Latest / Stuff You Should Know / (Approximately) 10 Things That Vanished Mysteriously
Transcript
- 0:01Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from house Stuff Works
- 0:04Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
- 0:13Speaker 1: There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry over there.
- 0:16Speaker 1: So this is stuff you should know the podcast. Wait,
- 0:19Speaker 1: him and a Jerry's not there all of a sudden,
- 0:23Speaker 1: it says she's vanished without a trace. No, she's right there.
- 0:26Speaker 1: There's just a miso dust lingering in her where she
- 0:31Speaker 1: once sat. Jerry, do you either want a So it
- 0:35Speaker 1: seems like she's eating me so soup a lot, but
- 0:37Speaker 1: she probably just did that once and I extrapolated that
- 0:40Speaker 1: over years. She's eating Indian food right now. I know,
- 0:43Speaker 1: our tiny little studio smells like we need a spice kitchen.
- 0:48Speaker 1: You know what that is. It's a kitchen full of spice.
- 0:51Speaker 1: Now it's a second kitchen for cooking really stinky food.
- 0:55Speaker 1: I didn't know that. Yeah, huh, I need it. I
- 0:57Speaker 1: want a spice kitchen so I can cook my rich
- 1:00Speaker 1: game meets that Emily can't stand the smell. What's your
- 1:03Speaker 1: favorite game meat? I'm just getting on like game meats.
- 1:05Speaker 1: What do you like the stinky? Oh? I mean, dude,
- 1:08Speaker 1: if I cook bacon or country ham or steak in
- 1:11Speaker 1: the Josh Clark cast iron fan steak. It stinks at
- 1:16Speaker 1: the house for two days. You know, She's just like,
- 1:19Speaker 1: oh my god, like that animal in here. You need
- 1:21Speaker 1: to get like good air purifier, air filter works works. Wonders. Well,
- 1:27Speaker 1: we don't have a stove hood yet, you know. Yeah,
- 1:31Speaker 1: which is that's probably the biggest rub. Yeah, And I
- 1:33Speaker 1: think like, depending on the stove hood, I think someone
- 1:36Speaker 1: are just kind of like, but there's ones out there
- 1:39Speaker 1: that are really good. Yeah. I bet those are the
- 1:41Speaker 1: expensive ones. Yeah, but I'll bet you can find a
- 1:44Speaker 1: good one that's at a lower price point. Maybe, or
- 1:48Speaker 1: maybe I could just hire a guy they got a
- 1:50Speaker 1: window right behind the stove to just sit, a little
- 1:53Speaker 1: short guy to sit in the window with some fireplace bellows.
- 1:56Speaker 1: They'd be good. Or one of those people who like
- 1:59Speaker 1: fan things with palm franz. Yeah, maybe that's cheaper. I
- 2:03Speaker 1: don't know. But for the life of your stove, probably
- 2:06Speaker 1: not weirdest start ever. So, Chuck, you remember when David
- 2:13Speaker 1: Copperfield made the Statue of Liberty disappear. I remember it happening.
- 2:17Speaker 1: I didn't watch it. You didn't watch it. No, I've
- 2:19Speaker 1: never been a big fan of his his magic work.
- 2:22Speaker 1: Even as a kid. Nah, not into it. Well, I
- 2:27Speaker 1: guess you would have been about fifteen at the time.
- 2:29Speaker 1: I could see you like being like, this is dumb. Yeah,
- 2:32Speaker 1: so you were eleven. It was the coolest thing ever. Yeah.
- 2:34Speaker 1: I was like, there's no way he's going to be
- 2:36Speaker 1: able to do this. Oh my gosh, he did it?
- 2:38Speaker 1: What I like? What is that? Even? I feel like,
- 2:43Speaker 1: if I remember correctly, he put up basically a curtain
- 2:45Speaker 1: around the Statue of Liberty and painted and the Statue
- 2:51Speaker 1: of Liberty wasn't there. I'm sure it's all smoking mirrors. Well,
- 2:54Speaker 1: of course it's you mean it wasn't real magic, but
- 2:56Speaker 1: I don't think so. I'm pretty sure it wasn't dark arts,
- 3:00Speaker 1: don't think so. I don't think Satan was involved. It
- 3:02Speaker 1: was too patriotic for that, you know what I mean. Um,
- 3:05Speaker 1: But anyway, my point is to this super lay intro
- 3:09Speaker 1: is that David Copperfield brought the Statue of Liberty back.
- 3:13Speaker 1: It didn't disappear forever. It just disappeared temporarily. It's amazing,
- 3:17Speaker 1: But there are some things, mostly people and some socks
- 3:23Speaker 1: that do just disappear forever that have disappeared forever, and
- 3:27Speaker 1: who's like mystery mysterious disappearances are still unsolved to this day.
- 3:31Speaker 1: It's pretty good. Do you lose a lot of socks? Uh? No, No,
- 3:36Speaker 1: Umi does our laundry. She keeps tabs on the socks. Well,
- 3:39Speaker 1: they make little tabs that you clip on keep your
- 3:42Speaker 1: socks together when And I've also seen there's this one
- 3:46Speaker 1: company that tried to sell socks and as three socks,
- 3:50Speaker 1: so you always had a backup superfluous sock. But it didn't.
- 3:54Speaker 1: I don't know if that took off like it should have.
- 3:57Speaker 1: Coulda who knows the person who invented it. They know,
- 4:02Speaker 1: believe me, they wake up every day and they're like,
- 4:04Speaker 1: three sacks was a great idea. So let's talk about
- 4:08Speaker 1: some of these things that have disappeared without a trace. Yeah,
- 4:12Speaker 1: this is one of our famous top tens. It'll be
- 4:14Speaker 1: what six eight, something like that, Solomon Northrop number one.
- 4:20Speaker 1: Have you seen twelve years of late yet? Man? Still No.
- 4:24Speaker 1: It's sitting on my DVR staring me in the face
- 4:27Speaker 1: and watch daring me to be sad and watch it.
- 4:31Speaker 1: You just gotta get it over with it. There's a
- 4:36Speaker 1: certain amount of Catharsis to it. It's not just gonna
- 4:38Speaker 1: bring you down to the depths of depression and leave
- 4:40Speaker 1: you there necessarily. Yeah, I've been ticking off the really
- 4:43Speaker 1: sad ones at a rate of about two per year.
- 4:47Speaker 1: Like I just watched Beast of the Southern Wild like
- 4:51Speaker 1: a few months ago. I haven't seen that one. That's
- 4:54Speaker 1: a good one. Is it good? Yes? Very tough movie,
- 4:57Speaker 1: is it? But yeah, long story short, I need to
- 5:00Speaker 1: watch Twelve Years of Slave. Okay, I'm shamed. I didn't
- 5:06Speaker 1: mean the same. I'm just saying it's like the third
- 5:08Speaker 1: time I've been shamed. It's a kid. It's a good movie.
- 5:10Speaker 1: So Solomon Northrop was the uh. He was the man
- 5:13Speaker 1: who wrote the memoir on which the movie was based,
- 5:17Speaker 1: because it's a true story about his life and he
- 5:21Speaker 1: was born free uh an African American in eighteen forty one.
- 5:25Speaker 1: Went well, it says here was lured from his home
- 5:28Speaker 1: in New York to Washington, d C. And then kidnapped
- 5:31Speaker 1: forced into slavery in Louisiana. Yeah, he was lured by
- 5:34Speaker 1: being basically hired as a musician, and while when he
- 5:39Speaker 1: went to d C, he was kidnapped and solding the slavery,
- 5:42Speaker 1: and man, it just gets worse from there. Whe they're like,
- 5:45Speaker 1: you should come down and play the nine thirty Club.
- 5:48Speaker 1: Basically yeah, He's like, great, let's see it. And they're like, oh,
- 5:52Speaker 1: there is no nine club. There's just horrific slavery on
- 5:56Speaker 1: a plantation in Louisiana. Um. So he actually, uh spoiler
- 6:01Speaker 1: alert for those of you, like Chuck who haven't haven't
- 6:03Speaker 1: seen the movie, he um is basically rescued from slavery.
- 6:09Speaker 1: He figures out a way to basically pass a message
- 6:11Speaker 1: along in the people who know and can confirm that
- 6:14Speaker 1: he was a born of Freeman, Um come and get him,
- 6:18Speaker 1: which is pretty great. Uh. The and at the very
- 6:22Speaker 1: end of the movie in it it says basically like
- 6:25Speaker 1: the circumstances and date and whereabouts of Solomon Northrop's death
- 6:29Speaker 1: are unknown. Okay, so they just finish it with a
- 6:32Speaker 1: They do graphic, yes, but basically it's almost like an
- 6:36Speaker 1: off handed thing. You don't think anything about it. But
- 6:39Speaker 1: it turns out he he disappeared. It was mysterious. Yeah,
- 6:44Speaker 1: he like people don't know where he went. He went
- 6:47Speaker 1: back to the North and ended up working in the
- 6:49Speaker 1: underground railroad. There's some um rumors that he became a
- 6:53Speaker 1: spy for the Union during the Civil War. And it's
- 6:58Speaker 1: so at some point he went you know, he wrote
- 7:01Speaker 1: Twelve Years of Slave, Yeah, and he went on a
- 7:03Speaker 1: book tour, um and abolitionist book tour, and he never
- 7:07Speaker 1: came home from it. Yeah. In eighteen sixty three was
- 7:10Speaker 1: about the last time that there were any records of
- 7:13Speaker 1: his existence. And there are a bunch of different theories
- 7:16Speaker 1: out there of what might have happened to him. Uh.
