00:00:04
Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Menke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim & Mild.
00:00:12
Speaker 2: Our world is full of the unexplainable. And if history is an open book, all of these amazing tales are right there on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
00:00:36
Speaker 1: It was October 11th of 1926, and Harry Houdini was on stage in Albany, New York. He was hanging by his ankles, and his assistant slowly lowered him into a water-filled tank. Suddenly, one of the pieces of the wooden apparatus around his ankles malfunctioned, smacking into his left ankle and fracturing it. He didn't even wince in pain. He was in complete control of his body, after all. and despite the shattered ankle, he went on with the trick, completely submerging himself in the tank. He finished the show, and then went to see a doctor. The doctor diagnosed the ankle and treated it, and advised that Houdini should cancel his next few tour dates. But the magician wouldn't stop. He didn't want to disappoint his fans, and to him, pain was always just something to be conquered, not to give in to. One of his most famous tricks was to call people up on stage and have them punch him in the stomach as hard as they could to prove that he had trained his stomach muscles to endure any blow. But the ankle clearly was bothering him. Throughout the next week, he kept returning to the doctor in Albany for further treatment. But he still decided to attend a lecture at McGill University in Quebec on October 19th. The topic was important to him. He was teaching the students about the movement known as spiritualism and the tricks that different supposed psychics employed to make their clients think that they could really commune with the spirits. Houdini often lectured on this topic. His lifelong obsession with magic meant that he took offense to anyone who claimed to actually be magical. It wasn't that he was completely closed off to the idea of a spiritual world. In fact, he hoped that there was one. But he knew a fellow illusionist when he saw one, and he hated the idea of someone in his trade using their abilities to manipulate grieving people trying to contact deceased loved ones. So, while he was at McGill, he shared with the students about trick tables, lights, and cold readings, anything and everything that might keep this younger generation from being fooled. Houdini found them to be such a receptive audience that he then invited them to come visit him backstage at his next show. On the night of October 22nd, the students visited him backstage at that show in Montreal. a strange, awkward man named J. Gordon Whitehead joined the group. He came forward, asking Houdini if he could truly withstand any blow to his stomach. When Houdini said yes, Whitehead started striking him repeatedly as hard as he could. Some accounts say that he wouldn't stop until the students pulled him away. Anyone else might have seen it as assault, but Houdini always hid his pain. He brushed the incident off and said that it was fine, but secretly he had been feeling unwell for days. He had wanted to chalk it up to his ankle, but the punches seemed to exacerbate stomach pain that he was already experiencing. As he rode on a train to Detroit the following day, the pain got worse, and he started to sweat. His fever rose to 104 degrees, but not surprisingly, he refused to go to the doctor. He had his opening night in Detroit to perform at, after all. and it must have been painful to watch as he was in immense torment. As soon as the curtain fell, Houdini collapsed. He was taken to a hospital where doctors diagnosed him with appendicitis. His appendix had ruptured and it was poisoning his body. They successfully removed it and Houdini seemed to be recovering. Reports indicated that he was in high spirits, no pun intended, talking with his family and his nurses. However, his blood poisoning took a turn for the worse and on October 31st, Halloween nights of 1926, Houdini passed away. The common explanation for the appendicitis is that J. Gordon Whitehead's punches caused it to rupture. The vigor with which he attacked Houdini almost suggests that he had a grudge against him. One popular theory suggests that he was hired by angry spiritualists who resented being debunked by Houdini. But there is a lot of debate in the medical community about about whether or not appendix rupture from external trauma is even possible. Such cases are rare, and even then doctors believe the ruptures could have already happened and the punches just exacerbated them. If anything, Houdini's death seems to have been the result of a tragic series of events. Hurting his ankle, getting punched, refusing to rest, all of these things kept him and his doctors from realizing what was actually hurting him. By the time they did, He was already septic. And look, I love storytelling. Obviously, it's what I do for a living. So I, like a lot of people, want to go looking for good story in things that happened in the past. So I can see how tempting it is to think that there was something strange about his death. Maybe, though, the answer is much more simple. That it was actually likely that someone as hardworking and risk-prone as Houdini would be vulnerable to this kind of medical complication. Still, the world will always be a little curious to know if there was some sleight of hand involved in this magician's final disappearance. It's a word that calls to mind an ancient, far-removed world from the modern day. Samurai. But there were actually samurai all the way up until 1877, the year that the telephone was invented. And the warriors themselves played a major role in their own demise. The 1870s were a time of rapid modernization for Japan, which, until recently, had been an isolated feudal state run by a military government. Samurai, who had held privileged positions within the old government, suddenly found themselves unemployed, disenfranchised, and forgotten. The country was moving on and leaving their old way of life in the dust. In the region of Satsuma, which