July 30, 2026 • 11 mins
Wonders and woe are the centerpieces of today's 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.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
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. Deep in the mountains
(00:37):
of West Virginia, the New River runs its ancient course
through the gorge. The land around it has been preserved
as a National park, and so there are miles of
natural beauty. There's a sort of quiet out there in
the depths of Appalachia. One could almost be forgiven for
not seeing the deep scar in the limestone cliffs, or
for not knowing of the catastrophic industrial event that caused
(00:59):
it all. Here in this beautiful place, hundreds of lives
were claimed by a slow, suffocating death. The nineteen twenties
were a time of incredible industrial expansion, and the chemical
giant Union Carbide decided that it needed to power its
plants in Alloy, West Virginia. This would require something of
an engineering feat. The site of the new hydroelectric plant
(01:21):
was not next to water. In fact, they would have
to dig a tunnel three miles long to tap the
new river so that the plant could make power. It
was going to be one of the marbles of modern engineering.
Thousands of laborers were brought in for the project, predominantly
black men recruited from the South. They were to blast, drill,
and then clear the tunnel. They would work long hours
(01:42):
in small, confined spaces, and this would prove to have
devastating consequences for those workers. You see, the rock through
which the tunnel was bored was rich in a mineral
called silica, and when pulverized into a dust, it becomes
lethal to inhale. And the air was thick with silica dust,
so thick that it was impossible to see more than
(02:03):
a few feet in front of you. There were no
masks to protect the men's lungs, no ventilation system to
draw the toxic particles away. The men essentially toiled away
and a death trap. Now, a common disease found among
miners is chronic silicosis, which scars the lungs, making them
unable to absorb oxygen. It normally takes years to develop,
(02:26):
but the men who worked in the Hawk's Nest tunnel
their working conditions were so extreme that they developed acute
silicosis within just months. They suffered through shortness of breath,
chest pain, and relentless coughing, and eventually their lungs would
shut down completely. It's estimated that between seven hundred and
fifty and one thousand workers due to respiratory failure from
(02:47):
working in the Hawk's Nest tunnel, making it the deadliest
industrial disaster in US history, surpassing even the infamous Triangle
Shirtwaist factory fire. Although massive in scale, the tragedy compounded
by a complete lack of accountability. Instead of helping the
workers who were affected, the company fired many of those
who began to show symptoms, sending them back home to die,
(03:10):
and those who did die were often buried by the
company in unmarked graves. At one point, workers gathered together
to file a class action lawsuit, but it was largely dismissed,
leaving victims without money for medical bills and lost wages,
and so for decades, the corporate record of these men
remained lost to neglect and cover up, but the disaster
(03:31):
could not be forgotten. You see, the real story of
Hawk's Nest doesn't lie in some redacted memos or columns
on a spreadsheet, But in the fragmented accounts of the
victims themselves, the oral histories collected over the years painted
a bleak picture. These were men whose coughing shook them
so hard they could barely speak, men who described it
(03:53):
as dry drowning and the feeling of sand filling their lungs.
They were fathers and sons, and it's impossible to ignore
the racial dimension of this disaster as well. The vast
majority of the men who died were black, recruited from
the rural self, and when the illness began settling in Union,
(04:13):
Carbide's response was as cruel as it was fast. Instead
of treatment, the men would receive their final paycheck and
a train ticket home. What became of them after that
was none of the management's business, and this physical distance
meant that the company could deny any responsibility. As these
men wasted away, their skin turning gray, their breathing reduced
(04:34):
to a mere rattle. The company's silence was nearly as
deadly as the dust itself. But in the following years,
the survivors and families of the dead found each other,
gathered in community centers and churches to share their stories
of loved ones lost.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
These meetings became the first real oral history of the
events and the people it most affected. In time, these
were archived and others began to tell the stories through writing, photography,
and art, and it remains an indictment of the human
cost of industrial greed. The miners of Hawk's Nest may
have been forgotten by the company, but they are remembered
(05:11):
by history today. Their story is a call to action,
a reminder that we must never forget the sacrifices made
in the pursuit of progress, and that we must always
protect the lives of those who build our world. The
(05:38):
skies have always been a great source of mystery and wonder,
even in our modern age. Looking up at the stars
or the vastness of a storm cloud can be a
potent reminder of how small we human beings really are
in this universe. They make all our triumphs and struggles
seem insignificant. For all of human history, we projected our myths,
(05:59):
our dreams, and our stories into the heavens above, and
when we didn't have our heads in the clouds, sometimes
we wondered what could lie beyond them. It was April
fourteenth of fifteen sixty one in the city of Nuremberg.
