Box Office Bomb

ones can often be a challenge. Well, I might have a solution for you. On November twelfth, we're publishing our very first cabinet of Curiosity's Book with our partners over

at Saint Martin's Press. As of today, the cover has been revealed and the pre order page has gone live, So you know what I'm going to ask for next, right, Every single pre order that we get will go into a bucket that counts toward the book's release week sales, which means that you find, folks, have a great shot at making this a New York Times bestseller, and knowing how amazing all of you are, I feel pretty good

about those odds. This book will be a collection of hundreds of Cabinet stories that you know and love, plus a handful of new ones. And best of all, they'll be sorted topically, making it really easy for you to pick your favorite category to read or to look up a tale you remember but haven't been able to find before. And the book is gorgeous too, making it a great

addition to any bookcase or bedside table. I've put the link to the official Cabinet of Curiosities book pre order page in the episode description, so just tap on that and let it take you to your favorite bookstore where you can pre order your very own copy, and now on with the show. You know, film has changed a lot over the last one hundred and thirty years. We went from short clips of only a few seconds long

to three hour motion pictures. Silent films gave way to the talkies, and given the amount of computer generated effects in today's movies, it might be safe for referring to many of them as animated films instead of a life live action pictures. But when film was still in its infancy, as directors were learning how to fool the audience with tricks of the lens, actors were also on the hunt for new ways to keep everyone on the edge of

their seats. Now, stunt doubles have been used since nineteen oh three's The Great Train Robbery, but some actors preferred to do their own stunts, and sure we still see that today. Just look at any film where Tom Cruise is running or hanging from an airplane, a mountain, or a building. But back in nineteen nineteen, one silent action star stood above the rest. Harold Lloyd born in Birchard, Nebraska, in eighteen ninety three. Harold walked a rocky path on

the way to start them. After performing with Thomas Edison's Motion Picture Company early in his career, he had a west to try his luck with the burgeoning movie industry out there. After a series of rejections at a studio head who wouldn't give him a shot, he met his future collaborator, Hal Roach. Now Roach was in charge of his own studio, and together the pair made a series

of silent shorts that drew in big crowds. Lloyd's lonesome Luke and Glass characters were often involved in chaotic, mad cap situations with a lot of slaps to humor and some pretty dangerous stunts. For example, in the nineteen fifteen short called Lonesome Luke Messenger, Lloyd and a fellow bike messenger get into a number of shenanigans. One scene has their bicycle knocking someone off a ladder before careening into

a tree. These are the kind of stunts that he became known for, and they helped rocket him to the top of the box office, and so it was no surprise that Lloyd would find himself being courted by the media. He often appeared in magazines and on posters advertising his films, and in August of nineteen nineteen, several months after signing a new contract with the Pathe Distribution Company, he was invited to WHITSL Photography Studio in Los Angeles for a

photo shoot. But it wasn't just him. He also had his fellow co stars and a box of props at his side to help sell his adventurous escapades. Among the various odds inside that box were some paper mache bombs, completely harmless and not filled with explosives at all. And that's when one of Harold's gagmen, a guy named Frank Terry, lit one of the fake bombs and handed it to the actor. Harold had been holding a cigarette which he had tried to light using the wick from the prop.

Plumes of smoke began to pour out from the top of the bomb, and he knew that so much smoke would ruin the shoot, so he went to place the object on a nearby table, and that's when the worst thing happened. It blew up in his face. Apparently, Pathay had been planning on a scene in an upcoming film not starring Lloyd, and it involved the use of some very real bombs. One of these explosive devices found its way into the prop box at the studio, and of all the ones that Terry could have handed him, he

picked the only real one to do so. The explosion nearly blew the roof off, leaving a gaping hole sixteen feet above their heads. It also fractured Terry's upper dental plate into two pieces while rendering the foot potographer unconscious, but Harold Lloyd was still standing despite being closest to the blast. Sure he suffered burns across his chest and face and nearly lost his eye. Thankfully, he wound up

