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One Man Show · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

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  Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
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  Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of
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  Speaker 1: the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all
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  Speaker 1: of these amazing tales right there on display, just waiting
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  Speaker 1: for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
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  Speaker 1: Comic book fans are familiar with a certain set of phrases,
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  Speaker 1: often shouted toward the heavens. Look up in the sky.
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  Speaker 1: It's a bird, it's a plane, it's Superman. But a
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  Speaker 1: person flying above the clouds was only fiction, right? Something
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  Speaker 1: like that couldn't happen for real, could it? Just ask
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  Speaker 1: the people of medieval Ireland. In the seven forties, reports
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  Speaker 1: began to pour in a bizarre sightings. Beginning in a
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  Speaker 1: place called Telltown in the northeast. Three ships were spotted
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  Speaker 1: at a distance, their crews throwing spears over the decks
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  Speaker 1: to catch fish swimming below. But the ships weren't in
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  Speaker 1: the water. They were overhead, soaring through the sky. One
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  Speaker 1: of the spears missed and landed at their feet Onlookers
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  Speaker 1: watched as a crew member leapt off the deck to
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  Speaker 1: retrieve it. He swam down through the air as if
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  Speaker 1: it were water, picked up the errant spear, and swam
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  Speaker 1: back up to his ship. Over time, these stories changed
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  Speaker 1: a bit. The three ships became one ship, and then
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  Speaker 1: a tenth century king was present in some tellings. In
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  Speaker 1: later versions, the spear was picked up by someone on
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  Speaker 1: the ground who refused to give it back. The crewmate
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  Speaker 1: who swam down to get it cried, I am being drowned.
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  Speaker 1: The king then ordered the spear to be returned to
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  Speaker 1: him so that he could get back onto his ship.
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  Speaker 1: And we know of these stories today because of the
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  Speaker 1: Irish Annals, historical records of important events in Irish history.
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  Speaker 1: Four of these annals contain information about the sky ships
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  Speaker 1: seen in Telltown. Hundreds of years after the first sighting,
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  Speaker 1: the tales changed again. Around the fifteenth or sixteenth century,
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  Speaker 1: a manuscript was published containing a different account of the events.
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  Speaker 1: They no longer took place in Telltown, but rather at
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  Speaker 1: a monastery near the center of the country. It was
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  Speaker 1: called Klonmacnois, and it served as a major educational hub
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  Speaker 1: for the country, teaching different trades and of course, religious doctrine.
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  Speaker 1: In this iteration of the story, the spear had been
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  Speaker 1: changed to an anchor, which was dropped from above and
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  Speaker 1: then retrieved by a crewmate who swam down to earth
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  Speaker 1: to get it back. The priests held on to the
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  Speaker 1: anchor as the sailor cried that he was drowning, until
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  Speaker 1: they let it go and he was able to return
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  Speaker 1: to his ship. And it was this narrative that soon
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  Speaker 1: left the confines of Ireland and spread throughout England. According
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  Speaker 1: to Jeffrey de Brul, a twelfth century French abbot, the
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  Speaker 1: anchor actually landed in London in eleven twenty two. A
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  Speaker 1: similar version from twelve eleven claimed that the anchor was
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  Speaker 1: seen among piles of stones in the churchyard. As the
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  Speaker 1: parishioners watched, the rope that was tied to the anchor
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  Speaker 1: began moving. It was like an invisible force that was
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  Speaker 1: trying to rip it out of the ground from above.
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  Speaker 1: Wouldn't budge. One of the sailors climbed down the rope
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  Speaker 1: to the ground level and was grabbed by the people nearby.
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  Speaker 1: He struggled to get away, but died in their custody,
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  Speaker 1: having drowned by our heavier moisture filled air. And that
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  Speaker 1: same story would be discovered some time later in a
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  Speaker 1: Norse compilation of fantastic tales called Irish Marvels. So did
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  Speaker 1: the people of Ireland really witness a fleet of ships
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  Speaker 1: traversing the sky? Well, what they saw and what they
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  Speaker 1: thought they saw were two different things. Some medieval scholars
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  Speaker 1: believe that there really was a sea to be found
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  Speaker 1: among the heavens. As described in the Book of Genesis,
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  Speaker 1: God made the firmament and divided the waters which were
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  Speaker 1: under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament.
