July 14, 2026 • 11 mins
Putting things down on paper can have curious consequences, as these two stories make clear.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Aaron Nke'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):
The stream of time, irresistible, ever moving, carries off and
bears away all things that come to birth, and plunges
them into uttered darkness, both deeds of no account and
deeds which are mighty and worthy of commemoration. The science
of history is a great bulwark against the stream of time.
(00:56):
In a way, it checks this irresistible flood. It holds
in its height grasp whatever it can sease floating on
the surface, and will not allow it to slip away
into the depths of oblivion. This is an excerpt from
the opening of the Alexiad, one of the most important
pieces of literature to come out of the Byzantine Empire.
It tells the story of the emperor Alexios Komnemnos, the
(01:19):
man who took Byzantium out of a desperate situation and
into its final successful era as an empire. Five hundred
years after the fall of Rome, the Byzantine Empire, or
the Eastern Roman Empire as it was known at the time,
was facing a fall of its own. In the early
eleventh century, the empire lost around half of its territory
(01:40):
to the Seljuke Turks. Normans pressed the empire from the west,
and the current emperor didn't know how to handle either threat.
In ten eighty one, Alexios Kommnos stepped into the chaos
and helped re establish the empire. He fought the Turks
and made efforts to re establish a friendly relationship with
the papals. In just a few short years, he went
(02:02):
from an upstart general to something of a savior for
the flagging empire. His most lasting contribution to this period
of history, however, came from when he requested European mercenaries
to help deal with the Turkish threat and inadvertently inspired
Pope Urban the Second to declare the First Crusade. And
because the Eastern Roman Empire was a Christian nation, this
(02:25):
was not a problem. In fact, it's the sort of
world altering decision that makes a king into a folk hero,
although of course it also takes a specific sort of
historian to make that transformation a reality. The Alexiad, with
a title that evokes Homer's Iliad, retells the rule of
Alexios like a cross between history and epic poetry. It's
(02:47):
a strange, singular work in the midst of an empire
that mostly produced historical accounts that were dry and factual.
And that's no accident. It's a history that's so personal
because it was written by someone who knew Komnmnos personally.
As a matter of fact, the author was the eldest
daughter of Emperor Alexios Anna Komnemni. She was present when
(03:09):
the first wave of crusaders arrived in Constantinople in ten
ninety six, and even though she was just a teenager,
her memory of the European rabble was fresh in her
mind when she wrote the account down many decades later.
An exceedingly smart and well read woman, she wasn't simply
content to live a life of luxury in the palace.
She wanted to learn and alter the world.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
As her father grew older and infirm, it was assumed
that upon his death, the crown would pass to her
younger brother John. Both Anna and her mother attempted to
persuade the die in Alexios to let Anna's husband inherit
so that she could rule, but they were unsuccessful. When
Alexios died, John the Second was crowned almost immediately. Some
(03:52):
historians say that Anna schemed to depose John, but the
plot was discovered and she was sent from court in disgrace.
Her royal ambition permanently thwarted. Anna Kommemni spent the last
thirty five years of her life reading and writing. She
became Europe's first female historian, although there is still rigorous
debates over whether her work should count as literature or history.
(04:15):
After all, The Alexiad is far from an objective accounting
of history, and she knew that she would face this
criticism too. In the preface of the book, she addressed
the idea that one has to sometimes pay compliments to
your enemies and criticize your relatives. In spite of this awareness,
it's impossible to argue that she wrote an unbiased work.
(04:35):
In fact, her very opinionated prose is what makes the
Alexiad a vital read. It is not an objectively accurate
piece of historiography, but it provides a valuable insight into
the reign of Alexios from someone who is close to him.
It shows us her contempt for the Crusaders, her assessment
of her father's military achievements, her resentment toward her brother.
(04:57):
Like all good primary documents, it makes history feel a
little more human. More modern scholars have attempted to dismiss
or downplay her contributions to our understanding of the era,
but in spite of that, the Alexiad is among the
most important epics of its era. Without exaggeration, there is
no piece of literature quite like it. John may have
(05:19):
gotten the crown, but in the end Anna got the
last word. Otto g. Lindbergh and Ernest Alpers stood on
(05:40):
the dusty shoulder of the road, looking up at the
painted marquee of the general store with an expression somewhere
between horror and awe. A few feet away, two young
girls in gingham dresses sat sipping from glass soda bottles.
Farmers and their families poured in and out of the
red storefront, arms laden with paper grocery bags and smiles
(06:00):
on their faces. And above it all hung a sign
with hand painted script that read ag Low General Store
The scene was nothing short of picturesque and everyday American
general store bustling with everyday Americans going about their everyday business.
