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Clumpy · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

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  Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Manky's Cabinet of Curiosity is a production
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  Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world
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  Speaker 1: is full of the unexplainable, and if history is an
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  Speaker 1: open book, all of these amazing tales are right there
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  Speaker 1: on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to
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  Speaker 1: the Cabinet of Curiosities. Everyone loves a good invention, something
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  Speaker 1: that took time to design. An engineer to solve a
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  Speaker 1: particular problem, come up with an idea that scratches an itch,
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  Speaker 1: and people will line up to buy it in droves.
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  Speaker 1: Some are novel, like liquid paper or the super soaker,
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  Speaker 1: while others change the world, like the television or the
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  Speaker 1: printing press. But some inventions aren't inventions at all. They're
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  Speaker 1: simply ingenious. Way is to use existing products, And even
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  Speaker 1: though nobody spent thousands of dollars building a prototype, that
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  Speaker 1: doesn't make these products any less useful. Perhaps no one
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  Speaker 1: knows the utility of a common, everyday item better than
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  Speaker 1: Ed Low. Low was born in nineteen twenty in St. Paul, Minnesota.
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  Speaker 1: Several years later, his family up and moved everyone to Kassopolis, Michigan,
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  Speaker 1: just over the border from Indiana. When he was in
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  Speaker 1: his twenties. Low enlisted to serve in World War Two
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  Speaker 1: and returned home in nineteen forty six to work for
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  Speaker 1: his father, Henry, who owned a company that sold blocks
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  Speaker 1: of ice and absorbents such as sawdust to local customers.
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  Speaker 1: The company sold another kind of absorbent as well. It
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  Speaker 1: was called Fuller's Earth, a type of clay used to
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  Speaker 1: clean up oil and grease. In some cases, it has
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  Speaker 1: been used to save people from being poisoned, as the
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  Speaker 1: clay is able to mop up and break down certain
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  Speaker 1: chemical agents in the stomach. One day in January of
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  Speaker 1: ninety seven, a friend of Lowe's named Cage Draper approached
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  Speaker 1: him with a problem. She had a roommate who went
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  Speaker 1: to the bathroom in a tray lined with ashes. When
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  Speaker 1: the roommate was finished doing their business, they tracked throughout
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  Speaker 1: the house, leaving footprints everywhere. She asked low for sand
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  Speaker 1: to fill the pan instead. She had her own, but
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  Speaker 1: it had been so cold outside that her sandpile had
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  Speaker 1: frozen salad. It had been her reason for switching to
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  Speaker 1: ashes in the first place. Unfortunately, sand presented its own
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  Speaker 1: set of issues. It would track everywhere too, and be
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  Speaker 1: just as messy as the ashes that she was currently using,
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  Speaker 1: so instead, Low suggested that she used Fuller's Earth. The
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  Speaker 1: clay material was far more absorbent and wouldn't leave a
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  Speaker 1: residue all over her floors. He gave her a bag
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  Speaker 1: of it from the trunk of his car and then
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  Speaker 1: didn't think anything more about it. Mrs Draper returned sometime
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  Speaker 1: later and asked for another bag. The first had worked,
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  Speaker 1: wonders her roommate no longer left her floors soot stained
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  Speaker 1: or sandy. You see, k Draper's roommates was a cat,
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  Speaker 1: and ed Lowe had just given her the first ever
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  Speaker 1: bag of kitty litter. He had originally tried to market
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  Speaker 1: it as a type of poultry litter that was more
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  Speaker 1: sanitary than the usual stuff, which was made of feathers,
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  Speaker 1: chicken feces, excess feed, and other bedding material. Like the
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  Speaker 1: chickens it was meant to help. However, that product really
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  Speaker 1: didn't fly, but Mrs Draper saw how useful it was
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  Speaker 1: for her. Once low realized that he had a hit
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  Speaker 1: product on his hands, he bagged up more clay, wrote
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  Speaker 1: the words kitty litter across the front of each bag,
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  Speaker 1: and took them to a local store to sell. The
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  Speaker 1: shop owner refused, no one was going to pay sixty
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  Speaker 1: five cents for a five pound bag of clay when
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  Speaker 1: they could spend a penny on a bag of sawdust,
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  Speaker 1: and said, but Low was sure that what he had
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  Speaker 1: was better than sawdust. He told the owner to give
