October 8, 2024 • 10 mins
Sometimes you get lucky, and sometimes you don't. Either way, it can make for quite a curious tale.
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Episode Transcript
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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 are right there on display, just
waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
(00:36):
Second chances are hard to come by in life. We
don't usually get the opportunity to redo a terrible job interview,
or make things right when we've wronged a partner. Life
is oftentimes a one way trip with no stops, and
we're just along for the ride. But one man achieved
the unimaginable. After being involved in one of the most
tragic events in history. He persevered. He received the second
(00:59):
chance of all second chances, and refused to let his
circumstances sink him. His name was Richard Norris Williams the Second,
although he often went simply by Dick Williams. He was
born in Geneva, Switzerland, to American parents from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
He could trace his lineage directly back to Benjamin Franklin.
After years of private tutelage at a Swiss boarding school,
(01:22):
he decided to take up a new hobby, tennis. From
the age of twelve, Williams trained and honed his skills
on the court, leading to his victory at the Swiss
Championship in nineteen eleven. The following year, he and his
father traveled to Cherbourg, France, where they boarded a ship
bound for America. Norris had been accepted at Harvard and
planned to become a success both as a tennis star
(01:44):
and as a student. Their trip started out fine, with
nothing but blue skies above and a rich future ahead
of them. They even dined with a captain for dinner
one night, but then tragedy struck. Word quickly spread through
the decks as guests panicked and filled the lifeboats. The
show ship was sinking. It had apparently struck an iceberg.
That's right, Richard Williams and his father were on board
(02:07):
the Titanic, but the two men didn't abandon ship, at
least not at first. Actually, they stayed back, helping others
to pile into the lifeboats. They even gave away their
life jackets to those who they felt needed them more.
Williams then discovered someone was trapped in a room while
the vessel was going under, so he ran back to
free them. By the time he returned, there was nowhere
(02:28):
for him to go. In a last ditch effort to
save himself, Williams leaped from the Titanic's main deck into
the frigid waters of the Atlantic. The shock of the
cold nearly paralyzed him, but he fought to survive as
long as possible. His father, on the other hand, was
not so lucky. Apparently, he'd been hit by one of
the ship's funnels as it fell into the water, killing
(02:49):
him instantly. Meanwhile, Williams noticed that one of the collapsible
lifeboats had taken on water but was still afloat. Over
two dozen passengers were holding onto it for support. He
swam over and took hold, hanging on along with them
until help arride. Six hours later, he was one of
thirteen surviving members of that group who'd been rescued and
(03:10):
brought aboard the Carpathia for examination. Unfortunately, his time in
the water had done extensive damage to his legs. They
were frostbitten, and there was no other choice than to
amputate both of them. Williams pleaded for an alternative. I'm
going to need those legs, he said, and got to
his feet, pacing around the deck, hoping to bring them
back to life. In William's mind, taking his limbs would
(03:34):
be the end of everything, his future, his tennis career,
and maybe even his life, and so he walked. He
got up every few hours and walked around the deck
of the Carpathia, hoping the exercise would restore the feeling
in his legs. Well. To his and everyone else's surprise,
it worked mostly. Over the next three months, he did
regain sensation in his legs, but not completely, and when
(03:57):
he was on them for too long they caused him
a great deal of pain. But twelve weeks after the
Titanic sank and doctors told him he was going to
lose his limbs, Richard Williams got back on the court.
