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Short Stuff: Emperor Norton · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to short stuff. I'm josh and
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: there's Chuck and there's Jerry, and this is short stuff.
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: Let's go all right. Emperor Joshua Norton the uh maybe first,
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: but at least one of the early great eccentrics of
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: San Francisco, California. Yeah, it's possible he was one of
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: It's possible he was the first, but it's actually kind
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: of unlikely if you think about it. Yeah, but it
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: is so funny to think about the fact that this
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: was in the eighteen fifties and and beyond, and uh,
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: San Francisco was still San Francisco. Yeah. I'd heard of
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: this guy. I didn't know much about him as his
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: news and eccentric, beloved San Franciscan. But when you dig
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: into this guy, it just gets better and better. Yeah,
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: it's pretty great. So he was. He was, Like you said,
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  Speaker 1: his name was Joshua Norton. He was born in England.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: Um and his parents traveled to South Africa to settle
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: there in eighteen twenty. Is part of a settlement scheme. Uh.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: And by settle I mean show up in interlocal colonized Yeah,
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: you go, um, and they I guess I don't. I
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: didn't understand why they left or he left, but at
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: some point he made his way to San Francisco. Um,
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: I believe for the gold brush. So I guess he
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: probably left himself and he made um. He made himself
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: pretty wealthy man, pretty quick by eighteen fifty two, within
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  Speaker 1: just three years UM of arriving, he was one of
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: the wealthy, reputable citizens of San Francisco. Yeah, the end
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: of story. Yeah, he he was in real estate early on. Um.
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  Speaker 1: But in late December or I guess just late eighteen
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  Speaker 1: fifty two, there was a famine in China and they
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: placed a ban on rice exports to other countries. Pretty sensible. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: so there was a shortage of rice as a result
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: in the US and in San Francisco, where they love
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: their rice. It is the San Francisco treat and always
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: has been. Right, they do a little something special to it,
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: but yeah, it's basically rice. So Norton heard that there
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  Speaker 1: was a ship coming to California from Peru that had
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  Speaker 1: like two hundred thousand pounds of rice. He saw a business,
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: uh investment opportunity and said, all right, I'm gonna buy
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: all this rice. I'm gonna corner the rice market and
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: I'm going to get even richer, which he did. Um.
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  Speaker 1: He bought this entire shipment. However, a bunch of more
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: ships came from Peru in order. Yeah, he didn't know
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: about those coming, No, and they had a bunch of rice,
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: and then the prices went back to normal and he
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: was just stuck with a bunch of rice. And eventually, uh,
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: and pretty short order, I think um had to file
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: for bankruptcy. Yeah, so he went from super wealthy San
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: Franciscan to bankrupt San Franciscan from one bad business decision,
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: which is why you don't want to put all your
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: eggs in one basket, right, that's right, or all of
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  Speaker 1: your rice on one ship from Peru. So he uh,
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: he kind of dropped out of of San Francisco society.
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  Speaker 1: Everybody lost track of him, and after a year or
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: two he re emerged. And when he re emerged, he
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  Speaker 1: was a little different, a little off compared to how
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  Speaker 1: he had been before. Uh. And one of the first
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  Speaker 1: things he did was distribute letters to the newspapers around
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  Speaker 1: San Francisco declaring himself Emperor Norton, the first of the
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  Speaker 1: United States. And the story would kind of end there.
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  Speaker 1: It would have just been a crackpot who distributed leaflets
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  Speaker 1: and no one would know about it because it would
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: have been totally lost to history if one of those
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  Speaker 1: San Francisco papers, the Bulletin, hadn't taken him up on this, uh,
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  Speaker 1: this offer and printed his letter, his his proclamation, and
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: it kicked off a tradition around San Francisco of basically
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: not just um printing Emperor Norton's proclamations, but also just
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  Speaker 1: reporting on him and his doings and what he was
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: up to at any given time. It was kind of
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  Speaker 1: it became a San Francisco media tradition. Yeah, and uh,
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  Speaker 1: I guess it was just something about San Francisco even
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  Speaker 1: back then, where the residents roundly were I guess probably
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  Speaker 1: kind of entertained by the guy uh and accepted him
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  Speaker 1: and revered him and embraced him as one of their
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  Speaker 1: kind of wacky locals exactly, maybe the wackiest local of
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  Speaker 1: all back then. Probably. So he would go around town
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  Speaker 1: and he wore a military uniform, and the even the
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  Speaker 1: I love this, even the army officers at the base
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  Speaker 1: at the presidio there gave him some like epaulets and
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  Speaker 1: things like that to put on his uniform. Yeah, it
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  Speaker 1: was pretty awesome. He wore a hat with the peacock
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  Speaker 1: feather and he had a couple of dogs named Bummer
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  Speaker 1: and Lazarus. That would you know, I mean, he sounds
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  Speaker 1: like this could be San Francisco two thousand nineteen as well. Sure,
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  Speaker 1: sure that Bummer and Lazarus thing, though that is contested.
