# Miniskirts in the Sky (and other strange history)

An episode of [TheThinkingAtheist](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/412308695), 7 Oct 2025, 1 h 06 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/mgln.ai/e/711/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/67458462/podcast830_miniskirts.mp3

Buckle up. This week's show is proof that truth may be stranger than fiction. True Stories Podcast Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/thethinkingatheist--3270347/support.

## Transcript

[0:01] Speaker 1: Understand the thinking atheist. It's not a person, it's a symbol,
[0:09] Speaker 1: an idea.
[0:10] Speaker 2: The population of atheists this country is going through.
[0:13] Speaker 1: The rule, rejecting faith, pursuing knowledge, challenging the sacred. If
[0:18] Speaker 1: I tell the truth, it's because I tell the truth,
[0:22] Speaker 1: not because I put my hand on a book and
[0:24] Speaker 1: made a wish and working together for a more rational world.
[0:29] Speaker 2: Take the risk of thinking. Feel so much more happiness.
[0:32] Speaker 2: Truth Fusian wisdom will come to you that way.
[0:35] Speaker 1: Assume nothing, question everything, and start thinking. This is the
[0:43] Speaker 1: Thinking Atheist podcast hosted by Seth Andrews.
[0:56] Speaker 2: If you know me, you know how much I love
[0:59] Speaker 2: to tell story. This is an assembling of three six
[1:04] Speaker 2: nine I think twelve different true stories, stuff that I
[1:08] Speaker 2: have featured on my other show, but I just wanted
[1:10] Speaker 2: to bring them together. Here is a nice distraction, weird history,
[1:14] Speaker 2: interesting stuff from decades, even centuries past entertainment for you
[1:21] Speaker 2: and yours. So here we go with some stuff that
[1:26] Speaker 2: you may not have heard that actually happened, real events
[1:29] Speaker 2: involving real people. Here we go. I'm Sat Andrew's and
[1:35] Speaker 2: what you're about to hear is a true story for celebrity,
[1:46] Speaker 2: influence and even power few positions rival vans of the
[1:50] Speaker 2: Supreme Pontiff, the head of the Catholic Church, the Pope. Now,
[1:56] Speaker 2: the church is no stranger to strange stuff, but one
[2:01] Speaker 2: centuries old court case ranks right up there. In the
[2:05] Speaker 2: ninth century, pope's were very much political animals, even more
[2:10] Speaker 2: so than today. They had the power to appoint various
[2:14] Speaker 2: political rulers. Pope Formosis ruled the Papal states from October
[2:20] Speaker 2: of eight ninety one to April of eight ninety six,
[2:23] Speaker 2: five years, but his tenure was a troubled one. Lots
[2:28] Speaker 2: of maneuvering and taking sides and validating one group while
[2:32] Speaker 2: invalidating another. The details are really really messy, but the
[2:37] Speaker 2: short version is this, Pope Formosis was involved in a
[2:42] Speaker 2: big blow up over the coronation of Charles the Second,
[2:46] Speaker 2: which angered a ton of powerful Catholics. Power players turned
[2:51] Speaker 2: on him. He had to flee Rome. He was excommunicated
[2:54] Speaker 2: from the church, but over the course of time he
[2:58] Speaker 2: would go on to get a harden. He would return
[3:01] Speaker 2: to Rome, and then he decided he was going to
[3:05] Speaker 2: liberate Rome from the current emperors. He was going to
[3:09] Speaker 2: have an alliance with a guy named King Arnulf of
[3:12] Speaker 2: the East Franks. He was going to use King Arnoulf's
[3:16] Speaker 2: army to mobilize an attack on Italy. There would be
[3:20] Speaker 2: an overthrow. I mean, it was just a big, big,
[3:23] Speaker 2: complicated thing. But both men, Foremosis and King Arnulf fell ill.
[3:29] Speaker 2: So this anticipated liberation of Rome fell apart. So are
[3:35] Speaker 2: you with me? Pope Foremosis had angered political power players.
[3:40] Speaker 2: He was excommunicated, he was removed as Pope, ran for
[3:45] Speaker 2: his life, got a pardon, and then tried to come
[3:48] Speaker 2: back for a grand takeover of the Rome that he
[3:52] Speaker 2: had just been kicked out of before his plans fell apart.
[3:56] Speaker 2: Now his successor as Pope was Stephen the sixth, and
[4:03] Speaker 2: Pope Stephen would never forget the scheming and the betrayals
[4:08] Speaker 2: of his predecessor. He was so enraged that he ordered
[4:12] Speaker 2: Formoses to be brought up on charges where he would
[4:15] Speaker 2: have to answer for his crimes against Rome, against humanity,
[4:19] Speaker 2: against God. Formoses was accused of violating canon law. He
[4:26] Speaker 2: was accused of perjury, He was accused of usurping the
[4:30] Speaker 2: papacy and violating the will of the Almighty. So there
[4:36] Speaker 2: he was in the courtroom former Pope Formoses. He was
[4:40] Speaker 2: sitting stoically dressed in his ecclesiastical robe as the charges
[4:45] Speaker 2: were argued in front of him. He was being defended
[4:48] Speaker 2: by a church deacon who articulated the best defense he
[4:52] Speaker 2: could muster. But it was all for nothing. This was
[4:56] Speaker 2: a show trial. On top of that, an earth quake
[5:00] Speaker 2: hit the region right in the middle of the proceedings.
[5:03] Speaker 2: That seismic event was portrayed as the righteous indignation of
[5:08] Speaker 2: God himself. So it's no surprise that Pope Stephen the
[5:13] Speaker 2: sixth would see his guilty verdict. He would oversee the
[5:18] Speaker 2: punishments of the betrayer. All of the former Pope's consecrations, appointments,
[5:24] Speaker 2: and ordinations were instantly nullified. His robes were stripped from
[5:29] Speaker 2: his body, and he was dressed in filthy rags. Three
[5:33] Speaker 2: of his fingers were hacked off. These were known as
[5:36] Speaker 2: the fingers of consecration, used to give blessings and formosis
[5:42] Speaker 2: was thrown into the Tiber River. This was a common
[5:46] Speaker 2: practice against Rome's most infamous criminals. This was a place
[5:51] Speaker 2: of disposal for the garbage for centuries. The Tiber had
[5:55] Speaker 2: swept away the bodies of political rivals, emperorsestion martyrs, and
[6:01] Speaker 2: enemies of the people. Legend says that even ponscious Pilot
[6:06] Speaker 2: had been tossed into the Tiber. Pope Stephen the sixth
[6:11] Speaker 2: had had his revenge in eight ninety seven C. But
[6:16] Speaker 2: his victory would not last long, and neither would his reign.
[6:21] Speaker 2: Stephen himself would be soon removed, imprisoned, and killed. And
[6:26] Speaker 2: yet the history books don't remember Pope Stephen for his
[6:30] Speaker 2: own death. He is remembered for putting a predecessor on trial,
[6:36] Speaker 2: a show trial, with the guilty verdicts all but guaranteed.
[6:41] Speaker 2: That court case has been made all the more famous
[6:44] Speaker 2: with this knowledge, the knowledge that the accused Foremosies, who
[6:50] Speaker 2: was sitting adorned at attention in the defendant's chair, the
[6:55] Speaker 2: man who said not a word, well, he didn't say
[6:59] Speaker 2: a word because he couldn't speak. Formoses had been dead
[7:06] Speaker 2: four months. Pope Stephen had been so outraged that he
[7:12] Speaker 2: ordered his enemy's corpse to be dug up for the trial.
[7:17] Speaker 2: He wanted to see that face, the deceased and decaying
[7:22] Speaker 2: face of Formoses, as the trial was held and the
[7:26] Speaker 2: verdict rendered. And when Formosis was stripped, dismembered, and tossed
[7:31] Speaker 2: into the Tiber, he wouldn't he couldn't feel a thing.
[7:37] Speaker 2: So now you know the history, the account from eleven
[7:41] Speaker 2: hundred and twenty eight years ago about a living pope
[7:46] Speaker 2: who tried a dead one, and who in that Roman court,
[7:51] Speaker 2: as the accusations flew, literally looked death in the face.