- 7:19Speaker 1: One that while he was a spy he was captured
- 7:22Speaker 1: and killed. One is that he was kidnapped again and
- 7:27Speaker 1: sold into slavery. But um, I think I read that
- 7:30Speaker 1: a lot of people just count out because he was
- 7:32Speaker 1: kind of too old to be valuable at that point
- 7:35Speaker 1: as a worker, yea. And or maybe he encount well,
- 7:41Speaker 1: we know he encountered some financial difficulties, so maybe he
- 7:43Speaker 1: just assumed a new identity and kind of skipped down.
- 7:46Speaker 1: There's also one that's like the saddest but also probably
- 7:50Speaker 1: the most realistic, that he died in a place where
- 7:54Speaker 1: they didn't know who he was and they weren't inclined
- 7:57Speaker 1: to to properly bury him, so he just led a
- 8:00Speaker 1: regular life and died unknown, Yeah, or like he got
- 8:04Speaker 1: run over by a horse or something on the book
- 8:06Speaker 1: tour and no one knew who he was. He just
- 8:09Speaker 1: thought he was like some African American, you know, or
- 8:13Speaker 1: maybe even a slave and they just buried him in
- 8:15Speaker 1: on mark Grave, Pauper's grave. Yeah, very sad. All right,
- 8:20Speaker 1: Well that is uh, that's the first one. Um. I
- 8:24Speaker 1: think Jimmy Hoffa is a great way to follow that up.
- 8:27Speaker 1: Who Jimmy Hoffa? M hmm, famous teamster uh, teamster boss.
- 8:34Speaker 1: I was reading a little bit about his huge beef
- 8:37Speaker 1: with Bobby Kennedy. They hated each other. They didn't like
- 8:41Speaker 1: each other, I mean hated each other. Like apparently Jimmy
- 8:44Speaker 1: Hoffa shoved Bobby Kennedy at a restaurant once because he
- 8:48Speaker 1: felt yeah, because he felt like he had snubbed him. Wow. Yeah,
- 8:52Speaker 1: Jimmy Hoffa didn't like that kind of thing. Bobby Kennedy
- 8:56Speaker 1: sent he wrote a book called The Enemy Within and
- 8:59Speaker 1: it was about like the Mob and um, I'm not
- 9:02Speaker 1: sure if Halfa was named in it or not, but
- 9:04Speaker 1: it was basically like all of his friends. Bobby Kennedy
- 9:08Speaker 1: wrote a book about it, and he sent a book
- 9:11Speaker 1: a copy of it to Jimmy Hoffa, and he wrote
- 9:14Speaker 1: a little inscription that said, to Jimmy, I wanted to
- 9:17Speaker 1: make sure you've got a copy of this from me
- 9:19Speaker 1: so you wouldn't have to use pension funds to buy
- 9:22Speaker 1: one zing zing indeed, and he said have him killed.
- 9:27Speaker 1: And he finally Bobby Kennedy finally got his mitts on
- 9:31Speaker 1: Jimmy Hoffa and sent him to prison for a little while.
- 9:33Speaker 1: But Halfa was a huge contributor to Nixon's campaigns against
- 9:37Speaker 1: the Kennedy and so when Nixon became president, he'd pardoned Halfa.
- 9:42Speaker 1: That's right, in nineteen seventy one, he was pardoned. And
- 9:44Speaker 1: then on July thirtieth, n sventy five, just four years later,
- 9:48Speaker 1: he went for a meeting at the uh macas Red
- 9:52Speaker 1: Fox restaurant. It's a great name in Bloomfield, Michigan's great
- 9:57Speaker 1: outside of Detroit, suburban Detroit. And he was never seen again,
- 10:03Speaker 1: never seen again, disappeared, no bones, nobody, no nothing. And
- 10:08Speaker 1: there's been tons of theories and suppositions and rumors about
- 10:12Speaker 1: what became of him. Right, yeah, Supposedly he was there
- 10:15Speaker 1: to meet um a couple of mafia bosses Anthony uh
- 10:20Speaker 1: Gia Cologne and Anthony pro Bazan though which was no
- 10:26Speaker 1: Tony Jack and Tony pro most were their nicknames. And um,
- 10:31Speaker 1: they denied later that they had a meeting scheduled and
- 10:34Speaker 1: they were they ended up actually having an alb because
- 10:37Speaker 1: I read that and I was like, well, duh, he
- 10:39Speaker 1: goes to meet with two mafia guys and disappears. But
- 10:42Speaker 1: supposedly they had an alibi and they yeah, exactly, and
- 10:46Speaker 1: they were not there. Um, so they were at church, yeah,
- 10:52Speaker 1: with their mothers. There was a truck, like a you know,
- 10:56Speaker 1: a semi truck pulling into the parking lot and almost
- 10:59Speaker 1: hit got hit by this car pulling out of Mercury
- 11:03Speaker 1: and he said he looked in and he saw Haffa
- 11:06Speaker 1: in the back seat with another guy with what looked
- 11:08Speaker 1: like a rifle like under uh, like a blanket in
- 11:11Speaker 1: between them. Oh yeah, I mean the mafia killed Jimmy Hoffa. Yeah,
- 11:16Speaker 1: there's virtually no dispute over that. It's just what happened
- 11:20Speaker 1: to his body exactly. So some people said that he
- 11:23Speaker 1: was buried under the old Giants Stadium in New Jersey,
- 11:26Speaker 1: that the meadow Lands or is the new one at
- 11:28Speaker 1: the meadow lands. The old well, the new one may
- 11:30Speaker 1: be there too, but the old one was definitely there.
- 11:34Speaker 1: Didn't happen? Did they ever dig it? Dig out the field?
- 11:38Speaker 1: And look? No, I think the MythBusters actually went there
- 11:41Speaker 1: with some equipment that could detect whether or not. Is
- 11:44Speaker 1: there anything those guys couldn't do? I don't know, get
- 11:47Speaker 1: along off the air. Yeah. Uh, we can also verify
- 11:52Speaker 1: that um, a couple of weeks before he disappeared, hundreds
- 11:56Speaker 1: of millions of dollars we're missing from the pension. And
- 12:00Speaker 1: um again, you know no secret that the mafia probably
- 12:04Speaker 1: had him done in right, So where's the body? Right? So? Um?
- 12:09Speaker 1: And I think two thousand and fourteen, a guy named
- 12:13Speaker 1: Tony Zarelli, another Tony, he wrote a book. Is that
- 12:18Speaker 1: what his? I'm just kidding his his His book was
- 12:21Speaker 1: called Half a Found and in it he detailed how
- 12:25Speaker 1: half of his body was buried under some concrete slabs
- 12:27Speaker 1: in a barn in upstate Michigan. I thought you gonna
- 12:31Speaker 1: say it was a pop up book, and at the
- 12:32Speaker 1: end he just pops up in right, here's half of um.
- 12:37Speaker 1: You got me with that one. And apparently the FBI
- 12:41Speaker 1: read this book and they went and dug up the
- 12:43Speaker 1: field and didn't find anything. Yeah, they've looked. Um, they're
- 12:47Speaker 1: quite a few locations in suburban Detroit that they've done
- 12:51Speaker 1: some digging over the years, all yielding nothing. And there
- 12:55Speaker 1: are other rumors he was fed to alligators in Florida.
- 12:58Speaker 1: Quite possible. It would be a good way to get
- 13:00Speaker 1: rid of a body and run through a wood chipper
- 13:02Speaker 1: was another one. Yeah, I'll fargo. Yeah, I think they
- 13:05Speaker 1: will never find him. I think. I also read that
- 13:09Speaker 1: one um, supposedly reputable mafia source said, yeah, we killed
- 13:16Speaker 1: him and we buried him in a shallow grave nearby,
- 13:19Speaker 1: and we were supposed to move it, but we never did.
- 13:21Speaker 1: So he's just, you know, not too far from the restaurant. Um.
- 13:25Speaker 1: They're like, we never thought about that place. But I
- 13:29Speaker 1: don't you know, I don't think they'll ever get anything.
- 13:32Speaker 1: To be one of those enduring mysteries that is lazy
- 13:36Speaker 1: who are too lazy to move a body to a
- 13:39Speaker 1: better right, just leave him in the shallow grave? All right?
