March 6, 2025 • 9 mins
Some mistakes are more embarrassing—and amazing—than others.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
iHeartRadio and Grimm 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.
(00:36):
The past is a foreign country. Author LP Hartley coined
this phrase in nineteen fifty three in the opening lines
of his book The Go Between. An instantly iconic simile,
it describes how alien even our own history looks to ourselves.
With enough time, history just becomes archaeology. But if human
history is a foreign country, natural history is like another planet.
(01:00):
Cleopatra live closer in history to the invention of the
iPhone than the construction of the Great Pyramids. Your lifespan
is closer to your great great grandparents than a Tyrannosaurus
rex was to a Stegosaurus. And after the passage of
so much time, it requires an immense act of imagination
to fill the gaps left by time. When you enter
(01:20):
a natural history museum, for example, one of the first
sites you're likely to see is a fully assembled dinosaur skeleton.
They're impressive, eye catching, and give a sense of immediacy
and scale to the past that might otherwise elude us.
We can easily imagine what it would be like to
be in that thing's presence, even if our species never overlapped.
(01:42):
But what we don't often think about is all the
trial and error that it took to assemble the skeleton properly.
Some skeletons are found intact, but others require mixing and
matching with bones from other sites or replicas made to
replace missing or damaged fossils. And if multiple fossils are
found the same place, the possibility for mixing creatures up
(02:03):
becomes very present. And one of my favorite examples of
this happening took place in central Germany. Sometime in the
seventeenth century, workmen who were mining near the town of
Magdeburg unearthed the Strange Cave. In this cave, they found
strange bones, bones that looked nothing like any animal they
had ever seen. Word quickly spread throughout the town, and
(02:24):
eventually the mayor Otto von Gurika studied the bones himself.
Gurica was initially quite worried that the workmen had damaged
the bones by handling them improperly, but as worries were
soon eclipsed by his own excitement at the discovery. He
wrote an article about this amazing find in the local newspaper,
and shortly thereafter they set about reconstructing this strange, strange beast.
(02:48):
We have to remember that the field of paleontology just
didn't exist back then. There was no ruling authority for
Gurka to report to for this kind of esoteric discovery,
so instead Gurika brought the bone bones to the town's abbess,
who helped lead a reconstruction of the creature. As they
tested which bones fit with which they were met with
another miraculous revelation. This creature had a long horn protruding
(03:12):
from its skull, sharp as a knight's lance, and for
many years, local legend had contended that there were unicorns
in these lands. In fact, there was a small cottage
industry among the villagers that involved selling medicine made out
of unicorn bones, but this was the first full skeleton
assembled of such a creature. It would become a prized
(03:33):
possession of the town, famed in local legend. Later in
the seventeenth century, a German polymath named Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz
drew a version of the creature's skeleton, using Gerica's description
as his primary basis. The resulting depiction of the so
called Magdeburg unicorn looked strange, a strong jawed skull with
(03:54):
two massive forelegs framing ribs, and a spinal column that
tapered off with the tail. The bipedal creature didn't really
look like a horse, like one assumes in most unicorn legends,
but more like a narwhal with an enormous head and
two over developed front legs. Although the bones themselves would
be lost over the centuries, the creature passed into legend
(04:15):
thanks to the drawings that leaven it's maid. Of course,
it would become obvious that Gurica, the Abbess and the
people of Magdeburg had not discovered a unicorn. They'd made
a haphazard assembly of different prehistoric animal fossils. The so
called unicorn is mostly made up of fossilized wooly rhinoceros,
a creature whose existence was not known at the time.
(04:38):
To the modern eye, it looks downright outrageous, a goofy
bipedal creature with proportions out of a cartoon. And while
we don't know for certain how seriously this discovery was
taken by the scientific community of its era, we do
know that the Magdeburg unicorn has a special place in
the annals of science. It's gone down in history as
(04:58):
the worst fossil recon instruction of all time. It was
August of nineteen eighty five, and New York City was
in the grip of its annual late summer heat wave.
(05:21):
In downtown Manhattan, two young boys strolled through the busy sidewalks,
gaping at the towering skyscrapers an endless stream of yellow cabs.
They were ten year old Keith Burne and thirteen year
old Noel Murray, and this was their first time in
the Big Apple. They were here without their parents or permission,
and so far they were loving every second of it.
(05:43):
The boys had been dreading the rapid approaching school year
and had decided to squeeze in one last summer adventure.
So two nights before they'd met up just before dinnertime.