[8:07] Speaker 2: I have always envied people who can draw. I am
[8:10] Speaker 2: in awe of Stephen Wiltshire, who is really good at
[8:14] Speaker 2: drawing cities, and I mean detailed drawings, tremendously impressive work,
[8:20] Speaker 2: and he does it all freehand. I mean, the guy
[8:24] Speaker 2: drew New York City three hundred and five square miles
[8:28] Speaker 2: of the Big Apple depicted on a nineteen foot long canvas.
[8:34] Speaker 2: Stephen sees it, he draws it. What a remarkable gift. Yet,
[8:39] Speaker 2: until he was five years old, Stephen had never uttered
[8:42] Speaker 2: a single word. Born with autism, all verbal languages seemed
[8:48] Speaker 2: like foreign languages to him. People wondered if he would
[8:51] Speaker 2: ever say anything. Until one day in his kindergarten class
[8:57] Speaker 2: at a London school for autistic chill. It was a
[9:00] Speaker 2: special day, the whole class going out on a field trip,
[9:04] Speaker 2: and when they returned, Stephen spoke. He said the word paper.
[9:11] Speaker 2: The teacher asked him to repeat his request and again
[9:14] Speaker 2: he said paper. Then she asked Stephen if he could
[9:19] Speaker 2: speak another word, and he did. He said penn well quickly.
[9:25] Speaker 2: Stephen Wiltshire was given paper and pen, and he began
[9:28] Speaker 2: to draw the places he had just visited. Using this
[9:32] Speaker 2: newly discovered sense of place, his instructor was able to
[9:37] Speaker 2: teach him the alphabet by associating letters with each of
[9:41] Speaker 2: the buildings that Stephen drew. A for Albert Hall, B
[9:45] Speaker 2: for Buckingham Palace, Z for the zoo, that kind of thing.
[9:50] Speaker 2: Stephen's parents started entering him in art competitions, with each
[9:55] Speaker 2: drawing bringing fresh attention and new admirers. Steve and himself
[10:00] Speaker 2: couldn't really understand why he was getting so much attention,
[10:04] Speaker 2: Why what he was doing was so remarkable, Why would
[10:07] Speaker 2: so many people care. In a BBC interview about her son,
[10:12] Speaker 2: Annette Wiltshire said, quote that he has a gift makes
[10:16] Speaker 2: no sense at all to Stephen. He knows that he
[10:19] Speaker 2: draws very well, but he picks that up from other people.
[10:22] Speaker 2: He sees the warmth on their faces. They tell him
[10:26] Speaker 2: how much they like his work, and that makes him
[10:28] Speaker 2: very happy. He loves the attention, and Stephen would continue
[10:34] Speaker 2: to get attention for the work of his pencil, including
[10:38] Speaker 2: attention by CBS's early show in two thousand and nine.
[10:43] Speaker 2: They asked this young prodigy to draw New York City
[10:48] Speaker 2: in glorious detail. They provided a helicopter so Stephen could
[10:53] Speaker 2: get overhead references to everything, and when Stephen was done
[10:57] Speaker 2: with the surveys, his canvas was prepared at the prestigious
[11:02] Speaker 2: Pratt Institutes, and over the course of four days with
[11:06] Speaker 2: headphones playing tunes from his iPod, mentally immersed in this
[11:11] Speaker 2: fresh cityscape, Stephen drew most of Manhattan, the Hudson Shoreline
[11:17] Speaker 2: of New Jersey, the George Washington and Verrazano Narrows, bridges,
[11:22] Speaker 2: Ellis Island, the bridges to Queens and Brooklyn, and so
[11:26] Speaker 2: much more, section by section, connecting the city together in pencil.
[11:32] Speaker 2: Now you can see and even purchase a print of
[11:35] Speaker 2: this at Stephen's website Stephen Wiltshire dot co dot UK,
[11:42] Speaker 2: and I will link that website in the show notes.
[11:44] Speaker 2: You'll also see his drawing of the Eiffel Tower, of
[11:47] Speaker 2: panorama of London, the Chicago River, Pershing Square in downtown
[11:53] Speaker 2: Los Angeles. He has drawn Hong Kong, Rome, Frankfurt, Madrid, Dubai,
[11:58] Speaker 2: Jerusalem and more. His drawing of Tokyo required a canvas
[12:04] Speaker 2: more than thirty two feet long. Stephen's talents have been
[12:08] Speaker 2: featured in books, They've been displayed in fine art galleries
[12:13] Speaker 2: and elsewhere. He drew a twenty ten panorama of Sydney,
[12:17] Speaker 2: Australia to raise awareness and money for Autism Spectrum Australia,
[12:23] Speaker 2: a terrific charity, and he is the subject of a
[12:26] Speaker 2: twenty nineteen documentary film called Billions of Windows. Yeah, you
[12:32] Speaker 2: need to see this guy's work, and I think you
[12:35] Speaker 2: should start with that first city drawing that I mentioned
[12:39] Speaker 2: a second ago, the great city of New York, drawn
[12:43] Speaker 2: in astounding detail over four days. And when you look
[12:46] Speaker 2: at it, remember this fact. Stephen Wiltshire didn't shoot reference
[12:52] Speaker 2: photographs from the air. He shot photographs with his brain.
[12:58] Speaker 2: Stephen has a photographic mind. And when he drew almost
[13:03] Speaker 2: the entire city of New York way back in two
[13:07] Speaker 2: thousand and nine, he did it all from memory after
[13:11] Speaker 2: looking at those buildings from above in one helicopter ride
[13:18] Speaker 2: that lasted twenty minutes. Man, the early days of commercial
[13:35] Speaker 2: air travel were really something, and not just because humanity
[13:40] Speaker 2: had entered this exciting new world of travel in the skies.
[13:44] Speaker 2: Twentieth century commercial planes were also little tubes of sexism.
[13:51] Speaker 2: The first ever commercial flight happened on the first of
[13:55] Speaker 2: January nineteen fourteen, from Saint Petersburg to Tampa. Decades later,
[14:01] Speaker 2: in the nineteen sixties, commercial flight was well established, with
[14:05] Speaker 2: airlines like TWA, Pan American Continental, and of course many
[14:10] Speaker 2: of the names that you and I see today. Yet
[14:13] Speaker 2: most of the twentieth century was largely a man's world,
[14:19] Speaker 2: with glass ceilings. In corporate culture, working women paid less
[14:24] Speaker 2: than men, commonly expected to stay home, cook clean, raise
[14:30] Speaker 2: the kids, serve the husband. They were, also, of course,
[14:34] Speaker 2: objects to be ogled. So let's say that it was
[14:39] Speaker 2: the nineteen thirties and you were a female applying for
[14:43] Speaker 2: work as a stewardess, which was the common term at
[14:46] Speaker 2: the time today its flight attendant. Early airlines had strict
[14:52] Speaker 2: appearance guidelines for women, As reported by The New York
[14:56] Speaker 2: Times in nineteen thirty six, girls who qualified for hostesses
[15:02] Speaker 2: had to be petit one hundred to one hundred eighteen pounds,
[15:07] Speaker 2: five feet tall to five four ages twenty to twenty six.
[15:13] Speaker 2: Women would be subjected to physical examinations four times a
[15:18] Speaker 2: year to ensure that they still had the quote bloom
[15:23] Speaker 2: of perfect health. In other words, flight attendants in the
[15:28] Speaker 2: nineteen thirties were required to be female, young, and hot.
[15:33] Speaker 2: I wonder if men wrote those rules. Air travel had
[15:38] Speaker 2: really opened up After the Second World War. The role
[15:43] Speaker 2: of stewardess was often seen as a glamorous profession. Be
[15:48] Speaker 2: gorgeous and see the world. But still, flight attendants were
[15:53] Speaker 2: required to be young, beautiful, white, heterosexual, feminine, and very
[15:59] Speaker 2: put together the perception of America's perfect woman. If you
[16:05] Speaker 2: gained too much weight or you cross the age of
[16:08] Speaker 2: thirty five, congratulations, you're fired. Uniforms were what you might expect,
[16:16] Speaker 2: form fitting dresses, often short skirts, and high heels. Imagine
[16:22] Speaker 2: walking the aisles in those at high altitudes, and you
[16:26] Speaker 2: can imagine the avalanche of sexual harassment that these women endured.
