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Grand Theft Aero · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

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  Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Menke'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: The Halls of American History team with legendary folk heroes
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  Speaker 1: from Johnny Appleseed to Paul Bunyan and John Henry. But
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  Speaker 1: for the people of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, one figure
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  Speaker 1: stands above the rest. His name was Snowshoe Thompson, a
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  Speaker 1: Norwegian American postman who delivered mail in the Sierra Nevadas
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  Speaker 1: during the mid nineteenth century. During that period of Western expansion,
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  Speaker 1: hundreds of thousands of Americans crossed the mountains to seek
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  Speaker 1: their fortunes in California, but virtually all of those pioneers
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  Speaker 1: only made the journey once, and many, like the infamous
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  Speaker 1: Donner Party, never even made it to their destination at all.
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  Speaker 1: Snowshoe Thompson, though, crossed the Sierras more often than anyone
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  Speaker 1: could count. As a mail carrier for the US Post Office,
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  Speaker 1: he braved remote mountain passes unreachable by freight train and
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  Speaker 1: too dangerous for the pony Express. He looked like a
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  Speaker 1: hero straight out of a Norse myth, six feet tall,
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  Speaker 1: with a thick blonde beard and striking blue eyes. He
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  Speaker 1: could often be seen streaking through the mountains on his
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  Speaker 1: massive skis, way down by a sack of letters. His
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  Speaker 1: friends knew that Snowshoe's story was as American as they come.
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  Speaker 1: He was born in Norway in eighteen twenty seven and
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  Speaker 1: emigrated to America with his mother when he was ten.
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  Speaker 1: They lived in a Norwegian immigrant settlement, first in Illinois
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  Speaker 1: and then in Missouri, and then in eighteen fifty one,
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  Speaker 1: at the age of twenty four, he headed west to California,
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  Speaker 1: where he briefly tried his hand at prospecting gold mining,
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  Speaker 1: though frustrated him, and four years later he was starting
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  Speaker 1: to despair that he would never be a success. Then
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  Speaker 1: one day he read a story in a Sacramento newspaper.
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  Speaker 1: The US Post Office wanted to establish a mail delivery
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  Speaker 1: line through the mountains, but was struggling to find anyone
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  Speaker 1: brave and athletic enough to do the work involved. Thompson
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  Speaker 1: headed straight there and applied for the job. He made
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  Speaker 1: his first trek as a postman in eighteen fifty six
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  Speaker 1: during the dead of winter, and he never looked back.
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  Speaker 1: Navigating these Sierra Nevadas was difficult, but it seemed like
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  Speaker 1: Snowshoe had been born for it. To make travel easier,
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  Speaker 1: he crafted long, wooden skis, similar to the kind that
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  Speaker 1: he would use in Norway back as a boy. Like
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  Speaker 1: John Henry's hammer, These skis soon gained legendary status. People
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  Speaker 1: said that they were ten feet long, six inches wide,
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  Speaker 1: and weighed twenty five pounds apiece. Meanwhile, stories about the
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  Speaker 1: mail carrying the Northmen proliferated throughout the mountains. According to
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  Speaker 1: his most famous tale, Snowshoe once encountered a prospector trapped
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  Speaker 1: inside a snow covered cabin. The man's feet were frozen
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  Speaker 1: solid with frostbites, leaving him in excruciating pain and unable
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  Speaker 1: to walk. The mail would have to wait. Snowshoe quickly
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  Speaker 1: gathered some firewood and built a fire in the cabin's hearth.
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  Speaker 1: Once the injured man was as comfortable as could be expected,
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  Speaker 1: he set off for Genoa, a mountain town near Lake Tahoe.
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  Speaker 1: Once there, he gathered a team of six men and
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  Speaker 1: raced back to the cabin. The fire had started to
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  Speaker 1: dwindle by then, but the prospector was still alive. Snowshoe
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  Speaker 1: and his companions loaded him onto a makeshift sled and
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  Speaker 1: hurried back to Genoa. Doctors examined the prospector's feet and
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  Speaker 1: concluded that there was no saving them. The frost bite
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  Speaker 1: was severe and they had to be amputated before ganggreen
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  Speaker 1: set in. There was just one problem. No doctor in
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  Speaker 1: the area had the chloroform they needed to perform the surgery.
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  Speaker 1: It was another job for Snowshoe Thompson. The mailman hopped
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  Speaker 1: on his skis and raced a Sacramento for the chloroform,
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  Speaker 1: then hurried back to Genoa in time to save the
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  Speaker 1: prospector's life. By the time all was said and done,
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  Speaker 1: he had traveled over four hundred miles on skis through
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  Speaker 1: mountainous terrain in the dead of winter, and he wasn't
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  Speaker 1: done just yet. Saving the prospector had cost him a
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  Speaker 1: few days, which meant that Snowshoe Thompson now had a
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  Speaker 1: lot of lost time to make up before the prospector
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  Speaker 1: or the doctor has got the chance to even thank him.
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  Speaker 1: He took a skiz and his mail bag and headed
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  Speaker 1: back out into the freshly falling snow. Standing in an
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  Speaker 1: airfield in Guymon, Oklahoma, William mcboyle scanned the skies. It
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  Speaker 1: was nineteen twenty six, and he was waiting anxiously for
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  Speaker 1: the sign that his grand scheme was going according to plan.