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  Speaker 1: To many at the time, it made sense that if
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  Speaker 1: there was a sea on Earth, then there must also
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  Speaker 1: be one above it as well. It's hard to imagine
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  Speaker 1: something as large arge as a boat flying through the
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  Speaker 1: air centuries before the first airplane would take off, but
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  Speaker 1: it might not be so strange after all. Hundreds of
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  Speaker 1: years after the first appearance of the Irish sky ships,
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  Speaker 1: another aircraft was seen, this time over Merkele, Texas. On
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  Speaker 1: the night of April twenty eighth of eighteen ninety seven,
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  Speaker 1: A group of people on their way home from church
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  Speaker 1: watched as an anchor attached to a rope was dragged
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  Speaker 1: along the ground for miles. It scraped across dirt, and
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  Speaker 1: gravel until it finally got caught on a section of
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  Speaker 1: railroad track. As these churchgoers looked up at what the
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  Speaker 1: rope was attached to, they saw an enormous airship, its
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  Speaker 1: windows illuminated by light from the inside. In an instant,
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  Speaker 1: someone from the ship climbed down and cut the anchor
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  Speaker 1: loose before the vessel took off, The crewmen hanging on
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  Speaker 1: as he disappeared into the night. According to an article
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  Speaker 1: printed in the Houston Post shortly thereafter, the anchor was
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  Speaker 1: put on display in a local blacksmiths shop. Whether these
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  Speaker 1: stories are true or not is honestly irrelevant. What Madam
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  Speaker 1: is that when it comes to exploration and the human imagination,
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  Speaker 1: the sky, as they say, is the limit. When we
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  Speaker 1: think about affecting change, we often sell ourselves shorts. There's
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  Speaker 1: a common sentiment shared by many that goes something like,
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  Speaker 1: I'm only one person? How much can I really do?
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  Speaker 1: And the reality is one person can make a difference.
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  Speaker 1: The problem is that difference isn't always best for everyone.
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  Speaker 1: Few people knew that better than Jay Cook. Cook was
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  Speaker 1: born in Sandusky, Ohio in eighteen twenty one to wealthy,
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  Speaker 1: powerful parents. He eventually moved to Philadelphia, where he got
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  Speaker 1: a job working at the banking firm E. W. Clarkin Company.
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  Speaker 1: After several years as a clerk, Cook was promoted to
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  Speaker 1: partner in eighteen forty two. Then he started his own
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  Speaker 1: banking company just before the start of the Civil War.
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  Speaker 1: It was so successful the US government went to him
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  Speaker 1: to borrow money so they could pay for things like uniforms, guns,
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  Speaker 1: and other necessities. Cook changed the face of banking in
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  Speaker 1: the United States. He helped establish the national banking system
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  Speaker 1: and managed to secure a hefty payout for himself through
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  Speaker 1: the sale of bonds during the war. Then in eighteen
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  Speaker 1: seventy he branched out of banking and turned the country
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  Speaker 1: into his own personal monopoly board. He started a railroad.
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  Speaker 1: Cook provided the financing for the Northern Pacific Railroad, which
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  Speaker 1: would create a direct line between Minnesota and the West Coast.
