One thing's for certain: managing a community is hard work. Every generation has its challenges, too—along with their own curious solutions.
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Welcome to Aaron Manky's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all of these amazing tales are right there on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. When it comes to advancements in science, education is key. Each generation learns from those who came before them, studying their experiments and findings. Students then apply what they've learned to keep things moving forward. Often children get their first taste of scientific exploration at home. They might receive a microscope for Christmas, or a chemistry set on their birthday, mixing baking soda and vinegar to produce volcanic explosions in their kitchens. But one scientist discovery led to a new kind of educational toy, one that was far more dangerous than anyone realized. His name was William Crooks, born in England in eighteen thirty two. William came from a big family, the oldest of eight surviving siblings out of a total of sixteen. Though his father and grandfather had been Taylor's Williams set out on his own path. He enrolled at the Royal College of Chemistry when he was just sixteen, paying his own way while living at home. He was also responsible for buying his own materials, including the chemicals used in his academic experiments. But his hard work paid off and he earned a scholarship for his sophomore year. William worked his way up, assisting the school's director, August Wilhelm von Hoffmann in the lab and with his research. As he got older and gained more experience, William also made connections with scientists from other fields. Michael Faraday, for example, experimented with electromagnetism and electro chemistry. The physicist George Stokes studied fluid dynamics and how light traveled. It's likely that both men influenced William heavily as he pursued his true passion optical physics. Now, optical physics dealt with the study of light and how it interacted with matter. William's father noticed this fascination with optics when the boy was just nineteen and built him a lab right in the family garden. Over the next several decades, William utilized several new testing methods including spectral analysis to track how matter reacted to electromagnetic radiation, and in eighteen sixty one, his techniques helped him discover a brand new element for the periodic table, thallium. William wrote papers, he developed new tools, and published numerous findings over the course of his life. In though everything changed, Marie Currey and her husband Pierre disc covered radium, and news of the breakthrough traveled around the world. Naturally, journalists sought out experts for their opinions on the finding, and one of those experts happened to be William Crooks. By nineteen o three, he had already started experimenting with radium on his own. He had taken a screen treated with zinc sulfide and placed it close to a small amount of radium, observing as the elements alpha radiation caused a fluorescent reaction. Unfortunately, during his tests, he spilled some of the radium over his workplace. Not wanting to lose a single grain of the expensive substance, he employed his microscope to help him find it all. He noticed during his search that some of the radium had wound up on the zinc sulfide screen, which caused tiny flashes of light to explode before his eyes. William realized that he needed a way to safely examine these flashes, so he created a device to contain the reaction. It was a metal tube with a smaller zinc sulfide screen. Inside, a needle held a tiny grain of radium at its tip close to the screen, the proximity of which could be adjusted thanks to a thumb screw. The reactions inside were viewed through a lens, which helped to seal the radioactive material inside the tube. He called it a spintheroscope, from the Greek spin thyro voglia, meaning scintillation. William died in nineteen but the popularity of his spintheroscope continued to grow. It proved so popular, in fact, that it became a hot toy for kids growing up in the nineteen forties and fifties. The Gilbert's You two thirty eight Atomic Energy Kit contained everything the budding nuclear physicists needed to smash the atom, all from the comforts of their bedroom. The kits even included a small amount of radioactive uranium or Yes. William Crooks might have given us thallium and the cathode ray tube, but his legacy, however, indirectly exposed children to something a bit more dangerous, nuclear powered toys. Conflict resolution is an important part of any relationship. Being able to work through our differences means we can form stronger bonds and collaborate more closely. It may take something as simple as a conversation, or as elaborate as multiple discussions in a conference room with the help of a mediator. Old sitcoms occasionally had episodes where two characters who disliked each other would suddenly find themselves locked in a room or a closet together, forced to work until help arrived. They would talk through their issues until by the end of the episode they came to a mutual understanding. But that was fiction. Real problems take real solutions, and sometimes the worst thing to do is lock people in a room and for the best. For over a millennia, though, the residents of Glencast, Scotland, did just that, well, sort of. They understood that it was beneficial to squash any conflict between two parties. They also knew that life in the village would be tough if people were getting into fights all the time, so they came up with their own way to bring about peace, and it didn't require a conference room at all. Glen Coe was no stranger to conflict. On February thirteenth of sixteen ninety two, soldiers from the Scottish government killed thirty members of Clan McDonald who had refused to align themselves with William the third and Mary the Second, the country's new king and queen. But even though the monarchy was violently forcing the stubborn clans into loyalty, the chiefs of those clans found a more civilized way of dealing with their differences. In fact, they had already figured out how to keep the peace without using violence at all. One way was by imposing fines on the chiefs for infractions committed by their clansmen. If the two parties were having a significant agreement, though the kind that couldn't be peacefully resolved or quickly resolved, there was a place they could go to hash things out. It was called the Island of Discussion, located in luck Levin. The tiny Island of Discussion was one of seven islands in the area. The people of Glencoe marooned the arguing parties there with a bundle of cheese, oatcakes and whiskey until they had worked out their problems. They were not allowed to leave until they were done, and they did this for over fifteen hundred years. No matter how heated things got, it seems like almost everyone was able to come to some kind of understanding. In fact, in all the time the island was used for conflict resolution, only one murder was said to have taken place, but lack Levin was home to more than just one island. The others were also used to vary in degrees. For example, once a land dispute was solved on the Island of Discussion, those involved were whisked away to a different island where the paper were was drafted to validate the agreement between both individuals, hence its name the Isle of Covenant or Ratification. Yet another island in luck Levin, was used as the final resting place for many of Glencoe's clans for hundreds of years, and like the Island of Discussion and the Isle of Covenant or Ratification, this one was an island of peace, not just for the dead, but for the living as well. Even if they were in conflict, clans would still share the work of keeping the place clean and maintained, and even when someone left Glencoe or the surrounding area, their final request was often to be returned and buried on that island. The last person to do so died in nineteen seventy two, having moved to London years before. Glenco's clans have no shortage of ways to keep the peace, but it's hard to beat a good old fashioned time out, even more so when that involved an entire island for them to sort out their problems, plus the cheese and whiskey. And I'm sure some parents out there I would love to do the same. 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.