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Looking Up · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

• 0:03
  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. On November, the night sky
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  Speaker 1: above Sacramento, California, was a source of fear and dread.
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  Speaker 1: It had already been a miserable night, with the skies
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  Speaker 1: filled with dark clouds and a steady wind. But as
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  Speaker 1: some of the more observant residents looked up, they were
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  Speaker 1: startled to see something else. There were lights in the
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  Speaker 1: sky and they were moving. Now, before you jump straight
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  Speaker 1: to assuming this was a UFO, let me give you
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  Speaker 1: more of the details. When you hear the whole story,
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  Speaker 1: it feels a lot less like an episode of the
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  Speaker 1: X Files and a lot more like something out of
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  Speaker 1: a Jewels Vern novel. And we have a man named
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  Speaker 1: George Scott to thank for that. He was an assistant
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  Speaker 1: to Louis H. Brown, California's Secretary of State at the time.
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  Speaker 1: With access to the Capitol building there in Sacramento, He
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  Speaker 1: and a few friends climbed up to the roof for
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  Speaker 1: a better look and discovered something more mysterious than lights.
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  Speaker 1: According to him, it was a set of three lights.
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  Speaker 1: They seemed to bob slightly as they moved, almost like
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  Speaker 1: a ship on the water. Above the lights, all of
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  Speaker 1: the observers could make out the dark shape of something
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  Speaker 1: long and curved. Another local claims he heard people up
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  Speaker 1: above him where the lights were, calling out orders for
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  Speaker 1: guiding the vessel. He said he could make out the
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  Speaker 1: full shape of the object above the lights, calling it
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  Speaker 1: a cigar shaped balloon with wheels at the side like
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  Speaker 1: a steamboat. But let's step back for a moment and
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  Speaker 1: let that soak in. This man was claiming to see
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  Speaker 1: a paddle wheeled boat in the sky over his community.
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  Speaker 1: More than unlikely, this theory seemed practically impossible. For context.
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  Speaker 1: Hot air balloons had been around for a while. The
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  Speaker 1: first aerial photos of Boston were taken by a photographer
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  Speaker 1: by the name of James Wallace Black in eighteen sixty.
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  Speaker 1: He climbed into the basket of a balloon owned by
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  Speaker 1: Samuel King and let it take him over a thousand
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  Speaker 1: feet into the sky above the city where he took
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  Speaker 1: his photos. It was a new use for a technology
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  Speaker 1: that had been around since the seventeen eighties. No one though,
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  Speaker 1: had managed to find a way to power and control
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  Speaker 1: those flights. Remember the reported hot air balloon steamboat contraption
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  Speaker 1: thing over Sacramento happened in eighteen ninety six, a whole
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  Speaker 1: seven years prior to the first recorded powered flight by
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  Speaker 1: the Right Brothers, So if the reports were true and
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  Speaker 1: this was a powered flight, it could rewrite the history books.
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  Speaker 1: Over the months that followed, the un identified aircraft was
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  Speaker 1: seen hundreds of times. For a while, it seemed to
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  Speaker 1: stick to the Pacific coast, flying down to San Francisco
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  Speaker 1: before heading north to Washington State. It vanished again for
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  Speaker 1: a while before reappearing near Omaha, Nebraska in February, which
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  Speaker 1: seems to have been part of a larger journey eastward.
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  Speaker 1: On April eleven, witnesses reported that the airship had finally
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  Speaker 1: reached Chicago. There's an old photo of it online, like
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  Speaker 1: a dark cigar against the pale, white, cloudy sky, but
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  Speaker 1: most historians think it's fake. Still, people saw it, and,
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  Speaker 1: just like in Sacramento, they wondered what it could be.
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  Speaker 1: Even though later reports claimed the mysterious airship had crashed,
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  Speaker 1: rumors about it continued to fly all over the country
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  Speaker 1: for some time, no pun intended. I swear whatever it was,
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  Speaker 1: we may never know. In a culture that was deeply
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  Speaker 1: in love with the idea of Jules Verne's captain Nemo,
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  Speaker 1: who sailed the oceans in a highly advanced submarine, anything
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  Speaker 1: was possible, and it spoke to the deep hunger most
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  Speaker 1: people have for answers to the mysteries of this world
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  Speaker 1: that we call home. If anything, perhaps the story should
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  Speaker 1: serve as a lesson to all of us today. Keep
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  Speaker 1: your eyes on the sky. You never know what you
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  Speaker 1: might be missing. The model was meant to be a glider,
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  Speaker 1: but committee was certain of that. They were a collection
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  Speaker 1: of aeronautical engineers and experts in flight, so for them
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  Speaker 1: to look at the small, wooden model and see its
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  Speaker 1: potential was a huge relief. There are certain elements that
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  Speaker 1: help an airplane fly through the air, and this model
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  Speaker 1: glider seemed to have nailed all of them. The wings
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  Speaker 1: had that perfect curve built into them for generating lift,
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  Speaker 1: what engineers referred to as the cambering. Those wings also
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  Speaker 1: bent downward toward or the tips, another key element of
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  Speaker 1: aeronautical design, and the shape of the entire model craft
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  Speaker 1: was exactly what you might expect a pair of main
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  Speaker 1: wings that extended away from the body and a raised
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  Speaker 1: tail fin with two protruding stabilizer wings. The committee could
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  Speaker 1: immediately see the usefulness of the design. With a small
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  Speaker 1: engine at the rear, they suggested this glider might be
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  Speaker 1: perfect for low speed flight, maybe even cargo transport. It
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  Speaker 1: was brilliant, and that was the problem. You see. This
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  Speaker 1: model was brought to the committee in nineteen six one
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  Speaker 1: after having been found in storage where it had been
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  Speaker 1: for decades. In fact, it had first been discovered five
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  Speaker 1: years before the Right Brothers made their historic flight at
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  Speaker 1: Kitty Hawk in North Carolina. It was a problem because
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  Speaker 1: it predated powered flight, something modern men and women have
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  Speaker 1: taken a lot of pride in. The box it had
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  Speaker 1: been rediscovered in was part of a collection of artifacts
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  Speaker 1: removed from a tomb in Sakara, which had been the
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  Speaker 1: burial ound for the ancient Egyptian capital of Memphis, a
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  Speaker 1: tomb that had been opened in eight and dated back
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  Speaker 1: over two thousand years. And the glider model wasn't a
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  Speaker 1: one off either. Archaeologists had found over a dozen others
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  Speaker 1: just like it, all of which are brilliantly designed for
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  Speaker 1: powered flight. We tend to view history as a never
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  Speaker 1: ending slope upward, where each new century places us farther
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  Speaker 1: up the technological ladder. We believe we're always gaining altitude,
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  Speaker 1: climbing to new heights, and soaring over our ancestors. It
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  Speaker 1: turns out we might be wrong. In the end, our
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  Speaker 1: pride might be nothing more than a flight of fancy.
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  Speaker 1: I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet
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  Speaker 1: of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn
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  Speaker 1: more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com.
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  Speaker 1: The show is created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership
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  Speaker 1: with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show
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  Speaker 1: called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show,
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  Speaker 1: and you can learn all about it over at the
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  Speaker 1: World of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.