Fellowship

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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 It was 9.40 a.m. on July 20th of 1945.
Betty Lou Oliver, a 20-year-old elevator operator, sat anxiously in her elevator car within the Empire State Building. The day had only just started.

Speaker 2 but it couldn't go fast enough as far as she was concerned. She wanted this whole summer to disappear behind her.
her.

Speaker 2 The war in Europe was finally over, and her fiancé, Oscar, had called earlier that month to let her know that he was coming home.

Speaker 2 Soon, Betty could leave the stuffy elevator behind, and she and Oscar could move back to their hometown in Arkansas to enjoy their life together. But everything was about to change.

Speaker 2 Betty delivered some passengers to the 80th floor and then sat and waited as the door closed.

Speaker 2 She hummed a song to herself, thinking about Oscar, when she suddenly heard a massive crashing sound above her. The whole elevator shook.

Speaker 2 Before Betty had time to think, the top part of the cab burst open, the metal splitting like paper.

Speaker 2 Flames erupted all around her, flash burning her skin before extinguishing, and then she was falling.

Speaker 2 She cried out as the damaged elevator began hurtling toward the ground, quickly clearing floor after floor. Her mind raced.
She didn't understand what was happening. Why had the elevator broken?

Speaker 2 Where did the flames come from? Was it some accident? Had the Germans or Japanese decided to restart the war? Her eyes went wide and she screamed in terror as her body began to float up off the floor.

Speaker 2 The cab was moving that fast. All she could think to do was grab the railing on the side of the elevator and pull herself in close to the wall.

Speaker 2 She kept falling, falling, and falling until the moment of impact finally happened. The elevator smacked against the bottom of the shaft, cracking the floor everywhere.

Speaker 2 The force of the impact sent Betty flying to the opposite side of the cab. She felt a terrible cracking sensation all up and down her back and neck.
She slumped to the floor, limp, unable to move.

Speaker 2 Pain enveloped her. Minutes passed.
All seemed silent.

Speaker 2 And then voices, panic sounds, pierced the cab, followed by the intense groaning of the metal doors as they were pulled apart with heavy equipment.

Speaker 2 When the firefighters entered, they were astonished to see Betty's broken body. They called for medics who quickly came to her side.
They They checked her pulse and discovered that she was alive.

Speaker 2 Betty was taken to a nearby hospital where doctors discovered that she had broken her neck, back, pelvis, and both legs.

Speaker 2 They used multiple innovative risky surgeries to repair the damage and bring her back from the brink of death. But what had caused this incredible accident?

Speaker 2 That morning, decorated Air Force pilot William Franklin Smith Jr. had been flying a B-25D bomber on a mission with two passengers to Newark, New Jersey.

Speaker 2 But the sky was full of heavy fog and he got lost taking a wrong turn.

Speaker 2 His altitude was half of what it should have been, which soon brought him smack dab into the 79th and 80th floors of the Empire State Building.

Speaker 2 The plane exploded on impact, setting both floors ablaze. William, his two passengers, and the 11 people inside the building were killed.

Speaker 2 One of the plane's engines flew off, falling several feet away and crashing into a penthouse art studio.

Speaker 2 But the other engine flew across the 78th floor where it entered the elevator shaft, severing the cables of Betty's elevator and exploding the top of her cab.

Speaker 2 As a result, she fell 80 stories or a thousand feet, giving her the Guinness World Record for longest fall survived in an elevator.

Speaker 2 This also remains the highest story fire that New York City firefighters have ever successfully contained.

Speaker 2 Experts, including members of the TV science show Mythbusters, agree that Betty survived the fall because of two factors.

Speaker 2 The broken elevator cables coiling at the bottom of the shaft cushioned her fall, and the narrow nature of the shaft creating air pressure that would have also slowed the cab.

Speaker 2 Still, it was barely enough. Betty's injuries were horrific.
Congress responded by passing a law that actually allowed victims of the crash to sue the government for damages.

