January 26, 2023 • 9 mins
Usually, the precise moment a significant event took place is difficult for historians to nail down. But not in the stories we cover today on our tour through the Cabinet.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcomed Aaron Manky's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of I
Heart Radio and Grim 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):
What happens when a small group of people experience the
same thing in different parts of the world, but nobody
believes them. They find each other because it doesn't matter
how much they protest or plead. Their spouses, children, and
even their doctors refuse to accept that something is wrong.
So this outspoken minority seeks others like them out. They
scour social media and online forums for individuals who have
(00:59):
been affected by similar phenomena. Individuals like forty six year
old Shanna Turner in North Carolina. She'd been at a
girls soccer game when it happened to her. Steve Marshburne
was working at a bank when he was hit by
it in nineteen nine. It forced him to undergo almost
fifty back surgeries over the course of his life, and
it happened to Gary Reynolds three times. All three of
(01:21):
these people, and over twenty others were part of a
very exclusive group of lightning strike survivors. When the human
body is hit by lightning, it's riddled with three hundred
million volts of electricity in an instant. We're not meant
to endure that much power, and some victims die of
cardiac arrest as a result, but many do survive, albeit
(01:42):
with serious consequences. Their skin is burned, their bones are shattered,
or their brains are fried. Shanna Turner suffered memory loss
as a result of her brush with Zeus, while Steve
Marshburn's back was broken when a bolt of lightning traveled
through the speaker of his banks drive through window and
struck him. And occasionally, lightning survivors are also graced with
(02:02):
scars on their bodies called Lichtenburg figures. They're often shaped
like the branches of a tree growing along the back, arms,
and chest. But as I mentioned before, not everyone walks
away from a power surge like that. It happened in
October of n in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The
area had been a battleground for some time, with a
(02:23):
civil war raging on between rebels and government forces, but
amidst all the fighting, there was a brief glimmer of
levity in the form of a soccer game. The home team, Benishati,
were up against the visiting Basanga team with a thaieh
score of one to one. The game was going fine
when out of nowhere, a bolt of lightning hit the
ground in a flash. Such an incident would have frightened
(02:45):
anyone close by. When everyone's eyes had adjusted and the
smoke had cleared, the damage was evident. Thirty people who
had been standing on the sidelines were hurt in the blast.
They were taken to local hospitals to have their burns treated.
The visiting team, though, was not affected at all. They
walked away without injury, but the members of the Beneshatti
team weren't so lucky. All eleven players, ranging in ages
(03:09):
from twenty to thirty five years old, had died instantly.
Many believed that witchcraft was the cause of the strike.
It wasn't uncommon for African teams to use witch doctors
to curse their adversaries. And what's worse is that this
isn't the only time such an event has occurred. Days earlier,
as the Morocco Swallows took on the Jumo Cosmos, seven
(03:30):
players and the referee were hit by a bolt on
the field. Two of the Swallow players were seriously injured. Sadly,
Africa is no stranger to such acts of God. The
continent is one of the biggest hot spots for lightning
strikes in the entire world, with South Africa alone seen
one deaths each year as a result, and the Democratic
(03:50):
Republic of the Congo, where the Benishatti players were killed,
can see as many as sixty flashes per square kilometer
each year, and those flashes tend to land in indust
real areas which are chock full of people just going
about their daily lives. But not all hope is lost.
Many office buildings are built with protective measures in place
to mitigate the effects of a lightning strike, and being
(04:13):
struck is not a death sentence in and of itself.
Only one in ten who are hit by lightning will die,
as proven by the folks like Shanna Turner and Gary Reynolds.
