Returning the Favor

Published Dec 29, 2022, 10:00 AM

It's delightful to learn something new about things that feel so familiar, and today's tour through the Cabinet aims to deliver on that.

Welcomed 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. The people that we see on TV and movie screens today often started from humble beginnings. Kathleen and Percy Carey, for example, lived with their sons in a Volkswagen van for a short time while Percy was looking for work. He finally found a job at a tire factory, working in the accounting departments, and the boys took jobs as janitors and security guards at the factory in exchange for living in the house that the company moved them into across the street. But eventually one of those boys broke out of his uniform and went on to great to claim because everyone knows who Jim Carey is now. In the mid nineteen sixties, Martin Luther King Jr. And his wife, Coretta Scott King were already well known. They had marched on Washington in nineteen sixty three, where Martin delivered one of the greatest and most famous speeches in American history on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Their words and actions were being heard and felt across the country as black men and women fought for their civil rights, and yet, despite their fame and calls for unity, the Kings were often persecuted because of their race. That would have been hard enough for only two adults, but the Kings also had four children, four children to guide through a world that would simultaneously revere them and condemn them. It was a terrible situation, and their parents did all they could to make things as normal as possible, and so sometime during the mid nineteen sixties, Mrs King tried to enroll her children in acting school, and unsa prizingly, not a single facility nearby would take them in. Despite the Civil Rights Act explicitly outlined segregation and businesses and public spaces, schools, and other establishments still did what they could to prevent black people from participating. So, with nowhere else to turn, Mrs King called up the little known Atlanta Actors and Writers Workshop, led by couple Betty Lou and her husband Walter. Betty Lou didn't hesitate she said to Mrs King, sure, come on over, and just like that, the King children were finally able to take acting lessons. Eldest daughter, Yolanda King, was lucky enough to study with the co owner, Walter exclusively, but that wasn't all. The Atlanta Workshop was one of, if not the only, integrated acting school around, where white students and black students could recite lines and perform plays on stage together. It sounds heartwarming now, but at the time it caused an uproar in the community. In nineteen she was cast as the romantic lead in a new play that the Workshop was putting on. However, her co star happened to be white, which led to violent unrest. One person hurled objects at the actors on stage while the show was going on. Another man with ties to the Ku Klux Klan blew up a car outside the theater the next day. Walter and Betty Leu did their best to keep all of the kids safe, especially the King children, which Mr. And Mrs King never forgot. Eventually, as word of their integrated school got around, business started to dry up and the workshop lost money. Betty Lou and Walter were in dire straits by nineteen sixty seven, which would turn out to be an extremely bad time for them, as they had a second child on the way. In late October, Betty Leu went into the hospital to give birth to a baby girl. However, this being America and all, having a baby was a costly experience even back then. Childbirth costs to the nineteen sixties averaged anywhere from a few hundred dollars to over a thousand dollars, a far cry from the tens of thousands that can cost today. Still, that was a lot of money back then, and an impossible amount to pay for two struggling acting school owners and so as thanks for accepting their children when no one else would, Martin Luther King Jr. And his wife Coretta Scott King stepped in to pay the hospital bill, allowing Walter and his wife Betty Lou to welcome their daughter Julia into the world without worry. It's a delightful tale of one couple helping another, demonstrating what true community is all about. We lift each other up, help out when we can, and make sacrifices for those in need. We could all use a bit of inspiration in that department from time to time, I think, I know I can, And that gift of their's of paying the hospital bill for a couple of friends had one other silver lining silver as in the silver screen, because Betty Lou and Walter Roberts would get to see their daughter, Julia become one of the biggest movie stars of our era and quite a pretty woman, Hollywood actress Julia Roberts. While many countries have declared war on the United States over the years, few have ever acted upon those threats, and for good reason, because they know that they would lose. The British, of course, took on the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War and lost. Man who can forget December seven of nineteen forty one when Japanese forces bomb Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, officially dragging the United States into World War Two. The conflict lasted another four years, but in the end the access Powers were defeated and the Allies celebrated victory. But during World War One, one year after America had entered the Fray, Germany did more than threatened to attack the United States. They actually did it, and in one of the most unexpected places too, jutting off of Massachusetts like a vestigial tail or the flexing arm of a bodybuilder. Is the Peninsula of Cape Cod. Since the late eighteen hundreds, it's been a summer getaway for the East Coast elite, a place to get away from the hustle and bustle of the big city, and of course, in nineteen seventy five it stood in for the cozy, shark infested hamlet in Steven Spielberg's blockbuster hit Jaws. However, nearly sixty years earlier, the Germans arrived to turn the Cape into a war zone. It happened on the morning of July one, eighteen nineteen. The German submarine YOU one fifty six had surfaced off the coast of Orleans, a small town on the eastern edge of Cape Cod. It was believed that the sub under the command of Captain Lieutenant Richard Feld, had been hunting for the Transatlantic Submarine communications cable connecting Orleans to France. This cable linked stations on land and allowed them to communicate across vast distances, and Richard wanted to sever it. However, another vessel had entered the area, a steam powered tug boat named perth Amboy, along with four barges in tow. The U boat sat there in the waters as the tug boat puttered by, and Richard, for some unknown reason, ordered his men to helm the guns on deck. They fired at the tug boats, heading all around the water and the beach, and sinking one of its barges. The perth Amboy took damage to its funnel and pilot house, but little did its captain know that help was on the way. A Curtis H S I L Flying boats armed with one Mark four bomb was en route. It had spotted the German sub and flew overhead, soaring it around eight hundred feet. Navy Ensign Eric Lingard, who was piloting the aircraft, called out to his chief Special Mechanic, Edward Howard. They were right overhead and the time had come to release the explosive. Even though the plane was two d feet shy of the recommended safe bombing altitude, there just wasn't time for safety with a German U boat tearing up the Massachusetts shore. Unfortunately, the bomb refused to break free, so Lingard and his men were forced to circle back around, taking fire from the U boats guns and Howard, seeing no other way to get the job done, crawled out along the top of the plane, inching towards the bombs annual release mechanism. The plane soon realigned itself with the sub and Howard freed the bomb, which fell into the water beside the submarine, but it didn't detonate. Verying the worst, the tugboat crew abandoned ship as the coast Guard arrived to pull them out of the water. Another plane, this one piloted by Coastguard Captain Philip Eaton, showed up next, also armed with a Mark four bomb, and the German U boat tried to shoot it out of the sky but failed, while Eaton released his bomb from an altitude of five feet and once again the explosive refused to go off. Without any options, Eaton flew off and came back only to chuck his toolbox and a wrench from the cockpit to the sub below, hoping to leave some kind of damage on the vessel's hull. The U one slipped below the waves once more and disappeared, just as residents along the beach came to see what all the commotion was about. News crews arrived shortly afterwards to interview people, including the crew of the tug boat it's captain, James Tapley, told the press about what he had witnessed, saying of the German sub I never saw a more glaring example of rotten marksmanship. And it was true. There were no casualties, and other than a sunken barge, damage from the U boats guns was relatively minor, which might be why so few people have heard about the moment when the Germans failed to attack the United States. But it was more than just a failure. One might go as far as to call it subpar. 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. One

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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