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- [00:01]
Capital One Bank Guy
Banking with Capital One helps you keep more money in your wallet with no fees or minimums on checking accounts and no overdraft fees. Just ask the Capital One Bank Guy. It's pretty much all he talks about in a good way. He'd also tell you that this podcast is his favorite podcast too. Oh really? Thanks Capital One Bank Guy. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See capital1.com Bank Capital One NA Member FDIC.
- [00:34]
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. Humans are incredible engineers. We've rarely met an engineering problem we couldn't solve. But as I'm sure you've heard before, sometimes humanity gets so caught up in whether it can do something, it forgets to ask whether it should. Such was the case in the late 1960s when the US government became aware of a sunken Russian submarine and stopped at nothing to retrieve it from the bottom of the sea. The K129 nuclear submarine sunk sometime around March of 1968. For reasons that will never be known, all the CIA did know was that the Russians were conducting a massive search and rescue operation in The Pacific Ocean, 1500 miles north of Hawaii. Once the Russians gave up, an American sub moved in using special cameras the Russian vessels didn't have the American sub revealed. The K129 was intact at the bottom of the ocean and if recovered, could provide the CIA with Russian missile technology and codebooks filled with secrets. But of course, this would be no easy retrieval mission. The sub was 16,500ft down. It was one thing to have an American sub take pictures, but having divers searching the debris at that depth was out of the question. And the wreck of the sub was so big that it would take some incredible machinery to recover it. The deeply paranoid, ethically dubious CIA of this time was not willing to let the opportunity slide though. And so they embarked on a multi million dollar project to design a vessel capable of pulling K129 from the bottom of the sea, codename Project Azorian. They would need a cover story, and so the CIA reached out to none other than eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes to lend his name to the project. The CIA would call their ship the Hughes Glomar Explorer, and Hughes would tell the public that it was his ship being constructed to use in Deep sea mining operations. The CIA then hired a team of engineers, Swearing them all to secrecy and even keeping some in the dark as to the true nature of the vessel. The explorer was an engineering marvel. At 618ft in length, the ship had the largest moon pole Ever constructed, which is an opening at the bottom of the vessel that allows submersibles to be deployed, or, in this case, retrieved. Two doors would open at the bottom of the ship, Releasing Clementine, the name for a giant claw that was to be lowered to the bottom of the sea to retrieve K129. Clementine was attached to massive lengths of steel pipe that could be slowly doled out to lower the claw Farther and farther down. The whole apparatus was capable of lifting over £21 million. But halfway through the construction process, the engineers realized that they had made a mistake. To put it in simple terms, the ship wasn't big enough to support the claw and was likely to break in half. During the operation, the CIA had to spend even more money and make the ship even bigger. The problem with this, the ship was now too big to fit through the Panama canal. And so once it set sail from the east coast of America, it would have to travel all the way around South America to reach its target. The ship was finally completed, Costing the American taxpayer nearly $300 million. It began its long journey to the Pacific in 1973, nearly getting delayed in Chile By a revolution there, but ultimately making it to its target without issue. The process of actually lowering the claw, Clementine Took weeks. Once it finally reached the K129 at the bottom of the ocean, the claw successfully grasped the sub in its pincers, Lifting it from its longtime resting place. But as the sub was slowly lifted back up, over thousands of feet, Disaster struck. Parts of the claw failed, Snapping off and allowing a majority of the sub to fall back to the ocean floor. The steel just wasn't strong enough. The crewmen had to settle for lifting the remaining piece of the sub up into their ship and heading home. It's unknown what, exactly the CIA Learned, if anything, from the recovered piece of the sub. They actually intended on authorizing a second mission to return to the site and try to recover the rest. But before that could happen, American journalists finally caught wind of the project and leaked details to the public. The general consensus seemed to be that another recovery mission Wasn't worth the cost. And so most of K129 remains where it came to rest at the bottom of the ocean. And any secrets it might have held Are lost to time. Curiously, the Russians have never made attempts of their own to recover the sub, a sign that nothing of value is really on board, or just an admission of a pretty big truth. 16,000ft of water is a pretty safe way to hide a.
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Savannah Guthrie
Every morning brings a fresh, new energy.
- [05:57]
Erin Menke
This is today with and no matter.
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Savannah Guthrie
What the day holds, we come to the Today show for all of it.
- [06:03]
Erin Menke
When things are tough, we talk about it. When there's something to figure out, we dig into it. And when there's joy, we celebrate it.
- [06:11]
Savannah Guthrie
Because today is where it's all happening. We get the best start to every morning because we start it together.
- [06:18]
Erin Menke
Watch the Today show with Savannah Guthrie and Craig Melvin, weekdays at 7am on NBC.
