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Master at Arms · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

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  Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Menkey'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. Throughout history, wartime has brought countless innovations that
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  Speaker 1: have trickled down into our daily lives. When metallurgist Harry
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  Speaker 1: Brearley coated iron and chromium to keep guns from rusting
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  Speaker 1: in World War One, he inadvertently created stainless steel. Years later,
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  Speaker 1: Nestley used the same technology that made penicillin possible during
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  Speaker 1: World War Two to bring its freeze dried coffee to
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  Speaker 1: store shelves everywhere. If we get to enjoy many of
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  Speaker 1: today's conveniences thanks to the discoveries of military scientists and
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  Speaker 1: engineers from all over the world, however, that door swings
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  Speaker 1: both ways, quite a few civilian inventions have also gone
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  Speaker 1: on to revolutionize how wars are fought. In one, for example,
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  Speaker 1: barbed wire was created to keep cattle from wandering off,
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  Speaker 1: long before it was used to impede enemy movement. Cameras
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  Speaker 1: also made the jump from family portraits to the front
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  Speaker 1: lines during World War One, when they were fastened to
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  Speaker 1: planes and used to gather photographs of enemy territories. In fact,
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  Speaker 1: one average citizen did quite a lot to change the
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  Speaker 1: face of war all on his own. During his sixty
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  Speaker 1: seven years on earth. He became known as one of
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  Speaker 1: the most brilliant engineers in the world, drafting vehicle and
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  Speaker 1: weapon designs he expected to be used by the militaries
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  Speaker 1: of his time. His tank concept, for example, bore a
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  Speaker 1: cone shape and was made of wood. Inside. Eight men
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  Speaker 1: would crank gears to turn the wheels, which would then
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  Speaker 1: carry them across the battlefield. The angled exterior your meant
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  Speaker 1: arrows and other projectiles would simply deflect off the sides
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  Speaker 1: or fall away. Portholes along the sides allowed for the
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  Speaker 1: tanks operators to fire at enemies without putting themselves in danger.
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  Speaker 1: Another unique vehicle came in the form of a chariot.
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  Speaker 1: Unlike the chariots of old, where horses pulled someone standing
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  Speaker 1: in a carriage, these new designs featured interesting upgrades. For one,
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  Speaker 1: the writer didn't stand in a carriage at the rear.
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  Speaker 1: He rode atop the horse, which was situated in the
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  Speaker 1: middle for whirling. Blades at the front would mow down
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  Speaker 1: the opposing forces, while blades at the back prevented rear attacks.
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  Speaker 1: He called it the scythed chariot. The engineer didn't limit
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  Speaker 1: himself only to modes of transportation, though, he also invented
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  Speaker 1: impressive weapons, such as an early machine gun. As with
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  Speaker 1: all of his creations, this too was made of wood.
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  Speaker 1: It boasted thirty three barrels arranged in a triangular frame.
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  Speaker 1: While one side of eleven barrels filled, another side would
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  Speaker 1: be loaded up as the third side cooled down. He
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  Speaker 1: was a man ahead of his time, and his blueprints
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  Speaker 1: proved it. His plans for a crossbow predated the handheld
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  Speaker 1: models used today. It was designed to be rolled into
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  Speaker 1: battle by two men who could cock it back with
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  Speaker 1: a massive projectile loaded into the cradle before pulling a
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  Speaker 1: release and letting it fly into a crowd. His notebooks
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  Speaker 1: and files were full of plans for vehicles and weapons
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  Speaker 1: no one had ever seen before. There was a cluster bomb,
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  Speaker 1: designed to wipe out pockets of enemy soldiers. He also
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  Speaker 1: invented a double hulled ship that could stay afloat if
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  Speaker 1: the outer hall was ever punctured, a concept seen today
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  Speaker 1: on oil tankers and submarines. And though he was so
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  Speaker 1: skilled in the art of wartime weaponry, in reality he
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  Speaker 1: hated it. He would rather have been building flying machines
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  Speaker 1: or perpetual motion machines, or doing what he was known
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  Speaker 1: best for, painting. This engineer and inventor was one of
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  Speaker 1: the finest artists of the sixteenth century, and his works
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  Speaker 1: are still studied in museums and classrooms to this day.
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  Speaker 1: There's no proof that any of his designs for his
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  Speaker 1: machine gun or his tank were ever actually built, yet
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  Speaker 1: their influence can be seen in today's modern equivalence. Had
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  Speaker 1: they been brought to life, as he'd feared, he might
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  Speaker 1: have been remembered as a monster, a man who chose
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  Speaker 1: to celebrate violence rather than peace. Fortunately that's not the case.
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  Speaker 1: The world instead associates him with the portrait of a
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  Speaker 1: young woman smiling now displayed in the Louver, as well
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  Speaker 1: as his painting of the final meal between Jesus and
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  Speaker 1: his disciples. He's not known as a merchant of death,
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  Speaker 1: but as the master artist behind the mona Lisa Leonardo
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  Speaker 1: da Vinci Evan paid for the tower himself. It wasn't
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  Speaker 1: really about him, though, No, the tower was a monument
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  Speaker 1: to the Viking explorer Leif Ericsson. It wouldn't be strange
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  Speaker 1: to build a monument to the man. He had been
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  Speaker 1: celebrated in all kinds of ways since the year one
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  Speaker 1: thousand when he was sailing the Atlantic. The strange thing
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  Speaker 1: was where Evan built that. You see the tower cast
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  Speaker 1: its long shadow over the Charles River, just inland from
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  Speaker 1: the city of Boston. What's even stranger is the huge
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  Speaker 1: inscription stretching across the front of the tower, saying that
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  Speaker 1: the land was discovered by leaf ericson one thousand a d.
