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Swimming Oil · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

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  Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Benky's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
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  Speaker 1: I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world is
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  Speaker 1: full of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book,
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  Speaker 1: all of these amazing tales are right there on display,
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  Speaker 1: just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet
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  Speaker 1: of Curiosities. Recent events have given people all over the
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  Speaker 1: world a chance to discover or rediscover new hobbies and interests.
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  Speaker 1: Some who have missed their normal lives have found a
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  Speaker 1: little culture by making sour dough bread and kombucha. Others
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  Speaker 1: have taken up painting, guitar and even podcasting. One hobby, however,
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  Speaker 1: is one almost all of us have done. We might
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  Speaker 1: forget about it as we get older, but it has
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  Speaker 1: been a mainstay of rainy days and quiet afternoons seemingly forever,
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  Speaker 1: and it got its start back in the seventeen sixties.
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  Speaker 1: John Spillsbury was born in England in seventeen thirty nine.
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  Speaker 1: He had one younger brother and an older brother who
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  Speaker 1: his father also named Jonathan. This strange, confusing choice got
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  Speaker 1: John mixed up with his brother quite often. Spillsbury took
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  Speaker 1: an apprenticeship with Thomas Jefferies, a cartographer who held the
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  Speaker 1: title of geographer to King George the third. Jeffreys maps
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  Speaker 1: were among the most celebrated and reliable of the time,
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  Speaker 1: including surveys of Virginia, New England, and the West Indies,
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  Speaker 1: and their maps were not only used to help sailors
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  Speaker 1: learn what resided on distant shores, but to educate children
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  Speaker 1: as well. After all, the world was changing and it
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  Speaker 1: was important that every person, regardless of their age, understood how.
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  Speaker 1: In addition, maps were ideal propaganda tools. As England continued
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  Speaker 1: its imperial march across the globe, it erected new borders
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  Speaker 1: and altered how its people saw their country, not as
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  Speaker 1: a land unto itself, but as one that was superior
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  Speaker 1: to everyone else. Such a sense of nationalism was key
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  Speaker 1: to indoctrinating young children into believing in England's superiority. However,
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  Speaker 1: there was a problem. Kids just weren't good at geography.
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  Speaker 1: Chuck it up to the ever changing borders or how
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  Speaker 1: complicated the maps were, the children had a hard time
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  Speaker 1: remembering where countries were located. Not to worry, though, that
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  Speaker 1: Spillsbury had an idea. He knew how to make geography
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  Speaker 1: more fun, and he turned it into a game. He
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  Speaker 1: took a map of Europe and glued it to a
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  Speaker 1: thin board of mahogany. Then he cut the map up
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  Speaker 1: using a tiny saw to divide the countries into separate pieces.
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  Speaker 1: Marketry saws were capable of making small, precise ornamental cuts,
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  Speaker 1: and were often used to perform inlay work in furniture.
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  Speaker 1: Spillsbury's educational creations were expensive due to their premium materials
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  Speaker 1: and handcrafted nature. As a result, only the very wealthy
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  Speaker 1: could afford them. King Charles the Third, who had relied
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  Speaker 1: on Thomas Freeze maps, was now buying Spillsbury's dissected maps
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  Speaker 1: for his own kids. As time went on, though makers
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  Speaker 1: branched out with their own designs. Beside maps, they still
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  Speaker 1: used wood for the backings, since wood was considered a
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  Speaker 1: much higher quality material than the ever increasingly popular and
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  Speaker 1: cheaper cardboard. Tools grew more advanced as well. Marketry saws
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  Speaker 1: gave way to fret saws, which featured a high arch
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  Speaker 1: and a thin blade perfect for carving delicate curves into
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  Speaker 1: the wood. Throughout the eighteen hundreds and well into the
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  Speaker 1: early nineteen hundreds, cut up pictures and maps became popular
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  Speaker 1: ways for people to pass the time after the stock
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  Speaker 1: market crash of nineteen nine. People used them to keep busy,
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  Speaker 1: as they could be purchased once and reassembled over and
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  Speaker 1: over again, far less expensive than live entertainments or going
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  Speaker 1: to the movies. These activities also piqued the interest of adults,
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  Speaker 1: who enjoyed putting together more and more complicated dissections with
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  Speaker 1: more pieces. The close of World War Two brought an
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  Speaker 1: end to the sale of wooden pieces, with cardboard proving
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  Speaker 1: more cost effective to both manufacture and purchase. Today, these
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  Speaker 1: brain training pastimes are done on dining room tables and
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  Speaker 1: playroom floors all over the world. They range in skill
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  Speaker 1: levels from just a few pieces all the way up
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  Speaker 1: to five thousand and beyond. Some companies even make three
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  Speaker 1: D versions of them, and several medical publications have argued
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  Speaker 1: that doing them regularly can help stave off such neurological
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  Speaker 1: diseases like Alzheimer's. John Spillsbury probably had no idea his
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  Speaker 1: invention would catch on in such a fun way. All
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  Speaker 1: he wanted to do was teach kids geography. Instead, he
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  Speaker 1: designed a quiet, contemplative hobby to help people unwind. He
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  Speaker 1: created the jigsaw puzzle. All it took was a hammer,
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  Speaker 1: a bucket, and a little patience. Frozen pieces were lumped
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  Speaker 1: together and smashed with the hammer, and then the mash
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  Speaker 1: was poured into a tub, and when the weather warmed up,
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  Speaker 1: oil pooled on the surface of the mash and was
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  Speaker 1: ready to be gathered and used. It was so easy
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  Speaker 1: that it earned a simple name, self running oil. Some
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  Speaker 1: people preferred seal oil in their lamps, mostly Greenland's Inuit communities,
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  Speaker 1: but when seal blubber wasn't around, self running oil was
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  Speaker 1: a good substitute. In eighteen oh five, some green Landers
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  Speaker 1: started experimenting with this self running oil. They wanted to
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  Speaker 1: see if there was more they could do with it.
