Welcome to Aaron Manky's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of I Heart Radio and

Grim and Mild. Our world is full of the unexplainable.

And if history is an open book,

all of these amazing tales are right there on display,

just waiting for us to explore.

Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. If you live anywhere that gets really warm in the summers, you know what a heat wave can do to your blood pressure,

trying to work or even sleep when you're

covered with sweat is downright miserable and the last thing you want to deal with is

other sticky irritable people. But when you can't escape your neighbors,

when heat and overcrowding get out of control, it creates a recipe for disaster, and a single spark can send an entire population spiraling from frustration into madness. Allow me to set the scene for you.

It's May of 2001 in Delhi, the capital of India, and one of the most populous cities in the world.

May is the height of summer there and and one of the most populous cities in the world.

May is the height of summer there,

and temperatures are creeping above 110 degrees Fahrenheit.

You're at home in your sweltering apartment

with no air conditioning, just a single electric fan humming away.

As night falls you anxiously wonder if you're in for yet another sleepless night, but

you douse yourself in cold water, turn off the lights, and try to ignore the heat.

And then, just as you're starting to drift off, the power goes out.

It's a rolling blackout, a common measure on hot nights when the grid is stretched past its breaking point.

But now you don't even have your fan and the apartment is starting to feel like a furnace.

So what do you do? Like many desperate people around the city like a ridiculously hot and now you've got the mosquitoes to contend with, not to mention the risks of sleeping outside in an overcrowded neighborhood.

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