August 11, 2022 • 10 mins
The world is out there, waiting for us to take control and explore it. How people have done that in the past, however, was sometimes a little curious.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcomed Aaron Mankey'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 are right there on display,
just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet
(00:27):
of Curiosities. Life can get pretty mundane on this planet.
Wake up, go to work, come home, go to bed.
It's understandable that many of us want something more, something exciting,
and to find it we need to look elsewhere. August
(00:49):
Picard had dreams like those. He and his twin brother,
Jean Felix Picard were born in Switzerland to a father
who taught chemistry at the local university. Science was in
their blood, so it was no surprise when they enrolled
at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology to pursue complementary degrees.
August got his degree in physics, while Jean Felix earned
(01:11):
his degree in chemistry. August enjoyed college life and even
stayed at the university to teach for several years after graduation. Eventually,
he took a job as a professor at the University
of Brussels in their physics department. Now around, Piccard became
fascinated with ballooning and exploring the heavens. Specifically, he wanted
to prove some of Einstein's theories correct by analyzing cosmic radiation,
(01:36):
so he designed a brand new mode of transportation. Its
purpose was to carry him high enough to capture and
study the cosmic rays in the atmosphere. What he designed
was a pressurized aluminum sphere or gondola, which would be
lifted into the upper atmosphere by a hot air balloon
filled with hydrogen. The gondola was big enough to carry
(01:56):
Piccard and a fellow scientist, Paul Kipfer, high over Germany.
They launched the vessel on May nineteen thirty one, and
almost immediately encountered a problem. The gondola had sprung a leak. Luckily,
with a few items they had on hands, such as
vassoline and cotton, the two men were able to plug
the leak and continue their ascent. They reached an eye
(02:19):
popping fifty one thousand, seven hundred and seventy five ft
nearly ten miles high, and became the first people to
ever reach the stratosphere. According to many They were also
the first to ever see the Earth's curvature. Their analysis
of the cosmic radiation at that altitude yielded impressive results.
Picard determined that the rays were stronger up there than
(02:41):
they were back on land, and he scooped some of
the air into vials to take back to his lab
to study. With their field work just about done, Picard
and kip Fur started their descent back to Earth, or
at least they tried. Unable to lower the balloon they
were tethered to, the men drifted over much of Europe,
wafting through Germany, Italy, and Austria. However, fortune again favored them,
(03:04):
as the night air chilled and the balloon was forced
to finally land. It deposited Piccarda and his partner on
a glacier seventeen hours after they had first launched. Their
oxygen tank only had an hour's worth of air left.
After his successful, yet terrifying trip, Picard continued to explore
the sky, setting another record the following year, but after
(03:26):
two dozen flights, he decided he wanted to see somewhere else.
In fact, he wanted to visit the exact opposite of
the stratosphere. Picard was determined to go deeper. He realized
that with some modifications to his original design, he could
make a version of his gondola that would take him
to the deepest parts of the ocean, areas that had
never been seen by human eyes before, and in seven
(03:48):
he debuted his newest creation, the Bath Escape, Except it
wasn't actually built yet. Although he started construction soon after
he finished the blueprints, Picard was forced to wait until
after World War Two had ended before he could finish
building it. The Bath Escape was finally completed in night.
Rather than use aluminum for his design, Picard built a
(04:09):
small spherical vessel out of steel. It had been designed
to withstand thousands of pounds of external pressure at great depths.
It was also attached to a massive tank filled with gasoline,
which was lighter than water and unable to be compressed.
To get the whole apparatus to sink, heavy iron weights
were attached that pulled both the capsule and the gas
tank to a depth of four thousand, six hundred feet.
(04:32):
There were also motors on board to assist in underwater
propulsion and to bring it back to the surface. All
he had to do was cut the weights loose and
let buoyancy do the rest. Picard himself couldn't actually ride
in the first bath escape, he ran several unmanned attempts
before handing it over to the French Navy two years later.
