July 3, 2020 • 9 mins
The artifact known as the Phaistos Disc was discovered on this day in 1908. / On this day in 1938, the world speed record for steam locomotives was set when Mallard when 126 miles per hour.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, y'all, we're rerunning two episodes today, which means you
might hear two hosts. Enjoy the show. Hi, and welcome
to this day in history class. It is July three,
and an artifact called the face Dose Disc was unearthed
on this day in night. Here are some highlights of
(00:20):
this history mystery. The face Dose disc was found during
a dig at the old palace of Minoan face Dose,
and that's on the island of Crete and the Mediterranean Sea.
And it was actually found in a basement of one
of the buildings, not in the actual palace itself. So
the Minoans, if you're not familiar with them, they were
an ancient civilization that flourished from roughly thirty five hundred
(00:40):
to five thousand years ago, and they were very known
for making great palaces, just enormous beautiful palaces, as well
as their written language and their artwork. So this disc
is roughly thirty seven hundred years old, so towards the
end of the Minoan civilization. It's made of fired clay,
(01:01):
about sixteen centimeters or six and a half inches across,
and it's not completely regular. The thickness varies a little bit,
as does the diameter. It's etched on both sides in
this spiral pattern that's made up of forty five repeating
symbols for two symbols total. So imagine kind of a
clay frisbee with a spiral pattern and a lot of
(01:23):
little symbols on it. These symbols are all stamped, and
it also looks like there are places where somebody made
a stamp and then rubbed it out to do it
over or perhaps replace it with a different stamp. And
both of the sides of the disk have one symbol
at the center and then they progress outward from there.
On side A it looks like a simple flower, and
(01:43):
on side BAT it's more like an abstract symbol of
wavy lines and a rounded triangle. The spiral lines that
go to the center and some other dots and dashes
were all done by hand and not with a stamp,
or at least that's how it looks. But there are
so many things we don't know about this thing. There's
a debate over which direction you should read it. Do
(02:03):
you start with the symbols in the center and work
out or do you work from the outside and work
in And what do the symbols represent Some of them
are really obvious pictograms, they look like real things out
in the world, but other ones are really a lot
more symbolic. Not sure what they might represent. Some people
have suggested that the symbols might represent syllables, but according
(02:24):
to linguists, they're not arranged in a pattern that makes
sense if they're symbols. Other people have said maybe they
are an alphabet, but that's a lot of characters for
an alphabet, so people are not quite sure about that either.
So in spite of all these things that we don't know,
a whole lot of people have said that they have
cracked the code, and in today's era, these are usually
(02:48):
accompanied by great trumpeting headlines proclaiming face dose disc Decoded
is more like people claim based dose disc Decoded. The
most recent of us is from ten, when Dr Gareth
Owens and Professor John Coleman concluded that the disc maybe
contains a prayer to a Minoan goddess, not trying to
(03:10):
just their work, just saying believes not really a we
definitely cracked the code. There are also some people who
think that this is all a fraud. That was the
conclusion of Jerome Eisenberg, who was the director and owner
of the Royal Athena Galleries in New York and an
expert on ancient art. He made that claim in two
thousand and eight. His hypothesis is that Luigi Pernier, who
(03:32):
is the person who discovered this disc, fabricated the whole
thing because he was envious that his colleagues were making
these great discoveries and he wasn't. So testing could pretty
easily determine whether this disc is something that was made
in eight or if it was instead made thousands of
years ago. The problem is that the museum and Creed,
(03:54):
where this is housed, would prefer it not be tested.
They make the legitimate points that it's impossible to test
it without in some way possibly damaging it. People have
talked about some not invasive methods of testing, but most
of the testing methods involved to involve taking just a tiny,
tiny amount of the actual disc, and the museum is
(04:16):
not willing to allow that. So Isisenberg contends that it's
not about preserving the disk, that the museum is just
worried about losing out on tourism dollars. If if it
turns out that this whole thing is a hoax, you
can learn more about the Face Does disc and the
Minoan civilization on the August third episode of Stuffy miss
(04:37):
in History class called The Face Dose Disc of Minoan Crete.
