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La La · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

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  Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
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  Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of
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  Speaker 1: the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all
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  Speaker 1: of these amazing tales are right there on display, just
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  Speaker 1: waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
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  Speaker 1: Many young people long for adventure. They're stuck in school
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  Speaker 1: or menial jobs, and they want a life where they're
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  Speaker 1: constantly on the move and experiencing new things. Young adult
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  Speaker 1: novels and role playing video games cater to this desire,
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  Speaker 1: featuring protagonists who come from humble beginnings and are swept
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  Speaker 1: up on epic journeys. After a chance encounter in eighteen
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  Speaker 1: thirty five, one young English aristocrat received a real life
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  Speaker 1: call to adventure. He set out on a journey that
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  Speaker 1: would change his life and the world. James had never
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  Speaker 1: been good at school. After dropping out, he joined the
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  Speaker 1: East India Trading Company Army, but soon took a bullet
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  Speaker 1: to the chest while in battle and was sent home
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  Speaker 1: to heal. He was bored and listless. The army had
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  Speaker 1: shown him some fascinating parts of the world, but he
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  Speaker 1: hadn't been free to explore it. He wanted to get
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  Speaker 1: back out there on his own. When his father passed
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  Speaker 1: away in eighteen thirty five, he received a massive inheritance.
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  Speaker 1: This was his chance to do something with his life,
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  Speaker 1: and so he did what any young man would do,
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  Speaker 1: and he bought a one hundred and forty two ton
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  Speaker 1: schooner called the Royalist. The lardship had six cannons and
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  Speaker 1: could accommodate dozens of crew members. James hired some men,
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  Speaker 1: purchased a ton of supplies, and then sailed toward Asia
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  Speaker 1: to find adventure. In eighteen forty one, he took on
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  Speaker 1: a request from the British governor of Singapore, who wanted
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  Speaker 1: James to travel to bruce Un to thank the Sultan
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  Speaker 1: there for the rescue of some British soldiers lost at sea.
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  Speaker 1: But like any good adventure, this simple request quickly turned
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  Speaker 1: into a larger ordeal. When James and his crew arrived
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  Speaker 1: in Brunei and met with the Sultan, they learned that
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  Speaker 1: this kingdom was beset by pirates, and so the sultan
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  Speaker 1: offered James governorship over the providence of Sarawak as a
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  Speaker 1: reward if he could put an end to the marauders.
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  Speaker 1: James teamed up with the Sultan's uncle, Hashem, and the
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  Speaker 1: two became friends, sailing the seas around Brunei and putting
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  Speaker 1: an end to the pirates. It was actually fairly easy
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  Speaker 1: with James's expensive ship. Once they found where the pirates
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  Speaker 1: were hiding, they could just blow them apart from the shore.
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  Speaker 1: And when James and Hashem returned to the Sultan, he
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  Speaker 1: gave James his reward, and James thus became the raj
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  Speaker 1: or the prince of Sarawak. But this put the British
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  Speaker 1: in an awkward position. Brunei is a small country on
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  Speaker 1: the northern tip of the large island of Borneo Sarawak
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  Speaker 1: by comparison, to make up most of the northern coast
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  Speaker 1: of the island. At the time, the Dutch controlled the
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  Speaker 1: southern half, and so the British were grateful to James
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  Speaker 1: because he was keeping the Dutch from gaining control of
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  Speaker 1: the island. But at the same time he was now
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  Speaker 1: a private British citizen with full control of his own
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  Speaker 1: Southeast Asian country. His actions could put the British into
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  Speaker 1: conflict if he wasn't careful, and as you can imagine
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  Speaker 1: James wasn't careful. He went about securing his kingdom in
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  Speaker 1: the most aggressive manner possible. He wiped out dozens of
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  Speaker 1: pirate villages. And these weren't just little caves full of
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  Speaker 1: stereotypical eyepatch wearing rogues. They were communities with women and children.
