[gentle music]
- Do you remember when model trains required a fire exit?
[train whistling]
- One moment you have your beautiful little village,
the next moment the forest fire comes
and burns it to the ground.
[flame whooshing]
- [Henry] Did you know that there was a time
when flying a kite sent you sky high?
[transition thudding]
- What if we made it big enough to strap a human onto it
and lift them up in the air?
[wind whooshing]
- Imagine dangling with no seatbelt in gale force winds.
- Or when skyscrapers became the ultimate climbing gym.
[transition whooshing]
- An error in this case means a fall, not from feet,
but from stories.
- It's completely insane,
[transition thudding]
but pretty marvelous as well.
- These are the things we used to do for fun,
for money, [metal clanging]
or maybe out of boredom [crowd clamoring]
that we'll never see again.
Were they dangerous?
Certainly.
Deadly?
Occasionally.
But boy, wasn't it exciting?
[suspenseful music]
[graphic whooshing]
[suspenseful music]
Remember back when free time meant hobbies
where you actually made things by hand?
When I was growing up, the space race had folks everywhere
building model rockets in their backyards,
and for kids left to their own devices,
it was a real blast.
[rocket whooshing]
- In 1957, the Soviet Union launches Sputnik.
[suspenseful music]
The first manmade satellite.
- [Newsreader] Today, a new moon is in the sky
placed in orbit by a Russian rocket.
- And this really kicks off the space race
between the Soviet Union and the United States.
- America is lagging,
and people become afraid of Russian dominance,
so space becomes a national obsession.
[gentle music]
- Suddenly kids everywhere want
to make their own rockets,
but do-it-yourself rocket kits are not yet a thing.
- [Henry] So kids in the '50s are allowed
to build their own explosive rockets from scratch
and adults are happy to show them how.
- Magazines like "Popular Mechanics"
actually run these how-to guides.
[suspenseful music]
Kids could look at and go, "Okay, so I need this much pipe.
This is the diameter, and this is how to build one."
- [Austin] Kids start scavenging garages
and local hardware stores for parts.
Suddenly everyone's basement is a mini Cape Canaveral.
[model rocket whooshing]
- [Henry] But you don't get liftoff
without serious combustion,
and kids have no problem getting their hands
on the explosives they need.
[firecrackers popping]
- [Lance] Kids tear apart fireworks.
They tear open dad's bullets from his hunting rifle
and they build black powder rockets.
- [Rutledge] What's so wild is that
you might burn down the garage,
and parents are like, "Oh, cool.
Glad you got a hobby.
This is great."
- [Natalia] The rockets kids are building
are not these little, dinky toys.
They are actually, on a small scale,
rockets with a lot of force and power.
Some blast off
between 100 and 200 [rocket whooshing]
miles per hour,
and they can go hundreds of feet into the air.
[model rocket whooshing]
[gentle music]
- [Austin] Today, you can't fly a drone anywhere
in New York City.
Uh-uh.
But back then, "Hey, you wanna go
to Brooklyn and launch some rockets?
Let's go."
[model rocket whooshing]
- But there's a reason it's called rocket science,
because it's hard, and it requires some know-how.
If you have the fin angles off by just a little bit,
instead of having a rocking go airborne,
you have a missile coming at you.
- [Lance] This isn't NASA.
This is kids messing around in the backyard.
It's not exactly safe.
[explosion booming]
- [Rutledge] You can only get lift off if you can control
how the fuel burns.
- [Hakeem] You need a controlled combustion
that ejects hot gases at a high speed,
and that's what's gonna give you your thrust.
- [Rutledge] But if you use too much gunpowder,
you are building up too much fuel for what it can burn.
You're essentially just building a pipe bomb.
[explosion booming]
- [Henry] And if gunpowder isn't powerful enough,
kids rip up something with even more oomph.
- Kids actually create a thing they call rocket candy,
and it's potassium nitrate and sugar.
[transition whooshing]
And it burns real, real fast.
[rocket whooshing]
- [Austin] Depending on how you make it,
rocket candy produces 50% more power than black powder.
So if you want your rocket to make it to the moon,
rocket candy's the only way to go.
[gentle music]
- [Rutledge] There's no oversight on this.
The fact that a kid could go to like a pharmacy
and buy potassium nitrate, just,
"Here you go," that's insane.
- [Lance] There's no law against this.
This is no secret formula.
They're giving you the recipe,
encouraging rocket science.
[dramatic music]
- [Rutledge] It's just total mayhem.
[explosion booming]
There's all kinds of accidents.
[rocket whooshing]
- [Hakeem] Kids are getting hit by the rocket fuels
that are 2,000 degrees.
That's hot enough to melt gold or vaporize human skin.
[model rocket whooshing]
- [Natalia] 30 kids are hurt and 11 are hospitalized in New York
[graphic thudding]
after a rocket explodes.
