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Vanishing Act · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

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  Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Menke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
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  Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Grim & Mild.
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  Speaker 2: Our world is full of the unexplainable. And if history
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  Speaker 2: is an open book, all of these amazing tales are
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  Speaker 2: right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.
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  Speaker 2: Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
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  Speaker 1: It was October 11th of 1926, and Harry Houdini was
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  Speaker 1: on stage in Albany, New York. He was hanging by
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  Speaker 1: his ankles, and his assistant slowly lowered him into a
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  Speaker 1: water-filled tank. Suddenly, one of the pieces of the wooden
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  Speaker 1: apparatus around his ankles malfunctioned, smacking into his left ankle
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  Speaker 1: and fracturing it. He didn't even wince in pain. He
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  Speaker 1: was in complete control of his body, after all. and
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  Speaker 1: despite the shattered ankle, he went on with the trick,
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  Speaker 1: completely submerging himself in the tank. He finished the show,
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  Speaker 1: and then went to see a doctor. The doctor diagnosed
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  Speaker 1: the ankle and treated it, and advised that Houdini should
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  Speaker 1: cancel his next few tour dates. But the magician wouldn't stop.
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  Speaker 1: He didn't want to disappoint his fans, and to him,
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  Speaker 1: pain was always just something to be conquered, not to
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  Speaker 1: give in to. One of his most famous tricks was
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  Speaker 1: to call people up on stage and have them punch
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  Speaker 1: him in the stomach as hard as they could to
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  Speaker 1: prove that he had trained his stomach muscles to endure
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  Speaker 1: any blow. But the ankle clearly was bothering him. Throughout
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  Speaker 1: the next week, he kept returning to the doctor in
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  Speaker 1: Albany for further treatment. But he still decided to attend
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  Speaker 1: a lecture at McGill University in Quebec on October 19th.
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  Speaker 1: The topic was important to him. He was teaching the
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  Speaker 1: students about the movement known as spiritualism and the tricks
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  Speaker 1: that different supposed psychics employed to make their clients think
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  Speaker 1: that they could really commune with the spirits. Houdini often
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  Speaker 1: lectured on this topic. His lifelong obsession with magic meant
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  Speaker 1: that he took offense to anyone who claimed to actually
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  Speaker 1: be magical. It wasn't that he was completely closed off
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  Speaker 1: to the idea of a spiritual world. In fact, he
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  Speaker 1: hoped that there was one. But he knew a fellow
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  Speaker 1: illusionist when he saw one, and he hated the idea
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  Speaker 1: of someone in his trade using their abilities to manipulate
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  Speaker 1: grieving people trying to contact deceased loved ones. So, while
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  Speaker 1: he was at McGill, he shared with the students about
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  Speaker 1: trick tables, lights, and cold readings, anything and everything that
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  Speaker 1: might keep this younger generation from being fooled. Houdini found
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  Speaker 1: them to be such a receptive audience that he then
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  Speaker 1: invited them to come visit him backstage at his next show.
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  Speaker 1: On the night of October 22nd, the students visited him
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  Speaker 1: backstage at that show in Montreal. a strange, awkward man
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  Speaker 1: named J. Gordon Whitehead joined the group. He came forward,
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  Speaker 1: asking Houdini if he could truly withstand any blow to
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  Speaker 1: his stomach. When Houdini said yes, Whitehead started striking him
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  Speaker 1: repeatedly as hard as he could. Some accounts say that
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  Speaker 1: he wouldn't stop until the students pulled him away. Anyone
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  Speaker 1: else might have seen it as assault, but Houdini always
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  Speaker 1: hid his pain. He brushed the incident off and said
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  Speaker 1: that it was fine, but secretly he had been feeling
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  Speaker 1: unwell for days. He had wanted to chalk it up
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  Speaker 1: to his ankle, but the punches seemed to exacerbate stomach
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  Speaker 1: pain that he was already experiencing. As he rode on
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  Speaker 1: a train to Detroit the following day, the pain got worse,
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  Speaker 1: and he started to sweat. His fever rose to 104 degrees,
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  Speaker 1: but not surprisingly, he refused to go to the doctor.
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  Speaker 1: He had his opening night in Detroit to perform at,
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  Speaker 1: after all. and it must have been painful to watch
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  Speaker 1: as he was in immense torment. As soon as the
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  Speaker 1: curtain fell, Houdini collapsed. He was taken to a hospital
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  Speaker 1: where doctors diagnosed him with appendicitis. His appendix had ruptured
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  Speaker 1: and it was poisoning his body. They successfully removed it
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  Speaker 1: and Houdini seemed to be recovering. Reports indicated that he
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  Speaker 1: was in high spirits, no pun intended, talking with his
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  Speaker 1: family and his nurses. However, his blood poisoning took a
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  Speaker 1: turn for the worse and on October 31st, Halloween nights
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  Speaker 1: of 1926, Houdini passed away. The common explanation for the
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  Speaker 1: appendicitis is that J. Gordon Whitehead's punches caused it to rupture.
