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Sky Fall · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

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  Speaker 1: Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history
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  Speaker 1: is an open book, all of these amazing tales right
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  Speaker 1: there on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome
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  Speaker 1: to the Cabinet of Curiosities. Listen, pay attention, tune your
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  Speaker 1: ear to the world around you, and you'll hear music everywhere.
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  Speaker 1: In the rhythm of a footstep on its hile floor,
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  Speaker 1: or in the chime of an elevator in the lobby,
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  Speaker 1: a baby's cry, a squeaky break, anything can become a
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  Speaker 1: song with a keen ear and a little imagination. A
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  Speaker 1: stonemason from Keswick, England, possessed such an ear, and it
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  Speaker 1: took him quite far. In eighteen forty, Joseph Richardson had
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  Speaker 1: been wandering around near a mountain five miles from his
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  Speaker 1: home when he struck one of the rocks along the
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  Speaker 1: mountain side. Surprisingly, it rang out with a clear, crisp tone,
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  Speaker 1: and it gave Joseph an idea. He took the rock
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  Speaker 1: home and stored it away. It had been the first
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  Speaker 1: step in a journey that would take him thirteen years
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  Speaker 1: to complete. He returned to the mountain over the course
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  Speaker 1: of those thirteen years, over and over again. In search
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  Speaker 1: of more rocks, known as horn fells. Just like the first,
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  Speaker 1: he hit each one to hear its tone, and he
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  Speaker 1: did this until he had amassed over sixty of them.
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  Speaker 1: His goal was to compile them into a musical instrument
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  Speaker 1: known as a lithophone. Now, the lithophone wasn't too different
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  Speaker 1: from a xylophone. It consisted of carefully assembled tiers of
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  Speaker 1: rocks arranged like piano keys. When struck, each rock elicited
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  Speaker 1: a specific tone on the musical scale. His first lithophone
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  Speaker 1: had too small, arranged to play most songs of the time,
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  Speaker 1: but a second version was so large it could reach
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  Speaker 1: eight octaves, and Joseph was obsessed with building the instrument,
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  Speaker 1: spending most of his time and money on its construction.
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  Speaker 1: The effort nearly bankrupted his family, but don't worry, he
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  Speaker 1: had a plan to earn it all back. With a
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  Speaker 1: special set of mallets and his children by his side,
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  Speaker 1: Joseph took his lithophone on a European tour. He and
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  Speaker 1: his sons toured Germany, France, Italy and other European countries,
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  Speaker 1: playing for all kinds of crowds. Audiences were in awe
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  Speaker 1: of the unique sound of his lithophone. The concerts proved
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  Speaker 1: so successful, in fact, that the Richardson's didn't return home
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  Speaker 1: for three years. He even performed for the Queen at
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  Speaker 1: Buckingham Palace. The papers reported that his Stones sounded like
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  Speaker 1: the warble of a lark at its upper register, and
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  Speaker 1: like the bellowing toll of a funeral bell at the
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  Speaker 1: lower end. Others described the music as haunting. It sounded
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  Speaker 1: like a relic from an ancient era, not a modern
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  Speaker 1: musical instrument. As Joseph traveled and put war into are
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  Speaker 1: on his creation, he modified it with steel bars for reinforcements.
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  Speaker 1: He also added bells and other pieces to produce additional
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  Speaker 1: sounds during performances. However, all that travel had exacted a
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  Speaker 1: heavy toll on his children too. They'd grown tired, and
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  Speaker 1: his youngest son had caught pneumonia. On the night before
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  Speaker 1: a plan trip to America. The boy passed away. Grief
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  Speaker 1: was too much for Joseph and his two other children,
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  Speaker 1: and so they ended the tour, and that was the
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  Speaker 1: end of the Richardson family band. It's not known whether
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  Speaker 1: Joseph ever performed with the Stones again after that, but
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  Speaker 1: we do know that they stayed in the family. In
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  Speaker 1: nineteen seventeen, more than sixty years after Joseph's death, his
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  Speaker 1: great grandson donated the lithophone to the Keswick Museum and
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  Speaker 1: Art Gallery in his hometown, where it still resides today.
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  Speaker 1: Its sound has been recorded and converted digitally too, so
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  Speaker 1: today's musicians can incorporate its ethereal notes into their modern compositions.
