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Sticky Fingers · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

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  Speaker 1: Welcomed Aaron Manky's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of iHeartRadio
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  Speaker 1: and Grim and Mild. Our world is full of the unexplainable,
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  Speaker 1: and if history is an open book, all of these
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  Speaker 1: amazing tales are right there on display, just waiting for
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  Speaker 1: us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. It's
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  Speaker 1: one of the most coveted substances on Earth. It's responsible
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  Speaker 1: for five hundred and fifteen million dollars worth of one
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  Speaker 1: country's gross domestic product and has been the target of
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  Speaker 1: several illegal operations over the years. It's completely natural and
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  Speaker 1: widely available, and yet its production and distribution have been
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  Speaker 1: controlled by a single cartel since the nineteen sixties. This
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  Speaker 1: dark discus liquid is trafficked all over the world in barrels,
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  Speaker 1: and between two eleven and two twelve, over nine thousand,
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  Speaker 1: five hundred of those barrels went missing, resulting in one
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  Speaker 1: of the biggest heists in history. It all started hundreds
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  Speaker 1: of years ago when the indigenous people of Canada's Eastern
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  Speaker 1: woodlands harvested this substance for themselves, cooking with it and
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  Speaker 1: boiling it down for long term storage. Eventually European colonists
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  Speaker 1: from France arrived and found out what they were doing.
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  Speaker 1: They learned how to extract it for themselves and studied
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  Speaker 1: their preservation techniques, and unsurprisingly, they soon pushed the indigenous
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  Speaker 1: people out and built a whole industry around the product
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  Speaker 1: to make themselves rich. Then, in nineteen sixty six, a
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  Speaker 1: group of individual producers from Quebec got together and came
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  Speaker 1: up with a plan. They would combine their efforts to
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  Speaker 1: market and sell this lucrative merchandise, thereby creating a cartel
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  Speaker 1: or federation, and it would control pricing and distribution for
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  Speaker 1: the next sixty years. Several years ago, a single barrel
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  Speaker 1: cost over thirteen hundred dollars, that's twenty six times more
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  Speaker 1: than the cost of a barrel of crude oil, and
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  Speaker 1: people paid those prices because what the cartel was selling
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  Speaker 1: was pure. Knockoffs were found everywhere but couldn't compare to
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  Speaker 1: the experience of consuming the real thing. But a tightly
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  Speaker 1: controlled industry, as it often does, soon leads to the
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  Speaker 1: creation of a black market, a place to pedal discount
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  Speaker 1: product and convincing fakes when people can't or just don't
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  Speaker 1: want to pay full price. Around twenty twelve, a worker
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  Speaker 1: for the cartel was in a storage warehouse when he
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  Speaker 1: noticed that something was a miss. His job was to
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  Speaker 1: take yearly inventory of the reserves, climbing up mountains of
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  Speaker 1: barrels filled with the liquid gold that kept the cartel
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  Speaker 1: at the top of the economic food chain. Except this
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  Speaker 1: time there was something wrong. He got to the top
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  Speaker 1: and felt one of the barrels. It moved, but it
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  Speaker 1: shouldn't have. When filled, each barrel should have weighed over
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  Speaker 1: six hundred pounds, but this time it weighed almost nothing.
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  Speaker 1: He knocked it down and listened as it led out
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  Speaker 1: a hollow sound. Upon hitting the floor, he opened it
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  Speaker 1: up to find it empty. So was the next barrel
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  Speaker 1: and the one after that. Some were even filled with
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  Speaker 1: water to throw cartel employees off. Hundreds of people were
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  Speaker 1: brought in for questioning, and after a brief investigation, two
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  Speaker 1: things came to light. First, over twelve percent of the
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  Speaker 1: cartel's reserve had been stolen, and secondly, the operation had
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  Speaker 1: been an inside job. Whoever had taken the product had
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  Speaker 1: managed to get out of Quebec and into places like
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  Speaker 1: New Brunswick and even the United States. They'd passed it
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  Speaker 1: off in small batches to sellers who had no idea
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  Speaker 1: where it came from. So how had the thieves done it?
