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New Year’s Cheers · 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 are right there on display, just
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  Speaker 1: waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
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  Speaker 1: Time flies when you're having fun and also when you're not.
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  Speaker 1: Either way, the clot keeps ticking. That's never more apparent
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  Speaker 1: than on December thirty first, when we look back at
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  Speaker 1: the previous year and talk about how we can't believe
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  Speaker 1: it is already over. But there was one year, over
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  Speaker 1: two millennia ago when people did not feel like the
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  Speaker 1: time had slipped away. And that's because forty six BCE
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  Speaker 1: lasted a whopping four hundred in forty five days. You see,
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  Speaker 1: the calendar has always been a bit tricky to nail down.
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  Speaker 1: For most of human history, years were measured using the seasons,
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  Speaker 1: and having exact dates and times wasn't that important If
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  Speaker 1: you wanted to schedule an event, you wouldn't tell people
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  Speaker 1: to meet you on Saturday at seven pm, because the
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  Speaker 1: whole idea of a seven day week and a twenty
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  Speaker 1: four hour day didn't exist. Instead, you'd say something like
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  Speaker 1: meet me at sundown on the night of the full moon.
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  Speaker 1: And let's be honest here. That sounds way cooler than
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  Speaker 1: how we schedule things today. Of course, many ancient cultures
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  Speaker 1: had tools like sundials and lunar calendars. In the Roman Empire,
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  Speaker 1: for example, one year was made up of twelve lunar cycles,
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  Speaker 1: each lasted about twenty eight days. The problem was this
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  Speaker 1: resulted in a year that was slightly shorter than the
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  Speaker 1: four seasons. Roman officials viewed the calendar as malleable, so
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  Speaker 1: they would add days here and there to make up
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  Speaker 1: the difference, but the system was far from perfect. Problems
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  Speaker 1: arose anytime politics got in the way of managing the calendar.
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  Speaker 1: The years before Julius Caesar rose to power were so
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  Speaker 1: turbulent that adding random day into the mix wasn't anybody's priority.
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  Speaker 1: By the time he took the throne in forty nine BCE,
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  Speaker 1: April fell in the middle of the summer and the
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  Speaker 1: harvest festival was three months before the actual harvest. Everything
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  Speaker 1: was out of whack, so to get things back on tracks,
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  Speaker 1: Caesar called for forty six BCE to be a transitional
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  Speaker 1: year with ninety extra days packed into it. He named
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  Speaker 1: it the Ultima Annis Confusionists, that is, the final year
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  Speaker 1: of Confusion. When forty six BCE was finally over, Caesar
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  Speaker 1: instituted the Julian calendar. Rather than being based on the
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  Speaker 1: cycles of the moon, this one followed the movements of
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  Speaker 1: the sun. It's where we get thirty and thirty one
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  Speaker 1: day months, as well as leap years. The Julian calendar
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  Speaker 1: followed the seasons much more accurately, so it didn't need
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  Speaker 1: to be constantly altered, but still it wasn't perfect. Roman
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  Speaker 1: astronomers had miscalculated the solar year by a mere eleven minutes,
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  Speaker 1: and this might not seem like much, but it added up.
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  Speaker 1: For every one hundred and twenty eight years that passed,
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  Speaker 1: the calendar fell about one day behind the seasons. This
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  Speaker 1: meant that by fifteen eighty two, the world was more
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  Speaker 1: than ten days off. This problem came to the attention
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  Speaker 1: of Pope Gregory the thirteenth, who suggested a few changes. First,
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  Speaker 1: they needed to make up for lost time. Literally, those
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  Speaker 1: living in Catholic Europe went to sleep on October fourth
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  Speaker 1: of fifteen eighty two, but when they woke up the
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  Speaker 1: next morning it was in October fifth. It was the fifteenth.
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  Speaker 1: They had jumped ahead ten days, and to make sure
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  Speaker 1: the same thing didn't happen again, modern astronomers also needed
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  Speaker 1: to fix the Romans miscalculation. They changed how leap years
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  Speaker 1: work just slightly, making any numbers divisible by four hundred
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  Speaker 1: or four thousand exempt. This small alteration guaranteed that the
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  Speaker 1: Gregorian calendar would remain accurate for the next twenty thousand years,
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  Speaker 1: but not everyone was on board. The British government refused
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  Speaker 1: to institute the change for nearly two centuries until they
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  Speaker 1: had lagged eleven days behind the rest of Western Europe.
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  Speaker 1: In seventeen fifty two, British King George the Second had
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  Speaker 1: finally had enough that September lasted just nineteen days in
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  Speaker 1: the Briginish Empire, allowing the nation to get back in
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  Speaker 1: line with the seasons. These days, the Gregorian calendar is
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  Speaker 1: considered the international standard, but that doesn't mean that every
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  Speaker 1: country and culture embraces it. Even now. The way humans
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  Speaker 1: keep time is not an exact science, and not everyone
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  Speaker 1: is about to celebrate the beginning of twenty twenty four
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  Speaker 1: in Ethiopia, for example, people use a version of the
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  Speaker 1: ancient Coptic calendar, which has thirteen months. Because of this,
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  Speaker 1: the current year there is twenty sixteen. Iran and Afghanistan
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  Speaker 1: both use the Persian Solar his reclendar. In those countries
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  Speaker 1: it's technically fourteen forty five. Nepal uses a traditional Hindu
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  Speaker 1: calendar that puts them about fifty six years in the
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  Speaker 1: future in twenty eighty, but that's nothing compared to China.
