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. Comic book fans are familiar with a certain set of phrases, often shouted toward the heavens. Look up in the sky. It's a bird, it's a plane, it's Superman. But a person flying above the clouds was only fiction, right? Something like that couldn't happen for real, could it? Just ask the people of medieval Ireland. In the seven forties, reports began to pour in a bizarre sightings. Beginning in a place called Telltown in the northeast. Three ships were spotted at a distance, their crews throwing spears over the decks to catch fish swimming below. But the ships weren't in the water. They were overhead, soaring through the sky. One of the spears missed and landed at their feet Onlookers watched as a crew member leapt off the deck to retrieve it. He swam down through the air as if it were water, picked up the errant spear, and swam back up to his ship. Over time, these stories changed a bit. The three ships became one ship, and then a tenth century king was present in some tellings. In later versions, the spear was picked up by someone on the ground who refused to give it back. The crewmate who swam down to get it cried, I am being drowned. The king then ordered the spear to be returned to him so that he could get back onto his ship. And we know of these stories today because of the Irish Annals, historical records of important events in Irish history. Four of these annals contain information about the sky ships seen in Telltown. Hundreds of years after the first sighting, the tales changed again. Around the fifteenth or sixteenth century, a manuscript was published containing a different account of the events. They no longer took place in Telltown, but rather at a monastery near the center of the country. It was called Klonmacnois, and it served as a major educational hub for the country, teaching different trades and of course, religious doctrine. In this iteration of the story, the spear had been changed to an anchor, which was dropped from above and then retrieved by a crewmate who swam down to earth to get it back. The priests held on to the anchor as the sailor cried that he was drowning, until they let it go and he was able to return to his ship. And it was this narrative that soon left the confines of Ireland and spread throughout England. According to Jeffrey de Brul, a twelfth century French abbot, the anchor actually landed in London in eleven twenty two. A similar version from twelve eleven claimed that the anchor was seen among piles of stones in the churchyard. As the parishioners watched, the rope that was tied to the anchor began moving. It was like an invisible force that was trying to rip it out of the ground from above. Wouldn't budge. One of the sailors climbed down the rope to the ground level and was grabbed by the people nearby. He struggled to get away, but died in their custody, having drowned by our heavier moisture filled air. And that same story would be discovered some time later in a Norse compilation of fantastic tales called Irish Marvels. So did the people of Ireland really witness a fleet of ships traversing the sky? Well, what they saw and what they thought they saw were two different things. Some medieval scholars believe that there really was a sea to be found among the heavens. As described in the Book of Genesis, God made the firmament and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament. To many at the time, it made sense that if there was a sea on Earth, then there must also be one above it as well. It's hard to imagine something as large arge as a boat flying through the air centuries before the first airplane would take off, but it might not be so strange after all. Hundreds of years after the first appearance of the Irish sky ships, another aircraft was seen, this time over Merkele, Texas. On the night of April twenty eighth of eighteen ninety seven, A group of people on their way home from church watched as an anchor attached to a rope was dragged along the ground for miles. It scraped across dirt, and gravel until it finally got caught on a section of railroad track. As these churchgoers looked up at what the rope was attached to, they saw an enormous airship, its windows illuminated by light from the inside. In an instant, someone from the ship climbed down and cut the anchor loose before the vessel took off, The crewmen hanging on as he disappeared into the night. According to an article printed in the Houston Post shortly thereafter, the anchor was put on display in a local blacksmiths shop. Whether these stories are true or not is honestly irrelevant. What Madam is that when it comes to exploration and the human imagination, the sky, as they say, is the limit. When we think about affecting change, we often sell ourselves shorts. There's a common sentiment shared by many that goes something like, I'm only one person? How much can I really do? And the reality is one person can make a difference. The problem is that difference isn't always best for everyone. Few people knew that better than Jay Cook. Cook was born in Sandusky, Ohio in eighteen twenty one to wealthy, powerful parents. He eventually moved to Philadelphia, where he got a job working at the banking firm E. W. Clarkin Company. After several years as a clerk, Cook was promoted to partner in eighteen forty two. Then he started his own banking company just before the start of the Civil War. It was so successful the US government went to him to borrow money so they could pay for things like uniforms, guns, and other necessities. Cook changed the face of banking in the United States. He helped establish the national banking system and managed to secure a hefty payout for himself through the sale of bonds during the war. Then in eighteen seventy he branched out of banking and turned the country into his own personal monopoly board. He started a railroad. Cook provided the financing for the Northern Pacific Railroad, which would create a direct line between Minnesota and the West Coast. The project had been approved way back in eighteen sixty four, but backing for it hadn't really materialized. Cook's contributions really jump started construction, which continued until eighteen eighty three. On September eighth of that year, former President Ulysses S. Grant drove a golden spike