Sky High

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Speaker 1 Welcome to Aaron Menke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim and Mild.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.

Speaker 2 Alvar slowly blinked his eyes open. The sun had been beating down on him while he slept, and it was time to take his surroundings in.
Everything seemed to have a blue tint while his vision adjusted.

Speaker 2 His skin stung all over. It was burnt and raw from the sun, the saltwater, and the sand.
His beard was caked with the ladder, but he slowly climbed to his feet.

Speaker 2 Looking around, he saw that he was on an island. The Gulf of Mexico stretched out to one side, and a small bay leading to a coastline was on the other.

Speaker 2 As his mind came back to him, he remembered that it was the year 1528. He was on an expedition to Florida for the Spanish crown, but it had gone terribly wrong.

Speaker 2 Hundreds had died from disease, starvation, or combat with the indigenous peoples. The last of them had tried to flee to Mexico City on makeshift rafts, but clearly that had had gone just as badly.

Speaker 2 Looking down at the beach, he saw several other Spanish sailors recovering as well. They were now shipwrecked on an unknown land.
Despite the glare from the sun, the men were all freezing.

Speaker 2 It was winter and a cold wind blew across the island. Alvar huddled near his fellow sailors, wondering where they would go next.
But he didn't have much time to mull it over.

Speaker 2 before new arrivals to the beach drew his attention. Nearly 100 native warriors waded across the bay and onto the island.
They were tall and imposing.

Speaker 2 Their nipples and upper lips were pierced with small pieces of wood. They were unlike anyone Alvar had ever seen.

Speaker 2 They all carried bows, and Alvar was sure that they were here to finish off the expedition. A few of the indigenous warriors stepped forward, and he was sure that they were about to start firing.

Speaker 2 But instead, they did something else that astonished him. They started to weep.
Soon, all the other warriors joined in. They laid their hands on the sailors.

Speaker 2 It soon became clear to Alvar and the others that the tribe was trying to show them sympathy for what had befallen them. It was a far cry from the warfare that they had experienced in Florida.

Speaker 2 These Native Americans took the sailors back to their huts on the mainland and shared their fires and food.

Speaker 2 They mostly ate roots from the small water-filled plants dotting the arid landscape, but they would eat just about anything, lizards, spiders, even deer droppings.

Speaker 2 While many of Alvar's fellow sailors turned their noses up at this, he quickly adapted, learning to live as the Native peoples did.

Speaker 2 Soon, he was even working for them, traveling further inland to trade shells and pearls for food with other tribes.

Speaker 2 The Native Americans believed in healing by laying on hands and breathing on injured or infected body parts.

Speaker 2 They thought that the Spanish, with their lighter skin, were somehow sent from the heavens and could perform these healing duties especially well.

Speaker 2 And so Alvar became known as a healer, traveling around this strange land, selling shells and breathing on injured body parts.

Speaker 2 It turns out that none of the other Spanish sailors were as adaptable as Alvar. They slowly died from starvation or exposure to the elements.

Speaker 2 A dozen decided to try their luck walking south on foot to Mexico. At least they thought that it was south.
They still couldn't be sure where they were.

Speaker 2 But Alvar stayed, partly to learn more about the native peoples and partly because there was one man there, a Spaniard named Lope de Oviedo, who was afraid of water and refused to leave the island.

Speaker 2 But finally, after many months, Alvar convinced him to leave by letting him ride across the bay on his back.

Speaker 2 They traveled miles barefoot, eventually reuniting with some of their fellow sailors, only three of whom were left.

Speaker 2 They continued south, sometimes meeting friendly native peoples, other times being taken captive and having to escape.

Speaker 2 Eventually, though, they made it back to Mexico, and from there, they sailed back to Spain. But it had been almost 10 years since they first set foot in Florida.

Speaker 2 They had walked over 2,000 miles barefoot and encountered all kinds of unique, fascinating cultures. In fact, Alvar and his friends were the first known Europeans to set foot in some of these places.

Speaker 2 Remember that strange land where they were originally shipwrecked? Today we call it Texas.

Speaker 2 And Alvar, better known by his full name Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, was the first historian of Texas, chronicling everything he saw.

Speaker 2 His endless curiosity, even in the face of death, led to copious journals that that give us some of our only insights into the Native American cultures at that time.

Speaker 2 Within a few years, many would die of disease carried by the Europeans. Others would be wiped out by famine or warfare with the Spanish or other tribes.

