One Man Show

Today we explore two strange stories that do more than entertain: they get us thinking.

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Episode Transcript

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):
Comic book fans are familiar with a certain set of phrases,
often shouted toward the heavens. Look up in the sky.
It's a bird, it's a plane, it's Superman. But a
person flying above the clouds was only fiction, right? Something
like that couldn't happen for real, could it? Just ask
the people of medieval Ireland. In the seven forties, reports

(00:56):
began to pour in a bizarre sightings. Beginning in a
place called Telltown in the northeast. Three ships were spotted
at a distance, their crews throwing spears over the decks
to catch fish swimming below. But the ships weren't in
the water. They were overhead, soaring through the sky. One
of the spears missed and landed at their feet Onlookers

(01:17):
watched as a crew member leapt off the deck to
retrieve it. He swam down through the air as if
it were water, picked up the errant spear, and swam
back up to his ship. Over time, these stories changed
a bit. The three ships became one ship, and then
a tenth century king was present in some tellings. In
later versions, the spear was picked up by someone on

(01:37):
the ground who refused to give it back. The crewmate
who swam down to get it cried, I am being drowned.
The king then ordered the spear to be returned to
him so that he could get back onto his ship.
And we know of these stories today because of the
Irish Annals, historical records of important events in Irish history.
Four of these annals contain information about the sky ships

(01:59):
seen in Telltown. Hundreds of years after the first sighting,
the tales changed again. Around the fifteenth or sixteenth century,
a manuscript was published containing a different account of the events.
They no longer took place in Telltown, but rather at
a monastery near the center of the country. It was
called Klonmacnois, and it served as a major educational hub

(02:21):
for the country, teaching different trades and of course, religious doctrine.
In this iteration of the story, the spear had been
changed to an anchor, which was dropped from above and
then retrieved by a crewmate who swam down to earth
to get it back. The priests held on to the
anchor as the sailor cried that he was drowning, until
they let it go and he was able to return
to his ship. And it was this narrative that soon

(02:43):
left the confines of Ireland and spread throughout England. According
to Jeffrey de Brul, a twelfth century French abbot, the
anchor actually landed in London in eleven twenty two. A
similar version from twelve eleven claimed that the anchor was
seen among piles of stones in the churchyard. As the
parishioners watched, the rope that was tied to the anchor
began moving. It was like an invisible force that was

(03:06):
trying to rip it out of the ground from above.
Wouldn't budge. One of the sailors climbed down the rope
to the ground level and was grabbed by the people nearby.
He struggled to get away, but died in their custody,
having drowned by our heavier moisture filled air. And that
same story would be discovered some time later in a
Norse compilation of fantastic tales called Irish Marvels. So did

(03:29):
the people of Ireland really witness a fleet of ships
traversing the sky? Well, what they saw and what they
thought they saw were two different things. Some medieval scholars
believe that there really was a sea to be found
among the heavens. As described in the Book of Genesis,
God made the firmament and divided the waters which were
under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament.

(03:51):
To many at the time, it made sense that if
there was a sea on Earth, then there must also
be one above it as well. It's hard to imagine
something as large arge as a boat flying through the
air centuries before the first airplane would take off, but
it might not be so strange after all. Hundreds of
years after the first appearance of the Irish sky ships,
another aircraft was seen, this time over Merkele, Texas. On

(04:14):
the night of April twenty eighth of eighteen ninety seven,
A group of people on their way home from church
watched as an anchor attached to a rope was dragged
along the ground for miles. It scraped across dirt, and
gravel until it finally got caught on a section of
railroad track. As these churchgoers looked up at what the
rope was attached to, they saw an enormous airship, its

(04:35):
windows illuminated by light from the inside. In an instant,
someone from the ship climbed down and cut the anchor
loose before the vessel took off, The crewmen hanging on
as he disappeared into the night. According to an article
printed in the Houston Post shortly thereafter, the anchor was
put on display in a local blacksmiths shop. Whether these

(04:56):
stories are true or not is honestly irrelevant. What Madam
is that when it comes to exploration and the human imagination,
the sky, as they say, is the limit. When we

