To Be

We've dreamed of soaring above the trees, zipping from place to place swiftly and efficiently. There's no traffic in the sky, no flat tires or detours to delay us and getting to our destinations. And Alexander Vigors saw the benefit of air travel, but he had a much different idea of achieving it than others. He was born in nineteen o one in Indonesia to Dutch parents who owned a sugar

plantation as well as a hotel. His mother, Johanna and his father, Albert, pushed alex toward a life of constant learning. Johanna spoke numerous languages and taught literature while Albert educated him on design and botany. In nineteen sixteen, Alex went off to the Netherlands to study numerous subjects, including blacksmithing,

mechanical engineering, ship building, and art. Upon his return to Indonesia in nineteen six he married his fiancee, Jacoba, and the two eventually moved to the U S where they settled down in Seattle, Washington. Alex took a job as a draftsman and the two began to build their life together in America. Sadly, in n Jacoba died during the birth of what would have been their first child, who

was still born. Distraught over the entire experience, Alex left engineering behind and instead threw himself into art, studying sculpture at the Art Institute of Seattle before moving to California

in the nineteenth dirties. Come World War Two, Alex enlisted in the Army, where he served as an intelligence officer, and it was during the war when he decided to make his grand plan to take to the sky's official He had gotten the idea in the nineteen twenties, believing that the helicopters of the time were nothing but death traps. They go down like a brick, he once said in

an interview. Then, after his family in the Dutch East Indies was captured by the Japanese during the war, Alex saw a need for a new kind of vehicle, one that could get people in and out of a jam quickly and safely. He filed his patent for his Disculptor a flying machine in nineteen four. About the only thing it had in common with a helicopter, though, was its use of horizontal rotors for lift. Otherwise the two vehicles

were completely different. Alex's rotors were encased in vertical tubes or tunnels, not exposed to the elements or enemy fire. In fact, all the components were designed to be housed within a fully enclosed, disc shaped frame like an athlete. Its discuss, This unique craft was meant to slice through

the air without resistance. Alex proposed his new aircraft to the U. S. Military, and they showed interest in building a prototype, but no one was willing to commit any kind of funding to the project while the war was still going on. However, once word got out about his invention, people all over the country got the bug to build

something similar. Over the next sixty years, the U. S. Patent Office saw upwards of a hundred and ninety patents for vehicles of similar style and designed to Alex's, especially during the nineteen fifties. These inevitably led to films, books, comics, and television shows where disc shaped aircraft were featured. Kids could even buy their own in toy form, of course, But the strangest variation of Alex's patent came from an inventor named John Quincy st Clair in two thousand five.

St Clair had previously filed patents for things like a walking through Walls training system, which would teach a person how to acquire sufficient hyperspace energy in order to walk through doors and walls. He also patented a magnetic vortex wormhole generator, so anyone could create a wormhole to another dimension with ease. Those patents made his idea for a

photon spacecraft sound as reasonable as sliced bread. St Clair designed a vehicle that used photon particles to lift itself off the ground, and, just like Alex's model, was to be shaped like a disk. Alex Baker's didn't realize it at the time, but his vehicle was destined to become the stuff of science fiction for decades it would be immortalized in movies like The Day the Earth Stood Still and Mars Attacks, but that had never been his intention.

Despite their having been reports of alien encounters and strange sightings before, Alex hadn't been influenced by any of those stories. He simply wanted to make the helicopter better, and to do that he had to invent and patent the Flying Saucer. Words are important, but not just in and of themselves, but the order they are put in, as well as the ones that are left out to take, for instance, the famous Shakespearean line to be or not to be? If you were to say, take out the not, the

sentence becomes pointless and nonsensical. While that never happened as far as I know, something very similar, did one forgotten not change the course of morality? Well more or less? It began in sixty one, No scratch that, It began long before that, with Moses on a mountain coming down with a set of ten very self explanatory commandments. Do this, don't do that, You know the drill. It became the foundation for Judaism and later on Christianity. All right, now,

let's get back to the seventeenth century. In sixteen o four, King James the first commission what would become the most widely spread version of the Bible in history. That's the King j Bible, in case that needs to be put

together for you. It had been centuries since the latest version of the Holy Book, and the King felt under pressure from Puritans and Calvinists alike pushing for a reformation, and so James commissioned the new Bible, calling for more contemporary language as well as common and recognizable terms, the end goal being a union of the warring religious factions. After all, the Church's vast array of various offshoots were well known for their battles, and this project was right

in the thick of it. The King James Bible rose beyond just a religious text, though, becoming a staple to the English language and giving us household phrases like an eye for an eye, a bottomless pit, and many more. But not all Bibles are created equally, Apparently, after widespread circulation, another printing of the King James Bible was ordered in sixteen thirty one from the Royal Printers in London, and while every other printing of that same book had seven

hundred and eighty three one thirty seven words. This edition had seven eight three on thirty six words. Yes, one word was omitted in the sixty one edition, and it made a world of difference. The word omitted was a simple not in Exodus twenty, verse fourteen, flipping the seventh commandment on its head. Instead of thou shalt not commit adultery, it now read thou shalt commit adultery, meaning that while you should not be killing and not stealing, you should

absolutely be committing adultery. The Lord himself had spoken, or rather the royal printers in London had spoken, And as if that wasn't bad enough, there was another mistake as well, this time changing a single word into a hyphenated superlative. This one appeared in Deuteronomy five, verse twenty four, where the Lord apparently didn't show his greatness at all, but his great ass, meaning that he must have one stellar donkey. Since that was the only meaning of the word at

the time of printing. Needless to say, there was something of a public outcry about it all. The archbishop was mortified by both mistakes and immediately set about rounding up copies to destroy them. Oh and the printers were fined as well by today's standards, around sixty fo dollars. While it may seem like nothing more than an innocent mistake, the sheer magnitude of the change has led some to believe that it was a classic case of Biblical sabotage.

This theory posits that Arrival snuck into the Royal printers workshop and made the change in hopes that they would lose their exclusive right to print the Bible. Thankfully, the archbishop did not succeed in destroying all of them, though various copies can still be found scattered across museums in both the United States and England, as well as one in Australia. And in case you're looking to bolster your own Biblical collection, a handful of these wicked Bibles still

pop up at various auctions from time to time. The latest one sold for roughly fifty six thousand dollars. While it's unlikely this steak altered the religious foundation of anyone, ever, it remains a great example of how one small mistake can make one big difference in meaning. And always remember thou shalt proof read before printing, or wait, no, yeah, that's right. 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.