Dire Dairy

This is an iHeart podcast.

Banking with Capital One helps you keep more money in your wallet with no fees or minimums on checking accounts and no overdraft fees.

Just ask the Capital One Bank guy.

It's pretty much all he talks about.

In a good way, he'd also tell you that this podcast is his favorite podcast, too.

Oh, really?

Thanks, Capital One Bank Guy.

What's in your wallet?

Terms apply.

See capital1.com slash bank.

Capital One NA member FDIC.

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.

On Christmas Eve of 1971, 17-year-old Juliana Kopka took her seat next to her mother on Lansa Flight 508.

She figured it would be a routine flight, one she had done a dozen times before.

But just a few hours later, she was free-falling through the sky, about to land in the middle of the world's densest jungle, completely alone.

If anyone was going to survive trekking through the Amazon, it was Juliana Kopka.

Daughter of two German zoologists, she had spent most of her childhood seeing her parents work at the Lima Museum of Natural History.

When she was just 14 years old, she accompanied her parents to establish a research station inside the Amazon.

Her parents made sure that she was well-versed in biology, zoology, ecology, and most importantly, the skills to survive the jungle.

She'd returned to Lima to finish school, and initially she and her mother were planning to return to the research station on December 19th or 20th.

But Juliana insisted she wanted to attend her graduation ceremony on December 23rd, leaving them scrambling to book a flight home on Christmas Eve.

The Peruvian airline Lansa had a reputation for old and malfunctioning planes, and Juliana's father begged them to avoid flying on it.

But since it was the only flight left on Christmas Eve, they booked their tickets for Lansa Flight 508.

Things began okay, but midway through the flight, the plane flew into a thunderstorm.

Lightning struck its right wing, igniting a fuel tank.

The plane exploded in midair, ripping apart over the rainforest.

In an instant, Juliana was falling 10,000 feet to the ground, still strapped into a row of seats.

Somehow though, miraculously, she survived the fall.

Perhaps it was the updraft from the storm or the surface area of the seats slowing her descent.

Maybe it was even the dense jungle canopy that broke her fall before she hit the ground.

Either way, Yuliana was still alive after plummeting nearly two miles to the Earth's surface.

But now, she had to stay that way.

Yuliana had blacked out during the fall, but came to on the forest floor.

She had a broken collarbone, a swollen eye, a deep gash on her arm, and a concussion.

She had lost one of her shoes and only wore a thin cotton dress.

She had no food except for a bag of candy from the plane, but she knew that if she wanted to make it out of this, she had to find help.

She remembered her father's advice, follow water.

People always live near water.

So when she found a creek in the jungle, she began trekking down it.

She kept walking for 10 days.

She was constantly worried about animals, jaguars, scorpions, poisonous insects, all of which she could barely see because she had lost her glasses as well.

She was repeatedly soaked by the December rains and attacked by mosquitoes.

Botflies began to infest the open wound on her arm, but despite all of this, she kept moving forward.

Finally, on January 3rd of 1972, she found a small boat and a hut.

A few hours later, local lumberjacks arrived at the encampment.

Shocked at her condition, they cleaned her wounds and placed her in a canoe.

and then they paddled her 11 more hours down the river to a settlement where finally a helicopter was able to airlift her to the hospital.

92 people were flying on Lansa Flight 508.

It's estimated that as many as 14 survived the crash, but died from their injuries in the jungle.

Only one person survived, Juliana Kopka.

Juliana recovered and led authorities back to the crash site just a few days later.

She finished school and eventually returned to the rainforest to study zoology just like her parents, specializing in bats.

Her story would have been incredible enough if it ended there, but there was one more twist of fate that Flight 508 had to offer.

You see, in the 1990s, German director Werner Herzog reached out to Juliana asking to make a documentary about her.

In the years since the crash, dozens of journalists and filmmakers had approached her with a similar request.

And normally she brushed off these messages.

But in Werner's case, she listened.

Because Werner Herzog was supposed to be on Flight 508 with her.

In 1971, Werner had been scouting locations in the Peruvian Amazon for his film Aguirre, The Wrath of God.

He was supposed to take Lansa Flight 508 that Christmas Eve, but a conflict caused him to reschedule his flight.

In the documentary that he made called Wings of Hope, Juliana told her own story while leading Werner to the crash site.

She felt making the documentary was therapeutic, a way to put to rest some of the trauma that had haunted her for years.

Juliana Kapka didn't just survive her ordeal, she thrived.

And even after falling nearly two miles through the air, she somehow landed on her own two feet.

Banking with Capital One helps you keep more money in your wallet, with no fees or minimums on checking accounts and no overdraft fees.

Just ask the Capital One Bank Guy.

It's pretty much all he talks about.

