The Hindenburg Disaster

Introduction

0:00This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human. Hey there. Before this podcast continues, I need you to fill out 37 forms about your listening history. I'll wait. Just kidding. That'd be ridiculous. Yet, we do it every time we need healthcare. But new Amazon Health AI is different. It can connect your health history to offer personalized care. So you can get help fast. Amazon Health AI. Healthcare just got less painful.

0:30With no fees or minimums on checking accounts, it's no wonder that Capital One Bank Guy is so passionate about banking with Capital One. If he were here, he wouldn't just tell you about no fees or minimums. He'd also tell you about how Capital One cafes are open seven days a week to assist with your banking needs. Yep, even on weekends. It's pretty much all he talks about. In a good way. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See CapitalOne.com slash Bank Guy. Capital One N.A. Member FDIC.

Workplace Challenges

0:59Work can be a little weird. Cringy training seminars. Coworkers who won't stop talking about their plant. Forgetting the mute button at an inopportune moment. We have to deal with a lot on any given work day. Sometimes it can feel hard to thrive and move forward in your career. Well, that's where LinkedIn comes in. LinkedIn helps you get ideas and insights from experts in your field, connect with people professionally, grow your network, and access tools designed to help you find the right fit for your next role. Whether you're just getting started, figuring out your next move, or looking to accelerate your career,

1:30LinkedIn is built to support you at every stage. Because LinkedIn is the network that works for you. Visit linkedin.com slash know stuff to learn more.

Podcast Introduction

1:41Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

1:50Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and Jerry's here too. And this is Stuff You Should Know. This is one of those ones, Chuck, that I'm really surprised we haven't done already. Yeah, for sure. And actually, boy, talk about a Segway. This is about the transatlantic voyage of the Hindenburg. But before we get into that quickly, we want to remind everybody,

Stuff at Sea Voyage

2:17or maybe if you're hearing this for the first time, about the Stuff at Sea voyage, that we're going on in partnership with Virgin Voyages. We're taking to the great seas, right? We are, not the skies, the seas. And we are actually headlining a very special voyage called Stuff at Sea. And it's us doing our thing, including a live podcast on board. And then some of our other colleagues too, including the Stuff They Don't Want You to Know guys,

2:47are going to be doing their thing too on this. I think it's a five-night voyage. That's right. October 2 through 7 from New York City to Bermuda. Like I said, this is through Virgin, so that means it is a kid-free luxury experience. And there's also going to be interactive sessions. There are going to be meet and greets. There are going to be themed activations. Whoa, wonder what that is. I also saw it described as a culture-soaked escape where pink sand paradise meets curious minds.

3:20I don't think anything else needs to be said besides that. Yeah, I mean, you get it, folks. If you want to come hang out on a very large boat with us in the middle of the ocean and hear us do our live podcast along with other things, then this is going to be your only chance to ever do that. Yeah, very nice. You can go to virginvoyages.com slash stuff, and that's in October. Cool. I don't know that this was the best episode to put that in, but we did what we did, you know?

Hindenburg History

3:49Well, it's not like it's the Titanic episode. Oh, that's a great, great, yeah, that's a good point. That would have been really bad. That would be bad, because we're taking to the skies now. Right. Talking about what happened on May 6, 1937, when the Hindenburg dirigible crashed, burst into flames over Lakehurst, New Jersey. Mm-hmm. And I am also surprised we haven't covered this. This is, you know, I didn't really know much about it. I knew the Hindenburg crash, and I'd seen the footage and heard the stuff, the commentary.

4:21But I was like, yeah, man, they built that thing, and they tried it out, and it crashed. I didn't know that they had successfully flown this stuff a bunch and that there were even worse airship disasters than this. This is just the most well-known for reasons we'll get into. Yeah. It was pretty shocking to see, and it was really well-documented. But, yeah, I think, including me. Well, never mind. There it is. What? Those are the reasons. Oh, yeah. But including me, though, Chuck, I thought it was the maiden voyage, too. I didn't realize it was just part of a larger thing either.

4:54And I think the Hindenburg itself had already been on a three-day publicity tour and a round trip to Buenos Aires and back from Germany before the unfortunate incident happened in New Jersey. Yeah, it had flown a bunch. Yeah. So let's talk about this, because the Hindenburg was known as an airship, which was also known as a dirigible, which you mentioned a second ago. And there's actually specific criteria to be a dirigible, and the Hindenburg just checked all the boxes.

5:27That's right. A dirigible means it is powered, so it's not just floating around up there like a hot air balloon. But hot air balloons and dirigibles are the same things as far as being lifted by what's known as LTA gas, lighter-than-air gas. In this case, we're talking hydrogen, but also helium was almost used, and now it's pretty much exclusively used. And then it means it's steerable as well. So you can tell it to go in a certain direction,

6:01tell it by way of working the rudder and powering those engines, and it'll go in that direction. All you have to do is shout, dirigible, go there, and it goes there. Well, I didn't know that it was actually, it can be an adjective as well. For steerable, dirigible and steerable. So, like, this car is highly dirigible because it's got great responsiveness. Yeah, just try using that word like that, though, and see if you don't get pushback. I would think there would have to be an auto journalist who's used it here or there because they're just so sick of using the same terms, you know?

