April 22, 2021 • 9 mins
Two well known subjects, two extraordinary stories. All part of today's tour through the Cabinet of Curiosities.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Aaron Benky's Cabinet of Curiosity is 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 are right there
on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to
(00:26):
the Cabinet of Curiosities. Picture of Valentine's Day card. You
probably see pink and red hearts, maybe a fun rhyme,
maybe one of those postcards printed for students to hand
out in class, Snoopy or some superhero saying beat my Valentine,
(00:50):
ready to be passed along with some candy hearts and
a shy smile. It's a sweet tradition, but for a
day celebrating the chance to turn a private crush into
something more. Valentine's Day wasn't always so sweet, And of
course there have always been people who didn't exactly feel
warm fuzzies every time that day came around. So what's
in it for them? Well, the Victorians had an answer
(01:12):
for that. Recently, a historian looking through a British museum
found a leather bound volume of Valentine's cards from around
eighteen seventy. The kind of display book that a salesman
would bring to stationary stores to show business owners what
they could bring their to their shelves on Valentine's Day.
The first half of the book is predictable, cherubs, flowers,
(01:33):
silver spirals, the kinds of classy cards Victorian lovebirds might
buy for each other. The second half, though, is more
for the mocking birds. The back of the album is
full of postcards that were printed with devastating insults and
hurtful rhymes. The illustrations are rude caricatures and crass parodies
of lovely greetings. Some of them even cross over the
(01:54):
line from the hideous to the obscene. Compared to the
other cards, they're a little rougher there, rented quickly on
cheap sheets of paper. After all, you probably want to
put most of your money into praising your friends, not
insulting your enemies. Even so, there were plenty of choices
for the discerning buyer. Take, for example, the card showing
a gentleman in striped trousers getting a bucket of water
(02:16):
splashed in his face by a smiling woman. His hat
flies off the edge of the page, and the rhyme
underneath it reads it says as plain as it can say,
old fellow, you best step away. Another example is a
card that's covered in delicate calligraphy but ironically reads, indeed
you are a little prig for home. I do not
(02:37):
care one fig. Now I'm not saying they would win
any prizes for poetry, but if you want to put
a suitor off your case, looking at the grin of
the woman with the bucket of water gives us a
glimpse of how someone might feel putting their coins down
on the counter in the stationary shop. But these mocking
cards weren't just printed to stop unwanted attention. They were
also called vinegar Valentine's printed in the event that you
(03:00):
just wanted to insult someone in your life, holiday or
no angry at a salesperson for how you were treated
in their store. There's a card for that, illustrated with
an obnoxious cashier behind the counter. There were cards printed
to sling at school, teachers, neighbors, and so many more.
Look any trip to the comments section on a website
(03:20):
will show you that cheap insults have never gone out
of style. So that raises the question why there aren't
more of these cards around the fact of the matter
is they didn't last. First of all, they were probably
thrown away when they were received because these Valentines didn't sing.
They stun One writer from the time remembered getting one,
and she said that she threw it directly into the fire.
(03:43):
Still enough of them have survived that today. Historians guessed
that something like seven hundred and fifty thousand Vinegar Valentine's
were being sent each and every year. But even as
they rose in popularity, there was plenty of pushback to
Valentine's Day has its fans, and they weren't too happy
that a day celebrating innocent love was being polluted with
(04:03):
overly malicious notes. And there's another twist on all this
too that may be part of the outrage against Vinegar Valentine's.
You see, the Victorian era was a time like today
when cards could be sent through the mail anonymously. What's
different from the present is that these were the days
before the English mail use stamps. Letters and cards could
(04:24):
just be dropped into the mail without the sender paying
up front to get them delivered. The mail still had
to be paid for, though, and who ponied up the
person who received the mail, which means that people actually
had to pay for the privilege of being insulted. Today,
a lot has changed, and even for those of us
who don't enjoy all the sugary sweetness of candy hearts,
(04:45):
at least we can all be grateful to leave behind
their tradition of adding insult to injury. Amelia was used
to going anywhere she wanted. That's because she could fly.
