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When a Traveler Arrived From a Country That Didn’t Exist · Ebbs of History

• Ebbs 40 Podcast v3: Welcome back, history lovers, to The Ebbs of History, the show where we dig up the strangest, wildest, and creepiest true stories the past has to offer. From dancing plagues to pirate queens, you'll laugh, you'll gasp, and you'll love my impeccable dad jokes. But mostly, you'll learn that history is way cooler than your textbook ever told you. We are history-loving hosts, Zoe, Gavin. And I'm Jason. This is the Ebbs of History. Quick note before we begin, near the end of today's story, we briefly mentioned that a man in distress tried to end his own life. We keep it short and we don't go into detail, but we wanted you to know it's coming. If it's a hard topic for you, it's okay to skip this one or listen with a grown up. Zoe, Gavin, how was everyone's week? It was good. really nothing happened. Yeah, it was kinda just another week. Like not not a bad thing, not a good thing, but just another week. For me, I don't know. I always feel like October is such a long month. Yeah. Because well, for it's absolute I mean 31 days anyway. It is a long month. But like I always feel like there's more working days in October than in any other month. We don't get any days off. Yeah, that might be it too. There's no days off. And also, like my history teacher, like the first day of October, she's like, October is historically the worst month for juniors. It is like the worst month of your whole junior year. So if you can just get through this month. Yeah, why? I don't know. Like I i I actually don't know. It might be the reason we don't have any days off. Like it's just like you're here like constantly. Well we're halfway through. So how do you think you're doing? I'm surviving. That's good. Yeah. I'm hanging in there. Cause it's like she's like historically like this is where like you you could hit some slumps. So just like be aware of it and like Just keep up your strategies, whatever you've been doing, like that's been working, keep it. And like, yeah. And also 'cause I think there's the PSAT this month and just like there's a bunch of like just testing and stuff just extracurricular stuff that's happening all at one time. Yeah. The extracurricular stuff is starting to pick up and so is school. Like we're starting to get into that routine. And like 'cause we have our we have our our quarter final this week. It got was supposed to be on Friday, but it got pushed because the quarter is over now. So it's like you got one quarter through school year, like yeah. Yeah. We're in our routines now. Okay. Yeah, Gavin, you really didn't have anything. I guess you finally started Ultimate Frisbee at school after it being delayed for a year. Yeah, we finally did that. my god. It took way too long. That was fun though, right? Yeah. Good. It wasn't the same person though. It was weird. I'm not sure if that's gonna be a permanent thing 'cause it got pushed back to Tuesdays instead of Wednesdays to have that same person. That's interesting. So maybe it was just a one off. I hope so. We'll find out this week. Alright. Today's episode was suggested to us by listener Aleister P. Not Alistair's first suggestion, or his last I'm sure, and we thank him and listeners like him for keeping us going. His first one was the female pulpite. Yep, that's right. Hmm. Today's topic is the man from Torid. The traveler who landed at a Tokyo airport and handed over a passport from a country that does not exist. Is he a time traveler? A visitor from a parallel universe or something even stranger. Now, before we start, have either of you heard of this one before? I haven't. This is new. Okay. what would a passport from a country nobody recognize actually prove? What do you mean? Say you're going say you're at the airport and you hand over a passport to the customs person from a country that Nobody knows about. What what do you think that would prove? Wh where where where do you think you would go with that? At this point, like nothing. So like, yeah, now what? It almost just would lead you to this crazy. Like it's like, you know how people fake their IDs, like fake passport, you know? Yeah, absolutely. And so they're probably gonna be arrested and questioned and there's gonna be investigations and today's a lot different, than it used to be when this happened. And this happened before nine eleven, and that's when everything really changed at the airports. But back in nineteen fifty-four, when this happened, you know, things things were a little bit more lax. All right, picture this. It's a sweltering July day in nineteen fifty four at Hanaida Airport in Tokyo, Japan. Planes are landing, luggage is rolling, and a customs officer is stamping passports on autopilot. Stamp, stamp, stamp. Then a man steps up to the counter. He's European looking, neatly bearded, wearing a sharp business suit. He speaks French, plus pretty good Japanese, and he slides his passport across the counter like he's done it a hundred times. And it seemed as if he had done it hundreds of times because the passport is stuffed with stamps from airports all around the world, including previous trips to Tokyo. He's carrying currency from several European countries and a checkbook from a real sounding bank. Everything