In fact, he didn't just play. He played against a
fellow Titanic survivor named Carl Howell. Bar Williams won the
first two sets of their match, but Bear managed to
(04:17):
outplay him in the end. Still, Richard kept going, and
in nineteen twenty four he took home the gold at
the Paris Olympics, winning in mixed doubles with his partner
Hazel Hotchkiss Whiteman. Even though Richard Williams didn't take home
the trophy against Bear, he arguably earned an even greater victory,
an Olympic gold medal for one, but he also survived
(04:38):
the sinking of the Titanic. He beat frostbite, and he
managed to return to the game he loved when the
odds were stacked against him, Game, Set, and match. George
(05:03):
Wheeland carefully wiped the dirt from the strange little hunk
of rock he had freed from the dusty ground. He'd
been digging in the Black Hills of South Dakota for
a few years now, and he'd found plenty of fossilized treasures,
from tiny dinosaur bones to massive tortoises shells, but he'd
never seen anything quite like this. As he used a
small soft brush to carefully remove the dirt from its crevices,
(05:27):
a pattern started to emerge. The rock was round, with
regular divots that suggested a rough texture like a pineapple,
but this plant had died millions of years before pineapples
had ever existed. What George held in his hand was
a psycatoid, an ancient plant that had once covered the
Black Hills. But it was so much more than a
(05:47):
simple plant. The fossil George held in his hand would
become an all consuming obsession that would take over the
rest of his life. Although George wasn't born until eighteen
sixty five, this story starts much earlier. It began seventy
million years ago, in the Cretaceous period, the time when
triceratops and t rex's roamed what would be the United States,
(06:08):
and the time when, one day, in that same area
in South Dakota that he found himself in later, a
landslide buried hundreds of psychatoids. They remained hidden for millions
of years, the pressure and heat slowly turning their organic
matter to hard rock. They would have stayed there too,
if it wasn't for America's agricultural expansion. In the early
(06:28):
eighteen nineties, ranchers that had settled in the area started
to report what they called petrified pineapples. They began selling
them as souvenirs, which eventually sparked the interest of the
nation's early paleontologists, and so Yale sent a young grad
student named George Wheeland to investigate in eighteen ninety eight,
and well, you know, the rest. Beyond studying the psycatoids,
(06:51):
George believed the first order of business was protecting them.
The first fossil had been discovered in the area six
years earlier, and already many of the specimens were gone,
sold by ranchers, taken by collectors, and requisitioned by researchers.
The rich trove of fossils was already being depleted, so
George began a campaign to get the region protected. In
(07:12):
nineteen oh six, when Teddy Roosevelt passed a law allowing
the federal government to take over land regarded as a
national monument, George knew that this was his chance. He
wrote hundreds of letters petitioning that the cycadoid fields should
be designated as a national monument. Despite his best efforts,
though the government refused, so George would have to get creative.
(07:33):
In nineteen twenty he acquired one hundred and sixty acres
of land in the Black Hills, including that sycatoid site.
Then he told the federal government that he would donate
the land to them if and only if they made
it into a national monument. They agreed, and in nineteen
twenty two, President Warren G. Harding declared the area the
Fossil Cycad National Monument. For the next decade, that National
(07:56):
Monument had a quiet existence. It was established when the
government was running into budget constraints, so it was never
assigned a superintendent or staff like other national parks. Instead,
it just got a small wooden sign and was monitored
by local ranchers, the same ones who used to sell
the fossils to tourists. So perhaps it wasn't a surprise
(08:17):
when in nineteen thirty three the park was found to
be almost completely empty. That year, a group of researchers
headed to the National monument to collect fossils to display
at the Chicago World's Fair. They weren't even able to
find the site at first, and when they got there,
there were no visible psychatoids anywhere. The wealth of the
specimens had been stolen, and the biggest shock was who
(08:39):
did the stealing. For years, George had been instrumental in
protecting the psychatoids from tourists and resellers, but perhaps he
should have been protecting the park from himself, because while
visitors took occasional souvenirs, it was George who stole several
thousand pounds of fossils from the national monuments he helped create.
Ever since he started digging in a night, George had
(09:01):
been taking samples back to Yale. Many were cataloged in
the university, but some were just taken to decorate George's home.
His obsession with the psychatioids led him to take cartfuls
of the fossils away from their natural resting ground. Sadly,
with all of George's efforts to preserve the National Monument,
he was the author of its demise. Fossil Psycad National
(09:23):
Monument never opened to the public. It never built a
visitor center or established a museum, and in nineteen fifty seven,
just four years after George's death, it became one of
the few national monuments to lose its protected status. Today,
you can still drive by the site to see what
little is left. Beyond the old sign, you'll find the
evidence of one man's a cover up that required a
(09:47):
whole lot of digging. 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 Manke in partnership with how Stuff Works, I make
(10:10):
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 Worldoflore dot com. And until
next time, stay curious.
