99% Invisible - 487- Atlas Obscura

Episode Date: April 20, 2022

Standing on Beechey island, a peninsula off Devon Island in the Canadian Arctic, are four lonely graves: three members of an ill-fated expedition to the Northwest Passage, and one of the men who went looking for them. In 1845, Sir John Franklin led an expedition to find the Northwest Passage, a direct route from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean across the arctic, on two ships that were called "unstoppable" at the time. They were stopped, though the exact circumstances remain murky.The story of the graves is chronicled on the Atlas Obscura Podcast, a short, daily celebration of the world's strange and wondrous places. The podcast has a mission similar to 99pi, which is to inspire wonder and curiosity about the world.  Today we're featuring two stories from the show.The second story visits the Unclaimed Baggage Center in Scottsboro, Alabama, which bills itself as "the nation's only retailer of lost luggage." If you've ever lost a bag during air travel, it probably wound up there, along with many other treasures and oddities.Subscribe to Atlas Obscure on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify or wherever you get podcasts.

This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars and I am standing in the Galapagos in front of a Congress of Marine iguanas. They're piled on top of each other. Occasionally if you can make it through the sound of the waves and the wind, you can hear them spitting out. So water from their nose. They just sneeze on each other and lie on each other. And they seem like they enjoy life pretty well. Last week, I was in the Galapagos Islands, which for me is the ultimate travel destination. I'm on Fernandina Islands with the marine iguanas,

are very plentiful. Also, the flightless comrades, who keeps his wings open, while he's just standing on a lava rock. It's really so looking. My family hiked and swam with these astounding creatures in this completely foreign landscape.

The ground is black lava. The iguanas just match the lava. You can almost step on them. They don't move. There are no predators. They have no fear of humans at all. And you can just walk over it up to them. You don't touch them, but you just walk real close to them.

Take a picture. And sometimes this season, you know. It was life-changing. I'll probably end up doing a story about it someday, just by myself, but fundamentally, I was there just to be there. And it was amazing. For 40 years of my life, I could barely conceive of doing this kind of trip, but I have that privilege now.

And after leaving the islands, my first thought was, I have to do this more often. Experiencing as much of the world as possible is something that I need to place a little closer to the foundation of my hierarchy of needs. This is something the team in Atlas Obscura figured out a long time ago. Atlas Obscura is the definitive guide to the world's hidden wonders. They write books, they host experiences, they lead excursions, and they have a podcast that I really enjoy.

So in order for me to have enough time to take my life-changing trip, we are presenting a couple of life-changing trips from Atlas Obscura that capture their adventurous and curious spirit. This is the beachy island graves. Way, way up north, far in the Canadian Arctic. There's a lonely wind-swept island. No trees, nothing just pebble beats, backed by mountains. Even in summer, it can be well below freezing on this island.

Cheats of ice float by in the bay, a crisp wind whips across its pebble beaches, and there are no signs of life. Out here, standing alone on this rock, are four simple wooden headstones. These graves are the remnants of one of the most infamous Arctic expeditions of all time. I'm Dylan Thurus and this is Atlas Obscura, an exploration of the world's strange, incredible, and wondrous places. In this two-part series, we are going to venture out towards those frozen graves, following two groups of adventurers, separated by more than 170 years, and will play witness to the disasters that befell them all. They've all been there. Yeah, yeah, so I had a great time.

Iron Man in wooden ships. A description of heroism never more apt is when applied to those who brave the Arctic. I have to admit that I am a sucker for true life adventure stories. The extraordinary tales, the human spirit against unforgiving odds, I kinda eat it up. My bookshelf is embarrassingly full of these kinds of stories, and included among them, of course, is one of the classics, one of the epics, the story of the Franklin Expedition. Sir John Franklin was at 59, a veteran of two Oberlin expeditions in the North American Army. On the morning of May 19, 1845, Captain John Franklin said goodbye to his wife, Lady Jane Franklin, and stepped aboard his new ship.

This was the beginning of his fourth Arctic mission. He already had a reputation for being tough. His nickname in the press was the man who ate his boots, because during one of his previous archite expeditions, Venus crew had survived by eating like in and their own boot leather. At nearly 60 years old, Franklin was embarking on one more mission, one that he knew would define him. Franklin was attempting the Victorian era's version of the moonshot. Franklin was going to try and chart the Northwest passage.