into the last piece of track, officially marking completion of the railway. Cook and Grant had known each other for some time, as the financier had donated heavily to his reelection campaign. In eighteen seventy two, well three years after construction had begun, Grant ventured to Cook's massive home in Philadelphia for a visit. It's not known what they talked about there, but chances are that it wasn't good. One year prior, a letter had been published by the banking firm of Lee's and Waller. It predicted that a crash of the railroad industry was imminent. Railways had become money pits, often rife with fraud and pointless construction. Many track systems were laid with no clear beginning or end, and Cook's investment bank in New York was on the verge of insolvency. He had no recourse. The European market was already dealing with its own financial crisis, and American investors weren't about to pour their funds into his endeavors. Neither was Grant. He'd been implicated a decade earlier in several financial debacles that made him hesitant to assist Cook. Despite their previous relationship. Three days after their meetup, Cook's bank went belly up. Pretty soon everyone back in New York heard the news. They mobbed the streets look for a way into the building. Police officers were called to quell the crowds and keep them from ripping the doors off their hinges. People lost everything and found themselves in the middle of the first Great Depression, almost sixty years before the Crash of nineteen twenty nine, and it was all thanks to Jay Cook. Even Wall Street shut down completely, with the New York Stock Exchange suspending trading for the first time ever. Grant considered funding a bailout of the Treasury Department, but ultimately decided against it. The Northern Pacific, though somehow managed to survive. A series of austerity measures had been initiated prior to the crash, and loans from other financiers helped keep the project alive. This crisis was known as the Panic of eighteen seventy three, and it led to the disillusion of over one hundred and twenty railroads, the loss of eighteen thousand businesses, and the bankruptcy of countless investors, and it lasted for more than five years. Among the first groups hit by the panic were formerly enslaved Americas who had had their life savings stored at the Freedman Savings Bank. It also went under, costing thousands of African American men and women everything they had. No one was safe from the panic, either from the poor and uneducated to the rich and cultured. Everyone stood to lose something or everything as a result of one man's greed. Because of Jay Cook, unemployment rose to a whopping fourteen percent across the country, although some areas saw even worse. Veterans were tossed into the streets, while men like Cook found ways to regain their wealth. He made his money back by investing in a silver mine out in Utah before dying in nineteen oh five. Jay Cook was a ruthless business man, and he was almost solely responsible for the first and probably one of the worst depressions that the United States has ever seen. 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.

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. Comic book fans are familiar with a certain set of phrases, often shouted toward the heavens. Look up in the sky. It's a bird, it's a plane, it's Superman. But a person flying above the clouds was only fiction, right? Something like that couldn't happen for real, could it? Just ask the people of medieval Ireland. In the seven forties, reports began to pour in a bizarre sightings. Beginning in a place called Telltown in the northeast. Three ships were spotted at a distance, their crews throwing spears over the decks to catch fish swimming below. But the ships weren't in the water. They were overhead, soaring through the sky. One of the spears missed and landed at their feet Onlookers watched as a crew member leapt off the deck to retrieve it. He swam down through the air as if it were water, picked up the errant spear, and swam back up to his ship. Over time, these stories changed a bit. The three ships became one ship, and then a tenth century king was present in some tellings. In later versions, the spear was picked up by someone on the ground who refused to give it back. The crewmate who swam down to get it cried, I am being drowned. The king then ordered the spear to be returned to him so that he could get back onto his ship. And we know of these stories today because of the Irish Annals, historical records of important events in Irish history. Four of these annals contain information about the sky ships seen in Telltown. Hundreds of years after the first sighting, the tales changed again. Around the fifteenth or sixteenth century, a manuscript was published containing a different account of the events. They no longer took place in Telltown, but rather at a monastery near the center of the country. It was called Klonmacnois, and it served as a major educational hub for the country, teaching different trades and of course, religious doctrine. In this iteration of the story, the spear had been changed to an anchor, which was dropped from above and then retrieved by a crewmate who swam down to earth to get it back. The priests held on to the anchor as the sailor cried that he was drowning, until they let it go and he was able to return to his ship. And it was this narrative that soon left the confines of Ireland and spread throughout England. According to Jeffrey de Brul, a twelfth century French abbot, the anchor actually landed in London in eleven twenty two. A similar version from twelve eleven claimed that the anchor was seen among piles of stones in the churchyard. As the parishioners watched, the rope that was tied to the anchor began moving. It was like an invisible force that was trying to rip it out of the ground from above. Wouldn't budge. One of the sailors climbed down the rope to the ground level and was grabbed by the people nearby. He struggled to get away, but died in their custody, having drowned by our heavier moisture filled air. And that same story would be discovered some time later in a Norse compilation of fantastic tales called Irish Marvels. So did the people of Ireland really witness a fleet of ships traversing the sky? Well, what they saw