He then built another with his son in nineteen fifty three,
(04:54):
and together they reached a depth of almost two miles,
deeper than anyone had ever gone before. August Picard lived
to seventy eight years old, passing away in March of
nineteen sixty two, but he left a lasting legacy, and
not just on the scientific community. He followed in the
footsteps of another former member of the Cabinets of Curiosities,
a man named Palais Hould, who, if you remember, navigated
(05:17):
the globe at only fifteen years old. And more Hold
had gone on to inspire Belgian cartoonist Her j to
create the character Tintin. Picard influenced another of HER's characters,
Tintin's friend, the scientist and inventor, Professor Cuthbert Calculus. Everyone
(05:49):
has a hidden talent. Somebody looking to break the ice
might mention how they can sing or perform magic tricks,
while another might be a skilled guitar player. It doesn't
matter who you are or what you do for a living,
you have something about you that makes you special. But
in nineteenth century America, having a unique talent or looking
a certain way did more than make you special, It
(06:11):
made you different, like Ella Harper. Ella was born in Hendersonville, Tennessee,
in eighteen seventy two William Harper and Minerva and childress.
She grew up in a farming family with four other siblings,
one of whom sadly passed away at only three months old.
Ella was born a little different from the others, but
it wasn't because of her hair color or how tall
(06:32):
she was. It was because she was flexible. You see,
Ella had been born with a rare condition called congenital
genuine record bottom, which affected how her knee joints developed,
allowing them to bend backward. Pretty quickly. She became a
child star, touring nearby states like Missouri and Louisiana as
part of the circus, demonstrating her ability to walk on
(06:52):
all fours by bending her knees ninety degrees in the
opposite direction. Her performances even earned her the nickname the
camel Girl, because camels also walk with their knees bent
in such a fashion. In eighteen eighties six, when she
was just sixteen years old, Ella met a man named W. H. Harris.
He was the owner of the Nickel Plate Show, a
traveling circus that was almost on par with P. T. Barnum's.
(07:15):
Harris had a cadre of animals and sideshow performers, but
Ella was something special. He offered her a job performing
for two hundred dollars a week. Adjusted for inflation, that
comes out to a weekly salary of roughly five thousand
dollars today, an unfathomable amount of money in eighteen eighty six,
especially for a sixteen year old girl. Ella continued to
(07:37):
be advertised as the Camel Girl and was often exhibited
alongside a real camel for comparison. Spectators were beckoned forward
to come and see the girl who walked on her
feet and hands just like an animal. Before she was unveiled,
cards would be handed out to the public that described
Ella and how she almost never walked on two legs.
She preferred to get around on her hands and feet,
(07:58):
shuffling forward like a camel without the humps. The cards
also encouraged audiences to see her while they still could,
as she had been touring for four years and was
leaving the circus soon to go to school, and it
wasn't a marketing employee either. Ella really was planning on
leaving the entertainment business entirely before the end of the year,
and at the close of eighteen eighty six she took
(08:19):
her earnings and went into retirement. She practically vanished until
fourteen years later when her name popped up on census
records for nineteen hundred. Ella had gone back to Tennessee
to live with her mother. Sadly, her father and one
of her brothers had died in the interim, but eventually
she fell in love with a teacher and shopkeeper named
Robert Safeley. The two were married in nineteen o five
(08:41):
and had one daughter, Mabel, as if the deaths of
her siblings and father weren't enough, though Ella suddenly lost
Mabel six months after her birth. She and Robert moved
to another county in Tennessee, where they took in Ella's
mother to live with them, and then in nineteen eighteen,
the couple adopted a baby girl named Jewel. Yet tragedy
seemed to fall of them wherever they went, and Jewel
(09:01):
passed away when she was only three months old. Ella
and Roberts moved one last time to Nashville, where she
finally succumbed to colon cancer in December of nine, at
the age of fifty one. Her mother died three years later.
It was believed that Ella was buried next to her children.
She had been born with a condition that would have
affected her in any number of ways. Many diagnosed with
(09:24):
genue ricravatum often experienced chronic pain and osteo arsthritis. Also,
given the time period, she could have found herself unable
to maintain a job or even find a partner as
a result of her condition. But Ella Harper showed them all.
She used her gifts to entertain crowds and earned a
lot of money in the process, getting out of the
circus and building a life for herself and her family.
(09:47):
She made the best of her situation, something we should
all aspire to, and it's fair to say to the
circus audiences in Tennessee at least, she was definitely the
bee's knees. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of
the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts,
(10:09):
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 dot com. And until
(10:30):
next time, stay curious. Ye
Welcomed Aaron Mankey'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 are right there on display,
just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet
(00:27):
of Curiosities. Life can get pretty mundane on this planet.
