Keep Your Pants On

that peeled the way to reveal escape maps. They also hid pistols in everyday objects like pens and smoking pipes, while hiding knives in things like pencils. And of course, there were coded messages, falsified communic case and countless other methods for fooling the enemy overseas. But back home in

the United States things were trickier. Everyone knows about the rubber and scrap drives to collect the necessary material for building planes and other supplies, while war bond sales helped finance operations in the first place, but when it came to building the planes themselves, America needed to keep things on the down low, far from the prying eyes of the enemy, and to do that they constructed the aircraft in Seattle, Washington. Now Seattle is situated on the Puget Sound,

an estuary leading out into the Pacific Ocean. It's not exactly safe from battleships, submarines, or fighter planes, but that was where aerospace Corporation Boeing had set up shop in nineteen o six. They were responsible for building B fifty two s and B seventeen bombers, producing as many as three hundred of the ladder each month by NINT. But in order to keep up with the demand of the United States military, Boeing needed to expand its first plant,

creatively called Plant One. Was a bit behind the times, so the company old out twenty six acres of land in Seattle to accommodate a brand new production facility, as well as a town for its workers to live in. The new plant, called Plant To, incorporated more modern amenities with state of the art assembly lines to keep things moving smoothly and efficiently, and the town itself was also

quite impressive, with well manicured lawns and monitored houses. The streets even had tongue in cheek names like synthetic streets, and from a distance it looked like any other town. And that was the point, because despite its unassuming appearance, it was never meant to be lived in. In fact, if anyone got close to it, they might have noticed that the houses were a bit too small and unfinished, the streets were a little too narrow, and the trees, well,

they didn't really have any leaves on their branches. You see, Boeing hadn't actually built a suburb for its workers. It was just a clever disguise for an airplane plant which resided forty ft below. MGM Art director John Debtley had been hired in nineteen forty who to help the company fabricated town to hide their operations. Debtlely had worked on films like Another Thin Man starring William Powell and Myrna Loyd, as well as the Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney film

Strike Up the Band. He was very familiar with building convincing movie sets, and this would be his best and most important work. Yet. He and his team got to work mocking the houses just over half the size of normal homes, and he only built their shells. The dwellings weren't furnished or even finished. They were shaped like suburban homes and that was enough. The grass was made of burlap and canvas, which was also used to rig up

some three trees. To make the canopies of those trees, he covered chicken wire and tar, and then coated the wire with chicken feathers to give the tree tops the appearance of being leaf covered. They were then spray painted green. Meanwhile, below the faux streets of Wonderland, as it was called, thirty thousand men and women kept things running, working tirelessly to produce B seventeens, B twenty nine super fortresses, B

forty ovens, and more. And the event that enemy planes managed to reach the West coast looking to attack the plant, the only thing pilots would see was just another quaint American suburb, all thanks to debt Le's Hollywood handiwork. Luckily, the fake town was never attacked. Boeing continued to produce planes there throughout the duration of the war without interruption. Afterward, the false houses and trees were dismantled, while the plant below them continued to be used through the Cold War.

It was finally all torn down in two thousand ten, and for the fake town and the factory it sat upon, that, as they say in Hollywood, was a rap. Some traditions have logical origins. For example, we put candles on birthday cakes because the ancient Greeks did it. Their cakes, though, were made as an offering to Artemis, the god a of hunting and the moon. One theory was that the lip candles gave the kek a hazy glow like a

full moon in the night sky. Another idea was that the smoke from the blown out candles would carry a person's wishes up to heaven, where Artemis would be able to hear them. But not all traditions are like those of the ancient Greeks. Some just can't be explained no matter how much we try, and one such custom happens to be one of the most bafflingly wild activities ever conceived.

No one is exactly sure how it started. Some claim that coal miners in the nineteen seventies invented it, while some historians believe it was developed by hunters way back in the fifth century. You see, back then, rabbits, moles, and other critters would hide in underground burrows, making it difficult for the hunters to find them, so they would send another animal into the tunnels to root them out a ferret. In fact, that's how we get the modern

phrase to ferret something out. But by the Middle Ages, ferreting had become illegal. Now, of course, illegal activities back then, just as they are today, were only illegal to those who couldn't get away with them. So in order to keep using ferrets, hunters would sneak them past the game wardens. And how do you smuggle a long furry rodent into a restricted area Why in your pants. Of course, after

that the practice changed into something entirely different. How exactly well, those details are a bit fuzzy, but it became a sport called ferret legging. The rules are quite simple. A competitor stands before a panel of judges with his pants tied at the ankles. He then places two ferrets inside his trousers and tightens his belt at the waist to keep them from getting out. The goal, and yes, I promise there is a goal here, is to last the longest as the ferrets clamber from one leg to the other.

None of the ferrets may be sedated, and they must have all of their teeth and claws intact. Oh, and the competitors aren't allowed to wear underwear. Among the earliest players of the game were coal miners in Yorkshire, England are in the nineteen seventies. It also found popularity among drunk patrons at pubs looking to gamble on absurd barroom shenanigans, which honestly doesn't surprise me in the least now. At first, contestants could only last about forty seconds before having to

remove the ferrets. Eventually they were able to stand the sensation for over a minute and even go as long as an hour and a half. But according to the record books, the longest a person has been able to last with ferrets in his pants a sentence even I never thought I'd have to say out loud, is about five and a half hours. That man's name was Regg Miller from Barnsley, South Yorkshire. He had originally hoped for six hours, having gotten used to keeping ferrets in his

pants as a child. He would catch them and store them in his trousers while working outside in the rain so that they stayed safe and warm. On July five, one Red stood in front of an audience of twenty people. Hour after hour, he calmly allowed the ferrets to travel from one leg of his pants to the other in search of an exit they would never find. It. Took five and a half hours, but they finally gave up.

Not the ferrets, mind you, the audience. They got so bored by his attempt they just got up and walked out. The stage was torn down with Redge still standing there, ferrets still in pantst until the record keepers just called it. He had beaten the original time, but he hadn't reached his goal of six hours, just shy of it at five hours and twenty six minutes. As the years went on, ferret legging, like the bell bottoms, the animals that had

been contained inside fell out of style. Although from two thousand three to two thousand nine it was actually part of the Richmond Highland Games and Celtic Festival in Richmond, Virginia, it was a sports unlike any other and its existence made no sense. But for those who played it, ferret legging was a solid test of their endurance, their tolerance for pain, and of course how much they'd had to drink.

Curious you better believe 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 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.