u/akiwi_intherough

H.G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds, published in 1898, imagined an invasion of Earth by a technologically superior civilization from Mars.

Forty years later, in one of the most famous bits of radio broadcasting in American history, The Mercury Theatre on the Air adapted the novel for radio, directed and narrated by a 23 year old Orson Welles.

The broadcast began with an introduction closely following Wells’s novel, but then shifted into an evening of ordinary radio programming repeatedly interrupted by increasingly urgent news bulletins.

At first, the interruptions seemed relatively mundane: strange explosions had reportedly been observed on Mars, followed by a seemingly unrelated report of an unidentified object crashing onto a farm near Grovers Mill, New Jersey.

Then an on-scene reporter described strange creatures emerging from what was apparently an alien spacecraft. The Martians attacked police and spectators with a heat ray, and the reporter's increasingly panicked broadcast abruptly went dead.

More bulletins followed, reporting a full-scale Martian invasion and the increasingly futile efforts of the U.S. military to stop it. The first half of the broadcast climaxed with a correspondent reporting live from a Manhattan rooftop as citizens fled from poisonous smoke released by towering Martian “war machines.”

He began coughing, then fell silent. Only after roughly thirty minutes did the program take its first break. The second half shifted into a more conventional radio-drama format.

The broadcast became legendary for supposedly causing mass panic across the country. Some listeners did mistake it for an actual news broadcast, particularly those who tuned in after the opening disclaimer.Thousands of people called CBS, newspapers, and police departments asking whether the invasion was real.

But the popular story of “millions of Americans panicking and fleeing the Martians” is likely heavily exaggerated.Newspapers at the time had an obvious incentive to portray the broadcast as a national hysteria, and subsequent research has found little evidence for the enormous mass panic later claimed.

There was genuine panic, however. Actor Stefan Schnabel, who was involved with the broadcast, later recalled that police began arriving at the studio:

“A few policemen trickled in, then a few more. Soon, the room was full of policemen and a massive struggle was going on between the police, page boys, and CBS executives, who were trying to prevent the cops from busting in and stopping the show.”

But the broadcast demonstrated something important: people could be convinced that something extraordinary was happening simply by presenting it in the language and format of credible news.

And that would become increasingly important as the 20th century went on, because when people began seeing strange things in the sky, they increasingly interpreted them through the cultural framework that The War of the Worlds had helped popularize.

If interested, I explore a history of UFO sightings here: https://aid2000.substack.com/p/hare-brained-history-vol-137-the?r=4mmzre&utm\_medium=ios

The Marquise de Brinvilliers was a Parisian aristocrat whose father held numerous important positions. Born in 1630 into a wealthy family, she later confessed, under torture, that she had been sexually assaulted at seven by an unnamed person and that she had a sexual relationship with her younger brother. How much of this was true is impossible to know.

She married another aristocrat and had several children, while also carrying on a long-term affair with Godin de Sainte-Croix, a military officer. As a commoner, thus affair was problematic for her family. Her father went to King Louis XIV and obtained a lettre de cachet against Sainte-Croix, sending him to the Bastille.

There, Sainte-Croix allegedly befriended an Italian chemist known as Exili. After his release, Sainte-Croix took up alchemy, and he and Brinvilliers began experimenting with poisons.

According to the later investigation conducted by Gabriel Nicolas de La Reynie, lieutenant general of the Paris police, and Brinvilliers's own confession, she began testing these poisons on unsuspecting people. She would reportedly visit hospitals, volunteer to care for the sick, administer various elixirs, and then return to observe their deterioration.

She eventually began poisoning her own servants through their food. Then came her father. Brinvilliers poisoned him for his inheritance. She burned through the money, however, and soon turned her attention toward two brothers who stood to inherit the family's remaining fortune. In 1670, she allegedly hired a man to poison them. It worked.

The murders continued to go unnoticed until Sainte-Croix died in 1672, allegedly from an accidental exposure to one of the poisons he and Brinvilliers had been experimenting with. He was also deeply in debt, and when authorities searched his possessions, they found poison, and, more importantly, correspondence between Sainte-Croix and the Marquise.