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  Speaker 1: The project had been approved way back in eighteen sixty four,
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  Speaker 1: but backing for it hadn't really materialized. Cook's contributions really
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  Speaker 1: jump started construction, which continued until eighteen eighty three. On
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  Speaker 1: September eighth of that year, former President Ulysses S. Grant
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  Speaker 1: drove a golden spike into the last piece of track,
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  Speaker 1: officially marking completion of the railway. Cook and Grant had
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  Speaker 1: known each other for some time, as the financier had
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  Speaker 1: donated heavily to his reelection campaign. In eighteen seventy two,
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  Speaker 1: well three years after construction had begun, Grant ventured to
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  Speaker 1: Cook's massive home in Philadelphia for a visit. It's not
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  Speaker 1: known what they talked about there, but chances are that
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  Speaker 1: it wasn't good. One year prior, a letter had been
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  Speaker 1: published by the banking firm of Lee's and Waller. It
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  Speaker 1: predicted that a crash of the railroad industry was imminent.
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  Speaker 1: Railways had become money pits, often rife with fraud and
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  Speaker 1: pointless construction. Many track systems were laid with no clear
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  Speaker 1: beginning or end, and Cook's investment bank in New York
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  Speaker 1: was on the verge of insolvency. He had no recourse.
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  Speaker 1: The European market was already dealing with its own financial crisis,
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  Speaker 1: and American investors weren't about to pour their funds into
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  Speaker 1: his endeavors. Neither was Grant. He'd been implicated a decade
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  Speaker 1: earlier in several financial debacles that made him hesitant to
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  Speaker 1: assist Cook. Despite their previous relationship. Three days after their meetup,
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  Speaker 1: Cook's bank went belly up. Pretty soon everyone back in
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  Speaker 1: New York heard the news. They mobbed the streets look
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  Speaker 1: for a way into the building. Police officers were called
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  Speaker 1: to quell the crowds and keep them from ripping the
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  Speaker 1: doors off their hinges. People lost everything and found themselves
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  Speaker 1: in the middle of the first Great Depression, almost sixty
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  Speaker 1: years before the Crash of nineteen twenty nine, and it
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  Speaker 1: was all thanks to Jay Cook. Even Wall Street shut
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  Speaker 1: down completely, with the New York Stock Exchange suspending trading
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  Speaker 1: for the first time ever. Grant considered funding a bailout
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  Speaker 1: of the Treasury Department, but ultimately decided against it. The
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  Speaker 1: Northern Pacific, though somehow managed to survive. A series of
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  Speaker 1: austerity measures had been initiated prior to the crash, and
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  Speaker 1: loans from other financiers helped keep the project alive. This
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  Speaker 1: crisis was known as the Panic of eighteen seventy three,
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  Speaker 1: and it led to the disillusion of over one hundred
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  Speaker 1: and twenty railroads, the loss of eighteen thousand businesses, and
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  Speaker 1: the bankruptcy of countless investors, and it lasted for more
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  Speaker 1: than five years. Among the first groups hit by the
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  Speaker 1: panic were formerly enslaved Americas who had had their life
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  Speaker 1: savings stored at the Freedman Savings Bank. It also went under,
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  Speaker 1: costing thousands of African American men and women everything they had.
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  Speaker 1: No one was safe from the panic, either from the
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  Speaker 1: poor and uneducated to the rich and cultured. Everyone stood
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  Speaker 1: to lose something or everything as a result of one
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  Speaker 1: man's greed. Because of Jay Cook, unemployment rose to a
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  Speaker 1: whopping fourteen percent across the country, although some areas saw
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  Speaker 1: even worse. Veterans were tossed into the streets, while men
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  Speaker 1: like Cook found ways to regain their wealth. He made
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  Speaker 1: his money back by investing in a silver mine out
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  Speaker 1: in Utah before dying in nineteen oh five. Jay Cook
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  Speaker 1: was a ruthless business man, and he was almost solely
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  Speaker 1: responsible for the first and probably one of the worst
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  Speaker 1: depressions that the United States has ever seen. I hope
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  Speaker 1: you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities.
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  Speaker 1: Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about
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  Speaker 1: the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show
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  Speaker 1: was created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership with how
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  Speaker 1: stuff works. I make another award winning show called Lore,
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  Speaker 1: which is a podcast, book series, and television show and
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  Speaker 1: you can learn all about it over at the worldolore
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  Speaker 1: dot com. And until next time, stay curious.