October 9, 2025 • 11 mins
Creative problem solving has led to some surprising stories.
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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 right there on display, just waiting
for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
(00:36):
On May fifth of nineteen forty five, Archie Mitchell and
his family went for a picnic outside of Bly, Oregon.
After lunch, Archie's wife took their children for a walk
along the creek. Archie was cleaning up the picnic area
when he heard an explosion. He later found out that
his wife and kids had stumbled upon a Japanese balloon bomb,
and when they touched it, the bomb had detonated. Between
(00:59):
November of nineteen forty four and April of nineteen forty five,
Japan launched over nine thousand balloon bombs, each about seventy
feet tall. They sent them sailing over the Pacific, hoping
to hit the United States and cause mass hysteria. Thankfully,
most of them sank into the ocean. But it just
goes to show that when it comes to warfare, not
(01:19):
every battle is fought on the front lines. In fact,
sometimes the smallest battles can be the ones that turn
the tides of war. At the beginning of World War II,
the Allied forces knew that disease and rough weather could
be as deadly to soldiers as enemy guns. It might
seem simple, but accurate weather data can save lives. The
country of Greenland was the perfect spot to predict the
(01:42):
weather in Europe. The German Army even joked that Greenland
was the weather kitchen. Weather it was made there and
then served to Europe over the next day. Greenland was
part of the Kingdom of Denmark, and at the time,
Denmark was occupied by Nazi Germany, so there was a
real fear that Germans would build weather stations on Greenland,
which would give them a huge leg up in the war.
(02:04):
The Allied forces needed to find those weather stations and
destroy them, but this was easier said than done. You see,
Greenland's terrain is rugged and the weather is rough. The
US Coast Guard struggled to navigate the ice filled waters
off the coast, and the Air Force found it difficult
to spot structures from the air, especially in the winter.
The northeastern part of Greenland was dark for months at
(02:27):
a time. What they needed was boots on the ground,
a way of traversing Greenland's ice hewn tundra. And that's
when the US Coast Guard commander pitched an idea that
was very unusual. He suggested that they follow the example
of native Greenlanders and travel by sled dog. The Governor
of Greenland loved the idea, and so the Northeast Greenland
(02:48):
Sledge Patrol was born. The original patrol was made up
of ten danish Men, one Norwegian, and four Inuit Greenlanders.
Having Inuit men on the team was essential. They had
been traversing the territory on sleds their entire lives. They
were intimately acquainted with the rough, sometimes treacherous terrain. The
patrol began traveling up and down the northeast coast, sleeping
(03:11):
in hunting shacks along the way. They hunted for their
food and relied on their team of Greenland husky dogs
to keep them safe. And the huskies were an essential
part of this mission. You see, Greenland huskies are known
for their stamina and their resilience, but they also have
a keen sense of smell. They can detect strangers from
far away, so if the Nazis were hiding along the ice,
(03:35):
the huskies would sniff them out. And within a few months,
the huskies proved just how good they were at sensing danger.
After a long time of searching for a German weather station,
a patrol of three men set out for Sabine Island,
just off the coast of Greenland, and after hours of searching,
they found something out of place, a crude hut with
(03:55):
smoke billowing from the chimney. Immediately, the men suspected that
this was the weather station they'd been looking for, but
they wanted to be sure, so instead of reporting the
hut to headquarters, they decided to spy on it for
a while, and in the meantime they would make camp
at a hunting shack nearby. They had just settled down
to dinner when their sled dogs began howling. Moments later,
(04:17):
they looked over the ridge and their hearts stopped. They
spotted a German search party armed with rifles approaching their shack.
They didn't have time to tack up the sleds, and
so they were forced to abandon their equipment and flee
into the woods. Over the next two days, they walked
about one hundred miles back home to base, and the
entire time they were thankful that their loyal huskies had
(04:39):
alerted them in time to make it out with their lives.
When they finally got back to camp, they reported what
they found. The US Army Air Force was sent to investigate,
and soon after they learned that the hut had in
fact been a German weather base. The Sled Patrol had
accomplished their mission, and thanks to their huskies, they had
made it out alive. Over the next few year years,
(05:00):
the Sled Patrol had numerous run ins with German soldiers.
In one skirmish, for example, a patrolman named Eli Knutsen
was killed. He was one of three patrolmen awarded a
Legion of Merit medal for bravery. And of course, thanks
to this very creative way of patrolling Greenland, the German
Army was never able to build a permanent weather station there.
