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- [00:00]
Grainger Ad Voice
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- [00:38]
Erin Menke
Welcome to Erin Menke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of iHeartRadio 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. In 1901, a British academic named Charlotte Moberly and her assistant, Elizabeth Jourdan, stepped off a train at the palace of Versailles. The two women had just started working together at a women's college in England, and this trip was supposed to be an opportunity to get to know each other. They walked around the palace for a while and found it beautiful but uninspiring. So they decided to go out through the garden and explore the Petit Trianon, a mansion on the palace grounds built in the 1760s. As they walked through the garden, though, they missed a turn and got lost. And that's when everything started to feel off. Unlike the palace, which was bustling with tourists, this part of the garden was almost completely deserted. There was no one around except for a handful of people in old fashioned uniforms and tricorn hats. Charlotte assumed that they were workers who were dressed in period costumes for historical reenactment purposes, but something about them didn't seem real. They looked like wax figures who'd been brought to life. Up ahead, Elizabeth pointed to an old farmhouse with a plow outside that looked like it was a hundred years old or more. There was a gardener outside of the farmhouse in the same old fashioned costume as the other workers, so the woman stopped to ask him for directions to the Petit Trianon. The gardener pointed them in the right direction, and as they got further down the path, Charlotte shivered. She felt like the world was literally losing dimension. The trees were flat and there were no shadows, as if she were walking through a painting. She told Elizabeth that she couldn't explain it, but she felt a suffocating sense of dreariness and dread Elizabeth raised her eyebrows in alarm and said that she too felt the same thing. Finally, they came to the Petit Trianon. Charlotte saw a young woman in a white hat and an old fashioned summer dress sketching a picture of the garden. And as she passed, she noticed that the woman bore a striking resemblance to the late queen Marie Antoinette. As soon as the women stepped inside the mansion, the oppressive atmosphere lifted. Everything looked normal again, as if a spell had been broken. They looked around the mansion for a bit, and then they headed back the same way they came. But strangely, on their way back, the workers in period clothing that they had encountered on their way in were nowhere to be seen. Charlotte and Elizabeth went back to their hotel, both nursing a strange feeling about what had happened that afternoon. But neither of them dared to talk about it until months later when they were finally back in England. And when they compared their recollections, they couldn't deny that something odd had occurred that day at Versailles. After their trip, Charlotte and Elizabeth went back to Versailles several times and tried to trace the path they had taken to the Petit Trianon. But it wasn't there. Various landmarks they remember walking past were completely missing, and the layout of the garden was entirely different. But after looking at historical maps, they realized the path they'd taken that day aligned perfectly with how the gardens were laid in the late 18th century, in the days of Marie Antoinette. Charlotte was never able to explain exactly what happened that day, but she lived the rest of her life convinced that somehow she and Elizabeth had briefly slipped back in time to see Versailles as it was, more than 100 years before their own day. And she believed that the woman she'd seen sketching in the garden was was none other than Marie Antoinette herself.
- [04:44]
Amy Eric
Hello, beautiful. I'm Amy Eric, founder of Madison Reed, a hair color company I named after my daughter. Forget everything you know about hair color. The mess, the smell, the hassle, the damage. We're female founded and female led. We've transformed the hair color experience with ingredients that care for your hair and and award winning color on your terms, at home or at our hair color bars. The future of hair color is here at Madison Reid. Are your ad campaigns lighting up the dashboard but not the pipeline? That's bullspend and marketers are calling it out in dashboard confessions.
- [05:23]
Erin Menke
My boss asked for results, so I opened my dashboard for the only positive sounding metric I had. Impressions.