Ignoring Keith's mother's insistence that they not go too far,
Keith and Nol headed straight for the local train station,
where they snuck under a turnstile and hopped aboard a
random train car. They didn't have a plan or a
(06:06):
destination in mind, but they kept changing transportation at random
until they wound up in New York. The city was
like anything they had ever experienced, and they spent hours
soaking in the sights and sounds. They kept their hunger
at bay by fishing coins from public fountains and using
the money to buy hot dogs and chips. The boys
were just discussing their next move when a shadow fell
(06:29):
over them. They looked up into the stony face of
one of New York's finest The cops said that his
name was Officer White and asked the boys where their
parents were. Nol slipped on a confident, easygoing smile and
gestured back down the sidewalk, as if to say that
she was just behind them and would catch up at
any minute. This trick had served the boys well throughout
(06:49):
their adventure, getting them passed more than a few ticket agents,
but Officer White did not buy it. He pressed them
for answers, and eventually Keith stammered that they were on
their way to meet their parents in the center of town.
Officer White frowned, and then he reached for his radio,
and minutes later the boys were seated in the back
of Officer White's police car, racing through the busy New
(07:10):
York traffic. Despite finding themselves in police custody, Keith and
Knowle were in high spirits. They marveled at the cruiser's
controls and pestered Officer White to turn on his sirens
and his megaphone. And while they knew that their trip
was rapidly coming to a close, they didn't mind too much.
This was shaping up to be a better adventure than
they could have ever hoped for. When they got to
(07:32):
the precinct, Officer White and his sergeant put the boys
in a holding room. After feeding them hamburgers and soda
and letting Noel play with an unloaded pistol. They begged
the boys to say where they were from, and finally
Keith and Knowle agreed that it was time to come
clean first. Though Noel asked how Officer White knew that
they were runaways, Officer White laughed and said that he
(07:55):
suspected something was up. When Noel mentioned meeting their parents
at the center of town. A local might say that
they were meeting a friend in Midtown or maybe even
Times Square, but no New Yorker would ever say the
center of town. However, the real giveaway was their thick accent.
The boys laughed at the comment and finally told Officer
White the whole story about their journey, how they had
(08:17):
stowed aboard several trains, a ferry, and finally a seven
forty seven, all without ever paying for a single ticket.
When he heard the tale, Officer White was sure that
they were pulling his leg yet again, but he made
some calls and discovered that it was all true. He
managed to get a hold of their parents, as well
as the airline they had conned, which responded by putting
(08:38):
Keith and Nol up in a five star hotel for
the night. To keep them busy and out of trouble.
Officer White's sergeant took them sightseeing and bought them all
the souvenirs they could carry. A few days and a
plane ride later, the adventure was finally over. Keith and
Nol were safe and sound back home in Dublin, Ireland.
(09:01):
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 Curiosities podcast dot com.
This show was created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership
with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show
called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television
(09:23):
show and you can learn all about it over at
the Worldoflore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.
Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
iHeartRadio and Grimm 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.
(00:36):
The past is a foreign country. Author LP Hartley coined
this phrase in nineteen fifty three in the opening lines
of his book The Go Between. An instantly iconic simile,
it describes how alien even our own history looks to ourselves.
With enough time, history just becomes archaeology. But if human
history is a foreign country, natural history is like another planet.
(01:00):
Cleopatra live closer in history to the invention of the
iPhone than the construction of the Great Pyramids. Your lifespan
is closer to your great great grandparents than a Tyrannosaurus
rex was to a Stegosaurus. And after the passage of
so much time, it requires an immense act of imagination
to fill the gaps left by time. When you enter
(01:20):
a natural history museum, for example, one of the first
sites you're likely to see is a fully assembled dinosaur skeleton.
They're impressive, eye catching, and give a sense of immediacy
and scale to the past that might otherwise elude us.
We can easily imagine what it would be like to
be in that thing's presence, even if our species never overlapped.
(01:42):
But what we don't often think about is all the
trial and error that it took to assemble the skeleton properly.
Some skeletons are found intact, but others require mixing and
matching with bones from other sites or replicas made to
replace missing or damaged fossils. And if multiple fossils are
found the same place, the possibility for mixing creatures up
(02:03):
becomes very present. And one of my favorite examples of
this happening took place in central Germany. Sometime in the
seventeenth century, workmen who were mining near the town of
Magdeburg unearthed the Strange Cave. In this cave, they found
strange bones, bones that looked nothing like any animal they
had ever seen. Word quickly spread throughout the town, and
(02:24):
eventually the mayor Otto von Gurika studied the bones himself.
Gurica was initially quite worried that the workmen had damaged
the bones by handling them improperly, but as worries were
soon eclipsed by his own excitement at the discovery. He
wrote an article about this amazing find in the local newspaper,
and shortly thereafter they set about reconstructing this strange, strange beast.