And being struck is still incredibly rare, even in a
lightning prone place like Africa. But don't get your hopes
up too high. You still have a better chance of
being struck by lightning twice than you ever do of
(04:35):
winning the lottery, and only one of those things leaves
you with a really cool scar. Ours is a culture
(04:56):
of change. Language, in particular, shifts with every generation. A
word like bully used to mean great or excellent, whereas
today it has come to signify someone who picks on others. Meanwhile,
scientific exploration and biological study have shed new light on
old perceptions over the years. For example, before we knew
what germs were, doctors thought that disease was caused by
(05:19):
poisonous air coming from the ground, and up until the
mid nineteenth century, farmers and even scientists thought that putting
a pair of dirty underwear in a bucket of grains
would create mice. It was a concept known as spontaneous generation,
which suggested that non living objects could create life. But
one person turned our preconceptions about the animal kingdom on
(05:42):
their head back in nineteen forty and changed the course
of the English language in the process. It all started,
surprisingly with the Bible and one important figure. He was
the son of Noah's grandson Cush, which made him know
his great grandson. He was also a great hunter and
a king who old over the land of Shinnar. Otherwise,
known as Mesopotamia. In the Book of Genesis, this king
(06:06):
was seen as having rebelled against God after ordering the
construction of the Tower of Babel. Remember, according to the
Babel story, everyone in the world spoke the same language,
and eventually they began building the tower, a massive structure
that was meant to reach the sky. But God saw
this going on and changed all of their speech to
different languages. Unable to understand one another, the builders were
(06:29):
scattered to different places all over the globe. It was
a story meant to explain, among many other things, why
different languages were spoken in different countries, But it was
also about the consequences of blind, unchecked pride, namely that
of the great king and hunter Nimrod, which brings us
to the modern age. You see, some kids these days
(06:50):
leave out a healthy snack for the Easter Bunny the
night before he set to arrive, and when they wake
up they might find that a piece of carrot was
left behind, along with eggs and candy, proof that their
good deed had not gone unnoticed. Of course, carrots and
rabbits go hand in hand like peanut, butter and jelly,
at least we think they do. But the fact is
(07:11):
that carrots hold very little nutritional value for rabbits. They
don't normally eat them in the wild, So why do
we think that they like them? And what does that
have to do with the biblical hunter. Well, the answer
might surprise you. It's all because of Bugs Bunny. When
Bugs Bunny debuted in nineteen forty in an animated short
called a Wild Hair, he popped up on screen chomping
(07:33):
on a carrot. It was a blatant send off of
Clark Gable's character in the nineteen thirty four film It
Happened One Night. In one scene from that film, Gable
could be seen munching on a carrot while talking to
his co star Claudette Colbert. Bugs mannerisms, including how he
ate the carrots, were a direct reference to gables performance
(07:54):
in that specific film, and the audiences of nineteen forty
knew it. But over time, those children, and then their
children and even their children's children all grew up with
Bugs Bunny cartoons, and that original Clark Gable connection faded away,
leaving behind the image of a rabbit eating a carrot,
and so pet owners and Easter celebrants grew up believing
(08:16):
that rabbits eight carrots, a new cultural assumption that was
all bugs Bunny's fault. But one other thing happened during
a wild hair that altered our culture and you could
see it or maybe hear it, and how we use
a certain word today. In that ninety animated short, Bugs
Bunny refers to his nemesis Elmer Fudd as a nim rod,
(08:38):
and to be honest, it did make a lot of sense.
Fudd was, after all, dressed and outfitted as a hunter.
There was also a throwaway line, but the sarcasm turned
the legendary name into a simple insult, and over time,
calling someone a nimrod became a new way to suggest
that they were bumbling, error prone buffoon. I think it's
(08:59):
fair to say that car tunes can teach us a lot,
like how to outsmart a coyote or how to evade
being eaten by a cat, But they can also affect
the way we see the world and alter the language
we use in the process. Some folks say that cartoons
will rot a person's brain. The truth, though it's a
lot more curious. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour
(09:24):
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 Manky
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
(09:46):
over at the World of Lore dot com. And until
next time, stay curious.
Welcomed Aaron Manky's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of I
Heart Radio and Grim 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):
What happens when a small group of people experience the
same thing in different parts of the world, but nobody
believes them. They find each other because it doesn't matter
how much they protest or plead. Their spouses, children, and
even their doctors refuse to accept that something is wrong.
So this outspoken minority seeks others like them out. They
scour social media and online forums for individuals who have
(00:59):
been affected by similar phenomena. Individuals like forty six year
old Shanna Turner in North Carolina. She'd been at a
girls soccer game when it happened to her. Steve Marshburne
was working at a bank when he was hit by
it in nineteen nine. It forced him to undergo almost
fifty back surgeries over the course of his life, and
it happened to Gary Reynolds three times. All three of
(01:21):
these people, and over twenty others were part of a
very exclusive group of lightning strike survivors. When the human
body is hit by lightning, it's riddled with three hundred
million volts of electricity in an instant. We're not meant
to endure that much power, and some victims die of
cardiac arrest as a result, but many do survive, albeit
(01:42):
with serious consequences. Their skin is burned, their bones are shattered,
or their brains are fried. Shanna Turner suffered memory loss
as a result of her brush with Zeus, while Steve
Marshburn's back was broken when a bolt of lightning traveled
through the speaker of his banks drive through window and
struck him. And occasionally, lightning survivors are also graced with
(02:02):
scars on their bodies called Lichtenburg figures. They're often shaped
like the branches of a tree growing along the back, arms,
and chest. But as I mentioned before, not everyone walks
away from a power surge like that. It happened in
October of n in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The
area had been a battleground for some time, with a
(02:23):
civil war raging on between rebels and government forces, but
amidst all the fighting, there was a brief glimmer of
levity in the form of a soccer game. The home team, Benishati,
were up against the visiting Basanga team with a thaieh
score of one to one. The game was going fine
when out of nowhere, a bolt of lightning hit the
ground in a flash. Such an incident would have frightened
(02:45):
anyone close by. When everyone's eyes had adjusted and the
smoke had cleared, the damage was evident. Thirty people who
had been standing on the sidelines were hurt in the blast.
They were taken to local hospitals to have their burns treated.
The visiting team, though, was not affected at all. They
walked away without injury, but the members of the Beneshatti
team weren't so lucky. All eleven players, ranging in ages
(03:09):
from twenty to thirty five years old, had died instantly.
Many believed that witchcraft was the cause of the strike.