- 13:43Speaker 1: Should we take a break, Yeah, why not? All right,
- 13:45Speaker 1: we'll come back and talk about more disappearing X. I
- 13:48Speaker 1: love this, Uh, one of these chuck, we should at
- 14:04Speaker 1: least give a shout out to is the three guys
- 14:06Speaker 1: who escaped Alcatraz. Oh yeah, and if you guys are
- 14:10Speaker 1: interested in that, go listen to our entire episode on Alcatraz,
- 14:13Speaker 1: where I believe we talked about this in depth. I hope.
- 14:15Speaker 1: So I'm pretty sure we did, because if not, people
- 14:17Speaker 1: are gonna be like, or just go watch the great
- 14:20Speaker 1: Clint Eastwood movie Escape from Alcatraz. Yeah, because it's pretty
- 14:23Speaker 1: darn accurate to the real story. Um, so we're gonna
- 14:27Speaker 1: breeze by that one. I mean, we can talk about
- 14:31Speaker 1: it if you want them, endlessly fascinated by. When we
- 14:33Speaker 1: were in San Francisco for our most recent tour for
- 14:36Speaker 1: Sketch Fest, Actually, did you go? No? I was. I
- 14:40Speaker 1: ran down to the bay and looked out across it.
- 14:42Speaker 1: I was like, I couldn't swim that, no problem. I
- 14:46Speaker 1: wanted to go, but you gotta get reservations far in advantage. Sure,
- 14:51Speaker 1: I've never been to Alcatraz. I want to go. Yeah.
- 14:53Speaker 1: I was like, let me call and get tickets and
- 14:55Speaker 1: they were like, we've been sold out for weeks. I'd
- 14:57Speaker 1: also like to go take a tour of Eastern State
- 14:59Speaker 1: pen the Tentry one of those old like crazy asylums. Yeah,
- 15:05Speaker 1: I would love to do that. It'd be pretty cool,
- 15:07Speaker 1: all right, Well, yeah, let's talk about it, why not. Yeah.
- 15:11Speaker 1: Nineteen sixty two, Frank Morris and the Anglan brothers, Johnny
- 15:14Speaker 1: and Clarence. They were bank robbers. Frank Morris is sort
- 15:17Speaker 1: of a lifelong crook. Yeah, very very super intelligent guy
- 15:23Speaker 1: who had escaped from several prisons. Uh. And finally they said,
- 15:27Speaker 1: you know what, We're gonna put you in Alcatraz because
- 15:29Speaker 1: it's inescapable. It's like the Titanic of prisons. You saw
- 15:34Speaker 1: what happen with that. So they devised a brilliant plan
- 15:37Speaker 1: over the course of several months, along with a guy
- 15:39Speaker 1: named Alan west Um who sadly was left behind um
- 15:44Speaker 1: to Uh, he wouldn't wake up. No, he couldn't fit through,
- 15:47Speaker 1: he couldn't get his little vent open. They what they
- 15:49Speaker 1: did was they carved out in vent over the course
- 15:52Speaker 1: of months with like these little homemade chisels. He ain't
- 15:55Speaker 1: too much bread pudding in the meantime, maybe, I mean
- 15:58Speaker 1: the guys tried. They were trying to kick out from
- 16:00Speaker 1: the other side, and eventually like we gotta go do
- 16:03Speaker 1: so Um. The plan was over the course of months
- 16:06Speaker 1: to carve out this space to get out, work their
- 16:09Speaker 1: way through the guts of the prison to the roof,
- 16:11Speaker 1: slide down some drain pipes, and then swim away with
- 16:15Speaker 1: homemade life vests made out of raincoats that they had
- 16:19Speaker 1: collected and glued together. But didn't they run into like
- 16:21Speaker 1: some construction or something like that that just totally through
- 16:24Speaker 1: their their plan off, improvise and go around, and it
- 16:28Speaker 1: just was exponentially harder than they thought it was going
- 16:31Speaker 1: to be getting out, I believe it. But they made
- 16:34Speaker 1: life rafts out of raincoats that they sewed together to inflate, well,
- 16:38Speaker 1: glued them together. Yeah, that's awesome. It is awesome. And
- 16:40Speaker 1: they also made um bodies, well heads at least, right, Yeah,
- 16:44Speaker 1: paper mache heads to lay in their bunks that um,
- 16:48Speaker 1: you know, they look like paper mache heads in the light,
- 16:52Speaker 1: but when you're walking the rounds at night and it's
- 16:54Speaker 1: just sort of tucked into a pillow under some blank
- 16:57Speaker 1: ets with real human hair from the barbershop, it fulled
- 17:01Speaker 1: the guards. Yeah. Really, don't they have those on display
- 17:06Speaker 1: in Alcatraz still? Oh, I'm sure they do. And here's
- 17:09Speaker 1: a neat little fact that I didn't know until my
- 17:11Speaker 1: friend Stacy told me. The they didn't have cold water
- 17:15Speaker 1: in Alcatraz because they didn't want you to be able
- 17:18Speaker 1: to acclimate yourself to the frigid baywaters over time. So
- 17:23Speaker 1: all the water was warm, luxurious, the bay waters about
- 17:29Speaker 1: fifty degrees. It's like an omni it is And uh,
- 17:34Speaker 1: they don't know, I mean the FBI, and everyone says
- 17:36Speaker 1: now they died for sure. That says that about everybody.
- 17:39Speaker 1: They can't catch you now they're dead. There's no way.
- 17:42Speaker 1: Just don't bring it up again, right, just shut up. Uh,
- 17:46Speaker 1: they don't think they could have survived the swim. Um.
- 17:48Speaker 1: The original plan was to go to Angel Island, go
- 17:51Speaker 1: to the opposite side of the island, and then swim
- 17:54Speaker 1: to Marin. I guess open a coffee shop. I guess
- 17:59Speaker 1: me dely right. When they crossed the county, they were
- 18:03Speaker 1: imbued with wealth. I don't know if they made it
- 18:06Speaker 1: or not. Apparently a couple of weeks later there was
- 18:08Speaker 1: a freighter ship that saw a body floating. Uh, they
- 18:14Speaker 1: didn't report it until October though. They went from July
- 18:17Speaker 1: to October and then said, oh, by the way, we
- 18:19Speaker 1: saw body floating. That looked like he was wearing prison denims.
- 18:22Speaker 1: They finally got to that on their to do list.
- 18:24Speaker 1: They're like, oh, yeah, report dead body. Well it's a
- 18:27Speaker 1: fraighter ship. They didn't care, you know, their laws, their
- 18:30Speaker 1: allegiances to the sea, not a man on land. And
- 18:33Speaker 1: they also found a few pieces of other evidence. Um,
- 18:36Speaker 1: they found a life vest with teeth marks near the
- 18:39Speaker 1: valve and um, human teeth marks. Yeah, human teeth marks. Yeah,
- 18:45Speaker 1: not Barracuda teeth marks. Isn't someone who was probably holding
- 18:48Speaker 1: it in their teeth trying to blow it up while
- 18:50Speaker 1: they were swimming. Where would they have gotten a life vest? Oh,
- 18:53Speaker 1: I don't know. I think it was one of the
- 18:54Speaker 1: homemade ones. Oh well, so, I mean that doesn't mean anything.
- 18:58Speaker 1: They could have ditched. Well that's what I said. And
- 19:01Speaker 1: the fact that the body was unidentifiable. Yeah, and they
- 19:05Speaker 1: never uh, they never you know, resurfaced. The plan was
- 19:10Speaker 1: to rob a store on Angel Island and get clothing,
- 19:13Speaker 1: and there were never any robberies planting. You know. That's
- 19:16Speaker 1: kind of about That's a little telling, although they could
- 19:18Speaker 1: have been like, I'm too cold to rob anything, let's
- 19:20Speaker 1: just go to Muran and hug Yeah. Uh so who knows.
- 19:25Speaker 1: Pretty neat, pretty neat? Indeed, when was that cool? I
- 19:30Speaker 1: think we'll never know, just like the rest of these
- 19:33Speaker 1: unexplained mysterious disappearances. Should we move on to the candy heiress. Yeah,
- 19:38Speaker 1: Helen Brock. Um, I can't remember where I saw something.
- 19:42Speaker 1: I saw it. I guess the documentary on this case.
- 19:45Speaker 1: It's amazing. It's an amazing true crime cold case. Helen
- 19:49Speaker 1: Brock's mysterious disappearance. And this our own article gets a
- 19:52Speaker 1: little bit wrong. Um, but let's talk about it, okay.
- 19:56Speaker 1: So Helen Brock was the heiress to the Brock Candy
- 19:58Speaker 1: fortune because her husband and Frank Brock um it, was
- 20:03Speaker 1: a co founder of the company and when he died,
- 20:05Speaker 1: he left his wife Helen. Um, I think, basically everything.
- 20:09Speaker 1: And she was a very very wealthy woman, and she
- 20:13Speaker 1: liked to do things like go to the Mayo Clinic
- 20:15Speaker 1: to get her annual physical like Mr Burns, although she
- 20:19Speaker 1: was nothing like Mr Burns from what I understand. She
- 20:21Speaker 1: was a very um, lovable, conscience is cool person. Um.
