Master at Arms

in World War One, he inadvertently created stainless steel. Years later, Nestley used the same technology that made penicillin possible during World War Two to bring its freeze dried coffee to store shelves everywhere. If we get to enjoy many of today's conveniences thanks to the discoveries of military scientists and engineers from all over the world, however, that door swings both ways, quite a few civilian inventions have also gone

on to revolutionize how wars are fought. In one, for example, barbed wire was created to keep cattle from wandering off, long before it was used to impede enemy movement. Cameras also made the jump from family portraits to the front lines during World War One, when they were fastened to planes and used to gather photographs of enemy territories. In fact, one average citizen did quite a lot to change the face of war all on his own. During his sixty

seven years on earth. He became known as one of the most brilliant engineers in the world, drafting vehicle and weapon designs he expected to be used by the militaries of his time. His tank concept, for example, bore a cone shape and was made of wood. Inside. Eight men would crank gears to turn the wheels, which would then carry them across the battlefield. The angled exterior your meant arrows and other projectiles would simply deflect off the sides

or fall away. Portholes along the sides allowed for the tanks operators to fire at enemies without putting themselves in danger. Another unique vehicle came in the form of a chariot. Unlike the chariots of old, where horses pulled someone standing in a carriage, these new designs featured interesting upgrades. For one, the writer didn't stand in a carriage at the rear. He rode atop the horse, which was situated in the

middle for whirling. Blades at the front would mow down the opposing forces, while blades at the back prevented rear attacks. He called it the scythed chariot. The engineer didn't limit himself only to modes of transportation, though, he also invented impressive weapons, such as an early machine gun. As with all of his creations, this too was made of wood. It boasted thirty three barrels arranged in a triangular frame. While one side of eleven barrels filled, another side would

be loaded up as the third side cooled down. He was a man ahead of his time, and his blueprints proved it. His plans for a crossbow predated the handheld models used today. It was designed to be rolled into battle by two men who could cock it back with a massive projectile loaded into the cradle before pulling a release and letting it fly into a crowd. His notebooks and files were full of plans for vehicles and weapons no one had ever seen before. There was a cluster bomb,

designed to wipe out pockets of enemy soldiers. He also invented a double hulled ship that could stay afloat if the outer hall was ever punctured, a concept seen today on oil tankers and submarines. And though he was so skilled in the art of wartime weaponry, in reality he hated it. He would rather have been building flying machines or perpetual motion machines, or doing what he was known

best for, painting. This engineer and inventor was one of the finest artists of the sixteenth century, and his works are still studied in museums and classrooms to this day. There's no proof that any of his designs for his machine gun or his tank were ever actually built, yet their influence can be seen in today's modern equivalence. Had they been brought to life, as he'd feared, he might have been remembered as a monster, a man who chose

to celebrate violence rather than peace. Fortunately that's not the case. The world instead associates him with the portrait of a young woman smiling now displayed in the Louver, as well as his painting of the final meal between Jesus and his disciples. He's not known as a merchant of death, but as the master artist behind the mona Lisa Leonardo da Vinci Evan paid for the tower himself. It wasn't really about him, though, No, the tower was a monument

to the Viking explorer Leif Ericsson. It wouldn't be strange to build a monument to the man. He had been celebrated in all kinds of ways since the year one thousand when he was sailing the Atlantic. The strange thing was where Evan built that. You see the tower cast its long shadow over the Charles River, just inland from the city of Boston. What's even stranger is the huge inscription stretching across the front of the tower, saying that the land was discovered by leaf ericson one thousand a d.

But there's more. It says that at this very spot in what is now Massachusetts, there was once a Viking city with docks and walls and dams that controlled the land, stretching from Rhode Island to the south, all the way up to St. Lawrence River up in Canada. Now, maybe this would have been safely ignored when Evan built the tower in eighty nine, but he wasn't a nobody quite the opposite. In fact, Evan Horsford was a retired Harvard professor the dean of Harvard's Science School and a very

successful businessman. And what's more, he wasn't the only Bostonian who thought the city had once been the home of Vikings. Actually, he was riding in the coat tails of some of Boston's most famous and most powerful nineteenth century citizens. It all started in the eighteen thirties when Boston's famous poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, had traveled to Denmark. Someone convinced him that Vikings had once landed in New England. When he got home to Boston, he retold that story to anyone

who would listen for years. By the eighteen seventies, some of the most important New England gentry had hatched a plan to tell it to the world. They got together and decided to build a statue in Boston of Leif Ericsson, and then they put the word out to raise the money. That's where Eben Horsford comes in. None of those Boston gentlemen would live to see just how deeply Eban fell in love with their plan, But if fall he did. After their death, Eben Horsford carried their idea forward and

put everything he had into the project. He built their statue of Leif Ericson in Boston, and you can still see it today rising in the Back Bay neighborhood. After all, Eban was no stranger to building in Boston. He was part of the group that had planned for the defense of Boston Harbor during the Civil War. But he did a lot more too. Evan was so convinced that he wrote seven books arguing that Leif Ericsson had discovered Massachusetts

before Columbus ever reached the hemisphere. Evan did his best to survey the land and thought that he found the spot where Leif Ericson's house had been. He had a plaque installed there, and then in nine Evan built that tower on the Charles River. Like the other Bostonians before him, Evan was trying to convince the world that Boston was the place where America began, complete with its first white

adventurers and even its first Christian bishop. It was, to put it mildly, all about putting people like him on a pedestal. Today we know that Leif Ericson actually landed much farther north at lance All Meadows at the tip of Newfoundland, at the Canadian site. Archaeologists have recently discovered and identified bronze cloak pins, iron nails and rivets, and what may even be a kiln for smelting iron from bog Ore. They are the kinds of things that Eban

searched for all around Boston but could never find. So it's a good thing that the message of all Evan's monuments has mostly been forgotten. After all, the story they're telling, the history that they want to teach, it's just wrong. But despite all that, Eban Horsford's legacy is still influencing us today, and it keeps rising up in homes across America because despite being quite a bad historian, Eban was actually a great chemist, and in the late eighteen fifties

he started selling double acting baking powder. It's sold like hotcakes. He even sold it to the Union Army during the Civil War, which is where he really started to make his fortune. Eban began by culling his invention, Horsford's Bread Preparation, but when he died and his manufacturing company wanted to

give up their name, they rebranded it. In fact, they named it after Evan's position at Harvard, where he was the Rumford Professor for Applied Sciences, today, Evans Invention is still in stores, proudly declaring that it has been trusted since eighteen fifty nine. And if you've ever used Rumford baking powder, then you've cooked with Evan's real discovery. And even if you don't know it, you've seen him too.

The red container is marked with the black silhouette of a man set in a white oval, the long shadow cast by the man himself. 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.