This was long before the formation of Germany, back when
it was a city in the Holy Roman Empire. Residents
(06:19):
of the city stepped out of their homes as dawn
was breaking. A number of them froze in place, staring
up at the heavens. The sun looked strange as it
rose to its usual place in the sky, and as
they watched, two arcs of red light appeared in the
middle of the sun. They looked something like large crescent moons,
and around them other lights started to spark into existence,
(06:42):
red spots above and below the sun. Other dark orbs
started appearing, as well as red crosses and stripes of green.
Before the eyes of the Nuremberg citizens, all of these
strange celestial objects started to fly aggressively against each other,
disappearing in and out behind them, the sun weaving around
like agitated birds, a flurry of light that was so
(07:05):
striking none of the people below knew how to make
sense of it. They could only describe it as a
battle of some kind. Some of the objects appeared to
exhaust themselves and fell down to the horizon. Enormous columns
of smoke came from the crash sites, although no one
dared to investigate. It lasted for about an hour. Finally,
(07:26):
as the skies quieted, another object larger than all the
rest appeared, and it looked like an immense black spear
pointing to the east, and then the skies were clear again.
At the time, no one knew what to make of
what they had seen. A local woodcutter named Hans Glesser
made a wood carving of the event, depicting the various
(07:46):
celestial objects and their interaction with the sun. He wrote
his description of the event below the woodcut, including his
own interpretation that the sites had been a sign of
God's might. Centuries after glare Us would cut, a different
interpretation became the primary one, and I'm sure you've probably
already guessed what it is you see. UFO enthusiasts eventually
(08:09):
became convinced the so called battle in the skies was
so strange and unique that it had to have been
an early glimpse of some kind of alien activity. The
truth is, Glasser's account had fallen into obscurity before it
was mentioned in a nineteen fifty eight book called Flying Saucers.
Modern myths of things seen in the sky, and the
book raised some interesting questions. Was this an interstellar war
(08:33):
or some sort of attempt at communication that the sixteenth
century Nuremberg citizens just couldn't understand. Skeptics of the UFO
Battle theory say that the people of fifteen sixty one
Nuremberg merely saw some unusual celestial phenomenon and elaborated on it.
The description of two crescent moons of light seemed to
be similar to sun dogs, an effect where the Sun's
(08:56):
halo produces two sharp flares on either side of the horizon,
and the other shapes likely came from staring at the
sun for too long. But if you've seen sun dogs,
you know that the effect is impressive, but it's mild.
It's hard to imagine even the most superstitious person looking
at them and thinking that there's actually whole celestial battles
(09:16):
being waged in the heavens. Hans Glesser's woodcut shows a
sky practically chalk full of spots and shapes. The other
popular point of skepticism is the author of the original story.
As far as we're aware, Hans Glesser wasn't a con
artist or a fabuloust, but his account is the only
one that we have of the event at all. Everything
(09:38):
he says is filtered through his perspective and artistic depiction.
Even the fact that many Nuremberg residents saw the lights
in the sky is a claim with a single source.
This all isn't unsurprising for the period, though, but it
does give us an almost infinite number of ways to
express skepticism or credibility of what happened, depending on what
(09:59):
you're most like to believe. The world is a place
full of awe inspiring sites. The earth skies produce auroras
in the Arctic Circle and green flashes on the ocean's horizon.
All that said, there is one thing that we know
to be true, even if we never know what happened
that day in Nuremberg, will never be short of signs
from above, and humanity will always spring to the task
(10:23):
of interpreting them. I hope you enjoyed today's guided tour
through the Cabinet of Curiosities. This show was created by
me Aaron Mankey 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
(10:44):
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. And if you're looking for an
ad free option, consider joining our page. It's all the
same stories, but without the interruption for a small monthly fee.