- 20:26Speaker 1: But she was very very wealthy, so why not go
- 20:29Speaker 1: to the Mayo Clinic? Back in she went to the
- 20:33Speaker 1: Mayo Clinic and got to work out, and the last
- 20:36Speaker 1: reliable person to see her alive was a woman who
- 20:40Speaker 1: was working at the Mayo Clinic gift shop where Mrs
- 20:43Speaker 1: Brock stopped to get a gift for her niece. A
- 20:46Speaker 1: Mayo Clinic snow globe exactly right, right, yeah, what else?
- 20:56Speaker 1: Anything else? Spooned spoon to Mayo Clinic spoon. People click those,
- 21:00Speaker 1: uh Mayo Clinic sock puppet. Big seller. So she said
- 21:07Speaker 1: to the lady, I'm in a hurry. My house man
- 21:09Speaker 1: is waiting. House man was one Jack Matlick, and she
- 21:14Speaker 1: was never seen again. Um, Mattlick had dropped her off.
- 21:19Speaker 1: Obviously it's for the outbound flight to Minneapolis. And then
- 21:22Speaker 1: he said, no, man, she came back. I picked her up.
- 21:26Speaker 1: And then she spent four days. I didn't call anyone,
- 21:30Speaker 1: but she was here home at home, even though there's
- 21:33Speaker 1: no evidence to corroborate this, right, And then he said
- 21:36Speaker 1: he dropped her off again at the airport, had to
- 21:38Speaker 1: go to Florida, right where she had a condo. Correct.
- 21:41Speaker 1: And it was when she didn't show up in Florida
- 21:43Speaker 1: as planned that people started noticing she was missing, and
- 21:46Speaker 1: they called her house and Matlick answered and two different
- 21:50Speaker 1: people gave varying stories about where she was. Did he
- 21:53Speaker 1: say Matlock residents? Right? I mean I mean resident. So
- 22:00Speaker 1: here's a couple of pinky details. Matt Matt like I
- 22:02Speaker 1: think was the guy, although he disagreed. Uh he um. Well,
- 22:08Speaker 1: the people on the original flight, like the flight crew said, Now,
- 22:11Speaker 1: she was never on this plane to begin with. Oh,
- 22:14Speaker 1: from the Mayo Clinic back to Chicago. Yeah, okay, so
- 22:17Speaker 1: that stands out as super hinky. Well he wasn't there,
- 22:20Speaker 1: then he was going to pick her up in Chicago.
- 22:23Speaker 1: He wouldn't have been in Minneapolis. So if she wasn't
- 22:25Speaker 1: on the flight from Minneapolis to Chicago, he wouldn't have
- 22:27Speaker 1: had anything to do with that, seemingly, but he Why
- 22:31Speaker 1: would he say that he picked her up if she
- 22:33Speaker 1: didn't arrive. I'm not saying he didn't know what happened,
- 22:37Speaker 1: but I don't think he was the one that killed her. Sorry,
- 22:39Speaker 1: just go well, he he cashed. He was found out
- 22:43Speaker 1: later to have cashed thirteen grand and checks with the
- 22:47Speaker 1: Fords signature from It wasn't his handwriting and it wasn't hers,
- 22:52Speaker 1: that's right, but he's clearly working with someone. Sure, that's
- 22:54Speaker 1: where I'm going here. Uh. And her brother Charles Voor
- 23:00Speaker 1: he's that and Matt like actually burned her diaries after
- 23:03Speaker 1: she died, and there's super weird. Well, her brother's explanation
- 23:07Speaker 1: was that she was into automatic writing, which is basically
- 23:09Speaker 1: where you get a piece of paper and a pen.
- 23:12Speaker 1: Super Victorian, right, and um, you say, oh, spirits speak
- 23:17Speaker 1: through me. Oh excellent airbag. Let's see what you got, right,
- 23:21Speaker 1: and you just start the spirits move your hand. And
- 23:24Speaker 1: her brother said, uh, she would not have wanted people
- 23:28Speaker 1: to see this stuff, so we just burned it. It's
- 23:30Speaker 1: like the weg Wegia writing. Right, It's exactly like that,
- 23:34Speaker 1: except with a pen. Interesting. So they were just embarrassed
- 23:37Speaker 1: and didn't want that to get out, that's what he said. Well,
- 23:41Speaker 1: I mean, it's not a crime to destroy your papers.
- 23:43Speaker 1: A lot of people made the case that um uh,
- 23:45Speaker 1: Mark Twain should have destroyed his papers rather than allowing
- 23:48Speaker 1: them to be published posthumously. I thought you were gonna
- 23:51Speaker 1: say Mark Twain got rid of got rid of her,
- 23:54Speaker 1: But that's impossible. It is in nineteen seventy seven. It
- 23:57Speaker 1: is impossible. You imagine Twain in the seventies. I think
- 24:01Speaker 1: it would have been much the same. Yeah, yeah, whimsical musings,
- 24:05Speaker 1: yea with a searsucker suit, sharp, sharp wit, you know, yeah,
- 24:09Speaker 1: with the series, Yeah, he would have been Tom Wolfe.
- 24:11Speaker 1: So there's another guy named Richard Bailey who was a
- 24:15Speaker 1: vacuum salesman. Apparently he was sort of like dirty rotten scoundrels.
- 24:20Speaker 1: He would swindle old ladies out of their dough. I
- 24:23Speaker 1: think it's more like American gigolo. Uh. Well, no, I
- 24:26Speaker 1: don't think he was jigglowing. I think he was. Oh
- 24:29Speaker 1: he was. Oh, I thought it just had to do
- 24:31Speaker 1: with horses. That was his. Like, invest in this thoroughbread,
- 24:37Speaker 1: give me your dough, but also come and lie down
- 24:40Speaker 1: with me this in the sock, in my jeans. You
- 24:43Speaker 1: know that's a gigolo thing to say. Uh. So he
- 24:49Speaker 1: was eventually pinched for fraud and racketeering, sentenced to prison.
- 24:54Speaker 1: Um and people thought that he had a role in
- 24:57Speaker 1: her disappearance. He said, no, I didn't. And a judge said,
- 25:01Speaker 1: do you know what I think you did? And he said,
- 25:04Speaker 1: who cares what you think? Judge? Well, the judge said, well,
- 25:06Speaker 1: I'll tell you why you should care, because I'm giving
- 25:08Speaker 1: you a thirty years sentence because I suspect that you
- 25:11Speaker 1: had something to do with Mrs Brock's disappearance and likely death.
- 25:15Speaker 1: So who do you think it was him? I do
- 25:18Speaker 1: Although he wrote a book, um, that said he loved her,
- 25:23Speaker 1: that he yes, he was a jigglo, just a jigglo,
- 25:27Speaker 1: but he fell in love with her and his love
- 25:29Speaker 1: was sincere and real. Um. And he said that he
- 25:33Speaker 1: was going to give the proceeds from his book to
- 25:37Speaker 1: her favorite charity, which is an animal welfare charity. And
- 25:41Speaker 1: she had her own foundation that she endowed upon her death,
- 25:44Speaker 1: and she was declared dead seven years later in nineteen
- 25:46Speaker 1: eighty four, just because that's what they do when you
- 25:48Speaker 1: don't turn up for seven years and people think you're dead, um.
- 25:51Speaker 1: And her her endowment basically went toward almost exclusively animal welfare. Well,
- 25:58Speaker 1: he had already stolen all of her money when he
- 26:00Speaker 1: killed her, right, Well, that was the thing. So we
- 26:01Speaker 1: sold her some bumb racehorses for three grand and they
- 26:06Speaker 1: later sold for one dollar. That's how bad off these
- 26:10Speaker 1: race horses were. He said, by Limp Joe, he's a
- 26:12Speaker 1: great investment. And the one eyed Pete and they they
- 26:18Speaker 1: think that he had her whacked because um, she was
- 26:22Speaker 1: going to blow the whistle on him. Interesting, Yeah, that's
- 26:25Speaker 1: the theory, right, and I mean he's in prison for
- 26:28Speaker 1: it right now. He's not in prison for her murder,
- 26:31Speaker 1: although the judge just said, like, yeah, I gave you
- 26:33Speaker 1: a stiff sentence because I think you killed her, kind
- 26:35Speaker 1: of like when O. J. Was sent in to prison
- 26:39Speaker 1: for armed robbery, yeah, and kidnapping and yeah, all these
- 26:43Speaker 1: other things. I think it's the exact same thing watching
- 26:45Speaker 1: that show right now. Now, I'm waiting until it's done
- 26:48Speaker 1: and then I'll start it. Terrible, well, terribly awesome. Oh okay, cool, Yeah,
- 26:55Speaker 1: I like that. However, I think I'm bailing on it
- 26:58Speaker 1: because after a few episodes that was the novelty of
- 27:01Speaker 1: it being terribly awesome kind of war off and I'm like,
- 27:04Speaker 1: I just don't know if I have time to watch
- 27:05Speaker 1: something that's good, bad or bad. I think you don't
- 27:08Speaker 1: like it's too short, you know, I like it, though,
- 27:10Speaker 1: you never know. I'll try it for sure. It's bad casting.
