Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: Snow Globes

Episode Date: December 21, 2022

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I'm Munga Shatikler and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find it in Major League Baseball, international banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too.

Just a Skyline drive on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here sitting in for Dave, so this is short stuff. The Happy Holidays edition. That's right. Happy Holidays. This is good. This would have fit nicely in our holiday episode, but I like the idea of a shorty as

well. Yeah. I can't just be like, oh, we'll just talk about pickles in a couple of days before Christmas. You don't like pickles of any sort, do you? No, it's the vinegar thing. I love cucumbers. You can ruin a good cucumber by soaking it in vinegar. Yeah, I love them.

I know. I'm a weirdo. People love pickles. Yeah. I'm crazy for them. And also, everybody, you can save your emails. We're very well aware of the irony that I used pickles as an example of something we're not talking about and then we started talking about pickles.

Is that a thing we do? It just happened at the very least. We're talking about snow globes though, right? Yeah, absolutely. And snow globes are really, really interesting as far as the backstory goes. I had no idea. I thought it would probably be kind of cool, but it actually kind of knocked my socks off. So hopefully, it'll knock everybody else's socks off just in time for them to be put

up alongside the fireplace. Wow. Look at you. What a great rejoinder. Thanks. Did I use that right? Yeah. Okay.

All right, so we're going to go back in time. Let's hop in the old way back machine. It's been a while. Oh, yeah. Dust that thing off and let's go back to a time and place where people worked by candlelight. And candlelight only gives off so much light. You can try different kinds of wax in the candle. Some of them might burn a little bit brighter.

I think the beeswax candle is the brightest. But if you are performing surgery, let's say, or if you're a cobbler and you're doing some fine detail work or a tailor or something like that, then you might need more light. And I'm looking around and it's pretty dark around us. And so someone had the bright idea of putting a glass globe filled with water in front of a candle and it created a bit of a more intense flashlight effect. Yeah. Basically, it creates a spotlight and like a good size one.

I saw it's about hand size, which is, that's all you need when you're sewing shoe soles, you know? Sure. So this trick was what was trying to be recreated when the guy who is credited with inventing snow globes stumbled upon them. He was a man named Erwin Pursey. He was an Austrian and his business was surgical instruments. He made them.

And there was a local surgeon in, I believe, Vienna who said, hey, these new bulbs from Mr. Edison are pretty great, but I need to make them brighter. Can you do anything about that? And so first thing you tried was that old shoemaker's trick. And he found it kind of works, but not necessarily. Maybe if I put something in there with them, it will, it will work. He tried, I think, some glitter first and that probably would have worked pretty well, but it sunk too fast.

So then he turned to semolina, which is partially milled wheat that comes in the form of kind of tiny white particles. Yeah. You probably have like semolina bread or something like that. They put it in baby formula back then, but when you put the semolina in the water, it didn't dissolve and it stayed intact and it sort of was suspended a little better than that glitter and was white and eventually would trickle down to the bottom. And Perzi went, my goodness, it looks like little snow inside this globe.

I think it might be onto something here. Yeah. So, Perzi is credited pretty much universally as the inventor of the snow globe. What's interesting about it is he most certainly wasn't. In fact, just something like 20 or so years before he invented his snow globe, there was one that had been displayed at the Paris Exposition of 1878. Yeah, in the form of a paperweight and it had a dude with an umbrella and when he shook that thing up, it would look like he was walking through a snowstorm.

This is not the kind of thing they have in a museum somewhere, but they do have a description and a report on the exposition. So it definitely happened first. I don't think anyone ever accused Prezi of stealing it. I think it's one of those things that was discovered just sort of individually by different people. Yeah. And if he was aware of it, he wasn't inspired by it.

What's interesting is it goes even further back than that. All the way back to the 16th century, there was apparently a German alchemist named Leonard Thurnes, Thurnicer, yeah, I'm going with that, who made basically a snow globe, but rather than snow, he filled it with birds, so the birds would just fly around. This is 1572. It was a few hundred years before. Right. Again, I don't think Prezi was aware of Leonard Thurnicer and his alchemy work.

He just kind of stumbled upon it. But because of that, because of the Paris Exposition, because in America in 1927, a guy named Joseph Garagia was given a patent for something kind of like the snow globe. It's a little muddy. The French, I believe, make a claim, certainly, for the inventors of the snow globe. But everybody says it was really Prezi who took this idea and ran with it, and he definitely ran with it. All right.