[16:32] Speaker 2: And imagine this scenario. From nineteen fifty three to nineteen seventy,
[16:38] Speaker 2: United Airlines offered men only executive flights between New York
[16:45] Speaker 2: and Chicago and between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Women
[16:50] Speaker 2: and children were forbidden to fly on those planes. Just men.
[16:56] Speaker 2: Males whose perceptions of male ness were molded by the
[17:01] Speaker 2: often unenlightened attitudes of the fifties, sixties, and seventies. The
[17:06] Speaker 2: perfectly made up stewardesses ensured that those men would be
[17:11] Speaker 2: properly doted on. They wore their form fitting mini skirts.
[17:17] Speaker 2: They served up hot coffee, steaks, and cocktails. They even
[17:22] Speaker 2: offered complimentary cigars. The planes were wired for the male
[17:27] Speaker 2: business world. Before liftoff and after touchdown, business men could
[17:32] Speaker 2: have flight attendance be their secretaries, going to the back
[17:36] Speaker 2: of the plane to make calls to clients from the plane.
[17:40] Speaker 2: Telephone stewardesses also helped to provide teletype printouts with closing
[17:46] Speaker 2: market prices delivered to the pampered patriarchs in their comfy chairs.
[17:52] Speaker 2: And these amenities were how United marketed these flights to men,
[17:58] Speaker 2: with newspaper ads showing male masters of the universe on
[18:03] Speaker 2: the planes, smoking pipes, playing cards, drinking alcohol, and being
[18:08] Speaker 2: served by pretty girls in pretty dresses. Of course, sexism
[18:14] Speaker 2: has always been with us, and even after women's rights
[18:18] Speaker 2: movements spearheaded rule improvements toward a more egalitarian corporate culture
[18:25] Speaker 2: in the eighties and nineties, on the ground and in
[18:28] Speaker 2: the skies, today, female flight attendants remain in the crosshairs
[18:33] Speaker 2: of staring eyes and groping hands. The Association of Flight
[18:38] Speaker 2: Attendants union representing fifty thousand people, still says that harassment
[18:44] Speaker 2: is everywhere. It happens every hour of every day, proving
[18:49] Speaker 2: that even at thirty seven thousand feet, some mines remain
[18:55] Speaker 2: in the gutter. But still, I suppose we have come
[18:59] Speaker 2: a fair dis distance from man air that seventeen years
[19:04] Speaker 2: span where males filled the planes and females literally fed
[19:10] Speaker 2: their notions of manhood. The next time you fly, thank
[19:15] Speaker 2: of flight attendants, any and all flight attendants. They will
[19:20] Speaker 2: tell you that their job is difficult and demanding, with
[19:23] Speaker 2: days away from home and exhausting service to thousands of
[19:28] Speaker 2: strangers every single week. They endure the leers of men
[19:32] Speaker 2: still locked in those antiquated notions of sex and sexism.
[19:39] Speaker 2: And if you are one of those guys who insist
[19:43] Speaker 2: on being a guy, hey, perhaps the window will provide
[19:48] Speaker 2: a more appropriate view. And that is a true story.
[20:00] Speaker 1: True Stories Podcast dot Com.
[20:06] Speaker 2: Oh, I've got more fun, interesting, bizarre, and entertaining or
[20:11] Speaker 2: hopefully entertaining true stories for you. We continue next. You
[20:21] Speaker 2: are listening to an assembling of real stuff, things that
[20:26] Speaker 2: happened with real people, science, history, trivia, and more. It
[20:31] Speaker 2: is kind of a one after the other rapid fire
[20:34] Speaker 2: series of true stories. I'm Seth Andrews and what You're
[20:40] Speaker 2: about to hear is a true story. Nineteen ninety one,
[20:51] Speaker 2: the University of Cambridge, England, two innovative men invented something
[20:58] Speaker 2: so unique, so novels ground breaking, so useful that you
[21:03] Speaker 2: and I would see around eight billion versions of their
[21:07] Speaker 2: invention in use all around the world today, the webcam.
[21:13] Speaker 2: These two researchers worked in a seven story computer lab
[21:17] Speaker 2: at Cambridge and they were trying to make a locally
[21:20] Speaker 2: networked surveillance camera that would broadcast video from one location
[21:26] Speaker 2: to computer monitors throughout the entire building. Now this seems
[21:31] Speaker 2: so quaint today, so easy to do. Modern webcams are
[21:36] Speaker 2: built into our entire lives, our home and office computers,
[21:40] Speaker 2: even our cell phones. And they're amazing technology. Full color,
[21:45] Speaker 2: four K resolution, enhancements to take out the background or
[21:49] Speaker 2: ad decorations, all kinds of bells and whistles. But this
[21:53] Speaker 2: was way back in nineteen ninety one. The time and
[21:56] Speaker 2: radio stations were playing both grunge bands and color bad
[22:01] Speaker 2: Converse was the popular tennis shoe. The Soviet Union was
[22:05] Speaker 2: dissolving the big computers at that time, the Apple II,
[22:09] Speaker 2: the Commodore sixty four, the Radio Shack TRS eighty, standard
[22:15] Speaker 2: IBM office computers PCs often ran on Windows three point zero,
[22:21] Speaker 2: the installation of which required seven separate discs that would
[22:26] Speaker 2: be loaded one after the other into a drive. Installation
[22:30] Speaker 2: could take hours, and the National Science Foundation had just
[22:34] Speaker 2: opened the Internet for commercial use, introducing the World Wide
[22:40] Speaker 2: Web and eventually connecting billions of us in real time.
[22:45] Speaker 2: Nineteen ninety one. This was the time of the Intel
[22:48] Speaker 2: four eighty six microprocessor, where a twenty five megahertz processor
[22:55] Speaker 2: speed and four meg of memory were revolutionary. Now compare
[23:01] Speaker 2: that twenty five megahertz then to four gigahertz today, four
[23:07] Speaker 2: meg of memory then to perhaps thirty two gig of
[23:12] Speaker 2: ram today. It's funny. Computer culture a quarter century ago
[23:18] Speaker 2: was both the time of Enlightenment and the Dark Ages.
[23:21] Speaker 2: And something like a networked camera sending a single video
[23:26] Speaker 2: feed to a building of computer users. Nothing like that
[23:31] Speaker 2: had ever been done before, but these researchers, Quentin Stafford,
[23:35] Speaker 2: Fraser and Paul Jardetski at the University of Cambridge set
[23:39] Speaker 2: themselves to make a webcam so they could give their
[23:43] Speaker 2: fellow researchers the ability to surveil the happenings at point A,
[23:48] Speaker 2: streaming to their individual monitors at points bced etc. Quentin
[23:54] Speaker 2: wrote the software using the X window system protocol. Paul
[23:59] Speaker 2: wrote the server program. The camera feed was a staggering
[24:03] Speaker 2: one hundred and twenty nine grayscale pixels and it wasn't
[24:08] Speaker 2: actually video. This camera would only be able to snap
[24:12] Speaker 2: three photos a minute to send up the chain. And
[24:16] Speaker 2: remember this was two years before web browsers could even
[24:19] Speaker 2: display images, So Fraser and Jardetsky had to write a
[24:24] Speaker 2: specific program just to allow visuals to stream to everybody's computer.
[24:30] Speaker 2: But they did it. They built it, they programmed it,
[24:34] Speaker 2: they activated it. They connected researchers and academics and a
[24:39] Speaker 2: seven story Cambridge computer lab to a three frame a
[24:44] Speaker 2: minute webcam feed that these people would obsess over. They
[24:49] Speaker 2: would obsess over it, and not just because of the
[24:53] Speaker 2: groundbreaking technology you see computer innovation, code writing, etc. These
[25:01] Speaker 2: things require lots of hours behind a computer, hard work
[25:05] Speaker 2: requiring a focused brain, brains which crave stimulation. But people
[25:13] Speaker 2: were tired of walking the whole building to one specific breakroom,
[25:19] Speaker 2: only to find that the coffee pot was empty. That's right.
