Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome
Speaker 1: to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Frying.
Speaker 1: I really love historical disputes, especially when it's some kind
Speaker 1: of scientific or technical discovery or advancement or some kind
Speaker 1: of medical something that people were arguing over. Like when
Speaker 1: I've been trying to figure out what to talk about
Speaker 1: next and nothing on my list is really grabbing me
Speaker 1: at the moment, sometimes I'll be googling like scientific disputes
Speaker 1: in history. This is one that I've been hanging onto
Speaker 1: for a while, and it's Alfred Wegner and the dispute
Speaker 1: over his theory of continental drift. And I really expected
Speaker 1: this episode to sound a lot like our previous one
Speaker 1: on Ignace semmelvice and handwashing, except geology, because that's how
Speaker 1: this or he gets told a lot of the time,
Speaker 1: especially to a general audience. It kind of gets summed
Speaker 1: up as Alfred Veganer introduced his theory of continental drift
Speaker 1: and was basically laughed out of the academy, and then
Speaker 1: after his tragic and untimely death, he was proved to
Speaker 1: be more or less right, and for a discovery that
Speaker 1: was as important to the field of geology as the
Speaker 1: discovery of DNA is to biology. But that is really
Speaker 1: not how this story goes at all. Alfred Wegner had
Speaker 1: a huge career outside of his ideas around what we
Speaker 1: understand today as plate tectonics. He did important and respected
Speaker 1: work that touched on a lot of different disciplines, and
Speaker 1: while there were definitely people who were very critical and
Speaker 1: even hostile when it came to what he called continental drift,
Speaker 1: he did have his supporters, or at least people who
Speaker 1: were like willing to entertain the idea that he could
Speaker 1: potentially be right. Alfred Veganer was born Alfred loth Are
Speaker 1: Veganer on November one, eighteen eighty in Berlin, Germany. His
Speaker 1: parents were Richard and Anna Vegner, and they had five children,
Speaker 1: three of whom survived infancy. Alfred was the youngest. His
Speaker 1: older brother and sister who survived were named Kurt and Tony.
Speaker 1: The men in the Veganer family typically went into the clergy,
Speaker 1: and that was also true for Alfred's father. He was
Speaker 1: a theologian and a classicist, and a pastor and an
Speaker 1: orphanage director. He also taught at the local gymnasium, but
Speaker 1: it was against the rules for Kurt and Alfred to
Speaker 1: attend the same school where he was working because he
Speaker 1: was their father, so they attended a different school and
Speaker 1: both wound up pursuing an education in science rather than
Speaker 1: following that family tradition into the church. Kurt studied you
Speaker 1: physics and Alfred studied at universities in Heidelberg, Innsbruck and
Speaker 1: Berlin before getting a doctorate in astronomy in nineteen o five.
Speaker 1: Even before finishing that doctorate, Veganer's interests went outside of
Speaker 1: what you might think of when we say astronomy. He
Speaker 1: had studied Max Plank's work on thermochemistry and thermodynamics, and
Speaker 1: some of the people he studied under for his doctorate.
Speaker 1: We're using planetary astronomy as a way to study the
Speaker 1: Earth rather than focusing on other planetary objects. He was
Speaker 1: also interested in weather and meteorology, and after finishing his degree,
Speaker 1: he started working at the German Aeronautical Observatory in Lindenburg.
Speaker 1: His brother worked there as well, and they used kites
Speaker 1: and balloons to study the Earth's atmosphere and atmospheric phenomena.
Speaker 1: At one point during this work, the Veganer brothers spent
Speaker 1: fifty two hours aloft in a balloon, which set a
Speaker 1: world record. Alfred Veganer was also part of the team
Speaker 1: that confirmed the existence of the stratosphere. Wasn't a team
Speaker 1: he was running, but he was involved in it. Veganair
Speaker 1: had been interested in Greenland since he was young. In
Speaker 1: in nineteen o six, he got the opportunity to go
Speaker 1: there as part of the Danish Denmark expedition, which intended
Speaker 1: to map Greenland's northeast coast. Veganer was the expeditions physicist
Speaker 1: and meteorologist, and his research involved more work with kites
Speaker 1: and balloons to collect atmospheric data. He also got a
Speaker 1: lot of practical experience in polar exploration. This expedition made
Speaker 1: its way through extremely inhospitable territory, so Veganer learned things
Speaker 1: like Arctic survival skills and how to handle a team
Speaker 1: of sled dogs. On July tenth of nineteen o seven,
Speaker 1: while they were on Cape Bismarck, Veganer and the team
Speaker 1: observed several water spouts. They took a lot of pictures
Speaker 1: and documented what they saw, and this experience may have
Speaker 1: inspired Veganer's interest in tornadoes and water spouts, which will
Speaker 1: come up again later in his career. Veganer kept journals
Speaker 1: during this expedition, documenting his experiments and their results, as
Speaker 1: well as the ordinary work that was associated with it,
Speaker 1: like setting up the equipment and keeping it maintained and repaired,
Speaker 1: and he also wrote about his own challenges as a
Speaker 1: member of the team. He had no experience in polar
Speaker 1: environments before this, and his knowledge of Danish was limited.