about this guy screams boring, experienced business traveler. Except for one tiny detail. The country that issued his passport is called Tarid. Zoe, you stared at more maps than most adults have at this point in your AP classes. Have you ever seen a country called Tarid? No. I actually like haven't. Cause I pretty well versed on at least Europe and North America and South America. Never seen that and never heard of it. No, but if it if it was from somewhere, I would maybe guess from like a really tiny island in in the Oceana. Okay. Because like it 'cause there's so many places like that that they're like they that they don't count as countries or like whatever, but they still are functioning and they issue things like that. So that's what I would guess. So you haven't heard of it? Never seen it? That's because there isn't one. The officers pull out a map of the world and ask the man to point to his home country. He confidently plants his finger on a little wedge of land between France and Spain. The officers look at where he's pointing and say, That's Andorra. And the man, according to the legend, gets genuinely upset. He's never heard of Andorra. He insists that spot is Tarid, and that Tarid has existed for more than a thousand years. Real quick pause here. Andorra, Israel. Yeah. It's a teeny tiny country in the mountains between France and Spain, and it might be weirder than the fake country, actually. It has two heads of state called co princes, and one of them is the president of France. The president of France is technically a prince of a second country. Talk about a side hustle. Anyway, back at the airport, things are getting tense. Officials call the company the man says that he works for. Never heard of them. They call the hotel where he says he has a reservation. Nothing. The bank on his checkbook? Nobody can find it. This man has paperwork for an entire life that does not appear to exist. You're the customs agent. Every document he's handed you is excellent and every fact behind those documents is completely false. Which do you trust? The paperwork or the phone calls? The phone calls. The phone calls, okay. Probably the phone calls, yeah. Okay. Cause someone can easily forge paperwork. Right. That's the weakest layer of security. Like anybody you can print off something and bring it to somebody and show them. Doesn't mean anything. But these phone calls is is the verification side of it. And it's not like it's the age of AI where you can copy someone's voice and like have them say whatever you want. Like this is actually a real person on the other side of the line. That's true. And so there's no it's it's a third party. verifying. Yeah. And then today it would be the third party could possibly be not real also. Yeah. So that's different. Yeah. That's today. In the time period, like this like it makes sense. so what what do they have today? What type of security situations do they have today? Like when you're signing in on stuff and getting your passport and things like that. Well they have like your records online. Do you have to submit a million and one different things like And if you don't have that certain thing, you get sent home. Like I've seen all the videos where it's like you go to the DMV and you don't have the declaration of independence, so you have to go home and get it. Like it's like they ask like the craziest things if you don't have it. Like that's funny. So you gotta pull what what was that movie? Nick Cage. Nicholas Cage. What what movie was it? National Treasure. National Treasure. All right. What about like two factor authentication? That's everywhere now. I I have it on everything that I I have because I work in a law firm and we have clients files and things like that. So like everything on my phone is two factor authentication just in case you know, even my even my personal stuff, 'cause things cross over so much. You know, so what about think about like refugees from other countries. They don't have these types of documents. Yeah. What does that mean for them? W if they come here to America? Like today. Like today. And they don't have these documents because they're coming from a country that, you know, is in war or you know, is in severe poverty and they were born in a village in the middle of the country with no access to a birth certificate or, you know, things like that. How I how hard do you think that is for them? It's probably really hard 'cause they don't have access to those tools to like get that paperwork. Right. And like online to make that paperwork. Absolutely. No online access. It's like to even start the process, you have to prove stuff. Like, like it's like you have nothing to show. Like I'm like I'm here in person. Yeah. You come here, here's my body. This is all I got. I exist. Like you don't have like it that almost goes back to like the you're just a number in our system kind of thing. Like you're just like J because you don't have a number, you don't exist to us. And it's like it's that kind of thing where it's like Yeah. Any other thoughts on that, Gavin, before I move on? All right. Well, the officials have no idea what's happening. So they do the reasonable thing. They put him in a nearby hotel for the night while they investigate. And just to be safe, they station two guards outside of his door. The room