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This is an iHeart podcast guaranteed human hey, this is US Olympic gold medalist Tara Davis Woodhull.
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And I'm US Paralympic gold medalist Hunter Woodhull.
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Learn more at pennymac.com pennymac loan services llc/housing lender nmls id 35953 licensed by the Department of Financial Protection and Innovation under the California Res Mortgage Lending Act. Conditions and restrictions may apply. 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. Have you ever wondered what happens to a commercial airliner when it's retired from service? Well, for those curious enough to ask, you'll find that there are a wide variety of jobs these planes can be pressed into after they're done ferrying passengers. And not all of these jobs are legal. In fact, one infamous airliner, 844AA, ended up causing an international incident. Maury Joseph is a Florida based CEO of an airline leasing company and in February of 2002 he came into possession of a Boeing 727 tail number. As I said, 844 AA, recently retired from American Airlines, he was approached by a South African entrepreneur, Keith Irwin, who had been hired by a joint partnership of airline interests in Africa looking to make money transporting fuel by air to diamond mines in Angola. A civil war had broken out in the country and transporting fuel by car had become too dangerous. Both Maury and Irwin had thick skins and were used to conducting business in Third World nations with these kind of problems. They also weren't afraid of working with industries that some people might find distasteful, such as the diamond trade. Mori sold Irwin the 747 for $1 million, but accepted a down payment of just 125,000 with further installments to follow once the fuel shipments got underway. Mori even sent a business associate with Irwin to Angola to make sure that things went smoothly. But from the get go, things were anything but smooth. Irwin and his flight crew were subjected to harsh conditions in Angola. They slept in terrible housing with no running water or electricity. They also felt unsafe. Practically everyone in the city carried an AK47. They were stuck in limbo as they waited for their client at one of the mines to process their passports and get them licenses to operate the 747 in Angola airspace. At one point, they feared that they would never get their passports back and would be stuck in the country forever. Eventually, though, their passports were returned. But some of Irwin's crew had already had enough and they returned to the States. Even worse, the client at the diamond mine wasn't paying up for expenses accrued thus far. Irwin had to accept his losses and negotiate a new deal with a new client. Irwin and what remained of the crew started flying missions delivering fuel to diamond mines in Angola. It was dangerous work. They had to maintain as high an altitude as possible until the very last second before landing to avoid being hit by gunfire from the war. And there were no paved landing strips at these mines. They were making extremely bumpy landings at dirt airfields. Before long, most of Irwin's crew had given up and gone home, including Maury, Joseph's representative. The operative had failed to make a return on Mori's investment and he wanted his plane back. 844 AA would sit in a hangar in Angola for months, slowly deteriorating and accumulating storage fees. And so eventually Maury, our airline CEO, traveled with an associate of his, Ben Padilla, to Angola, whose job it was to prepare the aircraft for the flight to South Africa, where it would be finally sold off. Maury flew ahead to finalize the deal, but on May 26th of 2003, he received a disturbing phone call. The aircraft and Ben Padilla had disappeared. It was last seen making erratic movements on the Runway in Angola before making an unauthorized takeoff over the Atlantic. And Maury wasn't just mad, he was also scared. Losing track of a plane that size and that valuable had serious consequences. This was even more true in the years immediately following the September 11, 2001 attacks. He had to contact the FBI and the Homeland Security, who in turn contacted every single US Embassy in Africa to let them know to be on the lookout for the missing plane. Everyone was afraid that the plane had been co opted by terrorists. Fortunately, an attack never came. But that left one of the biggest mysteries in aviation history. What had happened to the plane? Most people close to Ben Padilla believe that he wouldn't have stolen it. He was a simple airline engineer. It seems more likely that criminals from Angola might have attacked the plane with him on board and taken it into a remote area for disassembly. It's also possible that whoever hijacked the plane never made it to their destination and crashed into the ocean. This is one curious tale that will remain that way. No trace of 844 AA has ever been found. It's the largest missing aircraft in world history. Whatever you think of Maury, Irwin, Ben and the plane cargo business, it seems like surely there has to be an easier way to make a living. Well, the holidays have come and gone once again. But if you've forgotten to get that special someone in your life a gift, well, Mint Mobile is extending their holiday offer of half off unlimited wireless. So here's the idea. You get it now. You call it an early present for next year. What do you have to lose? Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch limited time.
