Some origin stories are inspiring, while others feel like a big hit. So these additions to the Cabinet should feel right at home.
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Welcome to Aaron Menkey'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. Giuseppe was a fisherman, and when he came to the United States just before nineteen d he wasn't dreaming of anything else except maybe some children to inherit his work, ethic, his courage, and what he knew about the world. In short, his legacy. That would be a challenge, though, because Giuseppe had left his own roots behind. You see, Giuseppe and his wife rosal Lee got married just a year before leaving their home town on the coast of Sicily. It was a place where fishing was a way of life. Ancient cisterns for fermenting fish still tell the story of just how long people have been passing down that livelihood, and in some ways Giuseppe was holding onto that history. He was destined to spend his life working hard as a fisherman, but he saw a future for himself, his wife, and his trade as he raised his fortunes catch by catch in a new land. At the turn of the twentieth century, there was a string of travelers leaving their town and heading to a new home a small village twenty five miles north of San Francisco called Martinez, California, and they weren't alone. Between eighteen ninety and nineteen, more than half of their Sicilian town immigrated to the United States. Most landed in New York City. But the hustle and bustle wasn't their goal, and they set their sights on sunny summer coasts of the Pacific. Giseppe heard about how good the fishing there was without batting an eye. His young family was on a train across the continent, headed for California, but it wasn't new seas they owned. Instead, Sicilian fishermen like Giuseppe were mostly working the Sacramento River netting salmon. The catch was good, but it was hard work, and that was fine with Giuseppe. Hard work was what he knew best. Like so many Americans, Giuseppe and Rosalie traveled with their newborn daughter, the first of a streak of nine children who would be raised together. And if Giuseppe was hoping for sons, he wouldn't be disappointed. He and his wife would raise five, practically a fleet of fishermen. So he got to work teaching what he knew to Thomas Michael, Vincent's, Joseph, and Dominic. As the Sicilian fishing family grew, they went looking for new waters. They went south to the wharfs of the bigger city, San Francisco, and they left salmon behind for other kinds of commercial fish, like sardines that could be packed and sold through city canaries. After all, Sicilian fishermen had developed tools that were uniquely effective at catching small fish, like the lampara net that swings open wide like a glove to catch whole schools of fish at once. It was just the kind of technique that made new American businesses work. And when I say work, I mean it. The work was harder than ever. And Giuseppe's last three sons, Vincent, Joseph, and Dominic, well, they weren't so keen on taking up their father's legacy. They had prospects though, Because they were in a booming city. The two youngest boys got jobs as paper boys, they're older. Sister Marie remembers once when she went downtown she saw them on their paper routes, but not exactly on them. They weren't diligently running along to deliver the papers. Instead, they had taken one of the newspapers, crumpled it into a melon sized ball, and started a game of catch, throwing it back and forth across a wide, busy San Francisco street. Not only were they not fishing, they weren't even working. And things got worse when their brother, Vince, took a left turn into an American pastime that his father didn't value at all. He abandoned fishing for baseball. In fact, Vince was good enough that he got pulled into the local team, the San Francisco Seals, and his younger brothers, well, they followed in his path instead of their fathers. But Vince didn't last all that long. He was more of a charmer than a slugger. It wasn't all that bad. He did make it into the major leagues, but then he said the kind of record that most people don't want for their legacy, the most strikeouts in one year. Fortunately for Vince, many more players would go on to break that record in the coming years, but Giuseppe could only shake his head when his son couldn't even succeed at the game he chose over the trade he rejected. Things didn't go that way for Dominic, though, With his round glasses and short stature, he became known as the Little Professor, and he found his success in a college town Boston. Playing center field for the Red Sox, he smashed down records of his own. In ninety nine, he had a hitting streak of thirty four games. Today in that record remains unbroken, and it wasn't the only sports legacy that Dominic left in Boston, because he turned his stardom into a major hall when he helped found a new England team for a different sport, the Boston Patriots. Vince and Dominic succeeded, and along the way they played their part in building new American pastimes that could be shared by American families and passed down from one generation to another. They offered their fellow Americans a different kind of catch from their father's sardines, But in their father's eyes, both were overshadowed by their middle brother, Joseph, because what he had achieved in baseball outshone them all. In fact, he outshone everyone, not just in their family, but in the history of the sport. Joseph even broke his little brother's record with his own unequaled hitting streak, going fifty six games in. Joseph's success put his parents in comfort for the rest of their lives, and it put the Sicilian family name in the history books to be passed down from one generation of baseball fans to the next, and Joe's family name DiMaggio. The origin of the city's name is unknown. It's even unclear who the first settlers in the area were, but needless to say, it's old nestled alongside a river that empties into the nearby sea. The town became a thriving commercial epicenter, surviving even when larger and more powerful cities fell to ruins. Merchants everywhere came through the port for trade or to supply their ships for more distant travels. The fertile surrounding lands and markets brought in ships and travelers from all over the world. With so much to offer, it became one of the most powerful maritime republics of its day. But with all that power and strategic location came the need to defend themselves against those looking to take it. The list of leaders and countries who sought to control the port appeared to be endless. It seemed that no sooner had they fought off one attack, that they had to fight off another. Now it may have been that they had fierce soldiers, or that they had a mind with another nearby and very powerful city, but one thing is certain. They had a formidable fleet and widely used naval rams, an underwater extension of a ship's bow resembling a beak covered with metal. As you might imagine, these rams were quite effective at punching holes in enemy ships. Aside from the threat from invaders looking to take their land, the ports also faced another enemy, pirates. Over time, the pirates from a particular country became so prolific that already sizeable fleet they had had to be expanded, and with the growing number of men brought in for the ships, the city grew as well. Eventually the fleet had grown to the point where they offered their services to their neighbors. On one occasion, they helped defeat a large navy. On another they came to the aid of a great nobleman conquering a fleet of pirates. The gold they earned for those services had been enormous, and the city used it to fund elaborate construction projects. One of those buildings was a church. You see, rivalry between cities prompted each to build more extravagant structures than their neighbors, and places of worship became the pinnacle by which each city was measured. Construction of an elaborate cathedral began just outside the city walls as a demonstration that they were not afraid of any future attacks. The site had originally housed a smaller church, but it had never been finished. Over the next couple of centuries, the new cathedral was expanded. Restorations began after a fire sometime later. But through all of this the cathedral lacked one thing, a bell tower. The trouble was it couldn't afford it, because while the city still flourished, the money from that long ago pirate battle had been spent. Funding came from a different source. A wealthy widow gave money toward the project, and, in typical competitive fashion, plans for the tallest bell tower in existence began. But as construction started, there were already problems. Despite the best architects, the tower was far from perfect. The city had other issues to deal with. Two a century of battles delayed finishing the tower, and then there was also the matter of the city shoreline, which had moved farther away due to silt deposits. But the builders were persistent and finally completed the project, albeit two hundred years later. The tower, made of white marble, stands on five feet tall inside our eight stories and seven bells, one for each note on the musical scale. But the tower isn't the only breathtaking feature of the city. There are over twenty other historic structures, including bridges, churches, and yes more towers, all funded from those earlier maritime battles. There's a square where knights were once headquartered, and the city became a hub for education too. In fact, Galileo was once a professor of mathematics at the local university, one of the oldest around. But this day it's the main cathedral and bell tower that this Tuscan city is known for. The City of Pisa. Oh and one more thing, there are actually three bell towers in Pisa, not one, and the other two have something extraordinary and common with their more famous sibling, both of them also lean. 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. Yeah,