Love Notes

Published Jun 18, 2019, 9:00 AM

Two remarkable individuals are the centerpiece of our tour today, and hopefully their stories will fill you with awe and wonder.

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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. Under the best circumstances, the odds of dying in a plane crash are one and twenty million. You're more likely to be struck by lightning or dye in a car accident than you are to perish in a malfunctioning airplane. However, no matter how unlikely the scenario, the fear of falling out of the sky from thirty thousand feet up is very real, and it's only amplified by stories like that of Tim Lancaster. Lancaster was a forty two year old British Airways pilot with over eleven thousand flight hours under his belt. He was more than capable of handling a simple flight from Birmingham, England, to Spain. On June tenth, Tim and his co pilot, Alistair Atchinson, took a British Airways Flight fifty nine into the clouds along with eighties seven Precious Souls. Take Off was perfect. The plane soared skyward for twenty minutes as it worked its way up. It was only when the plane reached twenty three thousand feet that everyone started to realize that this was one of those one in two hundred million flights. An explosion in the cockpit startled the passengers and blew the door to the flight deck clean off its hinges. They saw everything the open window, the debris and paperwork being sucked out the front of the plane, and the pilot had gone missing the windscreen. Basically, the plane's windshield had come loose and flown away completely, deep pressurizing in the cabin, and the pilot, Tim Lancaster, had been sucked out through the opening in a matter of seconds. Another remember bravely ran to the cabin and took a position in the pilot's seat while Atchinson, the co pilot, got his bearings. He strapped on an oxygen mask and told the passengers to hold tight. They were about to make an emergency landing. He got on the radio to signal to the closest airport that he needed a place to land, but the wind whipping through the plane made hearing anyone at air traffic control almost impossible. Without their confirmation, Atchinson couldn't begin the emergency landing procedures. After some time, however, a message from Southampton Airport came through and Atchinson began his descent towards the runway. He landed the plane without incident, saving the lives of every single person on board. But you might be wondering what happened to the pilot, Tim Lancaster. After all, authorities eventually found the windshield and were able to deduce what had caused it to separate from the rest of the plane. An investigation revealed the use of bolts of varying sizes in securing the windshield to the flight act, none of which had been strong enough to handle the changes in pressure between the cabin and the outside, and Lancaster well, they didn't have to go far to find him because he'd never left the season pilot had been sucked out the window, but Atchinson, thinking on his feet, had grabbed his colleague's ankles and held on with all his strength until more crew members were able to come and help him. Being exposed to such strong winds that that high altitude should have killed him, especially as his body continued to slide farther outside the cockpits. According to flight attendant Nigel Ogden, the first crew member to take over holding the pilot's ankles. Lancaster kept hitting his head on the fuselage, but letting go of him risked his body being sucked into one of the engines, which would bring down the plane even faster and kill everyone on board. So they held on Ogden, withstanding frost bite and exhaustion, until Atchinson was able to bring Flight fifty nine safely to the ground. Not a single passenger or crew member died in the incident, thanks to some quick thinking by everyone involved, and although Lancaster also suffered from frostbite and minor injuries, he was back on the job six months later with a heck of a story to tell, for sure. I can't help but wonder though, if he warned people before he shared the story with them. This one will give you chills, he must have said, So hold on tight. It doesn't take a lot to change the world. Just one small act can set off a chain of events that could shape the future for generations to come, and oftentimes those acts occur under durest when there's much to lose and little to gain in the short term. During Prohibition, the government took away alcohol across the country under the belief that they were hearing the nation of abhorrent behavior. Working class folks turned to bootlegging and hoarding to get by, and their combined efforts eventually led to the repeal of the Jaconian law. However, years earlier, it was a Roman priest who broke the law of the land, and his rebellion against the empire did more than change the law, it changed the world. Around two d d at the height of the rule of Emperor Claudius, the Second Rome was on a bloody path of war and destruction. Claudius needed his armies to be bigger and stronger. There was only one problem. No one wanted to join up. Roman men at the time had no interest in traveling across Europe to fight on behalf of a cruel and despotic leader. Legend has it that Claudius was so strong that he could knock out a horse's tooth with a single punch. He had no patience for formalities and positioned himself as the opposite of the aristocratic emperors that came before him. He was a soldier through an through, and he expected his men to follow suit. Because he was a soldier with deep affinity for the military. He had no time for silly things like marriage or family life. In fact, Claudius believed it was the concept of family that was keeping men from joining his ranks. They were soft and weak, he said. By getting married and raising children, they were not living up to their full potential as soldiers of Rome. However, rather than incentivized new recruits with promises of fame and glory, you know, positive reinforcement, Claudius took the opposite approach. He simply banned marriage. It was a harsh move, for sure, and one that did not go unnoticed by the Church. A local priest did not agree with this declaration. He believed people should be able to pursue their love despite what the emperor thought. Government had no right to deny what God had already blessed. Although he knew it was illegal, the priest found a way to rebel against Claudius. He began performing clandestine marriage ceremonies for Roman couples looking to build better lives for themselves. Unfortunately, just as had happened with speakeasies during the prohibition, the authorities found out about the secret ceremonies taking place right under the Emperor's nose. They arrested the priest and paraded him in front of the Prefect of Rome for a trial. Neither his testimony on true love or his duties as a man of the cloth made any difference to the Roman courts. He had defied Emperor Claudius and made a mockery of his position. The priest's fate had been sealed long before his trial. He was sentenced to death, which was to be carried out over a series of beatings and stonings before his eventual decapitation. Claudius was going to make an example out of this traitor for anyone else looking to challenge him. So defiantly. The priest was held in prison for a short time before his death, and during his stay something unexpected happened. He found love. Not unlike young couples, he had married in secret, and despite the obvious barriers keeping the two apart, their relationship flourished. You see, he had fallen in love with someone outside his prison cell, the daughter of one of his jailers. During their brief time that they had together, they exchanged notes and letters professing their love for each other all the way up to the day of the priest's execution. He was beheaded for his crimes as ordered, and went down in history as a martyr for his cause on behalf of lovers everywhere. And it was because of his efforts to stand up to an unjust and immoral law that he was later named a saint. And because he died on February, we remember him on that same day each year, signing letters and cards to our loved ones with his name, not ours from your Valentine. 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 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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