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Welcome to Erin Menke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim. And 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 ocean was dark. Fog lay thickly around the ships on every side, but even in such poor visibility, the ships pressed onward. The convoy was a substantial one, flanking the USS Abraham Lincoln, the second largest ship in America's fleet. As they sailed through the night, someone spotted something in the distance, a far off blinking light bearing right towards them. Men in the Lincoln's radio room got to work attempting to contact the oncoming vessel. Fortunately, they were able to establish radio contact quickly and sent out the oncoming vessel. This is the USS Lincoln. Please divert your course 15 degrees north to avoid collision, and the other vessel replied promptly, but not in the way the Americans were expecting. The other ship requested that the convoy divert 15 degrees to the south. Instead, annoyed by the backtalk, the captain took control of the radio, issuing an order for the other ship to turn, and again the ship only responded with its request. You first. The captain practically bellowed over the radio. This is the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, accompanied by three destroyers, three cruisers, and numerous support vessels. Get out of our way or we will take measures to protect our ships. The other radio simply replied, this is a lighthouse. It's your call. Chastened, the aircraft carrier complied without another word of complaint. And you may have heard this story before. It's a popular one among naval officers and sailors, and in recent years it's become a popular Internet meme online. Retellings claim to be transcripts of the conversation, but curiously, no one ever supplies a proper date for this encounter. As far as researchers can tell, it seems to date back as far as the 1930s. The USS Abraham Lincoln, which is often cited as the main vessel in this story, was constructed in the late 1980s, meaning that the original version of the story belongs to an entirely different ship. But whose ship was it that made this iconic blunder? And did the famous and now memed encounter even happen at all? Over the years, naval enthusiasts have poked a number of holes in the story. No one has found any records of this specific encounter thanks to the variable details of each retelling. Moreover, the facts of the story itself strain believability. After all, even in thick fog, it's borderline impossible for an experienced seaman to mistake a lighthouse for an approaching vessel. The steady blinking of a single powerful light looks very different from the scattering of lights across the deck of a ship in the dark. Besides, depending on the time period, it's possible that the lighthouse wouldn't even have a manned radio station like the story suggests. Reporters doing deep dives into the oral history of the so called lighthouse versus naval vessel story often find themselves coming up short with actual facts. The encounter has subsequently been relegated to the realm of urban legend. But calling it an urban legend sort of misses the point. The story isn't retold over and over again because it might have happened. It's retold because behind the clever ending punchline, there is a theme that we all recognize even as we laugh. The captain of the aircraft carrier is characterized as arrogant and overconfident. He thinks that because he has the bigger ship, he has the right of way, regardless of who is on the other ship. That's why this story always involves a major naval power, whether it's the US or the uk. Sailors retelling this story get to chuckle as their commanding officer gets chastened by a simple lighthouse manned by, we assume, a person the captain would never listen to under normal circumstances. In short, this story is less of an urban legend than it is a morality tale, reminding us that when we're sailing blind into uncharted waters, we should keep our ears open as well, as it's a bad idea to let self importance steer the ship.