is several floors up. No balcony, no way out. The next morning they open the door and the man is gone. Completely vanished. And here's the extra weird part. His documents, which were locked up separately in the airport security office, they're gone too. This is weird. No man, no passport, no Tarid, and he is never seen again. That's really weird. Hit me with your best theory. Guards at the door, sealed windows several floors up. Where'd he go? It's like some like Twilight Zone stuff. Like jump to the TV. Kidding. so no windows. No Well, there's windows, but they were, you know, several floors up. Mm. Locked probably because in hotels they only open up like an inch, you know, when you're that high up. Was it like a fireplace? Nope. Nothing. So it was just He just disappeared. A room with a bed. A room with a bed. No door. Well, I mean, there was a door that he could get in. But the door was but the door. The door was guarded by two guards. So he didn't walk out the door. He didn't jump out the window. He went down to the toilet, obviously. Obviously. Like apple and onion. Well, he did say that there's themes of like suicide. Okay. So maybe he jumped out that window. Where's his body then? Yeah, because they would have found his body. Honestly, it's probably something stupid, like the guards fell asleep and he just snuck out. Yeah. That's what I thought. Like or like he's like in the walls. In the walls, that's a good one. He went through the vents. Well, your guess is as good as anyone's else is as good as anyone else's because for decades that's where the story ended. People came up with spectacular explanations. Maybe he slipped through from a parallel universe or one where Andorra is called Tarid and then got yanked back home overnight. Maybe he was a time traveler from the future where the map looks different. The Man from Tarid became one of the most famous quote-unquote evidence stories for the multiverse, told around campfires and paranormal books, and eventually in about 10,000 YouTube videos. There's just one big problem with this entire story. Almost none of it happened. Here's your Ebbs of History plot twist. When researchers and journalists went digging for records of this 1954 incident, they found nothing. No police reports. No newspaper stories, no airport records for an event that supposedly caused an international freakout, 1954 was suspiciously silent on it. If this really happened, what kind of evidence would you expect to find? Some sort of police document. Not like it but honestly, having the no evidence is almost just like, we're gonna hide this away because this is embarrassing for us. Like we don't know what's going on, so we're just gonna shove it under the rug. What about like newspapers? But newspapers not reporting is weird. Right. Unless the police force paid them off. To not report it from the very beginning? Yeah. Cause like because again, it's embarrassing. What I'm thinking is they knew about this guy and they knew he could be a threat to the government and like like n he knows things. Like You think maybe he's a spy, like an agent from a different country, maybe? Or like to forced to play stupid kind of thing. Like something or like a parallel universe that the government knows about. Put on my tinfoil hat here. He's an alien. And but the go like the CIA, the government, they covered it up because they like Well, this had nothing to do with the United States, but I I get what you're saying. I guess. So here's the harder half of this question. Absence of evidence isn't always evidence of absence. Have you ever guys ever heard that? No. Evidence of absence is not absence of evidence. Absence of evidence isn't always evidence of absence. So when is a silent record actually proof that something didn't happen? This is a really tough thing to kind of put your brains around. That's crazy. Hold on. Eviden absence of evidence. Let me write that. Yeah. So the the quote is absence of evidence isn't always evidence of absence. Good. Yep, you got it. I wrote that down. So silence is damning in proportion to how loud the event should have been. Yeah. A quiet dinner in nineteen fifty four leaving no record is normal. An international incident at a major airport leaving no record is not normal. Yeah. So there's like no record on like their systems. Right. Or in the papers. Would this event have generated paperwork by its nature because it was such a big thing? And did anyone have a reason to destroy it? That's where your point point comes up, Gavin. Yeah. Like I feel like some government officials like had a reason to destroy it because they knew he could be a thud. Okay. A third front. Here's a modern parallel to kind of help you wrap your heads around this. Conspiracy theory claims that rest on they covered it up, which is unfalsifiable, right? Versus genuine archival gaps where records are burned and where the people involved were never considered worth recording. So a conspiracy theorist spouts off their theories and then someone says, But yeah, but there's no evidence of that. And their answer is they covered it up. That's unfalsifiable. That person that actually, you know, would say, Well, there's no evidence of this can't say that there is evidence of it. Because he says that it's un it says that it's been covered up. So the absence of evidence