It's fair to say that sometimes all it takes to be put on display in the Cabinet of Curiosities is a the courage to be ridiculous. Thankfully, both of today's stories share that in common.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
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. Evolution is nature's way of upgrading biological hardware so animals can continue to thrive in a changing environment. When swallows in Nebraska sauthern nests blown off cliff faces during storms, they started building them on highways and bridges instead. Unfortunately, passing cars and trucks would flatten them before the birds had a chance to escape. Nature's answer shorter wings. The cliff swallows wings eventually shrunk by a few millimeters to make its liftoffs faster, allowing it to escape imminent death from oncoming track think. African elephants have also changed, but not due to cars. Poachers have decimated the elephant populations in some areas in pursuit of their tusks. Those tusks are used by the males to fight off competition when looking for a mate. But because the long tusked elephants have been hunted to near extinction, short tusked elephants have prospered. How so they're passing down their genes to their offspring, many of which will grow up to not have tusks at all. A tuskless elephant used to be an anomaly. Now they make up almost half the elephant population in parts of Africa. Nature took away what made them valuable to poachers, and I think that's pretty darn cool. And then there's the common duck. It flies, it floats, it eats bread in the park. Female ducks have evolved to prevent let's just say, persistent males from engaging in unwanted mating, but the males have also evolved in unique ways. One particular duck in eighteenth century France had advanced beyond all others to become a big part of history, and it was all thanks to a man named Jacques du Vocuson. Vocus On was one of ten children born to an impoverished glovemaker. He had wanted to become a clockmaker, but chose to pursue a life within the church instead. It was only after an encounter with French surgeon Claude Nicola Luquette that he rediscovered his love of engineering and mechanics. Lecatte taught vocus In about anatomy, which gave the aspiring clockmaker ideas about blending the human body with the mechanical. For example, musicians were known to be well trained experts in the art of playing a particular instrument, but what if someone could play music without ever having touched a violin or a guitar before. In seventeen thirty seven, Vocusan got to work assembling bladders to act as lungs that would blow air into a flute, while gears and levers would move the players fingers over the holes, creating the individual tones. There was a modern marvel, but only a precursor to his next subject. The duck. Focus On built an apparatus comprised of moving gears that would allow a duct to bend its head down and eat pellets, then digest those pellets into excrement. The duck could also drink water, splash around with its bill, and make a gurgling sound. You're probably wondering why Vocusan had to get involved when the duck didn't do anything other ducks couldn't already do, And that's because his duck only looked like it was alive. In fact, neither the duck nor the flute player had ever lived before they were automatons. When it wasn't moving, the flute player looked like a well crafted marble statue, but as soon as Vocusan got its gears turning, the statue took on an incredibly lifelike appearance. Rumor had it that in order for its fingers to properly cover the holes, they were covered in human skin, but such claims have never been confirmed to be true. The digesting duck, though, was even more realistic. Vocusan modeled its movements on those of a real duck and worked tirelessly to make it replicate actions like eating and digesting as accurately as possible. When it ate a pellet, the morsel would travel through the digestive system until it was expelled as feces out the other end, just like a living creature. Vocus On created a third automaton, dubbed the Tambourine Player, that was much like the flute player built previously, but the duck seemed to be the real star of the show. Focus On presented his creations to the French Academy of Sciences as well as to the public in seventeen thirty eight. Those who witnessed their movements and heard their music were thrilled by such miraculous feats of mechanical engineering. Eventually, the machines made their way to various museums, but were lost over time. The duck was presumed to have been consumed by a fire at a museum and crack how Poland in eighteen seventy nine. However, half a century later, an employee at the Museum of Arts and Crafts in Paris discovered photographs taken some time during the nineteen twenties or thirties of a mechanical duck sitting on top of a large gear filled box. Someone had written images of Vocusan's duck received from Dresden on them, but their origin was unknown. All we have left of the inventors three creations are a set of questionable photographs, as