Speaker 1: Unlike any of the other scientists involved, he was also
Speaker 1: very early in his career and he hadn't really established
Speaker 1: a name for himself yet. This expedition achieved its objectives
Speaker 1: of mapping the northeast coast of Greenland, but it was
Speaker 1: also tragic. Several of its primary members, including leader Ludwig
Speaker 1: Milius Ericsson, died after being stranded when the sea ice
Speaker 1: broke up around them. Even so, before it was even over,
Speaker 1: Vegner was talking about where he might go in the future,
Speaker 1: even considering an expedition to Antarctica as a future project
Speaker 1: for himself. In nineteen o eight, after he returned from Greenland,
Speaker 1: Vegner moved to Marburg, where he started working at the
Speaker 1: Physical Institute in Marburg in nineteen o nine. He also
Speaker 1: lectured on meteorology and astronomy at the university there, and
Speaker 1: Vegner became particularly interested in atmospheric discontinuities, which are sudden,
Speaker 1: sharp changes in temperature or pressure. For example, there are
Speaker 1: discontinuity services around the boundaries of weather fronts and at
Speaker 1: the borders of atmosphere layers. Veganer wrote prolifically over the
Speaker 1: next three years, publishing more than forty scientific papers and
Speaker 1: then editing the ones on the subject into a book
Speaker 1: called Thermodynamics of the Atmosphere. This was a widely respected
Speaker 1: and referenced text on atmospheric thermodynamics for years, until it
Speaker 1: was ultimately replaced by a later book on the subject
Speaker 1: of that Veganer also wrote in one of Veganer's colleagues
Speaker 1: brought an atlas into their office that was Richard Andrew's
Speaker 1: Algaminy hand Atlas. This was one of the first atlas
Speaker 1: is in Germany that included both the coastlines of South
Speaker 1: America and Africa and the bathymmetry data or information about
Speaker 1: the ocean's depths that had been gathered by the expedition
Speaker 1: aboard the HMS Challenger in the late nineteenth century. So
Speaker 1: Veganer noticed something in this combination of data that intrigued him.
Speaker 1: He noticed that the eastern coast of South America looked
Speaker 1: like it would fit exactly against the western coast of Africa.
Speaker 1: And this wasn't just at the coastline at sea level,
Speaker 1: was also part of the underwater topography off of the
Speaker 1: Visible coast. He wrote a letter to Osa Coppen, daughter
Speaker 1: of climatologist Vladimir Coppen. Vladimir Coppen had advised Veganer in
Speaker 1: advance of the Donmark expedition, and Alfred and Os had
Speaker 1: started corresponding. Veganer wrote, quote, doesn't the east coast of
Speaker 1: South America fit exactly against the west coast of Africa
Speaker 1: as if they had once been joined? This is an
Speaker 1: idea I'll have to pursue. He didn't pursue it right away, though,
Speaker 1: it seems to have kind of slipped his mind until
Speaker 1: about a year later, when he read a newly published
Speaker 1: paper on paleo geography that documented fossils that had been
Speaker 1: found on both sides of the Atlantic. That combined with
Speaker 1: Veganer's earlier study of that atlas to put him on
Speaker 1: the path of formulating a theory of continental drift, and
Speaker 1: we will get to that after a sponsor break. Alfred
Speaker 1: Veganer was not at all the first person to notice
Speaker 1: that the eastern coast of South America and the western
Speaker 1: coast of Africa looked like they could fit together like
Speaker 1: puzzle pieces. I mean, this is an observation that children
Speaker 1: make the first time they experience a globe or an
Speaker 1: atlas that shows all of that. And people had been
Speaker 1: spotting that similarity starting as soon as there were maps
Speaker 1: showing both of those coasts. In fifteen nineties six, Dutch
Speaker 1: map maker Abraham or Tellius wrote that the America's looked
Speaker 1: like they had been quote torn away from Europe and
Speaker 1: Africa by earthquakes and floods. Francis Bacon commented on it
Speaker 1: in his Novamorganum, or True Suggestions for the Interpretation of
Speaker 1: Nature in sixteen twenty. In a passage on similarities found
Speaker 1: in the natural world, he wrote, quote similar instances are
Speaker 1: not to be neglected in the greater portions of the
Speaker 1: world's confirmation, such as Africa and the Peruvian continent, which
Speaker 1: reaches to the Straits of Magellan, both of which possess
Speaker 1: a similar isthmus and similar capes, a circumstance not to
Speaker 1: be a aributed to mere accident. By the nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: naturalists had also started to document animals, plants, and physical
Speaker 1: features that seemed to exist on both sides of oceans
Speaker 1: in a way that seemed impossible or at least really improvable,
Speaker 1: given that the ocean was there to separate them. There
Speaker 1: were rock formations on one side of the ocean that
