Hot Wheels

a Dutchman who built the first telescope in sight. He even tried to patent it, but his application was denied. Decades later, Galileo, with his eyes turned towards the stars, would use lipper Chase designed to build his own and his name would become synonymous with the invention. And what about Antonio Miyucci. In eighteen sixty Antonio built the first working telephone, and just like Liperche, he tried to secure

a patent for his invention. He succeeded, but when it came time to renew it, he couldn't afford the ten dollar renewal fee and lost his patent Two years later in eighteen seventy six, and up and comer named Alexander Graham Bell filed a patent for his own telephone. As you might imagine, Miucci was livid. He contacted a lab at Western Union where he'd sent the original plans for his telephone, which would serve as the proof he'd used to sue Bell for appropriating his work. But there was

just one problem. The plans were gone. No one knows for sure what happened to them, but Bell might have had a part to play in that, after all, he worked in the very same lab at the time. And then there's Gottlieb. Richard Troub, the German American was a tinkerer from Chicago, and in nineteen oh seventy penda letter to Motorcycle Illustrate did magazine. In it, he mentioned a four horsepower motorcycle that he built from scratch and even

included a photo of himself beside it. It's spent a year working on it between seven pm and eleven pm, six nights a week. It boasted a three and a half gallon gas tank, fifty five inch wheelbase, and in his words, perfect grip control. It was also way ahead of its time compared to similar bikes coming from the

larger manufacturers. No bicycle had yet adopted the twin break single cam system that Troub used, and at the time nothing else on the market could keep up with its top speed of eighty five, and it was road tested too. By the time he'd written that letter to the magazine, Trout had already ridden his bike for over fifteen hundred

miles without a single bit of trouble. He owned a small bicycle shop attached to his property, where he presumably built that bike, as well as at least one other just like it, although that one has been lost to time. But what happened to the first Troub motorcycle? The one that he wrote about in the letter? While in nineteen sixteen, the son of one of Troub's neighbors decided that he just had to have it, so he stole it from Troub.

The boy's father couldn't believe his son would do something like that, so as a punishment, he made him sign up to join the army. The young man was shipped overseas and sadly didn't come home. The motorcycle, though, was never returned. The prevailing theory is that just before he was deployed the Sun hid the bike so that he could come back to it when he returned from the war, but his parents had no idea what happened to it. Little did they know it was right under their noses.

The family eventually sold their apartment building and moved away. Then, in nineteen sixty seven, the new owners decided to spruce things up with some renovations. They hired a contractor who was tearing down a brick wall when he noticed something behind it, a two wheeled contraption that looked about fifty years old. The long lost Troub had been found. Not knowing what they had, the building's owners traded the bike to a Chicago motorcycle dealer for a seven hundred dollar Suzuki.

The dealer restored the Trial back to its original glory, and then ten years later he sold it to Hollywood stuntman Bud Ekins. Bud had worked as Steve McQueen's stunt double and was in Chicago working on a small budget film called The Blues Brothers the day. The Trial lives at the Wheels through Time Museum in North Carolina, where Gottlieb Troub's legacy has been allowed to live on. Surprisingly, it still runs just as well as it did back

in nineteen sixteen. The museum's owner, Dale Waksler, can sometimes even be seen riding around town on it, proving that the old saying is true. They just don't make them like they used to. All it takes is an idea, a phrase, or a philosophy to send people into a panic. If Area fifty one, a government site is off limits to the public, that must mean that aliens are being kept there. Did we really go to the moon or was the whole thing done on a sound stage? A

spoiler alert. We definitely went to the moon, But there are still people out there to this day who refuse to believe the truth, opting for their own version where only they really know what's going on. Conspiracy theorists ignore what's on the surface and instead lift up the curtain

to see what's underneath, even if there's nothing there. Take Pink Floyd, for example, The Dark Side of the Moon Wizard of Oz mash Up was already well known by the mid nineteen nineties, and even if the two works didn't line up exactly, there was enough there to propel the novelty from quiet rumor to cultural touch point. Pink Floyd released their album The Division Bell right around the same time as the inner net was starting to come

into its own use. Net groups were one of the main ways people communicated back then, similar to today's Reddit forums used. Net groups were big storehouses of information where people could post anonymously and have discussions on any number of topics. As the band kicked off its Division Bell World tour, an anonymous user posted a message to the Pink Floyd group where they believed they discovered a secret message the band had delivered. The person offered to guide

listeners to a deeper meaning Listen, read, think, communicate. These were the words they wrote before signing off under the name Publius. Additional messages from Publicius followed, including one that claimed the Division Bell album contained one central meaning, unlike the band's previous albums, which had been open to a

variety of interpretations. Even back then, Internet audiences were skeptical, and many believe this person to be part of the band or even the record company, just trying to drum up interest in the album. But it was the last message that people took farther down the rabbit hole than they'd ever been before. It spoke of a planned communication. On Monday July in East Rutherford, New Jersey, at ten thirty pm, white lights would flash. There is an enigma,

Publius promised. Trust Those who had believed in Publius's messages had their faith confirmed. As the band performed this song keep Talking during their July eight concert, the like display at the front of the stage started flashing and the words Enigma Publius appeared. In fact, the phrase showed up at several performances thereafter, yet the band claimed not to

know about any of them. Pink Floyd's lighting director was also thought to have been a co conspirator, but according to him, he was just doing what he was told by the band. The phrase popped up again when the band's album A Momentary Lapse of Reason was re released

the same year. Sadly, two years later, the service hosting the usenet where Publicist was posting was shut down, although similar posts appeared on other message boards and websites thereafter, making people wonder if either the account had returned or that the enigma had been solved. In two thousand two, it seemed as though the puzzle really had been solved

by Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmore. In an interview, he claimed the whole publicist enigma had been employed by the record company to get people talking about the album, and the band's lighting designer, Mark Brickman confirmed Gilmore's statement, adding even further intrigue to the legend. Apparently, the publicist enigma was the creation of a Washington d C. Insider, a former member of the intelligence community who had worked in encryption.

Brickman later recanted his statement, though claiming he regretted saying anything at all, and before he died. The author Douglas Adams weighed in on the whole thing. During a public online chat. Someone asked him if the publicist enigma was real. Adams was reported to have said, it had nothing to do with me. I can't say anything about it. He might have been telling the truth, or perhaps he had

been sworn to secrecy by a clandestine government agency. Of course, you might be wondering what Douglas Adams, the author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, had to do with Pink Floyd at all. Well. Adams had given the division bell it's title after David Gilmore donated a large sum of money to one of Adam's charities, the Environmental Investigation Agency, which might explain a comment made by Pink Floyd biographer

Nick Mason at a book signing. When asked about the publicist enigma, Mason claimed that a solution would have led to a crop of trees planted in the middle of a clearing. If the publicist enigma really was a record company invention, Pink Floyd might have created one of the first truly viral Internet hoaxes. After all, they were the ones who said you have to be trusted by the people that lie to you. 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