The Fast and the Furriest

fashion designer. Ralph Lauren joined the army as a young man before working as a salesman for the Brooks Brothers clothing store. But Juju McWilliams may have had the strangest start of all. McWilliams was born in Pasadena, California. In Her father was a successful Massachusetts politician and her mother the heiress to a paper company. McWilliams grew into quite the accomplished team. For one, she was tall for her age, standing over her high school classmates at a whopping six

ft two inches. Her height helped on the basketball court as well. After graduating high school, she attended college, where she continued her athletic trajectory until she took a job in New York, working at an advertising firm as a copywriter, but her life in the big city eventually ended as the war effort came calling. McWilliams enlisted in ninety two to serve her country. Unfortunately, the military deemed her too

tall for service. However, she was able to secure a spot with the Office of Strategic Services or o s S, where she served as a research assistant. She spent most of her time typing up little white cards with the names and addresses of government operatives. It wasn't glamorous, but it did put her on the radar of OSS top brass. Before long, they moved her from behind a desk to behind a lab table. You see, the OSS had a problem one they believed that McWilliams might be able to

help them solve. There was work being done in the OSS Emergency Sea Rescue Equipment section on stopping sharks. They didn't want to kill any sharks, but the curious creatures had a troublesome habit of accidentally setting off underwater mines that were meant for German u boats. There had also been several reports of shark attacks over the previous three years,

inciting fear among many sea bound soldiers. The os S tasked Captain Harold J. Coolidge with developing a shark repellent to keep them away from the minds and the men. Coolidge had come from the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology, and his partner Dr. Henry Field was brought in from a natural history museum in Chicago. McWilliams was assigned to Coolidge as an assistant. Together with Field and chemical technicians

Stewart Springer. The team ran a battery of tests on various substances to see how well they kept sharks away, and their test subject a small shark called the spiny dogfish. They put dead shark meat, acids, nicotine, pine oils, and about a hundred other chemicals in the water before settling on a combination of copper sulfate, copper acetate, maleic acid, and dead shark extract. The spiny dogfish found the mixture

repulsive and stayed away about sixty of the time. McWilliams was awarded for her work with the o s S and even met her future husband, Paul while working there. In fact, it was Paul who helped her find her footing after the war too. He had lived in France when he was younger and had developed a taste for fine food. After joining the US Foreign Service in ninety eight, he and Juju moved to the City of Lights, where she experienced one of the most incredible and important meals

of her life. It was at a restaurant called La Corone in the city of Ruan. Mc williams had enjoyed oysters followed by a main course of sulmoniere, a French fish dish often prepared heard with a savory brown butter sauce. She described the experience as an opening up of the soul and spirit, and inspired her to enroll in French culinary school, from which she graduated in nineteen fifty one.

McWilliams eventually met two other chefs, Simone Beck and Louisette Bertoli, who had been working together on a cookbook of French cuisine. Beck suggested McWilliams joined them as a third author, considering she was an American who had developed a love for French cooking, her insight might help the book reach an

American audience as well. The publisher originally turned the book down, claiming it was too long and boring to be of interest to anyone, but the three women persevered, and in nineteen sixty one, their seven hundred page love letter to French cooking was published. Too great to claim. McWilliams herself went on to become a successful newspaper columnist and cookbook author, as well as the host of a very popular cooking

show on public television. And none of it would have happened without two major events in her life or work with the oss on shark repellent and meeting her husband, Paul Cushing Child. The world at large never knew Juju McWilliams. Juju had been a childhood nickname of hers. Instead, they fell in love with Julia Caroline McWilliams, better known to aspiring chefs everywhere as Julia Child. In a deadly outbreak

of diphtheria hit the residence of Nome, Alaska. It's a highly contagious bacterial infection with a mortality rate of ten percent, and for children untreated and without vaccinations, the death rate jumps even higher. It's rare and developed countries due to vaccination, but in the early nineteen hundreds gnomes Lone doctor noticed a one percent mortality rate among children even with treatment.

It was often fatal in young children. To save them, he needed a special serum, one that he didn't have. Alaska is known for some unforgiving wilderness, and that January winter prevented getting the life saving serum to the town. Thick ice prevented ships from making passage to a nearby harbor. Alaskan winds and subzero temperatures rendered planes useless. Neither plane nor pilot would survive the trip, even if the handful of planes weren't in storage, too far away to even

consider the dangerous attempt without treatment. Though the entire town was in peril, children were the most vulnerable, and every day more fell ill, wheezing and gasping for breath. Despite his best efforts, all the doctor could do was watch them die at an alarming rate. The bacteria produced a deadly toxin that built up in the bloodstream, causing organ failure. He ordered a quarantine, though he knew that was just borrowed time. Without the serum, the children of Nome would die.

So telegraphs flew and Anchorage said they had the life saving serum. Although the closest they could ship the precious cargo was by railway to Ninana. There was only one thing left to do. Use the winter time mail carriers. No, these weren't special vehicles equipped for snow. These were sled dogs. There was a problem, though the dogs were used for

short distances. Humans and animals would have to travel seven hundred miles in a particularly harsh winter with little to no protection from the elements, much less defend themselves against dangerous wildlife, and with new cases of diphtheria appearing daily. They were up against the clock. Still, running the dogs too hard and fast would frost their lungs, effectively killing them.

The conditions that winter were terrible even for Alaska. Each team that had the serum would face similar conditions for their thirty mile run. Pushing harder would put the team at risk. The governor put out request for volunteers. They need the bravest of men and the hardiest of dogs. He didn't sugarcoat it either. They'd have to travel across frozen lakes with ice that may not hold their weights, navigate through dense forests, and travel in near white out

conditions across the undra in January. There wouldn't be a lot of daylight either. Most of the teams would be running in the dark. A ragged crew of locals stepped up to the challenge, mostly Athabaskans and Inuit who were familiar with the terrain. Short on enough volunteers, they would have to travel farther than others, and, as if they needed one more thing to worry about, the serum would

be rendered useless if it reached below freezing temperatures. The first team left at night on January, making the first leg of the journey in sixty below weather and traveling fifty two miles. To save his dogs from the strain, the musher frequently ran beside them. When he finally met up with the next team, he had suffered from hypothermia and frost bite. The last team encountered white out conditions. Snow crusted the dog's fur as they ran against strong winds.

An eighty mile per hour gust hit the team, flipping the sled, the cargo, and the dogs upside down in the snow. In an instant, musher gunner Cason dove into the snow after the serum, but he couldn't find it with his mits on. After digging with his bare hands, he scooped up the fur covered package. Then he righted the sled and pushed onto the meeting point for the next team, but his relief team never showed up. He had to ask his tired dogs to make the next

leg of the journey. Finally, at five thirty in the morning on February second, Casson's lead dog, Balto, barked as they stopped in front of the doctor's office. The Sierum safe and sound Man's best friend had saved the town. Forty eight years later, in nineteventy three, the race became immortalized in another way. The I did a rod sled race. As you might have already guessed, It's run every year in March, not January though. Oh and one last thing.

The governor who put out the call for the bravest of men and the hardiest of dogs. His name was Scott c. Bone. 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,