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 are right there on display, just
waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
(00:36):
Second chances are hard to come by in life. We
don't usually get the opportunity to redo a terrible job interview,
or make things right when we've wronged a partner. Life
is oftentimes a one way trip with no stops, and
we're just along for the ride. But one man achieved
the unimaginable. After being involved in one of the most
tragic events in history. He persevered. He received the second
(00:59):
chance of all second chances, and refused to let his
circumstances sink him. His name was Richard Norris Williams the Second,
although he often went simply by Dick Williams. He was
born in Geneva, Switzerland, to American parents from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
He could trace his lineage directly back to Benjamin Franklin.
After years of private tutelage at a Swiss boarding school,
(01:22):
he decided to take up a new hobby, tennis. From
the age of twelve, Williams trained and honed his skills
on the court, leading to his victory at the Swiss
Championship in nineteen eleven. The following year, he and his
father traveled to Cherbourg, France, where they boarded a ship
bound for America. Norris had been accepted at Harvard and
planned to become a success both as a tennis star
(01:44):
and as a student. Their trip started out fine, with
nothing but blue skies above and a rich future ahead
of them. They even dined with a captain for dinner
one night, but then tragedy struck. Word quickly spread through
the decks as guests panicked and filled the lifeboats. The
show ship was sinking. It had apparently struck an iceberg.
That's right, Richard Williams and his father were on board
(02:07):
the Titanic, but the two men didn't abandon ship, at
least not at first. Actually, they stayed back, helping others
to pile into the lifeboats. They even gave away their
life jackets to those who they felt needed them more.
Williams then discovered someone was trapped in a room while
the vessel was going under, so he ran back to
free them. By the time he returned, there was nowhere
(02:28):
for him to go. In a last ditch effort to
save himself, Williams leaped from the Titanic's main deck into
the frigid waters of the Atlantic. The shock of the
cold nearly paralyzed him, but he fought to survive as
long as possible. His father, on the other hand, was
not so lucky. Apparently, he'd been hit by one of
the ship's funnels as it fell into the water, killing
(02:49):
him instantly. Meanwhile, Williams noticed that one of the collapsible
lifeboats had taken on water but was still afloat. Over
two dozen passengers were holding onto it for support. He
swam over and took hold, hanging on along with them
until help arride. Six hours later, he was one of
thirteen surviving members of that group who'd been rescued and
(03:10):
brought aboard the Carpathia for examination. Unfortunately, his time in
the water had done extensive damage to his legs. They
were frostbitten, and there was no other choice than to
amputate both of them. Williams pleaded for an alternative. I'm
going to need those legs, he said, and got to
his feet, pacing around the deck, hoping to bring them
back to life. In William's mind, taking his limbs would
(03:34):
be the end of everything, his future, his tennis career,
and maybe even his life, and so he walked. He
got up every few hours and walked around the deck
of the Carpathia, hoping the exercise would restore the feeling
in his legs. Well. To his and everyone else's surprise,
it worked mostly. Over the next three months, he did
regain sensation in his legs, but not completely, and when
(03:57):
he was on them for too long they caused him
a great deal of pain. But twelve weeks after the
Titanic sank and doctors told him he was going to
lose his limbs, Richard Williams got back on the court.