- [Rutledge] People are losing fingers, eyes,
they're setting garages on fire.
[explosion booming]
- [Austin] Things get so bad
that the National Fire Prevention Association
and even the American Rocket Society
recommends banning the hobby.
[graphic thudding]
- [Natalia] So, by the early 1960s,
a few enterprising businessmen make standardized,
mass-produced toy rocket sets designed for children.
[suspenseful music]
- [Austin] They develop a rolled paper motor
with a measured amount of gunpowder.
They also create a launch pad that allows the rocket
to be ignited from a distance.
[model rocket whooshing]
- [Rutledge] But I gotta say, there's something cool
about building your own rocket.
These kids really had something.
I mean it's physics, and when making their own fuel,
it's also chemistry.
[model rocket whooshing]
- You might remember that in the old days, go fly a kite
meant get lost, go away.
And for some extreme kite flyers,
that's exactly what happened.
[gentle music]
- Kites are a really popular hobby,
especially in the early part of the 20th century.
They are relatively cheap, relatively simple,
but also pretty magical.
- Kite technology seems very simple.
You got a piece of cloth
and you spread it out over a frame, you know,
it lifts it, it catches a breeze, it goes up in the air.
What a peaceful day on the beach.
[suspenseful music]
And then somebody was like, "I got a better idea than that.
What if we made it big enough to strap a human onto it
and lift them up in the air?"
And I gotta be honest, I wanna do this.
[gentle music]
- [Bryant] Samuel Perkins is an inventor from Massachusetts
and he has invented a man-lifting kite.
[graphic whooshing]
- Perkins' man-lifting kites are essentially 10
by 15 feet wooden frames wrapped with canvas,
and he put multiple kites linked together in a single line.
- Each one adds more
and more lift until you get enough
that you can lift the body weight of a human being.
It's pretty wild.
[gentle music]
- Perkins debuts his system at the 1910
Harvard Boston aero meet in front of 67,000 spectators.
- According to reporters, the biggest spectacle
of the day is Perkins,
who's lifted 200 feet off the ground by five huge kites.
[suspenseful music]
- [Don] This is revolutionary.
In 1910, airplanes are still experimental,
and many don't stay up for more than a few minutes,
but Perkins' kites can remain aloft for a long time.
- [Kavitha] People are very excited about this.
Newspapers are all over it.
There's a ton of publicity,
and it feels like this could be the next big thing.
- [Brian] Does it not sound like
the greatest thing ever? [graphic whooshing]
I mean, you're flying.
You're flying.
- [Dan] Perkins' kites inspire others to make their own kites
to get into the action and get up in the air.
And some kite builders even start selling rides
on their contraptions to members of the public
for just a few cents.
And just like that,
the man-lifting kite craze takes off.
[gentle music]
- [Henry] But it's not nearly
as breezy as flying a regular kite.
- [Dan] These kites are about three times the size
of an average person,
and they're so powerful that you need
a crew of 10 just to keep them steady.
[suspenseful music]
- [Bryant] On the ground, wind might be 20, 30 miles an hour,
but if you go 400 feet above, that can double.
[suspenseful music]
- [Don] That's like highway speeds, 40 stories in the air.
Gusts can come out of nowhere.
The line twists,
and suddenly that whole rig can be spinning
like a corkscrew.
You're whipping through the air
with nothing to hold onto but a rope.
- [Henry] If you've ever flown a kite
and had it crash into a tree
or nose dive into the ground,
[graphic whooshing]
now picture that with a human being attached.
[suspenseful music]
- [Kavitha] There's no harness or seatbelt or really anything.
There's nothing between you and the ground.
[transition whooshing]
- [Dan] Imagine dangling in a lawn chair
with no seatbelt in gale force winds.
[suspenseful music]
- [Kavitha] During one of Perkins' demonstrations,
a rope snaps and a rider falls 75 feet to the ground.
- [Dan] Another time,
Perkins himself falls 12 stories
when heavy winds snap one of his kites.
His remaining kites acted like parachutes,
so he survives the fall.
But not everyone's so lucky.
- [Jason] Despite fatalities and countless injuries,
these kites continue to be popular
for about the next decade.
And kinda like the kites themselves,
the casualties, they just keep going up.
- [Kavitha] Eventually enough accidents happen
that the government finally steps in.
- [Jason] In 1954, the Civil Aeronautics Board
restricts lifting any person via kite power,
effectively grounding this high-flying hobby
once and for all.
[gentle music]
- [Brian] It's dangerous.
That being said, I think as a country
we have given up on kite technology in a way
that's unbecoming of us,
'cause it sounds awesome.
Nothing is gonna convince me
that gliding on a kite wouldn't be fun.
[gentle music]
- As the saying goes, what goes up must come down,
and down they came.
- There was a time when model trains were the hobby
of choice and fun for the whole family,
but you'd be surprised
how quickly things could go off the rails.