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  Speaker 1: away the bags to his customers. It didn't take long
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  Speaker 1: for those same customers to come back clamoring for more,
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  Speaker 1: and sixty cents was just fine to them. Despite selling
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  Speaker 1: out at one store, Low's product was anything but an
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  Speaker 1: overnight success. He didn't cross a million dollars in sales
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  Speaker 1: until eight years later. Eight years of trade shows, convention halls,
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  Speaker 1: and good old face to face marketing as a traveling salesman,
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  Speaker 1: but it eventually got him over that hump. He even
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  Speaker 1: went to cat shows and volunteered to clean the litter
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  Speaker 1: boxes with his own product, just to show how absorbent
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  Speaker 1: it was and how it killed odors. Eventually, his kitty
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  Speaker 1: litter became a nationwide phenomenon. He secured hundreds of patents, trademarks,
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  Speaker 1: and copyrights and single handedly created an industry worth almost
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  Speaker 1: three billion dollars today. It may have started out as
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  Speaker 1: just a pile of clay, but ed Lowe managed to
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  Speaker 1: turn his product into the Cat's Pajamas. If you tell
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  Speaker 1: people that you're going to do something, it's expected that
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  Speaker 1: you do it. Right to try and fail means that
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  Speaker 1: you've at least put in the attempt, even if it
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  Speaker 1: didn't turn out the way that you hoped to. Never
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  Speaker 1: make a try at all makes you a disappointment in
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  Speaker 1: the eyes of those who supported you. But to lie
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  Speaker 1: about your accomplishment, to make people think that you've done it,
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  Speaker 1: when in reality you haven't done anything at all, well
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  Speaker 1: you better hope they never find out. Donald Crowhurst told
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  Speaker 1: people that he was going to sail around the world.
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  Speaker 1: What actually happened it was far stranger. Crowhurst lived in
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  Speaker 1: British India until he was fifteen years old, when his
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  Speaker 1: family left to return to England. It had been a
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  Speaker 1: rough childhood for him. His father died one year after
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  Speaker 1: returning to England, and for the next five years Crowhurst
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  Speaker 1: served as the apprentice to the Royal Aircraft Establishment, after
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  Speaker 1: which he became a pilot for the Royal Air Force.
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  Speaker 1: For unknown reasons, though he left the r a F
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  Speaker 1: to pursue a career in the army but that didn't
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  Speaker 1: last long either, as he was implicated in an incident
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  Speaker 1: involving a stolen car. By nineteen sixty two, he had
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  Speaker 1: started his own electronics business and married a woman named
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  Speaker 1: Claire O'Leary. It seems the high jinks of his youth
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  Speaker 1: were behind him and he had settled down to become
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  Speaker 1: a family man. On the weekends, he would go sailing
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  Speaker 1: and build small gadgets to help him on the water.
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  Speaker 1: One such device was called the Navigator, which relied on
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  Speaker 1: radio signals to pinpoint a boat's location. Crowhurst used it
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  Speaker 1: on his own vessel and thought that it might be
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  Speaker 1: a big seller among the wider sailing market. Unfortunately, it
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  Speaker 1: didn't take off the way he had hoped, and the
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  Speaker 1: money he desperately needed to keep himself and his business
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  Speaker 1: afloat just wasn't coming in. But an opportunity soon presented
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  Speaker 1: itself that would lip the struggling entrepreneur out of the
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  Speaker 1: red and into the history books. It was a race
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  Speaker 1: sponsored by the British Sunday Times that pits sailing experts
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  Speaker 1: and amateurs against each other their goal to circumnavigate the
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  Speaker 1: globe single handedly. The grand prize was five thousand pounds
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  Speaker 1: about seventy five thousand American dollars by today's standards. Competitors
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  Speaker 1: had to begin their voyage anytime between June one and
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  Speaker 1: October thirty one of nineteen sixty. Crowhurst had a boatyard
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  Speaker 1: in Norfolk build his boat, a forty ftlaw trimaran dubbed
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  Speaker 1: the Tenmouth Electron. Sponsorship money was meager and the deadline
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  Speaker 1: to leave was closing in, so corners were cut to
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  Speaker 1: finish the boat on time. He finally set out on
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  Speaker 1: the last day possible according to the rule book, but
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  Speaker 1: his rushing and his lack of funds meant that many
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  Speaker 1: of the boat's safety features just weren't completed. He departed
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  Speaker 1: on Halloween from the seaside town of ten Mouth in Devon, England.