[25:28] Speaker 2: The first webcam was built so that a building full
[25:31] Speaker 2: of Cambridge researchers could see if there was any coffee
[25:35] Speaker 2: made before they got up and walked all the way
[25:38] Speaker 2: down to fill their mugs. Programmer Quentin Stafford Fraser actually
[25:42] Speaker 2: called his custom program ex Coffee and it saved thousands
[25:48] Speaker 2: and thousands and thousands of needless steps down halls and stairways.
[25:53] Speaker 2: It also let everybody know when someone needed to make
[25:57] Speaker 2: fresh coffee. The X coffee camera has become part of
[26:02] Speaker 2: technology history. It actually has its own wiki page. It
[26:06] Speaker 2: is listed on computer history chronologies. And when that laboratory
[26:12] Speaker 2: was moved in two thousand and one, the primitive little webcam,
[26:16] Speaker 2: the first webcam, was finally switched off for the very
[26:21] Speaker 2: last time. The story of that turning off was covered
[26:25] Speaker 2: in The Times, the Washington Post and elsewhere. The last
[26:30] Speaker 2: of that series of coffee machines in that breakroom monitored
[26:33] Speaker 2: by webcam. The last one was eventually sold to a
[26:37] Speaker 2: German news website via eBay. It was restored and switched
[26:42] Speaker 2: on in the magazine's editorial office, and that coffee maker
[26:46] Speaker 2: now sits in the Hinz Nicksdorf Museum. Oh what a
[26:51] Speaker 2: marriage coffee and the ability to see remotely whether or
[26:56] Speaker 2: not the coffee is made. That love of the sacred
[27:01] Speaker 2: Java provided the launch point for the webcam we used
[27:05] Speaker 2: today in zoom meetings, webcasts, FaceTime with family and friends,
[27:10] Speaker 2: all of that from coffeecam. The late author and humorist
[27:16] Speaker 2: Terry Pratchett once said, coffee is a way of stealing
[27:20] Speaker 2: time that should buy rights belong to your older self.
[27:26] Speaker 2: Thirty five years ago to Cambridge programmers bought time for
[27:30] Speaker 2: seven floors of coffee drinkers. How could they know way
[27:35] Speaker 2: back then that their coffee caam would change the world.
[27:49] Speaker 2: Would you rather be popular in people's minds or would
[27:53] Speaker 2: you rather be popular in terms of usefulness? Well, this
[27:58] Speaker 2: is the dilemma of one of the the most used
[28:01] Speaker 2: type faces in the world, Comic Sands. Comic Sands is
[28:08] Speaker 2: a sans serif typeface. It was first produced in nineteen
[28:12] Speaker 2: ninety four. Of course, as seraf is that small line
[28:16] Speaker 2: or stroke that's attached to the end of a larger stroke,
[28:20] Speaker 2: and a font saraf fonts often look a lot more
[28:24] Speaker 2: regal for some. A saraf free or sans serif typeface
[28:31] Speaker 2: just looks unsophisticated and Comic Sands has really sent the
[28:36] Speaker 2: snobs over the edge. This typeface was first introduced way
[28:41] Speaker 2: back in the nineteen nineties with the Windows ninety five
[28:45] Speaker 2: plus pack. It was conjured up by a Microsoft designer,
[28:50] Speaker 2: a man named Vincent Connair. It was inspired by the
[28:54] Speaker 2: lettering in the comic books that he had in his house,
[28:58] Speaker 2: specifically The Dark Knight Returns and The Watchman. He was
[29:02] Speaker 2: developing a text style for a speech bubble for a
[29:06] Speaker 2: Windows ninety five program. It was a help program with
[29:11] Speaker 2: a little cartoon dog, so if you had a question
[29:15] Speaker 2: or you couldn't find something, you would ask Rover and
[29:18] Speaker 2: a cartoon speech bubble would pop up and for Rover.
[29:22] Speaker 2: Vincent wanted an appropriate typeface vibe. Vincent had seen other
[29:29] Speaker 2: fonts used in cartoon speech bubbles, usually times New Roman,
[29:34] Speaker 2: a business font. It just looked off. He wanted something
[29:38] Speaker 2: more playful and friendly, targeted to younger people who were
[29:43] Speaker 2: totally into these fancy new computers. But his comic sans
[29:48] Speaker 2: creation was not originally intended for anything really beyond Rover
[29:53] Speaker 2: and the Windows ninety five help function. So imagine Vincent's
[29:58] Speaker 2: surprise when sands started showing up in formal documents and
[30:03] Speaker 2: workplaces around the world, in business letters, brochures, school papers.
[30:10] Speaker 2: Advertisers were using it on signs and promotions, even these
[30:14] Speaker 2: big highway billboards. A cartoon typeface had left its bubble
[30:20] Speaker 2: and gone mainstream. But oh the haters, they came out
[30:27] Speaker 2: of the woodwork comic sands, this uncouth, unclean, commoner typeface.
[30:35] Speaker 2: It was so beneath them. And it wasn't long before
[30:40] Speaker 2: hating on comic sands became a kind of sport. Just
[30:44] Speaker 2: a few years ago, according to an article on myfonts
[30:47] Speaker 2: dot com, one of the head designers at Twitter had
[30:51] Speaker 2: tweeted that the use of comic sands was the number
[30:55] Speaker 2: two complaint taking up their server space. The number two
[30:59] Speaker 2: comple from people number one the airline industry. Interestingly, number
[31:06] Speaker 2: three was justin Bieber. But the overall complaint seems to
[31:12] Speaker 2: be that if someone reads something that looks to cartoony,
[31:16] Speaker 2: they trust what they are reading much less. There is
[31:21] Speaker 2: an entire book just about fonts. It was written by
[31:24] Speaker 2: Simon Garfield and published in twenty twelve. It's called Just
[31:29] Speaker 2: My Type, and it opens up our world and our
[31:33] Speaker 2: eyes to the design, the flare, the nuance, the arts
[31:38] Speaker 2: of the letters that you and I type every single day.
[31:42] Speaker 2: The book is a history of and a love letter
[31:45] Speaker 2: to type faces, which are now more than five hundred
[31:49] Speaker 2: years old, hearkening back to the invention of the printing press.
[31:53] Speaker 2: If you browse Simon's book, I would wager you will
[31:56] Speaker 2: never see a street sign, or a building logo, a
[31:59] Speaker 2: movie poster, a convention program, or even an everyday email
[32:05] Speaker 2: without noticing the seriffs or the lack of seraphs, whether
[32:10] Speaker 2: it's small, medium, large, regular, bold, italic, and the subtle
[32:16] Speaker 2: and even not so subtle power of these characters in
[32:20] Speaker 2: the things we read. For being so small, the font
[32:25] Speaker 2: sure does a lot of heavy lifting. There are over
[32:29] Speaker 2: two hundred thousand fonts out there. The first sans serif
[32:34] Speaker 2: typeface was invented in eighteen sixteen by a printing pioneer
[32:39] Speaker 2: named William Caslon the fourth The first digital fonts originated
[32:44] Speaker 2: with none other than Steve Jobs. Before he left college
[32:48] Speaker 2: to go co found Apple, he took classes in calligraphy.
[32:53] Speaker 2: The early Macintosh computers had fonts that Steve Jobs made,
[32:58] Speaker 2: naming them after his favorite cities Chicago, Toronto, Geneva, etc.
[33:05] Speaker 2: The first machine printed and mass produced Bible was the
[33:09] Speaker 2: Gutenberg Bible. This was pressed in fourteen fifty five in Germany.
