Information, it seems, flows at the speed of the media. In ancient times, information traveled with people on ships or horses, so if, say, a battle was won or lost, it could take months or even years before anyone at home knew what happened. Although books and movable type allow people to store information, it still moves at the speed of people moving it. Before the telegraph, there were attempts to use things like semaphores to speed up the flow of information, but those were often limited to line-of-sight operations. Carrier pigeons were active, but not faster than humans.
The telegraph helped, but people did not have telephone stations in their homes. At least not normal people. But radio was different. It didn’t take long for every home to have a radio, and although the means of broadcasting were in the hands of a few, the message could go everywhere in an instant. This meant that news could travel from one side of the world to the other in seconds. It also meant rumors, fads, and what we might think of today as memes, too.
You might think that things that go “viral” are a modern problem, but, in fact, media sensation has always been with us. All that changes is their number and speed.
One of the first impressions of the virus sources is related to William Floyd Collins, an unfortunate cave explorer during the Kentucky Cave Wars.
It’s the background
Mammoth Cave in Kentucky has become a tourist attraction. The entrance to the cave was located on the Croghan family property. The large cave system was popularized in the 19th century, and with the construction of a lock and dam nearby in 1906, Mammoth Cave became accessible to regular visitors.
However, the cave was not entirely under Croghan’s land. There were other caves that may or may not have been connected to the Mammoth Cave. This led to intense competition. The Croghan family suppressed information about what land lies above the cave. At that time, some “owners” of the cave stopped people going to the cave, told them that Mammoth Cave was closed, and “helpfully” directed them to another place.
In the 1920s, George Morrison blasted new entrances to the cave in the non-Croghan area. There was a strong interest in finding new ways to enter the cave or nearby caves to collect money from tourists.
Back to Floyd
Floyd Collins discovered the entrance to what would become known as the “Great Crystal Cave” in 1917 and opened it to visitors in 1918. Unfortunately, this cave was difficult to access, so you didn’t make much money.
Floyd first entered the caves in 1893 at the age of six. He found his first cave in 1910. But the Great Crystal Cave was very far from the main road. He entered into an agreement with three farmers who own land near the highway. If Floyd can find a suitable cave or, even better, an entrance to Mammoth Cave, he can partner with them and create an equally profitable tourist attraction.
Floyd found a hole in what would become known as the Sand Cave. Some of the passages he had to walk through were as thick as 9 inches, which would not have been suitable for visitors, but they opened, apparently, to a large area. He was willing to expand the door to make this cave commercial.
In January of 1925, he was working in a cave when his gas lamp began to dim. He tried to get out, but when he tried to walk through a narrow passage, he hit his light, leaving him in the dark.
In the dark, he placed his foot on a seemingly solid wall and caused a shift that stuck his leg with a stone weighing nearly 30 kilograms. He was also buried with stones. At this time, he was 150 meters from the hole to the top.
The media
The next day, people noticed that Floyd was not there, but no one dared to follow him in the narrow corridors. His younger brother finally got close enough to see what had happened. He was able to give Floyd food and water as rescue plans were made.
After four days in the cave, several people tried to pull Floyd out using a rope and harness, but ended up injuring him. Meanwhile, the media was interested in the case, and the coverage attracted hundreds of tourists and novice scholars. Fires and, possibly, electric lighting that had been placed to provide Floyd with light and warmth, melted snow inside the cave, creating pools of water around the trapped man.
Two days after the failed rescue efforts, rain and melting snow caused the cave’s roof to collapse, and the rescue team realized it was too dangerous to dig it back out after making an attempt to do so. They decided to dig straight down to get to Floyd.
Digging
Unfortunately, the cave suffocated so they decided they couldn’t use the drills on the machine without risking suffocating Floyd. That meant people would have to dig a 55 meter hole to reach the victim. The initial estimate that 75 volunteers could dig the hole in 30 hours became optimistic, as the conditions worsened and the hole continued to deepen.
Someone cut the wires from the lamp and connected them to a loudspeaker to detect signs of life in the victim. They believed that the repeating sound meant that he was breathing.
The light was turned on on February 11, twelve days after the incident. After five days, they reached his body. He was dead and had been dead for several days.
You can find a well-made documentary from Remix Films in the video below. For a movie inspired by the event, see Billy Wilder’s film Ace in the Pit (1951) starring Kirk Douglas.
Viral
A newspaper reporter, William Miller, was at the scene and, being a small man, he was able to help remove the stones from Floyd before the cave. His interview with the man in the cave won a Pulitzer Prize.
There was a time when this would have been only a sensational local story, but in the current year of 1925, reports “came off the wire” by telephone and were picked up by newspapers around the world. The nearest telephone station was miles away, so two radio operators (9BRK and 9CHG) provided communication between the site, the newspaper, and the authorities.
The first broadcast radio station, KDKA, was only five years old, but the stations provided news bulletins detailing the progress. Thanks to the media, the crowds are reported to be in the tens of thousands. Finally, the National Guard arrived to help control the crowds.
Vendors came out to sell hamburgers and memorabilia like a macabre circus. As you can see in the video below, memorabilia about the event and Floyd Collins can be worth a pretty penny to collectors.
The whole thing became one of the three major media events between World War I and World War II. The other two were Lindbergh’s transatlantic flight (1927) and the kidnapping of Lindbergh’s child (1932). Sadly, Lindbergh was familiar with Floyd and flew news footage to the scene (albeit, reportedly, to the wrong newspaper).
Although not such a major event, the collapse of Canada’s Moose River Gold Mine in 1936 was similar and received worldwide media attention. It has the distinction of being the first 24-hour current affairs radio station in Canada.
Today
These days, exciting news is popping up everywhere. It seems they don’t start when they are fired by someone else. But we submit that “going viral” is not a modern thing. Only the speed at which it happens. Even an 1835 newspaper managed to spark a viral hoax.
Featured image: “Mammoth Cave Saltpeter Mine” by [Bpluke01]