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As anyone from a small town will tell you, not everyone is so welcoming to outsiders. People are wary of strangers. Newcomers can feel isolated, unwanted, or even outright disliked. And such was the case for Teodor Glava, a Romanian immigrant who moved to the small town and of Lafayette, Colorado, in 1914. Born in Lesnik in 1877, Glava led a brutal life working in marble mines belonging to the Austro Hungarian Empire. This work was dangerous, physically demanding, and of course it paid very little. So he came to America with nothing, hoping to find better work mining coal there. Glava eventually planned to send for his wife and daughter, whom he had left behind in Romania. When he arrived in Colorado, Glava was emaciated from years of backbreaking work and his difficult voyage. And the fact that he was so tall didn't really help. His skin was pale after years of working in the marble quarries and months in a cramped ship's cabin. Today, we would consider him a sickly looking man to the townspeople of Lafayette. In 1914, though he looks straight out of every vampire. Legendary they had come to fear. Theodore Glava's story came to a tragic end only four years after his arrival. The Spanish flu pandemic wiped out hundreds of people in the nearby town of Boulder, and the disease reached Lafayette shortly after. Glava and many other coal miners stood almost no chance. Remember, this was before the age of vaccination. The cold and unsafe working conditions meant that their immune systems were already weak. And tragically, he passed away in December of 1918, before he ever got a chance to send for his family back home. And this is where the story of Teodor Glava comes to an end, and the legend of the Lafayette vampire is born. You see, because Glova had been ignored and isolated for so long, no one really knew much about him. The absence of his family and the poverty he died in meant that there was no money for a proper burial. And as a result, he was buried in the paupers section of the Lafayette cemetery with a headstone hastily carved using the pointed end of a trowel and cheap cement. Glava's headstone also inaccurately listed his birthplace as Transylvania, the birthplace, as we know, of literature's most famous vampire, Dracula. With influenza killing dozens of others in Lafayette, though, people in town became desperate for someone to blame. When they spotted Glova's strangely scrawled headstone and that terrifying word, Transylvania, they recalled the pale, lanky stranger who had wandered into their midst so recently and hatched a plan to rid themselves of this pandemic they would need to dig up and kill the vampire. That winter, residents bundled up against the Colorado snow and made their way to the cemetery. Once there, they found his grave, and they started to dig. What they found in Glova's coffin confirmed all of their worst fears. He looked nothing short of monstrous. His hair and fingernails had continued to grow, which they took for proof of his undead nature. Glava's gums had pulled back away from his teeth, making them appear longer and more pointed. Moreover, his body looked almost completely unchanged from the day he had died. In short, he looked exactly like the vampire legends they had heard all their lives. Now, as any mortician will tell you, these changes to Glova's body were not supernatural at all. Skin and gums shrink after a person dies and begins to decompose, making hair, nails, and teeth appear longer, especially without the modern embalming processes we have today. And then there was Glova's unchanged appearance. Without any money to pay for a proper burial, he had been placed in the cheapest coffin available and buried in a shallow grave by a caretaker, possibly the same guy who had carved his headstone out of cement. The winter weather had kept Glava's body well preserved, which explains why he looked almost the same as the day he died. Of course, to the people of Lafayette, they had no way of knowing this, and they hadn't trudged to the cemetery in the middle of the freezing nights in search of rational explanations. Once they had dug up Glova's body, one of the locals plunged a wooden stake right through the supposed vampire's heart. And then, satisfied that they had rid themselves of the source of their bad luck, they went home. One can only imagine their surprise when a flourishing sapling appeared directly over Glova's grave that spring. The wooden stake intended to kill the vampire had taken root and grown into something beautiful. Nowadays, Glova has become a legend in Lafayette and around the United States. His grave, with the same poorly carved headstone is covered in roses, trinkets, money and souvenirs from his home country of Romania. And the tree is over a century old now and still growing. Passerbyers probably think that they're seeing the final resting place of a beloved local residential, but have no idea that they're actually looking at the legendary vampire of Lafayette. 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 curiositiespodcast.com the show was created by me, Aaron Manke, 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@theworldoflore.com and until next time, stay curious.
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