Speaker 1: seemed to pick up again on the other side. Mesosaurus
Speaker 1: fossils were found in both Brazil and South Africa, and
Speaker 1: there are freshwater trilobite fossils from the genus Paradoxides that
Speaker 1: were found in both North America and Europe. Naturalists found
Speaker 1: living animals too, like lemurs which live in Southeast Africa,
Speaker 1: the island of Madagascar, and Southeast Asia, even though there's
Speaker 1: a lot of water separating all of those. There were
Speaker 1: also coal beds on both sides of the Atlantic and
Speaker 1: seemed to be a part of the same system, and
Speaker 1: physical evidence of glaciers that had once existed in parts
Speaker 1: of the world now have tropical climates, and fossils of
Speaker 1: tropical plants in areas that are now polar. The list
Speaker 1: went on and on and on. So people started trying
Speaker 1: to come up with all kinds of possible explanations for
Speaker 1: how all of this stuff came to be. So for
Speaker 1: the animal fossils and the living animals, maybe they swam
Speaker 1: really was one, but kind of briefly that was easy
Speaker 1: to discount. It seemed incredibly unlikely that the animals in
Speaker 1: question could have swam that far, or maybe I don't know,
Speaker 1: clung to a floating log all the way across the ocean.
Speaker 1: The maybe they swam explanation also didn't account for things
Speaker 1: like rock formations and glaciers that seemed to have existed
Speaker 1: in what seemed like the wrong place. Another popular idea
Speaker 1: was that at one time there had been land bridges
Speaker 1: connecting the continents, but that those had ultimately sunk into
Speaker 1: the ocean. This tied into another prevalent idea that the
Speaker 1: Earth had once been molten and was contracting as it
Speaker 1: cooled and solidified. It was a little like the surface
Speaker 1: of a plum as it drives into a prune, which
Speaker 1: could explain the exits instance of both oceans and mountains.
Speaker 1: That land bridge idea still had some problems, though it
Speaker 1: didn't explain the rock formations that seemed to stop at
Speaker 1: one coast and then pick up again on the other
Speaker 1: side of the ocean, unless maybe those formations had been
Speaker 1: part of these land bridges that were now under water.
Speaker 1: But then there also wasn't a clear answer to what
Speaker 1: could have caused the land bridges to sink, if they
Speaker 1: had ever existed. In eighteen fifty eight, Antonio Snyder Pellegrini
Speaker 1: argued that maybe Africa and South America had been one
Speaker 1: continent at some point in the past. He suggested that
Speaker 1: the continents had been forced apart in the flood that
Speaker 1: is described in the Biblical Book of Genesis. Then a
Speaker 1: few decades later, when radioactivity was discovered in eighteen ninety six,
Speaker 1: that raised more questions about this general idea that the
Speaker 1: Earth was molten and was just contracting as it cooled.
Speaker 1: How could that be happening if there were radioactive materials
Speaker 1: within the Earth that we're giving off heat. On December
Speaker 1: know eight, American geologist Frank B. Taylor gave a presentation
Speaker 1: to the Geological Society of America in which he suggested
Speaker 1: that the continents were moving and had been pulled apart
Speaker 1: by lunar gravity. He thought that the collisions of the
Speaker 1: continents had pushed mountains into being, and that the continents
Speaker 1: movement had also left deep tears in the oceans. He
Speaker 1: published a paper in nineteen ten, and other papers followed.
Speaker 1: It is definitely possible that Veganer read Taylor's nineteen ten
Speaker 1: paper or one of the ones that followed, and for
Speaker 1: a while the theory of continental drift was actually called
Speaker 1: the Taylor Veganer hypothesis. In nineteen thirty two, though Taylor
Speaker 1: said that his name should be dropped off from the
Speaker 1: descriptor because other than the basic idea that the continents
Speaker 1: were moving, his ideas were really different from Veganers. Here's
Speaker 1: what Veganer thought was going on. He thought that the
Speaker 1: planet was made from concentric layers of material, which were
Speaker 1: denser the further down you go, and the outermost layer,
Speaker 1: with the continents on it was not contigue. Us oceans
Speaker 1: filled in any gaps. The continent layer was made of
Speaker 1: seal material that's largely silicon and aluminum, and the ocean
Speaker 1: floors were sema that's silicon and magnesium. Seal was less
Speaker 1: dense than sema so the seal continents could float along
Speaker 1: the sema ocean floor, kind of like icebergs float on
Speaker 1: the ocean. Veganer thought that at some point, about two
Speaker 1: hundred million years ago, all the continents had been connected
Speaker 1: into one land mass that he called Pangaea, and then
Speaker 1: something had broken them apart and allowed them to migrate
Speaker 1: around the Earth. He thought this motion explained how mountains formed.