Only Otto and Earnest knew the truth that none of this,
not the general store, or the families, or the girls
(06:23):
sipping cola were real. Thirteen years earlier, around nineteen thirty seven,
Otto and Ernest sat across from one another feeling very
pleased with themselves. Their industry was a cutthroat one. Deception, betrayal,
and most significantly, copycats were common pitfalls of their profession.
But that day, in the offices of General Drafting Company,
(06:45):
Otto and Ernest had an idea to overcome even the
sneakiest copycat artists. Okay, cartography, the science and art of
making maps may not be the first thing that comes
to mind when you think of unscrupulous business, but if
you asked Otto in Earnest, they would say that you
couldn't be more wrong. The world of map making hadn't
always been so lucrative, but as automobiles grew in popularity
(07:08):
through the nineteen thirties and forties, so too did the
need for road maps. And as the need for those
maps grew, so did the need for people looking to
take advantage of that business. After all, it's not as
if someone could prove a map was stolen or copied.
If they were accurate, then all maps kind of showed
the same thing, the same towns and the same cities
(07:30):
and the same roads, except for Aglow. Otto and Ernest's
brilliant idea. A copyright trap was an extra town, one
entirely made up by Otto and Earnest near the Catskills
at the intersection of New York two O six and
Rockefeller Road. Of course, Aglow wasn't a real place. Motorists
(07:51):
who were passing through Aglow would see a dirt road
intersection and a few scrubby patches of grass. This meant
any other maps that cropped up with the ma arker
for Aglow would be easy to identify as copyright infringement.
The name itself was a private joke, an anagram of
their initials Alpers g Lindberg, Otto, Ernest or Aglow. In
(08:14):
nineteen fifty, the Aglo Trap snagged its first prey. Rival
map company ran McNally published their map of New York
that included you guessed it, Aglow, Otto and Ernest were
thrilled by this. Not only had their plan worked, but
they had caught the massive corporation red handed. General Drafting
Company filed a lawsuit against ran McNally for copyright infringement,
(08:37):
expecting an easy victory in court and a sizable paycheck
for their trouble. But Rand McNally responded to the lawsuit. No,
they said, we didn't copy your map. We'd sent someone
out to Aglow and there's a real town there. What's more,
they told Auto and Earnest that the Delaware County offices
had records of Aglow. There was a gas station, a
(08:59):
general store, a fishing lodge, and a sparse collection of houses.
It seems that someone whose identity is now lost to
time actually arrived in the false town of Aglow after
finding it on one of Otto and Earnest's maps purchased
from the General Drafting Company. And when this individual saw
the dirt road intersection and empty acres, they interpreted the
(09:20):
non existent town as a land of opportunity and built
a town in that spot. This person must have assumed
that the name Aglow was in the official census record,
and so that's the name that this person and all
preceding businesses gave to their operations there the Aglow General Store,
Aglow gas Station, Aglow Fishing Lodge. I think you get
(09:41):
the idea, And so Otto and Ernest went and saw
the place for themselves, and they were shocked by what
they found. In their imaginative attempt to deter copycats, they
had somehow accidentally created a real town. Of course, Rand
McNally was found not guilty. The town of Aglow flourished
as much as a ton of a one hundred people
or so can. Around nineteen sixty, the general store closed,
(10:04):
than the gas station, than the lodge. Aglow fell into disrepair,
then eventually vanished, reverting back to that scrubby patch of
grass and a dirt road intersection that Otto and Ernest
had originally imagined. But the ghost of Aglow haunted most
other maps for decades. Heck, up until twenty eighteen, it
was still searchable on Google or Apple Maps. New generations
(10:26):
continued falling for the old trick, and Aglow gained popularity
after its appearance in John Green's novel Paper Towns. Once again,
the town of Aglow seems to thrive best in fiction.
I hope you enjoyed today's guided tour through the Cabinet
of Curiosities. This show was created by me Aaron Mankey
(10:48):
in partnership with iHeart Podcasts, researched and written by the
Grim and Mild team, and produced by Jesse Funk. Learn
more about the show and the people who make it
over at Grimandmild dot com slash Curiosities. You'll also find
a link to the official Cabinet of Curiosity's hardcover book,
available in bookstores and online, as well as ebook and audiobook.
(11:09):
And if you're looking for an ad free option, consider
joining our Patreon. It's all the same stories, but without
the interruption for a small monthly fee. Learn more and
sign up over at patreon dot com slash Grimandmild, and
until next time, stay curious.