- [Austin] After World War II,
Americans are working shorter hours,
and they're fleeing to the suburbs.
So now they've got more time, more money,
and more space to pursue new hobbies like model railroads.
[suspenseful music] [train whistling]
- [Brian] You're in your basement with model railroads,
you're playing God, you're creating the landscape,
you're creating the town, you're creating the tracks.
- [Austin] This is not a kid's toy.
This is like an adult hobbyist realm.
- [Speaker] A miniature railroad has come to be regarded
as standard equipment for the young male.
- [Rutledge] This is like a 300 million a year industry
in today's money.
[bright music]
- [Natalia] People got really fancy
with their electric train sets,
not just all the scenery,
but you had electric bridges that went up and down.
The problem is that the wiring would come loose
and the bridge would stop working.
- [Dan] But magazines and how to guides have a great solution.
Where the wires go, you just fill that little cup
with liquid mercury
and then the wire will always be touching metal.
But what the magazines don't tell you
is that you're also gonna get mercury poisoning.
[suspenseful music]
- [Henry] And what they also don't tell you
is that a short circuiting bridge might be the least
of your problems.
- [Lance] Early model train sets plugged into the wall
in the 110 volt outlet,
just like you're plugging in major appliances,
your washing machine or your dishwasher.
- [Austin] But most of these have fuses or cutoffs.
The trains don't. They're just drawing unyielding power.
[suspenseful music]
- [Hakeem] These little train sets may look like toys,
but they pack a lot of power.
There's enough electricity going through
that thing to stop your heart.
- [Austin] We've all heard that in real life you can get killed
by touching the third rail,
so it's sort of like this,
but on a smaller scale.
[dramatic music]
- [Henry] And when they add a transformer box in the 1950s
to make them safer,
it just gives you a new way to get burned.
- [Lance] The transformer's gonna take this power
that comes from the outlet at 110 volts
and it's gonna reduce it down to about 12 volts,
which is about enough to run a cell phone today.
- [Bryant] But they weren't really properly insulated,
and if they got too hot,
these transformer boxes, they could burn you.
But if they really got too hot, they'd catch fire.
[gentle music]
- [Don] All across the country,
newspapers run stories about electric trains
setting homes ablaze.
[graphic whooshing]
- [Lance] One moment you have your beautiful little village.
The next moment the forest fire comes
and burns it to the ground.
[gentle playful music]
- [Brian] But I would say that if any hobby
is worth the dangers,
I think it's model trains.
My first model train set
was my father's that he had as a kid.
The same things that were unlocked in my imagination
were unlocked in my father's imagination when he was a kid.
And I think that that's rare,
and I think that that's kind of beautiful.
[bright music]
- [Lance] There's still a whole lot of hobbyists today
who prefer the old-style trains for their durability
and their nostalgia.
Just remember to rewire the whole thing before you set it up
or have a fire extinguisher handy.
[train whistling]
- Remember the CB radio craze?
It wasn't just for truckers, everybody wanted to try it,
including my best friend, Gerald,
but what people didn't see coming was pretty shocking.
[suspenseful music] [horn honking]
- [Hakeem] CB radios were all the rage back when I was a kid.
25 million were sold in just
the years between 1974 and 1977.
- [Lance] People are learning CB talk.
You know, "Hey, good, buddy, what's your 20."
"I'm on a super slab with the hammer down on,"
which means that you're on an interstate highway going fast.
[bright music]
- [Rutledge] You gotta pick your own CB name,
your handle, if you will, like Love Muffin or Tiny Dancer.
"Breaker breaker 1-9,
this here's the bearded lady comeback,"
that's what they called me.
[gentle music]
- My poor father was forced to purchase a CB radio
for the car by me
because of the movie "Smokey and the Bandit."
- We ain't gonna make it, son.
- We've come this far, aint we?
[wood clacking]
[dramatic music]
- [Kavitha] Long before chat rooms and social media,
this was kind of the nascent version of that.
This was a way to kind of jump on with your family members
and friends and start chatting,
and sometimes you would jump on
and not even know who was on the other end.
- [Austin] CB radio's become so popular,
people aren't just using them in their cars and trucks.
They're turning their attics, their basements,
their homes into recreational CB radio stations.
- [Hakeem] During this boom, people start buying
these monster antennas so they can get more range.
- [Martin] Typical CB radio is giving you
maybe five miles of range.
The longer the antenna, the better the range
and the clearer the signal.
- [Hakeem] When it comes to CB antennas, size does matter.
These antennas can be 15 or 20 feet tall,
and they're attaching them to their roofs.
[dramatic music]
- [Austin] Now you've got your dad,
a hobbyist, not a professional,
getting up on a 20-foot roof
to erect a 20-foot aerial with his buddies.
This is a recipe for disaster.