And you can subscribe to this day in History class
on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts and whatever else you get
your podcasts. Tomorrow, we have a subject that's not about
American Independence Day, but it is appropriate for it. Hello,
(05:02):
Welcome to this dand history class where we desked off
a little piece of history every day. The day was
July three, nineteen thirty eight. The London Northeastern Railway Class
A four number forty four sixty eight Mallard set the
(05:24):
record for highest speed ever ratified for a steam locomotive
when it reached one hundred and twenty six miles per
hour or two hundred and one kilometers per hour. Mallard
was of the thirty five A four class of express
locomotives designed by Sir Nigel Gressley when he was the
Chief Mechanical Engineer of the London and Northeastern Railway or
(05:48):
l n e R. It was built in March of
nineteen thirty eight and it had a streamlined wedge shaped design.
It usually operated on the East coast line. The A
four class of locomotives were more efficient than previous locomotives,
shortening the trip time from London King's Cross to Newcastle.
(06:10):
The l M S Coronation held the disputable British theme
record as it was claimed to have reached one d
and fourteen miles per hour, and in nineteen thirty six,
Germany's d RG class five locomotive set the world speed
record for steam locomotives when it reached one hundred and
twenty four point five miles per hour on the Berlin
(06:31):
Hamburg line. Gressley and a team of engineers began modifying
the locomotive to beat the speed record. Mallard was chosen
to set the world speed record because it was one
of three A four locomotives that had special exhaust arrangements,
which included a double blast pipe chimney. Mallard also had
a Flaman speed recorder, a device that indicated the current
(06:54):
speed of a vehicle and recorded it on paper tape.
On Sunday July three, nineteenth Already eight driver Joe Duddington
attempted to set the world speed record for railways with Mallard.
The attempt was carried out during trials of a new
quick acting break. The test run would be between Grantham
and Lincolnshire and Peterborough in Cambridgeshire. Mallard was hauling seven
(07:18):
coaches waning two hundred and sixty seven US tons or
two hundred and forty three metric tons, with officials and
equipment aboard. There were three twin articulated carriages and a
dynamometer car which contained instruments that recorded the locomotive speed.
Fireman Thomas Bray was also on board. The remaining crew
(07:40):
and technical team weren't told that the trip was an
attempt to beat the world speed record until after the
trains northbound run from wood Green, North London. Notably, nobody
from the l N e R magazine was aboard, so
the magazine had to use an account from the Railway Gazette.
Mallard went through Grantham station at twenty four miles per hour,
(08:02):
then accelerated up to sixty miles per hour over the
next two and a half miles, eventually reaching seventy five
miles per hour. As a Mallard went down Stoke Bank,
the dynamometer card recorded the speed at one hundred and
twenty miles per hour, beating the British theme record. The
train would soon have to slow down at the S
(08:23):
and Dine curves, but there was a little time to
accelerate before that point, so the crew did and the
train made it to one twenty six miles per hour,
beating the world record. It maintained a speed between one
hundred and twenty three and one and twenty six miles
per hour for nearly two miles. It was possible they
(08:45):
could have gone faster had they not had to slow
at S and Dine. Shortly after Mallard set the record,
the force from the brakes caused Mallard's big end bearing
for the middle cylinder to overheat and it had to
go slow into Peterborough. It then had to go into
the workshop for repairs. Mallard retired from service in nineteen
(09:05):
sixty three. Between nineteen two and nineteen eight, it was
restored to working order in completed runs until nineteen nine.
Mallard still officially holds the world record, though others have
made unsubstantiated claims of reaching faster locomotive speeds. I'm Eve
Steff Coo and hopefully you know a little more about
history today than you did yesterday. If there's something that
(09:28):
I missed in an episode, you can share it with
everybody else on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook at t d
i h C podcast. We'll be back with more history tomorrow.
