The Forever Gal

liven up a day. For a brief few hours, we experience community with total strangers as we scream and yell encouragement at the players on the field. It's a tradition that goes back as far as any inhuman history. But going to a game isn't only about team spirit. It's also about conflict. Nothing is quite like a good rivalry between teams. Just ask any New England or how they feel about the New York Yankees and you'll see what I mean. It's like having a nemesis in your hometown.

These rivalries are engaging and powering and occasionally even deadly. To understand what I mean, let's take a look at the oldest college football rivalry in United States history between USC Berkeley and Stanford College, first played in eighteen ninety two. This rivalry has become known as the Big Game. These two colleges have played each other one hundred and twenty six times, and they're showing no sign of stopping. With each new generation of students, there's a new wave of

enthusiasm for continuing the competition. This rivalry is so popular that many forget its ties to one of the greatest tragedies in sports history. It was Thanksgiving Day nineteen hundred in San Francisco. There had only been nine Big Games so far, but each was larger than the last. Football fans flocked to the Mission District, a field known as the sixteenth and fulsome grounds. It stood near the industrial site.

The far end of the field was dominated by the shape of a new factory, and this was a bottle manufacturing facility that just opened by the San Francisco and Pacific Glass Works. By ten thirty that morning, the event managers were already struggling with the crowd size. The city of San Francisco had employed sixty police officers for crowd control. This was, to put it mildly, not enough. The number of attendees was soon in the tens of thousands. Tickets

for the game were sold for a dollar now. That might seem cheap today, but with inflation that comes out to around thirty or forty bucks now. Most of the attendees were still willing to pay. University of Californian fans were eager to see col defeat Stanford again, and Stanford fans wanted to see Stanford regain her honor after the previous years devastating thirty to zero shutouts. Even those who couldn't afford the ticket price were still eager to see

the game. It's estimated that several thousands tried to watch from the streets on top of the nineteen thousand in the stadium, but watching from the street was not a great view, so many sought a better vantage point, and on Fifteenth Street, the natural choice with a full view of the field was the glassworks factory. At least four hundred spectators climbed on top of the building in spite

of the protests of the factory security. The building manager had been tasked with keeping people off the roof, but the watchmen he had hired were woefully unprepared for the task. Inside, only one furnace was active, manned by a skeleton crew. The factory workers tried to phone the police, but were redirected to the event managers instead. Fans settled in ready for the game. To the untrained eye, it must have looked like a sturdy roof with corrugated iron on top

of a brand new factory. But early on people started to notice that things didn't feel quite right. The roof felt like it was straining already, and the game hadn't even begun. Lightheartedly teasing among the men and boys seemed to mask a deeper worry that something was about to go horribly wrong. Kickoff was at two thirty pm. Twenty minutes later, fans within the stadium would hear a loud

crash coming from fifteenth Street. It drew a few concerned glances, but the game did not stop, and soon all eyes returned to the players on the field. Meanwhile, the roof of the glassworks factory had completely collapsed. In an instant, A hole opened up in the roof of the factory, swallowing around two hundred people. About one hundred of them plummeted four stories onto a solid brick floor. Another sixty to one hundred people fell directly on top of the

furnace housing molten glass. The surface temperature would have been around five hundred degrees fahrenheit. As people rained down into the factory, fuel pipes broke, spraying hot oil onto the bodies that were already burning or broken. In the chaos, the factory workers hurried to save lives. They switched off the oil valves and tried desperately to retrieve the burning victims with tongs and pokers. Some of the luck year ones had managed to cling onto support beams or remaining

sections of the roof to save themselves. The less lucky found themselves pinned to the furnace by support rods, burning to death before they could be saved. All told, there were twenty three deaths in what became known as the Thanksgiving Day disaster. Of those, sixteen were teens and younger boys who couldn't afford the one dollar ticket fee. The youngest was nine years old. The final victim survived in critical condition for over three years before succumbing to his injuries.