Speaker 1: It wasn't that the Earth was cooling and shrinking like
Speaker 1: a prune, or that mountains were being pushed up by
Speaker 1: the force of colliding continents. He thought they were formed
Speaker 1: by the resistance that the continents experienced as they were
Speaker 1: sort of pillowing through the ocean floor beneath them, sort
Speaker 1: of like the way it's tablecloth wrinkles if you try
Speaker 1: to push it across the table. Veganer also thought the
Speaker 1: islands were pieces that had broken off the continents as
Speaker 1: they were moving. Veganer was not entirely sure what was
Speaker 1: providing the energy needed for the continents to move. He
Speaker 1: proposed several possibilities, and the one that he focused on
Speaker 1: the most was that it was some kind of energy
Speaker 1: related to irregularities in the planet's rotation on its axis.
Speaker 1: Veganer detailed all this in two papers published in nineteen
Speaker 1: eleven and nineteen twelve, both titled The Origin of Continents.
Speaker 1: He cited evidence from several different fields, including geology, paleontology, geophysics,
Speaker 1: and geodesy, and on January sixth of nineteen twelve he
Speaker 1: spoke about these ideas before the Geological Association in Frankfurt,
Speaker 1: and then he presented on it at the Society for
Speaker 1: the Advancement of Natural Science and Marburg, Germany a few
Speaker 1: days after that. This was just dramatically different from how
Speaker 1: most scientists understood the world at the time, and to
Speaker 1: be clear, it's really not how we understand it today either.
Speaker 1: But it also wasn't the only hypothesis out there. Other
Speaker 1: g oologists had also put forth various ideas about how
Speaker 1: the Earth's continents might have been joined together at some
Speaker 1: point in the distant past. Basically, it was clear that
Speaker 1: the whole model of the Earth is a molten object
Speaker 1: that was cooling and contracting just wasn't correct, so a
Speaker 1: lot of scientists were trying to figure out what really
Speaker 1: was happening. Veganer had some supporters, or at least people
Speaker 1: who thought he might be onto something. These were especially
Speaker 1: people who had personally seen or already knew about some
Speaker 1: of the evidence that he had cited. But he also
Speaker 1: had plenty of detractors. Some of this was rooted in
Speaker 1: the details of his work. For example, he said that
Speaker 1: Greenland was moving at about a hundred and twenty ft
Speaker 1: or thirty six meters a year. That was an error,
Speaker 1: and it was easily disproved. It also didn't seem like
Speaker 1: slight irregularities in the Earth's rotation could have provided nearly
Speaker 1: enough energy to move entire continents, especially if those continents
Speaker 1: were plowing their way through a less dense layer of
Speaker 1: the planet underneath them. Some of the people who disagreed
Speaker 1: with Veganer were particularly scathing about it. For example, Dr
Speaker 1: Rollin T. Chamberlain of the University of Chicago said, quote,
Speaker 1: Veganer's hypothesis in general is of the footloose type, and
Speaker 1: that it takes considerable liberty with our globe and is
Speaker 1: less bound by restrictions or tied down by awkward, ugly
Speaker 1: facts than most of its rival theories. So this wasn't
Speaker 1: really a case of one man, Alfred Wegener against the
Speaker 1: whole of science. Enough people thought he was at least
Speaker 1: partially correct that they became known as the mobilists, while
Speaker 1: people who disagreed were called the antimobilist or the fixi ists.