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  Speaker 1: James killed them by the hundreds, but he saw it
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  Speaker 1: as a necessary evil. The pirates threatened British shipping in
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  Speaker 1: the area. Additionally, a lot of the local tribes were
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  Speaker 1: engaged in human trafficking and head hunting, the practice of
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  Speaker 1: cutting off the heads of your enemies and shrinking them
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  Speaker 1: down to keep as trophies. James put an end to
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  Speaker 1: a lot of these practices, although again he was meeting
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  Speaker 1: extreme violence with his own version of extreme violence. In
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  Speaker 1: eighteen forty eight, he was knighted by the English Crown.
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  Speaker 1: Although he had been aggressive in his tactics, he had
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  Speaker 1: further British interests and avoided any conflict with the Dutch.
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  Speaker 1: His entire journey is obviously a pretty blatant example of colonialism.
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  Speaker 1: His desire for adventure led to the deaths of many,
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  Speaker 1: but some good did come from all of this violence.
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  Speaker 1: James's descendants ruled over Sarawak for one hundred years, and
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  Speaker 1: this allowed the people there to maintain their own unique culture,
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  Speaker 1: free from occupation by the British, the Dutch, or other
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  Speaker 1: nearby nations. That was until nineteen forty four, when the
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  Speaker 1: country was occupied by Japan. However, once liberated, the people
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  Speaker 1: of Sarawak were free to join a federation of other
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  Speaker 1: nearby island nations, becoming the nation that we know today
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  Speaker 1: as Malaysia. Curiously, this was only possible because of the
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  Speaker 1: actions of one man from half a world away. His
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  Speaker 1: desire to get out of the house and do something
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  Speaker 1: with his life permanently altered an entire part of the globe.
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  Speaker 1: In eighteen seventy nine, Edgar Degas spent four nights at
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  Speaker 1: the circus studying the routine of a high flying aerialist
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  Speaker 1: named Miss Lalla. He sat with his sketch pad sketching
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  Speaker 1: out images of her whirling through the air performing death
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  Speaker 1: defying stunts. Several months later, at the Fourth Impressionist Exhibition
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  Speaker 1: in Paris, he debuted a stunning portrait called Miss La
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  Speaker 1: La at the Cirque Fernando. His painting depicted a graceful
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  Speaker 1: black woman in a brightly colored costume high above the
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  Speaker 1: circus floor, dangling from a rope held not in her
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  Speaker 1: hand but in her teeth. The painting was so captivating
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  Speaker 1: that a well known art critic at the time said
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  Speaker 1: it was among Desgas's most striking and complex achievements. But
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  Speaker 1: while the art world has long marveled at this painting,
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  Speaker 1: history has nearly forgotten the woman who inspired it. They
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  Speaker 1: say a picture is worth a thousand words, right, But
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  Speaker 1: if that's the case, you'll need a whole museum to
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  Speaker 1: cover the fascinating life of famed circus performer Miss La La.
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  Speaker 1: Before Miss Lalla stunned circus goers, her name was Olga Brown.
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  Speaker 1: Records on her early life are sparse, but it's believed
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  Speaker 1: that Olga was the daughter of two fairground artists, Marie
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  Speaker 1: Christine Borchard, a white woman, and Wilhelm Brown, a freed
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  Speaker 1: slave who had made his way from the United States
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  Speaker 1: to Poland in the early eighteen hundreds. Olga was born
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  Speaker 1: in Poland, probably around eighteen fifty eight. Then, because she
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  Speaker 1: grew up around the fairgrounds, she had a keen interest
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  Speaker 1: in performing. At the young age of nine, her mother
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  Speaker 1: signed her into the circus where she quickly proved adept
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  Speaker 1: at the high wire and the trapeze. This was particularly
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  Speaker 1: because Olga was small in stature but muscular, with broad
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  Speaker 1: shoulders and strong legs. She could fly through the air
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  Speaker 1: with amazing height and was a perfect fit for the
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  Speaker 1: human cannonball act. That trick was a crowd favorite. As
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  Speaker 1: you might imagine, at the start of every performance, Olga
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  Speaker 1: would curl into a ball and roll down into a
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  Speaker 1: large wooden cannon at the edge of the circus ring.