(05:20):
In nineteen forty five, Denmark was liberated from Nazi Germany
and the Northeast Greenland Sled Patrol was disbanded, but it
was quickly re established in nineteen fifty, when the Cold
War created concerns around Soviet claims to the Arctic. The
unit was later renamed the Serious Dog Sled Patrol and
is still a reconnaissance unit within the Royal Danish Navy today.
(05:41):
So if you ever wind up on the Greenland tundra,
look around, sooner or later a husky might catch your scent.
(06:02):
For many people, belief in a dream is not enough.
Hoping you will achieve your goals is rarely what keeps
you working toward them. It needs some kind of progress,
some small successes, or encouragement from others to continue your journey.
But in the case of nineteenth century inventor Charles, belief
is all he had. He met with failure after failure,
(06:23):
and it was only his faith that he would eventually
succeed that kept him going. Charles had faith instilled in
him from a young age. Born in December of eighteen eighty,
he was raised in a Christian home, where stories of
the Book of Job had left a lasting impression on him.
Charles saw suffering as noble and it wasn't a person's
lot in life to want for anything anyway. They simply
(06:45):
had to work hard, provide for others, and accept whatever
God sent their way. Now, Charles's early years were spent
working with his father at the family hardware store, where
he learned about farming equipment and saw a major shift
in the American economy. Whereas as previously most manufactured goods
were imported from England, a slow shift began to take
(07:05):
place where Americans started to trust goods manufactured there, and
it was a significant opportunity for American manufacturers to meet
a growing demand. By eighteen thirty three, Charles decided to
set out on his own and become an inventor. He
planned to make new tools that all Americans could benefit from.
He was also married with six children, and he wanted
(07:27):
to provide for them financially. Now, unfortunately, this would prove
to be a lifelong struggle. Just like the biblical character job,
Charles's family was destined to suffer. He spent time in
New York speaking with manufacturers and learning about their needs,
and he came across a purveyor of life preservers who
admitted to Charles that the devices didn't work very well.
(07:49):
The rubber valve that kept the air trapped inside had
a tendency to melt at high temperatures and crack at
cold temperatures. It was pretty useless, considering that a lost
American sailor was likely to find themselves in either cold
waters of the Arctic or the warm waters of the Atlantic.
Rubber was in its infancy at the time and had
only recently been discovered in the form of a white,
(08:11):
sticky latex liquid produced by trees in the Amazon rainforest.
Charles was inspired to take this new wonder substance and
turn it into something truly revolutionary. He spent days and
then weeks and then months, sometimes experimenting in his home,
sometimes in different factories when he was allowed. His experiments
(08:32):
involved boiling the sticky, smelly substance over a stove and
then adding other chemicals to try and improve its durability,
and then he took it loan after loan to pay
for all of this. But all of these experiments led
to Charles racking up massive debt. The harsh laws at
the time meant that his creditors were able to throw
him in jail for failing to pay him back. Ironically,
(08:53):
it was in prison that he had his first breakthrough.
The jailers had allowed him a work bench and materials,
and eventually he discovered that adding the mineral magnesia to
the rubber helped it become less sticky and suitable for
articles of clothing like hats and shoes, and this discovery
helped him to pay off some debts and get out
of prison. By nineteen thirty nine, he was working for
(09:14):
a rubber manufacturer in Massachusetts when he had his greatest
breakthrough of all when he added the chemical element sulfur
to his rubber mixture. It allowed it to harden and
become immune to melting. In fact, if he took it
off the stove at just the right time and then
let it cool, it could then be returned to any
heat source, even a direct flame, and still retain its shape.
(09:34):
And he called it vulcanized rubber, named after the Roman
god of the forge. However, as we mentioned, it was
Charles's destiny to suffer. He was able to secure a
patent for his invention, but spent the next several years
trying to build confidence amongst his buyers and sue the
many competitors who tried to steal his method from making rubber.
(09:55):
Despite having finally achieved his goal, his finances were in
a more dire state than ever. He was forced upon
his wife's jewelry and even his children's textbooks, just to
keep them fed. After years of ups and downs, going
in and out of courts and debtors prison, he finally
passed away in July of eighteen sixty. He never had
(10:15):
a chance to build the manufacturing empire he had dreamed of,
but his vulcanized rubber was soon being used in everything
from shoes and horses to conveyor belts and tires. Curiously enough,
decades after Charles's death, a tire company was founded, one
that used his surname as a tribute to Charles and
his work. He never profited from his own discoveries, but
(10:39):
his faith led to one of the most recognizable names
in the automotive industry, all thanks to Charles Goodyear. 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. The show was created
(11:02):
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
learn all about it over at Theworldoflore 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 right there on display, just waiting
for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
(00:36):
On May fifth of nineteen forty five, Archie Mitchell and
his family went for a picnic outside of Bly, Oregon.