Speaker 2 Betty spent months in the hospital, but miraculously made a full recovery. She was able to return to Arkansas with Oscar, where they enjoyed a long life with many children and grandchildren.

Speaker 2 The accident was ultimately just a curious chapter in her life, but it's a good reminder that every day could be your last, and that if danger ever comes your way, hold on tight and you might just survive.

Speaker 1 This is Matt Rogers from Los Culture Resist with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang.

Speaker 3 This is Bowen Yang from Los Culturas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang.

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Speaker 1 Oh, really?

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

Speaker 2 If there's any universal truth about school life, it's that students love sorting themselves into clubs and cliques.

Speaker 2 As young people navigate the annoyances and frustrations of schoolwork, finding friends with the same interests can make things significantly more endurable, whether these clubs were official or not.

Speaker 2 In 1911, Birmingham, a group of nine British schoolboys found a club of their own. The four core members of this group were named Robert, Jeffrey, Christopher, and John.

Speaker 2 They were all ambitious young men who wanted to become poets, writers, and artists and frequently found themselves drinking tea together at barrow stores near the school where they would discuss the plans for their lives.

Speaker 2 And these were the usual things that schoolboy dreams are made of. Grand hopes for the future, dreams of artistic success and changing the world.
There was a maverick streak to this group.

Speaker 2 Sometimes they would smuggle tea into their school library in order to drink while studying. In homage to this behavior, the group would be named the Tea Club and Borovian Society.

Speaker 2 Every member would put the letters T C B S at the end of their signature, a way of signifying how important this bond was to them.

Speaker 2 Even when they split off to go to college, reunions between Robert, Jeffrey, Christopher, and John would continue.

Speaker 2 By the time they met in 1914, John was even beginning work on a piece of fiction that he had hopes for, until the larger world derailed everyone's ambitions.

Speaker 2 World War I broke out in Europe, and soon all four boys were training to fight. Christopher joined the Navy, Jeffrey and Robert enlisted in the Army.

Speaker 2 The final one to join was John, although he continued to send his poems to friends as he went through basic training.

Speaker 2 They deployed in 1915, and during the war, the TCBS would become a coping mechanism for the boys.

Speaker 2 Jeffrey wrote, while fearing the worst for his unit, that the death of one member would not destroy the TCBS. His friends were the Immortal Four.

Speaker 2 Of the so-called Immortal Four, only two would return home at the end of the war. Jeffrey and Robert both died during the Battle of the Somme, while Christopher and John survived.

Speaker 2 John worked hard to ensure that Jeffrey's poems would be published posthumously, collecting them and writing a preface for them himself.

Speaker 2 Christopher would go on to become a naval instructor, but John remained dedicated to the craft of prose and poetry.

Speaker 2 When he became a professor at Oxford, he founded another literary club among the professors, which would come to be known by its own name.

Speaker 2 But he never forgot his companions from the TCBS and named his children after them. John's prominence in literary circles grew over the following years.

Speaker 2 An expert on mythology and ancient languages, he contributed to new translations of Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, exploring the ins and outs of British literature with the keen eye of an academic and the passion of of an amateur.

Speaker 2 Not long after, inspired by his love of fairy stories, he wrote a book for children which would be published in the 1930s. And perhaps you've heard of it.
It was called The Hobbit.

Speaker 2 And after The Hobbit, he worked for almost 20 years to produce his masterpiece, The Lord of the Rings, a work of epic literature that redefined fantasy for all time.

Speaker 2 All because of a dream that he first conceived while illicitly smuggling tea into the library with his school friends. These days, days, it's a lot harder to stay in touch with our classmates.

Speaker 2 Life gets busy. Work takes us hundreds or thousands of miles from home.
And the careers we build or the lives we live often feel like we're moving on more than building up.

Speaker 2 But that doesn't mean we stop thinking about those early days and foundational friends. After all, you never forget your first fellowship.

Speaker 2 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.

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.

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

Speaker 1 This is an iHeart podcast.