Welcome to Aaron Nke'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):
The stream of time, irresistible, ever moving, carries off and
bears away all things that come to birth, and plunges
them into uttered darkness, both deeds of no account and
deeds which are mighty and worthy of commemoration. The science
of history is a great bulwark against the stream of time.
(00:56):
In a way, it checks this irresistible flood. It holds
in its height grasp whatever it can sease floating on
the surface, and will not allow it to slip away
into the depths of oblivion. This is an excerpt from
the opening of the Alexiad, one of the most important
pieces of literature to come out of the Byzantine Empire.
It tells the story of the emperor Alexios Komnemnos, the
(01:19):
man who took Byzantium out of a desperate situation and
into its final successful era as an empire. Five hundred
years after the fall of Rome, the Byzantine Empire, or
the Eastern Roman Empire as it was known at the time,
was facing a fall of its own. In the early
eleventh century, the empire lost around half of its territory
(01:40):
to the Seljuke Turks. Normans pressed the empire from the west,
and the current emperor didn't know how to handle either threat.
In ten eighty one, Alexios Kommnos stepped into the chaos
and helped re establish the empire. He fought the Turks
and made efforts to re establish a friendly relationship with
the papals. In just a few short years, he went
(02:02):
from an upstart general to something of a savior for
the flagging empire. His most lasting contribution to this period
of history, however, came from when he requested European mercenaries
to help deal with the Turkish threat and inadvertently inspired
Pope Urban the Second to declare the First Crusade. And
because the Eastern Roman Empire was a Christian nation, this
(02:25):
was not a problem. In fact, it's the sort of
world altering decision that makes a king into a folk hero,
although of course it also takes a specific sort of
historian to make that transformation a reality. The Alexiad, with
a title that evokes Homer's Iliad, retells the rule of
Alexios like a cross between history and epic poetry. It's
(02:47):
a strange, singular work in the midst of an empire
that mostly produced historical accounts that were dry and factual.
And that's no accident. It's a history that's so personal
because it was written by someone who knew Komnmnos personally.
As a matter of fact, the author was the eldest
daughter of Emperor Alexios Anna Komnemni. She was present when
(03:09):
the first wave of crusaders arrived in Constantinople in ten
ninety six, and even though she was just a teenager,
her memory of the European rabble was fresh in her
mind when she wrote the account down many decades later.
An exceedingly smart and well read woman, she wasn't simply
content to live a life of luxury in the palace.
She wanted to learn and alter the world.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
As her father grew older and infirm, it was assumed
that upon his death, the crown would pass to her
younger brother John. Both Anna and her mother attempted to
persuade the die in Alexios to let Anna's husband inherit
so that she could rule, but they were unsuccessful. When
Alexios died, John the Second was crowned almost immediately. Some
(03:52):
historians say that Anna schemed to depose John, but the
plot was discovered and she was sent from court in disgrace.
Her royal ambition permanently thwarted. Anna Kommemni spent the last
thirty five years of her life reading and writing. She
became Europe's first female historian, although there is still rigorous
debates over whether her work should count as literature or history.
(04:15):
After all, The Alexiad is far from an objective accounting
of history, and she knew that she would face this
criticism too. In the preface of the book, she addressed
the idea that one has to sometimes pay compliments to
your enemies and criticize your relatives. In spite of this awareness,
it's impossible to argue that she wrote an unbiased work.
(04:35):
In fact, her very opinionated prose is what makes the
Alexiad a vital read. It is not an objectively accurate
piece of historiography, but it provides a valuable insight into
the reign of Alexios from someone who is close to him.
It shows us her contempt for the Crusaders, her assessment
of her father's military achievements, her resentment toward her brother.
(04:57):
Like all good primary documents, it makes history feel a
little more human. More modern scholars have attempted to dismiss
or downplay her contributions to our understanding of the era,
but in spite of that, the Alexiad is among the
most important epics of its era. Without exaggeration, there is
no piece of literature quite like it. John may have
(05:19):
gotten the crown, but in the end Anna got the
last word. Otto g. Lindbergh and Ernest Alpers stood on
(05:40):
the dusty shoulder of the road, looking up at the
painted marquee of the general store with an expression somewhere
between horror and awe. A few feet away, two young
girls in gingham dresses sat sipping from glass soda bottles.
Farmers and their families poured in and out of the
red storefront, arms laden with paper grocery bags and smiles
(06:00):
on their faces. And above it all hung a sign
with hand painted script that read ag Low General Store
The scene was nothing short of picturesque and everyday American
general store bustling with everyday Americans going about their everyday business.
