Airborne

and he almost succeeded. Charles Kettering made cash registers. That was just his day job, but in his spare time, he was also an inventor. In the span of five years, he was awarded twenty three patents. But he didn't limit his expertise only to cash registers. He also liked to tinker with cars, Always looking to make things better, Kettering and a group of engineers would gather in a barn

owned by one of the other members to discuss improvements. Eventually, their frequent meetings were so productive they decided to incorporate, and their new company would focus on reducing automobile fatalities. Meanwhile, Elmer Speary, a former electric company Magnate was working on making ships and planes safer. His gyroscopic stabilizers helped large ships balance in rough waters. They soon led to the invention of small gyro compasses that would allow airplanes to

maintain true north while airborne. Sperry also had something else up as sleeve, though too. He didn't want to just make airplanes safer to fly. His goal was to eliminate the pilots entirely. Sperry and his business partner Peter Hewitt worked day and night on the first drone, an unmanned aircraft meant to deliver a payload to a designated target. The Navy didn't see a need for such a device, but the Army was intrigued. One man named Edward Deeds was a colonel in the U. S. Army and led

their aircraft production board. He was also one of the original members of Charles Kettering's Barn Gang, the group of engineers who had worked on improving automobiles in their spare time. Deeds like Speary's drone, and he asked Kettering to come on board as a supervisor. The operation was called Project Liberty Eagle, and it was top secret. None of the contacts listed exactly what would be produced. All components were classified. It was up to someone named as the account manager

to fill in the Army's higher ups. Verbally. Kettering's idea for the drone differed from his peers. He didn't think that it was possible for an unmanned aircraft to drop a bomb and return to its place of origin. He wanted to launch the single use playing with an explosive device attached to it, which could be launched at a potential target. The Army agreed, and Kettering got to work. He built his flying bombs out of wood wrapped in fabric and paper mache, but found the engines to be

too costly. There was also the problem of the aircraft knowing where to go when no one was controlling it. Speary took care of that last part, though, inventing a new kind of barometer to detect changes in air pressure within a few feet. Those changes were then passed onto a set of servos, which were used as a programmable air system. Their first tests of the Kettering Bug, as it was called, were complete failures. The first one crashed after flying only three feet. The second bug lasted fifteen

seconds and then hit the dirt. After several rounds of changes and bug fixes, including an updated engine, the Kettering Bug successfully performed a targeted flight. Unfortunately, by the time it was ready, it was too late. The Army had wanted to use Kettering's flying bombs for the war going on at the time, not the Gulf War or the

war in Vietnam, mind you. In order to manufacture these aircraft for the army, a new company was formed by Edward Deeds and Charles Kettering, who sought help from someone with extensive experience in the flight industry. You might say this person was the one who started it all well.

Along with his brother Orville Wright of the Right Brothers fame, was appointed director of the new Dayton Right Company, which was commissioned to produce the frames for the Kettering Bugs during World War One, oh and to get the engines at a reasonable price. Kettering reached out to the man who had mastered the art of production efficiency, Henry Ford. The greatest minds at the time came together to help

save lives during World War One. Although the Kettering Bug never saw combat, it lives on today in torpedoes and aerial drones. A promise of the future that wasn't quite ready to take flight. How we decorate the rooms in our home can tell a lot about who we are. We might have had posters in our childhood bedroom of our favorite bands and movie. As we get older and our taste change, hopefully they mature, we might have paintings

adorning our walls now, or interesting works of art. Sophie, however, turned entire rooms into a work of art. Sophie Charlotte, the second wife of King Frederick of Prussia, wanted a space to call her own within the walls of the Berlin City Palace. Architect Andrea Schleuder designed for her a series of ornate panels to cover one large room. The panels were then built by master craftsman Gottfried Wolfram with the assistance of two other men, who all helped give

the room its name. After all, they knew their way around high end materials, specifically amber. Together the men used tons of it, along with a heavy amount of gold leaf to cover the elaborate crafted panels. The result was a gilded masterpiece of royal decadence. Mosaics of amber were juxtaposed against golden flowers and cherubic statues along the walls.

It was anything but subtle. The Amber room didn't stay at the palace for long, though Russians are Peter the Great came to see the room for himself in seventeen sixteen, and soon after King Frederick gifted every last panel of it to him. Seeking an alliance against Sweden, Empress Elizabeth, Peter's daughter, had the room reinstalled at Katherine Palace, the family's summer home. She made some changes and incorporated even more amber and gold over the course of a decade.

By the time it was finished, over six tons of amber covered almost six hundred square feet of wall space in the palace. The room lived there for decades until the start of World War Two. As German forces moved through Europe and Russia, they were stealing arts and other valuable items for themselves. The Amber room would have been a treasure trove over the Nazis, so Russian experts tried to disassemble it and move it out of the palace.

Their efforts, though, failed. Before they even began, the amber in the walls had become brittle, any effort to remove it would destroy it. Instead, wallpaper was put up to try and hide it from prying eyes. But hiding six tons of amber and gold from dedicated art thieves with simple wallpaper was never going to work. In nineteen forty one,

the Nazis had raided the palace. They dismantled the room piece by piece in under two days, taking everything to Konigsberg Castle in East Prussia, where it was reassembled as a kind of trophy room. It stayed there for three years until nine Allied troops were advancing on Konigsberg and the British Royal Air Force reigned fire on the town,

turning buildings to ash. The Germans held their ground for five months until Hitler ordered every piece of art, including the Amber Room, moved away from the town to safer ground. Now here's where things get tricky. The man in charge of that move, Eric Cooke, was supposed to oversee the amber rooms transport, but he escaped Khonsberg and left his

subordinate in charge. The Russians arrived to occupy the town, destroying even more of it in the process, and as far as anyone knew, the Amber Room had not survived. After the war, a recreation was erected within Katherine Palace in Russia. It took twenty four years to complete it, probably because all they had to reference were black and white photos and sketches from the original room. All the remaining amber craftsmen in the country were brought into fabricate

panels as close to the originals as possible. But what of the once great room that had traveled from Berlin to Russia and finally to Konigsberg. Was it destroyed by Allied bombing? Well, yes and no. While it's unlikely that the entire room was saved at the end of the war,

rumors have circulated about its survival. According to some who were actually there, the panels had been loaded onto a German military ship on January thirty ninety five, a ship that was sunk by a Soviet submarine a short while later. Treasure hunters naturally searched the wreck for years looking for the panels, but they found nothing. In the late nineteen nineties, researchers claimed to have found the Amber Room in two different places. A group of German experts said it was

hidden in a over mine. A Lithuanian team, on the other hand, said it was at the bottom of a lagoon. Both teams. That turns out we're wrong. Unfortunately, modern assessments have declared the Amber Rooms recovery a lost cause. It was almost certainly destroyed in the Koenigsberg bombings at the end of the war, but those who want to get an idea of its opulence can still visit Catherine Palace near St. Petersburg. It's as close as anyone will get to what was once described as a true eighth wonder

of the world. 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 Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Manky 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 the World of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious. M