Speaker 1: This was not the end of Veganer's work on his
Speaker 1: continental drift theory, but he did keep working on lots
Speaker 1: of other stuff during his career, and we're going to
Speaker 1: talk a little bit more about that after we pause
Speaker 1: for a sponsor break. Alfred Wegener took another expedition to
Speaker 1: Greenland starting in This was another tread Turris expedition meant
Speaker 1: to cross and survey the Greenland ice sheet from east
Speaker 1: to west, including spending the entire winter out there on
Speaker 1: my sheet. At one point, a glacier that the team
Speaker 1: was on unexpectedly calved, and Veganer wrote that they quote
Speaker 1: escaped death only by a miracle. Veganer and Elsa Coppin
Speaker 1: that we mentioned earlier had gotten engaged before that expedition,
Speaker 1: and they married after he returned in nineteen thirteen. They
Speaker 1: would eventually have three daughters together. Ellis was a translator,
Speaker 1: translating scientific works, including some by her husband. She also
Speaker 1: published a biography of Alfred, including parts of his notes
Speaker 1: and journals after his death. Veganer's work as a scientist
Speaker 1: and a researcher was interrupted by World War One. He
Speaker 1: served in the German Army, first as a lieutenant and
Speaker 1: then as a captain. He was wounded twice, once in
Speaker 1: August nine fourteen in Belgium, and then once again in
Speaker 1: France on October four of that same year. That second
Speaker 1: injury was a lot worse. He was shot in the
Speaker 1: neck and had to go home to recover. He used
Speaker 1: that recovery time to write his book, The Origin of
Speaker 1: Continents and Oceans, which expanded on his earlier ideas around
Speaker 1: continental drift. Once Veganer was sufficiently recovered, he returned to
Speaker 1: the army, this time serving with the Field Weather Service
Speaker 1: as a meteorologist. This was not a particularly taxing assignment.
Speaker 1: He was stationed on the Western Front, which was a
Speaker 1: dangerous place to be, but his daily duties mostly involved
Speaker 1: making some routine weather observations. So he spent this time
Speaker 1: on study and research, writing a paper called on the
Speaker 1: Formation of hoar Frost on Horse Corpses, as well as
Speaker 1: a book called Tornadoes and Water Spouts in Europe. This
Speaker 1: book pulled together information on two hundred fifty eight reported
Speaker 1: tornadoes that had struck in Europe between fourteen fifty six
Speaker 1: and nineteen thirteen, because he could only get to one
Speaker 1: library to do his research because he was literally stationed
Speaker 1: at the Western Front during a war. Most of the
Speaker 1: tornadoes in question were in wet eatern Europe, reasonably near
Speaker 1: where he was stationed. This was the first Pan European
Speaker 1: book on tornado climatology, and it was really thorough. His
Speaker 1: intent was not to speculate on the causes of tornadoes
Speaker 1: and water spouts, which was not settled at that point.
Speaker 1: It was instead to pull together a wealth of data
Speaker 1: on how large the tornadoes were and when and where
Speaker 1: they struck and how they moved, along with other details
Speaker 1: like what they smelled and sounded like and any electrical
Speaker 1: phenomena associated with them. On April third of nineteen sixteen,
Speaker 1: while Veganer was at home in Marburg for Easter, a
Speaker 1: meteorite struck outside the nearby town of Treza. To professors
Speaker 1: from the University of Marbor got in touch with Veganer
Speaker 1: about trying to figure out where this meteorite had fallen.
Speaker 1: So wegener cross referenced newspaper accounts and eyewitnessed statements try
Speaker 1: to calculate its trajectory, eventually requesting some additional leave from
Speaker 1: the army to try to finish up this work. When
Speaker 1: the meteorites remains were found on March of nineteen seventeen,
Speaker 1: they were very close to the spot that he had predicted.
Speaker 1: Later in World War One, Veganer was transferred to the
Speaker 1: Eastern Front and then back to the Western Front. He
Speaker 1: kept working on his book on tornadoes, which came out
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventeen. Once the war was over, Veganer had
Speaker 1: trouble finding work at a university, and this seems to
Speaker 1: have been at least as much about economic conditions as
Speaker 1: it was about his controversial theories about how the Earth worked.
Speaker 1: He and Elsa eventually moved in with her father, and
Speaker 1: Alfred went to work at the German Marine Weather Observatory,
Speaker 1: in a position that his father in law had previously held.
Speaker 1: Beganer held his position for five years, and he did
Speaker 1: have teaching privileges at the University of Hamburg. In one
Speaker 1: Veganer published research on the causes of lunar craters. At
Speaker 1: the time, there were four primary hypotheses about what had
Speaker 1: caused the craters on the lunar surface that they were
Speaker 1: the remnants of some kind of bubbles that had collapsed,
Speaker 1: that they had been caused by title forces, that they
Speaker 1: were volcanoes, or that they were the aftermath of meteorite impacts.