does this make sense? Sort of. I I kinda it's just hard to like wrap my mind up. It's a very hard concept, yes. It's like a like a paradox. Yeah. Yeah. I get the basis of it. But I'm just like, you know, like it it it it's it's okay. Just because there wasn't anything just because there wasn't any records doesn't mean it didn't happen. That's kind of like in basic Yes. And then on the conspiracy side, they say that there's no evidence of it because it was covered up. You can't prove that it was covered up. That what that's what makes it unfalsifiable. I want you guys to remember that. Unfalsifiable 'cause it's gonna be I want it to start to be a theme. in our historiography going forward when we're looking at legends and things like that. whose absences from the record are real gaps and whose are proof of nothing happening. So poor people, colonized people, and women are underdocumented for structural reasons. So the same silence means different things depending on who the subject is. I want you guys to think about that though in the in you know in your everyday life when you're looking at something the you know like a conspiracy. Yeah. When you're you're trying to decide whether what you're reading is good or not. However, researchers did find something from a few years later, and it's arguably a better story. In October of nineteen fifty nine, five years after the date in the legend, a man landed at the very same Hanada airport. His name, at least the name he gave, was John Allen Kucher Zegris, thirty six years old, traveling with his Korean wife. And his passport was, let's say, a bold piece of arts and crafts. Japanese investigators later described it as handmade and about the size of a magazine. Imagine handing over a passport the size of a comic book and just maintaining eye contact. Like you guys know how big passports are. Mm-hmm. Imagine handing over a comic book and saying, This is my passport. They're like pocket size. Right. But then you just hand them a newspaper and it's like what? Here's an easier question than the last one. If you're gonna invent your own country for a fake passport, what would you name it? You don't need to look at your notes for this one. This one's in from your head. Would I forgot something that would go by as an actual country. Like that would kind of just slip under the radar, you know? Like I I Azerbaijanistan. Like Yeah. You're combining two, you know? Yeah. Right. Yeah, honestly, just just combine two actual nations. Exactly. And then people will look just like turn a blind eye. United States of like Canada or something. Mm-hmm. Like the United Provinces of Canada. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's a real thing. It's just like you No, it's not. It's just called Canada. Yeah, but like it it's provinces. I know. That's the joke. Even Gavin That's the joke. Even Gavin was fooled. Well, Zegris went with a doozy. Depending on which report you read, his passport claimed to be issued in Taman Rasat, the capital of a nation called Toreg, south of the Saharan Desert. And here's where historians get their magnifying glasses out. Taman Rasat is a real place. Province in Algeria, and Tareg, spelled T U A R E G, is a real people who lived in and around the Sahara for centuries. So Tarid was very likely just Tareg, misspelled, either by Zegris or by the reporters scribbling it down. The mysterious interdimensional country may just literally be a typo. That's It still bugs the question, wha how where'd he go? The original guy. We're it'll come up. Okay. So what I'm getting here is he's saying that Taman Rasat is a country. He's saying that that's the s capital city of Tareg. Okay. Which is a veal people in And Tareg is a people in Saharan Africa. S Taman Rasat is an actual city. But it's in Algeria. This is all made up. That's part of the problem. This is what's on his comic book sized passport. You see this? And the passport had a great finishing touch. Underneath the official looking stamp was a proclamation in the quote unquote language of Tarid. It read, and I quote, Rik Uwai Akra Nagusi Habisi Truptraupa. Language experts studied it for a very long time and concluded that it was absolute gibberish. He didn't even invent a country. He invented a gibberish language and dare linguists to prove it. Nobody who looked at the passport spoke the language on it, and the gibberish worked anyway. What is it about official looking formatting that makes people stop reading the content? Where have you seen a format do the convincing instead of substance? Like a lot of places. Like if something looks official, people are scope. Okay, whatever. Yeah. If it's got an official stamp on official looking stamp on it, seals letterheads. Right. Yeah. It's kinda like those terms of service that you just scroll past. Like, 'cause it's like, just another one of these again. Like, just just another official stamp. Let's just keep it moving. Modern parallel. Fishing emails. They have real looking bank logos and say, your account's going to be closed if you don't do this. And you know, it's a scammer. Fake invoices sent to companies, that happens all the time. a website that looks official, AI generated documents and fake citations with perfect formatting, that happens a lot in my industry. We've actually had at least one, maybe two, I can't remember, opposing counsel that we we caught using fake generated AI c case citations. That's crazy. And it happens all the time. 