- [Lance] Once you get it up there, you have
to make it stand upright like the mast of a ship,
and you have to attach wires to hold it up.
And remember that these are roughly three times
the height of an average man.
[dramatic music]
- [Henry] Safely installing your CB antenna
is a high wire act in more ways than one.
- [Austin] This is a time when
most power lines are above ground
and regulations stipulate that they only have
to be 12 feet from your house.
- [Lance] Even if that antenna only lightly brushes
a power line, it's gonna conduct all of that power,
up to 14,000 bolts of electric energy
straight into your body.
[electricity crackling]
It's like a human bug zapper.
[electricity crackling]
= [Austin] To put it in perspective,
old-fashioned electric chairs used 1,000 to 2,000 volts,
so this is enough electricity to kill you seven times over.
[gentle music]
- [Lance] So people are losing control of these antennas
and they are falling and crashing into power lines,
and we're not talking just a few people.
[graphic thudding]
- [Hakeem] In 1976 alone, there are 92 deaths
and 156 injuries reported
due to electrocution from the CB antennas.
[bright music]
- [Henry] But the hobby continues to grow.
- [Austin] By the late 1970s,
there are 40 channels across CB Radio,
but it's impossible to monitor how many people
are on and what they're talking about.
- [Henry] And the CB airwaves could provide
their own kind of shock.
[gentle music]
- [Lance] These were public airwaves,
and people, especially kids,
would be on the CB saying all sorts
of outrageous things just to get a rise out of people.
- [Brian] It was wild on those CBs back in the day.
You could say whatever you want
and then just switch to the next channel
and then start harassing those people.
Harassing.
Start talking to those people.
[gentle music]
- [Austin] By the early '80s, people have had enough
of the CB radio fad
and eventually will start yelling
at people on the internet.
- [Lance] But I have to say, CB radios have something
over the social media of today.
There's no record of anything I said over a CB radio.
You can't say that about social media today.
[gentle music]
- Once cell phones came along, it was over
and out for CB radios.
- Remember butterfly collecting? I do.
We all ran around with nets chasing one
of nature's most beautiful creatures.
Well, it turns out the butterflies
weren't the only ones in jeopardy.
[bright music]
- [Natalia] In 1951, Alexander B. Klots releases this book,
"A Field Guide to the Butterflies,"
which becomes the Bible for butterfly collectors
around the country.
- [Austin] America is suddenly crazy for butterflies.
[gentle music]
Clubs spring up,
schools send kids out into fields with nets,
seeing what butterflies they come up with.
It's a huge craze, and it's everywhere.
- [Natalia] The butterflies are beautiful,
but if you really wanna collect them...
[graphics clicking]
you have to kill them.
[bright music]
- [Austin] Butterflies are very delicate.
Their wings are paper thin, so killing a butterfly
by force will wreck your specimen.
- Killing something without profound overt physical damage
has long meant the use of one thing in particular, poison,
with cyanide being at the top of that list.
[dramatic music]
Cyanide is what they famously put in the Flavor Aid punch
at Jonestown to kill everybody.
[bright music]
- [Lance] Cyanide for as deadly as it is, was crazy easy to get.
You can order it mail order, you can get it out
of a science catalog.
- [Henry] And kids can take it right out
of their own chemistry sets.
- [Natalia] Kitchen tables turn into these little science labs,
and kids set them up with their wax paper, with their pins,
and of course with their killing jar.
[suspenseful music]
- [Lance] Everybody that's collecting butterflies
has their killing jar,
and you just take a standard glass jar,
you dump in a few cyanide pellets,
you screw the lid on top,
and so you have a perfect specimen every time.
No big deal.
[dramatic music]
- [Austin] It's not like people don't know
that this stuff is dangerous.
It's been proven for decades.
In 1923, a collector, Martin A. Meyer,
was found dead next to his killing jar.
People know this is toxic stuff,
but they're still using this chemical.
- [Adam] Now this breaks my brain a little bit
because at some point hobbyists say, "Wait, wait,
wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
We can't give cyanide poison to children.
[bright music]
We need to find a safer alternative.
What chemical should we give children
to use for their hobby?"
- Eventually they ended up substituting chloroform.
[gentle music]
Just so you know what chloroform is,
it's that thing you see a lot in like spy movies
where they put it on someone, they breathe it in,
and they immediately like collapse.
That's chloroform.
And in the 1950s, it's just kind of like
readily available to you.
- [Natalia] The movies make chloroform look like melatonin,
but it is not that.
[eerie music]
- [Adam] In real life,
chloroform creates respiratory failure,
cardiac arrest, kidney damage, liver damage,
and, oh, what's that called? [fingers snapping]
Death.
- [Natalia] In 1960,
the Federal Hazardous Substances Labeling Act
draws a line.
Anything with a serious toxin in it has to carry a label
that says danger, poison,
and its prohibited from being sold to children.