Finding the passage was all about money, about trade. European countries had wanted a faster route to Asia so that they could do more exporting. And the expeditions to find this trade route date back to 1497. The voyage meant sailing up and over North America through the incredible expanse of Arctic ice in order to ultimately reach the other side, the Pacific Ocean.

And even as the route lost its lustre as an economic possibility, the British stayed obsessed with charting it. By the time Franklin said sail in 1845, many had tried, failed, and died. failed and died. The two ships on the expedition, the HMS Arabis and the HMS Terror, had been reinforced to withstand the ice, and they were being sailed by an experienced crew of 134 sailors and officers. They even had a monkey on board named Jacko, but most of all they had lots and lots of food. 36,000 pounds of biscuits, 32,000 pounds of salted beef, 8,000 tins of preserved meat, they had a thousand pounds of just mustard and 3600 gallons of booze. It was enough food to last every sailor for three years.

When did you decide to go to the Arctic? What kind of incited you to want to take that trip? You know, I have no idea. Other than I like adventures, I was interested in the Franksville expedition. That's John Stewart. And in 2018, 173 years after the Franklin Expedition sailed, John Stewart, a thunder-be-Canada, climbed onto a little zodiac kind of inflatable boat, and motored out to a large cruise ship floating in the Arctic Bay. Oh, good. Yeah, I know, I know. At 91 years old, John Stewart was almost certainly the oldest passenger on the expedition.

Yeah, well, I know I'm not one to go and sit in the beach down the floor. I like to follow history if I can. This ship, John, was boarding, was called the academic Iofi, and it was part of an Arctic tourist cruise run by a company called One Oceans, and sailed by an experienced Russian crew. The purpose of the cruise was to follow in Franklin's footsteps. To bring Franklin obsessed travelers one step closer to the object

of their historical fascination. And the ship, the Iofi, was carrying a total of 126 people just about the size of Franklin's original crew. Although to be fair, the crew's expedition at John Stewart was on was a little bit cushier than Franklin's. Meals were served via a buffet line, and there were optional yoga classes.

John had opted for the cheaper shared bunk option. So I shared a cabin with somebody I had never met before, and I was shown to my cabin. I was the old-me person there, but eventually this young, good, lucky, inspired fellow stepped in and nearer, nearer, but me. And that fellow was me. I think we both hit it off pretty well at a very short period of time. I think we became good friends.

That's right. That's right. that's right. I was there as part of an Atlas Obscura trip, helping to make sure our travelers got what they needed. But John wasn't actually one of our Atlas Obscura travelers. He was just my delightful, unexpected, 91-year-old bunkmate. But that first night, John and I stayed up talking.

And he told me all about his wife and their three sons. Mara Friar won, they were young. We did a lot of canoeing around here, great canoe country up here. But they were quite adventurous trips and I really enjoyed them too. He told me all about his adventures and about how he'd been traveling alone more

since his wife passed away. And even how just a short time before our trip, he'd actually lost one of his three sons in a biking accident. It's a sad thing, but it's life, he can't really think about it. We had some wonderful times together and almost every year we went on some major holiday somewhere. That evening, I made a note to myself. John and I were going to stick together on this trip. He was the hardiest 91-year-old I had ever met. But I figured we could both use a good crewmate.

both use a good grooming. On July 6, 1845, Captain John Franklin wrote home from the whalefish islands just off the coast of Greenland. It was a letter to his wife and daughter, telling them not to worry, even if it was gone for many years. Part of the plan was for the Franklin expedition to spend multiple winters in the Arctic, and the ship was provisioned to last that long.

As the Franklin expedition left the coast of Greenland, one of Franklin's crew drew a pencil sketch of the Greenland Bay, a lovely image of a single ship, floating alone surrounded by ice and rock. And with that, the crew began to sail up and over the very top of the globe. Of course, Franklin and his crew were not actually the first explorers to make it this far into the Northwest passage, and the idea that they could even discover it was wrong. The Arctic waterways running from Greenland to Alaska

had already been home to Arctic and Inuit peoples for over 4,000 years. By the time Franklin came to find it, the Northwest passage had been thoroughly explored by Inuit tribes as they hunted, fished, and settled across thousands of miles of Arctic coastline. Then as Franklin's expedition had a deeper and deeper into the Arctic, the Inuit watched from afar, observing his progress through the passage, and into the dangers that they

already knew. Here on Beach Island, at the upper reaches of the passage, are the graves of three ordinary sailors doomed by extraordinary circumstances. During the first winter in the Arctic, the Franklin expedition hit an impasse, a frozen expanse of ice that they couldn't sail through, so they tried to turn around, but they were stuck. The way back had frozen solid.

