A Stone's Throw

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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.

Let me tell you a curious story from South Munster in Ireland, before recorded history.

A chieftain falls in battle.

Dying of his injuries, he crawls to the banks of the River Lee, and there he lies upon a large flat stone and waits to die.

Now, his identity has been lost to time, but not so for the woman who finds him by the river.

She was the queen of the fairies, a woman of immense power.

For many years she had doted on this chieftain, but she had been unable to win his love.

As his blood ran onto the stone at the river's edge, she wept for him, her tears mixing with the blood upon the rock.

She kissed this stone as well, and with the gesture, her powers sank into the mineral itself.

Countless centuries later, in the 15th century, Cormac Lardit McCarthy, 9th Lord of Muskery, was facing a dilemma.

He was to appear before Queen Elizabeth I to make an appeal to keep his ancestral lands.

On the eve of this appearance, he prayed to the pagan goddess Cleona.

That night, he would be visited by this very same queen of the fairies, and she told him that there was a stone in his castle that had absorbed her magic.

If he was to kiss that stone, any problem he had would be resolved.

And of course, he followed her advice, and after he kissed that stone, he was able to eloquently argue his case against the queen and keep his land.

This is one of the many legends that circulate around a particular castle in Ireland, or more specifically, a part of that castle's battlements, a block of limestone set into the tower sometime around 1446.

What makes this block so special has been shrouded in myth and fanciful history.

There's not a single part of the story that everyone agrees on, up to and including the ways in which Cormac, Lord of Muskery, learned of its special powers.

One myth says that Cormac rescued an old woman from drowning in a river, and the woman, revealing herself to be a witch, informed him of this magical stone that existed in the foundations of his own castle.

A more historically grounded tale says that this stone was a gift from Robert the Bruce to Cormac in thanks for aiding him in battle during the First War of Scottish Independence.

This would imbue the stone with great significance, having been gifted from Scotland to Ireland.

The legend even claims that this stone is from the same bed as the Stone of Schoon, the traditional stone used in the ceremony to crown Scottish and later British monarchs.

It's an appealing tale of solidarity, although the geology tells a very different story.

You see, the stone of Schoon is red sandstone, while the stone of Cormac, Lardet, and McCarthy's Castle is 330 million-year-old limestone, more similar in composition to the rock in the south of Ireland.

This also casts doubt on another of the stone's fanciful origin stories, that it was the stone the biblical figure Jacob slept on in the Holy Land, the resting place that gave him a vision of the ladder to heaven, which would henceforth be known as Jacob's Ladder.

Some have maintained that this stone was retrieved during the Crusades and eventually made its way back to Ireland, where McCarthy installed it in a place of honor upon his castle.

Oh, and the name of that castle, by the way, is Blarney Castle.

The stone itself is known as the Blarney Stone, and it's said that if you kiss it, it will bestow upon you the fabled gift of the gab, or a special eloquence and charm.

Over the years, many famous figures have traveled to Blarney Castle to receive this particular blessing, including most famously Winston Churchill.

A countless number of tourists have followed in his footsteps.

Kissing the Blarney Stone may sound trivial, but it's not the easiest thing to do.

In order to reach the stone, you have to lie on your back and lean out over the castle's battlements.

If you have a fear of heights, it would be a literal way to face your fears.

But in the end, it just might be worth it.

Whether you're partaking in the blessing of the God of Jacob, an Irish witch, the queen of the fairies, or simply linking yourself to the history of Robert the Bruce and his fight against the English, you are taking a moment to connect yourself with the past in a very tangible way.

That, at the very least, will give you something curious to talk about.

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Randy was roughly four days into the experiment when he started to think that he had made a terrible mistake.

The high school student from San Diego was out for a midnight stroll when he saw something that just about broke his brain.

As he approached an intersection with a pedestrian crossing sign at the corner, the stick figure man at the center of the sign moved.

Randy froze and rubbed his eyes.

Now the stick figure man was sliding down the signpost.

He reached the pavement, turned, and strode away across the intersection, whistling as he went.