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  Speaker 1: But there's more. It says that at this very spot
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  Speaker 1: in what is now Massachusetts, there was once a Viking
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  Speaker 1: city with docks and walls and dams that controlled the land,
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  Speaker 1: stretching from Rhode Island to the south, all the way
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  Speaker 1: up to St. Lawrence River up in Canada. Now, maybe
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  Speaker 1: this would have been safely ignored when Evan built the
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  Speaker 1: tower in eighty nine, but he wasn't a nobody quite
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  Speaker 1: the opposite. In fact, Evan Horsford was a retired Harvard
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  Speaker 1: professor the dean of Harvard's Science School and a very
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  Speaker 1: successful businessman. And what's more, he wasn't the only Bostonian
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  Speaker 1: who thought the city had once been the home of Vikings. Actually,
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  Speaker 1: he was riding in the coat tails of some of
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  Speaker 1: Boston's most famous and most powerful nineteenth century citizens. It
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  Speaker 1: all started in the eighteen thirties when Boston's famous poet,
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  Speaker 1: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, had traveled to Denmark. Someone convinced him
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  Speaker 1: that Vikings had once landed in New England. When he
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  Speaker 1: got home to Boston, he retold that story to anyone
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  Speaker 1: who would listen for years. By the eighteen seventies, some
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  Speaker 1: of the most important New England gentry had hatched a
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  Speaker 1: plan to tell it to the world. They got together
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  Speaker 1: and decided to build a statue in Boston of Leif Ericsson,
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  Speaker 1: and then they put the word out to raise the money.
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  Speaker 1: That's where Eben Horsford comes in. None of those Boston
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  Speaker 1: gentlemen would live to see just how deeply Eban fell
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  Speaker 1: in love with their plan, But if fall he did.
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  Speaker 1: After their death, Eben Horsford carried their idea forward and
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  Speaker 1: put everything he had into the project. He built their
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  Speaker 1: statue of Leif Ericson in Boston, and you can still
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  Speaker 1: see it today rising in the Back Bay neighborhood. After all,
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  Speaker 1: Eban was no stranger to building in Boston. He was
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  Speaker 1: part of the group that had planned for the defense
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  Speaker 1: of Boston Harbor during the Civil War. But he did
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  Speaker 1: a lot more too. Evan was so convinced that he
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  Speaker 1: wrote seven books arguing that Leif Ericsson had discovered Massachusetts
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  Speaker 1: before Columbus ever reached the hemisphere. Evan did his best
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  Speaker 1: to survey the land and thought that he found the
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  Speaker 1: spot where Leif Ericson's house had been. He had a
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  Speaker 1: plaque installed there, and then in nine Evan built that
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  Speaker 1: tower on the Charles River. Like the other Bostonians before him,
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  Speaker 1: Evan was trying to convince the world that Boston was
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  Speaker 1: the place where America began, complete with its first white
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  Speaker 1: adventurers and even its first Christian bishop. It was, to
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  Speaker 1: put it mildly, all about putting people like him on
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  Speaker 1: a pedestal. Today we know that Leif Ericson actually landed
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  Speaker 1: much farther north at lance All Meadows at the tip
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  Speaker 1: of Newfoundland, at the Canadian site. Archaeologists have recently discovered
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  Speaker 1: and identified bronze cloak pins, iron nails and rivets, and
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  Speaker 1: what may even be a kiln for smelting iron from
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  Speaker 1: bog Ore. They are the kinds of things that Eban
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  Speaker 1: searched for all around Boston but could never find. So
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  Speaker 1: it's a good thing that the message of all Evan's
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  Speaker 1: monuments has mostly been forgotten. After all, the story they're telling,
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  Speaker 1: the history that they want to teach, it's just wrong.
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  Speaker 1: But despite all that, Eban Horsford's legacy is still influencing
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  Speaker 1: us today, and it keeps rising up in homes across
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  Speaker 1: America because despite being quite a bad historian, Eban was
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  Speaker 1: actually a great chemist, and in the late eighteen fifties
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  Speaker 1: he started selling double acting baking powder. It's sold like hotcakes.
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  Speaker 1: He even sold it to the Union Army during the
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  Speaker 1: Civil War, which is where he really started to make
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  Speaker 1: his fortune. Eban began by culling his invention, Horsford's Bread Preparation,
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  Speaker 1: but when he died and his manufacturing company wanted to
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  Speaker 1: give up their name, they rebranded it. In fact, they
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  Speaker 1: named it after Evan's position at Harvard, where he was
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  Speaker 1: the Rumford Professor for Applied Sciences, today, Evans Invention is
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  Speaker 1: still in stores, proudly declaring that it has been trusted
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  Speaker 1: since eighteen fifty nine. And if you've ever used Rumford
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  Speaker 1: baking powder, then you've cooked with Evan's real discovery. And
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  Speaker 1: even if you don't know it, you've seen him too.
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  Speaker 1: The red container is marked with the black silhouette of
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  Speaker 1: a man set in a white oval, the long shadow
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  Speaker 1: cast by the man himself. I hope you've enjoyed today's
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  Speaker 1: guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by
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  Speaker 1: me Aaron Manky in partnership with how Stuff Works. I
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  Speaker 1: make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast,
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  Speaker 1: book series, and television show, and you can learn all
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  Speaker 1: about it over at the World of Lore dot com.
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  Speaker 1: And until next time, stay curious.