The Groupie

Some people welcome limitations as a way of testing their prowess and endurance. Others have those constraints forced upon them. This tour through the Cabinet will give us a glimpse of both kinds of people.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history
is an open book, all of these amazing tales right
there on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome
to the Cabinet of Curiosities. Harry was really good at chess.

(00:30):
I don't mean that in a casual way either. Harry
was tried and tested in dozens of large tournaments and
proved to be incredibly good at it. He started playing
at the age of fifteen, and over the years that followed,
became a master of the game. In he managed to
become the United States representative in a British competition known

(00:51):
as the Hastings Tournament. Most of the other chess players
there were a lot older than him, and there's a
rumor that they were a bit rude to him. He
might have had something to do with his age, sure,
but it was more likely to be connected to the
cigars he smoked while he played. Whether or not they
liked him didn't matter. Harry beat them all. I'm not

(01:13):
going to sugarcoat this story. Harry didn't live long. He
passed away in nineteen o six at the age of
thirty three, but he left behind a legacy that still
makes people scratch their heads today. Not for his typical
victories in normal chess competitions, though, no, Henry built a
reputation for something entirely different, group matches. He would sit

(01:36):
down with a number of other chess players, each with
their own game board and pieces set up, and then
play against all of them simultaneously. It would often take
place during an official tournament when many of the players
had the day off, so these were just random players
off the street. He was playing groups of the best
chess players in the world, all at the same time,

(01:59):
and he would win. Once he sat down with a
group of sixteen players and beat thirteen of them. Another time,
he played against twenty one contestants at a German tournament
and managed to record eleven draws, three wins, and six losses.
It was incredible to see as many people recorded one
player managing to think through and compete with a dozen

(02:21):
or more high level opponents at the same time. Well,
it was amazing. His best match was in Moscow in
nineteen o two. There he sat down with twenty two
tournament players and beat all but one of them. If
he hadn't died four years later, there's no telling what
else he would have been able to accomplish. Henry Nelson

(02:42):
Pillsbury was a phenomenon, and not just because he beat
so many players at the same time. No, as if
that weren't enough of a handicap, Henry managed to secure
all of these records with one additional limitation. You see,
he played each and every one of these group matches
is seated in a chair facing away from his opponent's

(03:03):
boards while others called out the moves to him. Henry
Nelson Pillsbury wasn't blind, but he played each of these
games as if he was. William was what you might

(03:30):
call an explorer. He grew up at the end of
the nineteenth century at a time in America when war
was raging across the state of Kentucky. No, not that
kind of war. This was the Kentucky Cave Wars, which
was a sort of competition between the people lucky enough
to own land over large cave systems who wanted to

(03:50):
sell tickets to tourists. Honestly, it was like a lot
of things in life. If there's money to be made,
people have a tendency to get competitive about it. But
of course this was a pretty odd business opportunity. If
you owned land with access to a cave that people
could walk into and look around, you could sell tickets
for admission and make a living. Except in Kentucky there

(04:12):
are a lot of caves. William was thirty seven years
old and lived on his father's land in central Kentucky.
About a decade before, he had discovered a cave on
the family property there and had begun selling tickets to visitors.
But there was a problem. The more popular Mammoth Cave
was easier to get to, so it had the majority

(04:34):
of the business in the area. Not one to be deterred,
William formed a plan. If he could find another entrance
to his family's own cave system, perhaps even one that
was closer to the foot traffic near Mammoth Cave, he
might be able to increase their business. So William went exploring,
and in he found something promising. He called it Sand

(04:58):
Cave and set about explore in it properly to make
sure it would work for all his goals. On January
he was crawling through a narrow part of the cave
when his lantern went down, leaving him in the dark.
Normally a very careful man, William accidentally kicked a large boulder,
which somehow rolled onto one of his legs, crushing it

(05:18):
and trapping him in the dark. His brothers and friends
tried to get him out but failed. Rescue workers failed
as well. A local college offered to send their entire
basketball team, but the offer was politely declined. They did
their best to keep Williams spirits up and brought him
food and water, but at the end of the day
he was trapped in a small cave, and that horror

(05:41):
wasn't about to just go away. On February four, six
days after becoming trapped, a group of men took him
a meal, and on their way out, the entrance to
the cave collapsed. William was still pinned beneath the boulder,
but now he was also cut off from the rest
of the world. His scuwers began to dig down from

(06:01):
a different location, but it took them ten days. When
they finally broke through and reached him on February, he
was already dead. It took William's family another two months
to retrieve his body, which they buried on their farm
on April nineteen, and then, oddly, the entire family sold

(06:23):
the farm two years later, moving away and leaving the
family cemetery behind. The new owner, being very aware of
the story of William's death, saw a business opportunity. He
dug up the explorer's body and moved it to the
cave there on his own land. He even had a
glass box made for it so that everyone who visited

(06:43):
would have a good view. Like the curiosity it was.
It sat in its glass case for nearly two years,
but in March of nineteen someone broke in and stole
William's body. When it was recovered a week later, the
damaged leg was missing. They the Corps put inside a
metal coffin, secured it with chains, and then placed it

(07:04):
deeper inside the cave. It stayed there until nineteen eighty nine.
There might be a silver lining to all of this, though,
When William became trapped in the cave back in nineteen five,
the media went wild. Historians believed that roughly fifty thousand
tourists came to the cave during those two weeks of
agony for William. They bought food and drink from the

(07:27):
local vendors, and then visited other nearby caves. Over fifty
reporters traveled there as well, each one hoping to write
the Great account of the ordeal. William Floyd Collins was
a star for a while. The result was an explosion
in public awareness of the Kentucky Cave system. In nineteen

(07:48):
forty one, the US government declared the entire Mammoth Cave
area to be a national park, protecting it for future
generations to enjoy. Each year, over half a million people
step inside and do a little exploring of their own safely.
I hope, I hope You've enjoyed today's guided tour of

(08:11):
the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts,
or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast
dot com. The 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 show, and you can learn all about it

(08:32):
over at the World of Lore dot com. And until
next time, stay curious.