'Cause Won't AI just make up stuff like that it does. It'll make up cases. It won't pull from real cases. It will pull, but if it can't find the answer, it will create its own case. That's crazy. And say that this is what it says. So we've got systems in place at work to catch that stuff. Not only in their work, but our work, because we use AI for things. and it's it's through actual case citation companies that we use the AI for that stuff. So it's good, but we still even check those. The crazy thing is, it worked. For a while, it worked great. Zegris reportedly traveled through multiple countries on his homemade passport, collecting real visa stamps along the way. The Japanese embassy in Taipei looked at this magazine sized craft project and stamped it with an actual visa. The story even reached the British House of Commons in July of 1960, where a member of Parliament brought up the Zegris case as proof that. And this is basically a direct quote Passports are not very good security checks. A con man's arts and crafts project got debated in one of the most famous legislatures in the world. And isn't it crazy that he said passports aren't very secure? They are like the be all end all now for proving your identity. Yeah. But that's because of all the checks and everything you have to go through to get that passport. Yeah, it's like you have to bring your passport like to get liter literally anything. Like when I when we were going in to get my license, we had to bring the passport. Like it was like that was the proof of my identity. Well, yeah, that's because you got the real ID. because I needed to get for real ID. If you were not getting the real ID, which you you had to, it's mandated now. But if you weren't, you wouldn't have had to bring in your passport. But they use the passport as a A secure check because you only need to bring your passport. If you didn't bring your passport, you would need a some sort of identification and another piece of paper and you know, cooperating. It's multiple layers at that point. Whereas the passport itself is the thing. Is the thing. It's you only need to bring the one. Well, 'cause you need to do all that stuff to get the passport. So it's like once you get your passport, you don't have to bring everything with you. Mm-hmm. Like it's like, here I am. I had to do I had to do XYZ to get this, so now you know I am this. I have been verified by the United States government as being myself. Yeah. Maybe even though I'm standing right here. Right. So who was this guy? That's where it gets murky because Zegris never gave the same answer twice. He claimed he was born in America. He claimed he'd been a a Royal Air Force pilot in World War Two and was captured by the Germans. He claimed he'd been a spy in South Korea. A pilot in Thailand and Vietnam, an agent for the FBI, an agent for the CIA, and an intelligence operative working for Egypt's Colonel Nasser. He was reportedly fluent in 14 languages. His resume was longer than a receipt from CVS, and investigators could not confirm a single line of it. What finally sank him wasn't the passport though. It was money. By December of 1959, Zegris was struggling to pay for his stay in Japan, so he started cashing counterfeit checks at Tokyo banks. Around 200,000 yen worth, which is about $550 then or $8,000 today. The Tokyo police arrested him, and a public security investigator named Atsuyuki Sasa, who later became a famous figure in Japanese security circles, dug into the case. Every embassy they contacted came back with the same answer. This man's story was fiction from top to bottom. Why do you think the fake checks exposed him when the fake passport didn't? Hmm. Maybe because the checks they had to go through more of like a check. Because the passport, like we said, it's kind of just like a stamp next, stamp next, stamp next. Like you're not really like looking too close. Like you're just like, if this looks official enough, I'll stamp it kind of thing. But like with the checks, like I feel I don't know how checking works, but like if you a actual person probably has to go through it and be like, okay, cool. Yeah. This goes to here, that goes to here. That's one thing. There's just more checks. Yeah, like the checks you gotta look closer into it to like see the value. See because yeah, you're you're exchanging something for money. And I think that's the answer. Because it's money. You're dealing with other people's money now. You're ba he was basically stealing money. Yeah. So all a bad passport creates is paperwork. Right. And then you send them back to wherever it came from. When you start messing with people's money is when they finally start paying attention and say, nope, you're wrong. Give me back my money and get out of here. You're going to jail. Mm-hmm. An example of this where somebody does something wrong. But they get caught for something else around money is Al Capone. Mm-hmm. What did he finally go to jail for? You guys remember? Was it it was something like it was like something like a with association. Like he didn't actually do something, but he was like No. I remember it was like something like he did so much worse, but he got arrested for something