That in and of itself wasn't the end of the world. They were in the Arctic. It was full of ice and they had expected something like this to happen, so they settled in for the first winter. And during that winter, the first touch of death visited the expedition. Three men, 20-year-old John Torrington, 32-year-old William Brain, and 25-year-old John Hartnell all died from some combination of pneumonia, malnourishment, zinc deficiency, and lead poisoning. In fact, they may well have been ill when they first boarded the ship.

When he died, 20-year-old John Torrington only weighed 85 pounds. All three were buried on beachy island. The very graves, John and I, were sailing off to sea. On the second day aboard the academic afty, John and I woke up, and along with all the other new passengers, we went into what was called the mudroom, where we practiced putting on our fowel weather gear. Basically just huge waterproof waiters and boots. The ocean water temperature was around 28 degrees or just below freezing so these weren't going to do you much good if you actually fell into the water but they were meant to keep you from getting soaked

when you went out on one of the little zodiac boats. After that we clomped our way up onto the deck where we all got trained in the use of the lifeboats. As we listened to the instructions, we stood along the bow of the ship and looked out at this new landscape in front of us. The wind was overpowering. The Arctic Ocean lapped against bare rocks. There are no trees, just water and stone. To my unfamiliar eyes, the landscape felt inhospitable and barren. Just about done with our introductory training, we all filed down below to watch a PowerPoint about how to avoid getting eaten by polar bears.

And I remember the rumors dark showing must have been showing PowerPoints, but as we were sitting there listening to this, all of a sudden there was a huge crash. I can still hear it. It's just like somebody was beating a oil drum with steel wires, and then we were throwing forward off our chairs. And obviously we hit something, and I think you could say if we say we were going to eat a rock at a hard place because we had hit a rock. We were all sent to our cabins and told the stay there.

The ship was listing at an angle that made it hard to walk. And as John and I slowly made our way back up the stairs, we saw the Russian crew, which up until this point, we hadn't seen that much of, now running all over the place, shouting in Russian, all wearing their life jackets. And the ship continued to sway at this nauseating angle. John and I made it back to our room, and we put on the foul weathered gear we had just been trained to use.

Ready, potentially, to go back out on deck and lower those lifeboats down into the water. We just had to see our little tour water. And then we just sat, awaiting further instructions, waiting to hear whether we needed to abandon ship. Anyway, it's fun being with you, don't you? You too, John. Take care, don't forget. We were keeping our spirits high, but truth be told, I was pretty nervous.

Now I can't remember his name, I can only think of Franklin. He's the wrong one to think of Franklin. We don't want to think of Franklin, we want to think of Robinson. Robinson, Perry would be okay. Shackleton. Shackleton. Yeah. Pray for Shackleton, Franklin. I'm afraid for shackles. And frankly, I'm afraid for shackles.

As my 91-year-old bunkmate and I sat in our cabin, we were very much aware that we and John Franklin were exploring the same Arctic. The water and rocks outside my windows were just like what Franklin had sailed past himself. And everyone on my boat, including us, knew how the Franklin expedition had ended. So, yeah, we're in the heart and we run the ship around. We're like literally stuck on a rock. It's a very exciting journey. Too probably too exciting for everybody here.

How are we gonna give a wish to you? Sometime in the early 1900s, in the northern islands of the Canadian Arctic, an innuid girl named Humahawk was out with her father walking across the ice and rocks. She was about seven or eight at the time and Humahawk and her father were out looking for driftwood when something bright caught her eye. A glint of light, the sun reflecting off of an eye metal object. And they are laying in the snow of the vast Arctic plain. She found a single engraved dinner knife. It was a relic of a long-lost crew and one key in unlocking the fate of the Franklin expedition.

There was a huge bump. This is about 15-20 minutes after the big bump. And it feels like the ship is trying to pull itself off or off. They said they said, yeah, we've grounded. We've actually grounded the ship. So you can feel most of them. That's John Stewart of Thunder Bay, Canada.

