Sometimes stories are powerful because of the yarns they spin, and sometimes they're powerful because of how they are told. Today's tour features one of each.
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Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all of these amazing tales right there on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. It's a jungle out there. Dangers lurk around every corner. Lions, tigers, and yes, bears can be hiding when we least expect them, even outside of the actual jungle. Of course, it's not supposed to be that way. But in New York in eighteen seventy four, the city was gripped by a panic unlike they'd ever seen before. It was first reported on the front page of the New York Herald. The animals at the Central Park Zoo had gotten loose, and we're now running free through Manhattan. It had all started with a rhinoceros, which gored its keeper before freeing itself and its fellow actives. A panther soon found its way into a church on West fifty three Street, terrorizing worshippers. Donkeys, apes, and elephants were on the prowl, taking out anyone in their path. According to initial reports, forty people had been killed one day after the escape. Two more had been injured. The Herald referred to that day as another Sunday of horror. The police worked tirelessly to corral the various beasts and quell the bloodshed. Rhino that had kicked everything off eventually fell into the New York sewer system, where it flought a sea lion, and anaconda found its next meal in a giraffe. A lioness evaded hunters on Broadway. There was also a polar bear, some hyenas, and a Bengal tiger the last of which boarded a ferry boat in search of some well, let's just call it seafood. It would be a busy several days following the escape, but soon enough the police managed to capture an account for every animal that had gone missing from the zoo. Walk through Central Park today, and you might not even re lies that anything had happened at all. Now, if you had read the original article in the New York Herald all the way to the end, you would have realized the shocking truth about the whole thing, that it hadn't actually happened. The story had been conceived by editor Thomas Connery, who had allegedly gotten permission to run it by the paper's owner, James Gordon Bennett Jr. Connery, had been strolling through Central Park when he saw a leopard being moved from its carriage to its cage at the zoo. In that time, it had nearly managed to break free from its captors. The story sat with him, and he considered writing a serious piece for the paper to shame them for their lack security. But then he got a better idea. He asked one of the writers, Joseph Clark, to pen the article, which came in at a round ten thousand words. Since it had been published on the front page accompanied by such a stark headline as awful calamity A shocking Sabbath Carnival of death, readers assumed it all to be true. Almost nobody read all the way to the end, where the final paragraph let every one in on the joke. It was the Victorian era equivalent of only reading the headline on social media. As a result, those who saw the headline and skim the peace behaved about as well as could be expected of them. Men grabbed their rifles and revolvers and headed out into the city, prepared to take down any non human creature they saw. It's even said that the editor of The New York Times was among them. Other papers sent out reporters for witness statements and information on the remaining animals that had yet to be caught. Even the police increased their patrol numbers, eager to bring an end to the carnage. Once everyone realized that there was nothing to worry about, the Herald came under fire for its role in terrifying the city. The Times and other newspapers attacked the Herald for its irresponsibility. A few papers used the opportunity to address the original underline issue of weak security at the Central Park Zoo, but perhaps the most notable story about the hoax came actually one week before it was ever published. At the time, the Herald did many op eds against President Ulysses S. Grant and his grasp for power. Grant, a Republican, had considered seeking a third term in office, even though tradition dictated that presidents should never serve more than two. The paper referred to this power grab as Caesarism. Political cartoonist Thomas Nast, also a Republican, put his own spin on the rumors by using The Herald's hoax as inspiration his cartoon was published in Harper's Weekly. In it, he represented the Herald as a donkey dressed in a lion's skin with the word Caesarism written across the side. As the donkey ran through the zoo, it scared the other animals, one of which was tagged as the Republican Vote. Nast referred to the Republican vote as the same animal again some weeks later, a trend that took off among political cartoonists all over the country. According to the legend, it was this new parade of animals that inspired Connery to publish that infamous hoax in the New York Herald, and Thomas Nast's depiction of the Republican Vote as a zoo animal has stuck around today. You'll see it on television, campaign posters and on the pages of countless newspapers across the country. In fact, it's now considered by most to be the mascot of the Republican Party, the elephant. We fill our days on this floating rock, chasing ambitions and aspirations. So many of us try to follow our dreams and fall short. We slip or stumble, and before we know it's it's all over, or maybe not it takes resilience and an iron will to reach out and put ourselves up to finish what we started. That's what John Gadsby did many moons ago in his own city. No, not Gatsby with T and that's a different story. This man's name was Gadsby with a D. He lived in Branton Hills, a tiny town in a bit of a bind. John Gadsby had seen it for himself. Criminals were everywhere, driving the quality of life in his hometown way down. Having grown tired of watching the place he loved fall apart all around him, Gadsby organized the local kids to form a group a means to build everything back up into a shining city on a hill. Once the group got to work, Branton Hills population skyrocketed from two thousand inhabitants up to sixty thou with boosts and weddings and berths, And with all of that growth came improvement to the conditions in town. John Gadsby had done such a good job at making Branton Hills better his neighbors elected him as their mayor, and with Gadsby at the helm, Branton Hills thrived. It was widely regarded as his stunning victory for the power of grassroots activism. In fact, his story was so inspirational an author thought that it would make for a decent book. However, this writer told the story using a strange approach known as a lipogram. A lipogram is a story where a particular element of the language is eliminated or a boundary of some kind is put in place. In his book about Gadsby, the author manipulated the language using such tools as circumlocation or a roundabout way of making a particular point. It was how the author was able to stay within his predetermined boundary. All told, the book wasn't too thrilling and had difficulty finding a publisher willing to print it. But the author believed in his story and did what any headstrong writer would have done. He printed Gadsby through a vanity distributor. Sadly, most hardbacks burned in a fire at the printing facility, so not many people were able to get their hands on one. However, a rare volume did eventually sell at auction for four thousand dollars. An Oshkosh Daily critic at the time called Gadsby's amazingly smooth with no halting parts. It was difficult for the author to pull off his language trick for as long as he did, and in succeeding, Gadsby became one of a handful of books over the years that has utilized a lipogram to tell its story. Sadly, Gadsby was not a work of non fiction. Branson Hills never existed, and John Gadsby himself also completely made up. There had been no grassroots activism, no jump in population, and no financial victory. John gadsby story had been entirely fictional, told by a man named Ernest Vincent Wright over the course of fifty words. It bore a striking resemblance to another book called A Void, published in nineteen sixty nine by George Perick. It was a novel about a group of people looking for a man named Anton Val. Part comedy, part horror, the story contained twists and numerous subplots in an effort to both confuse the reader and show off the author's ability in spinning a tail his hand tied behind his back by a self imposed constraint. Right and Perik shared a common love for lippogrammatic storytelling. They had a knack for telling stories in some of the most difficult ways imaginable. Nobody made them do it, and it had been a challenge, but in many regards it worked. They had, by all objective measures, told their story the way that they had intended. It also wild critics with their ingenuity. After all, it took dedicated writers and a whole lot of talent to pull off what they did. You see, the novels written by Ernest Wright and George Perrock lacked one important thing, the letter E. 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. Ye