As for the number of injuries, it's impossible to say. Newspaper reports from the following day list at least eighty injured, but the real number is likely much higher, and the more time passed, the more obscure the stories became. In fact, for a long time, it seemed like this event was doomed to be forgotten. There's no monument for it, and the big game continued the following year as if nothing

ever happened. Stanford and Cal have played each other over one hundred times since the tragedy, and they will continue to do so in the future, so as their next rematch comes around, it's a good time for us to remember. We all have things that bring us joy, and being a fan of a college football team can be just as meaningful as anything else. But it's also too easy to let our enthusiasm get away from us. So check your footing every once in a while. It's best to

make sure that you're standing on solid ground. A legacy is a curious thing. When we leave this world, we might live on in the faces of our children or the memories of our friends. What we leave behind could be as complicated as a family business or as simple as a family recipe. Legacies can also be complicated. In nineteen fifty one, one woman left behind a legacy that has touched nearly every person on earth, but it was taken right under the nose of the people who loved

her best. Henrietta was a striking woman born in nineteen twenty to a family of working class tobacco farmers in Virginia. By nineteen fifty one, young Henrietta was living in Baltimore. She was a mother to five lively kids and was known for hosting huge dinners and never being seen without her trademark red nail polish. But in nineteen fifty one, the normally energetic Henrietta was starting to feel ill. She complained to relatives of feeling like she had a knot

in her abdomen. When she finally went to Johns Hopkins Medical Center, the only nearby hospital that would even treat black patients, her worst fears were confirmed. She had cervical cancer. Henrietta immediately began radium treatments, but it was too late. The tumor spread and metastasized, and on October thirty first of nineteen fifty one, Henrietta died at the age of

just thirty one. For most people, that's where the whole story would end, but Henrietta was not Most people Johns Hopkins was a research hospital and in the same complex where Henrietta was being treated. Another researcher named George Guy was trying to solve a problem. He was the head of the tissue culture lab at Johns Hopkins. He wanted to use human cells to test new medications and therapies, but no matter what he did, he couldn't get human

cells to survive outside their bodies. So George Guy wasn't expecting much when a new sample of cells from a cancer patient named Henrietta was sent to his lab, but all of that changed the following day when he put the sample under a microscope. Guy was expecting to see a collection of deteriorating cells, but to his surprise, there were new cells in the culture. Within twenty four hours, henrietta cell sample had doubled, and it would continue to

do so for the next seventy years. Henrietta became the source of the first immortal human cell line ever discovered. Her cells thrived and replicated in lab conditions for over seven decades. Scientists don't totally know why exactly it did this. They just know that thanks to Henrietta, researchers have made great strides In medical technology, Henrietta cells nicknamed HeLa cells, have been used to test drugs, hormones, and even pioneer the polio vaccine. HeLa cells were sent into space to

observe the effects of zero gravity on humans. They were at one of the cornerstones of pioneering in vitro fertilization and in mapping the human genome, and were instrumental in developing the COVID nineteen vaccines. And, perhaps most importantly and definitely most bittersweet, HeLa cells were used for advanced cancer treatments, the type of breakthroughs which might have saved Henrietta's life back in nineteen fifty one. Talk about a legacy, but

Henrietta Lax never lived to see her impact. Back in nineteen fifty one, she never consented to seeing her cells used for medical research. As they became a mainstay of new research, scientists gained accolades and even sold patents based on her cells. They also published sensitive medical and genet information about the Lax family. All of this was while the Lax themselves were kept in the dark. Henriette's family didn't even find out about what's going on until nineteen

seventy five and naturally. Learning about Henrietta's legacy has caused mixed emotions for her family. The members are happy their mother and grandmother has had such a positive impact on the world, but they're angry the family wasn't informed and it's complicated to think about the financial aspect. For decades, Henrietta cells have generated millions benefiting pharmaceutical and biotech companies,

but her family has never seen a cent. Today, the National Institute of Health has partnered with the Lax family to try to right this wrong. Anyone who wants to use HeLa cells today in their research must first be approved by a committee made up of the Lax family and the National Institute of Health. Multiple biomedical companies have announced donations to the Henrietta Lax Foundation, where their money will support families whose genetic material has been used without

their consent. Henrietta Lax impacted a lot of people in her short life, and not just because of her remarkable cells, but also because of the lives that she touched while she was living. And yes, Henrietta cells may indeed live on forever, but with any luck, her memory will as well. 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 Worldolore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.