- 27:13Speaker 1: Cubic Gooding Jr. Is he not a good O J. Well,
- 27:16Speaker 1: he's just he's too nice. He's just small, like he
- 27:19Speaker 1: doesn't look like a football player. Even though he played
- 27:22Speaker 1: one Jerry McGuire, Yeah, he did. He played a wide
- 27:25Speaker 1: receiver though, what was he He's a running back, was he? Yeah?
- 27:29Speaker 1: You gotta be a little stock here and that bigger
- 27:31Speaker 1: and boy Malcolm Jamal Warner is a c and he's
- 27:35Speaker 1: way over the top. Yeah, but it's worth it for
- 27:39Speaker 1: just to watch Travolta. It's that's something else he plays.
- 27:41Speaker 1: Robert Shapiro, right, Oh does he? I can't wait to
- 27:44Speaker 1: see this now, man. Yeah, it's you should definitely check
- 27:48Speaker 1: out of psych the first one at least. Well, since
- 27:50Speaker 1: we're so psyched, we should take another break. What do
- 27:52Speaker 1: you think let's do it? Okay, how about a quick one.
- 28:08Speaker 1: George Washington's teeth Yeah, here today, gone tomorrow. Yeah. So
- 28:12Speaker 1: they were in a storage room at the Smithsonian. They
- 28:14Speaker 1: were on loan in uh from since nine from the
- 28:18Speaker 1: University of Maryland dental school. Right. Yeah. Washington had terrible teeth,
- 28:22Speaker 1: like me. That's his like that was his cross to
- 28:25Speaker 1: bear in his life. By the time he was inaugurated,
- 28:28Speaker 1: he only had one tooth remaining, so he very famously
- 28:32Speaker 1: had full dentures in his mouth. Uh. And the providence
- 28:36Speaker 1: of those dentures is up for debate. They're clearly not
- 28:40Speaker 1: they're not wood or wooden teeth. That's an old wives sale.
- 28:44Speaker 1: But there's things like ivory um gold, real human, real
- 28:48Speaker 1: human teeth. And that's where like the debate comes up
- 28:50Speaker 1: because some people are like, he these were forcibly taken
- 28:53Speaker 1: from his slaves, and other people are like, they might
- 28:56Speaker 1: be slave teeth, but he probably bought them. If you
- 28:59Speaker 1: really look at his character over the course of his lifetime,
- 29:02Speaker 1: he most likely wouldn't have had his teeth his slaves
- 29:06Speaker 1: teeth forcibly extracted. He probably would have compensated for and
- 29:09Speaker 1: if you look at contemporary ads at the time, that
- 29:12Speaker 1: was a common practice to buy teeth from people who
- 29:15Speaker 1: are willing to give him up. Although I'm quite sure
- 29:18Speaker 1: that somewhere in the US dentures were made out of
- 29:23Speaker 1: forcibly extracted slaves, which is like one of the most
- 29:27Speaker 1: horrific things I've ever heard of. So in the end,
- 29:29Speaker 1: Washington ended up having four. They're well, probably more than four,
- 29:33Speaker 1: but there are four existing sets left on display, and
- 29:37Speaker 1: one of which was at the Smithsonian until they disappeared
- 29:42Speaker 1: um from storage room where only employees had access, so
- 29:46Speaker 1: it double locked stories. Yeah, it very much. Is seems
- 29:50Speaker 1: like an inside job almost invariably. But it gets a
- 29:53Speaker 1: little more interesting because half of them showed back up. Yeah,
- 29:57Speaker 1: the lower the lower half, I think, leave those the
- 30:00Speaker 1: lower half. Yeah, like a year later, they just suddenly
- 30:03Speaker 1: reappeared out of nowhere, and they think that, Um, rather
- 30:07Speaker 1: than sell these on the market to somebody like Steven
- 30:10Speaker 1: Spielberg or something, they they they melted them down for
- 30:14Speaker 1: their gold, which is terrible. You know, that's I'd rather
- 30:19Speaker 1: have some rich jerk have the full set and just
- 30:22Speaker 1: know that they're out there still, then have them melted
- 30:25Speaker 1: down for gold. Right. They're like, you can get that anywhere? Um,
- 30:30Speaker 1: that would be very sad. Indeed. Uh. And to this day,
- 30:33Speaker 1: they still don't know where those the top set. I'm
- 30:35Speaker 1: sorry the Yeah, the top set remains missing. Yeah, it
- 30:41Speaker 1: might be someone's wedding ring right now. Wouldn't that be weird?
- 30:43Speaker 1: That would be really weird, you know. Yeah, Flight nineteen.
- 30:48Speaker 1: Are we moving on? Yeah? I love this one. We
- 30:51Speaker 1: covered this one a little bit in their Bermuda Triangle episode. Yeah,
- 30:54Speaker 1: I remember not liking that episode for some reason. I
- 30:57Speaker 1: don't know, I don't know. It was basically like, look
- 31:00Speaker 1: at all this hokum. Yeah. Yeah, we spent the whole
- 31:03Speaker 1: time explaining why that it's not a real thing. Okay,
- 31:06Speaker 1: well maybe I did like it then, Oh yeah, yeah,
- 31:08Speaker 1: because it's not a real thing. No, it's not. There's
- 31:11Speaker 1: not some mistake. There has been a lot of weird
- 31:13Speaker 1: disappearances in that area. That's indisputed, indisputable. Don't even try
- 31:21Speaker 1: Flight nineteen in December nineteen forty five, there were five
- 31:24Speaker 1: planes TBM Avengers, which are torpedo bombers. They took off
- 31:29Speaker 1: from Fort Lauderdale on a training mission. Uh supposed to
- 31:33Speaker 1: be a couple of hours. Don't go more than a
- 31:35Speaker 1: hundred and fifty miles, guys, and uh, just come on
- 31:38Speaker 1: back and we'll have some hot soup waiting on you, right,
- 31:41Speaker 1: or maybe it's Fort Lauderdale, some good spato, yeah, or
- 31:45Speaker 1: Cuban black bean suit maybe oh yeah. Yeah. But they
- 31:49Speaker 1: never came back, No, they didn't. Um and back back
- 31:52Speaker 1: in Fort Lauderdale. I think at the Fort Lauderdale Hollywood Airport,
- 31:55Speaker 1: which is what it is now. Back then it was
- 31:57Speaker 1: like Fort Lauderdale, right, Um, the they were waiting anxiously
- 32:03Speaker 1: for him, and and they never came back, although they
- 32:05Speaker 1: did get a radio transmission from the guy who was
- 32:08Speaker 1: the trainer, Yeah, the flight leader. He said, both my
- 32:13Speaker 1: compasses are out for some reason, and we are in
- 32:16Speaker 1: big trouble. We have no idea where we are. And
- 32:18Speaker 1: they went back and forth with the tower for a
- 32:20Speaker 1: while trying to figure out where they were. Uh, and
- 32:23Speaker 1: they changed courses a few times. Then that was the
- 32:26Speaker 1: last anybody heard of him. Yeah. So they sent a
- 32:29Speaker 1: plane after them, a Mariner aircraft with thirteen men aboard.
- 32:33Speaker 1: So they already lost fourteen, I believe, from these other flights,
- 32:37Speaker 1: five planes, and then they sent another plane, right, said,
- 32:39Speaker 1: another plane. That one didn't come back. People need a triangle. Well,
- 32:43Speaker 1: that one's no big mystery. They attributed that to an explosion,
- 32:46Speaker 1: so they think it actually exploded, and well what man,
- 32:49Speaker 1: it explode aliens, But it didn't seriously disappear, Okay. The
- 32:54Speaker 1: other ones definitely did mysteriously disappear, and um they most
- 32:59Speaker 1: people thought that they just went um further and further
- 33:02Speaker 1: out into the Atlantic. That at one point they were
- 33:05Speaker 1: over the Bahamas or Bermuda, which they mistook for the
- 33:09Speaker 1: Florida Keys, which is not the same thing. And if
- 33:12Speaker 1: you use that mistakenly, as your bearings, you're going to
- 33:15Speaker 1: be in big trouble, and that they ended up just
- 33:17Speaker 1: running out of feeling crashed in the Atlantic. But uh,
- 33:21Speaker 1: in the last year or two, a couple of independent
- 33:23Speaker 1: searchers who had this same theory independently came together and said,
- 33:28Speaker 1: you know what, there was in nine a Broward County
- 33:32Speaker 1: Sheriff's Department helicopter spotted the wreckage of one of these planes,
- 33:37Speaker 1: the TBM Avenger, in the Everglades, next to Jimmy Hoffa's body,
- 33:42Speaker 1: and um, they said, it was so far off from
- 33:46Speaker 1: where they thought flight nineteen had been that it couldn't
- 33:49Speaker 1: have been one of them. And then they went back
- 33:50Speaker 1: and looked at the records and they were like, well,
- 33:52Speaker 1: the only missing Avenger planes are from flight nineteen, so
- 33:57Speaker 1: it has to be one of them, basically, And they
- 33:59Speaker 1: found an aircraft carrier off of Daytona had tracked six
- 34:03Speaker 1: unidentified planes that night turning into the Florida mainland, so
- 34:07Speaker 1: they think rather than going out to see they turned
- 34:10Speaker 1: inland and didn't realize they were inland because the weather
- 34:13Speaker 1: was so bad. They were way off course right, and
- 34:15Speaker 1: they at least one of them crashed in the Everglades. Yeah. Um.
