Jump Rope Chant Singers (1:54)

He thought it was a.

Jad Abumrad (1:56)

Today on the podcast, we start off just for kicks in New York City.

Jump Rope Chant Singers (2:00)

Lincoln beach, he thought it was a dream.

Lincoln Beachy (voice actor or quoted text) (2:02)

Harlem with let's see.

Jump Rope Chant Singers (2:04)

I'm Paige Capote 1 Trinise Jones. My name is Captain Martinez and I go to school in the CS203.

Jad Abumrad (2:10)

Girls doing a little jump rope chant.

Jump Rope Chant Singers (2:12)

Lincoln Beachy thought it was a dream to go up to heaven in a flying machine. The machine broke down and down he fell. He thought he'd go to heaven, but he went to Lincoln Beachy thought it was a dream.

Jad Abumrad (2:24)

So this is a story actually about the guy at the center of this chant. The guy who's being jump roped about. Name's Lincoln Beachy and he's someone I.

Robert Krulwich (2:32)

Heard about from a friend of mine.

Sam Kean (2:34)

Hello, my name is Sam Keane and.

Jad Abumrad (2:36)

I'm a writer and then we met this guy.

Robert Krulwich (2:38)

Hey, hey.

Frank Marrero (2:39)

My name is Frank Marrero.

Robert Krulwich (2:41)

And together they told us the story of the most famous man you've never.

Jump Rope Chant Singers (2:45)

Heard of, Lincoln Beachy.

Jad Abumrad (2:50)

What can you tell us about Lincoln Beachy? The early years.

Frank Marrero (2:53)

He was, you know, he was born here in San Francisco.

Sam Kean (2:56)

Kind of a short kid, sort of lonely, kind of chubby, emotional, you know. He wasn't exactly a popular kid, not someone you'd peg as a hero, but he was fearless.

Jad Abumrad (3:09)

For instance, when he was about 10, this would be 1897, he was really into bicycles. And apparently he would launch himself off.

Frank Marrero (3:17)

Fillmore Hill, which is, you know, if you've seen the streets of San Francisco and seen cars flying through the air, that's those kind of hills without breaks.

Robert Krulwich (3:24)

Because what he really wanted to do, even as a little kid, is he wanted to fly.

Frank Marrero (3:27)

Yeah.

Robert Krulwich (3:28)

And when Lincoln was 18 years old, he met one of the pioneers of the duration.

Frank Marrero (3:33)

And he got this young guy, Lincoln Beachey, to be his dirigible pilot.

Jad Abumrad (3:37)

What is a dirigible?

Sam Kean (3:38)

It's a big floating sack of hot air. That's a basic idea.

Frank Marrero (3:42)

Okay.

Jad Abumrad (3:42)

Sim says you could steer this thing sort of, because it was kind of an early blimp.

Sam Kean (3:47)

Yeah.

Robert Krulwich (3:47)

But for Beachy, just wasn't enough.

Sam Kean (3:50)

He wanted to fly in a plane. Planes were the future.

Jad Abumrad (3:56)

Keep in mind this was early 1900s.

Sam Kean (3:58)

Less than 10 years after the Wright brothers flew their first flight. Planes were pretty primitive, basically like a flying bicycle, even.

Robert Krulwich (4:05)

So people were getting really excited about aviation, so they were going to air shows.

Frank Marrero (4:10)

They had every kind of flying machine that did and didn't work.

Robert Krulwich (4:14)

And Beachy, he tracked down the guy who put together most of the really big air shows.

Frank Marrero (4:18)

He says, hey, you know, I'm Lincoln Beachy. You know, I'm like, you know, really popular and cool and everything, and I'll be glad to fly for you. And he said, no, I don't think so. We don't need another pilot.

Robert Krulwich (4:28)

But Beachy says, how about, do you.

Frank Marrero (4:30)

Need a good mechanic? And so he got on as a mechanic.

Sam Kean (4:33)

I have heard stories that he would sleep in a tent near the plane factory, and he would actually get up at dawn and sort of sneak into these planes so he could fly them before other people were around.

Jad Abumrad (4:46)

And his big break came at a show in la, when one of the big time show pilots goes up, gets injured, and the organizer's like, oh, who.

Frank Marrero (4:54)

Are we gonna get to show the rest of the planes? And Beachy says, oh, I'll do it.

Jad Abumrad (4:58)

Bum. Bada dum.

Frank Marrero (4:59)

So they sent poor Beachy up in this plane and got up to about 3,000ft and the motor stopped.