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  Speaker 1: There is a plaque in San Francisco by the what's
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  Speaker 1: the pyramid building trans America trans America. Um that there's
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  Speaker 1: a plaque they're commemorating Bummer and Lazarus, and it specifically
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  Speaker 1: says they were not Norton's dogs. Um, they were their
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  Speaker 1: own sometimes possibly, but they were definitely their own equal
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  Speaker 1: celebrities to Emperor Norton. They were their own crew. Um
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  Speaker 1: that may or may not have overlapped with Emperor Norton,
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: but they deserve their own short stuff too. Actually, yeah,
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  Speaker 1: I'm curious about the name Bummer from back then. What
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  Speaker 1: that must have meant, I don't know. I don't know either.
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  Speaker 1: But the newspapers would also report on what they did too,
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  Speaker 1: Like there was at least apparently I've read an Atlas Obscure,
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  Speaker 1: there was at least one article that wrote on how
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  Speaker 1: they had stolen a bone from another dog. Like that's
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  Speaker 1: what you could pick up the San Francisco papers and
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  Speaker 1: read about. But it was it was part of Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: it was part of the city's pride and like every
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  Speaker 1: every aspect of it, you know. All right, well, let's
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  Speaker 1: take a short break and we're gonna come back and
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  Speaker 1: talk about some of his acclamations and uh and how
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: he went about town right after this. Alrighty, so, uh
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  Speaker 1: Emperor Norton. And by the way, in nineteen I'm sorry,
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  Speaker 1: in eighteen sixty one he added the title Protector of
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  Speaker 1: Mexico to his name after the French invaded Mexico. So
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: did you know the French invaded Mexico? Mm hmmm, I
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: don't know. I did not. I don't think I did.
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  Speaker 1: But it didn't. I mean, I don't know. There was
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  Speaker 1: so much invading going on back then. Nothing surprises me anymore.
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: Just two weeks ago it was the Dutch. Yeah, exactly. Uh.
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  Speaker 1: So he's hanging around Sam fram Cisco, he's got his outfit.
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  Speaker 1: He's Over the course of his reign, I guess you
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: could say he had some wacky declarations and some that
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: ended up kind of making sense. Um. He abolished Congress
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: or called for the abolishing of Congress. He dissolved the
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: United States of America as a whole, which makes it
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  Speaker 1: tricky to be the emperor of the United States. And
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: I didn't quite see how he how he rectified those
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: two I don't think he did. Um. He dissolves and
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: abolished the two political parties. Pretty sensible. But then one
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: thing he did was kind of interesting. He ordered a survey.
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: He was he was committed to finding a way to
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: connect Oakland and San Francisco, whether by bridge or by tunnel,
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: and he ordered a survey even in eighteen seventy two
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: to try and figure this out, which ended up being
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: pretty relevant later on. Yeah. He uh, he said, there's
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  Speaker 1: going to be a great basketball team one day over
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  Speaker 1: in Oakland, and San Francisco needs to have a way
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: to lay claim on that team. Oh, that's true. Um.
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: He he also ordered a suspension bridge be built from
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: Oakland to Goat Island to San Francisco too, So he
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: was very interested in connecting Oakland to San Francisco. Um.
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  Speaker 1: And that is kind of it was part of like
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  Speaker 1: the kind of civic um attention I guess that he
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: paid to the city. He was known for inspecting sidewalks
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: and streets and making sure they were in proper repair. Um,
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  Speaker 1: and the city loved this guy. He actually once proclaimed
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: that if you called San Francisco Frisco, it was a
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  Speaker 1: high misdemeanor and you can be fine twenty five bucks,
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: which these days is more than five dollars. So he
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  Speaker 1: really meant it, right. Yeah. I love that that was
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: even for boating back then, because it's it's long been
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  Speaker 1: known that you don't say Frisco. Yeah, this might be
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  Speaker 1: the origin of it. Actually, it's pretty cool. Um And
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  Speaker 1: and like I said, the city really did love him.
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  Speaker 1: They they he ate for free at all of the
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  Speaker 1: city's best restaurants. Um. If there is an opening of
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: a show, Uh, they would save a seat for him. Like,
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  Speaker 1: the city just loved him so much so that he
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  Speaker 1: was once committed by a police officer and the city
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  Speaker 1: just had this huge outcry against it. Yeah. I think,
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: well they got out because you know, like the police chief.