6:34Yeah, like Car and Driver magazine, like the snooty writers. Yes, exactly. So there's three forms that dirigibles come in, Chuck, and it basically all has to do with how the structure, the blimp part, is well-structured, I guess. The B word? Yeah, I know you're not really supposed to say that, but it's true. I mean, I think it's pretty accessible to say blimp, you know? Yeah, we got, you know, the Eastlake Golf Tournament is right near my house, and so when we're hanging out at the house during the tournament,

7:08oftentimes that Goodyear blimp is directly over my home. It's very cool to see. Didn't you say you're trying to angle for a ride in the Goodyear blimp and that your in-laws have ridden in the Goodyear blimp at our Akron show? Yeah, I have never done that. You know, obviously Akron is the home of Goodyear,

Dirigible Types

7:26and I think the blimp still, and my father-in-law Steve has at one point rode in that Goodyear blimp, but I have never done it. So if anyone can take me up, and you, I mean, you're invited, you know? Oh, sure, sure. I assume that. If you're interested. I don't know if I am or not. My dad went on a hot air balloon ride, and I was like, I'm not getting in that thing. Yeah, I mean, after reading this, I mean, it's a different deal now, but it definitely gives pause. Right. So let's get back to what the balloon-like envelope,

7:57a.k.a. the blimp part, how that describes what type of dirigibles there are. There's three of them, right? Yeah, there's non-rigid, semi-rigid, and rigid. Non-rigid is more like a hot air balloon. That means there's no structure on the inside, and it's just the pressure of that gas keeping everything puffed out. Yes, and hot air balloons are what make New Mexico's license plates so nice. Oh, yeah. Agreed. Semi-rigid is kind of like non-rigid, except there's like a keel. There's like a structure for the keel, the part that runs along the bottom of the envelope, right?

Hindenburg Design

8:31Yeah. So there is some structure to essentially the bottom, but then I guess it flops over. So it's basically like a chef's hat, like the Swedish chef's hat. Yeah. But it flies. Right. And then rigid is the last one. There's like a skeleton-like frame, usually of a really light but strong material, maybe aluminum. You sent a YouTube of colorized photos of the Hindenburg, the interior in particular, and they said that its skeleton was made of duralumin.

9:02Have you ever heard of that before? I had never heard of it, so of course I had to look it up. I'm sure you did too. That's an aluminum-copper alloy, right, that's as strong as soft steel, whatever that is. Yeah. I don't know what that is either, but if it's not exactly what it sounds like, then somebody messed up naming it. It's a lot lighter than soft steel, obviously. And in the case of the Hindenburg, and I learned this all from that YouTube video, it's pretty cool to see those pictures as well. Yeah. There are 15, as they describe them, Ferris wheel-like rings that gave this thing the shape.

9:37And between those rings, and this is something I didn't know, there were 16 separate balloons between those rings, and that whole thing was covered with Goodyear latex and then a cotton, like, canvas fabric outer shell. Yeah. So the outer skin, the envelope, was not what the gas was filled in. Like, it was in these, basically, bladders inside the envelope, right?

Hindenburg Features

10:03Yeah, yeah. How many were there? Like, 14, I guess, then? I think 16 balloons. Okay. We all should mention that that cotton canvas fabric was coated with a protective coating, because that'll come into play. Yeah. It kept the sun off, essentially, so that the sun wouldn't heat the gas inside, and so that the UV rays wouldn't break it down into useless, I don't know what you'd break hydrogen down into. I guess ions? I don't know. So the other thing about the rigid one, and I had no idea about this either, is that the passengers and crew usually are inside that envelope, inside the blimp.

10:40And if you look at the Hindenburg, there's, like, a little, you know, what's called a gondola attached to the bottom of it. And that seems to be, I think, the cockpit, where if you were a passenger and you were hanging out in the Hindenburg, you were inside that blimp. I had no idea about that. Did you? Yeah, I did, because, like, where else would they be? Because, I mean, once you find out that there are, like, 25 cabins and a bar and a restaurant and all that stuff, it's obviously not going to fit. I mean, you know, you could hang out there.

11:10In fact, I think they encouraged the passengers to hang out in that double-decked area, because that's where all the windows were. Right. But I also learned that from watching the trailer to the Hindenburg movie, when it showed a lot of action inside that shell. Okay, gotcha. So I just thought that the gondola was just that dwarfed by the blimp itself and that it held all that stuff. I had no idea they were inside the blimp. I find that much more claustrophobic.

11:42Yeah, for sure. And I could see how you would think that, because once you get a little bit, and we'll talk about the size of this thing, but you need not only look at pictures of the Hindenburg flying over New York City to see how gargantuan this thing was. It was enormous. So that Goodyear blimp, it depends on which one you're talking about. I've seen that the Hindenburg was more than 800 feet long, almost as long as the Titanic. Yeah. How does it compare to the 747?

12:13Where is that? I think it's like three times as long as the 747 and twice as tall. Yeah. I mean, seriously, like, go look up, just type in, like, Hindenburg over New York City, and the scale is really kind of drives it home for sure. Yeah, it's really impressive. One of the other things I saw, too, is that it had a gas capacity, so of the hydrogen it held, of 7,062,000 cubic feet of hydrogen gas. And to put that in perspective, that's the gas equivalent of 7,062,000 one-cubic-foot bags of topsoil that you get at the garden center.

12:50That's how much hydrogen gas it held. It's a lot of gas. And, you know, of course, that's what keeps it aloft. As far as those engines, it had four diesel engines, and it moved pretty quick. I mean, as far as travel of the day, it could get across the Atlantic in two days. Yeah. The fastest ocean liner trip took five, and it still had the sister ship, the LZ-130. They're still the two largest aircrafts to ever take flight off the ground.

13:21Yeah. So this was a pretty impressive ship for anybody to see. But it also was not like the first of its kind. It was the point that they had reached in the development of dirigibles up to that point, which had really been kind of going for almost 100 years at that point. I think it was in 1850 when the whole dirigible craze kicked off in Paris, thanks to our friend Pierre Julien. Yes, that's right. The first one, I think, was in 1850, like you said.

13:54The next one, and that seemed more like a little like, hey, everybody, check this thing out. In 1852, you got the first full-size one. Thanks. It was really the French and Germans leading this charge. It was a French engineer named Jules-Henri Giffard.

14:12143 feet, pretty big. Sure. You can't sneeze at that. He also traveled 17 miles around in his first flight of his airship, which is, again, nothing to sneeze at. He was puttering around at six miles an hour. Literally around, right? Yeah. Yeah, in circles, essentially. The first few airships just basically traveled in circles. The next one is 1884. This was considered the first round-trip flight. I'm not sure what Giffard was doing, but the French Army Corps of Engineers, like 30 years later, took their dirigible in a round-trip flight, again, a circle.