That's a good spot for a break. We're going to go back and tell the rest of his story right after this. I'm Mangesh Atikular, and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology, but from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention, because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to

look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in, and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, Major League Baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is a risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed.

Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right. So, Pretzi has invented this snow globe, files for a patent in 1900 for a, quote, glass globe with snow effect in, quote, called the Schnee Kugel. Schnee is German for snow and Kugel is like a globe or a ball or an orb, seeing it as like a cannonball or a sphere.

But it's snow globe. It took about five years only before there was a business being run in Vienna named Firm Pertzi. And then they later changed the name to the original Vienna Schnee Kugel Manufaktor, the original Vienna snow globe factory. And they are still making those snow globes and it's still the family making those snow globes. Yeah.

It's Erwin Pertzi III who now runs the show and has since the 80s. So cool. Yeah, it is really cool. And they're really high end snow globes too. I think several American presidents have commissioned snow globes from them. They take custom order. So, if you have a really cool snow globe idea and a chunk of change, the Pertzi's will make you whatever you want.

I'm not friends with them. I just have heard this before. So, I wonder if Erwin III was in the 80s was like, nine, I'm going to be a like in a band like Kraftwerk. And they said, you realize you live in a castle, would you like to see the balance sheet? And he went, maybe I'll stay in the family business. So the first 40 years, Chuck, they weren't really associated with Christmas that came later on.

Instead, they were typically religious themed stuff. One of their blockbuster sellers was the Maria Zell Basilica, which is a church in Austria. It's not in Vienna. I think it's more toward the east. And it's a pretty big imposing Baroque cathedral. And one of the reasons why they focus so much on this is because it was sold as a religious offering to pilgrims who would come to this church. They set up a souvenir, yeah, a religious souvenir.

They set up a stall and they would say, souvenirs, novelties, party sticks, and people would buy the snow globe and they would leave it as an offering. Yeah, they set up a thing between you and the exit and thus began the exit through the gift shop. Exit the church through the gift shop. But yeah, they took off really in a big way. Orson Welles used one very famously in Citizen Kane at the end when that snow globe breaks. I'm curious now if they made the St. Allegious Hospital one for the end of St. Elsewhere.

Man, that's a great question. Got to look that up. But Erwin too took over after World War II and said, you know what, we're doing great with these religious globes, but snow means Christmas. Christmas means snow. Why don't we start putting Santa Claus's in there and Christmas trees and snowmen. And they did. And then it became really heavily associated with Christmas.

And they are pumping out with about 30 employees, about 200,000 of these still every year. And they're all like made by hand, they're hand painted, again, they're like really well made. Early on though, they became like an American phenomenon. Like America said, these are ours. Snow globes are American from now on by about the mid 20th century, I believe. And they actually became like a go to souvenir in the post war boom where people started traveling around, where they started making better highways and all that, and Americans

just started driving around. And one of the reasons why that was able to happen was thanks to innovations in plastic. Yeah, plastic changed everything for good and bad. And they found out, you're always looking for the perfect particulate, I guess, to act as the snow. But what you don't want is to shake this thing up, and if you've ever seen it, had a cheap snow globe, and had plenty of those growing up, trust me. If you shake that thing up and the snow's on the ground in 15 seconds, you're really

not getting that sense of awe and wonder that you're looking for. You wanted to stay floating around, and over the years they experimented with different types of matter to use in there. And I think theirs is a trade secret, right? That's the impression I have, yes. They're not letting anyone know, but it's some sort of wax and or plastic. And apparently, theirs are so well made that their snowfalls can last two minutes after you shake it up.

Two minutes. By halfway through that, you'd be like, okay, enough already. I don't need to be delighted any longer. I'm going to get one of these. This is inspiring me. I'm going to get a genuine Irwin Austrian snow globe. Perzi. Well, Irwin, this is the first name, I guess.

Right. We're pretty tight. Yeah, I guess so. You're on a first name basis. You call him Perzi. I'll call him Ernie the third. So Chuck, I think we've reached the end of this holiday-centric short stuff, don't you? I do.

Well, jingle bells out of here. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.