Sticky Fingers

several illegal operations over the years. It's completely natural and widely available, and yet its production and distribution have been controlled by a single cartel since the nineteen sixties. This dark discus liquid is trafficked all over the world in barrels, and between two eleven and two twelve, over nine thousand, five hundred of those barrels went missing, resulting in one

of the biggest heists in history. It all started hundreds of years ago when the indigenous people of Canada's Eastern woodlands harvested this substance for themselves, cooking with it and boiling it down for long term storage. Eventually European colonists from France arrived and found out what they were doing.

They learned how to extract it for themselves and studied their preservation techniques, and unsurprisingly, they soon pushed the indigenous people out and built a whole industry around the product to make themselves rich. Then, in nineteen sixty six, a group of individual producers from Quebec got together and came

up with a plan. They would combine their efforts to market and sell this lucrative merchandise, thereby creating a cartel or federation, and it would control pricing and distribution for the next sixty years. Several years ago, a single barrel cost over thirteen hundred dollars, that's twenty six times more than the cost of a barrel of crude oil, and people paid those prices because what the cartel was selling was pure. Knockoffs were found everywhere but couldn't compare to

the experience of consuming the real thing. But a tightly controlled industry, as it often does, soon leads to the creation of a black market, a place to pedal discount product and convincing fakes when people can't or just don't want to pay full price. Around twenty twelve, a worker for the cartel was in a storage warehouse when he

noticed that something was a miss. His job was to take yearly inventory of the reserves, climbing up mountains of barrels filled with the liquid gold that kept the cartel at the top of the economic food chain. Except this time there was something wrong. He got to the top and felt one of the barrels. It moved, but it shouldn't have. When filled, each barrel should have weighed over six hundred pounds, but this time it weighed almost nothing. He knocked it down and listened as it led out

a hollow sound. Upon hitting the floor, he opened it up to find it empty. So was the next barrel and the one after that. Some were even filled with water to throw cartel employees off. Hundreds of people were brought in for questioning, and after a brief investigation, two things came to light. First, over twelve percent of the cartel's reserve had been stolen, and secondly, the operation had been an inside job. Whoever had taken the product had managed to get out of Quebec and into places like

New Brunswick and even the United States. They'd passed it off in small batches to sellers who had no idea where it came from. So how had the thieves done it? While they'd snuck the barrels out on trucks to a facility where they were drained of their precious contents and

refilled with water. The water filled barrels were then replaced in the warehouse, and the cartel had been none the wiser, Although after some time the thieves stopped putting water in them all together and simply left the barrels in the warehouse. And that decision to cut corners is what brought about their downfall in the end. So the cartail got the cops involved, who managed to track down the criminals using

good old fashioned police work. They interviewed sellers, employees and anyone else who might have had access to either the warehouse or the goods inside. In the end, seventeen people were arrested, Some paid fines while others went to jail. But what was so valuable in those barrels that people went to such lengths to steal it? It wasn't oil, and it wasn't drugs. It was one of Canada's biggest exports,

maple syrup Canada. You see is responsible for seventy five percent of the global maple syrup market, so it's no surprise that certain unscrupulous parties wanted a taste of that sweet, sweet money. It's been said that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach. Well that may be true, but in Canada it's also the way to his wallet. When someone is tilting at windmills, it means that they're

looking at a problem that's not very important. It's a common idiom that comes from the story of Don Quixote, published in the early sixteen hundreds by Miguel de Cervantes, about a so called knights with delusions of grandeur, and in one particular scene, don Quixote goes up against a group of windmills, which he perceives as enormous knights on

the attack. But they aren't knights. They're just windmills. They aren't really a problem, although one man did happen to tilt at actual windmills much later on, and in the process he helped revolutionize air travel. His name was Juan de la Sierva born in Mercia, Spain in eighteen ninety five. Wand came from money and would spend his allowance on

aircraft related items. He and his friends once pulled their funds together to buy the wreckage of a crashed They took the parts and managed to build a plane of their own. They even used an old wooden countertop to make the propeller. One went on to study civil engineering in college. It was a degree that he channeled into a project that he would eventually become known for, a safe way to fly at low speeds. He started it in nineteen twelve, developing all sorts of models with different

types of motors and propeller systems. In nineteen nineteen, though, he realized a rotor based design was the way to go, and to help him achieve liftoff, he looked to windmills. Juan had been in the audience for a production of Don Quixote when the inspiration struck. As he watched the windmills turn on stage, their blades rotating on their own, it hit him he had to use an auto rotating

rotor in his aircraft. A normal helicopter rotor would have been powered by a motor, but an auto rotating version used the air passing around the blades to turn them, keeping the vessel in the sky. He called his creation an autogyro, and Juan's autogyro used a standard propeller for thrust while the rotor managed lift and descent. But it was a long road to success. Early versions of the autogyro had trouble achieving liftoff and he was forced to

modify the vessel's design a number of times. But after the rotor was finalized and a special flap was installed to address a lift related issue, he managed to get airborne. The autogyros made in flight took place in nineteen twenty three at Spain's Haitafie Aerodrome, and it was just the beginning. He continued to develop the autogyro throughout the nineteen twenties, even showing it off to the Air Ministry for the United Kingdom for potential use by the Royal Air Force,

and they loved it. Jan moved his operations to the UK, where he founded the Sierva Autogyro Company Limited. His company made rotors, while more seasoned aircraft manufacturers made the frames that they were installed within. So what exactly was an autogyro. It was an aircraft similar to a helicopter, though the early Sierrava models looked more like lanes with chopper blades

whirrying overhead. As they became more advanced in the nineteen fifties and sixties, the autogyros or gyro planes were made smaller, with some only carrying one or two people. Looking at an autogyro today, one might believe it to be dangerous, maybe more dangerous than a regular plane, but not one. He trusted his designs implicitly. In fact, he probably should have flown one when he traveled to Amsterdam in December

of nineteen thirty six. On the morning of the ninth of that month, he boarded a Douglas DC two, a large twin engine liner able to hold fourteen passengers plus crew. Visibility was low that day due to heavy fog, but at ten thirty am the pilot was given the all clear. The DC two took off into the nebulous gray skies, hoping things would become clearer on the other side. Yet

it never made it. Shortly after takeoff, the plane collided with a house and exploded, killing fifteen of the seventeen people on board one included, but his legacy lives on today. Autogyros are still flown by the military and law enforcement agencies. All over the world. A German couple even piloted several between two thousand and nine and two ten as they used them to fly around the globe. But perhaps the most well known autogyro was made by Ken Wallace in

nineteen sixty one. Wallace was a former wing commander with the Royal Air Force and designed his aircraft to hold just the pilot. It was immortalized on screen in nineteen sixty seven when Sean Connery jumped into the cockpit as British Superspy James Bond in the film You Only Lived Twice.

Ron de la Sierva is responsible for one hundred and eleven years of aviation history, a history that still persists today, all because one man had a problem and he decided to spend a little extra time tilting at windmills to solve it. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts. Learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Manke 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.