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To Be · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Welcomed Aaron Manky's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of I
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  Speaker 1: Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world is full
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  Speaker 1: of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book,
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  Speaker 1: all of these amazing tales are right there on display,
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  Speaker 1: just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet
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  Speaker 1: of Curiosities. When it comes to transportation, people have always
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  Speaker 1: had their eye on the sky, from Da Vinci's Winged
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  Speaker 1: Wonders to Orville and wilbur Rights flights at Kittie Hawk.
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  Speaker 1: We've dreamed of soaring above the trees, zipping from place
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  Speaker 1: to place swiftly and efficiently. There's no traffic in the sky,
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  Speaker 1: no flat tires or detours to delay us and getting
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  Speaker 1: to our destinations. And Alexander Vigors saw the benefit of
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  Speaker 1: air travel, but he had a much different idea of
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  Speaker 1: achieving it than others. He was born in nineteen o
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  Speaker 1: one in Indonesia to Dutch parents who owned a sugar
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  Speaker 1: plantation as well as a hotel. His mother, Johanna and
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  Speaker 1: his father, Albert, pushed alex toward a life of constant learning.
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  Speaker 1: Johanna spoke numerous languages and taught literature while Albert educated
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  Speaker 1: him on design and botany. In nineteen sixteen, Alex went
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  Speaker 1: off to the Netherlands to study numerous subjects, including blacksmithing,
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  Speaker 1: mechanical engineering, ship building, and art. Upon his return to
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  Speaker 1: Indonesia in nineteen six he married his fiancee, Jacoba, and
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  Speaker 1: the two eventually moved to the U S where they
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  Speaker 1: settled down in Seattle, Washington. Alex took a job as
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  Speaker 1: a draftsman and the two began to build their life
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  Speaker 1: together in America. Sadly, in n Jacoba died during the
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  Speaker 1: birth of what would have been their first child, who
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  Speaker 1: was still born. Distraught over the entire experience, Alex left
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  Speaker 1: engineering behind and instead threw himself into art, studying sculpture
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  Speaker 1: at the Art Institute of Seattle before moving to California
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  Speaker 1: in the nineteenth dirties. Come World War Two, Alex enlisted
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  Speaker 1: in the Army, where he served as an intelligence officer,
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  Speaker 1: and it was during the war when he decided to
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  Speaker 1: make his grand plan to take to the sky's official
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  Speaker 1: He had gotten the idea in the nineteen twenties, believing
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  Speaker 1: that the helicopters of the time were nothing but death traps.
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  Speaker 1: They go down like a brick, he once said in
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  Speaker 1: an interview. Then, after his family in the Dutch East
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  Speaker 1: Indies was captured by the Japanese during the war, Alex
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  Speaker 1: saw a need for a new kind of vehicle, one
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  Speaker 1: that could get people in and out of a jam
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  Speaker 1: quickly and safely. He filed his patent for his Disculptor
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  Speaker 1: a flying machine in nineteen four. About the only thing
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  Speaker 1: it had in common with a helicopter, though, was its
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  Speaker 1: use of horizontal rotors for lift. Otherwise the two vehicles
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  Speaker 1: were completely different. Alex's rotors were encased in vertical tubes
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  Speaker 1: or tunnels, not exposed to the elements or enemy fire.
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  Speaker 1: In fact, all the components were designed to be housed
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  Speaker 1: within a fully enclosed, disc shaped frame like an athlete.
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  Speaker 1: Its discuss, This unique craft was meant to slice through
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  Speaker 1: the air without resistance. Alex proposed his new aircraft to
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  Speaker 1: the U. S. Military, and they showed interest in building
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  Speaker 1: a prototype, but no one was willing to commit any
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  Speaker 1: kind of funding to the project while the war was
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  Speaker 1: still going on. However, once word got out about his invention,
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  Speaker 1: people all over the country got the bug to build
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  Speaker 1: something similar. Over the next sixty years, the U. S.
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  Speaker 1: Patent Office saw upwards of a hundred and ninety patents
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  Speaker 1: for vehicles of similar style and designed to Alex's, especially
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  Speaker 1: during the nineteen fifties. These inevitably led to films, books, comics,
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  Speaker 1: and television shows where disc shaped aircraft were featured. Kids
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  Speaker 1: could even buy their own in toy form, of course,
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  Speaker 1: But the strangest variation of Alex's patent came from an
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  Speaker 1: inventor named John Quincy st Clair in two thousand five.
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  Speaker 1: St Clair had previously filed patents for things like a
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  Speaker 1: walking through Walls training system, which would teach a person
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  Speaker 1: how to acquire sufficient hyperspace energy in order to walk
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  Speaker 1: through doors and walls. He also patented a magnetic vortex
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  Speaker 1: wormhole generator, so anyone could create a wormhole to another
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  Speaker 1: dimension with ease. Those patents made his idea for a
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  Speaker 1: photon spacecraft sound as reasonable as sliced bread. St Clair
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  Speaker 1: designed a vehicle that used photon particles to lift itself
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  Speaker 1: off the ground, and, just like Alex's model, was to
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  Speaker 1: be shaped like a disk. Alex Baker's didn't realize it
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  Speaker 1: at the time, but his vehicle was destined to become
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  Speaker 1: the stuff of science fiction for decades it would be
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  Speaker 1: immortalized in movies like The Day the Earth Stood Still
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  Speaker 1: and Mars Attacks, but that had never been his intention.