(05:07):
And yes, I'm talking about that Amelia Amelia Earhart. She
didn't start out as a pilot, of course. During the
eighteen flu pandemic, she was one of the most trusted
nurses aids in a military hospital, working night shifts in
the pneumonia ward. But it was in the winter of
that year that she first caught an interest in flying.
She remembered that some of the military officers she knew
(05:29):
from the hospital were being trained to fly, and in
her time off from nursing duty, she would go to
their makeshift airfields and watch them take off. She never
got over the sting of the snow on her face
as it was blown back from the propellers. Within just
a few years, those propellers were hers. She had her
first flying lesson from another woman pilot named Netta Snook.
(05:51):
By that summer, she had scraped together enough money to
buy a yellow biplane that she called the Canary. The
next fall, Amelia broke a world record for female pilots,
and she took her little plane up to fourteen thousand feet.
She wasn't done, of course. She had always had a
reputation for being curious and bold, and the more she flew,
the more ambitious she got. In she became the first
(06:13):
woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean, but she wasn't
the pilot. She became the first woman to travel over
the ocean by air, but the fact that she was
only a passenger for the trip didn't sit well with her. Obviously,
she knew how to fly. She had already been piloting
shorter flights for almost ten years, so it's no wonder
she wasn't quite happy sitting there while someone else worked
(06:33):
the controls. After all, she wasn't a woman who was
happy with being bred to humility, as she later said, No,
Amelia was born for altitude, so it was a triumph
of both her talents and her courage when she finally
flew herself across the Atlantic two years later in ninety
two successes like that opened new doors for her. When
(06:54):
she got home from that trip, she had standing invitations
to just about anywhere she liked. After all, who wouldn't
want to host such a trailblazing spirit. So the dinner
parties where Amelia found herself were more and more lavish,
and more and more exciting. But no matter how exciting
they got, they still never quite met Amelia's high expectations.
(07:14):
Take for example, one particular dinner she attended on April
ninety three. It was about a swanky as it gets.
In those days. The newspapers love to report on what
Amelia would wear to her high profile gatherings, and that
night she went hatless but wore high heels, a long
white gown, a short black coat, and white evening gloves,
(07:34):
just the sort of thing high society papers would expect
from a high society dinner. What no one expected, though,
was that halfway through Amelia would turn to her hostess
and invite her out into the night sky. On a whim,
she suggested a flight to Baltimore. Perhaps just as surprising,
her hostess agreed it wasn't because it was a nice night,
(07:55):
though honestly, the clouds were low, and it was spluttering rain.
But the whole dinner party jumped up from the table
and called ahead to the airport. Amelia Earhart was taking
them into the sky. The airport scrambled to get ready.
One newspaper said that the airstrip was just one gigantic
mud puddle that night, lavishly streaked with water that hadn't
(08:16):
soaked in. But Amelia marched her high heels to the
waiting plane and ushered the dinner party inside. Soon enough
they were in the air. Some of the passengers remembered
that Amelia didn't even take off her heels and gloves
to fly. She was instantly at home. Now she was
the hostess and the rest of the group were simply
along for the ride. Amelia flew them along the Potomac River,
(08:39):
buzzed the Capitol Building, and then turned northeast towards Baltimore.