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  Speaker 1: Right away it was clear that he was not cut
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  Speaker 1: out for a trip around the world, especially by himself.
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  Speaker 1: His pace was dismal. He was traveling at half the
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  Speaker 1: speed necessary to keep up with the other contestants, and
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  Speaker 1: he was still fixing things as he was going, including
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  Speaker 1: leaks in the boat itself. Based on his logs from
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  Speaker 1: the event, Crowhurst believed that even then he had a
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  Speaker 1: fifty fifty shot at even finishing the race alive, let
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  Speaker 1: alone winning, he had to come up with a plan
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  Speaker 1: and fast, otherwise he was liable to die on board
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  Speaker 1: within the next several weeks. After more than two months
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  Speaker 1: without any updates that left his family desperate for a
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  Speaker 1: glimmer of hope that he was okay, Crowhurst radioed in
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  Speaker 1: that he had covered two and forty three nautical miles
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  Speaker 1: in a single day. It was a record, just not
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  Speaker 1: a real one. He had come up with an elaborate
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  Speaker 1: ruse early in his trip, one that had him turning
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  Speaker 1: off his radio and hanging out in the South Atlantic
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  Speaker 1: for just a few months. After some time, he would
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  Speaker 1: show up in England as though he had completed the
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  Speaker 1: whole trip. He didn't expect to win. In fact, he
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  Speaker 1: wanted to make sure of it, as his falsified logs
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  Speaker 1: wouldn't be looked at too closely if he came in
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  Speaker 1: at last place. But Crowhurst put about as much thought
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  Speaker 1: into fabricating his navigation logs as he did into the
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  Speaker 1: preparation for the race itself. His times and dates were
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  Speaker 1: all wrong, claiming that he was sailing to certain locations
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  Speaker 1: much more quickly than could reasonably have been expected. But
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  Speaker 1: he didn't care. In one of his last transmissions, he
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  Speaker 1: told his family and race officials that he was near
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  Speaker 1: the southern tip of Africa, and then in July of
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  Speaker 1: nineteen sixty nine, the truth came out. His boat was
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  Speaker 1: discovered drifting in the mid Atlantic by another ship. Almost
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  Speaker 1: everything was still on board, including his maps, navigational charts,
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  Speaker 1: and the doctored logs that he had left behind. Crowhurst, however,
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  Speaker 1: was nowhere to be found. It's believed that he took
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  Speaker 1: his own life at sea. His logs were filled with
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  Speaker 1: the words of a man who, according to some biographers,
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  Speaker 1: could not live with the guilt of committing fraud nor
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  Speaker 1: the reality of coming clean and losing everything. He wrote
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  Speaker 1: rambling diet tribes and imaginary arguments between himself and God,
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  Speaker 1: signs that his mental state was crumbling the closer he
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  Speaker 1: got to the end of the race. Donald crowhurst body
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  Speaker 1: was never found. The last thing he said to his
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  Speaker 1: son before he left on that fateful day in October
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  Speaker 1: was look after your mother. As if he'd known all
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  Speaker 1: along that he wasn't coming home. He just wanted to
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  Speaker 1: show the world and his family that he could do
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  Speaker 1: what he set his mind to do. Instead, he was
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  Speaker 1: swallowed whole by his own stubbornness, allowing the ocean to
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  Speaker 1: claim one more poor soul. I hope you've enjoyed today's
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  Speaker 1: guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free
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  Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by
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  Speaker 1: visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by
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  Speaker 1: me Aaron Manky in partnership with how Stuff Works. I
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  Speaker 1: make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast,
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  Speaker 1: book series, and television show, and you can learn all
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  Speaker 1: about it over at the World of Lore dot com.
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  Speaker 1: And until next time, stay curious.