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Soaring · 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.
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  Speaker 2: Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history
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  Speaker 2: is an open book, all of these amazing tales are
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  Speaker 2: right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.
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  Speaker 2: Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. In a heavily industrialized world,
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  Speaker 2: it's nearly impossible not to take some things for granted.
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  Speaker 2: Even the most modern systems require an immense amount of
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  Speaker 2: efforts behind the scenes. For instance, when you enter an elevator,
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  Speaker 2: it's not just automated steel cable and pulleys hoisting you up.
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  Speaker 2: It's also every single person who inspected the elevator and
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  Speaker 2: declared that it was safe to write. In the same way,
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  Speaker 2: when you board an airplane, you're in the hands of
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  Speaker 2: hundreds of people, from the pilots to the engineers and
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  Speaker 2: the air traffic controllers, all of whom are dedicated to
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  Speaker 2: keeping you safe. But of course, often it's only possible
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  Speaker 2: to appreciate this when things go wrong. On June twenty
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  Speaker 2: second of nineteen eighty three, Air Canada Flight one P
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  Speaker 2: forty three was preparing to take off from Montreal when
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  Speaker 2: the flight crew ran into a snag. The plane was
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  Speaker 2: a Boeing seven sixty seven, a relatively new introduction to
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  Speaker 2: Canadian airspace, and the systems had proven finicky from the
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  Speaker 2: get go. The biggest problem was that the fuel gauge
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  Speaker 2: was broken, so they could not see the amount of
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  Speaker 2: fuel in the tank. The ground crew told the pilot,
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  Speaker 2: Captain Bob Pearson, that it would take at least a
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  Speaker 2: day for replacement parts to arrive, but Pearson did not
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  Speaker 2: want to wait. There were sixty one passengers relying on him. Ultimately,
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  Speaker 2: the pilots decided to measure the fuel manually, doing the
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  Speaker 2: math to convert the weight of the fuel into leaders
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  Speaker 2: one point seven seven pounds per lead, and then they
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  Speaker 2: took off the following day for an estimated flight time
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  Speaker 2: of four and a half hours. At forty one thousand feet,
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  Speaker 2: a warning light started to go off in the cockpit,
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  Speaker 2: indicating low fuel pressure. The warnings seemed to indicate that
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  Speaker 2: the fuel tanks were much lighter than they should be.
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  Speaker 2: Then the engines started to shut down. When the first one.
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  Speaker 1: Stalled out, the pilots called air traffic control, requesting to
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  Speaker 1: divert to Winnipeg. When the second engine failed, they realized
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  Speaker 1: that they weren't even going to make it that far.
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  Speaker 1: Their plane was no longer flying, it was just gliding.
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  Speaker 1: Captain Pearson had experience with gliders, but there's a steep
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  Speaker 1: difference between your average glider and a Boeing seven sixty seven.
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  Speaker 1: The closest airstrip, twelve miles from them was a former
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  Speaker 1: Royal Canadian Air Force base in Gimli, Manitoba. The only
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  Speaker 1: problem was that it had been decommissioned and one of
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  Speaker 1: the runways had since been converted into a motor park.
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  Speaker 1: Neither the pilots nor the air traffic controllers were aware
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  Speaker 1: of this, though they only knew that there was a
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  Speaker 1: runway barely close enough for them to reach. As the
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  Speaker 1: plane sailed toward the air strip, systems continued to fail,
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  Speaker 1: Pearson's control of the airplane was limited to manual. The
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  Speaker 1: weight of the aircraft was fighting against the pilot's efforts
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  Speaker 1: to keep it level, banking hard against air currents. Meanwhile,
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  Speaker 1: on the ground, the Winnipeg sports Car Club was holding
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  Speaker 1: an amateur sports car race on the track that had
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  Speaker 1: once been Gimley's second airstrip. From the ground, the motorists
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  Speaker 1: saw a plane plummeting toward their position at an awkward angle. Terrified,
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  Speaker 1: they promptly fled across the field. The next problem, while
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  Speaker 1: the plane was going too fast for a safe landing,
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  Speaker 1: Pierson would have to decelerate and fast, otherwise they would
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  Speaker 1: skid past the runway and crash. When they touched down,
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  Speaker 1: Pearson immediately slammed on the brakes, causing some of the
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  Speaker 1: landing gear tires to violently blow out From the friction,
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  Speaker 1: The plane careened forward, skidding across the landing strip for
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  Speaker 1: almost three thousand feet before finally coming to a haul,
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  Speaker 1: its nose down and tail in the air. The passengers
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  Speaker 1: survived with minor injuries. In the aftermath of what would
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  Speaker 1: become known as the Gimli Glider incident, a review determined
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  Speaker 1: that the plane, on top of having a non functional
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  Speaker 1: fuel gauge, didn't have any fuel in its tanks. This
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  Speaker 1: was puzzling to the crew, who had accounted for this.
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  Speaker 1: They'd eventually learned that the problem was a mathematical one.
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  Speaker 1: The gauges in the new Boeing seven sixty seven measured
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  Speaker 1: its fuel weight based on the metric system. The first
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  Speaker 1: plane in Canadian airspace to do so, so, the formula
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  Speaker 1: that Pearson's crew used to calculate the weight was incorrect.
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  Speaker 1: They should have accounted forer point eight kilograms per leter
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  Speaker 1: rather than one point seven seven pounds. Both Pearson and
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  Speaker 1: his co pilot were reprimanded for their error, but in
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  Speaker 1: a sense, the passengers were fortunate to have them. Pearson's
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  Speaker 1: experience flying gliders ensured their safe landing, and the co
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  Speaker 1: pilot had suggested Gimli Runway despite it not being an
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  Speaker 1: active air base. Looking back, it's clear that they had
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  Speaker 1: the perfect set of skills to account for their own errors.