After lunch, Archie's wife took their children for a walk
along the creek. Archie was cleaning up the picnic area
when he heard an explosion. He later found out that
his wife and kids had stumbled upon a Japanese balloon bomb,
and when they touched it, the bomb had detonated. Between
(00:59):
November of nineteen forty four and April of nineteen forty five,
Japan launched over nine thousand balloon bombs, each about seventy
feet tall. They sent them sailing over the Pacific, hoping
to hit the United States and cause mass hysteria. Thankfully,
most of them sank into the ocean. But it just
goes to show that when it comes to warfare, not
(01:19):
every battle is fought on the front lines. In fact,
sometimes the smallest battles can be the ones that turn
the tides of war. At the beginning of World War II,
the Allied forces knew that disease and rough weather could
be as deadly to soldiers as enemy guns. It might
seem simple, but accurate weather data can save lives. The
country of Greenland was the perfect spot to predict the
(01:42):
weather in Europe. The German Army even joked that Greenland
was the weather kitchen. Weather it was made there and
then served to Europe over the next day. Greenland was
part of the Kingdom of Denmark, and at the time,
Denmark was occupied by Nazi Germany, so there was a
real fear that Germans would build weather stations on Greenland,
which would give them a huge leg up in the war.
(02:04):
The Allied forces needed to find those weather stations and
destroy them, but this was easier said than done. You see,
Greenland's terrain is rugged and the weather is rough. The
US Coast Guard struggled to navigate the ice filled waters
off the coast, and the Air Force found it difficult
to spot structures from the air, especially in the winter.
The northeastern part of Greenland was dark for months at
(02:27):
a time. What they needed was boots on the ground,
a way of traversing Greenland's ice hewn tundra. And that's
when the US Coast Guard commander pitched an idea that
was very unusual. He suggested that they follow the example
of native Greenlanders and travel by sled dog. The Governor
of Greenland loved the idea, and so the Northeast Greenland
(02:48):
Sledge Patrol was born. The original patrol was made up
of ten danish Men, one Norwegian, and four Inuit Greenlanders.
Having Inuit men on the team was essential. They had
been traversing the territory on sleds their entire lives. They
were intimately acquainted with the rough, sometimes treacherous terrain. The
patrol began traveling up and down the northeast coast, sleeping
(03:11):
in hunting shacks along the way. They hunted for their
food and relied on their team of Greenland husky dogs
to keep them safe. And the huskies were an essential
part of this mission. You see, Greenland huskies are known
for their stamina and their resilience, but they also have
a keen sense of smell. They can detect strangers from
far away, so if the Nazis were hiding along the ice,
(03:35):
the huskies would sniff them out. And within a few months,
the huskies proved just how good they were at sensing danger.
After a long time of searching for a German weather station,
a patrol of three men set out for Sabine Island,
just off the coast of Greenland, and after hours of searching,
they found something out of place, a crude hut with
(03:55):
smoke billowing from the chimney. Immediately, the men suspected that
this was the weather station they'd been looking for, but
they wanted to be sure, so instead of reporting the
hut to headquarters, they decided to spy on it for
a while, and in the meantime they would make camp
at a hunting shack nearby. They had just settled down
to dinner when their sled dogs began howling. Moments later,
(04:17):
they looked over the ridge and their hearts stopped. They
spotted a German search party armed with rifles approaching their shack.
They didn't have time to tack up the sleds, and
so they were forced to abandon their equipment and flee
into the woods. Over the next two days, they walked
about one hundred miles back home to base, and the
entire time they were thankful that their loyal huskies had
(04:39):
alerted them in time to make it out with their lives.
When they finally got back to camp, they reported what
they found. The US Army Air Force was sent to investigate,
and soon after they learned that the hut had in
fact been a German weather base. The Sled Patrol had
accomplished their mission, and thanks to their huskies, they had
made it out alive. Over the next few year years,
(05:00):
the Sled Patrol had numerous run ins with German soldiers.
In one skirmish, for example, a patrolman named Eli Knutsen
was killed. He was one of three patrolmen awarded a
Legion of Merit medal for bravery. And of course, thanks
to this very creative way of patrolling Greenland, the German
Army was never able to build a permanent weather station there.
(05:20):
In nineteen forty five, Denmark was liberated from Nazi Germany
and the Northeast Greenland Sled Patrol was disbanded, but it
was quickly re established in nineteen fifty, when the Cold
War created concerns around Soviet claims to the Arctic. The
unit was later renamed the Serious Dog Sled Patrol and
is still a reconnaissance unit within the Royal Danish Navy today.