[gentle music]
- [Austin] By the 1960s, schools and clubs
moved to new ways of asphyxiating your butterflies,
ethyl acetate jars,
short freezing, carbon dioxide.
All of these new methods are way safer for the kids.
For the butterflies, though, not so much.
- Did you know.
There was once a time when taxidermy
was a very popular hobby.
Now it wasn't great for the animals of course,
and it turns out it wasn't so great for the people either.
[bright music]
- [Kavitha] In the 19th century,
taxidermy becomes a huge hobby and all the rage
among the wealthy,
who preserve the trophies from their game hunts.
[gentle music]
- [Rutledge] People can actually preserve these animals
that they've shot or captured
and really kind of show off their wealth.
Because taxidermy is popular with people
that are really affluent,
the trickle down comes to normal folks
who also want to feel a little bit fancy,
so they start doing it themselves,
and it really takes off in that arena as well.
[gentle music]
- [Bryant] You can learn taxidermy at a museum,
at a club, and even at the YMCA.
- [Rutledge] In 1911, the Boy Scouts actually
made a badge for taxidermy,
and even 4H starts doing taxidermy in their courses.
- [Lance] There's specialty magazines
that are all about taxidermy.
They will give you instructions
and you have the ability to get all the materials
you need by mail order.
- [Rutledge] Whoa, artificial animal skulls for rugs.
Those are bear heads.
You can order a bear head to make your own bear skin rug.
This is great.
[gentle music]
- [Natalia] People are stuffing everything.
Yes, hunters are mounting deer heads,
but people are preserving roadkill.
I mean, even a bird that hits a window
is a subject for taxidermy.
Everything is fair game, including pets.
[gentle music]
- [Henry] But the process involved in this booming hobby
gets even hairier than you might expect.
- [Kavitha] After skinning the animal,
you rub soap over the insides
and the hide so it kills the insects
and actually prevents decay.
- [Lance] It's wonderful because it stays on the pelt.
The problem is its magical ingredient is arsenic.
[dramatic music]
- [Austin] Because it has no taste and dissolves so easily,
arsenic is used as a poison for centuries.
So many noblemen die from ingesting arsenic
that it's called the king of poisons
and the poison of kings.
- [Negin] At the time, they knew that arsenic was poisonous
if you ingested it,
but nobody thought about the consequences
of handling arsenic or breathing it in.
And, you know, these amateur taxidermists
were just slathering it on with their bare hands.
[suspenseful music]
- [Kavitha] Pretty soon people who do a lot
of taxidermy start suffering from symptoms
like stomach problems, skin cancer,
and their fingernails start falling off.
There're even deaths attributed
to arsenic poisoning from just handling the soap.
- And that's not the only problem.
The soap is used to preserve the animal's skin,
but if you wanna preserve the fur,
you have to add another ingredient.
Mercury.
[pensive music]
- [Negin] Today we know that handling mercury
and arsenic is really bad for you.
In fact, it's so bad
that you shouldn't even handle vintage taxidermy.
- [Lance] Museums today bag all these taxidermy specimens
that test positive for all these dangerous chemicals,
and they put a label on them that says,
dangerous for human contact.
[gentle music]
- [Rutledge] Eventually, better, safer methods
are used for taxidermy,
but up until the 1980s, this is what people use.
They just thought it was fine.
- [Jason] In the end, it's not the deadly arsenic
or the mind-altering mercury
that brings an end to taxidermy.
It's just a change in taste.
- [Natalia] These big stuffed animals
just fall out of fashion,
and so taxidermy starts to lose its luster as a hobby.
[bright music]
- The next time you see a stuffed fox at a flea market
and you think, "Wow,
that would look great in my living room."
Think twice.
- Kids have always loved playing with toy soldiers,
but did you know that there was a time
when they made them at home?
It was a hot hobby for a while.
A little too hot.
[gentle music]
- [Austin] In the early 1900s,
collecting toy soldiers is a huge hobby.
Companies are pumping out as many
as 11 million figures per year.
- In 1931, AC Gilbert is a toy manufacturer in New York,
and he looks at this and he thinks,
"You know what would be an even better hobby
than collecting toy soldiers, [lips smacking] making them."
[gentle music]
- [Rutledge] So he develops the AC Gilbert casting kit.
Cast your own metal toys.
You're gonna need an open flame to melt this metal.
This is wild.
[gentle music]
- [Austin] You take your metal, you put it in the ladle
and melt it over whatever flame you've got,
then pour it into the mold.
Press it tight, wait till it cools.
It's absolutely insane.
[bright music]
- [Negin] The mold works a lot like a waffle iron,
but instead of pouring batter in there,
you're pouring in molten metal,
which you have to heat
to 600 degrees for it to actually liquefy.
- [Don] This isn't happening in foundries with safety goggles
and the leather aprons.
