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White Whale · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

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  Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Manke'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 right there on display, just waiting
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  Speaker 1: for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
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  Speaker 1: Most of us have heard about Moby Dick, the huge
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  Speaker 1: ship smashing whale that Captain Ahab was desperate to catch.
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  Speaker 1: The book about this fantastical menace has earned a reputation
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  Speaker 1: as one of the great American novels. Published in eighteen
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  Speaker 1: fifty one, it's even been called the greatest book of
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  Speaker 1: the sea ever written. Now, whether you agree with that
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  Speaker 1: assessment or not, the book's popularity makes it very clear
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  Speaker 1: that we have a fascination with creatures of the deep,
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  Speaker 1: including gigantic whales. But giant whales, you see, aren't just
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  Speaker 1: a thing of fiction, and they've been around for a
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  Speaker 1: lot longer than good old Moby Dick. Whales haven't always
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  Speaker 1: been as well understood as they are now. For many
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  Speaker 1: in the Middle Ages, a whale was essentially just a
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  Speaker 1: sea monster. It was seen as something vicious that was
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  Speaker 1: to be avoided, if at all possible. In the sixth century,
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  Speaker 1: the seafarers of Constantinople were dealing with their own monster
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  Speaker 1: of a whale, and just like Moby Dick, he was
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  Speaker 1: causing a bit of a problem for sailors, and really
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  Speaker 1: that makes sense. No one had been able to study
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  Speaker 1: them or their personalities much at this point in history.
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  Speaker 1: Instead of scientific reports about their migration patterns, sailors shared
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  Speaker 1: stories about unfortunate deckhands being swallowed up by these huge creatures.
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  Speaker 1: Their logical conclusion was that anything that big and with
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  Speaker 1: that many teeth had to be a man eating monster.
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  Speaker 1: The specific whale in question that was giving the Byzantines
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  Speaker 1: a rut around was named Porphyrious. We can't know for sure,
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  Speaker 1: but it suspected that he was either a sperm whale
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  Speaker 1: or a very, very large orca. Measuring forty five feet
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  Speaker 1: long and fifteen feet wide, he was absolutely massive. Unfortunately,
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  Speaker 1: he wasn't a friendly giant. Most of what we know
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  Speaker 1: about Porfirius comes from the sixth century Byzantine historian Procopius.
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  Speaker 1: He wrote about Porfirius's exploits in two of his books,
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  Speaker 1: and in both of them, the giant whale was something
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  Speaker 1: to fear. Porfirius was a terror. He had a pension
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  Speaker 1: for destroying ships, and he didn't discriminate. We have stories
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  Speaker 1: going back hundreds of years about whales attacking whaling ships,
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  Speaker 1: but Porfirius he didn't target whalers. He targeted everyone. Fishing vessels,
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  Speaker 1: merchant ships, warships. They were all at risk of being
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  Speaker 1: smashed by Porfirius. His selection process seemed to be completely random, too,
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  Speaker 1: and that utterly terrified the sailors of the day. They
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  Speaker 1: were all afraid that he would choose to go after
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  Speaker 1: them next. Porphirius was usually seen swimming through the boss
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  Speaker 1: for a strait which connects the Black Sea to the
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  Speaker 1: Sea of Marmara. It was such a strategically important strait
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  Speaker 1: that it actually played a part in where Constantine decided
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  Speaker 1: to establish the capital of Constantinople. The strait was wildly important,
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  Speaker 1: but it also wasn't very big. The tight squeeze meant
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  Speaker 1: that there weren't many places these ships could sail to
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  Speaker 1: escape the whale's wrath, so they started to avoid sailing
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  Speaker 1: in the area where Porphyrius lurked, which of course led
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  Speaker 1: to long detours and late shipments. Aside from the logistical nightmare,
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  Speaker 1: the whale was hurting the economy, ships bringing in imports
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  Speaker 1: and supplies had a fair chance of being obliterated, which
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  Speaker 1: also meant that those shipments were lost whenever it happened.
