Backfire

Published May 6, 2021, 9:00 AM

When events are out of our control, all we can do is just make the best of it. The folks in our stories today did exactly that after life threw them some bizarre and unusual curveballs.

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Welcome to Aaron Benky's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all of these amazing tales are right there on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. Not long ago, the world witnessed an unimaginable site. A cargo ship known as the Ever Given had gotten stuck in Egypt's Suez Canal. Steered off its path by an oncoming sandstorm, the freighter blocked over three d sixty other ships from getting through the canal. The ordeal lasted almost a week and had everyone wondering how such a thing could have happened in the first place. Apparently few remembered that the now had gotten blocked once before, with a very different outcome. On June five, nineteen sixty seven, Israel went to war against Egypt and Syria in what came to be known as the June War. However, due to the surprising length of the fight, it also went by another name, the Six Day War. A conflict was over by June tenth, with Egypt retreating west. However, as they crossed the canal, Egyptian forces blocked it on both sides to keep the Israelis from using it. What they didn't realize was that their actions had inadvertently stranded a convoy of fifteen ships traveling through the canal at the same time. Every vessel dropped anchor as egypt sunk various other boats and even destroyed a bridge to prevent Israeli access. They also deployed underwater mines for good measure. The ships, having originally come from places like Britain, America, Sweden, West Germany, and Bulgaria, among others, were stuck. Crews used their radios to reach family and loved ones to alert them of what had happened, were forced to cease communications at the request of the Egyptians. Times got tough after that first month, which initially seemed like a vacation. As the days and weeks wore on, however, crew men grew lonely and isolated. Boredom eroded their mental health. The weeks turned into months, and countries negotiated crew swaps for their respective ships. Though they weren't moving, the vessels still required maintenance in order to stay afloat, so one crew would stay on for three or four months until another crew could be brought in to relieve them. The men, with nowhere to go and very little to keep themselves occupied, eventually got to know each other in a way. Each vessel became like a house in a small community, and that's how all the crew members treated their situation. Every ship served a different purpose. The largest one, with its enormous deck, became a soccer field. The men watched movies on the Bulgarian freighter and printed stamps on the polar ship, which the Egyptian authorities were kind enough to honor as legal postage. Many of the crew race lifeboats in the canal and attended church services on board the West German ship, and if they wanted to unwind, they took a dip in the pool on the Swedish vessel. Supplies were delivered regularly. During the brutally hot summer months. One could look out at the ships and see hundreds of beer bottles floating alongside their hulls. After a year without movement, the convoy even created its own version of the Olympics, with the various crews representing eight countries across fourteen sports. There was archery, water polo, sailing, and even the high jump. And for those who are curious, the Polish team took home the gold. Literally, they had medals made and everything. The men from all the ships had combined their resources to put the event together and that's how they operated their small community, dubbed the Yellow Fleet. They done it with everyone contributing for the greater good. It was a fully functioning utopia on the water and it stayed that way for eight years. In ninety each it removed the blockade and opened up the canal once again. The ships were free to return to their countries of origin and business went back to normal, but not for the men involved. They had made lifelong friends during their years on the water. Back on land, it had been a time of conflict and war, but in the canal nobody fought. There were no land disputes or enemy armies to contend with. Everyone helped one another. They all pitched in toward a common goal of fun and well being. Surviving crew members still meet up today, swapping stories about the good old days, when times were simpler, when their lives had stood still while the world continued on without them, When the Yellow Fleet was the safest, most prosperous, and peaceful nation in the world. It started with an exorcism, not of a person though, no, this was a set of clothing. But I can't blame anyone for thinking that there was something dark and deeply wrong about them, evil even now, as the story goes. They had been passed down between three different teenage girls, but it wasn't a happy hand me down situation. In fact, none of the girls had ever even worn the clothes. You see, each of them had died before they had a chance to the clothes, then got passed onto the next family who needed them, only to have their daughter die in turn. And that's the kind of terrible string of tragedies that can leave us feeling like there's a dark, supernatural force at play moving behind the scene, a force that needs to be stopped. So the families decided to do something about it. They brought the clothes to a priest for an exorcism, and in the winter of sixteen fifty seven, the priest decided to burn them. Like I said, I can't blame anyone for trying to put a stop to the tragedies that were happening. But what happened next was a disaster on an unbelievable scale. You see, all of this was happening in a city where winter winds were coming. On top of that, it had been a particularly dry year. A drought had sucked down the river, drained the wells, and left the city's buildings, as one historian puts, it, dry as tinder. So you can see where this is going, right. Their attempt to stop the curse and banish the destructive forces backfired on them. Literally, the embers of the fire floated up and a strong wind caught them. The nearby temple caught first, and once that went up, there was no stopping it. The fire traveled as it raged from the temples, to the food storage buildings to the wealthiest districts. Just when it seemed like the fire was going to be put out in one part of the city, the winds whipped up and carried it to another district, and the streets were chaos. When the prison caught fire, the doors were opened in a moment of compassion to save the lives of the inmates, but the terrified keeper of the city gates ordered the huge wooden doors closed, try upping thousands inside even the castle overlooking the city caught fire. Inside the stone walls got so hot that all the gold stored in the cellar just melted, and the gunpowder stored in the main tower exploded, bringing the castle crashing down. One Rand remembered carrying a lantern in mid day to light the way through the streets that were darkened by smoke. Part of the problem was how much of the city's land had been marked out for the wealthy to build their huge estates. Not enough of the city's area was set aside for the homes of working people, leaving them packed together like matches in a box. And the blaze went on for three days. When the news spread about how it all began, the fire got a memorable nickname, the Long Sleeves Fire. It almost sounds playful, but there was nothing funny about the scale of the disaster. In fact, it was more devastating than the Great Fire of London in sixteen sixty six, and became one of the worst city fires ever recorded. About sixty of the city had been destroyed, and the fire had no consideration for persons, status or prestige. Those crowded neighborhoods burst into flames but so did almost a thousand mansions more than three hundred temples, all of it burned together. For the city, this was a turning point. The medieval map had been burned away and the shape of the modern city was drawn in its ashes. Temples that were now seen as fire hazards were moved to the outskirts. Rebuilding the castle was delayed, while priority was given to rebuilding the homes of working people around wider streets. A bridge was even built over the river from the most crowded part of the city. If the residents there ever had to evacuate in the future, now they would have a path to safety. But that's not to put too bright a spin on it. Yes there was new building afterwards, but there's no denying that the fire was an enormous tragedy, and of course the greatest loss was the loss of life. Some historians placed the estimate at one hundred thousand deaths. It's one of those painful ironies from history that we see from time to time. It started with an effort to stop what seemed like a curse. Burn the clothes saved some lives, but in their attempt to prevent something bad, they created something worse. That's not the end of the story, though. The way the city came back from a disaster of this scale is a chapter in its history that gave it a new reputation, because the people of the city came together and laid the foundation for what would take the place of the home they had lost, and the way that they had rebuilt after so much destruction brought at least one historian to call this home of renewal an indomitable city the city of Edo in Japan, but that isn't the name we know it by today. No. It's modern name came in eighteen sixty nine, two hundred years after the fire, because the city had become such a center of Japanese life that the Emperor took up residence there, and despite all the trials and turmoil of the past, it became known as the Eastern Capital, or in other words, Tokyo. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Manky in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore which is a podcast, book series, and television show and you can learn all about it over at the world of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious. Yeah,

Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

From the creator of the hit podcast Lore comes a new, bite-sized storytelling experience. Each twice 
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