saving his sight. Unfortunately, he did lose one thing, well two really, his thumb and forefinger on his right hand. Once he had healed and got back to work, though hal Roach and producer Sam Goldwyn invented a prosthetic device

for him to wear. Goldwyn had been a glove salesman before founding his own studio, so he put that knowledge to work and took a rubber mold of Lloyd's complete left hand, and then, according to silent film historian Annette the Gastino, Lloyd no relation by the way, the mold was reversed to simulate the incomplete right hand. The missing fingers were then removed from the mold and inserted into a leather glove, which slipped over Lloyd's right hand, giving

him the appearance of having all five fingers intact. He only ever wore it while on the camera. When walking about town, he simply kept his hand jammed inside his pocket, and if he had to greet anyone, he shook their hand with his left. Harold Lloyd was one of the

most talented stars of the silent era. He pulled off some of the wildest stunts ever captured on film, including hanging from a giant clock, and he did it all after surviving a bomb blast and losing two of his fingers, and for that we should give that man a hand. We've probably all had a situation at work where we're

asked to do something we don't want to. Maybe someone left and now we have to take on their responsibilities as well, or a manager is trying to avoid hiring a new person, so they're just adding those old duties onto our own list. But even though we would love to say not my job and then walk away, we don't always get that satisfaction. The truth is if we want to stay employed, then sometimes we have to perform

tasks that we were never meant to do. British marine biologist Jeffrey Tandy ran into something similar in nineteen forty one, except if he'd said not my job, then World War two might have gone a lot differently. Tandy was born in nineteen hundred and graduated from Oxford in nineteen twenty one. He then attended Burbeck College in London for a graduate

school with a focus on marine biology. After his studies were over, he took a job at the Natural History Museum in London, where he worked for over twenty years studying cryptogams. Notice how I said cryptogams, which is a word used to describe plant like organisms that do not produce spores or flowers, not to be confused with cryptograms or puzzles involving encoded text. Basically, Tandy's line of work

was algae, moss and fung guy, not word games. But during the war he found himself in the very strange position of an impromptu career change. He had joined the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve and was sent to Bletchley Park,

which happened to be a massive mansion. It was built during the nineteenth century, but after Admiral Sir Hugh Sinclair, the head of the Secret Intelligence Service, bought the estates in nineteen thirty eight, it became home base for Allied codebreakers, and it was there that Tandy ran into a bit of a hiccup. You see, the Ministry of Defense was in need of someone with well to borrow a phrase from mister Liam Neeson a particular set of skills cryptography skills,

to be exact. But Tandy wasn't a cryptogrammist. He was a cryptogamist, the foremost experts and algae in the reserve in fact. But those two similar words got confused and the Ministry of Defense came knocking, and Tandy was in no position to say no. So for two years he served in a secret code breaking group, biding his time as a member of one of the most important and covert units of the war. And then in nineteen forty

one he got his big break. Some German U boats had been destroyed by Allied torpedoes, leaving behind a number of documents that had been salvaged from the recks. But this wasn't just any paperwork. Among the materials rescued from the bottom of the ocean were instructions on how to decipher enemy messages written using Germany's Enigma machine. In other words, the key to understanding what the Germans were saying to each other in secret. Unfortunately, those papers were unusable in

their current state. They were soggy and hardly readable. They needed to be dried out and repaired before they could be used. Enter Jeffrey Tandy. His previous experience in handling water logged objects and organisms such as algae were finally being put to good use. He grabbed some supplies from the museum and he got to work. His skill set had come in quite handy as he dried out the documents Once they were in good enough condition to be read by his colleagues, they were passed along to the

code breakers for further deciphering. The Allies now had a way to unlock intercepted German communicays, and of course it proved invaluable to the war effort. Thanks to Tandy's expertise, he shortened the length of World War II by his many as two to four years, and saved countless lives as well. Jeffrey Tandy didn't throw his hands up until the Ministry of Defense that it wasn't his job. He did what many of us do when thrust into occupations were unqualified for. He faked it until he made it.

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 Worldolore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.