(09:49):
For more podcasts from I Heeart Radio, visit the iHeart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Hey, y'all, we're rerunning two episodes today, which means you
might hear two hosts. Enjoy the show. Hi, and welcome
to this day in history class. It is July three,
and an artifact called the face Dose Disc was unearthed
on this day in night. Here are some highlights of
(00:20):
this history mystery. The face Dose disc was found during
a dig at the old palace of Minoan face Dose,
and that's on the island of Crete and the Mediterranean Sea.
And it was actually found in a basement of one
of the buildings, not in the actual palace itself. So
the Minoans, if you're not familiar with them, they were
an ancient civilization that flourished from roughly thirty five hundred
(00:40):
to five thousand years ago, and they were very known
for making great palaces, just enormous beautiful palaces, as well
as their written language and their artwork. So this disc
is roughly thirty seven hundred years old, so towards the
end of the Minoan civilization. It's made of fired clay,
(01:01):
about sixteen centimeters or six and a half inches across,
and it's not completely regular. The thickness varies a little bit,
as does the diameter. It's etched on both sides in
this spiral pattern that's made up of forty five repeating
symbols for two symbols total. So imagine kind of a
clay frisbee with a spiral pattern and a lot of
(01:23):
little symbols on it. These symbols are all stamped, and
it also looks like there are places where somebody made
a stamp and then rubbed it out to do it
over or perhaps replace it with a different stamp. And
both of the sides of the disk have one symbol
at the center and then they progress outward from there.
On side A it looks like a simple flower, and
(01:43):
on side BAT it's more like an abstract symbol of
wavy lines and a rounded triangle. The spiral lines that
go to the center and some other dots and dashes
were all done by hand and not with a stamp,
or at least that's how it looks. But there are
so many things we don't know about this thing. There's
a debate over which direction you should read it. Do
(02:03):
you start with the symbols in the center and work
out or do you work from the outside and work
in And what do the symbols represent Some of them
are really obvious pictograms, they look like real things out
in the world, but other ones are really a lot
more symbolic. Not sure what they might represent. Some people
have suggested that the symbols might represent syllables, but according
(02:24):
to linguists, they're not arranged in a pattern that makes
sense if they're symbols. Other people have said maybe they
are an alphabet, but that's a lot of characters for
an alphabet, so people are not quite sure about that either.
So in spite of all these things that we don't know,
a whole lot of people have said that they have
cracked the code, and in today's era, these are usually
(02:48):
accompanied by great trumpeting headlines proclaiming face dose disc Decoded
is more like people claim based dose disc Decoded. The
most recent of us is from ten, when Dr Gareth
Owens and Professor John Coleman concluded that the disc maybe
contains a prayer to a Minoan goddess, not trying to
(03:10):
just their work, just saying believes not really a we
definitely cracked the code. There are also some people who
think that this is all a fraud. That was the
conclusion of Jerome Eisenberg, who was the director and owner
of the Royal Athena Galleries in New York and an
expert on ancient art. He made that claim in two
thousand and eight. His hypothesis is that Luigi Pernier, who
(03:32):
is the person who discovered this disc, fabricated the whole
thing because he was envious that his colleagues were making
these great discoveries and he wasn't. So testing could pretty
easily determine whether this disc is something that was made
in eight or if it was instead made thousands of
years ago. The problem is that the museum and Creed,
(03:54):
where this is housed, would prefer it not be tested.
They make the legitimate points that it's impossible to test
it without in some way possibly damaging it. People have
talked about some not invasive methods of testing, but most
of the testing methods involved to involve taking just a tiny,
tiny amount of the actual disc, and the museum is
(04:16):
not willing to allow that. So Isisenberg contends that it's
not about preserving the disk, that the museum is just
worried about losing out on tourism dollars. If if it
turns out that this whole thing is a hoax, you
can learn more about the Face Does disc and the
Minoan civilization on the August third episode of Stuffy miss
(04:37):
in History class called The Face Dose Disc of Minoan Crete.