well as illustrations from the nineteenth century of the machines assembled all together on stage. One thing is certain, though Bocusan may have figured out how to replicate a duck's movement, but he couldn't give it a real digestive system. A magician in eighteen forty four managed to restore the digesting duck to its former glory and discovered that the feces was not comprised of digested pellets after all, it was made of little pieces of bread dyed green that were then dropped out of a separate compartment at the rear. Still, despite his inability to create life from mechanical parts, Jacques Duvocusan had managed to wile the world with the next best thing, proving that he wasn't completely full of it, even if his duck was. We have become quite the litigious society. Modern history is rife with frivolous lawsuits brought on by people who thought they could exploit a legal loophole for a quick buck. Take Richard Harris, who in sued Anheuser Bush for ten th dollars. His reason false advertising. It seems that Harris didn't appreciate how the men and beer commercials had success with beautiful women while he floundered in the dating department while he drank. He also blamed the company for getting him sick when drinking excessively. The courts had no problem ruling on such an important legal case. They tossed it out almost immediately. Another case of false advertising hit the docket in twenty one year old John Leonard sued Pepsi over its bi Pepsi Gets Stuff campaign. Leonard, like millions of others around the country, had watched an ad that showed the kinds of products that could be one if an individual earned enough points by buying Pepsi products. A T shirt, for example, cost eight points earned by drinking forty two liter bottles of Pepsi. However, among the toys and clothes that the company was offering was something that was never meant to be purchased, a Harrier jet. It appeared at the end of the commercial as a gag with a cost of seven million points. Pepsi had never considered someone might actually earn that many points, nor did they do the math on how much money seven million points were worth. But John knew. He learned that points could be purchased for ten cents apiece as long as he had at least fifteen original points earned through Pepsi cola. So he sent in a check for just over seven hundred thousand dollars as well as his fifteen points, and waited for his plane to be delivered. But Pepsi refused to pay up. Leonard took them to court, arguing that the company had committed fraud. A New York judge felt differently, stating that no reasonable person could have assumed that such an offer was realistic. The Pentagon also got involved, explaining that their thirty four million dollar Fighter jet planes could not be sold in flying shape to the public. So John Leonard and his dreams of flying to class were grounded for good. But Gerald Mayo of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania didn't have a beef to settle with a big evil company. His complaint veered more into the ethereal territory. He wanted to sue evil itself. In nineteen seventy one, the twenty two year old Mayo was an inmate at Pennsylvania's Western Penitentiary. But it wasn't his fault, you see, according to the claim he filed with the courts, it was Satan who was responsible for his downfall. He alleged that Satan had caused him misery and placed deliberate obstacles in his path to eat him down. Therefore, it was the devil himself who had and my quote, deprived him of his constitutional rights. But he didn't just slap a lawsuit on the prince of Evil, but complaints included both Satan and his minions. The court could have immediately thrown the case out on the basis that you can't sue a spiritual being, but Judge Gerald Weber took the complaints seriously. It was literally unprecedented, as no one had ever formally sued the Devil before, nor had Satan ever brought a case against anyone else. It was possible. The judge argued that Satan could be considered a foreign prince given his title and place of residence. If he did appear, he could claim sovereign immunity and therefore avoid all charges. That still wasn't enough to get the case tossed out, though surprisingly, Mayo had fulfilled three of the four requirements needed in order to file a class action lawsuits. He was suing on behalf of a large enough population that individual suits would be impossible, His claims could easily be applied to all other members of the class, and there were questions of law and fact that were common to the class as a whole. There were only two things holding Mayo back. First, the court couldn't determine whether he was an adequate representative for the class named in the complaint, and second, the U S. Marshals had no way to serve Satan with notice of the suit. For those two reasons alone, a claim was denied from proceeding further. It seemed that the devil really was in the details. Gerald Mayo just couldn't find him. 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 the world of Lore dot Come and until next time, stay curious.