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  Speaker 1: And then suddenly he saw it, a smudge on the
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  Speaker 1: horizon growing closer. Just minutes later, he smiled as his
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  Speaker 1: pilot landed the small plane safely on the airstrip. Phase
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  Speaker 1: one of their plan had worked. William's pilot had taken
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  Speaker 1: a passenger plane from an airfield in Ottawa, Illinois, nearly
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  Speaker 1: nine hundred miles away without getting caught. Now it was
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  Speaker 1: time for phase two, make the swap. William went over
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  Speaker 1: his instructions with the pilot as the man climbed into
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  Speaker 1: another plane. This one was similar to the first, but
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  Speaker 1: much worse for wear. All the pilot had to do
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  Speaker 1: was fly back to Ottawa's airfield, leave this inferior plane
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  Speaker 1: on the airstrip, and the plane's owners would never be
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  Speaker 1: the wiser, or at least by the time they discovered
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  Speaker 1: what had happened. Both pilot and plane would be long gone.
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  Speaker 1: William watched as the decoy plane raced down the runway
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  Speaker 1: and climbed high into the sky. It was the perfect crime,
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  Speaker 1: at least it would have been if William's pilot hadn't crashed.
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  Speaker 1: The police showed up at his door. Soon after. William
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  Speaker 1: discovered their foolproof plot wasn't so foolproof after all, He
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  Speaker 1: and the pilot were under arrest. William mcboyle and his
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  Speaker 1: pilot were tried and convicted in federal court for violating
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  Speaker 1: the National Motor Vehicle Theft Act. According to the court,
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  Speaker 1: William had knowingly transported a stolen motor vehicle over state lines.
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  Speaker 1: It would have been an open and shut case too,
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  Speaker 1: if not for a clever legal argument and a brand
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  Speaker 1: new technology. You see, William's lawyers appealed with a bold
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  Speaker 1: new tactic. Yes, they said William had taken a plane
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  Speaker 1: that was not his, and yes he had transported it
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  Speaker 1: across state lines, but none of that mattered because legally speaking,
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  Speaker 1: a plane was not a motor vehicle and there was
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  Speaker 1: no federal law against stealing planes. Now, you have to remember,
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  Speaker 1: at this point in history, nineteen twenty six, airplanes were
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  Speaker 1: a new technology. Just twenty three years earlier, Wilbur and
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  Speaker 1: Orville Wright had made the first successful man and flight.
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  Speaker 1: In the year since, people had just started to test
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  Speaker 1: the limits of airplanes. Until nineteen twenty six, when this
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  Speaker 1: theft occurred, planes were small and practical. They came into
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  Speaker 1: play during World War One as fighters and spies. After
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  Speaker 1: the war, planes were mainly used in air shows, where
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  Speaker 1: pilots competed for speed and distance records. Most planes were
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  Speaker 1: not large enough to transport much heavy cargo, and the
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  Speaker 1: first commercial flights were still decades away. To put this
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  Speaker 1: incident into context, William mcboyle stole this plane exactly one
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  Speaker 1: year before Charles Lindberg became an international celebrity for completing
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  Speaker 1: the first solo transatlantic flight. In light of this, mcboyle's
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  Speaker 1: lawyers argued that the National Motor Vehicle Theft Act was
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  Speaker 1: too narrowly written to include this new technology. The law
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  Speaker 1: described a motor vehicle as I quote here automobile, motorcycle,
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  Speaker 1: or any other self propelled vehicle not designed for running
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  Speaker 1: on rails. This argument brought the case all the way
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  Speaker 1: up to the Supreme Court, where, after much deliberation, the
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  Speaker 1: justices actually agreed with mcboyle. According to Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes,
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  Speaker 1: an airplane did not fit the definition of a motor
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  Speaker 1: vehicle as stated by the National Motor Vehicle Theft Act.
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  Speaker 1: Similar laws and cases had been decided on the assumption
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  Speaker 1: that this dev vehicle had to be one that traveled
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  Speaker 1: across land. Other laws specifically excluded planes as motor vehicles.
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  Speaker 1: Since there was no other federal law expressly forbidding the
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  Speaker 1: theft of planes, mcboyle could not be convicted. Technically speaking,
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  Speaker 1: stealing a plane was not against federal law. Now that's
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  Speaker 1: not to say that stealing in general was legal at
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  Speaker 1: the time, but grand larceny, which might cover stealing, say,
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  Speaker 1: a plane, is a state law. Mcboyle was charged federally,
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  Speaker 1: and once he was free, neither Illinois nor Oklahoma really
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  Speaker 1: wanted to charge him. Mcboyle gained his freedom through a
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  Speaker 1: fluke of federal law. The law wouldn't be amended until
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  Speaker 1: nineteen forty five, when the statute was changed to specifically
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  Speaker 1: include airplanes. This became especially important as commercial passenger flights
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  Speaker 1: became more common in the nineteen fifties, but none of
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  Speaker 1: that mattered to mcboyle after pulling off a high flying
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  Speaker 1: heist like that nothing could bring him down. 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 Worldoflore
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  Speaker 1: dot com. And until next time, stay curious.