Latest / Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities / The Little Giant

Transcript

The Little Giant · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: is an open book, all of these amazing tales right
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: there on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: to the cabinet of curiosities. The most difficult thing is
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: the decision to act. The rest is merely tenacity. Those
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: aren't my words, by the way. They belong to someone
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: who dared to do the impossible, someone we still remember today,
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: Amelia Earhart. She set numerous records during her life, both
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: as a woman and a pilot. She was the first
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: woman pilot to reach fourteen thousand feet in an airplane,
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean,
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: and the first to fly NonStop from coast to coast
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: across the continental US. And she would have been the
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: first woman to circumnavigate the globe by airplane had she
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: not disappeared during her final trip. But this story isn't
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: about her. It's about the woman who came before her,
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: the one who, in all respects, paved the way for
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: women like Amelia Earhart to prove their metal before the world.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: Her name was Annie London Dairy, and while she was
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: born in Latvia in eighteen seventy. She grew up in Boston.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: She was raised in a tenement along with four other siblings,
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: who all got married and started families of their own,
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: and Annie was no different. She met a man, Max Kopchovsky,
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: in and the two of them raised three children together.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: Alongside her sibling families. They supported each other the way
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: families are supposed to, but eventually they fell on hard
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: times and Annie had to find a job to make
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: ends meet. She ended up selling ad space for several
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: Boston newspapers. She held that job for many years, and
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: during her career two things happened. First, bicycle became the
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: vehicle of choice for the independent traveler. Everywhere she went,
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: someone was zipping up and down the street on two wheels.
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: And second, a man used one of these new fangled
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: machines to travel around the world. Suddenly, people everywhere were
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: wondering if it had been a fluke, could anyone else
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: take on the daunting task of traveling around the globe
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: on just a bicycle? And were only men up to
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: such an endeavor or could a woman handle the journey too?
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: That was the question too rich Boston aristocrats wanted to
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: have answered, so they made a wager, could a woman
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: go around the world in fifteen months by bicycle. If so,
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: the winner of the bet would get ten thousand dollars,
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: and so would the cyclist. Annie, who had never ridden
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: a bicycle before, volunteered for the challenge. Ten grand would
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: certainly come in handy for her family, but Annie already
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: had several strikes against her in the eyes of the
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: world around her. She was a woman, she was Jewish,
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: and she was a mother. The idea she would be
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: able to set a world record for circumnavigating the globe
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: on a bicycle sounded laughable to most, which made her
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: want to do it even more. She set out on
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: June from the Massachusetts State House wearing a long skirt
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: and a corset, hardly comfortable for a world cyclist in summertime,
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: and she brought along with her only a change of
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: clothes and a revolver for her safety. As long as
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: the weather held up, she averaged almost ten miles a
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: day and reached Chicago by late September. The journey was
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: getting harder, though, snow was falling the farther west she traveled,
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: and the dress was becoming too cumbersome for her to wear,
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: so she switched to a men's riding outfit, a far
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: cry from what most considered appropriate dress for a lady
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: at the time, but by now I think we all
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: can agree that there was nothing typical about Annie. She
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: turned around after that and headed back east. Two months
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: after reaching Chicago, she arrived in New York and boarded
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: a steamship for Europe, where custom officials confiscated her bicycle
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: and her money, and she was lambasted in the French
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: press for her choice of clothing. But none of that
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: deterred her. She got her bike back and returned to
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: the road, cycling from Paris to Marseilles before boarding another
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: ship to Japan. Only six months remained for her to
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: get back to Chicago and collect her winnings. Marche saw
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: Annie's return to the United States. As she docked in
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: San Francisco, California. She pedaled down through Los Angeles and
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: the Southwest as she followed the Southern Pacific Railway tracks
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: back to Chicago. She arrived there on September twelve, twelve
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: days shy of her departure date the year before, she'd
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: done it. After fifteen months of harsh roads, rain, snow,
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: and a few broken bones. Annie Londonderry had traveled around
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: the world by bicycle and won the ten thousand dollar
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: placed against her. An interesting note about Annie, though London
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: Dairy was not her real last name, she was born
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: Annie Cohen. You see, Annie had become a bit of
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: a celebrity before her trip even started. The idea alone
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: was enough for companies to try and latch onto her attempt,
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: and given the public perception of Jews at the time,
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: it wouldn't have been safe for her to travel with
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: her given surname Cohen, So she made a little deal
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: with the London Dairy Lithia Springwater Company. She would temporarily
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: change her last name to boost the company's visibility, and
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: in return, she'd be able to travel without fear of persecution.