Speaker 1: Veganer used cement powder to simulate both the lunar surface
Speaker 1: and the meteorites, basically throwing little bits of cement powder
Speaker 1: at a layer of cement powder with a teaspoon. Then
Speaker 1: he would carefully missed the surface of the simulated moon
Speaker 1: to set the powder. Once that was done, he would
Speaker 1: measure and document the craters that had been formed. In
Speaker 1: the pamphlet that he published on this subject, Veganer outlined
Speaker 1: various arguments against the other three hypotheses before detailing how
Speaker 1: these simulations supported the idea that meteorite impacts had caused
Speaker 1: the craters on the Moon. I love this so much, honestly,
Speaker 1: so do I. It's Alfred Veganer's crafty time that is
Speaker 1: very scientifically grounded. I love it. Uh. It's simultaneously very
Speaker 1: charming and really cool. It's ingenious. Veganer published another edition
Speaker 1: of his book on the Origins of Continents, and this
Speaker 1: one was translated into sere languages. It was still a
Speaker 1: controversial work, but it was not unanimously dismissed. Two years later,
Speaker 1: in nineteen twenty four, Veganer and his father in law
Speaker 1: published a book called Climates of the Geological Past. That
Speaker 1: same year, Beganer became a professor at the University of Gratz,
Speaker 1: where he was the chair of the departments of Meteorology
Speaker 1: and Geophysics. He also published another expanded edition of his
Speaker 1: earlier work on continental drift, this one also called The
Speaker 1: Origin of Continents and Oceans. By ninety six, Veganer's theories
Speaker 1: on continental drift were well known on both sides of
Speaker 1: the Atlantic, and that year the American Association of Petroleum
Speaker 1: Geologists held a symposium in New York City to discuss them.
Speaker 1: Veganer was not there, and overall the symposium was very
Speaker 1: critical of him. When he wrote the next edition of
Speaker 1: his book on Continents and Oceans, he tried to address
Speaker 1: at least some of their criticisms. In a tornado touched
Speaker 1: down near Gratz, and that rekindled Begner's interest in subject.
Speaker 1: He and Elsa walked the path that the tornado had followed.
Speaker 1: They took statements from eyewitnesses, and Vegada agreed to work
Speaker 1: with meteorologists Johannes Letzman on a project to try to
Speaker 1: determine the causes of tornadoes. The following year, Veganer published
Speaker 1: the final edition of his book on the Origins of
Speaker 1: Continents and Oceans, this one proposing six possible mechanisms for
Speaker 1: what might cause continental drift. As that happened, Veganer was
Speaker 1: planning another trip to Greenland. This time he planned to
Speaker 1: set up a weather station on the ice sheet, where
Speaker 1: a team would overwinter for two years to systematically gather
Speaker 1: data about the polar climate. Veganer was almost fifty and
Speaker 1: he recruited several younger scientists for this expedition, hoping to
Speaker 1: make sure there would be a new generation of polar researchers.
Speaker 1: This expedition really struggled from the start. The stock market
Speaker 1: crash of affected the global economy, and their funding almost
Speaker 1: fell through. When they got to Greenland on April fift
Speaker 1: nine thirty, the harbor was impassively ice over, and it
Speaker 1: stayed that way for two months. The expedition had nearly
Speaker 1: a hundred tons of supplies to unload, and it was
Speaker 1: basically impossible for them to start doing so until July.
Speaker 1: Then they faced unusually bad weather and propeller sleds that
Speaker 1: did not work as they had hoped, which kept them
Speaker 1: from being able to haul their equipment very well. They
Speaker 1: had planned to set up a camp called ice Mita
Speaker 1: or mid Ice part way across the continent, but as
Speaker 1: winter approached they were woefully behind schedule. Ideally, Ice Meta
Speaker 1: would have been totally set up and fully supplied before
Speaker 1: the weather became impassable, and the teams at the mid
Speaker 1: Ice station and on the coast would stay where they
Speaker 1: were until spring. Instead, by September, the shelter for the
Speaker 1: mid Ice station and most of their supplies we're still
Speaker 1: sitting at the harbor, but researchers Johannes Georgie and Earned
Speaker 1: Sores were at the station. Veganer and some of his
Speaker 1: colleagues were absolutely convinced that they if they did not
Speaker 1: it more supplies out to Icemanta. The two researchers there
Speaker 1: were not going to survive the winter. Veganer letter relief expedition,
Speaker 1: which departed by sled on September twenty one. As they
Speaker 1: progressed across the ice sheet, though nearly everybody with them
Speaker 1: turned back because it was just too treacherous Veganer, Rasmus Willamson,
Speaker 1: who was in Nook, and meteorologist Fritz Lowe were the
Speaker 1: only ones who got all the way to Icemanta, and
Speaker 1: they arrived there on October. By the time they got there,
Speaker 1: low was suffering from extreme frost bite and his toes
Speaker 1: had to be amputated. They were pretty surprised to find
Speaker 1: the Icemanta team in an ice cave with enough supplies
Speaker 1: that they hoped they would make it through the winter.