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  Speaker 1: While they'd snuck the barrels out on trucks to a
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  Speaker 1: facility where they were drained of their precious contents and
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  Speaker 1: refilled with water. The water filled barrels were then replaced
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  Speaker 1: in the warehouse, and the cartel had been none the wiser,
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  Speaker 1: Although after some time the thieves stopped putting water in
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  Speaker 1: them all together and simply left the barrels in the warehouse.
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  Speaker 1: And that decision to cut corners is what brought about
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  Speaker 1: their downfall in the end. So the cartail got the
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  Speaker 1: cops involved, who managed to track down the criminals using
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  Speaker 1: good old fashioned police work. They interviewed sellers, employees and
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  Speaker 1: anyone else who might have had access to either the
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  Speaker 1: warehouse or the goods inside. In the end, seventeen people
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  Speaker 1: were arrested, Some paid fines while others went to jail.
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  Speaker 1: But what was so valuable in those barrels that people
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  Speaker 1: went to such lengths to steal it? It wasn't oil,
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  Speaker 1: and it wasn't drugs. It was one of Canada's biggest exports,
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  Speaker 1: maple syrup Canada. You see is responsible for seventy five
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  Speaker 1: percent of the global maple syrup market, so it's no
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  Speaker 1: surprise that certain unscrupulous parties wanted a taste of that sweet,
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  Speaker 1: sweet money. It's been said that the way to a
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  Speaker 1: man's heart is through his stomach. Well that may be true,
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  Speaker 1: but in Canada it's also the way to his wallet.
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  Speaker 1: When someone is tilting at windmills, it means that they're
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  Speaker 1: looking at a problem that's not very important. It's a
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  Speaker 1: common idiom that comes from the story of Don Quixote,
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  Speaker 1: published in the early sixteen hundreds by Miguel de Cervantes,
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  Speaker 1: about a so called knights with delusions of grandeur, and
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  Speaker 1: in one particular scene, don Quixote goes up against a
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  Speaker 1: group of windmills, which he perceives as enormous knights on
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  Speaker 1: the attack. But they aren't knights. They're just windmills. They
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  Speaker 1: aren't really a problem, although one man did happen to
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  Speaker 1: tilt at actual windmills much later on, and in the
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  Speaker 1: process he helped revolutionize air travel. His name was Juan
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  Speaker 1: de la Sierva born in Mercia, Spain in eighteen ninety five.
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  Speaker 1: Wand came from money and would spend his allowance on
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  Speaker 1: aircraft related items. He and his friends once pulled their
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  Speaker 1: funds together to buy the wreckage of a crashed They
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  Speaker 1: took the parts and managed to build a plane of
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  Speaker 1: their own. They even used an old wooden countertop to
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  Speaker 1: make the propeller. One went on to study civil engineering
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  Speaker 1: in college. It was a degree that he channeled into
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  Speaker 1: a project that he would eventually become known for, a
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  Speaker 1: safe way to fly at low speeds. He started it
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  Speaker 1: in nineteen twelve, developing all sorts of models with different
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  Speaker 1: types of motors and propeller systems. In nineteen nineteen, though,
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  Speaker 1: he realized a rotor based design was the way to go,
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  Speaker 1: and to help him achieve liftoff, he looked to windmills.
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  Speaker 1: Juan had been in the audience for a production of
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  Speaker 1: Don Quixote when the inspiration struck. As he watched the
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  Speaker 1: windmills turn on stage, their blades rotating on their own,
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  Speaker 1: it hit him he had to use an auto rotating
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  Speaker 1: rotor in his aircraft. A normal helicopter rotor would have
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  Speaker 1: been powered by a motor, but an auto rotating version
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  Speaker 1: used the air passing around the blades to turn them,
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  Speaker 1: keeping the vessel in the sky. He called his creation
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  Speaker 1: an autogyro, and Juan's autogyro used a standard propeller for
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  Speaker 1: thrust while the rotor managed lift and descent. But it
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  Speaker 1: was a long road to success. Early versions of the
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  Speaker 1: autogyro had trouble achieving liftoff and he was forced to
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  Speaker 1: modify the vessel's design a number of times. But after
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  Speaker 1: the rotor was finalized and a special flap was installed
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  Speaker 1: to address a lift related issue, he managed to get airborne.
