Hi-Ho

Published Oct 17, 2019, 9:00 AM

We'll dig into the past today for a glimpse at the origins of incredible things. We hope you enjoy your guided tour.

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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. History is a lens. By looking through it, we can examine how we got to where we are today. There's much to learn from major events or discoveries of the past, and what they can tell us help us chart our journey from our first steps on Earth to our walk on the moon. History also allows us to see what went wrong and how we can do things better than next time around. It brings things into focus, so to speak, and perhaps the Vikings were looking for some of that focus when they came across rock crystals in eleventh century Sweden. In nineteen ninety seven, a team of scientists from a university in Germany arrived on the island of Gautland off the coast of Sweden to study the rock crystals the Vikings had left behind. These weren't like the jagged crystals most people are used to, with pillars of clear quartz seeming to grow out of the rocks. No, these crystals were smooth, impossibly so, and they'd been fashioned into convex bi aspherical lenses, not unlike contact lenses made today, except modern contacts and prescription lenses are made in labs by computer guided hardware. In many cases, one inch thick plastic discs called lens blanks are loaded into machines that grind and shaped them until they're the perfect curvature based on the patient's prescription. But the Viking crystals from Visby in Gautland, also known as the Visbye lenses, were made by a craftsman using a lathe that he turned as he shaped them by hand. It's easy to think of them as jewelry, especially since some of them were found cradled in silver fittings, but these crystals were too large to wear. Clearly the Vikings had bigger plans for them. They were most likely used to magnify small objects for artists, or maybe to start fires more easily by focusing the sun's rays at a pile of kindling. It's also possible that they were used in a similar fashion to cauterize wounds on the battlefield, and researchers haven't ruled out the possibility that the Vikings had tried to assemble them into some kind of telescope, but their craftsmanship wasn't the only thing special about the Bisbee lenses. In fact, the lenses have broadened our vision of what was capable. Hundreds of years before mathematicians had calculated the ideal lens shape. Without the proper formulas available to them, Viking artisans would have had to shape each crystal by trial and error. And we know this because subsequent excavations of the area uncovered other artifacts, such as beads and partial lenses, all failed attempts on the road to the perfect lens. Of course, one has to wonder what happened to the knowledge that led those lensmakers to their final design. Had it been available to others for use and expand upon, it's possible the first telescope might have been created much earlier than sixteen o eight, when Galileo gazed up at the stars. Unfortunately, any research or information on their creation has been lost to the ravages of time. One thing is certain, though, the lenses were not a Viking origin, nor were they native to the region. According to one expert, these rock crystals were imported from the Middle East into Western Russia before they were purchased by Swedish merchants who brought them home. Another theory states that the crystals were brought to Sweden by the bodyguards of Byzantine emperors, bodyguards who just happened to be Vikings. They were most likely fashioned in Eastern Europe, where they were set in silver before being passed through the Vikings extensive trade network. Today, a large collection of these lenses resides in Bisbee at the Foreign Sole Historical Museum. More lenses can be seen in the Swede National Museum in Stockholm. Although it's clear that many have been lost over the years, their existence is a wonder and it reminds us that history goes far deeper than we might think. Today's modern conveniences may have gotten their start many centuries ago as people look for ways to make their lives easier with new technology. And thanks to what these pioneers left behind, we have a better understanding of humanity's journey toward advancement and progress, which means it might be fair to say that these lenses have brought the past into focus. The best stories, the ones that transcend time and stay with us for generations, are often grounded in a little bit of truth. The fictional Overlook Hotel in Stephen King's The Shining was inspired by the very real and very haunted Stanley Hotel in the Colorado Rockies. In fact, King suffered a nightmare while staying there. They gave him the seed for a story about a family trying to survive the winter in a haunted hotel. Jaws by Peter Benchley didn't make people afraid of the water. No, that happened in nineteen sixteen when one shark killed five people during a summer at the Jersey Shore. But the news reports inspired Benchley's tale of Underwater Terror and the blockbuster film based on it. But there are stories that go back even further. They've lasted hundreds of years too, changing and transforming with each retelling, but still holding onto the magic that made them timeless in the first place. And at the heart of one of the most famous ones is Maria Sophia von Earthel. Maria was a baroness from Bavaria. She was born in seventeen twenty nine to Prince Philip Christoph von Earthel and Baroness von Bettendorff. Philip owned large swaths of land and was well respected among the Bavarian elite. After the birth of his daughter, though his wife passed away. Not wanting to live alone in his castle nor to raise his children by himself, he married the Countess von Reichenstein, Claudia Elizabeth Maria von Venningen. But the Countess was not what anyone would call motherly. She hated her stepchildren and was frequently cruel, especially to Maria. Her father didn't know about it, though, or if he did, he didn't care. He was too busy tending to royal business, such as the factory he owned that specialized in making glass and mirrors for the town. In fact, one mirror produced by the factory had a surface so perfect it was known as the talking mirror because they said it always spoke the truth. It lived within the castle along with Maria, her father, and her stepmother. There was also a mine in the nearby town of Bieber, reached only by traveling over seven mountains. Due to the mind's narrow tunnels and short ceilings, children and small adults were often employed to navigate them. They even wore brightly colored hoods when going through the particularly small tunnels. And if all of this sounds familiar, you wouldn't be wrong. It's believed that Baroness Maria Sophia vun Earthl was the real life inspiration for snow White, the princess who fled her evil stepmother for the nearby woods, only to encounter seven dwarves who provided her with safety and shelter. Of course, snow white stepmother, the evil queen, then used her magical talking mirror to find snow White, who then fell into a mysterious sleep after biting into a poison apple. Snow White was then placed in a glass coffin, where she awaited her prince to deliver true love's kiss and break the spell. The talking mirror already existed within the castle, The dwarves were based on real men who worked in the mines nearby, and the poison apple that was most likely inspired by the deadly nightshade plant that grew all over the region. A legend has it that the glass coffin was a nod of the glass factory owned by Maria's father. But unlike her fictional counterpart, the Baroness never found true love, nor did she marry a prince. She was poisoned by nightshade, though, but rather than putting her to sleep, it took her eyesight. Instead, she lived to the ripe old age of seventy one before passing away unmarried and without children, a far cry from the fairy tale told to young children at bedtime. And although she didn't quite get that happily ever after, she deserved her story still lives on today. Tales of the Baroness probably circulated by word of mouth around town, so it's a good thing. Jacob and Wilhelm lived only fifty miles from where she lived. They'd been known to gather folklore from all over Europe. Their first batch of stories was published in eighteen twelve, with a second volume released three years later, and although you might not know them by their first names, you definitely know them by another, the brothers Grimm. 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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