Robert Krulwich (5:06)

Stopped?

Frank Marrero (5:07)

Like just stopped? As in no going.

Jad Abumrad (5:10)

So There he is, 3,000ft in the air.

Robert Krulwich (5:13)

The plane naturally starts to drop down, down. And it's not just dropping, it's spinning.

Frank Marrero (5:19)

Because when you stall, always one wing stalls first, and that throws you into a spin. No one has ever gotten out of this. In 1910, one in three flights ended in disaster because nobody had figured out how to get out of the Deadly Spiral.

Jad Abumrad (5:33)

Because whenever happened, the pilot would try to do sensible things like turn the plane the opposite direction of the spiral.

Frank Marrero (5:39)

Makes it worse, or try to pull up, makes it way worse.

Jad Abumrad (5:42)

But Lincoln Beachey, in a split second, decides to do something totally odd.

Frank Marrero (5:47)

He realized what he was gonna have to do is dive into it.

Robert Krulwich (5:50)

In other words, turn into the spin and down.

Frank Marrero (5:53)

It's kind of like running down a mountain, rocky path and tripping. And instead of putting your hands out, you put your hands behind your back and smile. You want to do what you think you don't want to do that. Of course. He came right out of it.

Robert Krulwich (6:12)

Wait, he came right out of it, meaning he landed the plane?

Frank Marrero (6:15)

Yeah. When you dive into the spin, when you do the absolute worst thing you can think of, then all the controls come back.

Jad Abumrad (6:23)

So suddenly the plane just stopped spinning and he was able to land.

Frank Marrero (6:27)

He just curls out of it, pulls out of it and lands and floats it down. And he said, I suddenly could feel.

Robert Krulwich (6:33)

The airplane as though it was part of his body.

Frank Marrero (6:38)

From that moment forward, aviation was never the same. He went bananas. When you go see an aerobatic show and you see them do all these fancy. This is. And that's. He invented them, the figure 8, the vertical drop, the dip of death. He was the first person to point his plane straight down and achieve terminal velocity. At the time, medical science said if you achieve terminal velocity, you would die from fear. He would dive out of the sky from thousands of feet, spinning at the ground, and at the last second, pull up and pick up a handkerchief with his wingtip. No.

Jad Abumrad (7:22)

No way.

Frank Marrero (7:23)

Oh, yes. He invented aerobatics.

Jad Abumrad (7:26)

Pick up a handkerchief with his wing from where? The ground?

Frank Marrero (7:29)

Yeah.

Jad Abumrad (7:29)

That's crap.

Frank Marrero (7:30)

There's no way. There's no way.

Robert Krulwich (7:31)

Wait a second. Well, we may never know for sure because these things are wrapped within legends, within legends, clearly. But a lot of people saw wonderful things happen.

Frank Marrero (7:40)

Everybody had recognized that this was nascent, this was new. The population in the United states was about 90 million then 17 million people saw him that one year alone.

Sam Kean (7:52)

He was a pretty big deal.

Frank Marrero (7:54)

He had a girlfriend in every major American city. I talked to people who watched him buy diamond engagement rings by the dozens. And he always had one in his vest pocket.

Sam Kean (8:05)

Thomas Edison praised him. Carl Sandburg wrote a poem about him.

Frank Marrero (8:09)

Railroads changed their schedules to follow him around the country.

Sam Kean (8:13)

What Orville Wright called him the most wonderful aviator anyone has ever seen.

Robert Krulwich (8:18)

People are gaga, and most gaga of all are pilots.

Frank Marrero (8:23)

So many people are dying, imitating him. The city of San Diego considered doing an injunction, a legal injunction to bar him from flying.

Jad Abumrad (8:32)

But for Beachy, nothing could stop him. For a while, at least, nothing could stop him until he mastered this one particular trick. The trick of all tricks.

Robert Krulwich (8:40)

Loop the loop.

Jad Abumrad (8:41)

Yeah. What is that?

Sam Kean (8:43)

Basically, it's like a corkscrew maneuver.

Jad Abumrad (8:46)

Like on a roller coaster?

Sam Kean (8:47)

Yeah, like exactly like a roller coaster where you go level, then you go upside down. You come back going the same way. Difficult thing to do. Humans aren't evolved to fly. It's very easy to lose your equilibrium, to get. Get screwed up on what's up, what's down.

Robert Krulwich (9:02)

Plus, if you turn your plane upside down, one of these old planes, the.

Frank Marrero (9:06)

Motor would go off.

