This is an IHeart podcast.

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Welcome to Aaron Menke's Cabinet of Curiosity's, A Production of IHeart 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 Curiosity's.

The Curl Islands are a relatively remote place.

Off the east coast of Russia, north of Japan, it's a volcanic chain that most people would struggle to point out on a map.

The winters are cold, the summers are thick with fog, not what one thinks of when you mention

volcanic island in the Pacific.

During the Cold War, the Soviet Union maintained a garrison on the island of Iturrup.

The garrison was small, but had six self-propelled barges to help maintain supply lines

between them and the mainland.

During the winter of 1959, most of these barges were

beached in order to protect them from winter storms. However, in early January of 1960,

Soviet command alerted them of an incoming supply ship. So two of these barges were fueled and

pushed back out into the sea, where they were attached with mooring lines.

These barges, designated T-97 and T-36, were maintained by small skeleton crews.

On January 17th, while these men were aboard, a storm struck.

Intense winds battered at the moorings of both barges.

The tetherer on barge T-36 snapped,

and the 100-ton ship began to drift, in danger of being swept out to sea. The crew went to work

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