This is happening in kitchens with Mom's pot holders
as the protective gear.
- [Negin] If it spills on you,
you're getting third and fourth degree burns
with nerve damage.
[suspenseful music]
- [Henry] Sure, kids might get a burn or two,
but smelting your own collectibles
does have its advantages.
- [Kavitha] If you mess up, you can melt it down and redo it.
- [Austin] Bad guys get melted down into good guys.
Run out of infantry, melt down some cavalry.
It's constantly renewable, and it's awesome.
[gentle music]
- [Rutledge] Today, if you heat up metal on your parents' stove,
most moms would be like,
"If you get anywhere near this stove,
I will kill you in this kitchen."
- [Henry] But in the 1950s, anything goes,
and there is another surprise hidden in that hobby kit.
- The metal these kids are melting, it's lead.
[pensive music]
- [Negin] Lead was used because it melted
at a lower temperature than steel or iron,
so it was kind of perfect
for casting these little soldiers.
[dramatic music]
- [Jason] But lead is extremely toxic.
There is no safe level of lead exposure.
It's especially dangerous to inhale its fumes,
which are created when you melt it.
[pensive music]
- [Negin] When the kids are done, the dust that settles
around the kitchen, that's also poisonous.
- [Jason] Kids are handling these things,
they're storing them in their pockets,
they're even putting them in their mouths,
and all the while they don't realize this metal
is slowly building up inside their bodies.
[dramatic music]
- [Henry] Despite the dangers,
the United States doesn't start banning lead
until the 1970s.
- [Jason] So parents finally steer their kids away
from these metal casting kits.
The old lead army men are now replaced
by the green plastic ones we know and still love today.
- [Rutledge] You know what? You keep your plastic toys.
Give me your dangerous casting kit.
Sure, you could burn your parents' house down
and it's not healthy for you at all, but it is cool.
- In the old days, creativity didn't come
in a box with instructions.
Now, we didn't need much to keep ourselves busy.
A blank page, a lump of clay, a block of wood.
Fun was hands-on, even if it meant an occasional trip
to the emergency room.
[bright music]
- [Kavitha] In the 1950s, toy store aisles
are brimming with hobby kits,
model airplane kits, and paint by numbers,
and wood burning,
which is also known as pyrography or writing with fire.
[bright music]
- [Austin] Pyrography dates back into ancient times.
There is evidence of people using fire to write
on pieces of wood,
but now it's used via electricity,
and it's marketed towards kids.
[bright music]
- [Rutledge] In the 1950s, wood burning kids are pretty basic.
It's got your pen, which heats up,
and you can write with that
on the wood plank that it comes with,
and then it's got some designs included
that you can use to kind of get started.
[transition whooshing]
- [Austin] This is an extremely popular hobby in the 1950s.
The Boy Scouts even run articles on all the things you can
make with your wood burning kit,
from camp signs to coasters to name badges.
- [Rutledge] You feel like you're a tattoo artist
for a piece of wood.
If you're an eight-year-old boy
and someone hands you this pen that gets really hot
and then it'll burn wood.
I mean, sign me up, I'm in.
[gentle music]
- This is clearly marketed for kids, not for adults,
and it was normal for parents to buy these
for young children, but it wouldn't happen today.
- [Henry] Today there's a limit to how hot
items sold to children can get.
But in the 1950s, nothing is too hot for a kid to handle.
- [Austin] The heating element of these pens is a nichrome wire
through which the current is run,
and it hits 900 degrees.
[pensive music]
That's like pizza oven hot.
- [Rutledge] It's funny because parents weren't really thinking
about what was actually happening.
They were just thinking like, "Oh, cool, it's a project.
It's safer than building a rocket in the garage.
This is great."
But it was inherently dangerous what they were doing.
[suspenseful music]
- [Kavitha] This pen can obviously burn
through wood in seconds, which is helpful,
but that also means that it can burn through your skin,
and there are no safety measures whatsoever.
There's no screen, there's no temperature control,
there's not even an on/off switch.
[suspenseful music]
- [Austin] A heating element of that temperature
will ignite a piece of paper faster than a match.
It will scorch, sear,
and ignite a curtain [flame whooshing]
before you can smell the smoke.
[fire crackling]
- [Negin] Fire departments start getting calls
of like cinched tables
and melting cords [electricity buzzing]
and curtains on fire, [fire crackling]
but wood-burning kits aren't pulled from the market.
[gentle music]
- [Rutledge] But pretty soon, insurers start pushing
for more safety in kids' toys like this,
especially things that are electric
and have heat as a component to them.
And shortly after that,
manufacturers start adding things like on/off switches
and even heat controls.
[gentle music]
- [Kavitha] These days, the kits come with safety controls
and wood-burning is still a hobby,
but it is decidedly for adults.