(05:41):
So if you ever wind up on the Greenland tundra,
look around, sooner or later a husky might catch your scent.
(06:02):
For many people, belief in a dream is not enough.
Hoping you will achieve your goals is rarely what keeps
you working toward them. It needs some kind of progress,
some small successes, or encouragement from others to continue your journey.
But in the case of nineteenth century inventor Charles, belief
is all he had. He met with failure after failure,
(06:23):
and it was only his faith that he would eventually
succeed that kept him going. Charles had faith instilled in
him from a young age. Born in December of eighteen eighty,
he was raised in a Christian home, where stories of
the Book of Job had left a lasting impression on him.
Charles saw suffering as noble and it wasn't a person's
lot in life to want for anything anyway. They simply
(06:45):
had to work hard, provide for others, and accept whatever
God sent their way. Now, Charles's early years were spent
working with his father at the family hardware store, where
he learned about farming equipment and saw a major shift
in the American economy. Whereas as previously most manufactured goods
were imported from England, a slow shift began to take
(07:05):
place where Americans started to trust goods manufactured there, and
it was a significant opportunity for American manufacturers to meet
a growing demand. By eighteen thirty three, Charles decided to
set out on his own and become an inventor. He
planned to make new tools that all Americans could benefit from.
He was also married with six children, and he wanted
(07:27):
to provide for them financially. Now, unfortunately, this would prove
to be a lifelong struggle. Just like the biblical character job,
Charles's family was destined to suffer. He spent time in
New York speaking with manufacturers and learning about their needs,
and he came across a purveyor of life preservers who
admitted to Charles that the devices didn't work very well.
(07:49):
The rubber valve that kept the air trapped inside had
a tendency to melt at high temperatures and crack at
cold temperatures. It was pretty useless, considering that a lost
American sailor was likely to find themselves in either cold
waters of the Arctic or the warm waters of the Atlantic.
Rubber was in its infancy at the time and had
only recently been discovered in the form of a white,
(08:11):
sticky latex liquid produced by trees in the Amazon rainforest.
Charles was inspired to take this new wonder substance and
turn it into something truly revolutionary. He spent days and
then weeks and then months, sometimes experimenting in his home,
sometimes in different factories when he was allowed. His experiments
(08:32):
involved boiling the sticky, smelly substance over a stove and
then adding other chemicals to try and improve its durability,
and then he took it loan after loan to pay
for all of this. But all of these experiments led
to Charles racking up massive debt. The harsh laws at
the time meant that his creditors were able to throw
him in jail for failing to pay him back. Ironically,
(08:53):
it was in prison that he had his first breakthrough.
The jailers had allowed him a work bench and materials,
and eventually he discovered that adding the mineral magnesia to
the rubber helped it become less sticky and suitable for
articles of clothing like hats and shoes, and this discovery
helped him to pay off some debts and get out
of prison. By nineteen thirty nine, he was working for
(09:14):
a rubber manufacturer in Massachusetts when he had his greatest
breakthrough of all when he added the chemical element sulfur
to his rubber mixture. It allowed it to harden and
become immune to melting. In fact, if he took it
off the stove at just the right time and then
let it cool, it could then be returned to any
heat source, even a direct flame, and still retain its shape.
(09:34):
And he called it vulcanized rubber, named after the Roman
god of the forge. However, as we mentioned, it was
Charles's destiny to suffer. He was able to secure a
patent for his invention, but spent the next several years
trying to build confidence amongst his buyers and sue the
many competitors who tried to steal his method from making rubber.
(09:55):
Despite having finally achieved his goal, his finances were in
a more dire state than ever. He was forced upon
his wife's jewelry and even his children's textbooks, just to
keep them fed. After years of ups and downs, going
in and out of courts and debtors prison, he finally
passed away in July of eighteen sixty. He never had
(10:15):
a chance to build the manufacturing empire he had dreamed of,
but his vulcanized rubber was soon being used in everything
from shoes and horses to conveyor belts and tires. Curiously enough,
decades after Charles's death, a tire company was founded, one
that used his surname as a tribute to Charles and
his work. He never profited from his own discoveries, but
(10:39):
his faith led to one of the most recognizable names
in the automotive industry, all thanks to Charles Goodyear. 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. The show was created
(11:02):
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
learn all about it over at Theworldoflore dot com. And
until next time, stay curious,
Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities News
Host
Aaron Mahnke
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