(05:21):
think about affecting change, we often sell ourselves shorts. There's
a common sentiment shared by many that goes something like,
I'm only one person? How much can I really do?
And the reality is one person can make a difference.
The problem is that difference isn't always best for everyone.
Few people knew that better than Jay Cook. Cook was
born in Sandusky, Ohio in eighteen twenty one to wealthy,

(05:43):
powerful parents. He eventually moved to Philadelphia, where he got
a job working at the banking firm E. W. Clarkin Company.
After several years as a clerk, Cook was promoted to
partner in eighteen forty two. Then he started his own
banking company just before the start of the Civil War.
It was so successful the US government went to him
to borrow money so they could pay for things like uniforms, guns,

(06:06):
and other necessities. Cook changed the face of banking in
the United States. He helped establish the national banking system
and managed to secure a hefty payout for himself through
the sale of bonds during the war. Then in eighteen
seventy he branched out of banking and turned the country
into his own personal monopoly board. He started a railroad.
Cook provided the financing for the Northern Pacific Railroad, which

(06:29):
would create a direct line between Minnesota and the West Coast.
The project had been approved way back in eighteen sixty four,
but backing for it hadn't really materialized. Cook's contributions really
jump started construction, which continued until eighteen eighty three. On
September eighth of that year, former President Ulysses S. Grant
drove a golden spike into the last piece of track,

(06:51):
officially marking completion of the railway. Cook and Grant had
known each other for some time, as the financier had
donated heavily to his reelection campaign. In eighteen seventy two,
well three years after construction had begun, Grant ventured to
Cook's massive home in Philadelphia for a visit. It's not
known what they talked about there, but chances are that
it wasn't good. One year prior, a letter had been

(07:13):
published by the banking firm of Lee's and Waller. It
predicted that a crash of the railroad industry was imminent.
Railways had become money pits, often rife with fraud and
pointless construction. Many track systems were laid with no clear
beginning or end, and Cook's investment bank in New York
was on the verge of insolvency. He had no recourse.

(07:34):
The European market was already dealing with its own financial crisis,
and American investors weren't about to pour their funds into
his endeavors. Neither was Grant. He'd been implicated a decade
earlier in several financial debacles that made him hesitant to
assist Cook. Despite their previous relationship. Three days after their meetup,
Cook's bank went belly up. Pretty soon everyone back in

(07:57):
New York heard the news. They mobbed the streets look
for a way into the building. Police officers were called
to quell the crowds and keep them from ripping the
doors off their hinges. People lost everything and found themselves
in the middle of the first Great Depression, almost sixty
years before the Crash of nineteen twenty nine, and it
was all thanks to Jay Cook. Even Wall Street shut

(08:19):
down completely, with the New York Stock Exchange suspending trading
for the first time ever. Grant considered funding a bailout
of the Treasury Department, but ultimately decided against it. The
Northern Pacific, though somehow managed to survive. A series of
austerity measures had been initiated prior to the crash, and
loans from other financiers helped keep the project alive. This

(08:41):
crisis was known as the Panic of eighteen seventy three,
and it led to the disillusion of over one hundred
and twenty railroads, the loss of eighteen thousand businesses, and
the bankruptcy of countless investors, and it lasted for more
than five years. Among the first groups hit by the
panic were formerly enslaved Americas who had had their life

(09:01):
savings stored at the Freedman Savings Bank. It also went under,
costing thousands of African American men and women everything they had.
No one was safe from the panic, either from the
poor and uneducated to the rich and cultured. Everyone stood
to lose something or everything as a result of one
man's greed. Because of Jay Cook, unemployment rose to a

(09:23):
whopping fourteen percent across the country, although some areas saw
even worse. Veterans were tossed into the streets, while men
like Cook found ways to regain their wealth. He made
his money back by investing in a silver mine out
in Utah before dying in nineteen oh five. Jay Cook
was a ruthless business man, and he was almost solely

(09:43):
responsible for the first and probably one of the worst
depressions that the United States has ever seen. 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

(10:06):
was created 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 the worldolore
dot com. And until next time, stay curious.