[33:14] Speaker 2: The font was Textura. Helvetica is really popular today. By
[33:20] Speaker 2: the way, Helvetica is the Latin word for the place
[33:24] Speaker 2: of its creation, Switzerland. When man landed on the Moon,
[33:30] Speaker 2: NASA needed a font for its aluminum plaque that the
[33:34] Speaker 2: astronauts left right there on the surface of the Moon
[33:37] Speaker 2: during Apollo eleven. It is no surprise that they picked
[33:41] Speaker 2: a twentieth century typeface called Futura. Oh but comic Sands,
[33:48] Speaker 2: it was never a consideration, and even now for almost
[33:53] Speaker 2: every application. Those who may even secretly like comic Sands
[33:58] Speaker 2: maybe just too nervous to admit it out loud. But
[34:04] Speaker 2: perhaps it is time for us to take a stand
[34:06] Speaker 2: against the bullies, the shamers, the haters. Maybe we should
[34:11] Speaker 2: start typing this underdog font loud and proud. And to
[34:17] Speaker 2: all of those who remain stuck in their snarkiness and snobbishness,
[34:23] Speaker 2: I leave you today with one simple question. Beyond assisting
[34:29] Speaker 2: a cartoon dog who was assisting computer users, and beyond
[34:35] Speaker 2: not taking itself too seriously and spreading a little cheer
[34:39] Speaker 2: out there. What did comic sands ever do to you?
[34:56] Speaker 2: Here's a piece of trivia that I was not aware of.
[34:59] Speaker 2: Did you know that it is forbidden for a British
[35:03] Speaker 2: monarch to sit even for a second, even casually, even
[35:08] Speaker 2: when invited to do so. It is forbidden for a
[35:11] Speaker 2: British monarch to sit on the throne of another king
[35:16] Speaker 2: or queen. I did not know this well. That fact
[35:20] Speaker 2: relates to a widely reported story involving perhaps the most
[35:25] Speaker 2: famous royal in recent history. She was Queen of the
[35:28] Speaker 2: United Kingdom and other Commonwealth realms from February sixth, nineteen
[35:33] Speaker 2: fifty two until her death September eighth of twenty twenty two,
[35:38] Speaker 2: the monarch of thirty two sovereign states and fifteen realms,
[35:43] Speaker 2: on the throne for seventy years and two hundred fourteen days.
[35:47] Speaker 2: Elizabeth Alexandra Mary or Queen Elizabeth the Second. Eight years
[35:54] Speaker 2: before her death, she had been touring another great hall
[35:58] Speaker 2: in Northern Ireland, paying a visit to the royal estate
[36:02] Speaker 2: of another not of the British realm, and she was
[36:05] Speaker 2: taking in the history and hearing the stories, and doing
[36:08] Speaker 2: and saying, Queenlee things. And she was so respected and
[36:13] Speaker 2: so admired by her hosts that they invited her to
[36:17] Speaker 2: sit on the throne of another king. But for reasons
[36:23] Speaker 2: of royal protocol, Queen Elizabeth politely refused, because the ancient
[36:30] Speaker 2: rules for the royal family specifically said sitting on the
[36:33] Speaker 2: throne of another might be considered an act of aggression. Oh,
[36:38] Speaker 2: but they continued to encourage her, Please go ahead, It's
[36:42] Speaker 2: totally fine. Yet, Queen Elizabeth would only smile and remain standing. Now,
[36:49] Speaker 2: whether or not you support the idea of a royal family,
[36:52] Speaker 2: we have to admit the institution and its people have
[36:55] Speaker 2: been the centerpiece of some remarkable history. Of course, you
[37:00] Speaker 2: and I, who have followed some of the Shenanigans of
[37:03] Speaker 2: the royal family throughout history, have seen kings and queens
[37:07] Speaker 2: and princes and princesses involved in some interesting scandals. But
[37:13] Speaker 2: Elizabeth herself remained mostly above it all. Her coronation on
[37:19] Speaker 2: the second of June nineteen fifty three would be the
[37:22] Speaker 2: first ever televised coronation ceremony for a British royal. Tens
[37:27] Speaker 2: of millions would tune in to watch this new queen
[37:30] Speaker 2: be crowned and take her thrown the only throne suitable
[37:34] Speaker 2: for a British monarch, which was the reason that sixty
[37:39] Speaker 2: four years later she would politely refuse to take a
[37:43] Speaker 2: seat on that other throne inside that other great hall
[37:47] Speaker 2: in Northern Ireland. But wouldn't it have been something to
[37:52] Speaker 2: see Queen Elizabeth the Second sitting there, perhaps being photographed
[37:57] Speaker 2: for posterity, at rest the great seat inside the throne
[38:03] Speaker 2: room of the Red Keep in the city of King's Landing, which,
[38:11] Speaker 2: of course is not a real city, it's a set,
[38:16] Speaker 2: And right there inside that set she was surrounded not
[38:20] Speaker 2: with the royal subjects of another actual king, but with
[38:24] Speaker 2: actors and producers, screenwriters, directors, all of them, surrounding this
[38:30] Speaker 2: famous seat of power, forged at the order of Agon,
[38:35] Speaker 2: the conqueror, first of the Kings of the House Targarian,
[38:40] Speaker 2: fashioned from the swords of the king's vanquished enemies, and
[38:44] Speaker 2: located right there in the Red Keep's Great Hall at
[38:48] Speaker 2: King's Landing. That's right, Queen Elizabeth was playfully invited to,
[38:54] Speaker 2: for just a moment, feel a different kind of power,
[38:58] Speaker 2: the kind craved by ambitious schemers throughout the Seven Kingdoms.
[39:04] Speaker 2: By taking her place on the Iron Throne from the
[39:10] Speaker 2: television series Game of Thrones. I've got three more of
[39:20] Speaker 2: these things on the way, another twenty minutes of true
[39:24] Speaker 2: stuff that happened in our history. Hang on. Your support
[39:34] Speaker 2: is appreciated. Thanks for being a part of this community
[39:37] Speaker 2: and for becoming a patron. And if you are not
[39:40] Speaker 2: a patron, check out patreon dot com slash seth Andrews.
[39:46] Speaker 2: And here we go with our final round of true stories.
[39:59] Speaker 2: Is there anything more magical than a beautifully made wedding dress?
[40:05] Speaker 2: Of course, beauty is subjective, and I think we have
[40:08] Speaker 2: all attended ceremonies where we looked up and thought, this
[40:12] Speaker 2: doesn't quite work for me. Whether it's the wedding dress,
[40:16] Speaker 2: or the bride'smaid's gowns, or the tuxedos on the groom
[40:20] Speaker 2: and grooms men. Certainly it's not our choice. It's all subjective.
[40:24] Speaker 2: But something didn't quite hit well. I can imagine how
[40:29] Speaker 2: my wife and I might have reacted if we had
[40:32] Speaker 2: attended the December twenty nineteen wedding of a British woman.
[40:37] Speaker 2: She decided to go with an Italian theme, an Italian theme,
[40:43] Speaker 2: And I'm going to come back to this in just
[40:45] Speaker 2: a second. Honestly, it's kind of fun when brides and
[40:49] Speaker 2: grooms decide to mix things up, to do something out
[40:52] Speaker 2: of the box, even the weirds and the wild, and
[40:56] Speaker 2: there are real examples out there that would be impops
[41:00] Speaker 2: to forget. There was one woman she decided she wanted
[41:04] Speaker 2: her wedding to have flower power. Her entire wedding gown
[41:09] Speaker 2: was all carnations from neck to floor, white and pink carnations.
[41:16] Speaker 2: I couldn't help but think of the movie Midsummer. A
[41:20] Speaker 2: bride in Las Vegas decided to go full Vegas. She
[41:24] Speaker 2: got married as a show girl in a silvery one
[41:27] Speaker 2: piece revealing long legs and high heels. Her head dress
[41:32] Speaker 2: was amazing, In fact, it was taller than her actual
[41:36] Speaker 2: head and stitched to her back were gigantic angel wings.
[41:41] Speaker 2: About ten years ago, The Times Union reported a trend
[41:45] Speaker 2: for brides who were also avid hunters. They could opt
[41:49] Speaker 2: out of the veil and instead, at their ceremony walk
[41:54] Speaker 2: the aisle wearing deer antlers. In twenty sixteen, The to
[42:00] Speaker 2: Day Show featured away that you could have your cake
[42:03] Speaker 2: and eat it too. It was a wedding dress totally
[42:07] Speaker 2: made out of cake. Now this one was not actually wearable.