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  Speaker 1: Despite their having been reports of alien encounters and strange
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  Speaker 1: sightings before, Alex hadn't been influenced by any of those stories.
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  Speaker 1: He simply wanted to make the helicopter better, and to
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  Speaker 1: do that he had to invent and patent the Flying Saucer.
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  Speaker 1: Words are important, but not just in and of themselves,
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  Speaker 1: but the order they are put in, as well as
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  Speaker 1: the ones that are left out to take, for instance,
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  Speaker 1: the famous Shakespearean line to be or not to be?
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  Speaker 1: If you were to say, take out the not, the
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  Speaker 1: sentence becomes pointless and nonsensical. While that never happened as
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  Speaker 1: far as I know, something very similar, did one forgotten
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  Speaker 1: not change the course of morality? Well more or less?
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  Speaker 1: It began in sixty one, No scratch that, It began
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  Speaker 1: long before that, with Moses on a mountain coming down
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  Speaker 1: with a set of ten very self explanatory commandments. Do this,
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  Speaker 1: don't do that, You know the drill. It became the
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  Speaker 1: foundation for Judaism and later on Christianity. All right, now,
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  Speaker 1: let's get back to the seventeenth century. In sixteen o four,
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  Speaker 1: King James the first commission what would become the most
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  Speaker 1: widely spread version of the Bible in history. That's the
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  Speaker 1: King j Bible, in case that needs to be put
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  Speaker 1: together for you. It had been centuries since the latest
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  Speaker 1: version of the Holy Book, and the King felt under
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  Speaker 1: pressure from Puritans and Calvinists alike pushing for a reformation,
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  Speaker 1: and so James commissioned the new Bible, calling for more
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  Speaker 1: contemporary language as well as common and recognizable terms, the
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  Speaker 1: end goal being a union of the warring religious factions.
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  Speaker 1: After all, the Church's vast array of various offshoots were
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  Speaker 1: well known for their battles, and this project was right
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  Speaker 1: in the thick of it. The King James Bible rose
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  Speaker 1: beyond just a religious text, though, becoming a staple to
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  Speaker 1: the English language and giving us household phrases like an
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  Speaker 1: eye for an eye, a bottomless pit, and many more.
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  Speaker 1: But not all Bibles are created equally, Apparently, after widespread circulation,
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  Speaker 1: another printing of the King James Bible was ordered in
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  Speaker 1: sixteen thirty one from the Royal Printers in London, and
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  Speaker 1: while every other printing of that same book had seven
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  Speaker 1: hundred and eighty three one thirty seven words. This edition
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  Speaker 1: had seven eight three on thirty six words. Yes, one
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  Speaker 1: word was omitted in the sixty one edition, and it
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  Speaker 1: made a world of difference. The word omitted was a
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  Speaker 1: simple not in Exodus twenty, verse fourteen, flipping the seventh
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  Speaker 1: commandment on its head. Instead of thou shalt not commit adultery,
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  Speaker 1: it now read thou shalt commit adultery, meaning that while
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  Speaker 1: you should not be killing and not stealing, you should
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  Speaker 1: absolutely be committing adultery. The Lord himself had spoken, or
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  Speaker 1: rather the royal printers in London had spoken, And as
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  Speaker 1: if that wasn't bad enough, there was another mistake as well,
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  Speaker 1: this time changing a single word into a hyphenated superlative.
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  Speaker 1: This one appeared in Deuteronomy five, verse twenty four, where
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  Speaker 1: the Lord apparently didn't show his greatness at all, but
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  Speaker 1: his great ass, meaning that he must have one stellar donkey.
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  Speaker 1: Since that was the only meaning of the word at
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  Speaker 1: the time of printing. Needless to say, there was something
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  Speaker 1: of a public outcry about it all. The archbishop was
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  Speaker 1: mortified by both mistakes and immediately set about rounding up
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  Speaker 1: copies to destroy them. Oh and the printers were fined
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  Speaker 1: as well by today's standards, around sixty fo dollars. While
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  Speaker 1: it may seem like nothing more than an innocent mistake,
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  Speaker 1: the sheer magnitude of the change has led some to
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  Speaker 1: believe that it was a classic case of Biblical sabotage.
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  Speaker 1: This theory posits that Arrival snuck into the Royal printers
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  Speaker 1: workshop and made the change in hopes that they would
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  Speaker 1: lose their exclusive right to print the Bible. Thankfully, the
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  Speaker 1: archbishop did not succeed in destroying all of them, though
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  Speaker 1: various copies can still be found scattered across museums in
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  Speaker 1: both the United States and England, as well as one
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  Speaker 1: in Australia. And in case you're looking to bolster your
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  Speaker 1: own Biblical collection, a handful of these wicked Bibles still
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  Speaker 1: pop up at various auctions from time to time. The
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  Speaker 1: latest one sold for roughly fifty six thousand dollars. While
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  Speaker 1: it's unlikely this steak altered the religious foundation of anyone, ever,
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  Speaker 1: it remains a great example of how one small mistake
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  Speaker 1: can make one big difference in meaning. And always remember
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  Speaker 1: thou shalt proof read before printing, or wait, no, yeah,
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  Speaker 1: that's right. 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: or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast
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  Speaker 1: dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Manky
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  Speaker 1: in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award
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  Speaker 1: winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series,
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  Speaker 1: and television show, and you can learn all about it
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  Speaker 1: over at the World of Lore dot com. And until
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  Speaker 1: next time, stay curious.