had been one of the most powerful domains in the old military government, there was a renowned samurai named Saigo Takamori. He had opened more than a hundred private academies to retrain former samurai for new, modern jobs. But he wasn't just teaching his students how to read and farm. He also taught them how to use modern weapons favored by the new Japanese army. like rifles and artillery. When the Japanese government found out about this, they got spooked. They knew that it was dangerous for the former samurai to have access to these weapons. At any moment, tensions might boil over and they could launch a revolt. So in the middle of the night in January of 1877, the government sent a warship to an arsenal in Satsuma, hoping to remove all the weapons that were stockpiled there under the cover of darkness. But this turned out to be a terrible mistake. The local samurai caught wind of the raid, and they fought back. Within weeks, it spiraled into a full-scale rebellion. Over the next several months, the samurai who had founded the academies, Saigo Takamori, led more than 12,000 samurai across Japan. They were headed for Tokyo, the capital, where they planned to confront the emperor. But their training at Saigo's academies hadn't fully prepared them for the realities of modern warfare. Even with the firearms that they'd acquired, the samurai were terribly outgunned and outnumbered against the Japanese army. As the army bombarded them nonstop with artillery shells, the samurai's manpower and ammunition dwindled. They eventually had to resort to fighting with their swords in a true battle of tradition against technology. That summer, after months of battle, the samurai were forced to retreat, and by September they'd been pushed all the way back to Satsuma, where the rebellion had begun. But still, Saigo refused to surrender. With his last 500 surviving samurai, he launched one final hopeless battle against the Japanese army. Vowing to fight to the very end for their way of life, the samurai charged with their swords drawn into a barrage of artillery fire, and every single one of them died. The end of the Satsuma rebellion signaled the definitive end of the samurai era. The Japanese army had proven itself victorious, and with the samurai gone, Japan proceeded to march unimpeded into the modern era. I hope you enjoyed today's guided tour through the Cabinet of Curiosities. This show was created by me, Aaron Manke, in partnership with iHeart Podcasts, researched and written by the Grim & Mild team, and produced by Jesse Funk. Learn more about the show and the people who make it over at grimandmild.com slash curiosities. You'll also find a link to the official Cabinet of Curiosity's hardcover book, available in bookstores and online, as well as ebook and audiobook. And if you're looking for an ad-free option, consider joining our Patreon. It's all the same stories, but without the interruption for a small monthly fee. Learn more and sign up over at patreon.com slash grim and mild. And until next time, stay curious.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Menke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim & Mild.
00:00:12
Speaker 2: Our world is full of the unexplainable. And if history is an open book, all of these amazing tales are right there on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
00:00:36
Speaker 1: It was October 11th of 1926, and Harry Houdini was on stage in Albany, New York. He was hanging by his ankles, and his assistant slowly lowered him into a water-filled tank. Suddenly, one of the pieces of the wooden apparatus around his ankles malfunctioned, smacking into his left ankle and fracturing it. He didn't even wince in pain. He was in complete control of his body, after all. and despite the shattered ankle, he went on with the trick, completely submerging himself in the tank. He finished the show, and then went to see a doctor. The doctor diagnosed the ankle and treated it, and advised that Houdini should cancel his next few tour dates. But the magician wouldn't stop. He didn't want to disappoint his fans, and to him, pain was always just something to be conquered, not to give in to. One of his most famous tricks was to call people up on stage and have them punch him in the stomach as hard as they could to prove that he had trained his stomach muscles to endure any blow. But the ankle clearly was bothering him. Throughout the next week, he kept returning to the doctor in Albany for further treatment. But he still decided to attend a lecture at McGill University in Quebec on October 19th. The topic was important to him. He was teaching the students about the movement known as spiritualism and the tricks that different supposed psychics employed to make their clients think that they could really commune with the spirits. Houdini often lectured on this topic. His lifelong obsession with magic meant that he took offense to anyone who claimed to actually be magical. It wasn't that he was completely closed off to the idea of a spiritual world. In fact, he hoped that there was one. But he knew a fellow illusionist when he saw one, and he hated the idea of someone in his trade using their abilities to manipulate grieving people trying to contact deceased loved ones. So, while he was at McGill, he shared with the students about trick tables, lights, and cold readings, anything and everything that might keep this younger generation from being fooled. Houdini found them to be such a receptive audience that he then invited them to come visit him backstage at his next show. On the night of October 22nd, the students visited him backstage at that show in Montreal. a strange, awkward man named J. Gordon Whitehead joined the group. He came forward, asking Houdini if he could truly withstand any blow to his stomach. When Houdini said yes, Whitehead started striking him repeatedly as hard as he could. Some accounts say that he wouldn't stop until the students pulled him away. Anyone else might have seen it as assault, but Houdini always hid his pain. He brushed the incident off and said