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  Speaker 1: Joseph Richardson can tributed to the world of music in
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  Speaker 1: a powerful way over the course of thirteen years. He
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  Speaker 1: built his influence one stone at a time, with blood,
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  Speaker 1: sweat and a lot of tears, and even though the
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  Speaker 1: record books might not agree, one might say he also
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  Speaker 1: had a pretty big claim to fame. After all, he
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  Speaker 1: did create the world's first rock band. Plane crash survivors
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  Speaker 1: have told incredible stories of the fear they overcame when
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  Speaker 1: facing what they thought was certain death. A man who
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  Speaker 1: had been on a US Airways flight that crashed in
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  Speaker 1: two thousand nine discussed reading the emergency instructions while his
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  Speaker 1: plane was nose diving over water. A woman on a
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  Speaker 1: small chartered flight in found herself lost in the congo
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  Speaker 1: when the pilot lost control over a mountain range. She
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  Speaker 1: made it out of the wreckage, but eventually lost her
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  Speaker 1: legs to frostbite. We have their stories to help us
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  Speaker 1: understand what it's like to be part of an experience
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  Speaker 1: that most people do not survive. But what happens when
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  Speaker 1: those stories can't be told. I'm not talking about a
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  Speaker 1: lack of survivors. I'm talking about a lack of any
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  Speaker 1: evidence at all. What do you do when you know
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  Speaker 1: there's been a crash but there's no proof. It's hard
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  Speaker 1: to imagine such a thing happening. A large metal aircraft
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  Speaker 1: falling from the sky, the sound of the impact, an explosion,
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  Speaker 1: the smell of burning fuel. There would be pieces of
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  Speaker 1: the plane left over, or a crater, or down trees.
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  Speaker 1: And yet despite eyewitness reports of airplanes disappearing into wooded
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  Speaker 1: areas or over the ocean, there's no proof they ever happened.
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  Speaker 1: And the planes often seen are vintage models from the
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  Speaker 1: nineteen thirties and forties, usually aircraft used for bombings or
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  Speaker 1: personnel transport. For example, in the spring of nineteen Tony
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  Speaker 1: Ingle from Derbyshire, England, watched as a large airplane with
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  Speaker 1: enormous propellers silently fell into an open field where sheep
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  Speaker 1: had been grazing Tony hurried to the site, expecting death
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  Speaker 1: and destruction, hoping someone had radioed for help that would
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  Speaker 1: soon be on its way, but no help came. It
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  Speaker 1: wasn't needed. The sheep were still there, safely eating, without
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  Speaker 1: any trace of a crash. No smoke, no fire, and
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  Speaker 1: no plane. And that wasn't the only phantom crash seen
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  Speaker 1: over Derbyshire. One year earlier, the local police received hundreds
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  Speaker 1: of frantic calls about a World War Two bomber gliding
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  Speaker 1: at a dangerously low altitude. Many observers thought that it
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  Speaker 1: was moments away from crashing, so the authorities dispatched a
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  Speaker 1: full search team to hunt for the wreck, only to
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  Speaker 1: find nothing. The plane had just disappeared. Even as recently
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  Speaker 1: as two thousand eighteen, Derbyshire citizens took the social media
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  Speaker 1: with claims of another ghost plane cruising low overhead. Some
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  Speaker 1: had peg the vessel as a Douglas Dakota, a transport
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  Speaker 1: model that had crashed in the area during the war.
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  Speaker 1: It moved without making a sound, an impossible feat for
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  Speaker 1: something so large being powered by four giant propellers. It
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  Speaker 1: should come as no surprise that Derbyshire, England was an
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  Speaker 1: unfortunate victim of the Second World War. Having been subjected
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  Speaker 1: to countless bombings and attacks, much of the area was
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  Speaker 1: reduced to rubble. In fact, an old oak tree in
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  Speaker 1: the northeast Derbyshire town of Duckmanton is honored every year
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  Speaker 1: for taking a direct hit from a German parachute bomb
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  Speaker 1: in The bomb had been meant for the local railway station,
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  Speaker 1: but instead hit the tree, sparing not only the station
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  Speaker 1: but also hundreds of lives and a nearby school. That
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  Speaker 1: doesn't explain why phantom airplanes continue to plague the townspeople there, though,
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  Speaker 1: and Derbyshire isn't the only place where they've been seen.
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  Speaker 1: A loud roar startled the people of Berkshire, just west
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  Speaker 1: of London on the evening of October two thousand eleven.
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  Speaker 1: They ran to their win knows and into the street
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  Speaker 1: to check on the commotion. When they looked up, there
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  Speaker 1: was a commercial airliner streaking past them, headed for a
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  Speaker 1: nearby wooded area. The Civil Aviation Authority reported no distress
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  Speaker 1: calls that night from any passenger aircraft. The woods were
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  Speaker 1: also a dead end if the plane was real and
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  Speaker 1: hadn't made a hard landing or resulted in a crash,
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  Speaker 1: it's simply vanished in the end. Perhaps we shouldn't be
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  Speaker 1: asking where these planes come from or where they go
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  Speaker 1: when they vanish. Instead, maybe we should be asking ourselves
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  Speaker 1: a better question. If a plane falls in the woods
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  Speaker 1: and it doesn't leave a trace, was it ever really
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  Speaker 1: there at all? Either way, I'd call that curious. 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 asked dot com. The
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  Speaker 1: show was created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership with
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  Speaker 1: how 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 World
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  Speaker 1: of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.