Buzzing With Danger

of things over the years. Our use of language, both spoken and written, has allowed us to pass knowledge from one generation to the next, helping us become masters of many useful skills over time, cooking, hunting, building devices that help improve our lives and overcome challenges. In fact, our inventiveness is possibly the most defining qity we have. We as a species are incapable of flights or spending long periods of time underwater, and yet we've built contraptions that

allow us to do both. We've improved the quality of our food, our medicine, and our response to natural disasters and epidemics. We really are quite inventive, But right at the top of our list of skills is something deserving of less praise. We are tragically good at war. In fact, humans have been battling each other for so long that some of the most ancient mythologies on the planet include

a god of war. It seems that there has always been warfare, but rather than invent our way out of it, we've become really good at finding new ways to do it better or worse. The Romans understood this very well, and while they might not have invented one particular weapon, they spread its use far and wide. It was a small object, easily lifted that could be thrown into hordes of enemy troops, causing widespread damage when they exploded, sending out shrapnel that could turn the tide of battle in

their favor. In the eleventh century, German forces serving under Emperor Henry the First found themselves defending a fortress against French troops from the rain. In a desperate attempt to send their attackers running, the Germans picked up the same weapon and tossed it over their walls, and it worked. Its usefulness spread over the years, reaching most of Europe. King Richard actually employed the use of catapults to launch

the weapon deep into enemy encampments. In the hundreds, during a battle between Portugal and the Moors, the weapon was used with great success, and towards the end of the Thirty Years War, defenders of a walled city in Bavaria used their own version of these weapons to toss them over the walls, inflicting massive damage on the Swedish army trying to attack them. Covered in wounds, the Swedes retreated. There are even stories of sailors using this weapon during

naval battles. One or two brave souls would climb up to the highest point on their ships, rigging and then tossed the weapon down onto the enemy vessel, and the destruction it caused would often give the smaller ships an advantage over much more threatening attackers. Now, I do need to stop and point out that this is a weapon

that saw very little advancement over the centuries. While firearms have seemingly evolved from the Stone Age to the Space Age in terms of usability and effectiveness, this ancient weapon has stayed pretty much the same. But there have been some creative uses of it throughout history. Although typically thrown by soldiers or defenders, some people have actually tried using

this weapon in new and inventive ways. Some castles in England whales in Scotland were known to embed the weapon directly inside their walls, knowing that attackers would set it off and harm themselves in the process. Other armies developed smaller delivery devices, loading blow pipes with the dangerous contents of these bombs and shooting them at their enemies in close range combat. And in the fourteenth century, one European weapons designer created a sort of gatling gun catapult that

spun around and fired off a constant barrage of their payload. Thankfully, modern armies no longer used this weapon in the battles they fight, something I think soldiers on both sides can be thankful for. You see, it was the sort of weapon that could backfire easily, harming both the people who

are targeted as well as those doing the targeting. Plus, we've just decided there are more effective ways of defending ourselves than throwing a delicious food source at our enemies, especially when we run the risk of getting stung in the process. That ancient weapon of choice, often thrown over walls into crowds of attacking soldiers, the beehive. Can I confess something to you. It's something I'm embarrassed about, even

though it happened almost thirty years ago. You see, despite being an above average student in high school, I nearly failed in one subject, chemistry. Maybe I shouldn't feel so badly about that. I know a ton of people who have told me the same thing. Chemistry, even the basic stuff, is tricky and it takes a special mind to master the rules and systems inside it. As far as I'm concerned, those who go on to study it in college, let alone grad school, are the closest thing to wizards to

walk the earth. But there's no denying the power of chemistry. Right If it wasn't for smart people trying out new ideas, we wouldn't have super glue, or penicillin or the tiny glowing rectangle you're using to listen to this story right now, Chemistry has changed the world. So while it's a tough subject for most students, let's be grateful for those who

excel at it, students like Stephanie. Stephanie was born in ninety three to parents who had immigrated to Pittsburgh from pole Land, and she discovered an early love of the natural world. This was thanks in part to her father, who worked as a naturalist, and even though he passed away when she was just ten, that interest never went away. In six she graduated with a degree in chemistry from

Carnegie Mellon University and then took a pause. Medical school was on her list of goals, but she needed to earn the money to pay for it first, so she took a job as a chemist at DuPont, putting her bright mind and her new degree to work. Once settled there, she was put onto DuPont's Pioneer Research Laboratory team, their mission to find a lightweight fiber that was stronger than steel. You see, at that point, most automobile tires were made

of rubber and reinforced with steel wire. It was effective, but it added a lot of weight, and DuPont understood that chemistry might hold the answer. Now Stephanie had no plans to stick around. Medical school was where she wanted to be, but she was the sort of person who found chemistry fun if you can believe that, And soon enough, a summer became a year, and then two. In nineteen fifty nine, her work won her a publication award from

the American Chemical Society. She had demonstrated how to produce a nylon rope inside a beaker of chemicals, not earth shaking on its own, but Stephanie did it at room temperature. And maybe you're thinking to yourself, wait, I've seen science teachers do this in school, and you'd be right. But it was Stephanie who taught them all how to do it. Stephanie would end up filing twenty eight patents over her four decades at DuPont while building a legendary career as

a chemist, problem solver, and innovator. Not bad for a job. She never intended to keep just a way stop on her journey toward a medical degree that could have helped her save lives, but thankfully one of her inventions made up for all of that. In nineteen sixty four, the US was about to face a gasoline shortage, and one way to help cars is less gas was to reduce their weight, which brought the tire project back to her desk. If they could find a lighter material to replace that

steel wire inside them, tires would become more efficient. Now I'm not going to go into the chemistry of her solution. You can listen to the first twenty seconds of this story for my reasons why. Plus the terminology is so complex that would put my tongue into nuts, but in Layman's terms, that get us into the ballpark. What Stephanie did was recognize some potential in something that others would

have considered a mistake. Most nylon fibers were made by heating the polymers and then running the clear solution through a spinneret a sort of hypodermic needle for polymer solutions. The results were stiff fibers that broke fairly easily, but Stephanie created a solution that wasn't clear. In fact, she later described it as sort of like buttermilk, and when run through the spinnerett, this new recipe, for lack of a better term, produced a fiber that was five times

stronger than steel. After a brief stint inside tires, this new polymer found its way into more flexible items, rope, fabric for sales, and even bicycle tires. But it was one particular item of clothing that changed history. Stephanie Kulec might not have made it to medical school, earned her degree, and gone into practice, saving lives and hospitals everywhere in America, but she invented something that has kept a lot of

people out of the hospital ever since. The lightweight incredibly strong, flexible and adaptable material that we used today in bulletproof vests Kevlar. 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. Yeah,