In a good way.

He'd also tell you that this podcast is his favorite podcast, too.

Aw, really?

Thanks, Capital One Bank guy.

What's in your wallet?

Terms apply.

See CapitalOne.com slash bank.

Capital One NA member FDIC.

This show is sponsored by American Public University.

Balancing work, family, and education isn't easy, but American Public University makes it possible.

With online courses, monthly start dates, and flexible schedules, APU is designed for busy professionals who need education that fits their lives.

And affordability matters too.

APU offers the Opportunity Grant, giving students 10% off undergraduate and master's level tuition, helping you reach your goals without breaking the bank.

Plus, they provide career services and 24-7 mental health support at no extra cost.

Visit apu.apus.edu to learn more.

That's apu.apus.edu.

Looking back on the news of the past year, it seems that a lot of people have subscribed to the unusual belief that we can gauge the state of the economy based on the price of eggs.

It's difficult to say exactly when this started, but it certainly sounds logical, right?

Eggs are, after all, one of the most ubiquitous grocery products, the bedrock of baking, breakfasts, and batter the world over.

And when dairy prices rise, the average person can feel the strain acutely, from the farmers who raise the chickens to the individuals who are just trying to shop for their family.

So with that in mind, I'd like to tell you a story of what happens when dairy products can turn into their own form of natural disaster.

It started with an economic issue and became a local news crisis.

It was the spring of 1991.

For the previous 15 years, since 1974, the United States government had been purchasing dairy products from farmers in an effort to keep prices stable.

This ensured that the U.S.

had an enormous surplus of butter and cheese all stored in warehouses around the country.

This was a little inconvenient, but it was thoroughly ignorable as far as problems go.

One such complex was on Cottage Grove Road in Madison, Wisconsin.

It was half a million square feet, storing up to 15 million pounds of surplus butter.

Cheese, hams, and Oscar Meyer sausages would also be stored at this facility in significantly smaller quantities.

At around 3 p.m.

on May 3rd, there were about 25 people working in this warehouse when someone smelled smoke.

The source was was a forklift malfunction whose battery sparked and ignited a fire inside the temperature-controlled building.

The warehouse's insulation was extremely flammable, as was the butter being stored within it.

Under intense heat, butter will melt and then burn and then catch fire.

And it doesn't burn like coal or wood.

It burns more like grease.

So the entire building was aflame.

Firefighters were on the scene immediately.

They poured thousands of gallons of water on the fire, which would slow down the flames slightly but not put them out altogether.

Water only spread the melted butter around.

After a few hours, the walls of the warehouse began to give way.

The fire spread to a second building, and the first fully collapsed, unleashing a wave of butter, cream, and melted cheese onto the streets of Madison.

The current of dairy made it impossible for fire trucks to maneuver, so in order to fight the flames, firemen had to wade through a cholesterol-dense river that was almost five feet deep in places.

More frightening though, the fire was creeping closer to the factory's anhydrous ammonia tanks.

And if these tanks burst, it would release a toxic gas into the city.

Residents that lived within half a mile radius of the factory were prompted to evacuate.

Fortunately though, the firefighters were able to keep the flames away from the tanks.

Within 20 hours, the fire was contained, but the battle was far from over.

You see, the butter and cheese flood was ongoing, putting the city's fresh water supplies at risk, as well as the surrounding natural environment.

The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources joined the fire department's effort to stem the tide, erecting levees and dams to keep the butter, cheese, and assorted meats from running into nearby lakes and streams.

Public Works dug a pond for the runoff, and then quickly realized they had to dig a second one before it completely filled with butter.

Heck, they had to bring in pumps to help divert 13 million gallons of melted butter mixed with water and other runoff from the fire.

In the end, they had to use construction vehicles to dump sand on the burning butter in order to fully put out the flames, and the fire was officially declared out on May 11th, eight days after it had begun.

Clearing the surrounding streets, however, took an extra week.

The event became known as the Great Wisconsin Butter Fire.

It was the most costly fire in the state's history.

causing $7.5 million in property damage, destroyed $70 million worth of food products, and an extra $1 million in cleanup expenses, which was ironic since it all started because the U.S.

government wanted to avoid a financial crisis.

It's a delicious cautionary tale.

When you keep way too much butter near flammable materials, your city might become toast.

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.

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 is an ad by BetterHelp.

We've all had that epic rideshare experience.

Halfway through your best friends, and they know your aspirations to go find yourself in Portugal.

It's human.

We're all looking for someone to listen, but not everyone is equipped to help.

With over a decade of experience, BetterHelp matches you with the right therapist.

See why they have a 4.9 rating out of 1.7 million client session reviews.

Visit betterhelp.com for 10% off your first month.

This is an iHeart podcast.