stupid. Like Well yeah, I mean he was a mob boss and he had people killed and he killed people himself. He did a lot of bad things, bootlegging and things like that. He was caught for money. What did he finally go to jail for? Was it like money laundering? Yeah, close. I can't remember what it was, but I remember like seeing all the posters at Alcatraz. Fraud. Yes. Tax fraud. tax. It was tax fraud. yes, yes. Tax evasion. That's the word I was talking about. Tax evasion. Tax evasion. He didn't pay his taxes. That's what put him in jail, even though he'd killed innumerable people amount of people. Yeah. Or at least caused them to be Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's that's the standard example of this. You start messing with people's money. Yeah. You know, and even the government, like you didn't get he didn't give them their money. And that's what he got put away for. That's crazy on me. Remembering that. So what I have here is when you mess with money, you mess, you know, people notice. And in August of nineteen sixty, the Tokyo District Court sentenced Zegris to a year in prison. Here's the part we warned you about, so I'll keep it brief. when he heard the sentence, Zagris tried to end his own life right there in the courtroom. Guards stopped him and he was rushed to a hospital where he recovered. It's a sad reminder that behind the wild newspaper story, there was a real person that was in real distress. After serving his time, Zegris was deported. According to reports, he left Japan saying he wanted to start a new life in a new country, which is a remarkable thing to say for a man who had already started one country from scratch. And then he disappears from the historical record. No one knows who he really was, where he actually came from, or what happened to him. So the man from Tarid does vanish at the end of the story after all. Just not through a portal. Histography. So how did a checkbouncing con man with the craft project passport become an interdimensional traveler? Time, retelling, and a game of telephone played across decades. A French author named Jacques Bergier retold the case in the 1970s with the details completely scrambled. Different years, different locations for Tarid. In 1981, about a decade later, writers Colin Wilson and John Grant included a version of the story in a book called The Directory of Possibilities, misspelling Tareg as Tarid yet again. Then Japanese urban legend websites added the best parts. The map pointing to Andorra, the guarded hotel room, the overnight vanishing. There's your answer. It's not real. It wasn't real. Japanese urban legend websites created it. The turning point came when researchers, including the fact checking site Snopes and Japanese internet sluice, went hunting for the original records. One Japanese user tracked down newspaper articles from 1960 and 61 covering the Zegris trial. And the UK's parliamentary record preserve the 1960 House of Commons debate mentioning him. That's historiography in action. The legend said 1954. The paper trail said 1959. Some details, like Zegris's true identity, remain genuinely unknown. Does learning the truth make this story less interesting or interesting in a different way? Kinda both, because it shows that like. The conspiracy th part of it isn't real, but also opens a door to more mystery. Okay. I like that answer. Zoe? I agree. And I think he said it really well. So the legend offers a tidy impossible mystery with no loose ends. The real story offers an unsolved human one. A man who invented a country and a language and a life and whose actual name nobody knows. The legend answers nothing and feels complete. The truth answers a lot and feels unfinished, which is harder to tell around a campfire. So I think obviously the truth makes it less interesting. Because, you know, the truth is usually just mundane and not, you know, bombastic and it's kind of actual. Yeah. It's kind of like the prestige. Like that that we just watched last night. It was kinda just like Once the person knows the secret to the trick, it's not that yes, it's not as crazy as it is. Uh-huh. Or even the final reveal of the movie. It's like, that was it? Yeah. almost. Yeah. Like the final reveal. It's like, obviously. Like that makes sense. Well she said that at one point when he showed her a trick in that movie. Yeah. She's like, Yeah. He's like, well, it's obvious once you know it. Yeah. And I think that kind of encapsulates the entire movie right there in one sentence. Like The unknown is funner than the facts. Ignorance is bliss. Funner. That's a good one. Lessons we've learned today. What can we learn from this today? Any thoughts? Like just don't believe everything you hear, like question The theme of our show. Extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence. Yeah. Mundane claims don't. You know, mundane claims is probably what happened. Extraordinary ones you really need to look at. Yeah. Unfalsifiable. I honestly like the sentence absence of evidence isn't always evidence of absence. Faced with two options, the boring the less interesting one is most likely true. Most of the time, yeah. I'd say probably ninety nine point nine nine nine percent of the time. But you always gotta look. You know, strange things do happen. Yeah. but stories about parallel universes should probably