Hey everybody. It is Dylan here and I’m walking through my kitchen and I’m going to do something that I now pretty much take for granted every day. I’m going to walk up to my fridge — I’m holding a glass here — and I’m going to press a little lever and that is ice magically falling out of the fridge into my glass. and then I can put water in it. I still think it’s like one of the most luxurious things in the world. But 100 years ago, getting ice was a much more complicated endeavor.

Dozens of people out on a frozen pond, wielding huge saws and pickaxes and cutting these just massive blocks of ice that would be stored and stacked and shipped across the globe. That was the way that ice got into people’s homes and into their cups.

Sound of pickaxe swinging.

Dylan Thuras: It is just like a giant ice pick.

Ken Lincoln: Something gets heavier.

Dylan: Yeah.

More ice-cutting noises.

Dylan: I’m Dylan Thuras, and this is Atlas Obscura: a celebration of the world’s strange, incredible, and wondrous places.…