[42:11] Speaker 2: It was a sculpture, but still the weddible dress was
[42:15] Speaker 2: something to behold and then consume. There was an actual
[42:21] Speaker 2: edible dress. It was worn by a bride who showed
[42:24] Speaker 2: up for photographs looking like Candyland. The gown was made
[42:29] Speaker 2: with merengue flowers, swirling macaroon dots, and a head piece
[42:34] Speaker 2: made from lollipops. One woman with a sense of humor
[42:39] Speaker 2: called her custom gown the I Need a Drink dress.
[42:44] Speaker 2: The whole thing was a walking mini bar all around.
[42:49] Speaker 2: The long skirt was a frame with cup holders slotted
[42:54] Speaker 2: for thirty mimosas, complete with little umbrellas, and after she
[42:59] Speaker 2: walked the eye well she served her guests. In twenty fifteen,
[43:04] Speaker 2: students at the Miami International University of Art and Design
[43:08] Speaker 2: Fashion created a classic dress called mcdee Couture. It was
[43:14] Speaker 2: made entirely of McDonald's food packaging, nine hundred white sandwich rappers,
[43:23] Speaker 2: sixty yellow sandwitch rappers, and twenty fry boxes that were
[43:28] Speaker 2: flattened out and wrapped around her waistline as a belt.
[43:33] Speaker 2: You know, I wonder if these rappers had been previously used.
[43:37] Speaker 2: Can you imagine the model bride smelling like a happy meal.
[43:42] Speaker 2: That same year, ABC News and other outlets reported on
[43:47] Speaker 2: a contest which took place in the city of New York,
[43:50] Speaker 2: the eleventh Annual toilet paper Wedding Dress Contest. Fifteen hundred
[43:57] Speaker 2: people entered showing off goal made from nothing except Scharman
[44:02] Speaker 2: toilet paper, tape, glue, and thread. I am guessing you
[44:08] Speaker 2: did not want to get these things wets. And of
[44:12] Speaker 2: course that British bride who went with the Italian theme.
[44:17] Speaker 2: Her gown was designed to look exactly like a Pepperoni pizza.
[44:26] Speaker 2: The fabric of the entire dress was a pizza print
[44:30] Speaker 2: in the colors and shapes of pizza with white, yellow
[44:34] Speaker 2: shades of cheese. The train spotted with huge circles designed
[44:39] Speaker 2: with the texture of pepperoni, and a stitched brown border
[44:43] Speaker 2: resembling a crunchy baked crust. Why would the couple do this, well,
[44:50] Speaker 2: both of their families had long enjoyed a weekly pizza night.
[44:55] Speaker 2: This was a tradition they had enjoyed with their parents
[44:58] Speaker 2: and one they had passed on to their the children.
[45:01] Speaker 2: Pizza was simply a way of life, and it seemed
[45:04] Speaker 2: like a way to get married. That bride got a
[45:09] Speaker 2: lot of ridicule on social media for choosing something so tacky,
[45:14] Speaker 2: but hey, it's her moment, it's her dress, it's her choice,
[45:19] Speaker 2: and of course beauty is in the pie of the beholder.
[45:34] Speaker 2: Nineteen thirty nine. The war between Finland and Soviet Russian
[45:39] Speaker 2: is known by historians and a few history buffs, but
[45:43] Speaker 2: it is not really talked about much for obvious reasons.
[45:47] Speaker 2: The world was facing down the threats from Hitler's Germany
[45:50] Speaker 2: and Japan's ambitions to expand its empire, and so Finland,
[45:55] Speaker 2: a tiny country of about four million, going head to
[45:59] Speaker 2: head with its gigantic Russian neighbor. Well, that's a story
[46:03] Speaker 2: that often gets lost in the shadows, but this situation
[46:08] Speaker 2: would become known as the Winter War. Finland had just
[46:12] Speaker 2: gained independence, or a kind of independence, from Russia after
[46:17] Speaker 2: World War One, but in October of nineteen thirty nine,
[46:21] Speaker 2: Joseph Stalin demanded the right to establish military bases and
[46:25] Speaker 2: revise borders. The Baltic States submitted Finland would not, so
[46:32] Speaker 2: Russia decided it would take what it wanted by force,
[46:35] Speaker 2: and this was supposed to be an easy victory for
[46:38] Speaker 2: the Soviet Union. But oh, they were in for a
[46:42] Speaker 2: big surprise. Beyond the brutal cold and those lands just
[46:46] Speaker 2: above the Arctic circle, with the ice and snow and
[46:50] Speaker 2: frost bite and terrain, and the fierce Finland resists, the
[46:54] Speaker 2: Russian army came to encounter a man of only five
[46:57] Speaker 2: foot three who would himself be his own army from
[47:02] Speaker 2: the trigger end of a sniper rifle. His name was
[47:06] Speaker 2: Simo Haya. Snipers have great utility in times of war.
[47:12] Speaker 2: They can keep large numbers of enemy soldiers pinned down
[47:15] Speaker 2: as everybody fears being the next victim. The sniper looks
[47:20] Speaker 2: his victims in the face. The targeting is individual, the
[47:24] Speaker 2: kills are personal. Few things can demoralize an army like
[47:29] Speaker 2: a well hidden and accurate sniper. You wouldn't think that
[47:33] Speaker 2: a guy who was once a simple, finish farm boy
[47:37] Speaker 2: would generate all that fear, but this seventh son of
[47:41] Speaker 2: eight children learned to shoot out on the farm. Simo
[47:45] Speaker 2: was familiar with the dense forest and changing elements of
[47:49] Speaker 2: the outdoors. When he joined the local civil Guard at
[47:52] Speaker 2: the age of seventeen, it was immediately apparent he was
[47:55] Speaker 2: gifted with a rifle. His room was filled with trophies
[47:59] Speaker 2: from ing competitions. This guy could hit a small target
[48:03] Speaker 2: six times in a row in one minute from one
[48:06] Speaker 2: hundred and fifty meters using just a bolt action rifle.
[48:11] Speaker 2: Two years later, in nineteen twenty five, he started his
[48:15] Speaker 2: mandatory fifteen month military service. He qualified for formal sniper
[48:20] Speaker 2: training in nineteen twenty seven, and he joined his comrades
[48:24] Speaker 2: to battle Russia in the nineteen thirty nine War. His
[48:28] Speaker 2: condition for joining was that he be allowed to use
[48:31] Speaker 2: his old training school rifle, and his commanders agreed that gun,
[48:37] Speaker 2: an M twenty eight thirty seven point six y two
[48:41] Speaker 2: caliber weapon, would go on to make history. Simo aimed
[48:46] Speaker 2: at his targets using only iron sights. He did not
[48:49] Speaker 2: want to use a scope. He said the scope might
[48:52] Speaker 2: reflect the sun and expose his position. Sometimes he would
[48:56] Speaker 2: put snow in his mouth to keep his exhaled breath
[48:59] Speaker 2: from being noticed by the enemy and from his concealed
[49:04] Speaker 2: positions across the field of battle. Simohea sent death to
[49:09] Speaker 2: Russian soldiers like no one else. His average more than
[49:13] Speaker 2: five kills per day, his highest total for a single
[49:18] Speaker 2: day twenty five, and the killed count didn't include those
[49:22] Speaker 2: that he dispatched with a submachine gun. A whole other
[49:26] Speaker 2: kind of war he was waging as a single soldier
[49:30] Speaker 2: fighting for Finland. Now, the targets weren't hard to spot.
[49:35] Speaker 2: Russian troops, for some reason, were assigned brown uniforms and
[49:39] Speaker 2: a snow covered battlefield, while finished troops cloaked themselves in white.
[49:45] Speaker 2: The Russians were sometimes ordered to attack while crossing frozen lakes.
[49:50] Speaker 2: Many of the vehicles, the tanks and trucks, would actually
[49:53] Speaker 2: crack down into the freezing water through the ice. Russian
[49:57] Speaker 2: morale was very low, and yet on the Finland side,
[50:02] Speaker 2: Simo Hayes's story was a morale booster throughout the country.