Randy, of course, almost ran screaming in the opposite direction.

Fortunately, his friend Bruce was on hand to calm him down.

When Randy described later what he had seen, Bruce explained that it wasn't real.

The man in the sign had not moved.

Randy was just hallucinating.

But he wasn't on psychedelics.

The only drug in his system was the caffeine from the Coca-Colas that he had downed.

The 17-year-old, you see, hadn't slept in over four days, and unfortunately, he still had seven more to go.

It was December of 1963, and at that point, the record for the longest time spent awake was 11 days, or 240 hours.

Randy and Bruce had decided to try and break the record as part of an experiment for their school science fair.

Randy lost the coin toss to determine who would stay awake, which meant that Bruce and their friend Joe would take turns monitoring him.

Even before they began, though, the experiment started attracting attention.

Randy was interviewed by a San Diego newspaper and contacted by scientists who offered to monitor his recovery after the experiment was complete.

Meanwhile, his parents deliberately tried to convince him to choose another project.

They had a good reason to be concerned, too.

At that point, no one knew the impact of staying awake so long.

But a few years earlier, scientists had conducted an experiment where some cats were kept awake for 15 days straight.

In that case, there hadn't been any long-term side effects to study because the cats all died from stress.

Despite this potential danger, Randy and his friends were determined to go through with their plan.

The first 36 hours passed with only minor changes.

Randy had difficulty focusing his eyes, and he stumbled over tongue twisters, but otherwise, he felt okay.

The next day, though, his body temperature dropped, and he struggled to concentrate on anything for more than a few minutes.

He also grew increasingly irritable, which made monitoring him a lot less fun.

It wasn't until the hallucinations began on day four that the boys started to worry, and things got more serious from there.

On day five, Randy spent several hours convinced that he was a famous football player.

Later, he screamed at Joe to turn off the radio because he thought the DJ was laughing at him.

Even when Randy was not hallucinating, he was always at risk of falling asleep.

Bruce or Joe had to accompany him to the bathroom out of fear that he would pass out while on the toilet.

They kept him alert through frequent walks or games of basketball.

And while these distractions worked temporarily, Randy would always start to fade once again when he was back home.

By the final day, Randy was a zombie.

His speech became slurred and he couldn't complete basic math problems or recite the alphabet without forgetting what he was doing.

Oddly, his basketball skills kept improving though, probably thanks to all the practice.

On January 8th, Randy finally crossed the finish line.

After setting a new record for 246 hours awake, he passed out and slept for 14 hours straight.

His brain waves were monitored by those scientists who had volunteered to help, and what they found was startling.

It seemed that different sections of Randy's brain had been taking turns shutting down for brief periods.

So while he had never been completely asleep, parts of him had literally been dreaming.

To everyone's surprise, Randy's sleep patterns were back to normal within just a few days, with no signs of any lasting side effects.

And as you'd imagine, his story became a national headline while the data that Bruce and Joe had gathered was circulated throughout the scientific community.

Randy's swift recovery in 1964 seemed to suggest that people were capable of staying awake for long periods without suffering long-term side effects.

At least that's what they thought at the time.

By 2017 though, Randy Gardner was once again lying awake each night, although this time it wasn't by choice.

53 years after beating the world record, he had developed a horrible case of insomnia.

Perhaps it was his brain having revenge on him, or maybe Randy's body had simply gotten used to staying up later than most.

Either way, the boy who dared to stay awake was now desperate to fall asleep.

Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts or learn more about the show by visiting CuriositiesPodcast.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 over at theworldoflore.com.

And until next time, stay curious.

This show is sponsored by American Public University, American Public University where service members like you can access high-quality, affordable education built for your lifestyle.

With online programs that fit around deployments, training, and unpredictable schedules, APU makes it possible to earn your degree no matter where duty takes you.

Their preferred military rates keep tuition at just $250 per credit hour for undergraduate and master's tuition.

And with 24-7 mental health support, plus career coaching and other services, APU is committed to your success during and after your service.

Learn more at apu.apus.edu/slash military.

That's apu.apus.edu/slash military.

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