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  Speaker 1: The whales attacks also had an impact on their military,
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  Speaker 1: since more and more soldiers were being killed at sea
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  Speaker 1: by the whale. The fear the deaths and the immense
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  Speaker 1: property damage became such an issue that Emperor Justinian actually
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  Speaker 1: put out a bounty on the whale's head. No one
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  Speaker 1: ever cashed it in, though everyone was too scared to
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  Speaker 1: get close. And the craziest part of the story, This
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  Speaker 1: behemoth of a whale ended up terrorizing the seas of
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  Speaker 1: Constantinople for fifty years. He likely would have thrived many
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  Speaker 1: more years too, if he didn't make a fatal error.
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  Speaker 1: According to Procopius, the whale was beached one day after
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  Speaker 1: chasing dolphins a little too close to the shore. His
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  Speaker 1: gigantic body couldn't roll itself back into the surf, so
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  Speaker 1: the locals found him thrashing there, completely at their mercy.
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  Speaker 1: I'm sad to say that Porphyrius did not have a
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  Speaker 1: happy ending. The Byzantines, ready to take revenge for fifty
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  Speaker 1: years of terror, brought their weapons to meet him on
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  Speaker 1: the beach. After his death, the seas were once again safe,
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  Speaker 1: but Porfirius has not been forgotten. To this day. The
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  Speaker 1: records of his exploits are the earliest ones we have
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  Speaker 1: about whales attacking humans. He's even mentioned in Moby Dick,
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  Speaker 1: and this legacy is oddly present even today. Recently, stories
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  Speaker 1: of whale attacks have been on the rise. News reports
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  Speaker 1: about orcas banding together to go after boats had been
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  Speaker 1: all over our screens, and it's safe to assume that
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  Speaker 1: these stories will be around for quite a while. In
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  Speaker 1: a classic tale of man versus nature, some whales are
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  Speaker 1: still carrying out Porphurius's mission. Will they keep it up
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  Speaker 1: for as long as he did? Though only time will tell.
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  Speaker 1: In eighteen thirty three, a trio of brothers from Manchester,
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  Speaker 1: Connecticut saw the future and it was lined in silk.
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  Speaker 1: Ward Rush and Frank Cheney began growing mulberry trees, the
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  Speaker 1: perfect meal for their meal ticket of choice, the silkworm.
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  Speaker 1: Their goal was to cultivate silk domestically in order to
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  Speaker 1: siphon business away from overseas companies, and it looked like
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  Speaker 1: they had made a wise investment. At first, the price
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  Speaker 1: of mulberry trees grew by almost eight hundred percent from
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  Speaker 1: eighteen thirty four to eighteen thirty six, and their tiny
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  Speaker 1: farm blossomed into several full blown factories across two more states. Unfortunately,
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  Speaker 1: as time, warn looked as though the Cheneys had gone
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  Speaker 1: barking up the wrong tree because their mulberry inventory started
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  Speaker 1: dying and investors began looking elsewhere. Luckily, the brothers Ward, Frank,
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  Speaker 1: and Rush had not been caught out on a limb.
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  Speaker 1: They saw the market's downfall in time and pivoted from
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  Speaker 1: the production of silk to the processing of the material instead.
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  Speaker 1: They opened a new plant with their other brother, Ralph,
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  Speaker 1: and a man named Edwin Arnold in eighteen thirty eight,
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  Speaker 1: which bloomed over the next twenty two years into a
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  Speaker 1: six hundred workers strong silk processing powerhouse, and that growth
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  Speaker 1: continued into the early twentieth century. Silk became a highly
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  Speaker 1: coveted commodity in America thanks to Cheney silks. At its height,
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  Speaker 1: the company employed a whopping four thousand, five hundred workers
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  Speaker 1: in its factories. Sadly, just as had happened in the
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  Speaker 1: eighteen thirds, the silk economy was about to go bust.
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  Speaker 1: The Great Depression brought a halt to the production of
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  Speaker 1: luxury textiles, especially silk, and the company scrambled to save itself.