In fact, he didn't just play. He played against a
fellow Titanic survivor named Carl Howell. Bar Williams won the
first two sets of their match, but Bear managed to
(04:17):
outplay him in the end. Still, Richard kept going, and
in nineteen twenty four he took home the gold at
the Paris Olympics, winning in mixed doubles with his partner
Hazel Hotchkiss Whiteman. Even though Richard Williams didn't take home
the trophy against Bear, he arguably earned an even greater victory,
an Olympic gold medal for one, but he also survived
(04:38):
the sinking of the Titanic. He beat frostbite, and he
managed to return to the game he loved when the
odds were stacked against him, Game, Set, and match. George
(05:03):
Wheeland carefully wiped the dirt from the strange little hunk
of rock he had freed from the dusty ground. He'd
been digging in the Black Hills of South Dakota for
a few years now, and he'd found plenty of fossilized treasures,
from tiny dinosaur bones to massive tortoises shells, but he'd
never seen anything quite like this. As he used a
small soft brush to carefully remove the dirt from its crevices,
(05:27):
a pattern started to emerge. The rock was round, with
regular divots that suggested a rough texture like a pineapple,
but this plant had died millions of years before pineapples
had ever existed. What George held in his hand was
a psycatoid, an ancient plant that had once covered the
Black Hills. But it was so much more than a
(05:47):
simple plant. The fossil George held in his hand would
become an all consuming obsession that would take over the
rest of his life. Although George wasn't born until eighteen
sixty five, this story starts much earlier. It began seventy
million years ago, in the Cretaceous period, the time when
triceratops and t rex's roamed what would be the United States,
(06:08):
and the time when, one day, in that same area
in South Dakota that he found himself in later, a
landslide buried hundreds of psychatoids. They remained hidden for millions
of years, the pressure and heat slowly turning their organic
matter to hard rock. They would have stayed there too,
if it wasn't for America's agricultural expansion. In the early
(06:28):
eighteen nineties, ranchers that had settled in the area started
to report what they called petrified pineapples. They began selling
them as souvenirs, which eventually sparked the interest of the
nation's early paleontologists, and so Yale sent a young grad
student named George Wheeland to investigate in eighteen ninety eight,
and well, you know, the rest. Beyond studying the psycatoids,
(06:51):
George believed the first order of business was protecting them.
The first fossil had been discovered in the area six
years earlier, and already many of the specimens were gone,
sold by ranchers, taken by collectors, and requisitioned by researchers.
The rich trove of fossils was already being depleted, so
George began a campaign to get the region protected. In
(07:12):
nineteen oh six, when Teddy Roosevelt passed a law allowing
the federal government to take over land regarded as a
national monument, George knew that this was his chance. He
wrote hundreds of letters petitioning that the cycadoid fields should
be designated as a national monument. Despite his best efforts,
though the government refused, so George would have to get creative.
(07:33):
In nineteen twenty he acquired one hundred and sixty acres
of land in the Black Hills, including that sycatoid site.
Then he told the federal government that he would donate
the land to them if and only if they made
it into a national monument. They agreed, and in nineteen
twenty two, President Warren G. Harding declared the area the
Fossil Cycad National Monument. For the next decade, that National
(07:56):
Monument had a quiet existence. It was established when the
government was running into budget constraints, so it was never
assigned a superintendent or staff like other national parks. Instead,
it just got a small wooden sign and was monitored
by local ranchers, the same ones who used to sell
the fossils to tourists. So perhaps it wasn't a surprise
(08:17):
when in nineteen thirty three the park was found to
be almost completely empty. That year, a group of researchers
headed to the National monument to collect fossils to display
at the Chicago World's Fair. They weren't even able to
find the site at first, and when they got there,
there were no visible psychatoids anywhere. The wealth of the
specimens had been stolen, and the biggest shock was who
(08:39):
did the stealing. For years, George had been instrumental in
protecting the psychatoids from tourists and resellers, but perhaps he
should have been protecting the park from himself, because while
visitors took occasional souvenirs, it was George who stole several
thousand pounds of fossils from the national monuments he helped create.
Ever since he started digging in a night, George had
(09:01):
been taking samples back to Yale. Many were cataloged in
the university, but some were just taken to decorate George's home.
His obsession with the psychatioids led him to take cartfuls
of the fossils away from their natural resting ground. Sadly,
with all of George's efforts to preserve the National Monument,
he was the author of its demise. Fossil Psycad National
(09:23):
Monument never opened to the public. It never built a
visitor center or established a museum, and in nineteen fifty seven,
just four years after George's death, it became one of
the few national monuments to lose its protected status. Today,
you can still drive by the site to see what
little is left. Beyond the old sign, you'll find the
evidence of one man's a cover up that required a
(09:47):
whole lot of digging. 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 Manke in partnership with how Stuff Works, I make
(10:10):
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 Worldoflore dot com. And until
next time, stay curious.
Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities News
Host
Aaron Mahnke
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