He was my 91-year-old bunkmate on the academic Iofi, an Arctic cruise ship that was following in the path of the Franklin expedition. The Franklin expedition was a famous Arctic voyage that left in 1845 to chart the Northwest passage, but instead found themselves stuck in the ice. And on my trip, to follow in the footsteps of an Arctic voyage where things had gone incredibly wrong. Things had gone incredibly wrong. As John said about 15 minutes earlier, our cruise ship had hit a rock with an enormous crash,

throwing people to the ground. Outside on the deck you could hear the Arctic wind absolutely howling. The Russian crew was running around with their life jackets already on, shouting in Russian. John and I sat in our cabin waiting. We've been told of this time to get in for our heavy gear, and that's about where we are right now, just waiting for our next set of instructions. Inside, people were beginning to mill about. The crews had shut the bar down, but the buffet line was still operating. Inside, people were beginning to mill about. The crews had shut the bar down, but the buffet line was still operating.

It had to be the most awkward, nervous buffet I have ever been a part of. And wherever you were on the ship, inside or out, you could hear and feel the engines grinding as they struggled to pull us off this rock. At least until they shut them down, and the ship went quiet. I can remember sitting in the cabin waiting to be told what we're gonna do. I don't think anybody panicked that I saw.

Everybody was calm and accepted what had happened, and I think everybody accepted their fate. happened and I think everybody accepted their fate. In September of 1847, John Franklin and his Arctic expedition had been gone for over two years. Franklin had known before he left that it would take years to get through the Arctic, and no one expected to hear from him within a year, and two years didn't seem that far out of the ordinary. But Franklin's wife, Lady Jane Franklin, she was beginning to worry. She wrote to another famous art to explore Sir John Ross and urged him onward in a rescue

mission. She wrote, Should it be you to rescue them from parallel death, you will have your reward? Sir John Ross, the explorer Lady Franklin was hoping would rescue her husband, had himself spent four years surviving in the Arctic, and he was a long time friend of the Franklands. In 1848, more than three years after the Franklin expedition had departed, Ross set out alongside two other expeditions, each approaching from a different angle, on the hopes of finding the Franklin expedition.

Instead, they found nothing. Those would be the first rescue expeditions of many, many to follow, often with Lady Franklin as the motivating force behind them. The English public followed along with baited breath, finding Sir John Franklin and his lost expedition became a nationwide obsession. Lady Franklin, searching through the Arctic for her lost husband. In taverns across the country, ballads were sung of Lady Franklin's lament.

In 1854, nearly a decade after the Franklin expedition had first set out, and after more than a dozen rescue expeditions, one rescue mission leader, Captain Ray, returned from the Arctic with particularly grim news. He had spoken at length with the local Inuit tribes, and their stories of the expedition's fate were pretty clear. Captain Ray wrote that the unfortunate party under Sir John Franklin had met with a fate as melancholy and dreadful as it is possible to imagine.

The bodies of some 30 persons were discovered on the continent. From the mutilated state of many of the corpses and the contents of their kettles, it is evident that our wretched countrymen had been driven to the last resource, cannibalism, as a means of prolonging existence. In England, this news was met with absolute refusal. No one wanted to even entertain the idea that their noble hero and his crew might have resorted to cannibalism, least of all his wife, Lady Franklin. Captain Ray, who brought back the stories from the Inuit, was defamed, and a wave of racism

was unleashed against the Inuit. Charles Dickens referred to the stories as the vague babble of savages. But the evidence that John Franklin and his men were dead was hard to dismiss. The gravestones had already been found on beachy island, and later a note was discovered under a carn, saying that Admiral John Franklin had actually died in 1847, long before the first rescue mission had ever even departed. But even so, much remained mysterious. None of the dozens of missions to find the Franklin Expedition

was ever able to find out exactly where the men had gone, much less find the wreckage of the ships. Discovering that would have to wait another 170 years, and for the world to actually listen to Inuit stories. My name is Louis Comacac, I live in Joe Haven. I was born in Russia and I'm a known as a local historian. That's Louis Kamukak. Louis had been collecting Inuit stories for his whole life,

and Humahook, that Inuit girl who found the dinner knife, the one left behind by the Franklin expedition, that was actually Louis' great-grandmother. This is from a video that McLean's a Canadian news magazine made about Louis. There was one story that my great-grandmother told me they start finding all kinds of artifacts. She said they noticed that there was a big chain going into the ocean. Her story was always in my mind, but I didn't have a clue till I started going to school. The teachers started teaching history and they started talking about the Franklin expedition. Louis' knowledge of the traditional Inuit stories,