14:49This one was just four to five miles. And it had a nine-horsepower motor. And that is the same size motor of a really good push mower, lawn mower. Yeah, I mean, you know, you're up there in the sky, so you don't have to give it a lot to get it going. And, again, they're not going very fast, six to ten miles an hour. All of these so far have been non-rigid, by the way. The first rigid one came in 1899, courtesy of Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin.

15:20And that's where that word and eventual band name would come from. Yeah. Yeah, Zeppelin basically became the leader in designing and developing airships, dirigibles, at a time when it was like, this is the new thing. Like, if you wanted to get from one continent to another, you took a luxury liner. Like you said, they were kind of slow. So Zeppelins could go way faster. And it was like the promise of airship travel was just limitless at this time when Zeppelin came along.

15:53Yeah, for sure. And as far as the band, I can't remember who said it. This is off the dome. But somebody said something about them going over, they would go over like a Led Zeppelin. Yeah. Obviously, that's two contradictory terms. Sure. And that's what they meant. They were being sort of cheeky. And of course, you know, it was, the Hindenburg was on the cover of their first record of their debut album. One other thing I looked up, the LZ in any of the Zeppelins. So like the first rigid airship was called LZ-1.

16:24And you mentioned... Not for lead. No, I thought probably it was. Yeah. But it's Luftschiff or airship in German. So airship Zeppelin 1 was the first rigid airship. The sister ship of the Hindenburg was LZ-130. That's right. So yes, I think as a rule of thumb, anytime you're taking advantage of a new technology that carries you away from Earth or carries you along Earth at really fast speeds,

16:55do not go in any models that are still in the single digits. That's just a good rule of thumb, I think. All right. So if the new plane comes out and it's the, oh, I don't know, Air Max 7? Just wait until they get to 10. They're going to get there fast because those next three are not going to stay around very long.

Hindenburg Crash

17:15You're right. That's good advice. So 1910 was the first commercial passenger flight. This baby went, I think it carried 23 people plus nine crew on a sightseeing loop. Yep. But it crashed. No casualties. No, get this. So this was LZ-7, still single digits. Yeah. Ran out of fuel. It was blown off course. And it had engine trouble. And it crashed into some trees. But the fact that nobody died is pretty, well, happy, I guess.

17:49Yeah. 18 years later, we got our first transatlantic flight. And this is what they were gunning for. This thing went from Germany to where the Hindenburg would go, Lakehurst, New Jersey. It's sort of suburban Philadelphia, like east of Philly. Okay. 111 hours and 44 minutes. But this is what they were, you know, they were looking for, you know, the next wave of, like, taking people. It wasn't just, like, Wowser stuff or, hey, like, we tried it once. They were, like, really trying to compete with ocean liner travel.

18:20Yeah. I say we take a break and we come back and get into that a little more. How about that? All right. We'll be right back.

18:39Hey, everyone. Your outdoor space should feel like you. And Wayfair has the pieces that actually match the vibe of what you're going for. Yeah. Every style, every outdoor space, whether your vibe's modern, coastal, farmhouse, eclectic, Wayfair has all the options to help you create an outdoor space that is uniquely yours. That's right. And it's really easy to find what you need because Wayfair makes it simple to narrow down to what works for your style and budget. Outdoor seating, grills, major appliances, storage, patio lighting, rugs, decor, Wayfair is your one-stop shop for home. Yeah, plus installation and assembly services are available for a truly seamless experience.

19:14So get prepped for patio season for way less. Head to Wayfair.com right now to shop all things home. That's W-A-Y-F-A-I-R dot com. Wayfair, every style, every home. Wayfair, every style, every home. Work can be a little weird. One minute you're in a meeting that could have been an email. The next you're trying to decode corporate jargon that somehow means nothing. And don't even get us started on the quick sync that turns into a 45-minute deep dive.

19:45Yeah. Well, the truth is figuring out your career isn't always straightforward. Whether you're trying to grow, pivot, or just stay relevant, it can feel like you're navigating it all on your own. Well, that's where LinkedIn comes in. That's right. LinkedIn can help you grow your career, helping you confidently navigate your path with insights, ideas, and inspiration from your professional community. You can stay up to date with the latest trends in your field, connect with people who get it, and discover opportunities tailored to your goals, your experience, and what actually matters to you. Whether you're looking for something new or just trying to grow where you are, LinkedIn gives you the tools and connections to move forward with confidence.

20:20Because LinkedIn is the network that works for you. Visit LinkedIn.com slash no stuff to learn more. Guys, we got to talk about your secret late-night internet searches. You know, the ones? Bumpy leg rash, hair loss, itchy bum. Trying to figure out your body by endlessly searching for answers. We all do it, and it never works. Thankfully, there's Amazon Health AI. It can connect your symptoms with your medical history to offer personalized care 24-7.

20:55So, call off the search. Amazon Health AI is here. Healthcare just got less painful.

21:12Okay, Chuck. So, like you were saying before the break, the Zeppelin development had gotten to the point where it's like we can get across the Atlantic. We can get down to South America anytime we want. Like, no problem. We've reached that point. Let's just start creating dirigibles that are meant for transatlantic travel. Like, let's really put a dent in the ocean liner industry. We're just going to create a new travel industry.

21:42And that's what they set about doing. So, the Hindenburg LZ-129 was the part of this larger planned fleet of specifically transatlantic luxury Zeppelins that were going to essentially change the world and make it much smaller. Yeah, for sure. It was, you know, it was luxury in the sense that it was an airship that catered to rich people. If you look at the pictures, it looks nice, but it's still not like anything you would get on board like the Titanic or anything like that just because it was an airship.

