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to audiences with sensationalist headlines and juicy stories. Because it's hard to stand out in a crowd, isn't it. When one news source outperforms another. It's common for competitors to try anything for a bigger slice of the pie. And you know what it's going on. Since before the age of twenty four hour news networks, way before at the turn of the twentieth century, America declared war against Spain.

Cuba had been fighting for independence from Spanish rule since eight and the news being reported at the time was being filtered through interpreters and hearsay, most of which was pro revolution. Journalists didn't fact check what they were being told, they simply reported what they had heard and moved on to the next story. Nowhere was this more prominent than in The New York World, a newspaper owned by Joseph Pulitzer, and The New York Journal, which was owned by William

Randolph Hurst. The owners didn't only compete at the news stand, Hearst and Pullitzer shamelessly carried out their rivalry in public, most often within the pages of their respective newspapers. The ethical codes that today's modern journalists lived by didn't exist at the time, so the papers were hotbeds of shoddy journalism, driven by a philosophy of whatever it takes. For exact ample, the USS Maine, an American battleship that had been stationed

in Havana, exploded on February fifteenth. Over two hundred and fifty men were killed in the blast, and reporters swooped in to cover the story. Though the military put out a public statement claiming that the explosion had been an accident caused by a spontaneous fire, the Journal and the World came up with their own stories. They invented sources and made up facts. Each paper had its own agenda,

which they pushed by any means necessary. Hurst even promised a fifty thousand dollar reward of the person who brought those responsible for murdering two hundred fifty eight American sailors to justice. Anything, of course, to sell a paper, However, filling pages and column inches with brand new reporting each day was a herculean task. Sometimes the news was slow, other times what was available to report wasn't exciting enough.

It wasn't uncommon for one paper to steal a headline or even an entire story from another, adding fuel to their feud, and it happened often. The situation came to a head after Hurst had gotten tired of seeing his papers copy in Pulitzer's New York World, so he decided to take the fight right to them with a story they wouldn't be able to refuse. It involved Austrian artillerist Colonel refilpe w fen News. The colonel had been fighting on behalf of the Cubans when he was killed in battle.

The journal story was a reverent encapsulation of the colonel's contributions to the war effort, and it was taken almost word for word and reprinted in the New York World. Hirst didn't even have to read the whole article to know it. All he had to do was see the colonel's name printed in Pullitzer's paper, right there in black and white. Because reflip a w than news didn't really exist, Hurst made him up in an effort to catch Pullezer

red handed. Even the name was a dead giveaway. It was a nanagram that unraveled into the phrase we pilfer the news. Of course, Pullitzer didn't have the moral high ground either. His papers were just as guilty of plagiarism as Hearst's. In retaliation for Hurst's dirty trick with the Colonel, The New York World published a story featuring the name lister A Raw, which inevitably wound up in Pulitzer's paper. The media magnate had no idea that he had been

had lister A Raw wasn't real. His name, like the colonel's, had been in anagram, the letters of which rearranged into the words first a liar. Inspiration can strike from anywhere, whether it's in the shower, while cooking dinner or mowing the lawn. We never know when we're going to be hit with the next big idea. People watched birds sore through the sky for generations as they devised contraptions to

give themselves the power of flight. Wales provided the inspiration for submarines, and chemist Roy Plunkett was researching CFC refrigerants for du Pont when his tetra flora ethylene gas accidentally hardened into a powder. It turned out that the powder was heat resistant and made a great lubricant. With a few more tweaks, polytetra flora ethylene, otherwise known as teflon was born. Of course, inspiration doesn't always drop out of the sky or rise from the deep, nor fall like

snowflakes into our laps. Sometimes it hits us like a blast of lightning. Militaries all over the world have spent thousands of years looking for an advantage on the battlefield. Weaponry has advanced considerably in the days of swords and arrows. Today we have guns, missiles, and all sorts of weapons designed to damage the human body in ways we could never imagine. In two thousand eighteen, China claim did had developed a handheld rifle capable of firing a laser beam

strong enough to set clothes on fire. The beam could also penetrate glass and even shoot through a fuel tank to cause an explosion. The US military, on the other hand, already has a non lethal energy weapon that can heat any surface it's pointed at, including human skin. It was designed as a way to control unruly crowds and contain prison riots. There had even been talks to develop a device that would make someone think they were hearing voices

in their head. It would have fired short bursts of r F energy, capable of carrying words straight to a person's ears. Such an instrument could have been used to plant thoughts into a target's head or make them feel as though they were losing control of their mind. It had also been conceived as a method for contacting hostages in order to provide them with instructions given no other

way to reach them. However, one weapon was nearly borne from one of the most unlikely places, and due to its intended effects, it was also one of the most unethical. According to a declassified army document released around two thousand eight, the military was planning on constructing a weapon that would have disrupted a person's brain activity using electro magnetic pulses, in other words, by rapidly flashing light into someone's eyes. The Army would have been able to trigger a seizure

in anyone. The technology had also been planned to be tuneable, meaning it could have caused anything from loss of basic motor functions to full on epileptic episodes, depending on the speed of the pulses being fired and where did they get the idea to build such a weapon. A children's television show Pokemon, an episode of the Japanese cartoon, was blamed for sending seven hundred people to the hospital for

something called photic seizure induction. The flashing red and blue lights had triggered seizures in victims ranging from three years old all the way up to fifty eight and older. Two hundred viewers remain hospitalized for days due to epileptic symptoms. Pokemon stopped airing for four months, but reports of the cartoons effects made their way back to the United States, where they stirred up public debate as well as military

research and development. Parents were their children would also begin convulsive if they watch Pokemon, while Army scientists and engineers started drafting plans for a new kind of weapon, one that was non lethal but could incapacitate anyone over a distance of hundreds of meters. Like many of the devices

described before, this seizure gun was never actually built. However, it's one rock among a mountain of evidence that the world's armies are constantly dreaming up new ways to hurt and even kill anyone they perceive as a threat, and that their inspiration can come from anywhere, be it nature, a scientific breakthrough, or even something benign as a children's cartoon about superpowered animals. 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 Mankey 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,