She made an impression that night, but then she always
seemed to do that everywhere she flew. This time, though,
Amelia's hostess was so inspired that she asked for flying lessons,
and Amelia agreed. Those lessons never came about, though that
woman's husband felt that flying was just too dangerous, which
(09:02):
is understandable. He was accustomed to worrying about danger being
the President of the United States. So while Eleanor Roosevelt
never got her chance to learn from Amelia Earhart, it's
clear they would have made quite a pair, the First
Lady and the First Lady of Flight. I hope you've
enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe
(09:25):
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 over at the World of Lore
(09:46):
dot com. And until next time, stay curious. Yeah,
Welcome to Aaron Benky's Cabinet of Curiosity is 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 are right there
on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to
(00:26):
the Cabinet of Curiosities. Picture of Valentine's Day card. You
probably see pink and red hearts, maybe a fun rhyme,
maybe one of those postcards printed for students to hand
out in class, Snoopy or some superhero saying beat my Valentine,
(00:50):
ready to be passed along with some candy hearts and
a shy smile. It's a sweet tradition, but for a
day celebrating the chance to turn a private crush into
something more. Valentine's Day wasn't always so sweet, And of
course there have always been people who didn't exactly feel
warm fuzzies every time that day came around. So what's
in it for them? Well, the Victorians had an answer
(01:12):
for that. Recently, a historian looking through a British museum
found a leather bound volume of Valentine's cards from around
eighteen seventy. The kind of display book that a salesman
would bring to stationary stores to show business owners what
they could bring their to their shelves on Valentine's Day.
The first half of the book is predictable, cherubs, flowers,
(01:33):
silver spirals, the kinds of classy cards Victorian lovebirds might
buy for each other. The second half, though, is more
for the mocking birds. The back of the album is
full of postcards that were printed with devastating insults and
hurtful rhymes. The illustrations are rude caricatures and crass parodies
of lovely greetings. Some of them even cross over the
(01:54):
line from the hideous to the obscene. Compared to the
other cards, they're a little rougher there, rented quickly on
cheap sheets of paper. After all, you probably want to
put most of your money into praising your friends, not
insulting your enemies. Even so, there were plenty of choices
for the discerning buyer. Take, for example, the card showing
a gentleman in striped trousers getting a bucket of water
(02:16):
splashed in his face by a smiling woman. His hat
flies off the edge of the page, and the rhyme
underneath it reads it says as plain as it can say,
old fellow, you best step away. Another example is a
card that's covered in delicate calligraphy but ironically reads, indeed
you are a little prig for home. I do not
(02:37):
care one fig. Now I'm not saying they would win
any prizes for poetry, but if you want to put
a suitor off your case, looking at the grin of
the woman with the bucket of water gives us a
glimpse of how someone might feel putting their coins down
on the counter in the stationary shop. But these mocking
cards weren't just printed to stop unwanted attention. They were
also called vinegar Valentine's printed in the event that you
(03:00):
just wanted to insult someone in your life, holiday or
no angry at a salesperson for how you were treated
in their store. There's a card for that, illustrated with
an obnoxious cashier behind the counter. There were cards printed
to sling at school, teachers, neighbors, and so many more.
Look any trip to the comments section on a website
(03:20):
will show you that cheap insults have never gone out
of style. So that raises the question why there aren't
more of these cards around the fact of the matter
is they didn't last. First of all, they were probably
thrown away when they were received because these Valentines didn't sing.
They stun One writer from the time remembered getting one,
and she said that she threw it directly into the fire.
(03:43):
Still enough of them have survived that today. Historians guessed
that something like seven hundred and fifty thousand Vinegar Valentine's
were being sent each and every year. But even as
they rose in popularity, there was plenty of pushback to
Valentine's Day has its fans, and they weren't too happy
that a day celebrating innocent love was being polluted with
(04:03):
overly malicious notes. And there's another twist on all this
too that may be part of the outrage against Vinegar Valentine's.
You see, the Victorian era was a time like today
when cards could be sent through the mail anonymously. What's
different from the present is that these were the days
before the English mail use stamps. Letters and cards could
(04:24):
just be dropped into the mail without the sender paying
up front to get them delivered. The mail still had
to be paid for, though, and who ponied up the
person who received the mail, which means that people actually
had to pay for the privilege of being insulted. Today,
a lot has changed, and even for those of us
who don't enjoy all the sugary sweetness of candy hearts,
(04:45):
at least we can all be grateful to leave behind
their tradition of adding insult to injury. Amelia was used
to going anywhere she wanted. That's because she could fly.