22:20So, they couldn't, you know, there are obvious weight limitations and size limitations. Like, the cabins were really, really small, but they, you know, they were good-looking enough for the crowd that they were catering to, which is really rich people. Because I think it costs like, in today dollars, like $10,000 compared to about half that for an ocean liner, transatlantic ocean liner voyage. Yeah, those are one way, too. Not like our voyage in October, which is round trip. That's right. They're bringing us back, right?

22:50Yeah. Okay. They're just going to leave us stranded in Bermuda. I mean, they could drop us in Atlanta on the way home, I would think. Oh, that's a great idea. That's a wonderful idea, Chuck. We'll ask. Okay. So, yeah, I mean, it was expensive, but it was also very new, right? So, you can imagine, I mean, luxury ocean liners have been doing this for a very long time. By the time they reached that cost of about $5,000 for a luxury liner. So, you can imagine that, like, the Zeppelin company had their eye on bringing costs down eventually so that more people could afford it.

23:24But in the meantime, to start, I mean, that's kind of what you do. You attract everyone's attention by getting the richest, most famous, most powerful people to come fly on your friendly skies. And then newspapers write about it, like, oh, my gosh, did you see Mrs. Astor 800 feet up hanging from the outside of the Hindenburg? It was amazing. You could see right up her dress. That's what newspapers want to write about, you know? And so, that's what they were doing. Yeah. And today, Mrs. Astor's equivalent, I guess, is Katy Perry.

23:55That's exactly right, Chuck. What a time to live. That was amazing. So, I mentioned hydrogen and helium as the LTA, lighter-than-air gases, used to power anything like this. And they had a real decision to make early on with the Hindenburg, like, what to use. And the original design was hydrogen, but then they said there was a crash in 1930 of the British airship R101, out of the single digits, still crashed.

24:27Survived impact, but everybody died in the hydrogen fire because hydrogen turns out super flammable. So, Hugo Eckner said, you know what, let's go to helium. It's way more stable. It's a little bit heavier, so we're going to have to design a larger envelope so we can keep that same payload. But then, there was a U.S. helium embargo, and the United States was the only maker and seller of helium at the time. And so, they said, all right, you know what, let's go back to hydrogen and let's just cross our fingers.

25:00Yeah, there was a helium act of 1925 that I never heard of that the U.S. was like, this is a natural resource that we really need, so we're just going to keep it all to ourselves. We did a podcast on that at some point, right?

25:13On helium. No, we definitely talked about it because there was a shortage and it was all, everybody was really worried about it going away. And then, all of a sudden, we found a huge new vein of it in the United States and now there's no problem with helium anymore. Stuff like that makes me feel like we're definitely in a simulation sometimes, you know? Yeah. It happens a lot. Like, people are like, oh, we're hitting peak oil or, you know, like, we're going to run out of helium and all this horrible stuff's going to happen. And then, nothing happens. Like, something comes along and just completely does away with that randomly.

25:44Yeah. At any rate, that was not the case for the designers of the Hindenburg. They had to go with hydrogen, like you said. And because they had made that envelope so much bigger to accommodate the more helium that they were going to need, they were going to now have to fill the whole thing with hydrogen. So, they added a bunch more passenger cabins to basically, well, make more money, but also to make it heavier so that it would do all the same things it would have had it been helium. Yeah. So, it wouldn't float away. Pretty much.

26:14Pretty much. We went over some of the sizes. I think we should probably mention the cruising speed was 76 miles an hour with a topper of 84 miles per hour. Yeah. Uh, in total, you've got about 40 flight crew, 10 to 12 stewards and cooks, as we'll learn, there was a bartender as well. Mm-hmm. Uh, and then 50 passengers in 36, and then up to 72, I guess because they built those extra cabins, right? Right, right. And that was 1937 season.

26:46And I think 1936 was the only complete season in the Hindenburg service. Um, one other thing that I was trying to get to the bottom of that was surprisingly hard to find was its cruising altitude. Oh, yeah. Apparently, its usual cruising altitude or normal cruising altitude was like 650 feet or about 200 meters. Man, that's impressive. It is impressive, but they would usually fly lower to basically fly under clouds rather than through or over them. Um, so, uh, yeah, I mean, these things, I saw somebody say, like, these are, they were flying at the height of, like, you know, the tallest trees in the world.

27:21Like, it wasn't that high up that they were flying. Yeah. I mean, also, and I don't know if that had anything to do with it, but you want people to see this thing if they're trying to drum up business. Sure. And, again, those pictures over in New York City, that thing is pretty low. It is. Like, like, kind of concerningly low, actually. Yeah. Yeah. So, Chuck, just a little more about what it looked like inside and what it was, you know, like aboard the Hindenburg. Remember, these were luxury, like, state-of-the-art luxury accommodations in the mid-1930s.

27:52But they also had to adjust for weight and stuff like that, like you were saying. It seemed like there was formica everywhere. Like, it looked like the walls were made of formica, even. Yeah, totally a lot of formica. But that jibed a little bit with sort of the Art Deco look that seemed like it ran throughout. Yeah, for sure. They dressed for dinner, like you would think. There was an aluminum piano made specifically because a baby grand would just be too heavy. Yeah. And they had, of course, incredible meals in this incredibly cramped dining room.

28:27Yeah. And then there was a smoking room, which at first I'm like, well, of course there's a smoking room. It's the 30s. And then I was like, hydrogen dirigible. That is actually pretty remarkable. Yeah. It had a double airlock. Apparently there was one lighter, so they didn't trust people to, you know, just to bring their own lighters. So there was one lighter that would light everyone's cigarettes, I guess, or whatever else they were smoking. Pipes, I imagine, cigars. Blunts. Who knows? The bartender was, I can't remember the guy's name, but they talked about him in the YouTube video, and he seemed to be a pretty popular guy.