- 34:19Speaker 1: The only thing I knew about this previous to this
- 34:22Speaker 1: research was the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
- 34:25Speaker 1: Oh really they showed up in that, Yeah, I remember
- 34:28Speaker 1: that was Um. I never saw the whole thing. Oh man,
- 34:31Speaker 1: it still holds up. Yeah, like Spielberg knows what he's doing. Yeah.
- 34:36Speaker 1: And the special effects even still look pretty decent considering
- 34:39Speaker 1: you know what what we're how long ago it was, Um,
- 34:43Speaker 1: they found the planes and the desert. Uh. And the
- 34:47Speaker 1: idea was that the aliens had had gotten ahold of
- 34:50Speaker 1: the guys because at the end of the movie, the
- 34:53Speaker 1: big mothership lands and they lowered the thing and George
- 34:56Speaker 1: Clinton comes out, not George Clinton, but all these people
- 34:58Speaker 1: come out, and um, people again abducted over the years,
- 35:02Speaker 1: and the cruise of the Flight nineteen came out still
- 35:05Speaker 1: the same age as when they disappeared in their flight uniforms.
- 35:09Speaker 1: And they were like, wow, that was weird. They're like,
- 35:11Speaker 1: what a night And then they went, oh my god,
- 35:13Speaker 1: it's Richard Dreyfus. I love Jaws. Yeah, I didn't say that.
- 35:21Speaker 1: I watched a little bit of it. Was that any good?
- 35:23Speaker 1: Did you watch it? And I didn't catch my attention. Yeah,
- 35:26Speaker 1: I did watch Jaws again the other night for like
- 35:29Speaker 1: the eightieth time. That's an all time. That'll be great
- 35:32Speaker 1: a hundred years from now, and I can watch it
- 35:34Speaker 1: every single time. I get right back into it. Amazing. Uh,
- 35:40Speaker 1: Mary Celeste, I thought we had covered this, but we haven't. No,
- 35:44Speaker 1: this doesn't isn't super mysterious to me. What do you
- 35:46Speaker 1: think happened? Well, here's the backstory in case there's anyone
- 35:50Speaker 1: on earth that doesn't know about the ghost ship. Uh.
- 35:53Speaker 1: It was UM in eighteen seventy two, in December UM
- 35:59Speaker 1: there was a British vessel about four hundred miles east
- 36:02Speaker 1: of the Azores Islands, thousand miles west of Portugal, and
- 36:06Speaker 1: they saw this ship, the Mary Celeste, and they went, oh,
- 36:09Speaker 1: my god, look at that ship. We know that ship.
- 36:11Speaker 1: Let's go over to it and say hello. But there
- 36:14Speaker 1: was nobody on board, and they knew that it shouldn't
- 36:17Speaker 1: be where it was and that there's something up because
- 36:19Speaker 1: the crew that spotted it the um what is it
- 36:23Speaker 1: the day? Would you pronounce the E and the I? Uh,
- 36:29Speaker 1: I'd pronounced that the de Garrazia. Oh nice, okay, but
- 36:32Speaker 1: it's a British vessel so that's probably wrong, so okay,
- 36:36Speaker 1: but still they could have it named like that, you know.
- 36:38Speaker 1: So the de Garrazia UM said, well, this Mary Celeste
- 36:42Speaker 1: left eight days ahead of us, it should be like
- 36:44Speaker 1: all the way to Jenoa basically by now, and it
- 36:46Speaker 1: shouldn't be there. And when they looked, there was no
- 36:48Speaker 1: one on board. But there wasn't any obvious reason for
- 36:52Speaker 1: there to be no one on board. There was a
- 36:54Speaker 1: ghost ship, which is awesome in and of itself. I mean,
- 36:57Speaker 1: it is fairly mysterious UM because is well here here's
- 37:01Speaker 1: some of the facts. There were seventeen hundred and one
- 37:04Speaker 1: barrels of industrial alcohol on board UM. Only nine were
- 37:09Speaker 1: empty because there was one theory that the crew got
- 37:12Speaker 1: drunk and they an industrial alcohol industrial alcohol, and UM
- 37:17Speaker 1: had a mutiny, right, But that doesn't hold up. It's
- 37:21Speaker 1: not a likely story. Now they think the nine barrels
- 37:24Speaker 1: UM they were made of a different kind of oak
- 37:25Speaker 1: than all the others, and it was a leaky oak,
- 37:28Speaker 1: so they say it probably just leaked out what else,
- 37:31Speaker 1: food and water? They had plenty of it still on board,
- 37:33Speaker 1: six months worth left on board UM. And I think
- 37:36Speaker 1: a woman named Mary Thorogood created a documentary about this
- 37:40Speaker 1: and really like investigated it, and um, these are mostly
- 37:43Speaker 1: her findings and they're pretty recent. But um, one of
- 37:46Speaker 1: the one of the big weird mysteries that the lifeboat
- 37:49Speaker 1: was gone right, kind of weird. I think that's because
- 37:52Speaker 1: they got on it and left. There was a pump
- 37:54Speaker 1: disassembled and there's a little bit of water. But upon inspection,
- 37:58Speaker 1: the Dea Gratia found like, no, those things totally seaworthy.
- 38:01Speaker 1: She can make it all the way to Genoa and
- 38:03Speaker 1: we'll even tow her. And they towed her to Portugal,
- 38:06Speaker 1: I believe, right. Yeah, But here's the thing. Apparently the
- 38:09Speaker 1: whole where the flooding was was so crowded that the captain,
- 38:14Speaker 1: Benjamin Spooner Briggs, couldn't get down there. He said he
- 38:17Speaker 1: didn't know how much water. So one of the theories
- 38:20Speaker 1: is that he thought they had taken on way more
- 38:22Speaker 1: water than they had and his family was on board,
- 38:25Speaker 1: including a little two year old daughter, and he said,
- 38:28Speaker 1: uh no, let's just get the heck out of here.
- 38:30Speaker 1: I'm not taking any chances, which was a big chance
- 38:33Speaker 1: that didn't pay off in and of itself. Yeah, but
- 38:36Speaker 1: the abandoned ship is a lass resort like, you don't
- 38:39Speaker 1: just say, oh, I think we might be in trouble,
- 38:41Speaker 1: let's get on out of here on the one lifeboat
- 38:43Speaker 1: for all of us, and yeah, in the middle of
- 38:46Speaker 1: the Atlantic. That's not yeah, no, you're not going to
- 38:49Speaker 1: do that. What do you think happened. I think that
- 38:52Speaker 1: that's what happened. I think that he thought they had
- 38:54Speaker 1: taken on way more water, he had his family aboard,
- 38:57Speaker 1: I saw they had just been through a bad store
- 39:00Speaker 1: arm and he saw the mainland with his own eyeballs
- 39:04Speaker 1: and said, this is our chance. Let's not screw around here.
- 39:08Speaker 1: I don't want to sink with mainland and insight. But
- 39:12Speaker 1: the thing is that the mainland wasn't insight. The Azores
- 39:14Speaker 1: are like in the middle of nowhere. They're like halfway
- 39:17Speaker 1: between the Atlanta between Europe and um North America. Well
- 39:21Speaker 1: that's where they found it eventually. But supposedly he saw
- 39:24Speaker 1: the mainland oh yeah, And I think so. And that's
- 39:27Speaker 1: why I think that he just said, all right, it's
- 39:30Speaker 1: time to go. So there's long been a suspicion that
- 39:33Speaker 1: the crew of the day Grazia were the ones who
- 39:35Speaker 1: did away with the crew of the mart The last
- 39:38Speaker 1: wouldn't it go ship when we found it. Right. So
- 39:41Speaker 1: the reason they would have done this is because under
- 39:43Speaker 1: maritime law, if you find a ship that's insured, the
- 39:47Speaker 1: insurer has to pay you a salvage feeds insured amount,
- 39:50Speaker 1: which they did. They did, but they only got one
- 39:52Speaker 1: sixth of the insured amount, which suggests that the British
- 39:56Speaker 1: Maritime Admiralty Court believed that they were crooked, that they'd
- 40:01Speaker 1: done something to the Mary Celeste. We shall never know,
- 40:05Speaker 1: no unsolved mystery. Yeah. In fact, I was gonna say
- 40:09Speaker 1: we should do an episode on that and full but um,
- 40:11Speaker 1: I think maybe we should just refer people this stuff
- 40:13Speaker 1: he missed in history class, because they did a great
- 40:16Speaker 1: episode on that. Yes, Mary Celeste. So we got one
- 40:19Speaker 1: more chuck. Alrighty, this might be my favorite one of all.