It wasn't uncommon for African teams to use witch doctors
to curse their adversaries. And what's worse is that this
isn't the only time such an event has occurred. Days earlier,
as the Morocco Swallows took on the Jumo Cosmos, seven
(03:30):
players and the referee were hit by a bolt on
the field. Two of the Swallow players were seriously injured. Sadly,
Africa is no stranger to such acts of God. The
continent is one of the biggest hot spots for lightning
strikes in the entire world, with South Africa alone seen
one deaths each year as a result, and the Democratic
(03:50):
Republic of the Congo, where the Benishatti players were killed,
can see as many as sixty flashes per square kilometer
each year, and those flashes tend to land in indust
real areas which are chock full of people just going
about their daily lives. But not all hope is lost.
Many office buildings are built with protective measures in place
to mitigate the effects of a lightning strike, and being
(04:13):
struck is not a death sentence in and of itself.
Only one in ten who are hit by lightning will die,
as proven by the folks like Shanna Turner and Gary Reynolds.
And being struck is still incredibly rare, even in a
lightning prone place like Africa. But don't get your hopes
up too high. You still have a better chance of
being struck by lightning twice than you ever do of
(04:35):
winning the lottery, and only one of those things leaves
you with a really cool scar. Ours is a culture
(04:56):
of change. Language, in particular, shifts with every generation. A
word like bully used to mean great or excellent, whereas
today it has come to signify someone who picks on others. Meanwhile,
scientific exploration and biological study have shed new light on
old perceptions over the years. For example, before we knew
what germs were, doctors thought that disease was caused by
(05:19):
poisonous air coming from the ground, and up until the
mid nineteenth century, farmers and even scientists thought that putting
a pair of dirty underwear in a bucket of grains
would create mice. It was a concept known as spontaneous generation,
which suggested that non living objects could create life. But
one person turned our preconceptions about the animal kingdom on
(05:42):
their head back in nineteen forty and changed the course
of the English language in the process. It all started,
surprisingly with the Bible and one important figure. He was
the son of Noah's grandson Cush, which made him know
his great grandson. He was also a great hunter and
a king who old over the land of Shinnar. Otherwise,
known as Mesopotamia. In the Book of Genesis, this king
(06:06):
was seen as having rebelled against God after ordering the
construction of the Tower of Babel. Remember, according to the
Babel story, everyone in the world spoke the same language,
and eventually they began building the tower, a massive structure
that was meant to reach the sky. But God saw
this going on and changed all of their speech to
different languages. Unable to understand one another, the builders were
(06:29):
scattered to different places all over the globe. It was
a story meant to explain, among many other things, why
different languages were spoken in different countries, But it was
also about the consequences of blind, unchecked pride, namely that
of the great king and hunter Nimrod, which brings us
to the modern age. You see, some kids these days
(06:50):
leave out a healthy snack for the Easter Bunny the
night before he set to arrive, and when they wake
up they might find that a piece of carrot was
left behind, along with eggs and candy, proof that their
good deed had not gone unnoticed. Of course, carrots and
rabbits go hand in hand like peanut, butter and jelly,
at least we think they do. But the fact is
(07:11):
that carrots hold very little nutritional value for rabbits. They
don't normally eat them in the wild, So why do
we think that they like them? And what does that
have to do with the biblical hunter. Well, the answer
might surprise you. It's all because of Bugs Bunny. When
Bugs Bunny debuted in nineteen forty in an animated short
called a Wild Hair, he popped up on screen chomping
(07:33):
on a carrot. It was a blatant send off of
Clark Gable's character in the nineteen thirty four film It
Happened One Night. In one scene from that film, Gable
could be seen munching on a carrot while talking to
his co star Claudette Colbert. Bugs mannerisms, including how he
ate the carrots, were a direct reference to gables performance
(07:54):
in that specific film, and the audiences of nineteen forty
knew it. But over time, those children, and then their
children and even their children's children all grew up with
Bugs Bunny cartoons, and that original Clark Gable connection faded away,
leaving behind the image of a rabbit eating a carrot,
and so pet owners and Easter celebrants grew up believing
(08:16):
that rabbits eight carrots, a new cultural assumption that was
all bugs Bunny's fault. But one other thing happened during
a wild hair that altered our culture and you could
see it or maybe hear it, and how we use
a certain word today. In that ninety animated short, Bugs
Bunny refers to his nemesis Elmer Fudd as a nim rod,
(08:38):
and to be honest, it did make a lot of sense.
Fudd was, after all, dressed and outfitted as a hunter.
There was also a throwaway line, but the sarcasm turned
the legendary name into a simple insult, and over time,
calling someone a nimrod became a new way to suggest
that they were bumbling, error prone buffoon. I think it's
(08:59):
fair to say that car tunes can teach us a lot,
like how to outsmart a coyote or how to evade
being eaten by a cat, But they can also affect
the way we see the world and alter the language
we use in the process. Some folks say that cartoons
will rot a person's brain. The truth, though it's a
lot more curious. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour
(09:24):
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 Manky
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
(09:46):
over at the World of Lore dot com. And until
next time, stay curious.
Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities News
Host
Aaron Mahnke
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