Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all of these amazing tales are right there on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. A mysterious, stranger and impossible task. It's a common story and William Barrett's novel The Lilies of the Field, a young traveling army vet named Homer Smith stumbles upon an order of Catholic nuns. They are poor and in desperate need of help with
their fence. Homer fixes it for them, but instead of paying him, the nuns believe that he is a gift from God, meant to build them a church, and spoiler alerts, he does build them that church. The nuns insist that he stayed for the grand opening the next day so that he can be recognized for his work, but Homer doesn't need recognition. He's done his job, so he leaves in the middle of the night before they wake up. The Lilies of the Field is fiction, but Homer's story
is far from a tall tale. Back in the eighteen seventies, there was a small order of nuns living in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Their bishop Jean Baptiste Lammy oversaw them a group known as the Sisters of Loretto, and had a chapel built for them. The architect, Antoine Moulay sadly died before construction finished, so he did not get to see the Our Lady of Light chapel in all its glory, nor was he able to fix the one glaring problem
left over. Twenty two ft above the pews of the main chapel was the choir loft, with no way to get up to it. The chapel well, big enough for the most modest congregation living nearby, was too small to accommodate a regular staircase. Various ideas were suggested, ladders, lift systems, but nothing seemed right. With their options limited, the sisters prayed to St. Joseph for an answer. St. Joseph was the patron saint of carp Anders, and at that moment he was the only thing in the world who could
have helped them. The nuns had been praying for over a week when on the ninth day there was a knock at their door. It was a man, and he brought with him a mule carrying carpentry tools. He inspected the space and saw a way to provide the sisters with access to the loft without having to build an enormous staircase that would occupy the whole chapel. He just asked for one thing, not payment, only privacy. The sisters
could not be present while he worked. Whenever Our Lady of Light was in use by the nuns or other members of the church, the man disappeared. He would return when the chapel was empty. It's unclear how long it actually took for the visitor to complete his work, but the results spoke for themselves. The spiral staircase was a work of art. It was steep, and some of the nuns could only descend on their hands and knees to avoid falling the twenty two ft below, but regardless of
their fears, they were aesthetic. Their prayers had been answered. To thank the man for his work, the nuns insisted he stay for a party in his honor. However, when the time came to celebrate, he was nowhere to be found. They reached out to anyone in town who might have known or worked with the man, but no one had ever heard of him. He simply vanished without a trace,
and the staircase itself begged more questions than answers. The thirty three wooden steps wrapped around two sixty degree turns, yet the carpenter didn't use any nails or glue to secure them. Each step was fastened to the winding rails using only wooden dolls. In addition, the staircase as a whole had no support structure to keep it upright. The base did all the heavy lifting, making its impeccable construction
even more of a mystery. And finally, the wood the carpenter had used on the staircase had gone unknown until recently. A test concluded that the staircase was made of spruce. While there are some spruce trees native to the southwestern United States, the variety of spruce that was used on this staircase came from a much colder climate, places like Alaska. An unknown visitor showing up to build a staircase in a church sounded odd enough, but one with a donkey
carrying Alaskan wood through New Mexico sounded even stranger. While it only took one hundred years, but eventually the truth about the bisterious carpenter came to light. Historian Mary straw Cook spent almost a decade researching the story behind the Seven Sisters and their unique staircase. She even wrote a book about them. The man who showed up at the chapel with his mule and a toolbox went by the name Fressois Jean Rocas. He was a member of the Campaignons,
kind of a French version of the Freemasons. Rocas arrived in New Mexico with the express purpose of assisting the nuns with their staircase. But that would that he built it with It didn't come from Alaska after all, but a place even farther away, France. Sadly, Mr Rocas was killed in eighteen ninety four, about ten years after he finished building the stair case. He was shot in his home in Dog Canyon, New Mexico. But not to worry, Rocas would eventually be reunited with his greatest work and
