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Time Warp · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

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  Speaker 1: Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history
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  Speaker 1: is an open book, all of these amazing tales are
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  Speaker 1: right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.
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  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. We all have regrets
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  Speaker 1: something we said or did that we wish we could
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  Speaker 1: go back and change. If only there was a way
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  Speaker 1: to travel back to that point in time and fix
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  Speaker 1: what we messed up. Unfortunately, there's no trash powered DeLorean
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  Speaker 1: or flying phone booth that can help us with our mistakes.
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  Speaker 1: Time traveling is one of those concepts relegated to summer
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  Speaker 1: blockbusters and classic novels. But what if there was something else,
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  Speaker 1: Not a way to travel through time, but to see
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  Speaker 1: it like a television one could tune in any period
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  Speaker 1: and get a glimpse of the way things were. In short,
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  Speaker 1: what if someone built a window into the past. A
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  Speaker 1: fictional version of such a device was written about by
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  Speaker 1: sci fi author T. L Shared in his seven story
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  Speaker 1: E for Effort. In it, the main character Ed sees
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  Speaker 1: a silent film depicting the conquest of the Aztec Empire
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  Speaker 1: by Hernan Cortez. It's incredible, with acting and sets that
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  Speaker 1: looked just like the real thing, except for one thing.
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  Speaker 1: That event took place in fifteen nineteen, almost four hundred
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  Speaker 1: years before the birth of the movie camera. Ed learns
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  Speaker 1: that the person who made the film he was watching
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  Speaker 1: has invented a special time viewer capable of recording the past.
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  Speaker 1: Ed and the inventor's greed gets the better of them,
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  Speaker 1: and they are eventually taken into custody by the U. S. Government.
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  Speaker 1: I won't spoil the end, but the heroes don't fare
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  Speaker 1: too well. That said, the device was not always the
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  Speaker 1: fictional maguffin of a creative author. Back in the nineteen fifties,
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  Speaker 1: a device called the Chronovisor was being developed by a
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  Speaker 1: team of scientists backed by an unlikely organization, the Vatican.
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  Speaker 1: Like the novel's literary device, the Chronovisor would allow viewers
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  Speaker 1: to see historical events on a television screen and even
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  Speaker 1: captured them in photographs. Allegedly, the screen was so powerful
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  Speaker 1: it had the ability to see the future as well.
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  Speaker 1: The team was led by an Italian priest named Father
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  Speaker 1: Pellegrino Maria Ornetti. Assisting him in the endeavor were two others,
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  Speaker 1: Nobel laureate Enrico Fermi and an actual rocket scientist. This
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  Speaker 1: project was no joke, at least not according to the Vatican.
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  Speaker 1: Ernetti had gotten the idea for his time TV not
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  Speaker 1: from a science fiction novel, but from listening to Gregorian
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  Speaker 1: Chance at a university in Milan. He and another priest,
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  Speaker 1: father Augustino Gamelli, were engrossed in the performance when a single,
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  Speaker 1: clear voice ing out above all the others. It was
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  Speaker 1: that of father Gamelli's own father, who had long since
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  Speaker 1: passed away. Ernetti believed that the voice was not a ghost,
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  Speaker 1: but a moment from the past that had been preserved
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  Speaker 1: in time and was waiting for the right frequency to
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  Speaker 1: be discovered again. He and the other scientists working on
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  Speaker 1: the chronovisor allegedly managed to build a working model, but
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  Speaker 1: the whole project went underground for twenty years until Italian
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  Speaker 1: newspapers got wind of it again. They printed articles poking
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  Speaker 1: fun at Hernetti's silly little machine, which he not only
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  Speaker 1: claimed existed but worked as advertised. He told the papers
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  Speaker 1: he'd seen Napoleon Bonaparte, performances of lost plays by Roman poets,
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  Speaker 1: the Fall of Sodom and Go Mora, and perhaps the
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  Speaker 1: most historical event of all time, Christ's Crucifixion. When asked
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  Speaker 1: to provide a demonstration as proof, Ornettie objected. He said
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  Speaker 1: he couldn't since he had destroyed the Chronovisor out of
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  Speaker 1: fear it would be used for evil. The Vatican never
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  Speaker 1: admitted to having funded the creation of the device, but
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  Speaker 1: they did state that anyone caught using anything like that
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  Speaker 1: would be excommunicated. But don't let that fool you into
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  Speaker 1: thinking Ernettie was some sort of fraud ster. He was
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  Speaker 1: respected within the church as a scholar and a clergyman,
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  Speaker 1: a man who was able to combine his scientific curiosity
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  Speaker 1: with his faith to a great success. He had already
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  Speaker 1: performed comprehensive research on religious music and the acoustics of
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  Speaker 1: churches and cathedrals before he ever started working on a
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  Speaker 1: time viewer. Ernettie passed away in swearing with his dying
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  Speaker 1: breath that the Chronovisor was real and it did work,
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  Speaker 1: and he might have been right. One theoretical physicist from
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  Speaker 1: the University of Connecticut has spent his life trying to
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  Speaker 1: build a time machine in order to reunite with his
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  Speaker 1: late father. He claims it's possible, and though he hasn't
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  Speaker 1: been successful yet, he's certain someone somewhere will eventually build one,
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  Speaker 1: or maybe they already have of far off in the
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  Speaker 1: distant future. If so, we'll never know it, but to
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  Speaker 1: those watching, it will most likely be an instant classic.
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  Speaker 1: Some athletes become legends for a reason. Olympic gold medalist
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  Speaker 1: Usain Bolt is widely considered to be the fastest man alive.
