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Look To The Stars · 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 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 ancient Roman satirist juvenile famously said that the secret
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  Speaker 1: to being loved as a ruler is not good governance,
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  Speaker 1: but providing the public bread and circuses, food and entertainment.
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  Speaker 1: But it must be said that people sometimes are particular
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  Speaker 1: about what sort of circuses they're presented. Escapism and politics,
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  Speaker 1: although seemingly very far apart, often collide in the most
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  Speaker 1: turbulent of ways. That said, William mccreedy wasn't thinking of
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  Speaker 1: this when the curtain rose on May seventh of eighteen
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  Speaker 1: forty nine. He was one of the most acclaimed British
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  Speaker 1: actors of his era, and he was focused on his craft.
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  Speaker 1: He stepped out onto a stage in Manhattan, ready to
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  Speaker 1: perform the lead in William Shakespeare's Macbeth, and was greeted
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  Speaker 1: by a wall of jeers and booze McReady froze. He
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  Speaker 1: hadn't even delivered a line yet, and already the audience
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  Speaker 1: was turning against him. Moments later, the crowd began to
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  Speaker 1: throw rotten vegetables at him, as well as eggs and coins.
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  Speaker 1: It was so noisy that McCready and his fellow actors
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  Speaker 1: struggled to make themselves heard over the rabble. And this
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  Speaker 1: wasn't the first time that locals had disrupted McCready's performances.
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  Speaker 1: Earlier that week, someone had thrown a dead sheep onto
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  Speaker 1: the stage. There was an actor's worst nightmare, and everyone
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  Speaker 1: knew that there was only one person to blame. You see,
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  Speaker 1: that very same night, at a nearby Broadway theater, another
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  Speaker 1: performance of Macbeth was under way, and the lead there
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  Speaker 1: was an American named Edwin Forrest. The rowdy auditudiens that
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  Speaker 1: had disrupted me were all fans of his. It seems
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  Speaker 1: that these Shakespearean actors were in the midst of a
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  Speaker 1: public feud. Forest was everything that MacCready was not. Boisterous, unrefined, populist,
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  Speaker 1: in a word, American. MacCready said as much to interviewers,
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  Speaker 1: and Forest responded by attacking McCready's tour of America. If
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  Speaker 1: he couldn't be there to disrupt a show himself, he
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  Speaker 1: would encourage his fans to do it for him. And honestly,
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  Speaker 1: nineteenth century New York City was primed for this sort
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  Speaker 1: of theatrical turf war. The ruggedly handsome Forest was the
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  Speaker 1: perfect proxy for the working class, and the restrained MacCready
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  Speaker 1: was seen as refined, elegant, and a British import that
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  Speaker 1: appealed to the city's elites. After the May seventh humiliation,
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  Speaker 1: though MacCready announced that he would return to England, wealthy
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  Speaker 1: New Yorkers persuaded him to stay a little longer though.
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  Speaker 1: On May tenth, he would perform Macbeth again, and this
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  Speaker 1: time they would be watching for rabble rousers. Police officers
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  Speaker 1: were posted inside the theater and outside. The state militia
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  Speaker 1: was told to stand by, and they actually had good
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  Speaker 1: reason to be concerned. Incendiary posters started to appear on
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  Speaker 1: street corners, encouraging people to show up at the astor
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  Speaker 1: Place theater to protest MacCready, referring to the venue as
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  Speaker 1: a British aristocratic opera house. A crowd began to gather
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  Speaker 1: there as the play began. The crowd outside grew enormous.
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  Speaker 1: While inside the witches proclaimed by the pricking of my thumbs,
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  Speaker 1: something wicked this way comes. Heckeling began as soon as
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  Speaker 1: MacCready took the stage. The hecklers were grabbed by police
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  Speaker 1: and taken out of the auditorium the state militia. Meanwhile,
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  Speaker 1: we're losing control of the situation. Outside. The crowd you see,
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  Speaker 1: had swelled to around ten thousand people, a mix of
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  Speaker 1: protesters and curious bystanders. Someone doused the gas lamps in
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  Speaker 1: the square, making impossible for militia men to see the
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  Speaker 1: size of the protest, and soon after it turned from
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  Speaker 1: a protest into a riot as men threw objects at
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  Speaker 1: the militia, including paving stones, up from the street. Inside
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  Speaker 1: the theater, MacCready finished his performance in spite of the
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  Speaker 1: chaos outside and the sounds of breaking glass. As soon
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  Speaker 1: as the curtain fell, he disguised himself and slipped out
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  Speaker 1: the back entrance. Meanwhile, in an effort to control the mob,
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  Speaker 1: the military raised their muskets and fired into the air,
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  Speaker 1: and when that did not stop the hail of stones,
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  Speaker 1: they opened fire again, this time into the crowd. The
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  Speaker 1: mob dispersed in terror and all, twenty two people were
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  Speaker 1: killed and over one hundred were injured. MacCready fled back
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  Speaker 1: home to England and Forrest closed his engagement with the
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  Speaker 1: Broadway Theater soon after. But as Shakespeare himself wrote, what's
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  Speaker 1: done cannot be undone. It was not the first riot
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  Speaker 1: in New York history, nor was it the most violent,
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  Speaker 1: But in more ways than one, it was the most theatrical,
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  Speaker 1: growing pains as the American theater scene violently asserted its
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  Speaker 1: identity in defiance of the British. But for those involved,
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  Speaker 1: so foul and fair a day they had not seen.
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  Speaker 1: It was the evening of March thirteenth of nineteen ninety seven,
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  Speaker 1: and amateur pilot Kurt was on his descent into the
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  Speaker 1: Phoenix Airport when his son Oliver pointed to the sky.