Wake up, go to work, come home, go to bed.
It's understandable that many of us want something more, something exciting,
and to find it we need to look elsewhere. August
(00:49):
Picard had dreams like those. He and his twin brother,
Jean Felix Picard were born in Switzerland to a father
who taught chemistry at the local university. Science was in
their blood, so it was no surprise when they enrolled
at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology to pursue complementary degrees.
August got his degree in physics, while Jean Felix earned
(01:11):
his degree in chemistry. August enjoyed college life and even
stayed at the university to teach for several years after graduation. Eventually,
he took a job as a professor at the University
of Brussels in their physics department. Now around, Piccard became
fascinated with ballooning and exploring the heavens. Specifically, he wanted
to prove some of Einstein's theories correct by analyzing cosmic radiation,
(01:36):
so he designed a brand new mode of transportation. Its
purpose was to carry him high enough to capture and
study the cosmic rays in the atmosphere. What he designed
was a pressurized aluminum sphere or gondola, which would be
lifted into the upper atmosphere by a hot air balloon
filled with hydrogen. The gondola was big enough to carry
(01:56):
Piccard and a fellow scientist, Paul Kipfer, high over Germany.
They launched the vessel on May nineteen thirty one, and
almost immediately encountered a problem. The gondola had sprung a leak. Luckily,
with a few items they had on hands, such as
vassoline and cotton, the two men were able to plug
the leak and continue their ascent. They reached an eye
(02:19):
popping fifty one thousand, seven hundred and seventy five ft
nearly ten miles high, and became the first people to
ever reach the stratosphere. According to many They were also
the first to ever see the Earth's curvature. Their analysis
of the cosmic radiation at that altitude yielded impressive results.
Picard determined that the rays were stronger up there than
(02:41):
they were back on land, and he scooped some of
the air into vials to take back to his lab
to study. With their field work just about done, Picard
and kip Fur started their descent back to Earth, or
at least they tried. Unable to lower the balloon they
were tethered to, the men drifted over much of Europe,
wafting through Germany, Italy, and Austria. However, fortune again favored them,
(03:04):
as the night air chilled and the balloon was forced
to finally land. It deposited Piccarda and his partner on
a glacier seventeen hours after they had first launched. Their
oxygen tank only had an hour's worth of air left.
After his successful, yet terrifying trip, Picard continued to explore
the sky, setting another record the following year, but after
(03:26):
two dozen flights, he decided he wanted to see somewhere else.
In fact, he wanted to visit the exact opposite of
the stratosphere. Picard was determined to go deeper. He realized
that with some modifications to his original design, he could
make a version of his gondola that would take him
to the deepest parts of the ocean, areas that had
never been seen by human eyes before, and in seven
(03:48):
he debuted his newest creation, the Bath Escape, Except it
wasn't actually built yet. Although he started construction soon after
he finished the blueprints, Picard was forced to wait until
after World War Two had ended before he could finish
building it. The Bath Escape was finally completed in night.
Rather than use aluminum for his design, Picard built a
(04:09):
small spherical vessel out of steel. It had been designed
to withstand thousands of pounds of external pressure at great depths.
It was also attached to a massive tank filled with gasoline,
which was lighter than water and unable to be compressed.
To get the whole apparatus to sink, heavy iron weights
were attached that pulled both the capsule and the gas
tank to a depth of four thousand, six hundred feet.
(04:32):
There were also motors on board to assist in underwater
propulsion and to bring it back to the surface. All
he had to do was cut the weights loose and
let buoyancy do the rest. Picard himself couldn't actually ride
in the first bath escape, he ran several unmanned attempts
before handing it over to the French Navy two years later.