(05:07):
And yes, I'm talking about that Amelia Amelia Earhart. She
didn't start out as a pilot, of course. During the
eighteen flu pandemic, she was one of the most trusted
nurses aids in a military hospital, working night shifts in
the pneumonia ward. But it was in the winter of
that year that she first caught an interest in flying.
She remembered that some of the military officers she knew
(05:29):
from the hospital were being trained to fly, and in
her time off from nursing duty, she would go to
their makeshift airfields and watch them take off. She never
got over the sting of the snow on her face
as it was blown back from the propellers. Within just
a few years, those propellers were hers. She had her
first flying lesson from another woman pilot named Netta Snook.
(05:51):
By that summer, she had scraped together enough money to
buy a yellow biplane that she called the Canary. The
next fall, Amelia broke a world record for female pilots,
and she took her little plane up to fourteen thousand feet.
She wasn't done, of course. She had always had a
reputation for being curious and bold, and the more she flew,
the more ambitious she got. In she became the first
(06:13):
woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean, but she wasn't
the pilot. She became the first woman to travel over
the ocean by air, but the fact that she was
only a passenger for the trip didn't sit well with her. Obviously,
she knew how to fly. She had already been piloting
shorter flights for almost ten years, so it's no wonder
she wasn't quite happy sitting there while someone else worked
(06:33):
the controls. After all, she wasn't a woman who was
happy with being bred to humility, as she later said, No,
Amelia was born for altitude, so it was a triumph
of both her talents and her courage when she finally
flew herself across the Atlantic two years later in ninety
two successes like that opened new doors for her. When
(06:54):
she got home from that trip, she had standing invitations
to just about anywhere she liked. After all, who wouldn't
want to host such a trailblazing spirit. So the dinner
parties where Amelia found herself were more and more lavish,
and more and more exciting. But no matter how exciting
they got, they still never quite met Amelia's high expectations.
(07:14):
Take for example, one particular dinner she attended on April
ninety three. It was about a swanky as it gets.
In those days. The newspapers love to report on what
Amelia would wear to her high profile gatherings, and that
night she went hatless but wore high heels, a long
white gown, a short black coat, and white evening gloves,
(07:34):
just the sort of thing high society papers would expect
from a high society dinner. What no one expected, though,
was that halfway through Amelia would turn to her hostess
and invite her out into the night sky. On a whim,
she suggested a flight to Baltimore. Perhaps just as surprising,
her hostess agreed it wasn't because it was a nice night,
(07:55):
though honestly, the clouds were low, and it was spluttering rain.
But the whole dinner party jumped up from the table
and called ahead to the airport. Amelia Earhart was taking
them into the sky. The airport scrambled to get ready.
One newspaper said that the airstrip was just one gigantic
mud puddle that night, lavishly streaked with water that hadn't
(08:16):
soaked in. But Amelia marched her high heels to the
waiting plane and ushered the dinner party inside. Soon enough
they were in the air. Some of the passengers remembered
that Amelia didn't even take off her heels and gloves
to fly. She was instantly at home. Now she was
the hostess and the rest of the group were simply
along for the ride. Amelia flew them along the Potomac River,
(08:39):
buzzed the Capitol Building, and then turned northeast towards Baltimore.
She made an impression that night, but then she always
seemed to do that everywhere she flew. This time, though,
Amelia's hostess was so inspired that she asked for flying lessons,
and Amelia agreed. Those lessons never came about, though that
woman's husband felt that flying was just too dangerous, which
(09:02):
is understandable. He was accustomed to worrying about danger being
the President of the United States. So while Eleanor Roosevelt
never got her chance to learn from Amelia Earhart, it's
clear they would have made quite a pair, the First
Lady and the First Lady of Flight. I hope you've
enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe
(09:25):
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 over at the World of Lore
(09:46):
dot com. And until next time, stay curious. Yeah,
Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities News
Host
Aaron Mahnke
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