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  Speaker 1: The vigor with which he attacked Houdini almost suggests that
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  Speaker 1: he had a grudge against him. One popular theory suggests
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  Speaker 1: that he was hired by angry spiritualists who resented being
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  Speaker 1: debunked by Houdini. But there is a lot of debate
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  Speaker 1: in the medical community about about whether or not appendix
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  Speaker 1: rupture from external trauma is even possible. Such cases are rare,
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  Speaker 1: and even then doctors believe the ruptures could have already
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  Speaker 1: happened and the punches just exacerbated them. If anything, Houdini's
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  Speaker 1: death seems to have been the result of a tragic
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  Speaker 1: series of events. Hurting his ankle, getting punched, refusing to rest,
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  Speaker 1: all of these things kept him and his doctors from
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  Speaker 1: realizing what was actually hurting him. By the time they did,
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  Speaker 1: He was already septic. And look, I love storytelling. Obviously,
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  Speaker 1: it's what I do for a living. So I, like
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  Speaker 1: a lot of people, want to go looking for good
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  Speaker 1: story in things that happened in the past. So I
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  Speaker 1: can see how tempting it is to think that there
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  Speaker 1: was something strange about his death. Maybe, though, the answer
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  Speaker 1: is much more simple. That it was actually likely that
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  Speaker 1: someone as hardworking and risk-prone as Houdini would be vulnerable
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  Speaker 1: to this kind of medical complication. Still, the world will
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  Speaker 1: always be a little curious to know if there was
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  Speaker 1: some sleight of hand involved in this magician's final disappearance.
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  Speaker 1: It's a word that calls to mind an ancient, far-removed
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  Speaker 1: world from the modern day. Samurai. But there were actually
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  Speaker 1: samurai all the way up until 1877, the year that
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  Speaker 1: the telephone was invented. And the warriors themselves played a
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  Speaker 1: major role in their own demise. The 1870s were a
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  Speaker 1: time of rapid modernization for Japan, which, until recently, had
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  Speaker 1: been an isolated feudal state run by a military government. Samurai,
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  Speaker 1: who had held privileged positions within the old government, suddenly
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  Speaker 1: found themselves unemployed, disenfranchised, and forgotten. The country was moving
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  Speaker 1: on and leaving their old way of life in the dust.
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  Speaker 1: In the region of Satsuma, which had been one of
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  Speaker 1: the most powerful domains in the old military government, there
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  Speaker 1: was a renowned samurai named Saigo Takamori. He had opened
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  Speaker 1: more than a hundred private academies to retrain former samurai
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  Speaker 1: for new, modern jobs. But he wasn't just teaching his
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  Speaker 1: students how to read and farm. He also taught them
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  Speaker 1: how to use modern weapons favored by the new Japanese army.
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  Speaker 1: like rifles and artillery. When the Japanese government found out
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  Speaker 1: about this, they got spooked. They knew that it was
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  Speaker 1: dangerous for the former samurai to have access to these weapons.
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  Speaker 1: At any moment, tensions might boil over and they could
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  Speaker 1: launch a revolt. So in the middle of the night
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  Speaker 1: in January of 1877, the government sent a warship to
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  Speaker 1: an arsenal in Satsuma, hoping to remove all the weapons
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  Speaker 1: that were stockpiled there under the cover of darkness. But
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  Speaker 1: this turned out to be a terrible mistake. The local
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  Speaker 1: samurai caught wind of the raid, and they fought back.
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  Speaker 1: Within weeks, it spiraled into a full-scale rebellion. Over the
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  Speaker 1: next several months, the samurai who had founded the academies,
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  Speaker 1: Saigo Takamori, led more than 12,000 samurai across Japan. They
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  Speaker 1: were headed for Tokyo, the capital, where they planned to
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  Speaker 1: confront the emperor. But their training at Saigo's academies hadn't
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  Speaker 1: fully prepared them for the realities of modern warfare. Even
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  Speaker 1: with the firearms that they'd acquired, the samurai were terribly
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  Speaker 1: outgunned and outnumbered against the Japanese army. As the army
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  Speaker 1: bombarded them nonstop with artillery shells, the samurai's manpower and
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  Speaker 1: ammunition dwindled. They eventually had to resort to fighting with
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  Speaker 1: their swords in a true battle of tradition against technology.
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  Speaker 1: That summer, after months of battle, the samurai were forced
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  Speaker 1: to retreat, and by September they'd been pushed all the
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  Speaker 1: way back to Satsuma, where the rebellion had begun. But still,
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  Speaker 1: Saigo refused to surrender. With his last 500 surviving samurai,
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  Speaker 1: he launched one final hopeless battle against the Japanese army.
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  Speaker 1: Vowing to fight to the very end for their way
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  Speaker 1: of life, the samurai charged with their swords drawn into
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  Speaker 1: a barrage of artillery fire, and every single one of
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  Speaker 1: them died. The end of the Satsuma rebellion signaled the
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  Speaker 1: definitive end of the samurai era. The Japanese army had
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  Speaker 1: proven itself victorious, and with the samurai gone, Japan proceeded
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  Speaker 1: to march unimpeded into the modern era. I hope you
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  Speaker 1: enjoyed today's guided tour through the Cabinet of Curiosities. This
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  Speaker 1: show was created by me, Aaron Manke, in partnership with
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  Speaker 1: iHeart Podcasts, researched and written by the Grim & Mild team,
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  Speaker 1: and produced by Jesse Funk. Learn more about the show
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  Speaker 1: and the people who make it over at grimandmild.com slash curiosities.
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  Speaker 1: You'll also find a link to the official Cabinet of
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: Curiosity's hardcover book, available in bookstores and online, as well
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  Speaker 1: as ebook and audiobook. And if you're looking for an
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  Speaker 1: ad-free option, consider joining our Patreon. It's all the same stories,
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: but without the interruption for a small monthly fee. Learn
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: more and sign up over at patreon.com slash grim and mild.
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  Speaker 1: And until next time, stay curious.