- [06:24]
Savannah Guthrie
Millions of people have turned to Claude, the AI assistant from Anthropic because it just feels different. Where other AIs often sound a little robotic, Claude has been designed with special research that informs its character, meaning that Claude just gets it when it comes to empathy and emotional intelligence. That's why Claude has become the if you know, you know choice for dating advice, career coaching. Get gathering your thoughts for those important life decisions and more. Give Claude a try for free at Claude.com that's C-L-A-U--E.com and let us know how you feel the difference.
- [07:07]
Erin Menke
It's a well documented fact that pregnancy can bring on some pretty intense food cravings. Women have reported desires for everything from pizza and ice cream to stranger food combinations like pickles with peanut butter or chocolate cake with ketchup. And then there was Mary, an 18th century servant girl who allegedly developed a craving for rabbit meat, a craving so powerful it altered her mind, the unborn child she was carrying, and eventually all of England. The story begins one afternoon in April of 1726 while Mary was weeding a field outside her village near London. Mary was several months pregnant at this point, but as a poor servant girl in the 18th century, taking time off from work wasn't an option. So she was down on her hands and knees pulling weeds and trying not to think about how uncomfortable she was when she looked up and spotted a rabbit. Now, rabbit meat was expensive at the time, and Mary had three hungry kids and a husband at home, so she didn't think twice. She took off after the rabbit and almost had it in her grasp before it slipped under a fence and disappeared into the woods. To say that Mary was disappointed would be an understatement. That night she lay awake imagining all of the delicious meals the creature could have become. Braised rabbit, poached rabbit Rabbit pie, rabbit stew. Her mouth just watered from the thought of it all. And over the next few weeks, that craving only got worse. Mary begged her husband to buy her rabbit meat, but with his business struggling, they just simply couldn't afford it. A short while later, Mary suffered a painful miscarriage. Afterward, she expected the cravings to fade, but they only got worse. She continued to dream and obsess about eating rabbits until one day she fell strangely ill. At first, no one knew what was wrong with her. Then the cramps started, followed by full on contractions. Mary, it seems, was going into labor, which didn't make sense because she had already lost her baby. Her family sent for the doctor, a man named John Howard. But by the time he arrived, Mary was already done. She presented him with a thing she had birthed. It wasn't a human child, but several infant rabbits. Horrifically, most of the animals came out crushed or in small pieces and were all stillborn. Howard examined the fragments, but refused to believe that Mary had produced them, at least until she went into labor again. Over the next few days, Howard she delivered batch after batch of dismembered bunnies. He documented the births and stored the parts in jars for later study. In between the frequent birthing sessions, though, Howard wrote letters to England's top scientists who flocked to the village to see the phenomenon for themselves. Eventually, the king's personal physician was sent to investigate. He was so impressed by what he witnessed, he published a statement declaring that the rabbit births were a genuine medical phenomenon. Meanwhile, Mary had become a celebrity. Her story made national headlines, sparking heated debates between skeptics and believers. Those who were convinced pointed to the theory of maternal impression, which hold that a mother's thoughts can physically alter the body of the unborn child, resulting in marks or birth defects. To many experts at the time, there was little doubt about what had happened. Mary's cravings for rabbit flesh had turned her child into the object of her obsession. It's a disturbing thought and fortunately impossible. Today, the theory of maternal impression has been resoundingly discredited. And the same can be said for Mary's story. You see, her husband and some accomplices were eventually caught smuggling rabbits into her room. They'd been cutting the animals into pieces themselves, and Mary had been, well, putting them where babies come from. They'd hoped all the attention would make them wildly rich. But instead they became the subject of ridicule and scorn. And while they managed to avoid any criminal charges, they never profited a dime from the incident. Mary eventually faded into obscurity. But the doctors who vouched for her weren't so lucky. Several careers were ruined, and trust in the medical community plummeted for years to come. The nation's scientists were viewed as gullible fools, so eager to prove their unfounded theories that they would convince themselves of the imposs possible. And that criticism may have been warranted. It shouldn't have taken a medical degree to know that women don't give birth to rabbits. But that didn't stop Mary Toft from giving birth to a hoax that most people would describe as harebrained. 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 curiosity 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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Savannah Guthrie
Millions of people have turned to Claude, the AI assistant from Anthropic because it just feels different. Where other AIs often sound a little robotic, Clawd has been designed with special research that informs its character, meaning that Claude just gets it when it comes to empathy and emotional intelligence. That's why Claude has become the if you know, you know choice for dating advice, career coaching, gathering your thoughts for those important life decisions, and more. Give Claude a try for free at clawd.com that's C-L-A-U--E.com and let us know how you feel the difference.