end of the Franklin expedition, made him a unique expert on the subject and led him to believe that he that were mentioned by Eldrush. For nearly 160 years, the wereabouts of the HMS Arabis and HMS Terror remained a mystery, but in 2014, using in-uit testimony to guide them, Louis Comaook led a team from Parks Canada to the site of the HMS Aerobes. And recorded on a map from the 1860s is the inuit name of the area where the ship was found. And translated, it reads, the boat sank here. When I heard the news about one of the ship being flown, I think it was kind of emotional for me to think about the elders

that have been interviewing, they have been right on the law. And in it all history was powerful and it was the only way that everything was passed down through generations. It was passed on through generations. Louis Cama Cook died just a couple of years after the second ship that HMS Terror was discovered. Finding it was the result of a lifetime of his work collecting Inuit stories. The Royal Canadian Geographic Society called him the last great Franklin Surgeon.

We also know more about what happened to the Franklin Expedition, all of those years stuck in the ice, thanks largely to stories from the Inuit. Franklin died early, but the rest of the sailors died a longer, slower death. One by one succumbing to scurvy, starvation, zinc deficiency, hypothermia. Some of the sailors may have lived as long as six or seven years out on the ice, but in the end none of them ever made it back home.

Over the course of a decade, almost 32 expeditions went out searching for Franklin. Though those rescue expeditions never found Franklin. They did end up doing what Franklin was unable to. They effectively charted the Northwest Passage, and it was successfully navigated by Norwegian explorer Rold Amensen in 1906. Luckily for John and I, we didn't suffer quite the same fate as Franklin.

We were eventually rescued. It was really only 24 hours later, but it was a long 24 hours. And the real possibility of disaster had hung over all of us, just the sense that we had come to a place without really knowing how to survive there. As we took our zodiacs across the ocean and loaded onto our new ship, relief washed over everyone. It was only 8 a.m. in the morning, but the bar was open and John and I made ample use of it. It was glorious. You two John.

That was almost three years ago. almost three years ago. ... ... ... ... Calling John. So lucky he wrote down his information on an index card and then I took a picture of it.

... Hello. Hi. Is this John Stewart? It is John Stewart. Oh, my word, John. It is, okay, let me tell you. My name is Dylan and we were shipwrecked together. Yeah.

For heaven's sake, how are you doing? I'm doing fine. How are you doing? Well, I'm doing okay. I picked over to the 93 the other day. And... When I was writing? Well, I'm doing okay. I picked over to the 93th the other day. When I was writing this story, I knew I needed to give John a call. When I talked to him, what I found out was that wasn't John's last trip. Franklin never made it to beach island and back, and I never even made it to beach island.

But you know who did? I took the next cruise. You went back out. You went back out on another ship. Yeah, yeah. So I had a great time. But I was hoping that you would be there. We'd be gathered mates again.

I would have loved that. I wished, oh, that would have been great. Well, I'm so glad to hear that you made it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We were up above the Arctic surefl, actually. Then we went ashore, landed at the gray site. There it just for wooden slab headstones there, with a brass plaque on each one.

At 93, you've lived quite a full life. Do you have any advice for, you know, I'm, I'm 38 now, which to me feels like well on in my years. I've got two young kids. Do you have any advice for me or anyone else? I always be kind to people, to forgive, have purpose in life, and friends are one of your most important assets, cherish them. in your most important asset,

cherished boom. I have a memory of John that I will never forget, that last time at the bar, when the two of us were together in person, having just been rescued from a stranded ship, drinking a beer at eight in the morning, and in the background, someone put on a famous song about Franklin. People in the bar began singing along. Frank Lentzberg came over the ghost of the sea. Whether we meant two or not, we had truly gotten to experience a tiny bit of what it felt like to be out on the Franklin Expedition.

To follow our curiosity, to embark in the spirit of adventure and to sail out in Franklin's path. To take one last trip. more light through our lands, a white and savage, and make a northwest passage to the sea. More Atlas Obscura, after this. Here again is Atlas Obscura on 99% Invisible. In the late 1980s, a suitcase arrived at a warehouse in Scottsboro, Alabama. That wasn't so unusual. A lot of suitcases showed up at this particular warehouse. But inside this bag was something special. They opened this cage and this troll face is staring back at you.