29:02And there's one story of a famous passenger who created a drink, or I guess rather his wife did, British author Leslie Chateras, who created the Saint. Yeah. Franchise. His wife Pauline was aboard, and apparently they ran out of gin, like probably pretty fast. A lot of gin-based drinks back then. Sure. So she created a martini made from Kishbosser, which I looked up, which is like some sort of a cherry thing.

29:33Yeah, it's like a cherry brandy. It's really good.

29:36Oh, you've had it? Oh, yeah. Yeah, remember when I was like super into making cocktails? Yeah, I mean, I've used like the cherry, like the Luxardo liqueur and stuff. Is it sort of like that? No, it's much lighter, and it's not nearly as syrupy and heavy. It's more of a spirit than like a syrup, you know what I mean? Yeah, well, because the, yeah, Luxardo is a liqueur, but the other one is like a legit 90-proof, you know, kind of thing. Yeah, where you're like, whew.

30:07But it is very good, and it's like a cherry flavor, so she used that instead of gin. And apparently the, I don't, did the bartender die? Because like supposedly the rest of the ingredients are lost to history. I mean, I guess Pauline must have died, or else she could have just probably told everybody, by the way, like after this tragedy settles, I created a whiz-bang of a drink up there. Exactly. Remind me to tell you about the Hindenburg cocktail I came up with. But I saw somebody surmise that the other ingredients were probably dry vermouth, which would make it a martini, grenadine, and not like rose's grenadine, but like the real pomegranate syrup, and a lemon peel.

30:49Yeah, that sounds nice. Sure. I would try that. So, what else? They had that piano. Oh, the cabins had running hot and cold water. They had a little fold-down desk, but they were small. The crew cabins were just like you would expect a crew cabin to be, very small. It looked like those beds were a couple of feet wide. Yeah, and there were bunk beds, too. Yeah. So, with an art deco ladder, no less, too. Of course. It was kind of cool looking. I'm not a huge fan of the 1930s aesthetic.

31:22Ooh, I love it. I liked the ladders for the bunk beds. I'm big into deco. Maybe you can get one of those off of eBay or something. Oh, man. Like a Hindenburg ladder? It's probably dead or gone, up in flames, I would guess. Well, some of that stuff survived. It's in a museum. True. So, you couldn't buy it, but maybe we could, you know, bust it out. Yeah, if we could break into the Smithsonian.

31:46Get that ladder for you. Just pass everything else by and go straight for the Hindenburg ladder. That's it. That's all you want. And I'd be like, I'd get it home and be like, I don't even have bunk beds.

31:59So, this is all getting lots of press. Like, this is a big deal. Remember, the Hindenburg was part of a planned transatlantic fleet. So, this is big news. One thing that a lot of people forget is that the Nazis were in charge of Germany at the time. The Hindenburg was a German ship. It was a civilian ship, but it still had big, fat swastikas on its tail fins. And, as everyone knows, the Hindenburg went up in flames. I think it's no coincidence that its tail went up in flames first. Because, why wouldn't it?

32:32Right. That's a good point. I didn't think about that, actually. So, the Nazis were like, hey, we're trying to get everybody to like us, to psych them out. Right. And, let's send the Hindenburg on a three-day publicity tour around Europe, essentially. That was its maiden voyage in March of 1936. Yeah, they did a lot of these little propaganda flights. And, apparently, the one that lifted off on May 6th had some engine trouble. But, they had had to skip endurance tests because of one of those propaganda flights, right?

33:07Yeah. They were like, it'll be fine. They apparently think that they would have found the engine troubles. But, Hindenburg made its first passage to America in May of 1936, which is confusing because it was May of 1937 when it had its last voyage to America. So, almost exactly a year later, in between its first trip to America and its last trip to America, it got me all throughout researching this.

33:37Yeah, for sure. I kept going like, wait, what? How are these people alive? And then… Right. Yeah, they completed 34 flights in 1936, which included some of those propaganda flights, one of which, very famously, at the 1936 Olympic Games there in Berlin. And then, you know, round-trip flights to America, and then the one to Brazil that you mentioned. Mm-hmm. And, they had, you know, they were catering, like you mentioned, the Astors, you know, Nelson Rockefeller, the head of Eastern Airlines, TWA, Pan Am.

34:07Like, I think they were kind of rubbing it in the face of all these early airlines… Right. …saying, come fly on this super slow but kind of awesome thing. I wonder also if they were like, hey, don't you guys want to start your own airship division? We'll sell you the airships, you know? Yeah, I bet. It could have also been a little of both. Yeah, I bet you're right. That millionaires flight you mentioned, Eddie Rickenbacker was also on that, and he's the American flying ace from World War I who took down the Red Baron. Yeah, yeah. So, I'm sure it was a tad awkward around the other German military Nazi leaders who were on that millionaires flight, too.

34:41Yeah. Well, it's this guy. Right. So, that was 1936. It was a triumphant year for the Hindenburg, and it had six more successful flights in 1937 when it started. I say we take a break and come back again, and things just start to go poorly for the Hindenburg. How about that?

Investigation and Theories

35:00All right. We'll be right back. Work can be a little weird. One minute you're in a meeting that could have been an email. The next you're trying to decode corporate jargon that somehow means nothing. And don't even get us started on the quick sync that turns into a 45-minute deep dive. Yeah. Well, the truth is, figuring out your career isn't always straightforward.

35:34Whether you're trying to grow, pivot, or just stay relevant, it can feel like you're navigating it all on your own. Well, that's where LinkedIn comes in. That's right. LinkedIn can help you grow your career, helping you confidently navigate your path with insights, ideas, and inspiration from your professional community. You can stay up to date with the latest trends in your field, connect with people who get it, and discover opportunities tailored to your goals, your experience, and what actually matters to you. Whether you're looking for something new or just trying to grow where you are, LinkedIn gives you the tools and connections to move forward with confidence.

