Welcome to Erin Mankie's Cabinet of Curiosity's, a production of I Heart Radio and Grimm

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.

While it might defy logic, oftentimes the surest path to military victory is the least

obvious one.

And sometimes that path isn't even on the battlefield.

Knowing the odds were stacked against the American colonies in the Revolutionary War, George

Washington and Benjamin Talmadge relied on another facet of war to try to turn the

odds in their favor, espionage.

In fact they created an entire spiring that may well have won the war for them.

And from 1778 to 1780, this spiring was instrumental in keeping Americans in control of their own

destiny.

Known as the Culper Ring, this approach was so secret that George Washington himself

ordered Talmadge to keep him in the dark as to who the actual operatives were, all the

better to protect their identities, of course.

Most of the Culper code book historians have since been able to decipher the messages

that were sent between various parties, involving in keeping American intelligence a few steps

ahead of the British Army.

It used a numerical code system for common words, and once those numbers were cracked, this

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