Only Otto and Earnest knew the truth that none of this,
not the general store, or the families, or the girls
(06:23):
sipping cola were real. Thirteen years earlier, around nineteen thirty seven,
Otto and Ernest sat across from one another feeling very
pleased with themselves. Their industry was a cutthroat one. Deception, betrayal,
and most significantly, copycats were common pitfalls of their profession.
But that day, in the offices of General Drafting Company,
(06:45):
Otto and Ernest had an idea to overcome even the
sneakiest copycat artists. Okay, cartography, the science and art of
making maps may not be the first thing that comes
to mind when you think of unscrupulous business, but if
you asked Otto in Earnest, they would say that you
couldn't be more wrong. The world of map making hadn't
always been so lucrative, but as automobiles grew in popularity
(07:08):
through the nineteen thirties and forties, so too did the
need for road maps. And as the need for those
maps grew, so did the need for people looking to
take advantage of that business. After all, it's not as
if someone could prove a map was stolen or copied.
If they were accurate, then all maps kind of showed
the same thing, the same towns and the same cities
(07:30):
and the same roads, except for Aglow. Otto and Ernest's
brilliant idea. A copyright trap was an extra town, one
entirely made up by Otto and Earnest near the Catskills
at the intersection of New York two O six and
Rockefeller Road. Of course, Aglow wasn't a real place. Motorists
(07:51):
who were passing through Aglow would see a dirt road
intersection and a few scrubby patches of grass. This meant
any other maps that cropped up with the ma arker
for Aglow would be easy to identify as copyright infringement.
The name itself was a private joke, an anagram of
their initials Alpers g Lindberg, Otto, Ernest or Aglow. In
(08:14):
nineteen fifty, the Aglo Trap snagged its first prey. Rival
map company ran McNally published their map of New York
that included you guessed it, Aglow, Otto and Ernest were
thrilled by this. Not only had their plan worked, but
they had caught the massive corporation red handed. General Drafting
Company filed a lawsuit against ran McNally for copyright infringement,
(08:37):
expecting an easy victory in court and a sizable paycheck
for their trouble. But Rand McNally responded to the lawsuit. No,
they said, we didn't copy your map. We'd sent someone
out to Aglow and there's a real town there. What's more,
they told Auto and Earnest that the Delaware County offices
had records of Aglow. There was a gas station, a
(08:59):
general store, a fishing lodge, and a sparse collection of houses.
It seems that someone whose identity is now lost to
time actually arrived in the false town of Aglow after
finding it on one of Otto and Earnest's maps purchased
from the General Drafting Company. And when this individual saw
the dirt road intersection and empty acres, they interpreted the
(09:20):
non existent town as a land of opportunity and built
a town in that spot. This person must have assumed
that the name Aglow was in the official census record,
and so that's the name that this person and all
preceding businesses gave to their operations there the Aglow General Store,
Aglow gas Station, Aglow Fishing Lodge. I think you get
(09:41):
the idea, And so Otto and Ernest went and saw
the place for themselves, and they were shocked by what
they found. In their imaginative attempt to deter copycats, they
had somehow accidentally created a real town. Of course, Rand
McNally was found not guilty. The town of Aglow flourished
as much as a ton of a one hundred people
or so can. Around nineteen sixty, the general store closed,
(10:04):
than the gas station, than the lodge. Aglow fell into disrepair,
then eventually vanished, reverting back to that scrubby patch of
grass and a dirt road intersection that Otto and Ernest
had originally imagined. But the ghost of Aglow haunted most
other maps for decades. Heck, up until twenty eighteen, it
was still searchable on Google or Apple Maps. New generations
(10:26):
continued falling for the old trick, and Aglow gained popularity
after its appearance in John Green's novel Paper Towns. Once again,
the town of Aglow seems to thrive best in fiction.
I hope you enjoyed today's guided tour through the Cabinet
of Curiosities. This show was created by me Aaron Mankey
(10:48):
in partnership with iHeart Podcasts, researched and written by the
Grim and Mild team, and produced by Jesse Funk. Learn
more about the show and the people who make it
over at Grimandmild dot com slash Curiosities. You'll also find
a link to the official Cabinet of Curiosity's hardcover book,
available in bookstores and online, as well as ebook and audiobook.
(11:09):
And if you're looking for an ad free option, consider
joining our Patreon. It's all the same stories, but without
the interruption for a small monthly fee. Learn more and
sign up over at patreon dot com slash Grimandmild, and
until next time, stay curious.
Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities News
Host
Aaron Mahnke
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