36:05Because LinkedIn is the network that works for you. Visit linkedin.com slash no stuff to learn more. Guys, we got to talk about your secret late-night internet searches. You know, the ones? Bumpy leg rash, hair loss, itchy bum. Trying to figure out your body by endlessly searching for answers. We all do it, and it never works. Thankfully, there's Amazon Health AI. It can connect your symptoms with your medical history to offer personalized care 24-7.

36:40So, call off the search. Amazon Health AI is here. Healthcare just got less painful.

36:49You know, it's hard to believe that the first phone call ever happened over 150 years ago. Just think about that, Chuck. Yeah, it was a long time ago. And, you know, I'm Gen X, so I grew up talking on the phone with my friends in high school and stuff, and it was a really fond memory. And, you know, over all these years and all these phone calls, AT&T has been there, connecting people in meaningful ways. And this is more than a story of technological innovation. It's a story of human connection. That's right. Over that 150 years, there's been a lot of connection with people, whether it was me in high school or family connecting with one another long distance or those long-distance relationships.

37:24And AT&T has been there for it all. Connecting changes everything. AT&T. All right. I was confused by the May stuff as well, because here we are in May again, one year after the first commercial passage in 36. Yeah. All those successful flights later, the seventh one of the new year, on May 3, 1937, Captain Max Pruss was at the helm, and it lifted off there in Frankfurt, headed toward Lake Hirsch.

38:03There's a naval air base there, by the way, which is why they kept going to suburban New Jersey. Yeah, which is kind of shocking. They were letting the Nazis land blimps at a naval air base in New Jersey. Yeah. I mean, this was still – I mean, this was just before they probably would have said no, right? Right. Yeah. So they got all the way there. They flew. And that's sort of the cruel tragedy of this is – or one of them is, you know, if there were any nerves, they're like landing in New Jersey. And they're like, this is great.

38:35We made it, everybody. We're all sort of drunk. We put out our last cigars. It was a storm. There was a storm happening, so they sort of delayed the landing. They flew out over the ocean for a few more hours. I imagine everyone got even more liquored up. And then finally, around 7 p.m., they descended in high winds from about 500 feet down, down, down to a little under 300 feet. Yeah. And they actually dropped those mooring ropes, which turned out – spoiler alert – could have caused this whole thing. Yeah.

39:05And they secured those ropes at 725. They secured those ropes to the ground with their winch system. And in less than 30 seconds, it was all over. Yeah. But the ropes – bear this in mind. The ropes had been dropped and touching the ground for at least four minutes by this time. Right? Yeah. So, yes, it took – I think I saw 34 seconds from the time when the flames erupted to the time when the entire thing was destroyed and crashed on the ground. It went that fast.

39:35Like I said, the stern, the tail of it, caught fire first. And the flames just kind of blew through the envelope and came out the nose. And what's just mind-boggling is that as it landed on the ground – because it was a light skeleton, but not something you would want to land on you. And, in fact, one of the ground crew died from the skeleton landing on him.

40:01People – once they hit the ground, people were running out of the flames and survived. They were running for their lives and they actually made it, which is crazy. Yeah. I mean, we'll go ahead and go over the numbers. Two-thirds of the people basically survived. There were 97 people on board total, 36 passengers, 61 crew. And only 36 people perished, 13 passengers and 22 crew, and then the one ground crew person that you were talking about. And very famously, it was called live by a Chicago radio reporter named Herb Morrison.

40:36Yeah. And I think we should either – I'll either read it – well, I'll read it, but hopefully we can replace it with the real thing. Like, surely this is, like, within the public domain, right? I saw uncertain, according to the Library of Congress. All right. Well, shall I do it then? Yeah, do it. Can you do a great Herb Morrison impression, though? I'll do my best. Wait, can you do it as Jim Morrison? Maybe I should do it as Sammy Davis Jr., just to give it some light.

41:06I would love to hear that, if you're okay with it. No, no, I can't do that. That would be – even this – decades later, it would be disrespectful, I think. Yeah, I guess it hasn't been 100 years. No. All right, so here we go. This was Herb Morrison's call, and this is what was played and literally played in movie theater newsreels, like, the next day. So it's all over the place. It's fire, and it's crashing. It's burning, bursting into flames, and it's falling in the mooring mast. This is the worst of the worst catastrophes in the world. Oh, it's crashing.

41:37Oh, four or five hundred feet into the sky, and it's a terrific crash, ladies and gentlemen. There's smoke, and there's flames now. And the frame is crashing to the ground. Oh, the humanity. And all the passengers screaming around here. I can't talk, ladies and gentlemen. Honest, it's just laying there, a mass of smoking wreckage. And everybody can hardly breathe and talk. Honest, I can hardly breathe. I'm going to step inside where I cannot see it. That was excellent.

42:04If you listen to Herb Morrison actually doing this, he's in between a lot of these sentences. He's like, oh, oh. Yeah, yeah. He is just completely overwhelmed. It happens immediately. The moment he sees those flames, he's just completely overwhelmed. Go listen to Herb Morrison calling that. Because it's just, it's quite stirring. And he's the one who gave us that phrase, oh, the humanity. Yeah, apparently that's where that comes from. I did, I just kind of wanted to do a straight reading. I didn't want to do all the moaning.

42:35No, no, I mean, no one expected you to do that. Well, I didn't want to arouse anybody. Oh, yeah. You've always got your eye like three steps ahead, man. I hope so. But yeah, oh, the humanity. That had never been said before? Is that true? I don't know. I don't know if it had been said, but certainly Herb Morrison was the one who popularized it. It seems to me like everything that he said was just pouring out of him without thinking. So I would guess that was just off the cuff for him. Man, it's amazing. So again, only 36 of the 97 people aboard perished.

43:08Immediately, there were about 1,500 U.S. Navy personnel there that were, you know, all of a sudden doing not much of a search, but just rescue attempts. And like I said, it was all over the news the next morning. It was on movie theater newsreels. Within hours, both American and German investigators were there. And immediately, theories started coming out kind of left and right. Yeah, so this is the 30s. Everybody's already starting to get wise to what the Nazis are like.

