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Treasure Island · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

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  Speaker 1: Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history
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  Speaker 1: is an open book, all of these amazing tales right
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  Speaker 1: there on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome
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  Speaker 1: to the Cabinet of Curiosities. Scene is believing. It's a
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  Speaker 1: well known phrase that has come to me in the
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  Speaker 1: opposite of its original intent. Writer and physician Thomas Fuller
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  Speaker 1: originated the quote in seventeen thirty two when he said
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  Speaker 1: scenes believing, but feelings the truth, meaning your eyes may
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  Speaker 1: deceive you, but what you can touch and feel will
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  Speaker 1: be the true test of what's real. Students and faculty
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  Speaker 1: at Cornell University got a test in truth in the
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  Speaker 1: early nineteen twenties. After a major storm coated the campus
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  Speaker 1: in snow. Someone noticed to set a footprints, large footprints
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  Speaker 1: bigger than any human could make. The Prince started on
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  Speaker 1: campus and traveled until they reached nearby bb Lake, where
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  Speaker 1: they stopped. The lake had frozen over, but something had
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  Speaker 1: opened up a wide hole in the ice, presumably whatever
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  Speaker 1: creature had made the footprints. A zoologist at the university
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  Speaker 1: rushed to the scene and identified the kind of animal
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  Speaker 1: that could have made such imprints and such a large
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  Speaker 1: hole in the ice it was, he said a rhinoceros.
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  Speaker 1: Authorities were called in to drag the water for a body.
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  Speaker 1: The local paper announced that a rhinoceros had drowned in
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  Speaker 1: bb Lake, and nobody on campus, students or staff would
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  Speaker 1: drink water from the tap, as the university's water supply
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  Speaker 1: came directly from that lake. A few people who did
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  Speaker 1: drink it claim that they could taste the rhinoceros. One
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  Speaker 1: thing is true about the story. A rhinoceros did make
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  Speaker 1: those tracks, well part of one. Professor Louis Agassi was
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  Speaker 1: an ornithologist at Cornell. He had traveled all over the
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  Speaker 1: world and brought back many souvenirs from his jarnie. One
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  Speaker 1: such item was a waste basket made from a hollowed
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  Speaker 1: out leg from a rhinoceros. But I guess he didn't
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  Speaker 1: make the tracks. That was all the work of a
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  Speaker 1: prankster and Cornell student, Hugh Troy. Troy had snuck into
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  Speaker 1: the professor's office to borrow the leg for his stunt.
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  Speaker 1: He and a friend filled it with scrap metal to
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  Speaker 1: weigh it down, then tied a thirty foot clothesline to it,
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  Speaker 1: which they held at each end. Together, the friends walked
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  Speaker 1: to the lake, pressing the basket into the snow to
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  Speaker 1: give the illusion of rhino tracks. Then Troy cut away
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  Speaker 1: a part of the ice over the lake to make
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  Speaker 1: it look like the rhino had simply walked in and drowned.
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  Speaker 1: It wasn't until much later when an anonymous letter penned
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  Speaker 1: by Troy explained the hoax to everyone on campus. Troy
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  Speaker 1: was a mastermind of pranks, and fooling an entire university
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  Speaker 1: was only the beginning. He once painted bare feet on
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  Speaker 1: a lecturer's galoshes, then covered them in soot. After the
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  Speaker 1: lecture was over, the owner of the shoes put them
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  Speaker 1: back on and stepped outside into the rain, which washed
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  Speaker 1: away the soot, making it look like the speaker was
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  Speaker 1: walking around campus without his shoes on. He also once
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  Speaker 1: cut a piece of corned beef to look like a
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  Speaker 1: human ear, then hung it at a Van Go exhibit
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  Speaker 1: in New York's Museum of Modern Art. The plaque that
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  Speaker 1: he had made to go with it claimed that the
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  Speaker 1: ear had been the one van Go himself had cut
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  Speaker 1: off before he died. Museum goers swarmed the display until
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  Speaker 1: employees realized what had been done. But perhaps the greatest
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  Speaker 1: trick this devil ever pulled happened in New York City's
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  Speaker 1: Central Park. Troy had purchased a park bench for himself
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  Speaker 1: and decided to walk through the park carrying it. The police,
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  Speaker 1: upon seeing a man hauling a park bench by himself,
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  Speaker 1: thought he was stealing it. However, every time they tried
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  Speaker 1: to arrest him, Troy pulled out the receipt to show
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  Speaker 1: them that he had in fact legally purchased the item.