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  Speaker 1: Following Oliver's gaze, Kurt saw something unlike anything he had
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  Speaker 1: seen in the air, a cluster of six lights soaring
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  Speaker 1: towards the airport in a perfect v formation. Something about
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  Speaker 1: the lights unsettled him. They were hypnotizing, but the longer
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  Speaker 1: he stared, the more confused he became. He couldn't put
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  Speaker 1: his finger on it, but they just weren't quite behaving.
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  Speaker 1: Like any aircraft that he knew, so Kurt decided to
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  Speaker 1: call the lights in on the radio. When he reported
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  Speaker 1: the lights to aircraft at Control, he was met with
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  Speaker 1: a confused pause. Then an authoritative voice told him that
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  Speaker 1: they didn't see any lights in the area that he
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  Speaker 1: had indicated. In fact, they didn't see anything at all.
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  Speaker 1: Nothing had appeared on the radar whatsoever. As far as
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  Speaker 1: they were concerned. Kurt and Oliver were seeing an unidentified
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  Speaker 1: flying object. They may have been some of the first
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  Speaker 1: witnesses of the Phoenix Lights in nineteen ninety seven, but
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  Speaker 1: they were far from the last. That evening, thousands of
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  Speaker 1: other people in Arizona spotted the strange lights flying overhead.
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  Speaker 1: Hundreds of photos and videos of the lights were taken,
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  Speaker 1: making the incident one of the most recorded UFO sightings
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  Speaker 1: in American history. On the ground, residents of Phoenix seemed
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  Speaker 1: to spot two distinct types of aircraft earlier that night.
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  Speaker 1: Starting around eight PM, multiple witnesses spotted a group of
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  Speaker 1: five or six reddish orange lights that formed a V formation.
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  Speaker 1: This was the group of lights that Kurt had reported.
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  Speaker 1: This V was first sighted near Henderson, Nevada, nearly three
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  Speaker 1: hundred miles north of Phoenix and reportedly traveled slowly through
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  Speaker 1: the Phoenix Mountains toward the city. Later in the nights,
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  Speaker 1: around ten pm, another group of lights flew over Phoenix.
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  Speaker 1: These ones were in a straight line, and rather than
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  Speaker 1: flying forward, they seemed to hover near the city. Some
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  Speaker 1: people even thought that they saw some of these second
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  Speaker 1: lights fall out of the sky, just like the earlier lights.
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  Speaker 1: These ones disappeared almost as quickly as they had first arrived,
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  Speaker 1: and for weeks, the Phoenix lights had the city in
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  Speaker 1: a chokehold. The media frenzy blamed everything from aliens to
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  Speaker 1: Russian spies. To calm things down, the Arizona governor hosted
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  Speaker 1: a bizarre press conference where he claimed that he had
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  Speaker 1: found the person responsible for the lights, and then brought
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  Speaker 1: on an aid who was dressed in an alien costume.
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  Speaker 1: The joke helped to reassure the public that they weren't
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  Speaker 1: under any imminent threats of alien invasion, but the truth
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  Speaker 1: about the lights was no laughing matter. While the night
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  Speaker 1: of March thirteenth featured two separate UFO incidents, both groups
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  Speaker 1: of mysterious lights were caused by the same thing, Operation Snowbird.
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  Speaker 1: You see in nineteen ninety seven, the Air National Guard
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  Speaker 1: were conducting exercises out of an air base in Tucson, Arizona.
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  Speaker 1: One of these, codenamed Operation Snowbird, was meant to test
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  Speaker 1: the capabilities of the A ten Thunderbolt attack planes under
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  Speaker 1: winter conditions. While commercial planes typically employ blinking lights to
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  Speaker 1: help with visibility, military planes don't have to follow the
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  Speaker 1: same flight rules, so when a group of six Thunderbolts
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  Speaker 1: launched in a V formation, they kept their lights steady
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  Speaker 1: as they crossed Phoenix and headed south to Tucson. The
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  Speaker 1: second sighting also involved Thunderbolt planes, but it wasn't the
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  Speaker 1: lights on the aircraft that struck people as odd. Around
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  Speaker 1: ten PM, a group of Thunderbolts launched from a military
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  Speaker 1: airfield south of Phoenix. These planes were practicing dropping slow
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  Speaker 1: burning flares. The light from the flares, when seen from
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  Speaker 1: far away, seemed to fall slowly toward the ground, just
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  Speaker 1: as people reported seeing in the second UFO sighting. The
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  Speaker 1: Phoenix lights gained a lot of attention when they first appeared,
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  Speaker 1: but were quickly explained by the Army National Guard. Except
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  Speaker 1: some witnesses missed the memo. In fact, Kurt the amateur
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  Speaker 1: pilot who first called the lights in to air traffic control,
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  Speaker 1: didn't discover the truth until two years later. He was
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  Speaker 1: in his house in California when he noticed his wife
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  Speaker 1: watching a news program on UFO sightings, and Kurt instantly
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  Speaker 1: recognized the incident the newscasters described as the one that
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  Speaker 1: he and his son Oliver had witnessed in nineteen ninety seven.
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  Speaker 1: When he told his wife, Goldie, she hardly believed him.
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  Speaker 1: It all sounded too coincidental, not just that he had
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  Speaker 1: witnessed the event, but that he Kurt had been the
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  Speaker 1: first to report it to the authorities. After all, who
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  Speaker 1: would believe a big Hollywood star like Kurt Russell would
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  Speaker 1: spot a UFO. It honestly sounded out of this world.
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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 was 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: Worldolore dot com and until next time, stay curious,