- 40:23Speaker 1: I had never heard of this, uh pro basketball player
- 40:26Speaker 1: who disappeared without a trace. I had neither. His name
- 40:28Speaker 1: is John Brisker, right, that's right. He's from Detroit, and
- 40:32Speaker 1: he went to your University of Toledo. Actually go uh rockets, Rockets.
- 40:38Speaker 1: And the thing is while he was at YOUTU, apparently
- 40:40Speaker 1: he had had a racially harmonious upbringing in Detroit and
- 40:43Speaker 1: got to Toledo and experienced racism firsthand and grew up
- 40:47Speaker 1: fairly bitter from it. He was um uh he He
- 40:50Speaker 1: had a reputation of having a short fuse after that point,
- 40:54Speaker 1: which he didn't have before growing up. Yeah. He went
- 40:58Speaker 1: on to play pro ball with the A B A
- 41:00Speaker 1: the Pittsburgh Condors, and then eventually Um made his way
- 41:04Speaker 1: to Seattle with the SuperSonics, and he was good too.
- 41:06Speaker 1: With the Condors. Over three years, he averaged twenty six
- 41:09Speaker 1: points a game the first year. It was the second
- 41:13Speaker 1: and third years it was about thirty points a game
- 41:16Speaker 1: for the year. That's a that's amazing even for the
- 41:19Speaker 1: A B A. Um, I'm not knocking to A B A.
- 41:23Speaker 1: They were great. Actually, was there an Atlanta team in
- 41:26Speaker 1: the A B A. No, it was always NBA. Where
- 41:29Speaker 1: did Atlanta get its team from from? Why do I
- 41:33Speaker 1: want to say Milwaukee? That was the Braves, jeesu, I
- 41:37Speaker 1: can't remember. And the Thrashers were the Flames right. Well,
- 41:41Speaker 1: now we had the Flames and they just went away,
- 41:43Speaker 1: and then we created the Thrashers and Flames went out.
- 41:46Speaker 1: They went out. Now the tough The Thrashers went to
- 41:48Speaker 1: Canada or something. Yeah, they went to a different city. Uh,
- 41:52Speaker 1: don't have hockey in Atlanta. I think we've learned our
- 41:55Speaker 1: lesson not There's a lot of transplants, but apparently not enough.
- 41:59Speaker 1: So back to Brisker, he Um eventually played for the Sonics.
- 42:04Speaker 1: After that he said, I'm gonna open a restaurant that failed,
- 42:08Speaker 1: and then in night he said, you know what, I'm
- 42:11Speaker 1: going to Africa and I'm gonna open an import export business. Yeah,
- 42:14Speaker 1: but he he wasn't just going to Africa. He went
- 42:17Speaker 1: to Africa under the invitation of the Ugandan dictator Idi
- 42:21Speaker 1: A mean who loved basketball. Loved basketball, and I guess
- 42:24Speaker 1: I'd heard of John Brisker, and John Brisker said, sure, man,
- 42:28Speaker 1: let's uh, let's hang out kind of like Rodman with
- 42:31Speaker 1: Um Kim Jong Un. Yeah, and uh he went and
- 42:35Speaker 1: hung out with the d I mean definitely Um. And
- 42:38Speaker 1: I guess about six weeks after he made it to Uganda,
- 42:41Speaker 1: he placed a call to his girlfriend and the mother
- 42:44Speaker 1: of one of his children, Um Melvis Diane Williamson, right,
- 42:49Speaker 1: and he said, hey, baby, we are going to get
- 42:52Speaker 1: back together. I'm gonna have you guys come over here soon.
- 42:54Speaker 1: I'm just laying the foundation. It's all good. I'll see
- 42:57Speaker 1: you guys, I'll call you in a little bit. And
- 42:59Speaker 1: now is the last anybody ever heard from him? Yeah,
- 43:02Speaker 1: and there, Um, there are many theories on this one.
- 43:04Speaker 1: One is uh well, I mean figures in a couple
- 43:07Speaker 1: of ways. One is that maybe he ran a foul
- 43:09Speaker 1: of I mean and was killed by uh, he and
- 43:12Speaker 1: his soldiers. The other is that he was killed by
- 43:15Speaker 1: anti I mean revolutionaries because he was pals with I
- 43:19Speaker 1: mean and he was there when the Immane regime was
- 43:24Speaker 1: top old, like that's when he was there. Uh. And
- 43:28Speaker 1: another one that I don't think it's true at all
- 43:31Speaker 1: is that he eventually made his way to uh to
- 43:34Speaker 1: Jonestown and was part of the Jonestown Jim Jones suicide people.
- 43:41Speaker 1: That one actually has more legs than it appears at first.
- 43:43Speaker 1: He had a great aunt who was there who tried
- 43:46Speaker 1: to get him and other family members to come join
- 43:49Speaker 1: her in Jonestown. All right, So we'll give that up.
- 43:51Speaker 1: So it's like not just totally random. Yeah, you know, um,
- 43:55Speaker 1: but that's probably probably didn't happen. I think they can't
- 43:58Speaker 1: find any real evidence that happened. His brother Ralph said
- 44:02Speaker 1: up until he was declared dead, and um, I think
- 44:05Speaker 1: nine five, His brother Ralph held the idea that his
- 44:10Speaker 1: brother had just assumed another identity to get away from
- 44:13Speaker 1: debt because he had like twenty grand and taxes just
- 44:16Speaker 1: from that restaurant alone. Um, that used to be a
- 44:20Speaker 1: viable option in life. You could just like you, did
- 44:25Speaker 1: we ever do a show on that? Yeah? Okay, that
- 44:28Speaker 1: was a long time ago. That one might need a
- 44:31Speaker 1: dusting off, But it's I think the answer now is no,
- 44:34Speaker 1: you can't. Yeah, exactly is that it? Sir? I think
- 44:39Speaker 1: that's it. Man, unsolved mysteries that may stay unsolved forever.
- 44:44Speaker 1: We're Roberts Stack, thank you for joining us. Or wait,
- 44:48Speaker 1: I'll be Dennis Freena, You be Robert Stack, got breast
- 44:52Speaker 1: his soul, both their souls. Freena is dead now it stinks.
- 44:58Speaker 1: He's one of my faves. Yeah, he was good. Remember
- 45:00Speaker 1: Crime Story eighties to Vegas show? Yeah, I don't think
- 45:05Speaker 1: I ever saw that good one, but he's uh. Midnight
- 45:09Speaker 1: Run one of my all time favorite comedies. He figures
- 45:12Speaker 1: heavily into that and um, Out of Sight, the great
- 45:18Speaker 1: movie from Steven Soderbergh, George Clooney and Jennifer Local Philipez.
- 45:23Speaker 1: Fantastic movie. He's in that too. I like him as
- 45:26Speaker 1: a long order man myself. Right, he's a former like
- 45:28Speaker 1: real copynic. I could totally see that. Uh well, if
- 45:32Speaker 1: you want to know more about Dennis Varina, type that
- 45:34Speaker 1: name into the search bar at how stuff works dot com.
- 45:37Speaker 1: And since I said search bar, it's time for the
- 45:39Speaker 1: listener mail. Oh no, my friend, it is time for administrating.
- 45:51Speaker 1: I can hear the drumming bass kicking in right about now.
- 45:54Speaker 1: That's right. So this is when we thank people for
- 45:56Speaker 1: their lovely gestures of kindness by sending us uh neat things,
- 46:01Speaker 1: oftentimes handmade. Yeah for sure, man, so ready to get started? Yeah,
- 46:07Speaker 1: I'll go ahead and start with our pals Liz and
- 46:10Speaker 1: Gin a Little Bit Sweets. They consistently send us candy
- 46:14Speaker 1: every year from their homemade they're shop in Brooklyn, New York. Yeah. Um,
- 46:20Speaker 1: it's all delicious. We talked about them for years and
- 46:23Speaker 1: they are genuine pals now and uh just great ladies
- 46:28Speaker 1: and support Little Bit Sweets is all I gotta say. Yep,
- 46:32Speaker 1: L I D D A B I T Sweets. Correct,
- 46:35Speaker 1: you will love it. Um. Let's see. I want to
- 46:38Speaker 1: thank Eddie Pray Livingston who gave me went and at
- 46:42Speaker 1: our Atlanta show. As we were leaving the stage, she
- 46:45Speaker 1: handed me a book and the book was a copy
- 46:48Speaker 1: of Paper Moon. Actually Eddie Pray, the movie that Paper
- 46:51Speaker 1: Moon is based on. If you'll know that she has
- 46:54Speaker 1: the same name as the as the title character. That's
- 46:57Speaker 1: because her grandfather, Joe David Brown wrote the book. Pretty amazing. Yeah,
- 47:01Speaker 1: so thank you very much for that. I'm that's I
- 47:03Speaker 1: can't wait to read it because that is famously one of,
- 47:06Speaker 1: if not your favorite movies. Right, it is tied with
- 47:09Speaker 1: The Shining Oh wow, yeah, I talk about two different movies.