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  Speaker 1: The cannon would boom and La La would be ejected
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  Speaker 1: from the barrel and launch across the high top tent,
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  Speaker 1: doing acrobatics as she sailed through the air before finally
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  Speaker 1: landing in a net on the other side of the ring.
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  Speaker 1: It soon became clear that Olga was a rising star
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  Speaker 1: no pun intended. The circus began billing her as a
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  Speaker 1: main event, but as so often happened to black women
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  Speaker 1: at the time, they didn't just focus on her talent.
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  Speaker 1: They also exoticized her, calling her Miss Lalla Venus of
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  Speaker 1: the Tropics, or sometimes the African Princess. It was without
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  Speaker 1: a doubts fetishizing and othering to her, but Olga or
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  Speaker 1: Miss La La, as she was known, never let the
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  Speaker 1: callous way she was built affect her ambitions. Throughout her
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  Speaker 1: teenage years, she performed in several different circuses and music
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  Speaker 1: halls across Europe, making a name for herself as the
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  Speaker 1: first rate aerialist in acrobat that she deserved to be.
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  Speaker 1: But at the time, there was one circus act that
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  Speaker 1: always stole the show, iron jaw routines. Iron jaw performers
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  Speaker 1: were usually early men with extraordinary neck strength. They would
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  Speaker 1: bite down on a leather bit attached to a rope
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  Speaker 1: and then pull, usually some kind of heavy object, across
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  Speaker 1: the ring. Crowds loved it, and La La knew that
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  Speaker 1: she was strong enough to come up with her own
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  Speaker 1: version of an iron jaw routine. She practiced dangling from
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  Speaker 1: a rope clenched between her teeth until she was comfortable
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  Speaker 1: holding her own body weight, and then she practiced aerial poses,
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  Speaker 1: creating beautiful shapes with her body while literally flying by
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  Speaker 1: the skin of her teeth, and by the time she
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  Speaker 1: was twenty one, Miss Lalla had developed something truly unique,
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  Speaker 1: an aerial iron jaw routine. She would walk to the
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  Speaker 1: center of the circus ring as the trapeze bar descended
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  Speaker 1: from the ceiling. She would then attach a hook to
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  Speaker 1: the trapeze and bite down, and then she'd be lifted
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  Speaker 1: into the very top of the circus tent. A swivel
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  Speaker 1: device on her hook allowed her to spin in the
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  Speaker 1: air seventy feet over the audience's heads. After that, she
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  Speaker 1: would lock her knees over the trapeze bar, the metal
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  Speaker 1: hook still dangling from her mouth, and she would use
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  Speaker 1: the hook to suspend one or even two other performers
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  Speaker 1: in mid air, to the roar of the crowds below.
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  Speaker 1: It was truly astonishing, especially given Miss Lalla's size, and
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  Speaker 1: it didn't take long for word about her routine to spread,
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  Speaker 1: and Miss Lalla toured Europe as a main attraction for
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  Speaker 1: the next nine years. But even though Lalla and her
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  Speaker 1: fellow performers were trained veterans, their jobs were still dangerous.
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  Speaker 1: Accidents happened, and in in eighteen eighty eight, a stunt
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  Speaker 1: went wrong. One of Laala's friends fell from a trapeze
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  Speaker 1: and plummeted to her death. After that, Miss Lalla backed
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  Speaker 1: away from performing. A few months after that, she met
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  Speaker 1: a fellow circus performer named Manuel Woodson. They got married
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  Speaker 1: and had three daughters who went on to form their
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  Speaker 1: own circus troop, the Three Kazias. But Laala faded from
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  Speaker 1: public life. Sadly, we're not sure where or when she
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  Speaker 1: passed away, but thanks to Dega, her likeness is forever immortalized.
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  Speaker 1: Her portrait hangs of the National Gallery in London, where
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  Speaker 1: she will forever stun adoring crowds who gather to watch
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  Speaker 1: her fly. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of
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  Speaker 1: the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts,
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  Speaker 1: or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast
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  Speaker 1: dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Mankey
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  Speaker 1: in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award
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  Speaker 1: winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series,
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  Speaker 1: and television show, and you can learn all about it
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  Speaker 1: over at Theworldoflore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.