Bank On It

one of two ways. We either shrug these coincidences off and move on, or we study them obsessively. The crew of the s S St. Paul had no reason to believe in coincidences when they encountered the h M S. Gladiator, at least not yet A Gladiator was a warship of the British Royal Navy. It had been launched in eighteen ninety six out of Portsmouth, England, and boasted a crew

of two D fifty officers. On the afternoon of April nineteen o eight, the Gladiator was steaming into ports off the Isle of Wight at a speed of roughly three knots were just over three and a half miles per hour. The crew couldn't see much with a snow storm blowing outside, including other ships. As the Gladiator headed up the Solent, a channel between the northern coast of the Isle of Wight and the southern coast of England, a fog horn blared out in the distance. It wasn't uncommon for ships

to pass through this area. However, there was no way to see what was approaching until it was too late. In this case, it was an American ocean liner named the St. Paul. The St. Paul hailed from Philadelphia and had been built as a passenger liner before being repurposed as an auxiliary navy cruiser for the US. On the day of its launch, it had been christened with the customary bottle of champagne fastened to a rope. The glass shattered against the bow as expected, but when it came

time for St. Paul to move, it didn't. Not at first a bad sign, well for the superstitious, it might have been. As the Gladiator was pulling into port, the St. Paul was on its way back to the States. Each ship's lookout saw the other one approaching. Both captains began evasive maneuvers. Immediately. The St. Paul turned to pass on Gladiator's port side, but the British ship didn't have the room to allow for a wide enough berth. As a result, the two ships collided and gashes were torn along their

hulls in the process. The Gladiator took on water while it's captain attempted to steer it toward a sand bank. Crewmen dropped anchors, hoping to slow its movements, but all their efforts were in vain. The vessel slowly sank. Someone shouted abandoned ship, and men jumped into the water, with some cliin at the capsizing hull, desperately trying to hang on. Once the water reached the engine room, the boilers exploded.

Sailors who had been trapped inside were instantly killed. The ones who tried to swim toward land found the icy water too rough, As men on shore launched a small rescue boat, which couldn't break past the choppy waves. The crew who had jumped for their lives soon found themselves being swept out to see where they met their end, and the few who stood on the overturned whole of the Gladiator were only left to shiver and wait for

help to come. The collision took place at two thirty pm on April nineteen o eight, and twenty seven men died as a result, but the American ship, the Saint Paul, only suffered minor damage to its bow and returned to Southampton for repairs. The St. Paul continued to travel over the next several years. When the United States entered World War One in nineteen seventeen, many large ships were chartered by the U. S. Navy to serve their country. For example,

banking giant JP. Morgan even watched as his yacht was taken by the military, becoming an armed ship called the Corsair. The St. Paul was no exception. They made a dozen trips between the United States and England for a year until nineteen eighteen, when it was sent to New York, where it was to be overhauled into a troop ship. In late April of that year, the liner was moored at Pier sixty one in New York undergoing its conversion when it suddenly capsized. It simply rolled over on its side,

just as The Gladiator had done ten years earlier. Most accounts note the dates of the sinking is April nineteen eighteen. However, according to some records, the incident was actually said to have occurred on April at two thirty pm, ten years to the minute since the sinking of the h MS Gladiator. It was business for the little fellows, but not just the fruits in vegetables he sold to the local grocers.

I'm Adeo Giannini had succeeded in that already, but he also saw that his neighbors in the Italian immigrant community where he had grown up, we're facing another challenge. The banks in San Francisco wouldn't loan the money. I'madeo knew that they were good for it. Though he knew his friends and neighbors, his family. He knew how hard they worked and how many of them were already really trying

to make it in their new American home. After all, many of them were already making good money from their jobs, but as usual, banks were turning them away. And it wasn't just home and business loans. Amadeo knew some immigrant families who couldn't even open a savings account, so he set about to change that. After being told that they had no business in a bank, I'm Adeo's Italian neighbors kept their stacks of coins stashed at home under mattresses.