A four-foot tall goblin puppet with a giant head, a huge nose, and piercing blue eyes. I'm Hoggle. Who are you? Inside the bag was the real original Hoggled doll, this beloved character from the Jim Henson movie Labrith. I get tickled every time I think about how funny and astonishing that must have been.

We were just amazed at, we have Hoggled. If you lose your luggage while traveling, you're probably going to get it back. 99.5% of lost bags ultimately make their way back to their owners. But once in a while, that other 0.5%, bags slip through the cracks. And when that happens, airlines will hang on to the luggage for 90 days. They do their best to reunite bag and owner, but after that 90 days, the bag legally becomes the airline's property. And that is when the Unclaimed Baggage Center steps in.

The Unclaimed Baggage Center buys orphan bags from the airlines, and then either donates, recycles, or resells their contents. And they've got contracts with all the domestic airlines and they go and load up these lost bags on semis at the airport and then drive them all the way back to Scottsboro. I attract just back to our building and we unload those two cases and we have a team of what we call openers and we'lled those two cases, and we have a team of what we call openers that will open the two cases. This is Jennifer Kretner, and she's been working at Unclaimed baggage

for more than 20 years, since she was just five days out of high school. And they go through each suitcase to figure out, you know, does the Southam need to be sold? Does the Southam need to be cleaned? Does the Southam need to be recycled? Or does the Southam need to be cleaned? Does the Sada need to be recycled? Or does the Sada need to be donated? Personally, I would love to spend a day being a bag opener.

Each bag would be like a little Christmas morning. Like, what is in there? What's inside the next one? Although, that said, more than once, bag openers have opened up a suitcase and found a live rattlesnake inside. Another time, they found an entire bare-pelt, packed in salt, and still in the middle of the curing process.

Smell kind of gave it away. So, there are some hazards to the job, but there are also some thrills. We've had aluminum fire suits. We've had two full suits of armor. The most expensive thing that we've ever sold was actually a mint platinum presidential Rolex. It retailed for $64,000.

We sold it in our store to a gentleman that shopped for this about one month. And he purchased it for $32,000. We sold it in our store to a gentleman that shopped to this about one a month and he purchased it for $32,000. The finer jewelry that winds up at Unclaimed Baggage gets appraised and I'll just say this is why I'm a carry-on only kind of guy. One of the coolest things that we have gotten in in my time here was a 40-karat and natural raw in-rolled. And we found that in the toe of a sock rolled up in the corner of a suitcase. I mean, totally interesting me.

He wouldn't ever think something that's for $30,000, would just be in the toe of a sock, tossed in with a dirty laundry, but that's exactly how we found it. Finding an emerald in someone's dirty laundry is exciting, but for the vast majority of the time, it's just dirty laundry. Lots and lots and lots of dirty laundry. Every bag tells a story. So some of these bags were all in their range of the trip and some of the

bags were coming home from the trips. You can imagine, it's not as glamorous as one might think, but it is very interesting. In fact, there is so much dirty laundry that unclaimed baggage has its own laundry facility. They process over 50,000 items every month. That's the biggest straw cleaning service in the state of Alabama. As a matter of fact, that's more than most laundry mats processed in an entire year. Instead, that happens right here. It's thoughts for you. The laundry gets washed and the electronics are sent away to be wiped of their previous owner's data. And yes, there are a lot, a lot of electronics, headphones, laptops, iPads. So easy to leave in those seatback pockets.

Finally, everything is ready for its second life. If something doesn't get recycled or donated, it goes out to the store shelves and attention to all bargain hunters out there. Most items in the store are resold for about 20 to 80% off their retail price. There are roughly 45,000 flights every day in the store are resold for about 20 to 80% off their retail price. There are roughly 45,000 flights every day in the United States. So of the bags that get lost each day, even if only half of one percent of those bags

are truly lost, it adds up quick. Unclaimed baggage center stocks anywhere from 5,000 to 7,000 new items every single day. Today, Unclaimed Baggage Center is this huge sprawling place. It's bigger than a city block, but it started much much smaller. In 1970, Doyle Owens was working part-time as an insurance salesman in Scottsboro when he got a call from a friend who worked for a bus company in Washington, DC. The Frento Doyle about a unique problem he had. He had too many pieces of lost luggage that were just piling up. I borrowed my dad's pickup truck and $300 as one of the first load went to Washington, DC, and picked up the bag. Doyle died in 2016 and this is footage from an oral history made by Unclaimed Baggage.