and what they thought they saw were two different things. Some medieval scholars believe that there really was a sea to be found among the heavens. As described in the Book of Genesis, God made the firmament and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament. To many at the time, it made sense that if there was a sea on Earth, then there must also be one above it as well. It's hard to imagine something as large arge as a boat flying through the air centuries before the first airplane would take off, but it might not be so strange after all. Hundreds of years after the first appearance of the Irish sky ships, another aircraft was seen, this time over Merkele, Texas. On the night of April twenty eighth of eighteen ninety seven, A group of people on their way home from church watched as an anchor attached to a rope was dragged along the ground for miles. It scraped across dirt, and gravel until it finally got caught on a section of railroad track. As these churchgoers looked up at what the rope was attached to, they saw an enormous airship, its windows illuminated by light from the inside. In an instant, someone from the ship climbed down and cut the anchor loose before the vessel took off, The crewmen hanging on as he disappeared into the night. According to an article printed in the Houston Post shortly thereafter, the anchor was put on display in a local blacksmiths shop. Whether these stories are true or not is honestly irrelevant. What Madam is that when it comes to exploration and the human imagination, the sky, as they say, is the limit. When we think about affecting change, we often sell ourselves shorts. There's a common sentiment shared by many that goes something like, I'm only one person? How much can I really do? And the reality is one person can make a difference. The problem is that difference isn't always best for everyone. Few people knew that better than Jay Cook. Cook was born in Sandusky, Ohio in eighteen twenty one to wealthy, powerful parents. He eventually moved to Philadelphia, where he got a job working at the banking firm E. W. Clarkin Company. After several years as a clerk, Cook was promoted to partner in eighteen forty two. Then he started his own banking company just before the start of the Civil War. It was so successful the US government went to him to borrow money so they could pay for things like uniforms, guns, and other necessities. Cook changed the face of banking in the United States. He helped establish the national banking system and managed to secure a hefty payout for himself through the sale of bonds during the war. Then in eighteen seventy he branched out of banking and turned the country into his own personal monopoly board. He started a railroad. Cook provided the financing for the Northern Pacific Railroad, which would create a direct line between Minnesota and the West Coast. The project had been approved way back in eighteen sixty four, but backing for it hadn't really materialized. Cook's contributions really jump started construction, which continued until eighteen eighty three. On September eighth of that year, former President Ulysses S. Grant drove a golden spike into the last piece of track, officially marking completion of the railway. Cook and Grant had known each other for some time, as the financier had donated heavily to his reelection campaign. In eighteen seventy two, well three years after construction had begun, Grant ventured to Cook's massive home in Philadelphia for a visit. It's not known what they talked about there, but chances are that it wasn't good. One year prior, a letter had been published by the banking firm of Lee's and Waller. It predicted that a crash of the railroad industry was imminent. Railways had become money pits, often rife with fraud and pointless construction. Many track systems were laid with no clear beginning or end, and Cook's investment bank in New York was on the verge of insolvency. He had no recourse. The European market was already dealing with its own financial crisis, and American investors weren't about to pour their funds into his endeavors. Neither was Grant. He'd been implicated a decade earlier in several financial debacles that made him hesitant to assist Cook. Despite their previous relationship. Three days after their meetup, Cook's bank went belly up. Pretty soon everyone back in New York heard the news. They mobbed the streets look for a way into the building. Police officers were called to quell the crowds and keep them from ripping the doors off their hinges. People lost everything and found themselves in the middle of the first Great Depression, almost sixty years before the Crash of nineteen twenty nine, and it was all thanks to Jay Cook. Even Wall Street shut down completely, with the New York Stock Exchange suspending trading for the first time ever. Grant considered funding a bailout of the Treasury Department, but ultimately decided against it. The Northern Pacific, though somehow managed to survive. A series of austerity measures had been initiated prior to the crash, and loans from other financiers helped keep the project alive. This crisis was known as the Panic of eighteen seventy three, and it led to the disillusion of over one hundred and twenty railroads, the loss of eighteen thousand businesses, and the bankruptcy of countless investors, and it lasted for more than five years. Among the first groups hit by the panic were formerly enslaved Americas who had had their life savings stored at the Freedman Savings Bank. It also went under, costing thousands of African American men and women everything they had. No one was safe from the panic, either from the poor and uneducated to the rich and cultured. Everyone stood to lose something or everything as a result of one man's greed. Because of Jay Cook, unemployment rose to a whopping fourteen percent across the country, although some areas saw even worse. Veterans were tossed into the streets, while men like Cook found ways to regain their wealth. He made his money back by investing in a silver mine out in Utah before dying in nineteen oh five. Jay Cook was a ruthless business man, and he was almost solely responsible for the first and probably one of the worst depressions that the United States has ever seen. 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.