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  Speaker 1: Between nineteen twenty nine and nineteen thirty three, Cheney Silks
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  Speaker 1: sold off as much property as it could to stay afloat,
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  Speaker 1: but it wasn't enough. They filed for bankruptcy protection in
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  Speaker 1: nineteen thirty five. But then something happened. A few years
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  Speaker 1: later the company got a second chance. It teamed up
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  Speaker 1: with DuPont and the United States Air Force in nineteen
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  Speaker 1: thirty eight to help with the war efforts. The goal
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  Speaker 1: was to bring to market a brand new kind of parachute,
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  Speaker 1: and to do that, a new subsidiary was formed called
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  Speaker 1: Pioneer Parachute Company. Now Cheney Silks had aided in the
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  Speaker 1: manufacture of parachutes before by providing silk to different companies,
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  Speaker 1: but now Pioneer was doing it all on their own,
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  Speaker 1: and to accommodate the military's generous order, it could no
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  Speaker 1: longer rely on expensive fabrics such as silk. Instead, it
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  Speaker 1: turned to synthetic mater burials like DuPont's brand new invention nylon,
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  Speaker 1: which was strong and easy to sow into predetermined patterns.
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  Speaker 1: The product had originally been intended to make stockings, but
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  Speaker 1: with the war growing overseas, Pioneer began testing the fabrics
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  Speaker 1: viability in parachutes. It used unmanned payloads at first to
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  Speaker 1: measure the rates of dissent in any damage that might
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  Speaker 1: be incurred upon landing, although in order to verify how
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  Speaker 1: it handled on a real jump, a true parachutist would
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  Speaker 1: have to strap in and take a leap of faith,
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  Speaker 1: so the company continued to hone its design over the
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  Speaker 1: next few years until nineteen forty two, when twenty four
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  Speaker 1: year old Adeline Gray from Oxford, Connecticut was enlisted to
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  Speaker 1: test its latest shoot. Gray had been jumping since she
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  Speaker 1: was nineteen and was working at DuPont as a parachute
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  Speaker 1: rigger and packer. On June sixth of nineteen forty two,
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  Speaker 1: she not only became the first person to use a
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  Speaker 1: nylon parachute, she became the first woman to do so
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  Speaker 1: as well. She leapt from a height of twenty five
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  Speaker 1: hundred feet before an audience of reporters and miss military
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  Speaker 1: officials that it was a success. The United States military
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  Speaker 1: placed a massive order for nylon parachutes, which were used
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  Speaker 1: to safely airdrop supplies into hard to reach territories during
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  Speaker 1: World War Two. Plus the new parachutes also helped American
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  Speaker 1: soldiers land at Normandy on June sixth of nineteen forty four,
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  Speaker 1: exactly two years after Adeline Gray's successful test. On that day,
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  Speaker 1: Private Robert C. Hillman donned his own nylon parachute and
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  Speaker 1: jumped out of a C forty seven skytrain over France.
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  Speaker 1: He was one of the tens of thousands of Allied
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  Speaker 1: soldiers who were responsible for D Day's success, from Hillman
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  Speaker 1: to DuPont's engineers, to Adeline Gray, and all the way
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  Speaker 1: back to the Cheney brothers. It's possible that we might
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  Speaker 1: not have won the war without the nylon parachute. But
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  Speaker 1: Private Hillman had one specific person to thank for his
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  Speaker 1: role that day. You see, he was carrying a special
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  Speaker 1: parachute with a woman's initials on it. When asked by
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  Speaker 1: an NBC War correspondent riding in the plane with him
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  Speaker 1: why he was so sure about his upcoming jump, Because
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  Speaker 1: my mother works for the Pioneer Parachute Company, Hillman replied,
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  Speaker 1: and her initials are on my shoot. I hope you've
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  Speaker 1: enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe
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  Speaker 1: for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the
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  Speaker 1: show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was
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  Speaker 1: created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership with how Stuff Works.
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  Speaker 1: I make another award winning show called Lore, which is
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  Speaker 1: a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can
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  Speaker 1: learn all about it over at the Worldoflore dot com.
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  Speaker 1: And until next time, stay curious.