43:40There's also communists running around, maybe even old school anarchists who like to throw bombs. So the idea that it was an act of sabotage was bandied about very quickly. One of the first people who had their eyes set on them was a guy named Joseph Spey. Have you, did you see his professional name? Oh, no, I didn't. I saw he was an acrobat, but what was his name? He was an acrobat. He was also an actor. He appears in Marathon Man. Apparently, he's the guy who dies in the car crash that starts everything off.

44:12Oh, wow. His professional name as an acrobat was Ben Dova.

44:19I'm not kidding. Oh, wow. That's amazing. Yeah. So he, I'm just going to call him Ben Dova from here on out. Sounds like a Bart Simpson call into most average. It totally does. He was deemed suspicious by one of the stewards, a German steward, aboard the Hindenburg. And apparently, the German steward told the authorities who were investigating this that he found Joseph Spey, Ben Dova, quote, unsympathetic to airship travel.

44:50Like he wasn't, he wasn't just overjoyed or blown away by it, apparently. Which is spoken like a true everyday fascist POS, if you think about it. Yeah. But he might also have been like, I'm Ben Dova. You think, like, you should see what I've seen. Exactly. Well, that was one of the other things, too, that when he was being investigated, they were like, he's also an acrobat. He could probably climb around inside the skeleton and plant a bomb. So, apparently, they found zero evidence to that of, like, supporting him being a bomber whatsoever.

45:22Yeah. I have not seen the film from 1975 with, what's the guy's name? George C. Scott. And Anne Bancroft, among others. But it seemed from the trailer that they fully, like, just fictionalized and that it was a bomb and it was sabotaged. And that was the movie. Oh, really? I didn't know that. That's lame. Yeah, that's what it looked like to me. And apparently, it was a $15 million movie at the time, which was a lot of dough in 1975 for a movie. Sure. What was going on with blimps and disaster stuff in the 70s?

45:55Because there was also that movie Black Sunday. Yeah, it was just the peak. It was peak disaster film. So, they were looking at all angles, I think. I gotcha. I should have guessed that. There were other people who were considered for sabotage. Anti-Nazis. Sure. There was one that said the Zeppelin Company and or the Nazi Party blew up the ship for insurance money. Yeah, that was one. I think it was covered for $15 million. And according to West Egg, that's about $355 million today.

46:26Oh, wow. Do not think the Nazi Party would not have considered doing that. Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, bombs being fired at from below, from above. The one thing they do know for sure is that the hydrogen was what caused it to go up in flames in like 30 seconds. Right. There was no controversy about that. How that happened is still not for sure known. Witnesses said that as the ship approached, it appeared to be glowing before the fire even started.

46:58And so, at the time, scientists heard that and they were like, oh, okay, well, it gathered an electrostatic charge because of the storms that were going on. And there was probably like a hydrogen leak. And that's what ignited the whole thing. Right. The thing is, is like that electrostatic charge, if it had like sparked, it would have had to have sparked exactly where that hydrogen leak was. And across an 800-foot dirigible, the chances of the spark and the leak happening at the exact same spot are pretty low, right?

47:30Yeah, I agree. So, there's other theories that are, that try to, basically, basically everyone agrees there was, it was, there was an electrostatic charge. Somehow the electrostatic charge sparked. Somehow that spark set off the hydrogen explosion. Almost everyone agrees on that. But within that, you can, you still have a lot of room to maneuver around and figure out, you know, what exactly led to this disaster. And what's amazing is that we still don't know today.

48:00Yeah, I mean, there have been a lot of books written about it over the years. There was one in 1962 called Who Destroyed the Hindenburg? By A.A. Hurling. And they blamed a ground rigger named Eric Spell, who was actually on the crew. He was in, inside the blimp. And apparently blew it up to appease or to please his communist girlfriend. But I don't know if he survived or not, but that doesn't make sense. And I don't think there was any evidence at all about that. No, and now that I see Michael Mooney, he wrote a book called The Hindenburg.

48:32And that movie was based on the Hindenburg, and he basically used that theory. So that's why they would have made it like a bombing. Yeah, he must have been the character in the movie that I saw that was running around up to no good. Ben Dover is a character in that movie, but he goes by, I think, Joseph Spell, I think. Oh, this is a missed opportunity. Oh, for sure. Yeah. There's also a theory about incendiary paint, which is basically a scientist from NASA named Addison Bain, who his career is based on creating hydrogen fuel propulsion systems, right?

49:07Using hydrogen as fuel. Yeah, so he's pro-hydrogen. Very much so. He had an idea that, no, the hydrogen was, that was secondary. That what really ignited first, and then eventually ignited the hydrogen, was this coating on the outer shell of the envelope, which we talked about that kept the sun's rays off, and that that ignited. And he really went to town on this. Apparently, he had a television special and had to really work at getting an actual piece of salvaged envelope from the Hindenburg.

49:41He burned it on TV, but he really had to bend over backwards to get this thing to light. So, essentially, his own demonstration proved to critics, like, that theory's not, doesn't hold hydrogen. Yeah, it was debunked. Boy, you were just flying all over the place with these jokes and double entendres. Very impressive. Thanks. I appreciate you noticing. The giant capacitor theory, there was just, like, five years ago, there's a Caltech professor named Konstantinos Giapas.

50:13Not sure where he was from. But he offered a different take on the ignition source. I think there was a PBS show, Hindenburg, colon, the new evidence. And here was the deal. There was, you know, that outer skin that we were talking about, but that skin wasn't directly wrapped on the frame. It had these little wooden spacers, like, hundreds, I would imagine thousands of these things, spacing it out so it didn't actually touch the frame. And his proposal was that when the ship dropped those ropes that we talked about, and I said to put a pin in it,

50:44that the space between the ship's skin collected a lot of positive electrostatic charge during that storm. So the area between the skin and the metal frame collected electrons when the ropes hit the ground, and it turned it into just a big, basically a giant bomb, a big energy-storing capacitor that was dotted with these little capacitors, like ignition points, essentially. Yeah, that's, so that's what he, his, that's what we were saying, that the ignition point, the spark, and the hydrogen leak being at the same spot was very unlikely.