Speaker 1: They were actually doing some scientific study from this improvised
Speaker 1: research set station in the ice cave. Basically, they seemed
Speaker 1: to be doing okay with two people, but they definitely
Speaker 1: did not have the supplies to sustained three more for
Speaker 1: the whole winter. So Veganer and Villamson decided to head
Speaker 1: back to the coast, leaving Low behind to recuperate. Those
Speaker 1: two men left on November one, hoping that the wind
Speaker 1: that they had been fighting on their way in would
Speaker 1: help them on the way out. So the team at
Speaker 1: the coast really didn't have a way of knowing any
Speaker 1: of this, and the team at Isasmata didn't have a
Speaker 1: way of knowing what happened After Veganer and villainson left
Speaker 1: the ice cave in April of nineteen thirty one, wherein
Speaker 1: there had been no word from the two men. People
Speaker 1: started searching for them. Kurt Wegener came to Greenland to
Speaker 1: take up his brother's spot at the head of the expedition.
Speaker 1: Alfred Wegener's body was found on May twelfth, carefully laid
Speaker 1: out and stitched into sleeping bag covers. The spot was
Speaker 1: marked with a cairn and a pair of cross skis.
Speaker 1: Veganer's cause of death is unknown, but it could have
Speaker 1: been heart failure or possibly carbon monoxide poisoning from a
Speaker 1: camp stove. Whatever the cause, it is clear that Rasmus
Speaker 1: Williamson had survived Veganer and had tried to give him
Speaker 1: as thoughtful a burial as was possible on an ice sheet,
Speaker 1: but Williamson was never seen again and his body was
Speaker 1: never found. The team that found Veganer's body after this
Speaker 1: search surrounded it with ice blocks and put up a
Speaker 1: large iron cross. The German government offered to mount an
Speaker 1: expedition to bring his body back to Germany, but Veganer's wife,
Speaker 1: Elsa insisted that it be left where it was. Apparently
Speaker 1: she found the idea that someday, as the ice shifted
Speaker 1: and split, he might wind up floating at sea in
Speaker 1: an iceberg. She thought that was a somewhat romantic and
Speaker 1: suitable end for him. After Veganer's death, some scientists continued
Speaker 1: to support his ideas of continental drift. British geologist Arthur
Speaker 1: Holmes worked out a model that explained how the continents
Speaker 1: moved through convection in the Earth's molten layers, but that
Speaker 1: was controversial as well. That was a lot closer to
Speaker 1: how we understand it today. Without its most vocal proponent,
Speaker 1: the idea of continental drift mostly fell out of favor
Speaker 1: in most places, although it does seem to have been
Speaker 1: accepted by the Nazi government of Germany after Megan's death,
Speaker 1: and it was sort of used as evidence of German
Speaker 1: innovation and modernity in Nazi propaganda. The idea that the
Speaker 1: continents were once connected by now sunken land bridges became
Speaker 1: a lot more mainstream then. In the nineteen fifties and sixties,
Speaker 1: a lot of research started backing up the basic idea
Speaker 1: of continental drift. A lot of it was connected to
Speaker 1: magnetism in molten material, magnetic particles line up with the
Speaker 1: poles then stay in that position once the material cools
Speaker 1: and solidifies. In the nineteen fifties, paleo magnetic research suggested
Speaker 1: that Europe and North America had once been connected based
Speaker 1: on the way these magnetic materials were oriented. Maps of
Speaker 1: the ocean floor that were created starting in the nineteen
Speaker 1: fifties made it clear that the sea floor is not flat.
Speaker 1: There are mid ocean ridges that we now know a
Speaker 1: ligne with the edges of tectonic plates. Study of these
Speaker 1: ridges made it clear that they were both younger and
Speaker 1: thinner than other parts of the sea floor. In the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties, researchers discovered what looked like magnetic stripes on
Speaker 1: either side of these ridges, corresponding to the shifts and
Speaker 1: the polarity of the Earth's magnetic field and that magnetic
Speaker 1: phenomenon that we talked about earlier. Also in the nineteen sixties,
Speaker 1: the worldwide Standardized Seismograph network made it possible to spot
Speaker 1: global patterns in when and where earthquakes occurred, which once
Speaker 1: again we're connected to the movement of tectonic plates. Together,
Speaker 1: these and other discoveries made it clear that some of
Speaker 1: Meganer's ideas were right. The continents are on tectonic plates,
Speaker 1: and these plates slowly move, but his ideas for how
Speaker 1: and why they move weren't really close to the mark.
Speaker 1: The accepted idea today is that the plates are pushed
Speaker 1: apart at the mid ocean ridges and in subduction zones,
Speaker 1: one plate slides under its neighbor, pushing material back down
Speaker 1: into the Earth's mantle. Most of the time, this movement
Speaker 1: is explained through convection in the molten mantle, but there
Speaker 1: is still some debate on exactly how this works. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of convection, but then in terms of like, okay,
Speaker 1: how specifically is the convection making this do That's where
Speaker 1: there's more debate still. Today, there is a lunar crater
Speaker 1: named for Alfred Wegener, as well as the Alfred Wegener
Speaker 1: Institute for Polar and Marine Research, and various honors and
Speaker 1: awards bear his name as well. There's a theoretical explanation
Speaker 1: for ice crystal formation and clouds called the Bergeron Fandyson
Speaker 1: Beginer process. Vegner's former home is also now the Vegener Museum.
