Spinning Their Wheels

Think about it, how would a professional athlete know how fast they could run if they didn't have a competitor to try and beat. Some of the great inventions of

our day are a result of competition. The mobile computers we all have in our pockets would most likely not have arrived so soon if it weren't for the competition between in a number of companies, and the war of the currents in the eighteen eighties between alternating current and direct current gave us the home electrical systems we have today. So we can't fault Daniel Burnham for thinking about his own competition and wanting to do better. He was an

architect with an unusual and rare project. Take a massive section of Chicago and turn it into an attraction that would captivate the world. Just a year before, in eighteen eighty nine, the city of Paris played host to the World Exhibition, and standing tall in the center of their wonders and entertainment was a structure that we all take

for granted today, the Eiffel Tower. So with Chicago on the cusp of hosting their own World's Columbian Exhibition, Daniel was in desperate need of something even bigger, more impressive than that. Thankfully, there were a lot of options submitted, but none seemed to sparkle with the wonder that he was aiming for. Honestly, for a while, he sort of just felt like he was spinning his wheels, moving from one proposed to the next, getting interested, before ultimately realizing

the idea was impossible, or too expensive, or both. But that's when he met George. George was a young civil engineer with a lot of innovation in his blood. As a child, his family moved around a bit from his birth state of Illinois to the much drier climate of Nevada. His father had been a horticulturalist, and in the eighteen seventies took on the responsibility of beautifying Carson City by importing hundreds of trees from out east. George, though, wanted

to build things. He spent a brief amount of time at the California Military Academy before pursuing his engineering degree, and by eighty one he was in that weird position so many college graduates find themselves in even today, fully trained, hungry for opportunity, and looking for work. But instead of getting a job somewhere else, he hired himself by starting a company that tested the intricate steel structures of bridges.

But when George heard that the planners of the World's Columbian Exhibition we're looking for and engineering feats, he saw his chance to really turn some heads. He drafted up his proposal and sent it over, and Daniel Burnham loved it. His fellow planners, though, weren't so sure. Was it spectacular, absolutely, but how would it work? After all, it seemed to

be far too complex to be viable. So when his idea was rejected, George insisted that it would work by providing studies that he paid for out of his pocket to prove the safety and functionality of the design. He even found his own investors to cover the cost of building it, to make it even easier on the planning committee, and finally they agreed, and George immediately got to work. And what he ended up building in was both breathtaking to the people who first saw it and familiar to

many of us today. It was a massive wheel that stood over two hundred sixty feet high, mounted on a central axle. Hanging off the outer edge of that wheel at regular intervals were forty passenger cars, each capable of seating about sixty people. It was like a giant metal spider web that just turned and turned, taking occupants on a steam powered circular twenty minute ride above Chicago. And the world fell in love with George's new invention, as

any trip to a local fair might tell you. Today, even the great city of London has their own permanent version, the London I. But it wasn't a happy ending for George. The exhibition in Chicago withheld three quarters of a million dollars in profit, worth tens of millions of dollars today, and the loss ultimately drove him into bankruptcy. George died from typhoid fever three years after his great Wheel took

its first spin. At the young age of just thirty seven, and while most people have forgotten his personal story, you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who doesn't know his name, George Washington Ferris, the father of the Ferris Wheel. Death affects everyone differently. Not only do mourning rituals vary from culture it's a culture, but death itself can hit each

individual in its own way. The loss of an estranged relative might not gardner many tears, but losing a close friend who saw us through a bad time in our lives might cause intense heartache. Every death is unique, as are its effects on our mental health. One particular activity, though, has captivated mourners for hundreds of years. What started out as a way to literally raise the dead has now

become a rite of passage for teenage girls everywhere. It's true origins are unknown, but historians can at least trace the practice back to a book called The Diary of Samuel Peeps. Samuel was a member of parliament during the seventeenth century and began writing in his diary on New Year's Day of sixteen sixty. Over the course of the next ten years, he kept a daily account of his days, including observations on things such as English politics and the

arts of the time. However, on July one six, Samuel recorded a particular story that had been told to him by a friend of his name, Mr. Brisbane, who had witnessed something akin to witchcraft while in France. He'd watched as four young girls each knelt on one knee around a boy lying on the ground. He was on his back, giving the appearance that he had died, and each girl placed one finger underneath him. Then they recited a short poem, each girl whispering a line of it into the ear

of the one next to her. Here lies a dead body, stiff as a stick, cold as marble, light as a spirit, rise in the name of Jesus Christ. The lines were uttered in round robin style as the girls proceeded to lift the boy off the ground with only their outstretched fingers. Brisbane couldn't believe his eyes. Surely it had been an illusion, so when it was over, he told the boy to get up and move out of the way, and then brought in a much larger man to take his place.

Sure Enough, the girls chanted the same incantation again, each one reciting a single line, and lifted the hefty newcomer over their heads, each one using only a single finger. Where had the girls learned such a game. It's possible it had been passed down from people who had never actually seen it as a game, people who really wanted to raise those they've lost. Decades earlier, from sixty to sixteen thirty two, France had seen a monumental loss of

a million people to a plague epidemic. The constant reminder of death, watching family and friends succumb to it every day had most likely affected the surviving children, and one way to make something like death less scary was to turn it into a game, a game where someone could literally be raised from the dead. Throughout history, other attempts to lift people with the lightest of touches has also been recorded, as in an eighteen five The Seven volume

by one Robert Conger Pell. In the book, Pell described how a man lying on a bench with his legs fully extended could be lifted by two people standing on each side of him. In order for the lift to be successful, though the two men both needed to inhale at the same time just before the lift. At eighty three, inventor and scientist David Brewster wrote about a similar experiment as Pells. In Brewster's version, however, the subject being raised

had to adhere to a set of rules. For one, they needed to be heavier than anyone else in the group, and second, the person was asked to lay across two chairs, with one to support his back and one to hold up his legs. Four people then stood around him to buy his legs and two near his shoulders. Their first lift often went poorly, with no one able to get him in the air. It wasn't until everyone took a deep breath, including the person being lifted, that he was

finally able to be hoisted with ease. It was as if the air in his lungs had turned him into a loon. The exercise is still performed today, though it's not done by science minded adults anymore. It's played as a game at places like slumber parties, and it goes by the catchy name of light as a feather stiff as a board. Physics does the um heavy lifting, with each person taking on an equal amount of the subject's

body weight at the same time. Their coordinated efforts allow them to lift a person off the ground as though they weigh almost nothing at all, and thankfully there's no witchcraft required. 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 Come and until next time, stay curious. Yeah,