[50:06] Speaker 2: This guy was lethal, he was effective, he was successful,
[50:11] Speaker 2: and yet in March of nineteen forty he would prove
[50:15] Speaker 2: mortal as a Russian explosive detonated right next to him,
[50:19] Speaker 2: shrapnel striking his head. It was assumed that Simo was
[50:24] Speaker 2: dead until a fellow soldier saw his leg moving slightly,
[50:30] Speaker 2: with his left cheek and much of his upper jaw
[50:33] Speaker 2: blown off of his head, and with so much loss
[50:35] Speaker 2: of blood, it seemed unlikely he would survive. But after
[50:39] Speaker 2: fourteen months and twenty five surgeries, Simo lived, and for
[50:46] Speaker 2: his actions in battle, he was commissioned a lieutenant and
[50:50] Speaker 2: ultimately given the prestigious Knight of the Mannerheim Cross Award.
[50:55] Speaker 2: He was disfigured for life, but he never complained. He
[51:00] Speaker 2: would live to the age of ninety six, passing away
[51:03] Speaker 2: in two thousand and two. In any context, it would
[51:07] Speaker 2: be remarkable that a single soldier could amass so many
[51:11] Speaker 2: sniper kills and a single deployment so many that he
[51:15] Speaker 2: would become known by his nickname the White Death. Five
[51:20] Speaker 2: hundred and five confirmed kills. But what's even more interesting
[51:27] Speaker 2: is that seem Ohea, one man with an iron sight
[51:31] Speaker 2: and snow in his mouth, carried out those five hundred
[51:35] Speaker 2: and five kills in just over three months. For obvious reasons,
[51:45] Speaker 2: sim Ohea, the White Death, is considered the most lethal
[51:50] Speaker 2: sniper in history. Twenty nine year old Steve Callahan had
[52:03] Speaker 2: designed and built his very own sailboat, and that sailboat
[52:08] Speaker 2: had a purpose. He was going to sail a transatlantic
[52:12] Speaker 2: race that was known as the Mini trans At the
[52:15] Speaker 2: starting points was Penzance, Cornwall, England. There would be a
[52:20] Speaker 2: stopover in the Canary Islands and then onto the finishing
[52:24] Speaker 2: point at Antigua. Thousands and thousands of miles on the
[52:28] Speaker 2: ocean with a certain class of boats. Steve and the
[52:33] Speaker 2: other captains were sailing something called a sloop. This would
[52:37] Speaker 2: be a relatively small boat with a single mast. It
[52:41] Speaker 2: had sails fore and aft, and there would be one
[52:45] Speaker 2: person on board. I mean the captain was the crew.
[52:49] Speaker 2: This was the boat that belonged to Steve until it
[52:54] Speaker 2: was soon claimed by the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.
[53:00] Speaker 2: Steve had christened his vessel the Napoleon Solo, and as
[53:05] Speaker 2: he was an American, he sailed out of Rhode Island
[53:08] Speaker 2: toward the starting point in England. That's thousands of miles
[53:12] Speaker 2: just to get there, and the event had not even started.
[53:14] Speaker 2: But he did arrive and in January of nineteen eighty
[53:18] Speaker 2: two he lined up with all of the other captains
[53:21] Speaker 2: to kick off the Great Mini Transact Solo Race. And
[53:27] Speaker 2: when I say solo, I mean solo. It's just you
[53:31] Speaker 2: and the ocean in a potentially homemade or experimental boat.
[53:36] Speaker 2: No external help with navigation, no computers, no satellite link,
[53:41] Speaker 2: no contact with the outside world. With maybe one exception.
[53:46] Speaker 2: The boats had a single short range radio that would
[53:49] Speaker 2: allow captains to talk to each other if they were
[53:52] Speaker 2: close by, maybe a range of ten miles, and that
[53:56] Speaker 2: was it. January nineteen eighty two race began and Steve
[54:02] Speaker 2: and the others headed out southbound from Cornwall toward Tenerief.
[54:08] Speaker 2: But the weather turned nasty. The boats got kicked around,
[54:13] Speaker 2: some were damaged, a few of them sank. The captain's rescued.
[54:18] Speaker 2: Steve's boat had taken a pretty serious beating, so he
[54:23] Speaker 2: limped to Loch Conronia, Spain to make repairs. After he
[54:28] Speaker 2: got fixed up, then it was down the coast of
[54:30] Speaker 2: Spain and Portugal out to Madeira and the Canary Islands.
[54:35] Speaker 2: After that began the long North Atlantic journey to the
[54:39] Speaker 2: Finish Line and Tiga in the Caribbean, over four thousand
[54:43] Speaker 2: miles floating on forty five feet of do it yourself construction.
[54:49] Speaker 2: He started his last leg of that journey on the
[54:52] Speaker 2: twenty ninth of January nineteen eighty two, and it was
[54:56] Speaker 2: smooth sailing for the first week, but then the weather
[55:02] Speaker 2: turned and Steve's sailboat was ravaged by gale force winds.
[55:08] Speaker 2: He managed to keep it afloats to keep moving westward,
[55:13] Speaker 2: but then on the night of February fourth, Steve suddenly
[55:17] Speaker 2: heard and felt a deafening smash into the boat, possibly
[55:22] Speaker 2: a large shark or maybe a whil something big, something solid.
[55:27] Speaker 2: Whatever it was, it had ripped the hull of the
[55:30] Speaker 2: boat wide open, and the ocean was pouring in. So
[55:35] Speaker 2: there in the dark on the sinking Napoleon solo, Steve scrambled.
[55:40] Speaker 2: His only choice was evacuation. He grabbed the inflation tabs
[55:45] Speaker 2: on the life raft. He tethered that raft to the boat,
[55:49] Speaker 2: and then as it continued to fill up with water,
[55:52] Speaker 2: he desperately went back and forth from raft to boat,
[55:56] Speaker 2: harvesting as much as he could, and it's impressive how
[56:00] Speaker 2: much he was able to salvage. A piece of cushion,
[56:03] Speaker 2: a sleeping bag. He got the emergency kit, which had food, navigation,
[56:08] Speaker 2: charts of flashlight, solar stills for making drinking water, a
[56:13] Speaker 2: small spear gun, and even a book a survival manual.
[56:19] Speaker 2: By the time dawn arrived, Steve Callahan had separated from
[56:24] Speaker 2: his sunken sailboat. He was drifting on that raft westward
[56:29] Speaker 2: with the ocean current. Now, the rescue raft did have
[56:34] Speaker 2: a radio beacon, but the aircraft passing overhead, well, they
[56:38] Speaker 2: were too far away to pick up the signal. The
[56:42] Speaker 2: raft had a flare gun, and Steve would fire that
[56:45] Speaker 2: gun as nine different ships would ultimately pass nearby, but
[56:51] Speaker 2: none saw the light of those flares. So there he
[56:55] Speaker 2: was on the water in the middle of nowhere. Steve
[56:58] Speaker 2: wasn't just looking for an island. Steve was the island unseen,
[57:04] Speaker 2: unheard totally by himself, and he knew what that meant.
[57:10] Speaker 2: So the sailor became a survivalist with a plan. Those
[57:14] Speaker 2: solar stills and some fresh rain provided drinking water. He
[57:19] Speaker 2: rationed himself to just one cop of water a day.
[57:23] Speaker 2: He was able to catch some fish with the spear gun.
[57:26] Speaker 2: He mapped out a daily routine. He would stretch and exercise.