Speaker 1: If you want to read a lot more about this
Speaker 1: dispute about continental drift and how the idea grew into
Speaker 1: plate tectonics. There is a four volume set called The
Speaker 1: Continental Drift Controversy. It's more than pages long, so to
Speaker 1: be clear, it was not part of the research for
Speaker 1: this episode. That's a lot of pages. Yeah, it exists.
Speaker 1: I wanted everyone to know in case you really are
Speaker 1: so interested in finding out so so, so much more detail.
Speaker 1: I don't know how many podcast episodes we would need
Speaker 1: to be able to create to have pages of a
Speaker 1: book be part of We'll just do a new podcast.
Speaker 1: It's nothing but us reading that book aloud. Sure it
Speaker 1: will get cajillions of listeners. Definitely. Do you have a
Speaker 1: little bit of listener mail I do. This is from Snow.
Speaker 1: Snow says, Hello, Holly and Tracy. I've been enjoying your
Speaker 1: podcast for about a year now, both on my long
Speaker 1: commute and while sewing on my time off. Through you,
Speaker 1: I discovered saw Bones, and then through them, I found
Speaker 1: Adam Conover's podcast. So, in addition to the enjoyment I
Speaker 1: get from your work, thank you for guiding me to
Speaker 1: other great entertainment slash learning options. I wanted to write
Speaker 1: today because three times very recently I've laughed so loudly
Speaker 1: in my car that other drivers probably heard me the
Speaker 1: first two times. I'm pretty sure Holly was reading my mind.
Speaker 1: While listening to the Saturday Classic on Maria tal Chief,
Speaker 1: I winced upon hearing about her starting point work too early,
Speaker 1: only a second before Alli said that ballet fans who
Speaker 1: were now listening probably winced at that My undergrad degree
Speaker 1: is in ballet and modern dance, although I'm a librarian now. Then,
Speaker 1: while listening to the episode on The witch Finder General,
Speaker 1: I was thinking to myself that I needed to make
Speaker 1: note of the names of the witches familiars because they
Speaker 1: would be great pet names. Again, immediately before, Holly said
Speaker 1: exactly the same thing. Finally, Tracy made me laugh during
Speaker 1: the first of year behind the scenes many episodes when
Speaker 1: she said that she is sure she'd be accused of
Speaker 1: witchcraft due to being outspoken and having pet black cats. Well,
Speaker 1: I too am outspoken and only getting more so as
Speaker 1: I settled firmly into middle age. But instead of cats,
Speaker 1: I have two dogs and five pet rats. Here's the
Speaker 1: feisty women and their various familiars for pets. Anyway, thanks
Speaker 1: for many hours of fun and edication. Keep up the
Speaker 1: great work, Snow. Thank you so much Snow for this email.
Speaker 1: I wanted to read it number one because I thought
Speaker 1: those were three funny moments in our recent podcast episodes.
Speaker 1: But I saw also I had forgotten at this point
Speaker 1: because this was literally twenty years ago. Um for a
Speaker 1: period of a few years, just after I graduated from college,
Speaker 1: I also had a pet rat Um. I had a
Speaker 1: pet rat and three cats at that point, so very
Speaker 1: suspicious behavior, although I was quite young then, right. Anyway,
Speaker 1: sometimes I think there's some Chuo Picabra, DNA and Mr Burns,
Speaker 1: which I don't know what that makes me, but so
Speaker 1: thank you so much Snow for that. If you would
Speaker 1: like to write to us, we actually have a new
Speaker 1: email address. It is History Podcast at I heart radio
Speaker 1: dot com. You can write to us about this or
Speaker 1: any other podcast episode, or just to say hi, or
Speaker 1: send us pictures of your pets. Any of those things
Speaker 1: all great. We love email. You can also find us
Speaker 1: all over social media at missed in History. That's where
Speaker 1: you'll find our Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram. You can't
Speaker 1: come to our website, which is missed in History dot
Speaker 1: com to find show notes on all the episodes Holly
Speaker 1: and I have worked on together. And a searchable archive
Speaker 1: of the episodes. And you can subscribe to our show
Speaker 1: on Apple podcast the I heart Radio app, or anywhere
Speaker 1: else you get your podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History
Speaker 1: Class is a production of I heart Radios How Stuff Works.
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