that it was fine, but secretly he had been feeling unwell for days. He had wanted to chalk it up to his ankle, but the punches seemed to exacerbate stomach pain that he was already experiencing. As he rode on a train to Detroit the following day, the pain got worse, and he started to sweat. His fever rose to 104 degrees, but not surprisingly, he refused to go to the doctor. He had his opening night in Detroit to perform at, after all. and it must have been painful to watch as he was in immense torment. As soon as the curtain fell, Houdini collapsed. He was taken to a hospital where doctors diagnosed him with appendicitis. His appendix had ruptured and it was poisoning his body. They successfully removed it and Houdini seemed to be recovering. Reports indicated that he was in high spirits, no pun intended, talking with his family and his nurses. However, his blood poisoning took a turn for the worse and on October 31st, Halloween nights of 1926, Houdini passed away. The common explanation for the appendicitis is that J. Gordon Whitehead's punches caused it to rupture. The vigor with which he attacked Houdini almost suggests that he had a grudge against him. One popular theory suggests that he was hired by angry spiritualists who resented being debunked by Houdini. But there is a lot of debate in the medical community about about whether or not appendix rupture from external trauma is even possible. Such cases are rare, and even then doctors believe the ruptures could have already happened and the punches just exacerbated them. If anything, Houdini's death seems to have been the result of a tragic series of events. Hurting his ankle, getting punched, refusing to rest, all of these things kept him and his doctors from realizing what was actually hurting him. By the time they did, He was already septic. And look, I love storytelling. Obviously, it's what I do for a living. So I, like a lot of people, want to go looking for good story in things that happened in the past. So I can see how tempting it is to think that there was something strange about his death. Maybe, though, the answer is much more simple. That it was actually likely that someone as hardworking and risk-prone as Houdini would be vulnerable to this kind of medical complication. Still, the world will always be a little curious to know if there was some sleight of hand involved in this magician's final disappearance. It's a word that calls to mind an ancient, far-removed world from the modern day. Samurai. But there were actually samurai all the way up until 1877, the year that the telephone was invented. And the warriors themselves played a major role in their own demise. The 1870s were a time of rapid modernization for Japan, which, until recently, had been an isolated feudal state run by a military government. Samurai, who had held privileged positions within the old government, suddenly found themselves unemployed, disenfranchised, and forgotten. The country was moving on and leaving their old way of life in the dust. In the region of Satsuma, which had been one of the most powerful domains in the old military government, there was a renowned samurai named Saigo Takamori. He had opened more than a hundred private academies to retrain former samurai for new, modern jobs. But he wasn't just teaching his students how to read and farm. He also taught them how to use modern weapons favored by the new Japanese army. like rifles and artillery. When the Japanese government found out about this, they got spooked. They knew that it was dangerous for the former samurai to have access to these weapons. At any moment, tensions might boil over and they could launch a revolt. So in the middle of the night in January of 1877, the government sent a warship to an arsenal in Satsuma, hoping to remove all the weapons that were stockpiled there under the cover of darkness. But this turned out to be a terrible mistake. The local samurai caught wind of the raid, and they fought back. Within weeks, it spiraled into a full-scale rebellion. Over the next several months, the samurai who had founded the academies, Saigo Takamori, led more than 12,000 samurai across Japan. They were headed for Tokyo, the capital, where they planned to confront the emperor. But their training at Saigo's academies hadn't fully prepared them for the realities of modern warfare. Even with the firearms that they'd acquired, the samurai were terribly outgunned and outnumbered against the Japanese army. As the army bombarded them nonstop with artillery shells, the samurai's manpower and ammunition dwindled. They eventually had to resort to fighting with their swords in a true battle of tradition against technology. That summer, after months of battle, the samurai were forced to retreat, and by September they'd been pushed all the way back to Satsuma, where the rebellion had begun. But still, Saigo refused to surrender. With his last 500 surviving samurai, he launched one final hopeless battle against the Japanese army. Vowing to fight to the very end for their way of life, the samurai charged with their swords drawn into a barrage of artillery fire, and every single one of them died. The end of the Satsuma rebellion signaled the definitive end of the samurai era. The Japanese army had proven itself victorious, and with the samurai gone, Japan proceeded to march unimpeded into the modern era. I hope you enjoyed today's guided tour through the Cabinet of Curiosities. This show was created by me, Aaron Manke, in partnership with iHeart Podcasts, researched and written by the Grim & Mild team, and produced by Jesse Funk. Learn more about the show and the people who make it over at grimandmild.com slash curiosities. You'll also find a link to the official Cabinet of Curiosity's hardcover book, available in bookstores and online, as well as ebook and audiobook. And if you're looking for an ad-free option, consider joining our Patreon. It's all the same stories, but without the interruption for a small monthly fee. Learn more and sign up over at patreon.com slash grim and mild. And until next time, stay curious.
