Two curious searches, each with their own depth and focus. Enjoy this trip through the Cabinet.
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Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. 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. If you live anywhere that gets really warm in the summers, you know what a heat wave can do to your blood pressure. Trying to work or even sleep when you're covered with sweat is downright miserable. And the last thing you want to deal with is other sticky, irritable people. But when you can't escape your neighbors, when heat and overcrowding get out of control, it creates a recipe for disaster, and a single spark can sent an entire population spiraling from frustration into madness. Allow me to set the scene for you. It's May of two thousand and one in Delhi, the capital of India and one of the most populous cities in the world. May is the height of summer there, and temperatures are creeping above one hundred and ten degrees fahrenheit. You're at home, in your sweltering apartment with no air conditioning, just a single electric fan humming away. As night falls, you anxiously wonder if you're in for yet another sleepless night, but you douse yourself in cold water, turn off the lights, and try to ignore the heat. And then just as you're starting to drift off, the power goes out. It's a rolling blackout, a common measure on hot nights when the grid is stretched past its breaking point. But now you don't even have your fan, and the apartment is starting to feel like a furnace. So what do you do? Like many desperate people around the city, you climb out onto the rooftop or balcony and try to sleep there. It's still ridiculously hot, and now you've got the mosquitoes to contend with, not to mention the risks of sleeping outside in an overcrowded neighborhood, but at this point you're desperate for sleep, so you stretch out and that's when you hear it, a faint thumping sound, like something banging on metal. As it grows louder, you realize that someone is climbing up the drain pipe. Could it be a neighbor from one of the other apartments. Who's gotten locked out or is it thieves? Whatever it is, the sounds keep getting louder until you can't bear the anticipation anymore. You peer over the balcony. In your mind goes blank. The person climbing toward you isn't a person at all. It's a monkey or something with a distinctly ape like face. It's between four and five feet tall, covered in shaggy black fur, and wearing what looks like a motorcycle helmet. It would be downright comical if it weren't for the shiny metal claws on its fingertips, which are currently lashing out straight toward you. The claws rake across your arms, drawing blood. You fall back in horror and pain, but the creature is already on the move. It leaps to the next building, then down into the alleyway, where it takes off into the darkness on rollerblades. It's a wild story, right. The world is full of strange cryptids, but a rollerblading monkey man hybrid with metal claws is definitely up there for oddness. And if this were an isolated incident, it would be easy to dismiss. But my friends it was not not at all. On the first night, fifteen people reported seeing the creature. Many of them sustained serious injuries in the form of bruises, bites, and scratches, and things only get worse from there. The following day there were fifty attacks. Then the fatalities began. Two men fell to their deaths from rooftops after screaming that they were being pursued by the monkey Man. Newspapers dubbed it the Black Monkey. They eagerly published the most sensational reports, alongside photos of by and scratches. Fanning the flames of hysteria, bands of vigilantes took to the streets, beating up anyone they deemed suspiciously harry. Meanwhile, the phones of the Delhi police kept ringing off the hook with sightings of the creature, and then, after about two weeks, it all came to a screeching halt. The calls slowed to a trickle, and the vigilantes went home. Oddly, no suspects had been arrested. The monkey man, if there ever was such a figure, was still at large, and to this day the mystery has not been solved. So what happened well, according to the official explanation it was all the case of mass hysteria, which seems incredible considering how many people it affected, But on closer inspection, there wasn't much similarity between the many wounds that were treated. Some could have been from stray dogs or rats, while others might have been from normal monkeys. Deli boasts a population of over twenty five thousand primates. After all, looking back, maybe the monkey man really was a group delusion, induced by stress and exacerbated by sensational tabloid reporting. But you have to think the city's monkeys must have been dealing with the heat as well, so maybe one of them was having a really bad day and just needed a way to cool off. In nineteen eighty four, amidst the tumult of the Soviet Afghan War, photographer Steve McCurry embarked on a mission. He was hired by National Geographic to document the harrowing reality of refugee camps along the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan. These camps provided a fragile sanctuary for the displaced masses fleeting the war. McCurry's journey took him through a labyrinthine network of thirty camps. One of these camps, known as Nasir bag became the focal point of his expedition. Established in nineteen eighty, Nasir Bog's population, at one point reached one hundred thousand. As he walked through the camp, McCurry stumbled upon a scene that altered the course of his career. A small school for girls. One of the fifteen girls stood out, a twelve year old with piercing green eyes. When McCurry lifted his lens, the girl shielded her face, a silent gesture of defiance against a world that had turned its back on her plight. But her teacher urged her to reveal herself. She wanted the world to see. The girl complied, and in that moment of vulnerability, McCurry captured an image that would reverberate across the globe, a portrait of resilience and the suffering of a nation torn apart by war. The photograph was published in the June nineteen eighty five edition of National Geographic, and because McCurry didn't have a translator with him that day, he simply titled the photo the Afghan Girl. The young girl didn't know it, but the photo made her the poster child for her people's hardship. Something about her unreadable gaze equally haunted and inspired viewers. Soon people around the world began referring to this image as the Afghan Mona Lisa. But for McCurry this was just the beginning. He returned to Afghanistan throughout his career, and then in January of two thousand and two, McCurry learned that the Nasir Bog camp was being closed. He and a team from National Geographic returned to the country once more, this time in search of a girl who had changed the world. By now, she'd be about thirty years old. When he arrived back in Nasir Bag, McCurry spoke to many of the people still there. With nothing but the photo of the Afghan girl and the little information he had, he and his team eventually found someone who claimed to know the woman's brother. That person sent word to the family that McCurry was looking for her. Finally, McCurry and his team were sent to a remote region of Afghanistan. There, amidst the desolate beauty of the landscape, they found her, a woman weathered by time and circumstance, yet bearing the same steely resolved that had captivated the photographer decades earlier. In that moment of reunion, time seemed to stand still as McCurry beheld the Afghan Girl once more. As he captured her image anew, he was struck by the familiarity of her gaze. She posed for the camera the same way she did all those years before, face turned toward the lens, eyes lit with resolve. Later IRIS recognition technology helped confirm that the woman was indeed the Afghan Girl, and the world finally learned her name as well, Sharbat Gula. She was a mother and a widow, and although she recalled being photographed in the nineteen eighties, it wasn't until she met McCurry in two thousand and two that she laid eyes on the iconic image. Seeing the photograph probably brought her back to that painful time in her life. Her parents had been killed when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, and she traveled to Nasir Bag by foot with her sister's brother and grandmother. Gula's journey became a testament to the indomitable human spirit in the face of adversity. For over a decade following her meeting with McCurry, Gula continued to suffer displacement as a result of the conflict in Afghanistan, but in twenty sixteen, the Afghan government gifted her a house to call her home. In the annals of history, the Afghan Girl remains more than just a photograph. She is a symbol of the enduring human spirit, and in the eyes of Steve McCurry, she's a reminder of photography's power to transcend borders. 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 Worldolore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.