Jad Abumrad (9:07)

Why would the motor go off?

Frank Marrero (9:08)

Because they hadn't figured out fluid mechanics of pumping the gas up into it. It all fell. It was by gravity.

Robert Krulwich (9:14)

Still, Beachy thinks, I'm gonna do this thing.

Jad Abumrad (9:16)

Can't stop me.

Robert Krulwich (9:16)

But one day he's on a train.

Frank Marrero (9:18)

He's gonna speak at the Olympic Club. And Charlie Walsh's wife. Now, Charlie Walsh is one of his dear friends. He just died two days before trying to do a Beachy, as dozens did, meaning trying to do a trick that Beachy did. It's called doing a Beachy. And so Charlie Walsh's wife sees him changing trains, and she crashes against him, saying, you killed Charlie. He's in the baggage car in a coffin.

Sam Kean (9:44)

It really got to him.

Robert Krulwich (9:45)

And it started him thinking about all the people who had died trying to imitate him.

Sam Kean (9:50)

At one point, he said he felt like he had murdered some of these people. That's how hard he took this. And at that point, he decided he couldn't go on with it. He decided he had to retire.

Jad Abumrad (10:02)

So he arrives at the Olympic Club and as everyone's cheering, steps up to.

Frank Marrero (10:05)

The podium, comes up and says, you could not make me enter a plane again at the point of a revolver. I'm done.

Jad Abumrad (10:11)

That's really what he said?

Frank Marrero (10:12)

That's really what he said.

Jad Abumrad (10:13)

Wow.

Robert Krulwich (10:14)

But he added a kind of parting thought.

Lincoln Beachy (voice actor or quoted text) (10:17)

I am tormented with the desire to loop the loop in the air. I know I can do it, but I know no one else can do it. And I know that if I ever go up into the air again, I will pull off this loop, the loop. And then many men will be taken by death and trying to do the same thing, because I have done it.

Frank Marrero (10:36)

So he retires for three months.

Jad Abumrad (10:40)

And that's not exactly quitting.

Robert Krulwich (10:44)

Here's the thing. During those three months, the unthinkable. Somebody else does the loop de loop for the first time. Some Frenchman.

Sam Kean (10:53)

He couldn't stand that someone else had looped the loop before him. And he decided he was going to be the best looper in the world. And it took him a few months of practice, but he did it. He eventually outdid the Frenchman. And he would start pulling, you know, four, five, six loops in a row.

Robert Krulwich (11:14)

Again and again and again.

Frank Marrero (11:16)

When he finally did the loop de loop, I want to read you what he wrote. The Silent Reaper of Souls. And I shook hands that day.

Lincoln Beachy (voice actor or quoted text) (11:27)

Thousands of times we've engaged in a race among the clouds, plunging headlong into breathless flight, diving and circling with awful.

Frank Marrero (11:36)

Speed through ethereal space.

Lincoln Beachy (voice actor or quoted text) (11:39)

And many times when the dazzling sunlight has blinded my eyes and sudden darkness has numbed all my senses, I have imagined him close at my heels. On such occasions, I have defied him, but in so doing have experienced fright which I cannot explain today. The old fellow and I are pals.

Frank Marrero (12:03)

Suffer me for a second while I wax philosophical.

Jad Abumrad (12:05)

Do it.

Frank Marrero (12:06)

Something happened in the psyche of humanity. You got to realize, for a hundred thousand years, millions upon millions of people have wanted to fly.

Jad Abumrad (12:16)

And Frank believes that when people saw Beachy loop the loop so many times, so effortlessly, it was a turning point.

Frank Marrero (12:23)

If you could do that, you were free in the air.

Jad Abumrad (12:26)

We were no longer just managing to fly. Now we own the sky.

Robert Krulwich (12:34)

1915. The World's Fair is going to be held that year in San Francisco, California, which is Beachy's hometown now.

Frank Marrero (12:40)

At the time, he was working on a monoplane, a single wing airplane.

Robert Krulwich (12:44)

It was a brand new thing. It hadn't been tested, but the fair.

Frank Marrero (12:47)

Officials had seen it and they said, oh, would you show? Would you fly us your new one? He said, sure.

Robert Krulwich (12:53)

So March 14th, Beachy takes this thing up for its very first flight.

Sam Kean (12:59)

Some people say there are up to a quarter million people at the expo and most of them were watching him.

Frank Marrero (13:05)

So he goes up above, over Alcatraz and 3,000ft above Alcatraz and starts diving and that structural metallurgical smarts hadn't been developed enough yet on single wing airplanes. And they both of his wings crack back.