- You know, I had a wood-burning kit when I was a kid,
and after I burnt my fingers several times,
I left it on the shelf.
Probably for the best.
- World War II sparked a model plane craze in America.
Bedrooms became mini aircraft hangers
filled with all the parts, paint, and glue they needed.
Fun was in the air, but so was something else.
[dramatic music]
- [Kavitha] After World War II, plastics
along with injection molding
makes model kits sturdier, more affordable,
easier to assemble, and more realistic than ever.
- [Adam] There was so much detail.
You see the rivets on each plate of the wing.
You see the bullets in the cannon
and the attention to detail
sort of sparked your imagination.
- [Don] As a kid, you would do anything you could,
mowing lawns,
washing cars to get that little bit of money
to go down to Bob's Hobby Shop,
and it could take a whole Saturday to build
one of these planes, and it was worth it.
[gentle music]
- [Adam] A survey of Boy Scouts asks,
what do you like to do for fun?
And 99% of them say model building.
99% of them.
- [Laurie] Parents love this because the kids are building.
It's educational.
So you think, "What could possibly go wrong?"
- [Henry] These new plastic modeling kits
requires something new
to hold them together.
[gentle music]
- [Adam] Plastic has a different type
of bonding surface than things like paper or wood.
So you can't really use that white Elmer's glue.
You have to have something called modeling glue.
- [Kavitha] This glue contains a substance called toluene,
which is a petroleum-based solvent
that actually creates a tiny chemical reaction.
So the plastic melts and can fuse together.
- And so after a time, if you're really one of these kids,
you are in a bedroom full of models.
They're hanging from your ceiling,
they're up on your bookshelves, they're everywhere,
they're little friends of yours, you know?
You've spent so much time
with these models understanding how they were built
that you were organically attached to them.
[gentle music]
- [Henry] But something doesn't smell right.
- Kids are spending hours in their rooms
building these cool model kits,
and these glue fumes they're building up,
and these kids discover the fumes.
They have a side effect.
- Kids are just straight up getting high.
[dramatic music]
They're getting lightheaded, foggy,
dizzy, all from this glue.
- [Don] In middle school I remember
a little glue in the baggy
and then it gets passed around and everybody smells,
and I would take it and this is when I learned
to just say no.
[dramatic music]
- [Jason] Eventually the model-making
becomes secondary for some kids,
or they completely skip it
and just buy the glue to sniff it.
[pensive music]
- [Natalia] At first, there's a buzz,
but that quickly turns into hallucinations, mood changes,
and brain and organ damage.
It's no joke. And this stuff is so easy to get.
- You can pretty much walk into any store,
and at 15 cents, you know,
a kid can get many tubes of this glue
for the cost of a candy bar.
- [Henry] And most parents are none the wiser.
- [Adam] That is until 1959.
[gentle music]
When an article in the "Denver Post" talks about
how kids are getting high from sniffing modeling glue.
- At first, authorities just think
these are isolated incidents,
but stories are coming in of kids getting high
and sniffing glue from all over the country.
- [Adam] In the fall of 1962,
police in Washington DC handled roughly 300 incidents
of kids sniffing modeling glue
to get high in just two months.
[bright music]
- [Henry] By the mid 1960s, every kid in school
knows what to do if they want a buzz.
[dramatic music]
So glue becomes public enemy number one.
- Schools start holding assemblies
to like teach kids about the dangers of sniffing glue.
- [Don] Principals tell parents
to search their kids' rooms for tubes of glue.
States restrict the sale of glue to minors.
There's even public service announcements
about the dangers of sniffing glue.
- [Speaker] Well, here's a deadly poison
that some young people play with for kicks,
the glue sniffers.
[gentle music]
- [Brian] People like that are
the ones that ruin model building for everybody else.
Like suddenly, if you want to build the Enterprise,
you're a glue huffer.
It really sullied the reputation
of the model-building community.
- [Laurie] Our children were building these amazing things,
but they were definitely doing it
while they were a little or a lot high.
[upbeat music]
- [Henry] The modeling glue is allowed to stay on the market
for a few more decades with a change
that doesn't protect you from the toxins
as much as it punishes you for trying to sniff 'em.
- [Don] Manufacturers use these bitter additives.
They're so strong that if you sniff it,
it will make your eyes water
and send you into a coughing and sneezing fit.
They essentially make the experience of sniffing glue
so awful that the high just isn't really worth it anymore.
[gentle music]
- [Natalia] By the 1990s, many manufacturers
switch completely from toluene into epoxy glues.
This makes the activity much safer.
- [Jason] But it turns out there's an innocent victim here.
It's good, old-fashioned school glue.
Parents and teachers have been warning us
about its dangers for decades.
But as it turns out, you can't get high sniffing Elmer's.
[bright music]
- Once sniffing glue stopped being a thing,
I guess kids just went back to eating paste.