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  Speaker 1: The autogyros made in flight took place in nineteen twenty
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  Speaker 1: three at Spain's Haitafie Aerodrome, and it was just the beginning.
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  Speaker 1: He continued to develop the autogyro throughout the nineteen twenties,
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  Speaker 1: even showing it off to the Air Ministry for the
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  Speaker 1: United Kingdom for potential use by the Royal Air Force,
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  Speaker 1: and they loved it. Jan moved his operations to the UK,
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  Speaker 1: where he founded the Sierva Autogyro Company Limited. His company
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  Speaker 1: made rotors, while more seasoned aircraft manufacturers made the frames
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  Speaker 1: that they were installed within. So what exactly was an autogyro.
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  Speaker 1: It was an aircraft similar to a helicopter, though the
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  Speaker 1: early Sierrava models looked more like lanes with chopper blades
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  Speaker 1: whirrying overhead. As they became more advanced in the nineteen
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  Speaker 1: fifties and sixties, the autogyros or gyro planes were made smaller,
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  Speaker 1: with some only carrying one or two people. Looking at
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  Speaker 1: an autogyro today, one might believe it to be dangerous,
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  Speaker 1: maybe more dangerous than a regular plane, but not one.
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  Speaker 1: He trusted his designs implicitly. In fact, he probably should
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  Speaker 1: have flown one when he traveled to Amsterdam in December
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  Speaker 1: of nineteen thirty six. On the morning of the ninth
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  Speaker 1: of that month, he boarded a Douglas DC two, a
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  Speaker 1: large twin engine liner able to hold fourteen passengers plus crew.
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  Speaker 1: Visibility was low that day due to heavy fog, but
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  Speaker 1: at ten thirty am the pilot was given the all clear.
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  Speaker 1: The DC two took off into the nebulous gray skies,
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  Speaker 1: hoping things would become clearer on the other side. Yet
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  Speaker 1: it never made it. Shortly after takeoff, the plane collided
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  Speaker 1: with a house and exploded, killing fifteen of the seventeen
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  Speaker 1: people on board one included, but his legacy lives on today.
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  Speaker 1: Autogyros are still flown by the military and law enforcement agencies.
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  Speaker 1: All over the world. A German couple even piloted several
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  Speaker 1: between two thousand and nine and two ten as they
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  Speaker 1: used them to fly around the globe. But perhaps the
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  Speaker 1: most well known autogyro was made by Ken Wallace in
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  Speaker 1: nineteen sixty one. Wallace was a former wing commander with
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  Speaker 1: the Royal Air Force and designed his aircraft to hold
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  Speaker 1: just the pilot. It was immortalized on screen in nineteen
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  Speaker 1: sixty seven when Sean Connery jumped into the cockpit as
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  Speaker 1: British Superspy James Bond in the film You Only Lived Twice.
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  Speaker 1: Ron de la Sierva is responsible for one hundred and
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  Speaker 1: eleven years of aviation history, a history that still persists today,
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  Speaker 1: all because one man had a problem and he decided
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  Speaker 1: to spend a little extra time tilting at windmills to
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  Speaker 1: solve it. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of
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  Speaker 1: the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts.
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  Speaker 1: Learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com.
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  Speaker 1: The show was created by me Aaron Manke in partnership
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  Speaker 1: with How Stuff Works. I make another award winning show
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  Speaker 1: called Lore, which is a podcast, book series and television show,
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  Speaker 1: and you can learn all about it over at the
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  Speaker 1: World of lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.