But since he was married to the daughter of the neighborhood's richest man, i'm Adeo had an insider's view on the favoritism that kept immigrant families or anything that wasn't already rich from opening accounts. He also had an insider's view on the way that money in the bank earned interest, and Amadeo wanted to bring that advantage to others. But the question was how to convince people to trust a bank after they had been burned by the sneers of

others in the past. It all starts with a name, of course, and Amadeo knew just the thing when he opened his first accounts in nineteen o four. He hung his banner from a saloon, a banner designed to give his neighbors a sense of security in something familiar. He called it Bank of Italy, and it worked. Soon enough, Amadeo had the bartender working as a bank teller. Of course, he had to start by going door to door and

even talking with people on the street. He pounded the pavement to make the case that an immigrants business could thrive with the help of a local bank, and his campaign paid off. Within a year, he was managing over seven hundred thousand dollars for his community. In today's money, that would be roughly twenty million. I'm a day understood the enormity of the trust that his neighbors had placed

in him. He even issued shares of stock in the bank so that the business itself was majority owned by the fish dealers, grocers, house painters, and barbers who left their money with him. So when disaster struck two years later, he took action. Six was the year of the massive San Francisco earthquake. It tore through the city, and what wasn't destroyed by the shaking earth in the early morning hours was torched by the raging fires that followed. More

than three thousand people died. Over eighty percent of the city was wiped off the map. It was a scene of destruction that brought hell to earth. Almost nothing downtown was spared, and all the big money in the banks couldn't hold back those fires. Titans of finance and corner grocers alike saw their livelihoods go up and smoke. Amadeo borrowed a cart from the local garbage collector and rushed

into the rubble. Somehow he was able to scrape together about eighty thousand dollars in coins and pile them in his cart. One story says that he covered them with crates of oranges from his days as a produce broker. Another says he just piled garbage on top of them. Either way, he used the garbage collector's cart to get his neighbor's money out of the downtown destruction. In exchange for the cart, Amadeo promised the garbage collector that he would give the man's son a job at the bank

if it ever reopened. It didn't take long to learn how important that effort was, because news came that all the other big banks were devastated and fires still burned hot around their vaults. Anything that wasn't already destroyed would be turned to ash by the intense heat if they tried to open the doors. So Amadeo turned around and headed for the water front. He set up shop there.

Legend goes that Amadeo's desk on the docks was two barrels with a board across the top, and right then and there he started to invest in the project to rebuild the city. The first step was to send two ships up the coast to Washington and Oregon to bring back lumber. Now more than ever, people needed somewhere safe to keep their money, and Amadeo had proven that he had the courage and quick thinking for that job. More

people than ever came to him with deposits. People had fled the ruins of their homes with all the valuables they could carry, and we're living in relief camps around the circle of devastation. So words spread fast. All you needed to open an account with Almadeo Giannini was a signature and a handshake, and you could deposit your valuables in Amadeo's Bank of Italy. With the support, the Italian neighborhoods of North Beach were back on their feet faster

than any other part of town. From that starting point, you might say Amadeo made bank so much so that he started opening up branches up and down California. And like he did in San Francisco, Amadeo insisted that his banking services be available to the immigrant communities everywhere he set up shop, working families in Yugoslavian, Russian, Mexican Portuguese, Chinese,

and Greek communities suddenly had access to bank accounts. In later years, Amadeo would all eas make a habit of pointing out that the loans he made to working people were always paid back in full. Other banks made their money betting on the wealthy brokers and power tycoons. Amadeo launched his bank betting on the power of working class people. Out of the disaster in San Francisco, Amadeos soon found

himself running the largest bank in the nation. Through war, the Great Depression, and waves of anti immigrant prejudice, Amadeo's bank survived to become the largest privately held bank in the world. It funded the rebuilding of San Francisco. It funded California vineyards. It funded the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge. It funded new projects like a little storytelling shop called the Walt Disney Company when they wanted to make a feature length animated film they called snow White.

Through it all, Amadeo even earned himself a good reputation. Some people said he never took much money out of the bank for himself. It gave him the nickname the reluctant Millionaire. It seems he always followed the principle that you build from the bottom up. In fact, when he died, Amadeo Giannini's entire estate was worth less than a million dollars.

Of course, his bank has changed a lot over time, and not always for the better, but the spirit of serving everyone, regardless of their background or whether they already had money for the Vault laid the groundwork for an institution that remade banking across the country and the world. Before long, Bank of Italy even changed its name to something we would recognize today, the Bank of America. 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 it's hill next time. Stay curious, Yeah,