come with receipts. Yeah. This one doesn't. See, it's fun to believe, but like spending that on like the internet. Mm-hmm. No. Knowing the truth, like just don't do that. Don't spread false information when you know the true story. To go off of your don't trust anything, you should always ask yourself, what's the original source here? You know, the Tarid legend survived for decades because nobody checked. One person reading old newspapers did more than a thousand people sharing the story that grew over time. Finally, a reminder that people live inside sensational stories. Zachers was a lawbreaker, but he was also clearly struggling. History asks us To be curious about people, not just amazed by them. The legend turned him into a portal. The record turned him back into a man. And the man is the part still worth wondering about. It's time for the fun fact challenge. Alright, this week we're using the second set of buzzers given to us. The questions that I'm asking are no longer. Who can buzz in fastest? So I don't think it's gonna be a problem as when we use these. All right. You guys know the rules. Lock in when you know the answer. And I'm gonna repeat that. When you know the answer. Don't just lock in and then start looking. Okay. Question one the legend puts the man from Tarid at Hanaida Airport in one year. And the actual record puts John Alan Kutra Zegris there in a different one. Give me both years. That's Gavin. Okay. It's nineteen fifty-four and nineteen fifty-nine. That is correct, sir. One point to Gavin. I I got a little nervous there. But I was like, huh. You know it's I didn't say that you couldn't answer because you weren't looking at your notes. So that was okay to stall a little bit while you were thinking about it. Mm-hmm. Because you came up with nineteen fifty four fast. I'm just want to let you guys know that for future, right? Okie dokie. All right. Question two. The country named Tarid was almost certainly a garbled version of the name over Tobeg. That is correct. Can you spell it? T A U. No, it's T-U-R-E-G. Close. It's T-U-A-R-E-G. I should have gotten it. I I could have buzzed in and gotten that question. What? What that wasn't the question, was it? Because I didn't know I was going to buzz in. Alright, now this one's just for fun. The homemade passport never got Zegris arrested. Something else did. Gavin. I don't like these buzzers. The checks. I don't like these buzzers. Cashing counterfeit checks at Tokyo Banks. Woo woo If anything, it should be like this. This day in history. Today is October twenty second, and on this day in nineteen forty eight, Harry and Esther Snyder opened the first In N Out in Baldwin Park, California. Now I want in and out. Me too, Gavin. What's up? Yeah, actually it's lunchtime, huh? Yeah. the stand was barely bigger than a shed and drivers ordered through a two way speaker rather than flagging down a car hop. Which the company calls California's first drive thru hamburger stand. See, I'll see videos of like the first McDonald's and there's like a museum attached to it. And it's like really interesting. It is, yeah. Where is it? Is it in California? Yeah, it's in San Bernardino. that's close. All right. What's your go-to in and out order? Okay. So I get a number one, no onion. And if I remember, well done fries. Okay. And what's the number one? For people that don't live in California. Sorry. It is a double double and it comes with the sauce, the it's basically just Thousand. It's yeah. It's Thousand Island. and then it has the two they're almost I would qualify them as Smash Burgers. Yeah, they're they're thin. Yeah, they're not smash burgers. They're thinner patties, and then they have I get the cheese on it, and then it has lettuce, tomato, and then onions, but I take the onions off. So it's basically a basic burger with two patties, so it's a double double. It's really good with s with the sauce. Yeah. Yeah. Speaking of the sauce, I kind of made a sim simile spread just the other night because we had burgers. Yeah. Anyways, what I only get is a double double animal style on the Vox. I'm joking. I was gonna say, wait a minute, what? Wait a minute. I order for you all the time. I've never said that. like I kinda changed up my order lately. Probably like a double double cheese. I normally take off the Les tomatoes. I probably keep on the onion. Actually, no, it's not grilled. So probably no onion. And then I like it. I used to not get the sauce and now I get the sauce. 'Cause it's awesome. Mm-hmm. And I love the fries. People diss it. Like all the time. I'm like, they're so good. You got exactly the fries. Yeah, they're a dog shake. Well, yeah, that's just yeah. That's just that's not an in and out thing. That's an everyday thing. Yes. Yeah, the French fries are cut right there. They have potatoes, whole potatoes, and they through a machine, they cut and then they fry like right there. So it doesn't get any fresher than that. Yeah. Sometimes you'll be able to see like slicing them in the kitchen and a machine. And it just like has like little vates and like put the potato in is like Sometimes, yes, I do agree that they do need a little bit more salt, but they give you salt packs. What they're really salty, I feel. what I think Zoe, you're right, getting them well done. Yeah. Because I think that kinda well, when they're