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  Speaker 1: After all, whale oil had been used to light lamps
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  Speaker 1: and make soap since the fifteen hundreds, so there was
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  Speaker 1: some inspiration to see what else could be done. It
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  Speaker 1: was still decades before petroleum would land on the scene,
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  Speaker 1: but in Greenland they weren't short of ideas, and when
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  Speaker 1: people trying it, they found that with self running oil
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  Speaker 1: they had a light source that worked just as well
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  Speaker 1: as any whale oil. In fact, if they boiled the mash,
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  Speaker 1: they could produce two different kinds of oil, a light
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  Speaker 1: machine oil and a second darker product as well. Yes,
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  Speaker 1: the darker ooze from the second boil had an offensive odor,
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  Speaker 1: but when it was treated with caustic soda, it came
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  Speaker 1: out a smooth, reddish brown color, and it burned clean.
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  Speaker 1: When it was lit, it barely gave off any smoke,
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  Speaker 1: even less than a wax taper. And the oil was
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  Speaker 1: so light that people using it in their lamps said
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  Speaker 1: that it just ran up the wick. So it was
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  Speaker 1: a perfect indoor light, even in small spaces. You might
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  Speaker 1: say that nothing could hold a candle to it. But
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  Speaker 1: it wasn't just useful for fueling lamps. When it was processed,
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  Speaker 1: it could be used for other work as well, like
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  Speaker 1: tanning hides, and that's where it's more odorous qualities weren't
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  Speaker 1: all that much of a downside. Soon enough, self running
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  Speaker 1: oil was just too useful not to harvest and too
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  Speaker 1: valuable not to buy and sell. Plus there was a
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  Speaker 1: lot of it off the coast of Greenland. When the
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  Speaker 1: experiments at the beginning of the eighteen hundreds turned out
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  Speaker 1: the first usable products, only a little harvesting was being done,
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  Speaker 1: but by the end of the century, a whole industry
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  Speaker 1: had grown up and the harvest had multiplied a thousandfold
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  Speaker 1: or more. One sailor said that he had spent thirty
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  Speaker 1: years hunting self running oil, and over the course of
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  Speaker 1: his career he had brought in eighteen thousand gallons of
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  Speaker 1: the raw materials to be refined. Boats were going out
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  Speaker 1: from Greenland, Norway and Iceland to crisscross the cold waters
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  Speaker 1: of the Arctic, and in the winters, the solid ice
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  Speaker 1: around North Greenland allowed for the oil to be gathered
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  Speaker 1: without any boats at all. It just took a few
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  Speaker 1: people working together. A hole in the ice was enough,
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  Speaker 1: so with a hammer, a bucket, a few friends and
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  Speaker 1: some patients, anyone could get into the self running oil business.
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  Speaker 1: But the experimenting didn't stop there. How about mixing the
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  Speaker 1: self running oil with seal oil or cod liver oil. Well,
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  Speaker 1: that worked like a charm too soon. Not only was
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  Speaker 1: self running oil the ordinary way of lighting homes in
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  Speaker 1: North Greenland, but it became a major export. As its
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  Speaker 1: reputation grew and spread, orders came in from tanneries and
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  Speaker 1: other businesses across Sweden and Germany. Self running oil was
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  Speaker 1: a hit. In fact, by the end of the century.
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  Speaker 1: Most of the oil was sold overseas and a famous
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  Speaker 1: blend that came to be known as trek Kroner Tran
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  Speaker 1: or three crowns oil. It became one of the Royal
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  Speaker 1: Greenland trades finest products, and the innovation didn't stop there.
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  Speaker 1: Over the years, self running oil became an ingredient in
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  Speaker 1: all kinds of inventions, for better or for worse. It
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  Speaker 1: was used in the recipe for glycerin and nitroglycerin, yes,
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  Speaker 1: the nitro that's in dynamite and the machine. Oil was
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  Speaker 1: also used as an industrial lubricant, and there was no
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  Speaker 1: shortage of demand for explosives during both World Wars. Eventually,
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  Speaker 1: synthetic oils would replace the self running oil harvested in
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  Speaker 1: the Arctic waters. Today, it's mostly used as a dietary
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  Speaker 1: supplement because somewhere along the line it was discovered that
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  Speaker 1: self running oil also had some vitamin A in it.
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  Speaker 1: But even into the nineteen fifties it was still tanning
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  Speaker 1: hides and greasing machinery. People were buying the oil and
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  Speaker 1: huge amounts, and Norway especially stepped up to provide The
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  Speaker 1: Danish Navy even had one of their submarines named after
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  Speaker 1: the oil source have colin, but that makes sense if
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  Speaker 1: you've already guessed that the oil came from a predator.
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  Speaker 1: Most of us would approach with fear, like a stick
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  Speaker 1: of dynamite about to blow up, because for more than
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  Speaker 1: a century, the self running oil was collected by intrepid
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  Speaker 1: sailors and fishermen who found a way to make a
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  Speaker 1: living by skimming the oil off a mash of the
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  Speaker 1: liver of the half collin, the Danish name for the
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  Speaker 1: Arctic greenland shark. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour
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  Speaker 1: of 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 Manky
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  Speaker 1: in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award
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  Speaker 1: 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 the World of Lore dot Come and until
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  Speaker 1: next time, stay curious. H