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  Speaker 1: He did it so often the authorities eventually stopped arresting him.
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  Speaker 1: That's when Troy put the real prank at emotion. He
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  Speaker 1: organized a group of friends to go through the park
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  Speaker 1: and take the real city benches. The various cops on
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  Speaker 1: the beat thought that it was Troy up to his
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  Speaker 1: old tricks again, so they let them go, and all
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  Speaker 1: the benches were carried off from Central Park. From rhinoceros
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  Speaker 1: prints in the snow and a severed ear hanging in
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  Speaker 1: a museum, to coordinating a mass theft of park benches,
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  Speaker 1: Hugh Troy pulled off so many practical jokes he could
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  Speaker 1: talk about them for hours to impact auditorium. That is,
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  Speaker 1: of course, if the audience could find a seat first.
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  Speaker 1: It lies just three d miles off the coast of
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  Speaker 1: Costa Rica, a lush green paradise. Crystal blue waters lap
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  Speaker 1: at golden shores, while hundreds of species of insect and
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  Speaker 1: nineties species of birds coexist in a tropical wonder in.
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  Speaker 1: Step foot on Cocos Island and you'll think you're standing
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  Speaker 1: in the middle of a mirage. An island so beautiful
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  Speaker 1: it might be too good to be true. Well, depending
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  Speaker 1: on who you ask, it is. English pirate Edward Davis
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  Speaker 1: first landed on Cocos Island in seventeen o nine, albeit
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  Speaker 1: by accident. He and his crew were sailing their ship,
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  Speaker 1: The Bachelor's Delight, to the Galapagos Islands, hauling ten years
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  Speaker 1: worth of gold and jewels, in search of a hiding spot.
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  Speaker 1: They stumbled upon the deserted Cocos Island and decided to
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  Speaker 1: stash their booty there where nobody would find it. Over
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  Speaker 1: one years later, Captain Bloody Sword Bonito and his men
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  Speaker 1: stormed the shores of Cocos Island with one hundred fifty
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  Speaker 1: tons of gold. They'd intercepted a Spanish galleon on its
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  Speaker 1: way to Acacoco, Mexico, capturing its guard and donning their
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  Speaker 1: uniforms as a disguise without killing anyone, They simply unloaded
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  Speaker 1: all of the gold from that ship and loaded it
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  Speaker 1: onto their own before heading west. The pirate captains spread
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  Speaker 1: the gold around Cocos, bearing in some beneath the white sand,
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  Speaker 1: while stashing the rest in a cave. Bonito, not want
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  Speaker 1: to leave any loose ends, blew up the cave's entrance
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  Speaker 1: by igniting some powder kegs from his ship, closing it
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  Speaker 1: for good. And the crewmen who had helped him. He
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  Speaker 1: killed most of them so nobody else would know the
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  Speaker 1: location of the treasure, while the men he had spared
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  Speaker 1: died at sea not long after, Bonito had been the
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  Speaker 1: sole survivor. Then, in eighteen twenty, Cocos lured another captain
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  Speaker 1: to its shores. William Thompson, reputable British sea trader, had
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  Speaker 1: been hired by the Spanish viceroy in Peru to hide
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  Speaker 1: valuable artifacts belonging to over fifty Spanish churches. General Jose
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  Speaker 1: de San Martin had been leading a revolution for South
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  Speaker 1: America's independence from Spain. As his forces marched towards Lima,
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  Speaker 1: the viceroy new San Martin would take everything they had,
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  Speaker 1: so they loaded all their gold and silver onto Thompson's boat.