(02:48):
We have to remember that the field of paleontology just
didn't exist back then. There was no ruling authority for
Gurka to report to for this kind of esoteric discovery,
so instead Gurika brought the bone bones to the town's abbess,
who helped lead a reconstruction of the creature. As they
tested which bones fit with which they were met with
another miraculous revelation. This creature had a long horn protruding
(03:12):
from its skull, sharp as a knight's lance, and for
many years, local legend had contended that there were unicorns
in these lands. In fact, there was a small cottage
industry among the villagers that involved selling medicine made out
of unicorn bones, but this was the first full skeleton
assembled of such a creature. It would become a prized
(03:33):
possession of the town, famed in local legend. Later in
the seventeenth century, a German polymath named Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz
drew a version of the creature's skeleton, using Gerica's description
as his primary basis. The resulting depiction of the so
called Magdeburg unicorn looked strange, a strong jawed skull with
(03:54):
two massive forelegs framing ribs, and a spinal column that
tapered off with the tail. The bipedal creature didn't really
look like a horse, like one assumes in most unicorn legends,
but more like a narwhal with an enormous head and
two over developed front legs. Although the bones themselves would
be lost over the centuries, the creature passed into legend
(04:15):
thanks to the drawings that leaven it's maid. Of course,
it would become obvious that Gurica, the Abbess and the
people of Magdeburg had not discovered a unicorn. They'd made
a haphazard assembly of different prehistoric animal fossils. The so
called unicorn is mostly made up of fossilized wooly rhinoceros,
a creature whose existence was not known at the time.
(04:38):
To the modern eye, it looks downright outrageous, a goofy
bipedal creature with proportions out of a cartoon. And while
we don't know for certain how seriously this discovery was
taken by the scientific community of its era, we do
know that the Magdeburg unicorn has a special place in
the annals of science. It's gone down in history as
(04:58):
the worst fossil recon instruction of all time. It was
August of nineteen eighty five, and New York City was
in the grip of its annual late summer heat wave.
(05:21):
In downtown Manhattan, two young boys strolled through the busy sidewalks,
gaping at the towering skyscrapers an endless stream of yellow cabs.
They were ten year old Keith Burne and thirteen year
old Noel Murray, and this was their first time in
the Big Apple. They were here without their parents or permission,
and so far they were loving every second of it.
(05:43):
The boys had been dreading the rapid approaching school year
and had decided to squeeze in one last summer adventure.
So two nights before they'd met up just before dinnertime.
Ignoring Keith's mother's insistence that they not go too far,
Keith and Nol headed straight for the local train station,
where they snuck under a turnstile and hopped aboard a
random train car. They didn't have a plan or a
(06:06):
destination in mind, but they kept changing transportation at random
until they wound up in New York. The city was
like anything they had ever experienced, and they spent hours
soaking in the sights and sounds. They kept their hunger
at bay by fishing coins from public fountains and using
the money to buy hot dogs and chips. The boys
were just discussing their next move when a shadow fell
(06:29):
over them. They looked up into the stony face of
one of New York's finest The cops said that his
name was Officer White and asked the boys where their
parents were. Nol slipped on a confident, easygoing smile and
gestured back down the sidewalk, as if to say that
she was just behind them and would catch up at
any minute. This trick had served the boys well throughout
(06:49):
their adventure, getting them passed more than a few ticket agents,
but Officer White did not buy it. He pressed them
for answers, and eventually Keith stammered that they were on
their way to meet their parents in the center of town.
Officer White frowned, and then he reached for his radio,
and minutes later the boys were seated in the back
of Officer White's police car, racing through the busy New
(07:10):
York traffic. Despite finding themselves in police custody, Keith and
Knowle were in high spirits. They marveled at the cruiser's
controls and pestered Officer White to turn on his sirens
and his megaphone. And while they knew that their trip
was rapidly coming to a close, they didn't mind too much.
This was shaping up to be a better adventure than
they could have ever hoped for. When they got to
(07:32):
the precinct, Officer White and his sergeant put the boys
in a holding room. After feeding them hamburgers and soda
and letting Noel play with an unloaded pistol. They begged
the boys to say where they were from, and finally
Keith and Knowle agreed that it was time to come
clean first. Though Noel asked how Officer White knew that
they were runaways, Officer White laughed and said that he
(07:55):
suspected something was up. When Noel mentioned meeting their parents
at the center of town. A local might say that
they were meeting a friend in Midtown or maybe even
Times Square, but no New Yorker would ever say the
center of town. However, the real giveaway was their thick accent.
The boys laughed at the comment and finally told Officer
White the whole story about their journey, how they had
(08:17):
stowed aboard several trains, a ferry, and finally a seven
forty seven, all without ever paying for a single ticket.
When he heard the tale, Officer White was sure that
they were pulling his leg yet again, but he made
some calls and discovered that it was all true. He
managed to get a hold of their parents, as well
as the airline they had conned, which responded by putting
(08:38):
Keith and Nol up in a five star hotel for
the night. To keep them busy and out of trouble.
Officer White's sergeant took them sightseeing and bought them all
the souvenirs they could carry. A few days and a
plane ride later, the adventure was finally over. Keith and
Nol were safe and sound back home in Dublin, Ireland.
(09:01):
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 Curiosities podcast dot com.
This show was created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership
with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show
called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television
(09:23):
show and you can learn all about it over at
the Worldoflore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.
Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities News
Host
Aaron Mahnke
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