Bean There, Done That

Published May 26, 2022, 9:00 AM

More human ingenuity is on display on today's tour of the Cabinet.

Welcomed Aaron Manky'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. There's an ancient proverb that says, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. When two factions oppose a mutual threats, they can join forces to defeat them. Just before the start of World War Two, Finland had two enemies, Germany and the Soviet Union, and because of one side's aggressive tactics, it had to make a very unfortunate friend of the other. You see, Germany and the Russians had divvied up Finland in Latvia, Estonia and several other Baltic states as part of the Molotov Ribbon trot. Packed The Soviets invaded Poland in mid September, then tried to negotiate a portion of Finnish territory for their own uses. For one, they wanted to install a military base on Finnish soil, just as they had done with several other Baltic States, but Finland wouldn't have it, so a second conflict, known as the Winter War kicked off between the two parties. It resulted in many casualties and the eventual signing of the Moscow Peace Treaty, which gave the Soviet Union one tenth of Finland for themselves. We look back at the Soviets as allies who helped us defeat the Nazis, but after the Moscow Peace Treaty was signed, many countries saw them as a bully, and Finland had no interest in aligning themselves with Germany as they were still seen as being associated with the Soviet Union. After reaching out to the United Kingdom for help but getting a refusal, they realized that they had to solve the problem on their own. The Soviets continued to push into Finland and so did Hitler. With nowhere else to turn and Hitler's rejection of the Molotov ribbon trot packed the Finnish were forced to partner with them against the Russians in Nte. Finland, now backed by Germany, was able to reclaim the land that had lost to the Soviets, including the city of Weiberg. It was a great story. But even though the Soviets no longer occupied the territory, they weren't completely gone. You see, on their way out, the Red Army had left behind one thousand land mines, and those mines started exploding all over the city. It was believed that they were on a time delay, but towards the end of August of nineteen forty one, Finnished forces soon discovered the truth. Under one of the town's bridges, a mine had been deposited, packed with six ms of an explosive charge. Attached to the charge was a small device which was taken to an engineer at the communications departments, and that engineer took it apart and found something amazing. A small radio received her inside the mines had been designed to go off when their internal radios received a remote signal at the right frequency. When that signal was received, boom and worse yet, similar receivers were found on all the minds around Weiberg. After some more digging, Finish engineers found out that the signal was close to the A M frequency used by public radio broadcasts, so they came up with a bizarre scheme to block that signal. A polka specifically the Sacki arv Polka, which was looped for twenty four hours a day by the Finnish public radio. As long as the song was playing, the Soviets couldn't set off their minds. Of course, it didn't take long for the Soviets to figure out their plan, so they changed the signal to match one of the other two radio frequencies used by the receivers. Well, the Fins figured that out too, and jammed every possible frequency with their polka all day and all night. The fast paced tune played out over the radio waves. Three months later, only a dozen minds had gone off out of the thousands the Russians had planted, a long enough delay for their batteries to have run out and the threat of remote detonation to no longer be a concern. The Soviets would eventually return and take back their territory from the Germans who occupied it, helping the Allies win the war in the process, but the Saki r v Polka became a major hit in Finland and an unofficial anthem at the end of the war. Today it stands as a fun reminder that for a short time at least Finland bested one of the biggest powers in the world with nothing more than a little ingenuity and a whole lot of polka. Few industries have seen as much innovation over the years as that of the auto industry. From steam engines and the electric starter to to cruise control and intermittent wipers, cars have never been strangers to leaps and technological advancement. Aside from alternative fuel sources, one area of immense change has been in the materials used to make car bodies. The earliest models were unsurprisingly comprised of wood. After all, wood had been used to make chariots, carts, wagons, and carriages for centuries, it only made sense to build the first automobiles out of wood as well. The Model T added aluminum panels to the equation, which improved strength and rigidity, While the nineteen fifties saw the advent of fiber reinforced plastic or f RP. This new material was made from a polyester resin by companies like Chevrolet for their Corvette. But back in the nineteen forties, one automaker tried to revolutionize the fabrication of his car's body panels, and he didn't turn to metal or fiberglass. He looked to the farm. That's where Henry Ford grew up, on a farm in Michigan, and he hated it. But no matter how far away he got from that farm, he never forgot about his experiences there. They stayed with him even as he developed his first automobile, his factory, and his eventual empire. Perhaps inspired by his time in the fields, he developed a fascination with pushing the limits of agriculture, so much so that he cultivated a friendship with the inventor who came up with over three uses for the common peanuts, George Washington Carver. Carver was heading the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama at the time, but traveled to Michigan to assist Ford with his next big breakthrough, an automotive technology, soybeans. Ford saw the soybean as an alternative to other materials being used to make car parts. To demonstrate his seriousness at the prospect, he built a factory dedicated to his next big thing, the soybean car. Of course, the car itself wouldn't be made from pure soybeans. The beans would be used as the basis for a new kind of plastic. Ford believed a plastic car was safer than those made of steel. If it rolled over in an accident, it wouldn't get crushed, and using plastic would free up metal for tanks and planes. During wartime, Henry Ford had planted the seeds for the next automobile, and he put designer Eugene Gregory in charge of nurturing the soil so to speak. The Soybeans car frame was made of tubular steel, upon which sat fourteen plastic body panels that were easily assembled. The windows were made of acrylic, and even with a V eight engine inside, the vehicle was surprisingly light less than two thousand pounds. Ford allegedly tested the Soybeans plastic resilience by whacking it with an axe. According to a video of the demonstration, he couldn't make a dent. The prototype made its debut with the nineteen forty one Dearborn Days Festival, followed by an exhibition at the Michigan State Fair the next year. Unfortunately, Ford's grand plan for the future of the car was ill timed. World War Two put a stop to all car manufacturing in the US, and Ford himself was already in poor health. He handed control of a company to his grandson. After the war, no one had any interest in making the plastic car anymore. Ford had poured millions into the projects and the result had been mixed. In fact, his engineer, who hadn't been a fan of the soybean car in the first place, was responsible for destroying the only prototype. No formula for the plastic exists today. However, Ford wasn't the only car maker with the bright idea to make one out of plastic. General Motors had tried their luck with a plastic automobile just a few years earlier. At the New York World's Fair of nineteen thirty nine, GM debut two models of their own, but rather than use plastic made from soybeans, they turned to a clear, acrylic plexiglass. What they unveiled was a four door touring sedan with sea through panels, allowing pedestrians and other drivers to gaze at the inner workings of the car as it drove by. The steel frame, the brackets and rivets, even the spare higher We're all clearly visible, giving outsiders the sense that they had X ray vision like Superman, and just like Ford's soybean car, GMS ghost cars were never put into production. They were primarily designed as display pieces to show off the benefits of plexiglass. Plastic cars have popped up every now and then over the years, but Steele continues to be the material of choice for today's automobiles. It's a fantastic idea, though, but one that seems to have never succeeded in taking root. 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 Mankey 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 Loure dot Come 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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