It's Alive

Published Apr 11, 2019, 9:00 AM

Some human accomplishments are frightening, and others are hilarious. I hope you don't mind if the tour guide shows you one of each today as you pass through the Cabinet.

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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. Any hairbrain scheme or wild new idea is typically met with the same reaction when pigs fly too many. The idea of airborne livestock is unheard of. After all, it's not like pigs have wings, do they. However, organizers of the nineteen thirty St. Louis International Air Exposition needed something new to enthrall audiences. Now, you wouldn't think that an air show in nineteen thirties Missouri would need a gimmick to keep spectators entertained. Pilots performing aerial tricks overhead should have been enough, but the people demanded more. They wanted to see something they had never seen before. So the show organizers looked for a new act, something bold, something daring, something bizarre, And that's when they turned to Ali. She went up on February eighteenth of nine thirty in a Ford Trimotor. The three engine prop plane traveled a total of seventy two miles from Bismarck, Missouri, to St. Louis. People on the ground watched in awe as a team of scientists and a farmer named Ellsworth W. Buntz went up along with her bunts, crouched beside her with a bucket and his hands ready to pull on her utters. If you haven't guessed it by now, the Ali I'm referring to was no pig. She was a cow, a Guernsey cow, to be exact, and a very productive one at that. It was said that she had to be milked three times a day, far more than her bovine colleagues on the farm. Because of her overabundance of milk, Ali was chosen for the unique honor of being the first cow to fly in an airplane. As the plane flew, Bunce was able to procure twenty four quarts of milk from her, which he packaged up in brown cartons and parachuted down to the audience. Famous aviator Charles Lindbergh was said to have caught one for himself. But I know what you're thinking, why put a cow on an airplane? Well. Scientists had wanted to test the effects of high altitude on livestock, and the St. Louis International Air Expo was in need of a new kind of attraction. What better way to solve both problems at once than by putting a one ton dairy cow in a small metal tube and firing her thousands of feet into the air. The experiment worked, and elm Farm Ali, as she came to be known, was awarded several firsts. She was the first cow to fly in an airplane, and because of her Ellsworth Bunts became the first man to milk a cow on an airplane in flight. Ali's achievement is still remembered today, just not in a anyone might have expected. She became so popular that an operatta was written about her, called Madam Butterfat, Written of course, by the composer Muccini. It tells the story of how Ali threatened to unleash a gigantic cow pie in the plain's cabin unless her milk was dropped to the poor children below. A production is still performed each year at the National Mustard Museum in Middletown, Wisconsin, featuring such songs as Bovine Cantata in B flat major and Yes, there is indeed a National Mustard Museum. In fact, the museum also celebrates Ali each year in a festival known as Elm Farm Ali Day. Why Wisconsin when Ali hailed from Missouri. Well, Wisconsin is the dairy capital of the US. It produces more milk than any other state in the country. But the mustard museum connection seems a bit more strange until you hear the curator explain it. Apparently, there's an old Wisconsin saying that goes something like this, A cow who cuts the mustard is a cow who can be trusted, and no cow is more trusted in Wisconsin than Elm Farm. Aye. Giovanni Aldini was a scientist, like his uncle Luigi Galvanni. Now if that name sounds familiar, that's because it's where we get the term galvanism. Galvinism is the contraction of a muscle when exposed to an electrical current. If you've ever seen someone get taste, you've probably seen galvinism in action. Toward the end of the eighteenth century, Aldini traveled extensively performing grotesque experiments before captivated and disgusted audiences. He would lob the head off an animal, then hook it up to a battery and demonstrate how its jaw would open and close, or how its eyes would move about in their suck gets too many the animal looked like it was somehow alive again. Aldini took his research further and began experimenting on humans. He was one of the first doctors to practice electroshock therapy on the brain, claiming it could be used to cure a number of mental illnesses. However, his greatest experiment was yet to come, and it would change the world in unexpected ways. A London man named George Forster had been convicted of murdering his wife and child. The trial was scheduled quickly and witnesses called in to testify. During the trial Forrester's mother in law explain how her daughter and grandchild had gone to see him one Saturday afternoon in December of eighteen o two. Apparently, he and his wife didn't live together, despite her insistence that they share a home as a family. She and the child left on Sunday morning. On Monday, their bodies were found in the Paddington Canal. It took almost no time for the jury to find Forrester guilty. The courts sentenced him to hang, followed by a dissection of the body shortly after and Forrester was despondent. Not only had he lost his family, but hanging was not a wholly effective method of execution. Death row inmates had been known to lose consciousness, giving them the appearance of having died before being dissected alive on the exam table afterward, and that was Forrester's greatest fear. So he fashioned a knife out of what he could find in his cell and attempted to end his own life before the hanging. It didn't work. With all other options dried up, Forrester decided to come clean. He confessed to his family's murder, how he hated his wife and had brought her to the canal twice before, but couldn't find the nerve to and her life until that third and final visit. The hanging proceeded as planned, and Forrester's body was quickly sent off to be examined. The pace of the trial, hanging, and dissection of the victim's body were considered hasty, even by the standards of the time, and it was thought that Forrester's confession had been coerced out of him, and that an officer named mister Pass had rushed the trial simply to acquire a fresh corpse for a wealthy benefactor. And that benefactor's name none other than Giovanni Aldini. Is he He had big plans for the late mister Forrester, which he demonstrated at London's Royal College of Surgeons in eighteen o three. The audience was packed with doctors and civilians, all craning their necks to get a better look at the spectacle on the operating room table. With the victim laid out on the table, Doctor Aldini proceeded to take two conducting rods connected to a mattery and pressed them against various parts of Forrester's body. He would apply them to his face and watch as the jaw moved and the muscles underneath contracted. The left eye even opened when touched to his backside. Forrester's entire body tensed up and his legs moved, as though he were coming back to life. And that's what some in the audience believe to be happening right before their eyes, that a man was being electrocuted back to life. In fact, Mr pass, the official who had allegedly obtained the corpse for the scientist, was so disturbed by what he saw that he died of shock soon after leaving the theater. The fascination around Galvinism and al Dini's experiments never really subsided, even as medical science continued to progress. Through the nineteenth century, English poet Samuel Taylor Coolridge often discussed with friends how electricity could be used to regenerate life. Among those friends were a family of writers known as the Godwins. Their daughter Mary, fascinated by these perverted tales of mad science, eventually channeled her obsession into a story of her own. In fact, Mary Godwin and that story have come to define an entire genre of literature. But you might know her better today as Mary Shelley. 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.

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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