Ascension

Quaker family packed up and moved to southern California. Five years later. They settled in on their dusty ranch about thirty five miles north of San Diego, and then life just sort of kept going. By four, Charlie was a twenty nine year old sewing machine salesman who was frustrated with his lot in life. He still lived with his parents, and, judging by how hard they had both worked just to stay afloat all these years, Charlie's own future was far

from bright and sunny. Charlie was a smart guy, though he'd been paying attention, and he noticed something about the weather as far as he could tell, rain storms had a way of following big battles that involved cannons and rifles. He wondered if there was a chemical reason why, and started to dig into the field of pluviculture, literally the science of making rain. Charlie got busy testing out his ideas. He began to experiment with different chemicals, mixing them inside

a large wooden tub. When he was sure he had the recipe right, he covered it and let it sit for a while before carefully pushing the lid off from some distance with a long pole. The resulting steam drifted up into the sky and then caused rain to fall on his father's bone dry ranch. He'd done it. The first place he took his services was north to Los Angeles.

They agreed to pay Charlie a thousand dollars if he could give them eighteen inches of rain, and that was a lot of money to a poor sewing machine salesman, close to twenty eight thousand dollars in modern American currency in fact. So Charlie built himself a small tower near ruby O Canyon, put his big wooden vat on top of it, and let the chemicals get to work. And it was a success. Charlie gave Los Angeles over eighteen inches of rain and took home a big, fat paycheck.

With success under his belt and the testimony of a happy city, he started going elsewhere. In the decade between nineteen o five and nineteen fifteen, Charlie worked on as many as seventeen contract jobs. Sometimes they were cities, other times they were groups of farmers looking for a little help. And then San Diego called. They were in the middle of a big drought, and after hearing about Charlie's services, they decided to give the rainmaker a try. They asked

him to fill their depleted reservoir, and he agreed. The city council met and voted on the project and agreed to pay him ten thousand dollars if he could deliver on his promise. The first thing he did was build another of his towers about sixty miles to the east of the city, right on the edge of the Moraina River. I'm not sure how moving his chemicals twenty feet higher was supposed to help a process that involves sending fumes into the clouds to agitate them and create rain, but

Charlie insisted on it. That was January one of nineteen sixteen. Four days later, the rain arrived. The local newspaper reported on a light sprinkle that day, but it was certainly not enough to fill the local reservoir. But it rained the next day as well, and the next after that. In fact, it wasn't stopping. The ranges seemed to keep coming, pouring from the sky day night. In those first five days, the city recorded at least seventeen inches of rain. It

was wonderful, but also a bit troubling. The rain had filled the San Diego River and it was beginning to spill over into the land around it. Reports of flooding and mud slides began to pour in, as was the news that homes were being swept away. It was still raining on January when the reservoirs dam broke. A torrent of water at least forty ft high, crashed down from the hills towards the city, destroying buildings and taking lives along the way. It was pure and utter destruction, all

because of the rain. The January nineteen sixteen rain storm brought thirty inches of rain into San Diego, but it was also a disaster for Charlie. The city was so upset over the destruction his rain had caused that they refused to pay him. The resulting legal battle took two decades to fizzle out, but Charlie never saw a dime

or it. He did well elsewhere for a while. He apparently signed a contract in nine up in Canada and received offers from Cuba, but when the Great Depression arrived, cities no longer had the funds to pay for something as frivolous as rainmaking. He eventually closed up shop and went back to selling sewing machines. Charlie Hadfield never wrote

his recipe down. He repeated it dozens and dozens of times, and we have accounts from witnesses about what he did with his mixture or what it smelled like, but never what the ingredients were. So when Charlie died in nineteen fifty eight, he took his secret formula with him to the grave. His recipe might be forgotten, but the catastrophe he delivered certainly hasn't been. San Diego still remembers Hatfield's flood, although folks are still divided on how it all really happened. Either.

Charlie Hatfield was the miracle worker he claimed to be, or he simply manage to arrive at the perfect time for an extraordinary act of God. I'll let you decide which option to believe. When Catherine the Great, the longest reigning Empress of Russia, passed away in seventeen ninety six, her son Paul the First, ascended to the throne. That's how things are done in a monarchy, after all, But

that doesn't mean the people had to like it. Granted, the people of Russia had gotten used to Catherine, so Paul seemed like a small, cheap replacement for something so powerful and irreplaceable, which might explain why the conspiracies began almost immediately. Five years later, he was assassinated and his son Alexander the First took the throne. Now there's been debate for decades about that situation about whether or not

Alexander had played a part in his father's death. Certainly, there isn't enough proof to make a solid case for it, but there's wiggle room in there for sure. Most of the reports from Alexander's life say that he was very remorseful about his father's death. Maybe it was guilt or maybe it was just grief. We'll never know, but It's important to keep that in mind when I tell you the rest of the story, because the next twenty four years were a roller coaster ride for him, and it

didn't end well. There were victories, such as the eighteen twelve defeat of Napoleon, who had tried to invade Russia and marched to Moscow, only to be turned back, but he was plagued by attempts on his life and even a botched kidnapping plot. By the end of his life, he was incredibly distrusting of the people around him and wanted to escape at all. In eight he had his chance.

His wife had been ill for some time, and they decided to take a journey to the southern city of tagg and Rock on the coast of the Sea of Azov. Along the way, he caught a cold and eventually died of typhus. His wife passed away while his body was being returned, and the throne passed on to his brother Nicholas. And that's the story we're all told. But there are

rumors of something more bizarre. It said that Alexander, haunted by remorse for his father's assassination and driven by a desire to get out of the Spotlight hadn't died after all, but had actually stepped down from his position as emperor so he could remove himself from society. It would mean two things, though, first that his confid in St. Petersburg was empty, and second, the real Alexander lived on for many years elsewhere in Russia. It's a fantastic tale, but

there might actually be some truth to it. In eighteen thirty six, someone in the mountains outside of perm claimed to see a man who looked exactly like the former emperor. He lived as a hermit in the area, and locals referred to him as Father Kuzmich. One tale in particular spoke of how a student of this monk had the chance to visit the city, where she had an opportunity to see a portrait of Emperor Alexander. Upon returning to her teacher, she told him that he was the spitting

image of the dead ruler. Was Father Kuzmich really Alexander the first in a sort of self imposed exile. We'll never know for sure, but it's certainly fun to imagine it being true that a ruler as powerful as Alexander could simply step aside, fabricate his own death and then live out the rest of his life helping others in the mountains as a monk. Well, it's intriguing at the very least. Father Kuzmitch passed away in eighteen sixty four

after a long life of serving and teaching. Over a century later, in nineteen eighty four, he was canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church. Whether he was an emperor or a hermit, the people of Russia have refused to forget him. And the coffin of Alexander, Well, it seems that it's been opened back up on more than one occasion. The most significant of those events took place in It said that the Soviet authorities were looking for valuables and had opened a number of tombs to see what they could

find inside. When they reached the tomb of Alexander, they found the royal seals on his coffin still intact. Breaking it open, they peered inside, hoping for some lost treasure or priceless jewelry that might be used to raise money. Instead, they found something much less precious, lumps of lead weights. Alexander's body. Assuming it had been there in the first place, it was nowhere to be found. 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 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 the World of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.