction workers dug the
hole for the foundation, and it was massive, probably a

(05:38):
few stories deep. People were familiar with the resort's layout,
after all, many of them had worked there, but no
one knew of any other part of the building that
reached so far underground. Confusion devolved into fear when cement
trucks began parading to and from the construction site, and
this went on for days before giant steel doors were
installed and guards were stationed out front. It was unlike

(06:01):
anything people had ever seen before, and it felt ominous
inside the building. The wing was closed off to anyone
except top personnel and curiously, a continuous stream of TV repairmen.
One administrative employee stuck up a friendship with the repairman's manager,
and there was something the employee couldn't shake. All of
the other resort workers were Greenbrier employees, but the TV

(06:24):
repairman worked for a contracting company. None of the Greenbrier's
top personnel provided any explanation for this, so people started
forming their own theories. By the time the Cuban missile
crisis occurred in the early sixties, many believed the expansion
served as a nuclear hideout for President John F. Kennedy.
It wasn't an outlandish thought, considering a lot of residents

(06:46):
had built bomb shelters in their own backyards, and yet
few people who supported this theory would openly admit to it.
People still remembered the World War II posters that had
the phrase loose lips sink ships. So while gossip and
speculation circled among friends, most people rarely discussed the mystery
underneath their own town. But in nineteen ninety two, one

(07:08):
person in Greenbrier opened up to someone who would turn
the tides forever. They anonymously contacted a Washington Post reporter
and laid out the full truth. As it turned out,
the people of the town had been right almost You see,
the wing wasn't a nuclear shelter for JFK, but for
every single member of Congress. It was a bunker fitted

(07:29):
with a congressional floor and podium, a fully stocked pharmacy,
and eleven hundred pre assigned bunk beds. The people of
Greenbrier weren't surprised when they heard the news. If anything,
they were satisfied to be proven right. There were a
few other people who weren't surprised either, the Forsyth TV repairman.
They were some of the only people allowed in the
bunker before nineteen ninety two, and they weren't there to

(07:52):
repair TVs. They were actually technicians who performed routine safety checks.
They made sure that all the protective features worked, like
the blastproof doors and the decontamination showers. Since it was constructed.
Congress has never used the bunker, and hopefully they never
have to, but that doesn't change the fact that it
was simultaneously both the most necessary use of funds and

(08:14):
the most wasteful. 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

(08:37):
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.