He then built another with his son in nineteen fifty three,
(04:54):
and together they reached a depth of almost two miles,
deeper than anyone had ever gone before. August Picard lived
to seventy eight years old, passing away in March of
nineteen sixty two, but he left a lasting legacy, and
not just on the scientific community. He followed in the
footsteps of another former member of the Cabinets of Curiosities,
a man named Palais Hould, who, if you remember, navigated
(05:17):
the globe at only fifteen years old. And more Hold
had gone on to inspire Belgian cartoonist Her j to
create the character Tintin. Picard influenced another of HER's characters,
Tintin's friend, the scientist and inventor, Professor Cuthbert Calculus. Everyone
(05:49):
has a hidden talent. Somebody looking to break the ice
might mention how they can sing or perform magic tricks,
while another might be a skilled guitar player. It doesn't
matter who you are or what you do for a living,
you have something about you that makes you special. But
in nineteenth century America, having a unique talent or looking
a certain way did more than make you special, It
(06:11):
made you different, like Ella Harper. Ella was born in Hendersonville, Tennessee,
in eighteen seventy two William Harper and Minerva and childress.
She grew up in a farming family with four other siblings,
one of whom sadly passed away at only three months old.
Ella was born a little different from the others, but
it wasn't because of her hair color or how tall
(06:32):
she was. It was because she was flexible. You see,
Ella had been born with a rare condition called congenital
genuine record bottom, which affected how her knee joints developed,
allowing them to bend backward. Pretty quickly. She became a
child star, touring nearby states like Missouri and Louisiana as
part of the circus, demonstrating her ability to walk on
(06:52):
all fours by bending her knees ninety degrees in the
opposite direction. Her performances even earned her the nickname the
camel Girl, because camels also walk with their knees bent
in such a fashion. In eighteen eighties six, when she
was just sixteen years old, Ella met a man named W. H. Harris.
He was the owner of the Nickel Plate Show, a
traveling circus that was almost on par with P. T. Barnum's.
(07:15):
Harris had a cadre of animals and sideshow performers, but
Ella was something special. He offered her a job performing
for two hundred dollars a week. Adjusted for inflation, that
comes out to a weekly salary of roughly five thousand
dollars today, an unfathomable amount of money in eighteen eighty six,
especially for a sixteen year old girl. Ella continued to
(07:37):
be advertised as the Camel Girl and was often exhibited
alongside a real camel for comparison. Spectators were beckoned forward
to come and see the girl who walked on her
feet and hands just like an animal. Before she was unveiled,
cards would be handed out to the public that described
Ella and how she almost never walked on two legs.
She preferred to get around on her hands and feet,
(07:58):
shuffling forward like a camel without the humps. The cards
also encouraged audiences to see her while they still could,
as she had been touring for four years and was
leaving the circus soon to go to school, and it
wasn't a marketing employee either. Ella really was planning on
leaving the entertainment business entirely before the end of the year,
and at the close of eighteen eighty six she took
(08:19):
her earnings and went into retirement. She practically vanished until
fourteen years later when her name popped up on census
records for nineteen hundred. Ella had gone back to Tennessee
to live with her mother. Sadly, her father and one
of her brothers had died in the interim, but eventually
she fell in love with a teacher and shopkeeper named
Robert Safeley. The two were married in nineteen o five
(08:41):
and had one daughter, Mabel, as if the deaths of
her siblings and father weren't enough, though Ella suddenly lost
Mabel six months after her birth. She and Robert moved
to another county in Tennessee, where they took in Ella's
mother to live with them, and then in nineteen eighteen,
the couple adopted a baby girl named Jewel. Yet tragedy
seemed to fall of them wherever they went, and Jewel
(09:01):
passed away when she was only three months old. Ella
and Roberts moved one last time to Nashville, where she
finally succumbed to colon cancer in December of nine, at
the age of fifty one. Her mother died three years later.
It was believed that Ella was buried next to her children.
She had been born with a condition that would have
affected her in any number of ways. Many diagnosed with
(09:24):
genue ricravatum often experienced chronic pain and osteo arsthritis. Also,
given the time period, she could have found herself unable
to maintain a job or even find a partner as
a result of her condition. But Ella Harper showed them all.
She used her gifts to entertain crowds and earned a
lot of money in the process, getting out of the
circus and building a life for herself and her family.
(09:47):
She made the best of her situation, something we should
all aspire to, and it's fair to say to the
circus audiences in Tennessee at least, she was definitely the
bee's knees. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of
the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts,
(10:09):
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 dot com. And until
(10:30):
next time, stay curious. Ye
Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities News
Host
Aaron Mahnke
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.