his lasting legacy. His body is buried in the cemetery just outside the Our Lady of Light Chapel in Santa Fe, just feet away from its beautiful wooden spiral staircase. When you're born the fifth of six children, you might act out to get attention. After all, you're not the baby of the family, and you're not the oldest, so it takes some doing to make your siblings and even your
parents notice you. Born around eighteen oh seven to Mayo Greenleaf Patch and Abigail McIntyre, Sam Patch's childhood, well, it really didn't exist. After his family moved from Massachusetts Rhode Island, Sam had to help support his large family. He got a job in a cotton mill, but on the side he had a kind of unique hobby. He'd liked to jump off of things. He got to start by jumping into the Blackstone River from the top of the mill
dam and a nearby bridge. The other child workers would join him, while some try to keep up with his ever growing heights. Only Sam was able to leap deftly into the waters below from the highest points in Rhode Island. By the time he was in his twenties, Sam had moved to Patterson, New Jersey, to work in a new mill spinning cotton bear. But Sam wasn't the only recent arrival to the growing city. A new bridge was being
constructed over the great falls of the Passaic River. The owner of the land, Timothy Crane, had started to gentrify the area by turning public picnic grounds into upscale eateries and gardens, and in order to reach these new establishments, he built a wooden bridge for residents to cross. Sam wasn't thrilled with the idea of his fellow workers being forced out of the area, but the bridge looked promising. On the day Crane opened it to the public, Sam
saw his chance to steal the spotlight for himself. Clad in nothing but his shirt and underwear, Sam leapt from eighty feet above the falls into the water down below. The crowd cheered, and Sam quickly became known around town as the Jersey Jumper. He gave a few more performances from the bridge before moving on to bigger stunts, from taller bridges to the top of a ship's mast. Every time Sam Patch hit the water, his fame grew skyward.
But the biggest heights was yet to come. In order to drum up tourism for Niagara Falls, Sam was hired to perform his most dangerous jump to date. He leapt from the base of the falls into the Niagara River below. A boat patrolled the area for Patch, who was supposed to re emerge where he landed, but he couldn't be found. The crowd held its breath as they watched and waited, no sign of Sam anywhere. The jump had been too high. They thought no one could have survived that, and then
they saw it movement on the shore. Sam had made it out. Everyone cheered for the dared level celebrity. Less than a week later, ten thousand people flocked to Niagara Falls to see him do it all over again. But there were still greater heights to achieve, and Sam saw his next challenge in Rochester, New York. The papers ran advertisements leading up to the jump on November six of eighteen twenty nine, asking four donations to cover his travel expenses.
They also promised another performer would be taking the leap as well. Between Niagara Falls and Rochester, Sam gained an assistant for his act, a pet bear cub. At two o'clock in the afternoon, in front of over seven thousand people, Sam led the cub by its collar to the edge of High Falls, ninety seven feet above the Genesee River and pushed it over. The bear emerged from the water unscathed, and now it was time for Sam to take the spotlight, which he did with a plum The jump was a
roaring success. The donations, however, were not hoping to squeeze a little more money out of them. Sam had a tall platform that elevated him drew ft above the river, higher than the edge of the falls. The local papers advertised the encore performance as Sam Patches last jump. He'd only intended to take a break during the winter months. He didn't realize how right the newspapers would really be.
The following Friday, Sam climbed up on the top of the platform and spoke to the audience, and then took his leap. Something was wrong. Though his body tightened, his legs, which were usually squeezed together, had separated when he was halfway down. When his body hit the water hard, it disappeared beneath the surface. Boats scoured for signs of him everywhere. The crowd watched the shore to see if he had
swam his way to safety. No one would have an answer until four months later, when his body was found along the shore seven miles downstream. Sam Patch died at the peak of his career as a national celebrity, but looking back, he might have benefited from the sage advice of a popular song that would a I Have about one seventy years later, penned by the philosophers known today as TLC. Don't go chasing waterfalls. They wrote, please stick
to the rivers and lakes that you're used to. 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.