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: The best part of it all was the ten grand
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: she'd won was really just icing on the cake. Annie
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: had made more money from the corporate sponsorships and speaking
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: engagements she'd picked up on her trip, establishing herself as
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: an entrepreneur and one of the first true professional female athletes.
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: Sure there's a lot to criticize about her journey. She
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: certainly took a lot of steamships and trains, and there
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: was no doubt there were better bicyclists out there. She
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: did just about what anyone could have done. She made
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: the decision and she acted upon it. No Annie stood
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: apart from everyone else because of something else. She, more
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: than anyone else in her day, had the goal to
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: follow Amelia Earhart's advice four decades before she spoke it.
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: Annie had tenacity. People change over the course of their lives.
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: As they grow up, they grow in other ways. Their
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: taste change, their styles change, even the kinds of friends
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: they keep change. But most people tend not to change
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: in other ways. Oh sure, they might get a drastic
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: haircut or have a little work done, and some people
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: might hit the gym five days a week so they
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: can look like a superhero by beach season. But nobody
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: changes the way Adam did. And that's because Adam was
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: one of a kind. He was born in Austria at
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: the turn of the century. Ever the patriotic fellow, He
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: attempted to enlist in the German army during World War One,
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: but he was turned away, and for a very good reason.
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: There was no way that they were going to allow
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: a four ft six man on the front lines. They
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: didn't even make uniforms in his size, but he kept trying.
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: He felt he had a duty to serve his country,
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: and he wouldn't let his diminutive stature hold him back.
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: Adam managed to add another two inches to his frame
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: the following year. The army still wouldn't have it. He
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: came in at under five feet tall, and to the
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: powers that be, he proved to be more of a
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: liability than an asset. Oddly enough, though, there were parts
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: of Adam that had developed beyond his undersized build, namely
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: his hands and his feet. He was like a massive
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: puppy in that respect, with the shoes, eyes that had
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: doubled within two years, even though his height remained mostly
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: the same. When he reached the age of twenty one,
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: it was like a switch had been flipped. Adam shot
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: up like a redwood, almost three feet in ten years.
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: Doctors examined him thoroughly, discovering he was born with a
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: condition known as acromegaly, in which the pituitary gland produces
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: too much growth hormone. Even if you haven't heard of it,
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: there's no doubt you've seen it. The condition affects fewer
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: than twenty thousand cases per year, but some notable individuals
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: include celebrities like Andre the Giant from The Princess Bride
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: and Richard Keel, who played the metal mouth henchman Jaws
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: in several early James Bond movies. Adam's condition worsened later
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: in life due to a tumor on his pituitary gland.
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: If you were to look at pictures of him from
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: when he was barely twenty all the way to the
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: end of his life, you'd see just how stark that
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: transformation was. One moment, he's the picture of perfect health,
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: all of his facial features within standard proportion. The next,
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: his forehead has enlarged, as has his chin, and his
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: cheeks are puffed out like a chipmunk's. Within ten years,
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: Adam had gone through a sort of jeckal and Hide
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: transformation into some one completely different. The doctors tried to
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: operate and remove the tumor, but given how long he
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: had been growing, chances of curing his condition were slim.
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: They managed to slow down the growth rate, but unfortunately
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: it wasn't enough. He kept getting taller, his body contorting
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: and modulating to accommodate the rapid growth. He went blind
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: in one eye and deaf in his left ear. His
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: spine curve so severely he was bed ridden by his
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: late forties. Most people stopped growing by the time they
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: reach adulthood, and might even begin shrinking as they approach
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: old age, hunched over by years spent at a desk
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: or performing manual labor, not atam. Though by the time
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: he died at the age of fifty one, he'd grown
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: from a meager four feet six inches of his youth
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: was staggering seven ft eight inches tall. He had lived
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: two lives as part of two different worlds, making Adam
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: Rayner the only man on earth to have ever lived
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: as both a dwarf and a giant. I hope you've
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: created by me Aaron Manky in partnership with how Stuff Works.
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: I make another award winning show called Lore, which is
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: learn all about it over at the World of Lore
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: dot com. And until next time, stay curious.