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  Speaker 1: Their traditional calendar puts them all the way in forty
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  Speaker 1: seven to twenty. So let this be a reminder. The
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  Speaker 1: time is an illusion, and the way that we measure
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  Speaker 1: it is curious. Indeed, as the new year approaches, you
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  Speaker 1: might be reaching into your fridge for a festive drink
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  Speaker 1: like eggnog or champagne. In Scotland, though, they're mixing up
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  Speaker 1: a different kind of holiday beverage, one with a very
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  Speaker 1: curious history. It's called athel Bros, and legends about this
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  Speaker 1: winter time brew go back over five hundred years. There
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  Speaker 1: are a couple of different versions of the story. The
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  Speaker 1: first one goes like this, there once was a giant
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  Speaker 1: who lived in the Scottish Highlands in a region called Ethel.
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  Speaker 1: The monster terrorized innocent people, spreading fear across the hills.
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  Speaker 1: A local hunter wanted to put a stop to the violence,
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  Speaker 1: but to defeat the beast, he had to be clever.
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  Speaker 1: Rather than attacking the giant outright, the hunter mixed up
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  Speaker 1: a vat of oatmeal, whiskey, cream, and honey and set
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  Speaker 1: it out for the monster to eat. The spiked porridge
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  Speaker 1: was so strong that it put the beast into a
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  Speaker 1: never ending stupor, thereby ending its reign of terror. Now
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  Speaker 1: the second and more slightly believable version of the tale
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  Speaker 1: begins like this. In the late fifteenth century, the British
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  Speaker 1: Isles were racked by a series of battles known as
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  Speaker 1: the Wars of the Roses. People were fighting to gain
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  Speaker 1: control of the British throne, and they were willing to
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  Speaker 1: do just about anything to get it. Enter Ian MacDonald,
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  Speaker 1: a Scottish earl. In fourteen seventy five, Ian signed a
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  Speaker 1: traitorous agreement with British King Edward the Fourth. The contract
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  Speaker 1: said that if England were to subdue Scotland, the earl
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  Speaker 1: would be granted partial rulership over his homeland, And just
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  Speaker 1: like that, Ian stopped fighting England and began plotting a
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  Speaker 1: rebellion against his own leader, the Scottish King. Unfortunately for Ian,
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  Speaker 1: his plans weren't exactly secret. There were spies everywhere. Soon enough,
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  Speaker 1: word got around to another Scotsman named John Stewart. He
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  Speaker 1: was the Earl of Athel of the Highlands, the same
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  Speaker 1: area where our fabled giant had lived. Angered by Ian's
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  Speaker 1: traitorous actions, John set out to squash the uprising before
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  Speaker 1: it could even begin, and the Scottish spies gave John
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  Speaker 1: some important intel. Ian and his men had a specific
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  Speaker 1: date in mind for the rebel. Until then, they were
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  Speaker 1: hiding out on a nearby hill, eating rations and getting
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  Speaker 1: water from one specific well, and that detail the well
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  Speaker 1: gave John an idea. The night before Ian's coup was
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  Speaker 1: scheduled to take place, John ordered his men to sneak
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  Speaker 1: into the enemy camp and sabotage their water supply by
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  Speaker 1: filling the well with oats, honey, and scotch. Apparently, Ian
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  Speaker 1: and his men didn't notice that their water had magically
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  Speaker 1: transformed into some kind of thick whiskey cocktail. I guess
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  Speaker 1: we're meant to suspend our disbelief at this point in history.
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  Speaker 1: That's or the stuff just tasted so good that they
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  Speaker 1: didn't want to question it. Regardless, legend has it that
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  Speaker 1: Ian and his troops ate so much that they all
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  Speaker 1: passed out in the morning. They were too exhausted to
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  Speaker 1: mount their rebellion, And there you have it. With nothing
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  Speaker 1: more than the power of a stiff drink, John had
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  Speaker 1: successfully stopped the uprising. Now in both stories, ethel Bros
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  Speaker 1: originates in the Highlands, is made in massive quantities, and
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  Speaker 1: has a nearly mythical ability to leave people staggeringly drunk.
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  Speaker 1: It's believed to be one of the world's first cock tales,
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  Speaker 1: and it's remained popular throughout history. Thankfully, though the recipe
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  Speaker 1: has since been refined. John Stewart's descendants made one big
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  Speaker 1: change in the early eighteen hundreds. They replaced the oatmeal
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  Speaker 1: with a mixture of blended oats and water, which was
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  Speaker 1: then strained to ensure a smooth, drinkable consistency. And this
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  Speaker 1: was arguably the first version of oat's milk. Who knew
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  Speaker 1: that our favorite lattes could be traced back to a
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  Speaker 1: fifteenth century Scottish cocktail? Right these days, ethel Bros is
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  Speaker 1: most often brewed during hogmen at which is the Scottish
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  Speaker 1: version of New Year's Eve, one of the country's most
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  Speaker 1: important holidays. Hogmen Ase celebrations feature torchlit parades, swinging fireballs
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  Speaker 1: and other ritualistic traditions. Plus there's plenty of athel bros
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  Speaker 1: to go around. And hey, I can't think of a
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  Speaker 1: better way to ring in the new year than with flames,
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  Speaker 1: toasts and strange stories. So cheers to twenty twenty four.
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  Speaker 1: In all the curious tales we've yet to discover, I
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  Speaker 1: hope 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. This 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 Worldoflore
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  Speaker 1: dot com. And until next time, stay curious.