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  Speaker 1: Tennis icon Serena Williams is the winner of twenty three
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  Speaker 1: major singles titles, an Open Era record, and Jim Thorpe
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  Speaker 1: born in eight seven, was the first Native American to
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  Speaker 1: win a gold medal for the United States when he
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  Speaker 1: competed in the nineteen twelve Olympics. He's also considered the
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  Speaker 1: greatest athletes of the first half of the twentieth century.
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  Speaker 1: They poured their lives into their passions. Their hard work
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  Speaker 1: and determination earned them worldwide fame. Children look up to them,
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  Speaker 1: aspiring Olympians idolize them. However, not all legends are born
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  Speaker 1: out of sweat and gold. Some don't work as hard
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  Speaker 1: as the others. Some stumble onto the pages of history
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  Speaker 1: without doing anything at all. Frank Hayes was born in
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  Speaker 1: Brooklyn in one year after Jim Thorpe, and he got
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  Speaker 1: his start working around horses. He tried his hand at
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  Speaker 1: jockey to no success, so eventually became a stable hand
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  Speaker 1: for a local horse breeder. Work was work, after all,
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  Speaker 1: and he wasn't about to look a gift horse in
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  Speaker 1: the mouth. Frank's boss saw potential in him, though, but
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  Speaker 1: not as a jockey. Instead, he wanted Frank to train
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  Speaker 1: his thoroughbreds to race, and Frank was a natural. Despite
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  Speaker 1: never winning a race of his own, he went on
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  Speaker 1: to train several champion steeds, earning him respect from all
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  Speaker 1: over the sport of horse racing. Still, Frank never forgot
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  Speaker 1: about his first passion. He was a jockey at heart,
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  Speaker 1: and he dreamed of the day when he would once
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  Speaker 1: again mount up and ride one of his trained horses
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  Speaker 1: to victory, and that day eventually arrived. In June of nineteen,
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  Speaker 1: he had been training a particular horse named sweet Kiss
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  Speaker 1: for a steeple chase at New York's Belmont Park. A
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  Speaker 1: steeple chase is different from a regular horse race in
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  Speaker 1: that it involves jumping over obstacles such as fences and ditches. Unfortunately,
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  Speaker 1: with the event only days away, Frank found that riders
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  Speaker 1: were in short supply, of course, he was only too
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  Speaker 1: happy to volunteer his services for the event and hopefully
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  Speaker 1: the horse's owner would agree. The owner, however, didn't want
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  Speaker 1: him to compete, claiming his weight would slow the horse down.
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  Speaker 1: But time was running out and there were no other jockeys.
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  Speaker 1: If sweet Kiss was going to compete at Belmont, they
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  Speaker 1: had to rely on Frank to do the job. He
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  Speaker 1: went on a severe diet to lose the weight needed
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  Speaker 1: to qualify, and on the day of the race, Frank
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  Speaker 1: Hayes got his wish. He was thrilled, of course, finally
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  Speaker 1: someone had taken a chance on the thirty five year
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  Speaker 1: old stableman and he wasn't going to throw it away.
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  Speaker 1: Even the other jockeys could see how excited he was
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  Speaker 1: to compete. It didn't matter that the odds were stacked
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  Speaker 1: against him literally too. At twenty to one, Frank climbed
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  Speaker 1: a top Sweet Kiss at the starting line and waited
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  Speaker 1: for the signal. The starter waved the flag and the
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  Speaker 1: race was begun. Frank and Sweet Kiss took off like
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  Speaker 1: a rocket, jumping over hurdles around two miles of track,
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  Speaker 1: leaving the other horses in the dust. As they pulled
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  Speaker 1: into the final turn. It was just the two of
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  Speaker 1: them galloping toward the finished line. Frank hunkered down, leaning
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  Speaker 1: into Sweet Kiss, the wind whipping overhead. The audience roared.
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  Speaker 1: They stood to watch the underdogs, this horse and it's jockey,
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  Speaker 1: who hadn't a chance of winning minutes before, about to
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  Speaker 1: win the competition. They crossed the finished line to deafening cheers,
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  Speaker 1: and Sweet Kiss gradually slowed to a stop. Over another
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  Speaker 1: hundred yards, Frank Hayes had won his first race after
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  Speaker 1: years of staying off the track. The horse's owners and
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  Speaker 1: the people in the stands all ran down to meet
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  Speaker 1: him to congratulate him for what he had accomplished. The
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  Speaker 1: place was a buzz with the joyful chaos of celebration,
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  Speaker 1: but as they got closer, it was clear something had
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  Speaker 1: gone wrong. Frank fell off the horse and landed face
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  Speaker 1: down in the dirt. Almost immediately, Doctor John Vorhees, the
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  Speaker 1: track physician, hurried over to see what had happened, and
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  Speaker 1: the news he delivered to the others was bad. Apparently
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  Speaker 1: Frank's excitement got the better of him during the race.
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  Speaker 1: He had suffered a heart attack, but somehow managed to
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  Speaker 1: hold on. By the time the horse finally crossed the
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  Speaker 1: finish line. Frank was nothing more than cargo hitchen a
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  Speaker 1: ride on its back. It's ironic. I know Frank Hays
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  Speaker 1: had wanted to be a jockey his entire life, but
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  Speaker 1: in the end he turned out to be nothing more
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  Speaker 1: then dead weight. 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 Mankey
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  Speaker 1: in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award
• 10:20
  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 com. And until
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  Speaker 1: next time, stay curious.