(11:05):
Learn more and sign up over at Patreon dot com,
slash Grimandmild, and until next time, stay curious.
Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
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. Deep in the mountains
(00:37):
of West Virginia, the New River runs its ancient course
through the gorge. The land around it has been preserved
as a National park, and so there are miles of
natural beauty. There's a sort of quiet out there in
the depths of Appalachia. One could almost be forgiven for
not seeing the deep scar in the limestone cliffs, or
for not knowing of the catastrophic industrial event that caused
(00:59):
it all. Here in this beautiful place, hundreds of lives
were claimed by a slow, suffocating death. The nineteen twenties
were a time of incredible industrial expansion, and the chemical
giant Union Carbide decided that it needed to power its
plants in Alloy, West Virginia. This would require something of
an engineering feat. The site of the new hydroelectric plant
(01:21):
was not next to water. In fact, they would have
to dig a tunnel three miles long to tap the
new river so that the plant could make power. It
was going to be one of the marbles of modern engineering.
Thousands of laborers were brought in for the project, predominantly
black men recruited from the South. They were to blast, drill,
and then clear the tunnel. They would work long hours
(01:42):
in small, confined spaces, and this would prove to have
devastating consequences for those workers. You see, the rock through
which the tunnel was bored was rich in a mineral
called silica, and when pulverized into a dust, it becomes
lethal to inhale. And the air was thick with silica dust,
so thick that it was impossible to see more than
(02:03):
a few feet in front of you. There were no
masks to protect the men's lungs, no ventilation system to
draw the toxic particles away. The men essentially toiled away
and a death trap. Now, a common disease found among
miners is chronic silicosis, which scars the lungs, making them
unable to absorb oxygen. It normally takes years to develop,
(02:26):
but the men who worked in the Hawk's Nest tunnel
their working conditions were so extreme that they developed acute
silicosis within just months. They suffered through shortness of breath,
chest pain, and relentless coughing, and eventually their lungs would
shut down completely. It's estimated that between seven hundred and
fifty and one thousand workers due to respiratory failure from
(02:47):
working in the Hawk's Nest tunnel, making it the deadliest
industrial disaster in US history, surpassing even the infamous Triangle
Shirtwaist factory fire. Although massive in scale, the tragedy compounded
by a complete lack of accountability. Instead of helping the
workers who were affected, the company fired many of those
who began to show symptoms, sending them back home to die,
(03:10):
and those who did die were often buried by the
company in unmarked graves. At one point, workers gathered together
to file a class action lawsuit, but it was largely dismissed,
leaving victims without money for medical bills and lost wages,
and so for decades, the corporate record of these men
remained lost to neglect and cover up, but the disaster
(03:31):
could not be forgotten. You see, the real story of
Hawk's Nest doesn't lie in some redacted memos or columns
on a spreadsheet, But in the fragmented accounts of the
victims themselves, the oral histories collected over the years painted
a bleak picture. These were men whose coughing shook them
so hard they could barely speak, men who described it
(03:53):
as dry drowning and the feeling of sand filling their lungs.
They were fathers and sons, and it's impossible to ignore
the racial dimension of this disaster as well. The vast
majority of the men who died were black, recruited from
the rural self, and when the illness began settling in Union,
(04:13):
Carbide's response was as cruel as it was fast. Instead
of treatment, the men would receive their final paycheck and
a train ticket home. What became of them after that
was none of the management's business, and this physical distance
meant that the company could deny any responsibility. As these
men wasted away, their skin turning gray, their breathing reduced
(04:34):
to a mere rattle. The company's silence was nearly as
deadly as the dust itself. But in the following years,
the survivors and families of the dead found each other,
gathered in community centers and churches to share their stories
of loved ones lost.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
These meetings became the first real oral history of the
events and the people it most affected. In time, these
were archived and others began to tell the stories through writing, photography,
and art, and it remains an indictment of the human
cost of industrial greed. The miners of Hawk's Nest may
have been forgotten by the company, but they are remembered
(05:11):
by history today. Their story is a call to action,
a reminder that we must never forget the sacrifices made
in the pursuit of progress, and that we must always
protect the lives of those who build our world. The
(05:38):
skies have always been a great source of mystery and wonder,
even in our modern age. Looking up at the stars
or the vastness of a storm cloud can be a
potent reminder of how small we human beings really are
in this universe. They make all our triumphs and struggles
seem insignificant. For all of human history, we projected our myths,
(05:59):
our dreams, and our stories into the heavens above, and
when we didn't have our heads in the clouds, sometimes
we wondered what could lie beyond them. It was April
fourteenth of fifteen sixty one in the city of Nuremberg.
