Second Chances

the dead have seen the end of war. Don Carcos, however, didn't die, and yet he saw the end of war, well sort of. The day after the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor, sixteen year old Don went with his older brother to the local Navy recruitment center in their hometown of Lewiston, Maine. While waiting for his brother to finish his application, a recruiter popped his head into the waiting room and asked

the younger Don why he wasn't joining his brother. He told the man that he wasn't old enough just yet, but his birthday was a few days away. Good enough, the recruiter said, and just like that, Don was enlisted in the United States Navy alongside his older brother. He was placed on the USS rapid In out of Boston. The rapid In wasn't a ship meant to see action, though, it was a tanker that would sail around waters infested with German submarines in order to refuel Allied ships and cruisers.

One summer morning, while Don was up on the deck, an explosion rocked the ship. Shrapnel flew everywhere, and something whacked the young sailor in the forehead, just above his right eye. He blacked out and woke up in a hospital in Iceland. Though he hadn't suffered direct damage to his eye, doctors told him that he would never be able to see out of it again. They encouraged him to let them remove it. On refused. If it wasn't going to bother him, he just as well would keep

everything intact. His military career was over before it even started. After he'd healed enough, Don went home and got a job at a local mill. He had to learn how to function with only one I. His depth perception was almost gone, and he barely had any peripheral vision. Daily life was a constant struggle, especially since he lived in fear of something bad happening to his one good remaining I But he got by working at the mill for three years until he earned enough money to pay off

his father's house. After some time, he got married and had children of his own, eventually settling down on a two acre horse farm. Now, as Don got older and his children grew up and built lives of their own, he moved away. He saw countless doctors over the years, all of whom told him the same thing. He would never regain sight in his right eye. No technology in the world existed that would restore it for him. However, or despite the prognosis, he never lost hope nor his

love of horses. He got a job at the Manticello Raceway in New York when he was in his mid sixties. He was a jack of all trades they're, working as a security guard who would check in horses before races. He also did odd jobs around the barn. One night in two thousand and six, after a particularly tough day at the track, he arrived home dizzy, barely able to stand. Something had happened. As he rubbed his good eye, he noticed something happening with the other one, the eye. His

doctors had told him would never work again. He could see with it. He covered his good eye to make sure it wasn't a fluke. The image and the right one didn't disappear. His sights had been restored, and he had my buddy Chemo to think for it. My buddy Chemo was a horse at Manta Sello. Don was putting a collar around its neck when the horse headbutted him in the same spot where the explosion had hit him

sixty four years earlier. The impact had been so powerful that it had thrown the eighty two year old back into the paddock wall. He was shaken and ended up with a pretty bad lump on his head, but was otherwise unaffected, or so he thought. It wasn't until hours later when he got home and realized something inside him had been changed. Don tried to keep it a secret afterward, telling only a few close friends about the incident, but it didn't take long for the story to spread all

over the world. The montes Cello Miracle. They called him Don Carcos. The man who had been blind in one eye for almost his entire life had been cured by a horse. Now that's what I'd call curious explorers. From all over Europe spent hundreds of years looking for it. A sea route to the Pacific Ocean by way of the Arctic. They called it the Northwest Passage, and between the fifteenth and twenty centuries, hundreds of sailors set out

to find it. One of those expeditions was led by British explorer Sir John Franklin, along with the crew of one thirty men. In May of eighteen forty five, they set off in two ships, the h M s Erebus and the h MS Terror. Now Franklin was no stranger to the sea. He'd been an officer in the Royal Navy for years, and his new ships possessed some of the most modern technology of the day, including steam engines and iron rutters. These were features that led to both

ships being described as unstoppable. Their first stop after leaving England with Scotland. From there they continued on to Greenland and finally northern Canada. Two whalers claimed to have seen the crew in that area around July of eighteen forty and everyone on board seemed okay. Unfortunately, the Franklin expedition wouldn't stay that way. Shortly after, they were never heard from again. Two years went by and nobody knew what had happened. There had been no letters nor any word

that the ships had found the Northwest Passage. Three more expeditions were assembled, but not to find the passage. These went out in search of Franklin and his crew, all of which returned months later empty handed. Any trace of Franklin, the crew members, or the two ships had vanished, and then in eighteen fifty a whole fleet of ships departed

with the sole mission of locating the missing explorers. They came to an island in northern Canada called Beechey Island, named for the father's son duo of William and Frederick Beachey, who first stepped foot there in eighteen nineteen. The island proved ominous for the search party. What they discovered was that Franklin and his crew had landed there to rest for a time, with plans to set back out to see later at some point. Shortly after they arrived, though

three crew members died. In the years that followed, more details about the fate of the remaining crew came to light. It turns out that the Arabis and terror hadn't made it too far from Beechey Island. They'd ended up getting trapped in the ice, and the ships were abandoned when it was clear there was no way to break them free. Everyone fled to nearby King William Island to regroup, and

that's where further tragedy befell Franklin and his crew. According to the local Inuit who had seen them, about forty crewmen had succumbed to starvation, while Franklin himself along with two dozen officers, had perished in eighteen forty seven, and based on what little evidence was found, it seems that at least some of the crew had turned to cannibalism for survival. Others wrote letters in their final days that were eventually found during an eighteen fifty four excursion to

King William Island. But perhaps the most chilling remnants of the Franklin expedition were left back on Beechey Island three graves, all clearly marked in honor of the first men to die on Franklin's crew, William Brainy, John Torrington and John Hartnell, and those bodies were exhumed in the nineteen eighties by dr Owen Beatty, a forensic anthropology is from Canada. Who performed autopsies on all three of the bodies. The remains

had been impeccably preserved by the freezing temperatures underground. Now it had originally been believed that the men had died of lead poisoning from the cans used to hold their food and fresh water, but it was later determined that the men in these graves had died from either pneumonia or tuberculosis. They had already been in poor health when they landed on Beechey Island, the harsh environment had only

made things worse. The men were eventually reburied alongside a fourth Thomas Morgan, who had been part of an eighteen fifty four expedition to find them. His cause of death, though, had been scurvy. Today, explorers visit Beechey Island to see

the graves for themselves. They pay their respects to the men who brave the Arctic in search of the Northwest Passage, unaware that it had all been a one way trip, and they get to see for themselves one of the last places that Franklin and his crew ever visited, where the environment is only slightly colder than the truth. 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,