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  Speaker 1: We should all be so lucky. The thing about airport
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  Speaker 1: security is that they're trained to spot a lie. They'll
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  Speaker 1: notice in an instant if your palms are sweating, if
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  Speaker 1: you avoid eye contact, if any part of your story
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  Speaker 1: doesn't add up. Fooling them doesn't just require nerves of steel.
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  Speaker 1: It takes an Oscar worthy performance. It was a chilly
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  Speaker 1: January morning in Tehran and the airport was buzzing with
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  Speaker 1: tense energy. Lines of stiff backed travelers inched through security,
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  Speaker 1: speaking to one another, enclipped sentences while pretending not to
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  Speaker 1: notice the machine gun toting soldiers hosted at every corner
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  Speaker 1: in this scene. Walk to a group of filmmakers, you
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  Speaker 1: could spot them a mile away, not because they were glamorous,
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  Speaker 1: but because they were not. The filmmakers were the most
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  Speaker 1: aggressively casual people in the terminal, sporting bell bottom jeans,
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  Speaker 1: shaggy California haircuts, and oversized sunglasses. They carried bulging suitcases,
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  Speaker 1: a few tattered movie scripts, and the kind of self
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  Speaker 1: importance that you typically only find in Hollywood. The leader,
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  Speaker 1: a man with a questionable mustache and an armful of
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  Speaker 1: rolled up movie posters, stepped forward first. The name on
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  Speaker 1: his paperwork was Kevin Costa Harkins, and, as he explained
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  Speaker 1: to the Iranian immigration officer, he was a Canadian film producer.
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  Speaker 1: He and his crew had spent the last few days
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  Speaker 1: scouting locations for an upcoming sci fi epic that they
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  Speaker 1: hoped to shoot in Iran's other worldly deserts. The officer
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  Speaker 1: inspected Kevin's Canadian passport with the slow, deliberate suspicion of
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  Speaker 1: a man who had heard every excuse in the book
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  Speaker 1: and trusted none of them. And to be fair, he
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  Speaker 1: had good reason to be skeptical. Iran was embroiled in revolution,
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  Speaker 1: and tensions between the country and the West had never
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  Speaker 1: been higher. A few months earlier, in November of nineteen
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  Speaker 1: seventy nine, a group of Iranian students had stormed the
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  Speaker 1: American embassy in Tehran and took more than fifty diplomats hostage.
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  Speaker 1: Since then, the city had become one of the most
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  Speaker 1: dangerous places in the world for Americans. Many Western countries
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  Speaker 1: shuddered their embassies, warning their expats in the country to
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  Speaker 1: get out as soon as they could. But Kevin and
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  Speaker 1: his film crew had apparently not taken that advice. As
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  Speaker 1: he explained to the immigration officer, movies couldn't wait for politics.
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  Speaker 1: They had art to make, and besides, they were Canadian,
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  Speaker 1: not American. Finally, after what felt like an eternity, the
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  Speaker 1: official stamped Kevin's passport, slid it back across the counter,
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  Speaker 1: and waved him through. One by one. The others followed.
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  Speaker 1: They held their breaths until the last boarding pass was checked,
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  Speaker 1: the cabin doors closed, and the wheels finally lifted off
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  Speaker 1: Iranian soil. Seated in coach with champagne trembling in paper cups,
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  Speaker 1: the group exchanged shaky smiles They couldn't believe what they
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  Speaker 1: had just pulled off, because they weren't filmmakers. They weren't
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  Speaker 1: even Canadian. They were six American diplomats running for their lives.
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  Speaker 1: During the chaos of the embassy attack in November, a
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  Speaker 1: handful of Americans had managed to slip away. For months,
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  Speaker 1: they'd hid inside the homes of Canadian diplomats, including the
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  Speaker 1: Canadian ambassador Ken Taylor, who risked his life protecting them.
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  Speaker 1: Working together, Canadian officials and the CIA brainstormed and discarded
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  Speaker 1: countless plans to bring the diplomats home. It was Tony Mendez,
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  Speaker 1: a CIA officer posing as Kevin, who suggested smuggling them
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  Speaker 1: out on a commercial plane. He concocted the lie about
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  Speaker 1: a sci fi film shooting in the Iranian desert, and
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  Speaker 1: had ads for it printed in Iranian newspapers to lend
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  Speaker 1: it legitimacy. Meanwhile, the Canadian embassy provided fake passports and
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  Speaker 1: exit visas. The plan's only weak point was that it
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  Speaker 1: read respired the diplomats to lie their way past Iranian
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  Speaker 1: immigration officials without slipping. They weren't trained spies or actors,
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  Speaker 1: and if they faltered for even a second, it would
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  Speaker 1: mean prison or worse. Instead, they gave the performance of
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  Speaker 1: a lifetime history remembers their daring escape as the Canadian Caper.
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  Speaker 1: The Canadians just called it helping out a friend in
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  Speaker 1: need in Hollywood. Well, they eventually made a movie about
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  Speaker 1: the event. It's called Argo, after the fictional sci fi
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  Speaker 1: film concocted by the CIA. Oh and just like the
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  Speaker 1: performance that inspired the movie, it too proved to be
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  Speaker 1: Oscar worthy. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of
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  Speaker 1: the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts,
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  Speaker 1: or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast
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  Speaker 1: dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Mankey
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  Speaker 1: in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another a
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  Speaker 1: award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series,
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  Speaker 1: and television show, and you can learn all about it
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  Speaker 1: over at Theworldoflore dot com.
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  Speaker 2: And until next time, stay curious.