This was long before the formation of Germany, back when
it was a city in the Holy Roman Empire. Residents
(06:19):
of the city stepped out of their homes as dawn
was breaking. A number of them froze in place, staring
up at the heavens. The sun looked strange as it
rose to its usual place in the sky, and as
they watched, two arcs of red light appeared in the
middle of the sun. They looked something like large crescent moons,
and around them other lights started to spark into existence,
(06:42):
red spots above and below the sun. Other dark orbs
started appearing, as well as red crosses and stripes of green.
Before the eyes of the Nuremberg citizens, all of these
strange celestial objects started to fly aggressively against each other,
disappearing in and out behind them, the sun weaving around
like agitated birds, a flurry of light that was so
(07:05):
striking none of the people below knew how to make
sense of it. They could only describe it as a
battle of some kind. Some of the objects appeared to
exhaust themselves and fell down to the horizon. Enormous columns
of smoke came from the crash sites, although no one
dared to investigate. It lasted for about an hour. Finally,
(07:26):
as the skies quieted, another object larger than all the
rest appeared, and it looked like an immense black spear
pointing to the east, and then the skies were clear again.
At the time, no one knew what to make of
what they had seen. A local woodcutter named Hans Glesser
made a wood carving of the event, depicting the various
(07:46):
celestial objects and their interaction with the sun. He wrote
his description of the event below the woodcut, including his
own interpretation that the sites had been a sign of
God's might. Centuries after glare Us would cut, a different
interpretation became the primary one, and I'm sure you've probably
already guessed what it is you see. UFO enthusiasts eventually
(08:09):
became convinced the so called battle in the skies was
so strange and unique that it had to have been
an early glimpse of some kind of alien activity. The
truth is, Glasser's account had fallen into obscurity before it
was mentioned in a nineteen fifty eight book called Flying Saucers.
Modern myths of things seen in the sky, and the
book raised some interesting questions. Was this an interstellar war
(08:33):
or some sort of attempt at communication that the sixteenth
century Nuremberg citizens just couldn't understand. Skeptics of the UFO
Battle theory say that the people of fifteen sixty one
Nuremberg merely saw some unusual celestial phenomenon and elaborated on it.
The description of two crescent moons of light seemed to
be similar to sun dogs, an effect where the Sun's
(08:56):
halo produces two sharp flares on either side of the horizon,
and the other shapes likely came from staring at the
sun for too long. But if you've seen sun dogs,
you know that the effect is impressive, but it's mild.
It's hard to imagine even the most superstitious person looking
at them and thinking that there's actually whole celestial battles
(09:16):
being waged in the heavens. Hans Glesser's woodcut shows a
sky practically chalk full of spots and shapes. The other
popular point of skepticism is the author of the original story.
As far as we're aware, Hans Glesser wasn't a con
artist or a fabuloust, but his account is the only
one that we have of the event at all. Everything
(09:38):
he says is filtered through his perspective and artistic depiction.
Even the fact that many Nuremberg residents saw the lights
in the sky is a claim with a single source.
This all isn't unsurprising for the period, though, but it
does give us an almost infinite number of ways to
express skepticism or credibility of what happened, depending on what
(09:59):
you're most like to believe. The world is a place
full of awe inspiring sites. The earth skies produce auroras
in the Arctic Circle and green flashes on the ocean's horizon.
All that said, there is one thing that we know
to be true, even if we never know what happened
that day in Nuremberg, will never be short of signs
from above, and humanity will always spring to the task
(10:23):
of interpreting them. I hope you enjoyed today's guided tour
through the Cabinet of Curiosities. This show was created by
me Aaron Mankey 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
(10:44):
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. And if you're looking for an
ad free option, consider joining our page. It's all the
same stories, but without the interruption for a small monthly fee.
(11:05):
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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