Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all of these amazing tales are right there on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. We've all taken a joke too far. Maybe it was a mistimed zinger or a prank gone awry. We knew it was wrong, but by the time it was over, it was too late. That's the problem with some jokes. They tend to take
on a life of their own. In Sir Francis Drake's at sail for the Strait of Anian, a way of reaching the Atlantic Ocean from the fabled Northwest Passage over the top of North America. Instead, he reached the shores of northern California and began exploring. Unlike other adventurers who might have left behind a lasting t tomitt to their presence, Drake left only a small brass plate or plaque. Upon it had been inscribed the declaration from Drake claiming the
land in the name of Queen Elizabeth. It was signed with his name and the day he landed. The plates existence was noted by English diarist Francis Pretty, who had detailed his travels with Drake as they circumnavigated the globe over three d Fifty years later, a chauffeur named William Caldera discovered the small brass artifact in northern California while
his employer and a friend were hunting. Caldera held onto the plate so that he could research its origins on his own, but accidentally tossed it out during a routine cleaning of his employer's car. It sat on the side of the road in San Rafael for three years before another young man named Beryl Shinn found it and rushed it over to historian Herbert Eugene Bolton. Bolton was an expert on Spanish American history. He knew exactly what Shinn possessed.
He checked the plate and its inscription against Francis Pretty's diary entry. It was exactly as Pretty had described. Elevated at the discovery, he contacted the president of the California Historical Society, Alan Chickering, as well as Robert Gordon Sprowl, president of the University of California. They confirmed that Shin had indeed found Sir Francis Drake's long lost brass plate.
Bolton together with Chickering, pulled their resources to buy the plate from Shin for a hefty sum at the time, but Shin wasn't quite ready to part with it just yet. He disappeared for four days, claiming he wanted to have his uncle examined the plate before he sold it. Bolton panicked when he didn't hear from him and upped his bid to thirty That seemed to do the trick, and not long after, Herbert Bolton was the proud owner of
Sir Francis Drake's brass plate. He and Chickering announced their acquisition to the California Historical Society in ninety seven, before donating the plate to the University of California's Bancroft Library. Bolton, incredulous at his good fortune, had finally fulfilled a decade's long dream of finding one of the most elusive totems in history. But not everyone was as enthralled with their discovery. Critics pointed out a whole host of problems with the plate.
For example, the spelling of certain words were not historically accurate, they were too modern. Also, the queen was referred to as Queen Elizabeth when the common form of her title during Drake's time was Elizabeth, by the Grace of God, Queen of England, France and Ireland, Defender of the Faith. There were also the physical attributes of the brass itself. It didn't look old or aged enough, but Bolton and Chickering were not dissuaded. They had explanations for every supposed
flaw pointed out to them. Unfortunately, even the president of the university, Robert Spraul, who had encouraged their purchase of the plates, came to doubt its origins. Bolton sought out a third party to help confirm its authenticity. So he solicited the services of Colin Fink, professor at Columbia univer Versity, who specialized in electro chemistry. Fink tested the plate and no doubt about it, it was the real deal. The plates was authentic, and that was the final word on it.
For over forty years, photos of Drake's plate of brass found their way into textbooks and onto posters. Replicas were made and presented to Queen Elizabeth the Second Though despite the authoritative stance of Dr Fink, something never quite sat right with the other academics. By the nineteen seventies, technology had come so far as to allow researchers to dig
even deeper into the plates chemical and physical makeups. The four Anniversity of Drake's Landing in California was coming up, and it seemed like the perfect time to reanalyze the plate. Scientists bombarded it with all kinds of X rays and gamma rays, and the results came back much different than Dr Fink's. One clue they noticed was that the plate hadn't been hammered flat as it would have in the fift hundreds. Instead, it had been old out, which was
a much more modern technique. Also, its edges had been precisely cut with power tools, and its chemical composition showed that it was made up of too much zinc to be from the time period. In short, it was a fake. What Bolton never realized at the time was that he had been meant to find it. It had been made for him. Members of a fraternal history organization known as e Clampus Vitis or e c v knew all about
Bolton's obsession with the plate. As a joke, they used Francis Pretty's description of it as a recipe to make their own. They had planted it in a popular area known to other California Historical Society members, expecting one of them to find it and bring it to Bolton. When the chauffeur lost it, the prank fizzled out until it
was rediscovered several years later. Unfortunately, by the time it was announced to the public, it was too late for the pranksters to come forward without seriously damaging the credibilities and careers of everyone involved, so they simply let it go. But even though the plate is fake, it's journey and origin story have cemented it as a new kind of artifact, one that is part of two separate histories and is a testament to the lengths people will go to to
confirm their obsessions. Or maybe the whole thing was just e clampus vitas in a nutshell. After all, their motto translates into something pretty clear. I believe it because it's absurd. Where do we go when we die? Is there an afterlife? Do our souls get left behind? Or is there another plane of existence for the human spirits after these physical vessels have expired? We ask ourselves these questions because for the most part, we fear death. More importantly, we fear
what we don't know. About death. It's not like those who have experienced it can tell us what it's like, although one man thought he could find out. Thomas Edison is known to history as the inventor of the phonograph, the movie camera, and the practical electric light bulb. He's often portrayed as a shrewd, cold businessman, a man who valued proof above belief and who had no patience for philosophy or existentialism. Yet he was fascinated by the afterlife,
particularly in how one reached it. While many people believe in the concept of heaven or hell, where one soul would end up depending on how they behaved in life, Edison theorized something else entirely. He believed life was like energy, and that there was a set amount of it available and it could not be created or destroyed. What we consider to be a soul was actually a bunch of microscopic consciousness that monitored what was going on inside our bodies.
When they got along, they kept us alive. When they argued, we died, and the consciousness either passed on to another host or they began to create new life in which to inhabit, and if they could be rearranged back into their original state back when they got along in the previous host, that person could be resurrected to some degree. For example, a deceased person's personality could find its way into another living human, or a newborn baby might be
someone else's second chance at a new life. Edison's ideas weren't typical, as I'm sure you've noticed. Even still, he searched for a way to find these particles to validate that his theory was correct. Test after test, he built prototypes of devices he thought would detect the personalities of the dead, but had no luck. Not even the teams of scientists he had working for him could figure it out. So he did what he did best. He went to
the media. In the fall of ninety Edison announced to the world that he had been hard at work on a new invention, one that would allow him to communicate with the dead. He called it the spirit phone. Interestingly, something as spiritual as talking to the dead did not affect him on a spiritual level. He refused to acknowledge the public's interest in the occult or seances. This was a scientific endeavor, he said, and one meant to yield proof,
not further muddy the waters. He reached out to another inventor, Sir William Crooks in England, who had allegedly taken photographs of ghosts that he encountered. Edison was inspired by the visual proof he'd gathered that ghosts were in fact susceptible to man made gadgets, and it wasn't long before he set to work on his spirit phone. Allegedly, after his public announcement, Edison didn't speak about the project again, nor
did he show anyone what he might have been working on. Unfortunately, the famous inventor died in one taking the paranormal telephone with him. No one has found proof that he ever actually worked on such a device. Some believe the whole thing had been a hoax to keep his name in the papers, while others swear to this day that there are blueprints and even a prototype somewhere evidence of his
dedication to his claims. A decade after his death, a seance was conducted and contact was allegedly made with Edison's ghost. He was asked about the spirit phone and whether it had been real. According to the entity, not only was it real, but the blueprints for it had been left in the possession of three of his former assistants. Sadly, though, that's where the story ends. As you might expect, Edison's assistants have all passed away and it couldn't be reached
for comment. 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 Come and until next time, stay curious. H