51:19And what Geopas basically said was like, no, all those spacers became capacitors themselves. And they were all storing all this energy, negative on the frame, positive on the skin, and all it took was one spark for all of them to start sparking. And if you have hundreds, or like you said, thousands of little capacitors sparking at once, it's going to blow up a hydrogen dirigible, and it's going to do it pretty fast. And I said that there was four minutes in between the time when they dropped the mooring cables to the ground

51:51and the time the Hindenburg blew up. And in this, in one of the tests that Geopas ran for NOVA for this program, he basically ran essentially the same situation that the Hindenburg would have gone through under his theory, and it took four minutes for it to build up enough of a charge for the capacitor to spark. Yeah, this sounds pretty good. Yeah, I like this one a lot, too. Yeah, and it's the most recent one. I guess the others have been debunked, so, you know, I'm bandwagoning, admittedly.

52:23For sure. So, one of the things that a lot of people aren't aware of is that the Hindenburg, when it went up, not only did it immediately put an end to the idea of transatlantic airship flights, or airships in general, aside from Goodyear, who braved on. That was it, yeah. It put the kibosh on hydrogen as a fuel. That's why people like Addison Bain in the 90s were coming up with these things trying to defend hydrogen. They're saying, no, it's safe, it's safe. And people are like, did you see the Hindenburg?

52:53You're a fool. And apparently it is safe in some ways compared to, like, gasoline. Yeah. I mean, there are new airships happening, and there's, you know, there's people working with hydrogen again. So, it's like enough time has passed to where they're looking into this kind of thing again. I think the Pathfinder 1, Google co-founder Sergey Brin is the sort of brainchild behind that one. That thing is 400 feet long, 8 feet long. And I think it's still, like, none of these things are commercialized yet.

53:28They're, like, still in testing phases and development phases. Yeah, and they all run on helium, not hydrogen, too. Yeah, I mean, hydrogen's being used for other things. But, yeah, they're still, I don't think they could ever use hydrogen again for something like this. We've talked about the Hindenburg before. It must have been on, like, one of the videos we did because I remember us saying that none of the people who jumped, no, none of the people who didn't jump died.

53:59That it was only the people who jumped from the Hindenburg who died. That's not true. That is an urban legend. And we kept it going. But this was 15 years ago. So, come on. Give us a break. Okay. Yeah. If you want to see parts of it, I told you, you know, some is in the Smithsonian. Some of the pieces of the ship, some of the luxury stuff, you know, kind of like the Titanic survived. The National Postal Museum has some stuff. Obviously, the Air and Space Museum has some stuff. And that's where you can see it.

54:30Just keep your eyes off that ladder.

54:35That's for Josh. Thanks, man. I appreciate you looking out for me like that. Since Chuck is looking out for me with Smithsonian artifacts, that means, obviously, it's time for Listener Mail, guys.

54:49This is just a really nice email from Michael in Columbus, Ohio. Hey, guys, just want to give you thanks for being one of the most consistent aspects of my world for almost two decades. I started listening when I was 10 years old. Nice. On and off, of course, at first. But in the last couple of years, I've been listening to new episodes every week. Such a gift you've given and are still giving to this world, sharing your stories, perspectives, and jokes, and rants and spectacles with us. I truly hope you two and Jerry and all the people who help behind the scenes are able to recognize the benefit and impact of having consistent worldly discourse.

55:22Being able to turn on a podcast and learn about landing on the moon or the wonders of the world or anything in history really inspired the learning in me and continues to spark my curiosity every week. Josh, Chuck, and team, you guys rock. Thanks from a 27-year-old kid trying to figure out this world. Hope remains alive. And that is Michael in Columbus. Man, alive. That was really great. Thanks a lot, Michael. Yeah, that inspires us. Yeah, I'm inspired to go another 18 years, Chuck.

55:50I hope I live that long. You better, man. Well, I plan on it. Okay. Well, if you want to be like Michael and send us just a really, gee whiz, that's super nice email. We love those. Love them. You can send it off to stuffpodcasts.iheartradio.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

56:21Hey, everybody. We've told you before and we'll tell you again. SimpliSafe is pretty great. And for a lot of good reasons, too. That's right. SimpliSafe has fully customizable systems to fit your exact needs. Comprehensive sensors and indoor-outdoor cameras protecting against intruders, fires, and floods. And it's all backed by SimpliSafe's professional monitoring agents who dispatch emergency help when you need it. Yeah.

56:51Over 5 million people value and trust SimpliSafe with their home security every day. And I'm one of them, too. It's also super easy to set up and customize a system that ships right to your door in a few days. And there's no drilling required, either. Plus, you don't have to wait around for a technician's appointment. That's right. No long-term contracts, affordable pricing, and they are customer first because they were named America's Best Customer Service by Newsweek. Yep. Stuff You Should Know listeners will get 50% off a new system for signing up for professional monitoring and your first month is free just by visiting SimpliSafe.com slash stuff.

57:23That's half off at SimpliSafe.com slash stuff. There's no safe like SimpliSafe. SimpliSafe.com slash stuff.

57:58For more important disclosures, please visit Protective.com. Imagine never buying gas again. Well, you can with an electric vehicle. EVs are easy to charge as your phone and perfect for everyday life. You can drive daily with confidence everywhere you go. Most Americans drive just 40 miles a day, and most EVs are equipped with 200 to 400 miles of range. Plus, they've got fewer parts, they require fewer repairs, and they produce fewer headaches. And with all those pluses, it's no surprise that we're seeing more and more EVs on the road, which makes the planet happier and happier.

58:30The way forward is electric. You can learn more about EVs at electricforall.org. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.