Speaker 2 So, the next time you find yourself shipwrecked or lost in a strange land, do yourself a favor and stay curious. It might just be the best way to make it through alive.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Oh, really?

Speaker 1 Thanks, Capital One Bank Guy.

Speaker 1 What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See capital One.com/slash bank.
Capital One NA member FDIC.

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Speaker 2 Lunch Atop a Skyscraper. It's one of the most famous photos ever taken.
You've most likely seen it before. It depicts a row of iron workers sitting along a steel beam.

Speaker 2 Below them, the distant buildings of New York City are as clear as day. But the men on this beam seem unaware of how high up they are.

Speaker 2 They're sharing cigarettes, opening their lunch boxes, talking amongst one another.

Speaker 2 The one to the far right of the frame is the only one who seems aware that they're being photographed, squinting toward the camera with an empty flask balanced upon his knee.

Speaker 2 The original 1932 caption of the photo reads, in part, while New York's thousands rush to crowded restaurants for their noonday lunch, These intrepid steel workers atop the 70-story RCA building in Rockefeller Center get all of the air and freedom they want by lunching on a steel beam with a sheer drop of over 800 feet to the street level.

Speaker 2 Honestly, it's no surprise that this image is iconic. It's both deeply humanizing of these steel workers and also vertigo-inducing.

Speaker 2 Almost impossible to look at without swaying on your feet a little and being glad that you are on firm ground.

Speaker 2 But as with every photograph of daring and impossible feats, there's one question that many ask themselves. Who took this picture?

Speaker 2 Well, it turns out there are more photographs from the RCA building, and some of them are just as dizzying as the lunch picture.

Speaker 2 One picture shows a slim man in 1930s attire, you know, suspenders, a tie, high-waisted pants and spats, perched on a steel beam with both his hands around a bulky camera, pressed up against his chin.

Speaker 2 It looks as if a stray gust of wind might blow him away.

Speaker 2 And this man is the photographer Thomas Kelly, one of several photographers who were present on September 20th of 1932, the day that the famous picture was taken for RCA.

Speaker 2 Two of the others were William Lefwich and Charles Ebbetts, and no one can be quite sure which of them snapped the famous lunch photograph.

Speaker 2 Like every other case of contested authorship, this topic is hotly debated among enthusiasts. Originally, Louis Hine received credits.

Speaker 2 He had famously photographed the construction of the Empire State Building as well. But it's likely that he was not present for the RCA shoot.

Speaker 2 So, how do we determine which of these long-dead men took the photo? Well, internet sleuths have taken to image analysis.

Speaker 2 By looking at the skyline behind each of the photographers and their relative positions on the construction site, they can make educated guesses about which part of the city should be on the other end of the camera.

Speaker 2 And the results? None of the photographs of the photographers show them taking the famous shot. So, back to square one.

Speaker 2 In 2003, Corbis Images, a company specializing in archival images, hired a private investigator to track down the photographer of the famous picture.

Speaker 2 The investigator located an old newspaper article which credits a man known as Hamilton Wright. But it's possible that Mr.
Wright was not even on the building at the time.

Speaker 2 He was the head of a photography company and he would often get credit for images taken by people working under his employ.

Speaker 2 But it does give us at least a possible connection because at least one of the photographers that we know of was employed by the Hamilton Wright company, Charles Ebbets.

Speaker 2 Ebbets was now the favorite candidate for authorship, but the presence of so many other photographers on the day still cast doubts on who was actually responsible.

Speaker 2 The original glass negative of the photograph is housed in a storage facility in Pennsylvania.

Speaker 2 It's broken in several places, but has been kept in temperature-controlled facilities ever since to make sure the pieces do not degrade with age.

Speaker 2 And as for the men in the photograph itself, Well, their identities are even less certain than the photographer. They were most likely immigrant laborers, never credited in their time.

Speaker 2 Whole documentaries have been produced seeking out the identities of these men in the picture. Some of them have been positively identified, but others are lost to history.
Or perhaps not quite lost.

Speaker 2 That's the beautiful thing about photographs like Lunch Atop a Skyscraper. It may not be much, but an image like this transcends time, location, and profession.

Speaker 2 creating empathy between us and the men who were working there 80 years ago. That's an even more towering achievement than the tallest of skyscrapers.com.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And you can learn all about it over at theworldoflore.com. And until next time, stay curious.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Oh, really?

Speaker 1 Thanks, Capital One Bank Guy. What's in your wallet? Terms apply.
See capital One.com/slash bank. Capital One NA member FDIC.
This is an iHeart podcast.