When we look like J.D. Clampage, Clannlin' coming back down from Washington, they see it the Alabama. When Doyle got back to Scottsboro with his very first luggage haul, he set up a handful of card tables in an old rented house and he ran an ad in the local paper. He planned to be open for just two days, but by the end of the first day, he was already completely sold out. And that's when Doyle knew he was on to something. A few years later, Doyle landed his first contract with an airline company,

and eventually locked in contracts with other domestic carriers. He quit his insurance job and the business popped along steadily. But then, in 1995, a little talk show picked up the story. Did you see a gold necklace that's about... Right. Actually, I saw... But I lost it in Newark airport five years ago. Right.

Well, there's lots of jewelry inside, Oprah, and the way they price jewelry is, it's first. Well, we kind of joke, it felt like the Queen of England arrived. And truly, from that day forward, it changed everything. It was a game changer. Today, all kinds of people show up to shop at the Unclaimed Baggage Center. Tourists, locals, people who make one annual giant shopping pilgrimage, millionaire shop for discount Rolexes next to everyday people looking for a new cheap winter

jacket, or just maybe, if they're lucky, Oprah's gold necklace. But a few of the items that come through Unclaimed Baggage are just too special to sell, like Hoggle from Labyrinth. He's still there. As soon as you walk through the front door, Hoggle is there on your left. And once workers opened up a bag and found a camera from the space shuttle, this was one of the earliest iterations of the digital camera, only three were ever made. So, Unclaimed Baggage, give that one back. Other things that turn up at Unclaimed Baggage

are genuinely rare and contain these huge stories of humanity and culture. Thinking back over my time, I can remember a trunk of Versace runway gowns that came through, just fresh off the runway. Around the same time, can remember a trunk of Versace runway gowns that came through, just fresh off the runway. Around the same time, there was a truncful of amazing hand painted kimonos. A Tibetan ceremonial horn, a handmade Polynesian grass skirt, a medicine stick, likely from a tribe in the Amazon, with a ceremonial shrunken head still attached.

One day, this well-worn Gucci suitcase showed up at the store, and inside, it was filled with Egyptian artifacts, including a burial mask that dated to about 1,500 BC. Just around the time when the Phoenicians were putting the final touches on this thing called the alphabet. So, you know, old. Each non-descript roly bag that arrives at the Unclaimed Baguette Center brings a story with it. Not always as exciting as a lie-rattle snake or ancient Egyptian artifacts, but still there's a story

there. Who was this person? Where were they going? Why do they still have a hair crimper? Where were they going? Why do they still have a hair crimper? Where were they gonna wear those glittery golden sneakers? Were they actually using this iPod Nano, or did it just slip into a crevice in their bag and get lost twice over? Does the toddler who lost their panda-blanky miss it? the The Unclaimed Baggage Center is open every day of the week, except Sundays. And if you can't make a trip to Scottsboro, Alabama, these days you can still do your bargain hunting

in their online store. But it really just gives you a taste of what you'll find in the real brick and mortar store. So if you're looking for a suit of armor or a hoggled doll, you better make your way down to Scottsboro. The Atlas Obscura podcast is hosted by Dylan Thurris and is a co-production of Atlas Obscura and Witness Dogs. The production team includes Chris Naka, Doug Boltinger, Camille Stanley, Sarah Wine, Manolo Morales, John DeLore, Willis Ryder Arnold,

Gianna Palmer, Tracy Samuelson, Baudelaire Sous, Peter Clowny, and Casey Hulfer, themed by Sam Tindal Mixed by Luz Flunny. The unclanded baggage episode was produced by Johanna Mayer. 99% invisible is Martin Gonzalez, who mixed this episode for us. Swan Riaw, Delaydi Hall, Kurt Colstead, Emmett Fitzgerald, Vivian Leye, Joe Rosenberg, Chris Baroube, Christopher Johnson, Lawson Madonna, Jason Dillion, Sophia Klatsker, and me Roman Mars. We are part of the Stitcher and Series XM podcast family

now headquartered six blocks north in the Pandora building and beautiful, uptown, Oakland, California. You can find the show and join discussions about the show on Facebook. You can tweet me at Roman Mars and the show at 99PI org where on Instagram and Reddit too. You can find other Stitcher shows I love as well as every past episode of 99PI at 99PI.org.

Thank you. Sail away with me, to the Loch Nogos, we can rely on each other. A-ah, fun one rom and to another.