And you can subscribe to this day in History class
on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts and whatever else you get
your podcasts. Tomorrow, we have a subject that's not about
American Independence Day, but it is appropriate for it. Hello,
(05:02):
Welcome to this dand history class where we desked off
a little piece of history every day. The day was
July three, nineteen thirty eight. The London Northeastern Railway Class
A four number forty four sixty eight Mallard set the
(05:24):
record for highest speed ever ratified for a steam locomotive
when it reached one hundred and twenty six miles per
hour or two hundred and one kilometers per hour. Mallard
was of the thirty five A four class of express
locomotives designed by Sir Nigel Gressley when he was the
Chief Mechanical Engineer of the London and Northeastern Railway or
(05:48):
l n e R. It was built in March of
nineteen thirty eight and it had a streamlined wedge shaped design.
It usually operated on the East coast line. The A
four class of locomotives were more efficient than previous locomotives,
shortening the trip time from London King's Cross to Newcastle.
(06:10):
The l M S Coronation held the disputable British theme
record as it was claimed to have reached one d
and fourteen miles per hour, and in nineteen thirty six,
Germany's d RG class five locomotive set the world speed
record for steam locomotives when it reached one hundred and
twenty four point five miles per hour on the Berlin
(06:31):
Hamburg line. Gressley and a team of engineers began modifying
the locomotive to beat the speed record. Mallard was chosen
to set the world speed record because it was one
of three A four locomotives that had special exhaust arrangements,
which included a double blast pipe chimney. Mallard also had
a Flaman speed recorder, a device that indicated the current
(06:54):
speed of a vehicle and recorded it on paper tape.
On Sunday July three, nineteenth Already eight driver Joe Duddington
attempted to set the world speed record for railways with Mallard.
The attempt was carried out during trials of a new
quick acting break. The test run would be between Grantham
and Lincolnshire and Peterborough in Cambridgeshire. Mallard was hauling seven
(07:18):
coaches waning two hundred and sixty seven US tons or
two hundred and forty three metric tons, with officials and
equipment aboard. There were three twin articulated carriages and a
dynamometer car which contained instruments that recorded the locomotive speed.
Fireman Thomas Bray was also on board. The remaining crew
(07:40):
and technical team weren't told that the trip was an
attempt to beat the world speed record until after the
trains northbound run from wood Green, North London. Notably, nobody
from the l N e R magazine was aboard, so
the magazine had to use an account from the Railway Gazette.
Mallard went through Grantham station at twenty four miles per hour,
(08:02):
then accelerated up to sixty miles per hour over the
next two and a half miles, eventually reaching seventy five
miles per hour. As a Mallard went down Stoke Bank,
the dynamometer card recorded the speed at one hundred and
twenty miles per hour, beating the British theme record. The
train would soon have to slow down at the S
(08:23):
and Dine curves, but there was a little time to
accelerate before that point, so the crew did and the
train made it to one twenty six miles per hour,
beating the world record. It maintained a speed between one
hundred and twenty three and one and twenty six miles
per hour for nearly two miles. It was possible they
(08:45):
could have gone faster had they not had to slow
at S and Dine. Shortly after Mallard set the record,
the force from the brakes caused Mallard's big end bearing
for the middle cylinder to overheat and it had to
go slow into Peterborough. It then had to go into
the workshop for repairs. Mallard retired from service in nineteen
(09:05):
sixty three. Between nineteen two and nineteen eight, it was
restored to working order in completed runs until nineteen nine.
Mallard still officially holds the world record, though others have
made unsubstantiated claims of reaching faster locomotive speeds. I'm Eve
Steff Coo and hopefully you know a little more about
history today than you did yesterday. If there's something that
(09:28):
I missed in an episode, you can share it with
everybody else on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook at t d
i h C podcast. We'll be back with more history tomorrow.
(09:49):
For more podcasts from I Heeart Radio, visit the iHeart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
This Day in History Class News
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Gabe Luzier
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