Sam Kean (13:24)

Someone said it sounded like a ship mass just snapping, cracking right in half.

Frank Marrero (13:28)

He fell 3,000ft. They estimated him going at 250 miles an hour and hit the water right at the foot of Fillmore Hill.

Sam Kean (13:41)

When a doctor looked at him later, he actually only had a broken leg from the impact. But what got him was he was strapped in pretty tightly and no matter how hard he struggled, he could not get out of the straps. Plane had him wrapped in so tightly it just drug him down to the bottom and he drowned in the bottom of San Francisco Bay. After that show, for 24 hours straight.

Robert Krulwich (14:08)

You couldn't make a phone call in.

Sam Kean (14:10)

San Francisco because so many people were calling in and out with news and rumors about what had happened to Lincoln Beachy. So he took down the entire San Francisco phone system.

Robert Krulwich (14:21)

So why has he been erased from the common historical memory? I mean, you hear about flying aces from World War I, Eddie Rickenbacker and you hear about Charles Lindbergh, of course, and you hear about Amelia Earhart. Yeah, but you don't hear about Lincoln Peachey.

Frank Marrero (14:38)

Well, after the war we had new heroes and he slipped into obscurity, except for one thing.

Sam Kean (14:48)

It's a jump rope chant.

Jump Rope Chant Singers (14:52)

Lincoln Beachy thought it was a dream.

Sam Kean (14:54)

That, you know, little kids would say. It went. Lincoln Beechey thought it was a dream to go up to heaven in a flying machine. The machine broke down and down he fell. Instead of going to heaven he went.

Jump Rope Chant Singers (15:11)

To Link and Beachy thought it was a dream to go up to heaven in a flying machine. The machine broke down and down he fell. He thought you gotta heaven but he went to Lincoln Beachy thought it was.

Additional Chant Singers (15:23)

A dream to go up to heaven in a flying machine. The machine broke down and down he fell. He thought he'd go to heaven but he went to Blinkin Beach. He thought it was a dream to go up to heaven in a flying machine. The machine broke down and he fell. He thought he'd go to heaven but he went to Lincoln Beach. He thought it was a dream to go up to heaven in a flying machine. The machine broke down and down he fell. He thought he'd go to heaven but he went to Lincoln Beach.

Jad Abumrad (15:53)

Thanks to Sam Kean, author of the Disappearing Spoon and Other True Tales of Madness, Love and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of Elements. And thanks to Frank Moreno Morero. Right.

Frank Marrero (16:03)

My book is Lincoln the Man who owned the sky.

Robert Krulwich (16:06)

And thanks to Nick Capodici for being our Lincoln Beachy.

Jad Abumrad (16:09)

And lastly, we want to than again our jump ropers at CS200 here in Manhattan and this talented group of singers at the LaGuardia School of the Arts.

Frank Marrero (16:16)

My name is Emma Moorcroft.

Jad Abumrad (16:17)

Kelly Fthew, Mew, Julia Egan, Marielle Nazareno, Ruby Froome. And Ruby wrote and arranged what you're hearing.

Additional Chant Singers (16:22)

Lincoln Beach. He thought it was a dream to go up to heaven in a flying machine. The machine broke down and down he fell. He thought he'd go to heaven, but he went too.

Jad Abumrad (16:34)

Oh, and thank you to Robert Apostle at LaGuardia and Brenda Addison at CS200 for the hookups.

Robert Krulwich (16:40)

And if you are be at all tantalized by the idea of a loop.

Jad Abumrad (16:43)

Well, we have a whole hour long segment coming up next in our next podcast, all about loops.

Robert Krulwich (16:48)

Loopy math, loopy biology, loopy neurology, loopy jokes coming your way.

Jad Abumrad (16:53)

I'm Jad Abumrad.

Robert Krulwich (16:54)

I'm Robert Klowicz.

Jad Abumrad (16:55)

Thanks for listening.

Dallas (Radiolab Listener/Message Reader) (16:56)

Message. Hey, I'm just gonna read for the credits. This is Dallas from Dallas. That's really my name and that's really where I'm from. Radiolab is supported in part by the Alfred P. Sloan foundation, enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world. More information about Sloan at www. Excuse me. More information about Sloan@www.sloan.org. and this is me mentioning that I'm a Radiolab listener.

Sam Kean (17:23)

Bye.

Dallas (Radiolab Listener/Message Reader) (17:24)

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