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  Speaker 1: Also included among the riches was a life size statue
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  Speaker 1: of the Virgin Mary, cast entirely in gold and covered
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  Speaker 1: in jewels. Thompson's instructions had been to eild the ocean
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  Speaker 1: with the viceroys treasure safely hidden aboard his ship, the
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  Speaker 1: Married Deer, until San Martin was out of the picture.
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  Speaker 1: Spanish guards were even brought on board to protect the
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  Speaker 1: bounty in case Thompson got any ideas. But Thompson did
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  Speaker 1: get an idea or two. Carting a load of gold, silver,
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  Speaker 1: and gems worth millions of dollars proved almost impossible to resist.
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  Speaker 1: After they left Lima and the shoreline had disappeared into
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  Speaker 1: the horizon, Thompson and his men killed the guards and
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  Speaker 1: dumped them overboard. Then they sailed to Cocos to hide
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  Speaker 1: what had become known as the Treasure of Lima. The
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  Speaker 1: plan afterward had been for Thompson and his crew to
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  Speaker 1: part ways until things died down, then returned to the
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  Speaker 1: island together and split the treasure among them. However, as
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  Speaker 1: soon as they departed Cocos, the Married Deer was stopped
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  Speaker 1: by Spanish forces who arrested everyone on board. Thompson and
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  Speaker 1: his first mate made a deal to show the Spanish
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  Speaker 1: guard where they buried everything in exchange for their lives,
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  Speaker 1: while the rest of the crew was hanged for piracy.
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  Speaker 1: The two remaining members of the Married Deer escorted the
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  Speaker 1: armed soldiers to the island as promised, and then made
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  Speaker 1: a run for it. They escaped into the dense jungle,
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  Speaker 1: hiding among the trees. The guards searched for hours but
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  Speaker 1: came up empty, eventually sailing away exhausted and embarrassed, Thompson
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  Speaker 1: and his first mate remained behind. As of today, the
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  Speaker 1: treasure of Lima has never been recovered. Cocos Island and
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  Speaker 1: the legends surrounding it have captivated the imaginations of people everywhere,
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  Speaker 1: from treasure hunters to writers. Over three hundred attempts have
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  Speaker 1: been made to find the various caches of gold and
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  Speaker 1: jewels that have been hidden there over the last several
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  Speaker 1: hundred years. Even President Franklin D. Roosevelt took a shot
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  Speaker 1: at it in the nineteen thirties. Since then, Cocos Island's
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  Speaker 1: reputation has only grown, influencing numerous fictional islands in literature
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  Speaker 1: and film. Daniel Dafoe based the Island of Despair in
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  Speaker 1: his novel Robinson Crusoe on Cocos. Treasure Island, as described
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  Speaker 1: by Robert Louis. Stevenson's book of the same name, was
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  Speaker 1: also based in part on Cocos and the story surrounding it,
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  Speaker 1: and author Michael Crichton used Cocos Island as a model
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  Speaker 1: for island knew Are, the location of the ill fated
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  Speaker 1: dinosaur themed resort Jurassic Park. The buried gold hidden around
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  Speaker 1: the island may never be found, especially since the Costa
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  Speaker 1: Rican government has refused to issue any more permits for
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  Speaker 1: treasure hunting. But the island isn't going anywhere, and neither
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  Speaker 1: is the treasure. And if we've learned anything from films
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  Speaker 1: like Jurassic Park, it's that life uh finds away. I
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  Speaker 1: hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities.
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  Speaker 1: Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about
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  Speaker 1: the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show
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  Speaker 1: was created by me Aaron Manky in partnership with how
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  Speaker 1: Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore,
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  Speaker 1: which is a podcast, book series and television show, and
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  Speaker 1: you can learn all about it over at the World
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  Speaker 1: of lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.
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  Speaker 1: Ye