- 47:12Speaker 1: That movie. Uh, Burning Hand Leather Goods sent us these
- 47:18Speaker 1: awesome leather notebookcases. Very cool. Yeah, they have all kinds
- 47:25Speaker 1: of cool products. Yeah, I would highly advise you check
- 47:28Speaker 1: that out. Douglas Gibson sent us a copy of Tales
- 47:32Speaker 1: of the Fifth Grade Night, the kid's book that he wrote,
- 47:35Speaker 1: which is awesome. Thank you, Um, Uncle John's Bathroom Reader.
- 47:38Speaker 1: As always, they have sent us stuff over the years. Um.
- 47:42Speaker 1: When they found out that Josh was a big fan,
- 47:45Speaker 1: they were delighted. And now we have a ship, yeah,
- 47:49Speaker 1: kinship with one another. Yes, we do. Here and remember Gordon,
- 47:54Speaker 1: one of the founders of Uncle John's The Bathroom Reader's Institute.
- 47:58Speaker 1: That's right, Um, was on our barb episode. That's right.
- 48:02Speaker 1: Well we got into a shouting match at somebody. Uh,
- 48:06Speaker 1: let's see. Kurt Schroeder from the Origami Brain Injury Rehab
- 48:10Speaker 1: Center and Mason Michigan send us some cool puzzles and
- 48:13Speaker 1: books that are awesome and um mind bending. Thank you
- 48:17Speaker 1: for those. Jeff, thank you for the um tick Coombs. Yeah,
- 48:22Speaker 1: the patent pending tick Coombs. Well, by now this is
- 48:25Speaker 1: so long ago, the patent has probably been granted. So
- 48:28Speaker 1: if you have a dog, you can go to tick
- 48:30Speaker 1: Comb dot com and they are pretty awesome and they
- 48:33Speaker 1: are three D printed. Even Alex Blangya sent us the
- 48:37Speaker 1: Joy of Christmas CDs, his CD of him singing Christmas standards.
- 48:41Speaker 1: Thank you very much for that, Alex, I love Christmas music.
- 48:45Speaker 1: Sarah at the Beijing Normal University, not the abnormal University
- 48:50Speaker 1: in Beijing, the much more highly reputable normal one. She
- 48:54Speaker 1: sent us the beautiful stuff you should know paper cuts,
- 48:58Speaker 1: uh and the charms right, yes, very nice. Um. Tyler
- 49:02Speaker 1: Murphy for not just the North Dakota wine, but tons
- 49:06Speaker 1: of other things. Great gifts over the years. And also
- 49:10Speaker 1: steady unflagging support for us through emails and thoughts and
- 49:16Speaker 1: tweets all that stuff. Thanks a lot. Taller was a
- 49:19Speaker 1: great guy doing fighting the good fight by being a
- 49:21Speaker 1: public school teacher. Yeah that's right. Daniel from checkniflo for
- 49:26Speaker 1: the sound Still series necklaces because they're awesome. Yeah, they're
- 49:31Speaker 1: really cool. You can find those at uh check niflow
- 49:34Speaker 1: that is t e c h n I flow design
- 49:38Speaker 1: dot com, or just go to Etsy where you could
- 49:40Speaker 1: find all this stuff usually. Uh Talia send us a
- 49:43Speaker 1: postcard from Canada. Lisa Harrish sent us some banana candies.
- 49:48Speaker 1: Thanks guys. We got another postcard and invitation actually from
- 49:52Speaker 1: Emily Crawford to stand Hewitt Hall and Akron, Ohio and
- 49:56Speaker 1: stand Hewitt is a very famous place and Acron it's
- 50:00Speaker 1: sort of like they're built more House and it's gorgeous
- 50:04Speaker 1: and um. Sadly Emily's parents moved down here, so I'm
- 50:07Speaker 1: not going to Acron much anymore. Well, we could still
- 50:10Speaker 1: go for stan Hewitt Hall, all right. Uh Read Wilson
- 50:14Speaker 1: of Read Wilson Design, which you can find it read
- 50:17Speaker 1: Wilson Design dot com. Send us some really awesome doormats
- 50:21Speaker 1: and coasters. Yea, the good stuff, man, go check it out.
- 50:25Speaker 1: Read Wilson Design dot com. He's got a lot of
- 50:27Speaker 1: really cool ideas. Abby sent us a letter and a drawing,
- 50:31Speaker 1: and she wrote in to let us know how to
- 50:33Speaker 1: pronounce bus salts correctly? Am I saying it right? I
- 50:37Speaker 1: don't remember we said basalt basil and I think it's
- 50:40Speaker 1: a basalt. Yeah uh? And happy birthday Abby? Uh? Good
- 50:45Speaker 1: looking high school yes for both of us. U. Alan
- 50:48Speaker 1: Barrington Hughes sent us a Reaper sauce from pucker Butt
- 50:51Speaker 1: based on our Chili Pepper episode. I have not gone
- 50:54Speaker 1: anywhere near it. I tasted it and burned a hole
- 50:57Speaker 1: clean through my tongue. So if you're into the really
- 51:00Speaker 1: hot stuff and you think you have what it takes,
- 51:02Speaker 1: I dare you to give it a show. Yeah yeah,
- 51:05Speaker 1: Um Whitley, thank you for the pencil colored art. It's
- 51:08Speaker 1: really cool. And we're guessing that it's Darwin and McCarthy.
- 51:12Speaker 1: That's our best guest, okay, and I think we're right. Um.
- 51:16Speaker 1: Dawson's Hot Sauce from Hamilton, Ontario, Canada sent us some
- 51:20Speaker 1: really great hot sauces. Um. My favorite was the garlican
- 51:23Speaker 1: hall OPENO. That was good stuff. Carol Chan, thank you
- 51:28Speaker 1: for the rat race Millionaire I guess written by your
- 51:31Speaker 1: husband Michael Hunk, and also the three knitted rats. Who
- 51:36Speaker 1: doesn't love a knitted rat? Know what? That's why she
- 51:39Speaker 1: included them? Agreed um? And then Robin and Aaron sent
- 51:43Speaker 1: us to St. Louis Arch postcard. Thanks for that, guy.
- 51:46Speaker 1: Alison McDougall, thank you for the c d s of
- 51:49Speaker 1: your husband's one man band, who also doesn't love a
- 51:52Speaker 1: one man band? And you can listen to that at
- 51:54Speaker 1: mcdoug McDougall music dot com with two l's and just
- 51:58Speaker 1: mc not m macy. Yeah, of course it's the traditional spelling.
- 52:02Speaker 1: I think that's it man. I think we're essentially caught
- 52:04Speaker 1: up on administrative details, so guys were now we need
- 52:08Speaker 1: more stuff. Thanks as always everyone who's kind enough to
- 52:13Speaker 1: take the time. It's oh hey, thanks to Nate today
- 52:16Speaker 1: at H and F Burger downstairs for compying my lunch. Nice.
- 52:20Speaker 1: I went down there to eat a meal and he
- 52:22Speaker 1: comes by and goes Charles W. Chuck Bryant and I went,
- 52:26Speaker 1: I know what that means, but he's the GM at
- 52:32Speaker 1: home and Finch their restaurant group and I went to
- 52:35Speaker 1: leave and they were like, no, it's on a nice
- 52:37Speaker 1: Did he send you a burger for me? No, but
- 52:40Speaker 1: I would advise you going down there and just like
- 52:42Speaker 1: kind of just kind of staying around the counter, training
- 52:45Speaker 1: your neck around, stand under the TV with me on it. Right. Yeah,
- 52:49Speaker 1: So thanks Nate. Uh, he didn't even know we were
- 52:51Speaker 1: in this building. Oh yeah, you listen more closely, Nate. Yeah,
- 52:54Speaker 1: that's what I said. We talked about it basically all
- 52:56Speaker 1: the time. He won't even hear this. Uh. If you
- 52:59Speaker 1: want to get in touches us, you can just send
- 53:01Speaker 1: us high You don't have to send us anything. UM.
- 53:04Speaker 1: You can say hi, um, but not have to say
- 53:06Speaker 1: hi because it's been done. You can tweet to us
- 53:08Speaker 1: at s y SK podcast. You can join us on
- 53:11Speaker 1: Facebook dot com, slash stuff you Should Know. You can
- 53:13Speaker 1: send us an email to Stuff Podcast at house Stuff
- 53:15Speaker 1: works dot com, and in the meantime, you can hang
- 53:18Speaker 1: out with us at our home on the web, Stuff
- 53:20Speaker 1: you Should Know dot com for more on this and
- 53:27Speaker 1: thousands of other topics. Is it how Stuff Works dot com.