not well done, they are a little bit mushy and I don't like I personally don't like that, so I get well done and they're a little bit more crispy and just mm. So good. We are definitely going out in and out today. let's go. So I actually want to say something about that. I'm not that big of an in and out fan. I like it a lot. And you know, don't get me wrong, but like it's not all it's cracked up to be that people, you know, people that come from out of state they have and they're like, it was just a burger, you know. Yeah, it's a it's a good burger, no doubt. But it's just not all you know, the craziness. I d I don't subscribe to the craziness around it. However, when your mother and I moved back to Chicago, I couldn't get an In N Out burger. And I craved it and I wanted it so bad. Yeah. There's something about it. Yeah. It's like There is There's that one thing that keeps you coming back, you know? Yeah. It was like one of the first things we did too when we came back here, when we moved back here, was go to In and Out and get That's the first thing you gotta do when you come back. It's calm on a I feel like it's something that's like mediocre not mediocre, but just like like you don't get the hype when you have it, but then when you can't, it's like you're craving it, you know? I I don't know about you guys, but I'm always craving in and out. I mean I'm not. That's the thing. all right. Also on this date in nineteen sixty two, President Kennedy went on television to tell Americans that the Soviet Union had put nuclear missiles in Cuba and announced a naval quarantine of the island. He listed the cities in range including Washington, Mexico City, and Cape Canaveral. This is kind of an an extension of The one that we had last week. The Cuban Missile Crisis. Yeah, the Cuban Missile Crisis. We talked about it. That was the day that the They found them, right? That they found them. we were talking basically about how like the Cuban Missile Crisis we talked about how they found them a week before and now Kennedy announced to the public. Right. So a week ago, they had the pictures taken and they saw that the missiles were being in, you know, put in Cuba. And today's the day that he announced it to the nation and let everybody know hey, these missiles can reach Mexico City, Washington, Cape Canaveral, like Yeah, yeah. Because the Soviet Union wasn't in vain of America, even with the best missiles in the world. Right. So so they put them in a place that's that they was Cuba like neutral? Okay. They were communist, yeah. Okay. So that's yeah, that's exactly why, for sure. But I just think that's cool that like we can track it like that. And it's like exactly a week, Kennedy told like I just think that's so cool that like we talked about it last week and this week it's like a continuation. How I write these is I look up ten things that happened on this date and then I whittle it down to three, sometimes four. But that one was there. I'm like, that's just it's too perfect. Yes, it's I just think it's so cool that it is exactly a week. Yeah. All right, and then in 2012, Cycling's governing body stripped Lance Armstrong of all seven. tour de France titles and banned him for life. The US ADA case described not just drugs but plu but blood transfusions with bags of his own blood stored and reinfused during races. Does that what does that mean to you? He was using steroids. Not really. The the the blood part. he had feel like modifying his blood? Not modifying it but I guess they would be, yeah. What they were doing was that he had a bunch of blood taken before these things and he had it stored. so if they blood tested him, he would be okay. Nope. A different way. They oxygenated the blood. They put more oxygen in it, and then at night during the race, he would have blood transfusions of oxygenated blood, and that would help him do better the next day. It's called blood doping. There's no actual drugs. It's your own blood with just extra oxygen, but it's cheating. Yeah. I have a little story about that actually. blood oxygenating? No. About Lance Armstrong. Anyways. So after our math tests, our math teacher allows us to look at her past like yearbooks from our school. And in one of them It said Lance Armstrong wins tour defense. Or like he wins some cycling competition. I was like, Ooh, that's a not age of That's right. Crazy like looking to the past. So like find milk. Yeah. It's like fine milk. And he's like in movies too, like as Lance Armstrong, like I I'm seven time tour winning. Yeah. It's almost like seeing like O J in movies. It's like Yes. Ooh. How are you doing? All wow, look who it is. So the man from Tarid wasn't a visitor from another dimension. He was a mysterious con artist with a homemade passport and a made-up language and a story so strange it grew into a legend. The real mystery isn't which universe he came from, it's who he actually was, and we still don't know. That's it for this episode. Thanks for traveling your time with us. If you like today's story, share it with a friend, a teacher, or your family. Then come find us on Instagram at Ebbs of History with your show ideas, corrections, and questions. Signing off, this has been your co-host, Gavin Zoe. And me, Jason. Until next time, keep wondering, keep laughing, and keep learning through the Ebbs of History.