- [05:31]
Amy Eric
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- [05:51]
Erin Menke
Six men emerged from the spinning gray capsule, green in the face and clutching their stomachs. Captain Gray Beal swore under his breath. They had only lasted a few hours in the Slow rotation room, a 20 foot circular space mimicking the living quarters of future astronauts. Across the large room, his colleagues shook their heads. Grey Beal could easily guess what the problem was. Insufficient data. These men, although eager to help, were too ill for scientists to learn anything about long term changes to the human body in spaceflight. At high G forces they passed out, and at slow rotations their body lost equilibrium and they inevitably became sick. A memory tugged at the back of Captain Graybiel's mind, something he had learned in medical school or in the Navy's medical academy. There'd been a model of the human ear for students to observe, large drawings of semicircular canals that made up the vestibular system, the part of the human body responsible for balance and detecting motion. Gray Beal thought of the tests that his team had already conducted, and he thought back to which volunteers were most successful and what set them apart. And then an idea came together in his mind. So he sent a message to Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C. requesting students to assist with a test that could very well win Americans the space race. Gabriel didn't share his hypothesis with the other scientists, but he felt confident that he was on the right track. A few days later, another group of men sat in the Slow Rotation Room. An hour passed, then two scientists outside the SRR were thrilled. So far, these new volunteers from Gallaudet were lasting longer than any others had. Much, much longer. The 11 volunteers from Gallaudet spent a few hours in the SRR the first time, then two days. Eventually the Gallaudet 11, as they came to be called, spent 12 days inside the SRR. Captain Grey Beal's team was exhausted, overworked, and eager to be done. When the door to the SRR was opened, the Gallaudet 11 were sitting calmly inside, playing a game of cards. If anything, they looked surprised that the time had passed so quickly. The Gallaudet 11 went on to ace every test from the Aerospace Medical association, the Zero Gravity Simulator, nicknamed the Vomit Comet, rapid elevator rides up the Empire's State Building with electrodes attached to their eyelids and a machine literally called the Human Disorientation Device. All the while, Gay Briel's team was getting more data than ever before, which meant that they were understanding the human body better. Calculations were adjusted to account for ease of movement. And the Gallaudet 11 gave clear, precise feedback on what they felt. The difficulty of performing sub movements and the psychological effects of extended time in zero gravity. Finally, the most difficult test of all arrived. In 1964, 10 of the Gallaudet 11 boarded a tugboat setting out over the Atlantic. Black clouds hung in the stormy sky. But Graybiel's team had expected this. They had counted on it. In fact, they would go on to sail 200 miles of rough seas and dangerous storms. In a final study of what happened to the human body under extreme conditions, Grey beals researchers reported 40 foot waves, buffeting winds and surges, three times the force of gravity. For the experiment, the Gallaudet 11 were supposed to provide blood and urine samples, answer questionnaires and tests of dexterity under physical strain. As it happened, the researchers and the boat crew were so seasick, they had to cancel all the tests. The Gallaudet 11, on the other hand, had a fantastic time. They read books, played games, and commented on the exciting wild ride. So what was it that set these specific men apart? What superpower allowed them to withstand conditions that no one else could? The Gallaudet 11. Or deaf. In the 1950s, Gallaudet University was one of few schools who catered to deaf or hard of hearing students. Most of these 11 men had survived spinal meningitis, a condition that damaged their vestibular systems. This meant that they could no longer hear. And it also meant that they were exactly what NASA needed to study the effects of deep space travel on the human body. The Gallaudet 11 were more than just test subjects. They took active roles in the scientific process. They taught the researchers asl, which could be used to communicate even in a vacuum like space, where sound doesn't travel. One member of the Gallaudet 11, though a man named Robert Greenman, actually worked with Captain Gray Beal years before the project officially started. He was integral to the success of NASA's research. But like the rest of the Gallaudet 11, his contributions went unrecognized until 2017, when Gallaudet University opened an exhibit highlighting the critical contributions of Greenman and his peers. And rightly so, because it's to them that we owe the success of every manned spaceflight in American history. All the way from the Apollo missions to today's Artemis 2. I hope you enjoyed today's guided tour through the Cabinet of Curiosities. This show was created by me, Aaron Manke, in partnership with iHeart Podcasts, researched and written by the Grim and Mild team and produced by Jesse Funk. Learn more about the show and the people who make it over@grimandmild.com curiosities. You'll also find a link to the official Cabinet of Curiosity's hardcover book, available in bookstores and online, as well as ebook and audiobook. And if you're looking for an ad free option, consider joining our Patreon it's all the same stories but without the interruption for a small monthly fee. Learn more and sign up over@patreon.com grimandmild and until next time, stay curious.
- [11:49]
Sean Duffy
I'm US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy. We all get distracted when we drive, whether it's from our phones or kids in the backseat bickering. But how we handle these distractions can be a matter of life or death. Before you get on the road for your next road trip, please put your phones on silent and take a mental note to focus on driving.
- [12:16]
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Paid for by NHTSA this is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.