[57:31] Speaker 2: He would use the sun and the stars for navigation
[57:34] Speaker 2: as he tried to push himself with the oars as
[57:37] Speaker 2: best he could day and night. Day and night, Steve
[57:42] Speaker 2: drifted with the winds and the currents. And the days passed,
[57:48] Speaker 2: Steve's body began to deteriorate. He was sunburned and covered
[57:53] Speaker 2: in salt water sores. His equipment started to break. He
[57:57] Speaker 2: had to constantly fix punctures in his raft. At one
[58:01] Speaker 2: point he was surrounded by sharks, but never underestimate the
[58:06] Speaker 2: survival instinct, the will to live. That may have been
[58:11] Speaker 2: the most important tool Steve used on his Atlantic drift
[58:15] Speaker 2: day and night, day and night until April twentieth, nineteen
[58:22] Speaker 2: eighty two, just southeast of Guadalupe, Steve was discovered and
[58:27] Speaker 2: rescued by fishermen who quickly rushed him to shore and
[58:31] Speaker 2: then off to the hospital. He made a full recovery
[58:35] Speaker 2: in the weeks after, and Steve would go on to
[58:39] Speaker 2: keep sailing for years to come. In the book that
[58:43] Speaker 2: he wrote about his experience, Steve Callahan talked about those
[58:46] Speaker 2: nights under the stars. He called what he had seen
[58:50] Speaker 2: a view of heaven from a seats in hell. And
[58:56] Speaker 2: I can't really argue with the hell parts, given how
[58:59] Speaker 2: many days he was a drift back in nineteen eighty two,
[59:05] Speaker 2: Steve's sailboat sank Friday, February fifth. He was rescued on Tuesday,
[59:13] Speaker 2: April twentieth. I don't know could you do it? Could
[59:19] Speaker 2: you survive out there for seventy six days? Steve Callahan did,
[59:28] Speaker 2: retrieved and rescued after drifting alone on a raft in
[59:33] Speaker 2: the ocean for two and a half months. You probably
[59:49] Speaker 2: know what a death mask is. I'll get into the
[59:53] Speaker 2: deeper backstory in just a moment, but I am most
[59:56] Speaker 2: interested today in what is arguably the most seen, replicated,
[1:00:02] Speaker 2: and publicly known death mask in history. It has also
[1:00:07] Speaker 2: been the most kissed, the peaceful mold of Lea Conway
[1:00:12] Speaker 2: de Lescene. Nobody knows her name, but I'll bet you
[1:00:16] Speaker 2: have seen her face. Even long before the mummifications of
[1:00:22] Speaker 2: ancient Egypt, death masks had been made before photography was invented.
[1:00:28] Speaker 2: Death masks were a way of preserving the detailed physical
[1:00:32] Speaker 2: features of someone who had passed away. A drawing, a painting,
[1:00:36] Speaker 2: or any two dimensional replications just couldn't capture who that
[1:00:41] Speaker 2: person had been like a three D casting wood. Death
[1:00:45] Speaker 2: masks have been used to help record the faces of
[1:00:49] Speaker 2: anonymous and soon to be buried corpses in case families
[1:00:53] Speaker 2: were out there looking for a missing person. They were
[1:00:57] Speaker 2: used for honor and memory. They gave continued life to
[1:01:01] Speaker 2: royalty and nobility. Death masks have been made of iconic
[1:01:06] Speaker 2: figures like Beethoven, Napoleon, Oliver Cromwell, Nicola Tesla, Richard Wagner,
[1:01:13] Speaker 2: even the French philosopher Voltaire. The less famous have also
[1:01:18] Speaker 2: been immortalized or at least memorialized in wax, plaster or
[1:01:23] Speaker 2: some other hardening material, the hands of babies who died
[1:01:27] Speaker 2: in childbirth, criminals whose remains were studied by medical science,
[1:01:33] Speaker 2: and everyday people who died young and old, their only
[1:01:37] Speaker 2: remaining identities, forever sleeping or staring into future generations. Who
[1:01:45] Speaker 2: was the unidentified female that you and I know so
[1:01:49] Speaker 2: well today, even if we don't know that we know her?
[1:01:54] Speaker 2: Who is le Conway de lessene Well. The cast itself
[1:01:59] Speaker 2: dates back to the late eighteen hundreds. It is of
[1:02:03] Speaker 2: a teenage girl who may have died by her own hand.
[1:02:08] Speaker 2: For whatever reason. Her body had been found and retrieved
[1:02:12] Speaker 2: from the Sene River. There were no markings or signs
[1:02:16] Speaker 2: of trauma upon the body, hence the suspicion she may
[1:02:20] Speaker 2: have taken her own life. The pathologist at the Paris
[1:02:24] Speaker 2: Morgue saw her, and he was apparently so struck by
[1:02:28] Speaker 2: her beauty that right there he made a death mask
[1:02:32] Speaker 2: out of wax. That mold would soon be replicated, then
[1:02:37] Speaker 2: embraced and displayed by others who were also captured by
[1:02:41] Speaker 2: her beauty, her serenity, her peacefulness. The French philosopher Albert
[1:02:47] Speaker 2: Camieu would compare her smile to that of the Mona Lisa.
[1:02:52] Speaker 2: That smile with closed eyes, even features and serene expression
[1:02:58] Speaker 2: became the inspiration for many stories and works of art
[1:03:01] Speaker 2: at the time. Some women were said to fashion their
[1:03:04] Speaker 2: own style to match hers. Go ahead, google the image.
[1:03:10] Speaker 2: Google the death mask of the Unknown Woman of the Sin.
[1:03:15] Speaker 2: See the face, that peaceful face. Imagine who she might
[1:03:20] Speaker 2: have been, what she might have been thinking, how she
[1:03:24] Speaker 2: had lived and why she had died. Wonder what she
[1:03:28] Speaker 2: might have thought about her unintended immortality and celebrity being
[1:03:34] Speaker 2: compared to art displayed as art well into the twenty
[1:03:38] Speaker 2: first century, and also being the most kissed face in
[1:03:43] Speaker 2: the world. And I'll bet you've kissed this face yourself
[1:03:49] Speaker 2: if you have ever taken CPR training. Back in nineteen
[1:03:57] Speaker 2: sixty two, men Asmund Lair Doll and Peter Sapphire introduced
[1:04:03] Speaker 2: the first medical simulator for teaching CPR. It was a mannequin,
[1:04:08] Speaker 2: which they called the risusi Annie Doll. Lairdahl had been
[1:04:13] Speaker 2: a toy maker when his son was only two years old.
[1:04:16] Speaker 2: The boy had fallen into water and drowned, and Lairdohl
[1:04:20] Speaker 2: had saved his son using CPR, and he became convinced
[1:04:24] Speaker 2: that others could save lives as well, if only they
[1:04:28] Speaker 2: could be taught the technique. How would they do so?
[1:04:32] Speaker 2: They needed a mannequin, a mannequin with a peaceful face
[1:04:38] Speaker 2: that would make students feel less uncomfortable, and so Lerdahl
[1:04:43] Speaker 2: and Sapphire used the death mask of the Anonymous Teenager
[1:04:48] Speaker 2: to mold their life saving teaching tool. And since its introduction,
[1:04:54] Speaker 2: the anonymous face of a girl from the eighteen hundreds
[1:04:58] Speaker 2: has met the lips of millions and millions people who
[1:05:02] Speaker 2: have no idea they are breathing a simulated kiss of
[1:05:06] Speaker 2: life on a famous face in death. So the next
[1:05:11] Speaker 2: time you see somebody using that life size CPR doll
[1:05:15] Speaker 2: to learn the technique, let them know they just kissed
[1:05:19] Speaker 2: the mysterious beauty, the Anonymous Teenager, the unknown woman of
[1:05:27] Speaker 2: this sin. And that's a true story.
[1:05:35] Speaker 1: True Stories podcast dot Com.
[1:05:39] Speaker 2: I hope those were fun for you. I've often heard
[1:05:42] Speaker 2: the saying the truth is stranger than fiction. I don't
[1:05:45] Speaker 2: know if that's true or not, but I don't know.
[1:05:48] Speaker 2: There's some wild, fun, entertaining, crazy stuff out there that's
[1:05:52] Speaker 2: part of our history and part of our culture, and
[1:05:55] Speaker 2: those are often the stories I like to tell. So
[1:05:58] Speaker 2: appreciate you being here, be said, and I will see
[1:06:01] Speaker 2: you back here next time.
[1:06:02] Speaker 1: Follow the Thinking Atheist on Facebook and Twitter for a
[1:06:06] Speaker 1: complete archive of podcasts and videos, products like mugs and
[1:06:09] Speaker 1: t shirts featuring the Thinking Atheist logo, links to atheist
[1:06:13] Speaker 1: pages and resources, and details on upcoming free thought events
[1:06:17] Speaker 1: and conventions. Log onto our website, The Thinkingatheist dot com.

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