- Lots of people enjoy a nice hike up a mountain
or a little rock climbing,
but there was a time when thrill seekers took climbing
where it was never meant to go,
armed with nothing but nerves of steel and a good grip.
[bright music]
- [Natalia] Most people look at skyscrapers
and see an office building,
but for a certain kind of daredevil, they're a playground.
- [Hakeem] People have been climbing buildings
since the early 1900s.
It's a hobby known as buildering,
though today we call it urban climbing.
- [Henry] And the bigger the building,
the bigger the payoff.
[dramatic music]
- [Jason] In the 1970s, there is a skyscraper boom,
the World Trade Center, the John Hancock building,
and the Sears Tower in Chicago.
These things are going up everywhere.
- [Hakeem] In 1977, the World Trade Center's South Tower
is the third tallest building in the world
at 110 stories tall.
A climbing hobbyist, George Willig,
decides that's what I'm gonna climb.
[gentle music]
- [Adam] So Willig does a reconnaissance mission,
and he notices three-inch,
C-shaped stainless steel channels
that run along the building's corners.
And that's his eureka moment.
- They're meant to be tracks for window washers,
but for him, they're the path to the top.
- [Jason] He goes into heavy DIY mode,
and he develops these clamps
that can hook into the tracks on the skyscraper itself.
Then he can sort of pop them off,
slide up and then lock them in again.
But there are no safety lines.
In fact, there was no safety equipment whatsoever.
So it's completely insane, but pretty marvelous as well.
- [Natalia] It looks good, but he can't test it.
It's totally illegal to climb a building.
So the test run is gonna be the day
that he actually does it.
[suspenseful music]
- [Jason] So in the morning of May 26th, 1977, he sneaks
through a construction fence
and starts climbing the South Tower
of the World Trade Center.
[suspenseful music] [siren howling]
By 6:30 AM, he's already gathering a crowd.
- When Willig reaches the 55th floor,
police officers on a washing rig
try to get him to stop, but he won't.
- [Martin] I watched it on Channel 7 News, and I was like,
"I wonder if that guy's gonna make it."
- [Natalia] Just falling off the roof of your house
has a one in five chance of being fatal.
[suspenseful music]
Anything over 60 feet would take a miracle to survive.
And he's hanging off the side of a building
that's over 22 times higher than that.
- [Hakeem] Keep in mind, an error in this case means a fall
not from feet, but from stories.
- [Jason] By the time he gets close to the roof,
his feet are blistered, his hands are raw,
and he's tempting fate with every move.
- [Adam] At 10:05 AM, after nearly three hours
of hauling himself upward,
he finally reaches the top.
[crowd cheering] [crowd applauding]
Then they throw the book at him.
[gentle music]
Reckless endangerment,
disorderly conduct, criminal trespass.
They even slap him with a quarter-million-dollar fine.
- [Hakeem] But everybody thought it was the coolest
thing that ever happened.
So they dropped the charges against him,
and his fine was reduced to $1.10.
One penny for every floor he climbed.
- [Reporter] George, when did you first get the idea?
- [Henry] Other climbers aren't so fortunate.
[transition whooshing]
When Dan Goodwin tackles the John Hancock Center in 1981,
he gets a very chilly reception
from Chicago's fire department.
- [Martin] He reaches the 37th floor
and they spray water from hoses at him
to deter him from going higher.
- He's 300 feet up on the side of a building
and you're gonna start pummeling him with water?
I mean, this is probably not gonna go very well.
[dramatic music]
- [Adam] He almost comes off the building and falls to his death.
But somehow this wild man manages to keep going.
[bright music]
And seven hours later he reaches the top.
- [Natalia] I gotta have admiration for people
who see a skyscraper and think, "I wanna climb that."
There's like something pure and optimistic
and courageous about like man over building.
- [Jason] The crazy thing is you think about someone
doing a stunt like this today,
they're gonna have sponsors, they're gonna get paid for it,
but these guys,
they're not doing this for any kind of reward like that.
They're doing this for the love of the game.
- [Adam] Eventually, building owners say enough is enough.
They hire more security, they install cameras,
they put better fencing around to increase obstacles.
- [Jason] Architects even develop vertical prismatic glass
that doesn't have ledges
that makes it really hard for climbers
to even start climbing.
- [Hakeem] People are still climbing buildings.
One just happened in Taipei. [people cheering]
But this was a staged event with cameras,
and it was broadcast for the world to see.
So today, these climbs are much more controlled
and planned than in the past.
[dramatic music]
- Looking back at the hobbies that we loved,
it was a lot more than just a way to pass time.
Whether it was attaching ourselves to kites,
making homemade rocket fuel,
or smelting our own lead soldiers,
we let our imaginations run wild.
Sometimes a little too wild,
but that's what made our hazardous history a hobby
we never quite gave up.
[graphic whooshing]
[dramatic music]