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  Speaker 1: I guess it was like you can't look up Emperor Norton, right.
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  Speaker 1: I think my favorite part of the whole thing though,
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  Speaker 1: is he issued his own currency and it was accepted. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: that great, It's amazing. Man. I want to be this guy.
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  Speaker 1: But what's neat Well, there's just a couple of steps.
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  Speaker 1: You need to take their chuck and need together to
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: do that. I need to get some flets and pretty
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  Speaker 1: much make some money. Um, you're already beloved, so check
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  Speaker 1: check one. All right. Um. So this guy, Emperor Norton,
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: is um hanging around San Francisco. He's he's loved, he
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: is issuing his own currency. He eats at all of
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  Speaker 1: the city's best restaurants. One of the things that stuck
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: struck me about this guy is he does that seemed
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: to have taken advantage of it because when he died,
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: except for eating for free and issuing his own money, well,
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  Speaker 1: I'm saying he wasn't like, oh, you guys are gonna
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  Speaker 1: take this money. Let's see what all what all I
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  Speaker 1: can do with this? You know what I mean? Um,
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  Speaker 1: he just seems to have kind of done enough to
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: to live comfortably and gotten by um. But like when
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: they when he died, he dropped dead at the corner
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  Speaker 1: of California and what is now Grant Avenue, which was
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  Speaker 1: between knob Hill and the Financial District. At age sixty one,
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  Speaker 1: just dropped that on the street. And um, when they
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: went to go search his room at the boarding house,
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  Speaker 1: I mean he had some a collection of walking sticks
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  Speaker 1: and canes they would carry around with them, some hats,
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: and like a two dollar and fifty cent gold piece. Um,
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  Speaker 1: so he he didn't he wasn't a hog. It sounds
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  Speaker 1: like he he was very much committed to looking over
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  Speaker 1: San Francisco and making sure it was in good shape. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: and they ended up taking care of him, uh postmortem
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: even Um, originally he was going to be buried in
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: a pauper's grave. And the Pacific Club, which was a
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: businessman's association back then, they may still be around for
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: all I now, Uh, maybe they're part of the problem
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: in San Francisco. Maybe they said, you know what, we're
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: gonna he should be buried in a rosewood casket and
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: we're gonna have a great funeral procession. And in eighteen
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  Speaker 1: eighty January tenth, thirty thousand of two hundred and thirty
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: thousand residents attended this funeral procession. Yeah, that's amazing. Even
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: more attended his exhamation because he was buried at the
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: Masonic Cemetery and they moved the Masonic cemetery, probably to
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: make way for like Uber's offices or something like that.
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: And um, everybody was moved to Colem, California. Well, Colma, California.
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: They had a new they had a reburial and something
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: like I think sixty thousand people showed up for that one. Amazing, Yeah,
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: and they flew the flag that half mass. This is
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: fifty years after this guy has died, and he he
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: was still that revered and still is today by by
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: some people in San Francisco of course. Uh yeah, San
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: Francisco loves to embrace their their local eccentrics. I love it.
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: So he uh, like we said, they they have built
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: the Bay Bridge now, uh there is a tunnel with
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: the public transportation. So that those two things came true
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: that he was looking into. And then since then he's
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: been immortalized in a lot of literature and plays over
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: the years, including Mark Twain even who lived in San
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: Francisco at the time. He was clearly smitten with the
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: guy as well. Yeah. He he shows up as the
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: king in Huckleberry Finn. I think that characters named after him.
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: There's no less than three operas and a musical written
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: about him. He's He's beloved. Also, there's a episode of Bonanza.
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: This this is the weird Cherry on Top. I think
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: it basically tells the story of the time he was
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: comitted um and released and he liked. The character's name
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: is Emperor Norton. It just it just so happens that
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: they coincided, you know, the Bonanza timeline and Emperor Norton's
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: real lifetimeline coincide in this this episode of Bonanza, which
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: I have to see. It's called um well, I don't
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: know what it's called. Well, I know that I gotta
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: see it too. I do know that Mark Twain was
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: on the show, even not the real Mark Twain. Obviously
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: it was probably he broke I guess. I hope. So
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: there's nobody who could do a Mark Twain like him
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: or Val Kilmer. There's nobody who can do a Mark
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: Twain like Howhold. I got nothing against well that's not true.
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that old grudge that time he shoved you
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: into the street. Ye shouldn't have done that. Bal I
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: got nothing else, nothing else over here. I hope you
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: enjoyed this episode of short Stuff, short stuff, away stuff.
• 13:55
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• 13:57
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