They Might Be Giants

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Welcome to Aaron Menke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim and Mild.

Our world is full of the unexplainable.

And if history is an open book, all of these amazing tales are right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.

Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.

Prolific authors leave behind a great deal when they die.

Not just their completed works, but every piece of paper that ever touched their pen suddenly becomes valuable.

For their next of kin, going through the notes and assembling a legacy for the deceased writer can be a lifelong duty.

In 1912, an Irish woman named Florence fell into this very situation.

She became a widow at the age of 54, her husband succumbing to disease.

Almost immediately, she had work to do, not just in arranging his funeral or comforting his bereaved friends, but she also had to manage his literary estate.

For work, her husband Abe had been a theater manager for most of his life and the assistant to a famous stage actor.

And while the short stories and books were well received, they'd never sold quite as well as he had hoped.

Florence hoped, in her own way, that she could provide literary success for her husband in death that he had not achieved in life.

So throughout the 1910s, she edited together collections of his short stories and negotiated with publishers to keep his novels in print.

They provided the same modest income that they always had, never quite enough.

And then in 1922, 10 years after her husband's death, she received a strange letter in the mail.

The envelope contained a handbill advertising an upcoming motion picture, screening in Berlin.

It wasn't an invitation.

She lived in London after all, but looking at the handbill, there was no denying that it was meant for her.

Emblazoned underneath the film's title was her husband's name.

They had changed the title and many plot elements, but the film was undeniably based on the book that Abe had written 25 years before.

And Florence was insulted.

Despite making a screen adaptation of her husband's work, the producers had not asked for her permission or made any effort to secure film rights for the material.

Florence didn't have the money to hire a lawyer herself, but she couldn't let this sort of behavior stand.

She contacted the British Incorporated Society of Authors, imploring them to sponsor a copyright lawsuit against the production company Prana Film.

They accepted and engaged a Berlin-based lawyer to take on Florence's case.

As you'd imagine, the case dragged on for years.

But as it did, the offending film spread from country to country.

The case rolled on for more years to come.

Pranafilm fought Florence every step of the way, but ultimately the court found the case in the widow's favor.

There would be no payout, however.

In the course of the lawsuit, Pranafilme ran out of money and declared bankruptcy.

They couldn't afford to pay Florence, even if the court ordered them to.

So, she had to get justice some other way.

In July of 1925, at her own request, the court ordered the producers to destroy all copies of the film in circulation.

Unfortunately for her, this order would be difficult to enforce.

Each copy of the film was seven reels of 35mm film stock, and once they were sent abroad, tracking them down required a lot of legwork.

The film had already played in Switzerland, the Netherlands, France, and by the late 1920s, copies were already spreading to the United States and Great Britain.

Ultimately, a great many copies of this offending film would be destroyed, but at least one print would survive, preserving the adaptation for a hundred years to come.

You may have already guessed by now that the Florence of this story is Florence Balcombe, who had become the wife of Brom Stoker, author of Dracula.

She managed his literary estate for the rest of his life.

The motion picture that she tried so hard to destroy is Nasferatu, the silent film that today is considered a landmark in the history of horror cinema.

In a strange way, the result of Florence's Stoker lawsuit is a historical compromise.

The producers of Nasferatu never made a profit from her husband's work, yet the groundbreaking art that resulted from their copyright infringement survived to the present day.

The value of a work of art is greater than the amount of profit it makes in its lifetime.

Brom Stoker's Dracula, despite being one of the most beloved novels of its era, was not enough to guarantee financial security for his family.

If it had been, maybe Florence wouldn't have pursued Prana film so aggressively.

But Dracula, and Nasferatu by extension, is a tenacious tale.

Even when you try to kill it, it'll just rise up from the dead again, ready to spread the vampire's curse to a whole new generation.

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Your friend, on the other hand, might want a homebody who loves to cook and play chess.

For King Frederick William I of Prussia, there was only one thing he cared about when it came to picking soldiers for his own personal regiment.

He didn't care if they could shoot or march or even win in battle.

None of that mattered so long as they were tall.

When King Frederick took the throne in 1713, his first order of business was strengthening his army.

But while the rest of his troops recruited average-height men, he had a special project of creating a regiment entirely composed of the largest men he could find.

To join the regiment, a soldier had to be at least 6'2, a tall order today, let alone back then.

Now, King Frederick himself was only 5'6 ⁇ , but that didn't stop him from scouring the country for tall recruits.

And when Prussia's supply had been exhausted, he turned to other kingdoms.

Tsar Peter the Great of Russia sent Frederick a platoon of giant fighters as a gift, as did the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire.

Other lanky legioneers were begged, borrowed, or stolen from other armies.

They were promised high pay, and if that didn't work, sometimes they were simply kidnapped.

One of the tallest men in the regiment, the towering 7'1-inch Irishman James Kirkland, was tricked into service when he boarded a Prussian ship.

Now, life wasn't all that bad for this regiment.

The group, nicknamed the Potsdam Giants or the Longfellows, enjoyed better housing, better rations, and better pay than the rest of the king's army.

However, the pay scale was decided by height, which probably left some of the smaller recruits feeling underappreciated.

Despite all of this, not every one of his soldiers was happy with their new life.

Some, especially those who had been kidnapped, deserted the regiment or even tried to take their own lives.

Still, things weren't terrible for the Potsdam giants.

For example, they never really saw any real action.

Rather than being on the front lines, they remained in the capital, acting as more of a ceremonial guard than a deadly military team.

King Frederick oversaw drills of the Longfellows every day, delighting in watching them march through their maneuvers.

He dressed them in striking uniforms with blue and gold jackets, clean white pants, and red hats that were 18 inches tall, adding nearly two feet to their already impressive height.

It was Frederick's favorite diversion to parade them before visiting diplomats and leaders, having them march in time following their mascot, a particularly large bear.

He also enjoyed spending time with the troops and painting their images from memory.

Even in his sickbed, he delighted in being brought to a window to watch the tall soldiers march outside.

The king's obsession with tall soldiers and the limited supply available soon led him into a new, darker direction.

In his own personal eugenics experiments, he paired tall men with tall brides in hopes that their children would become fresh new recruits for his army.

Although he didn't live long enough to see these children grow up, there were rumors for generations that the people of Potsdam were particularly vertically gifted.

And in another dark turn, rumors swirled that the king tried to make his soldiers even taller by affixing them by the hand and feet to torture devices called the rack.

He likely hoped that he could stretch these soldiers even longer, but as the story goes, he gave up when too many of them died in the process.

Despite his interest in building up his regiment, though, King Frederick's rule was mostly peaceful.

He spent his time not in battle, but reforming the military, bringing on new recruits and training them in new fighting techniques.

By the time the king died in 1740, the army had 3,200 giants on its roster.

But his son, Frederick the Great, didn't have the same enthusiasm for height as his father.

Frederick the Great disbanded the regiment, sending soldiers to serve in other areas of the army.

And here's hoping that those who were kidnapped were also allowed to return home.

And Frederick the Great is remembered as both an impressive military leader and a patron of the arts.

He made Prussia a huge military power, embraced Enlightenment ideals, and even wrote operas.

But unlike his father, his enthusiasm for giants in uniform, well, let's just say that fell a little short.

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 CuriositiesPodcast.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 show.

And you can learn all about it over at theworldoflore.com.

And until next time, stay curious.

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