The man Brinvilliers had hired to poison her brothers was arrested, tortured, and confessed. Brinvilliers herself fled France and remained at large for more than three years. She was finally captured in Liège in 1676.

After being subjected to the “water cure,” Brinvilliers confessed to murdering her father and one of her brothers and was believed to have poisoned at least thirty other people.
She was beheaded on July 16, 1676.

But King Louis XIV and La Reynie suspected that Brinvilliers and Sainte-Croix were only the beginning. La Reynie started with the people who sold the stuff, arresting alchemists,
fortune tellers, apothecaries, abortionists, and assorted practitioners selling what we might today describe as snake oil.

One of the most infamous people swept up in the investigation was Catherine Monvoisin, better known as La Voisin. La Voisin ran an enormous network of fortune tellers, chemists, abortionists, and occult practitioners. She herself dabbled in essentially all of it, selling potions, poisons, and aphrodisiacs while also performing alleged magical rituals and black masses for wealthy clients. She became enormously wealthy.

Then, in 1679, one of her rivals, Marie Bosse, implicated her in the investigation. Bosse made a series of explosive, and exaggerated, claims. La Voisin some very important people. But no name was more explosive than Madame de Montespan.

Françoise-Athénaïs de Rochechouart de Mortemart, better known as Madame de Montespan, was Louis XIV's longtime mistress and the mother of several of his children, whom he would eventually legitimize. At the height of her influence, she was reportedly referred to as the “real queen of France.”

And according to the testimony gathered by La Reynie, Montespan had been visiting La Voisin since 1665. The following year, she allegedly had a black mass performed in which she lay naked on an altar covered in blood, supposedly from freshly slaughtered infants, while invoking supernatural forces to make the King fall in love with her. And Louis XIV did, in fact, fall in love with her.

Whether the ritual actually happened is another question entirely. Much of the case against Montespan consisted of hearsay, coerced testimony, and accusations that were later retracted. After sobering up, La Voisin herself walked back some of her claims.

Nevertheless, rumors surrounding Montespan became increasingly lurid. Court gossip accused her of plotting to kill Louis XIV and of poisoning Marie Angélique de Scorailles, a beautiful young woman who had caught the King's attention.
She died in 1681. Rumors immediately suggested poisoning.

Louis XIV had a serious problem. The Affair of the Poisons had grown from the alleged crimes of one aristocratic woman into a sprawling investigation implicating fortune tellers, alchemists, abortionists, aristocrats, courtiers, and potentially the King's own mistress.

Louis was already looking for a way to distance himself from Montespan. He also had no interest in publicly investigating whether the mother of several of his children had attempted to use black magic to control himC or worse, plotted his death. So his deputies, including La Reynie, began quietly shutting the investigation down.

Thirty-four people were ultimately executed for poisoning or witchcraft, while several courtiers were exiled.

Montespan, however, was never punished.
She eventually fell from favor and was pushed out of court, retreating to her enormous residence at the Château de Clagny, where she spent the remainder of her life largely removed from the influence she had once wielded. She died in 1707.

If interested I cover the story here: https://aid2000.substack.com/p/hare-brained-history-vol-135-the?r=4mmzre&utm\_medium=ios

Charles-Henri Sanson was born in 1739.
His family's association with the executioner's office had begun generations earlier. The job brought the family a comfortable home and respectable income, placing them firmly among Paris's upper-middle class. There was, however, a catch. The profession itself made them social outcasts.

A few years after his birth, Charles-Henri was sent to a convent school in Rouen. His father's identity was concealed from the other students, presumably to protect the boy from the stigma attached to the family profession. At fourteen, that secret was exposed and Charles-Henri was asked to leave the school.

He returned to Paris, where his father arranged for him to be privately tutored by a physician. Charles-Henri had developed an interest in anatomy and medicine and dreamed of becoming a doctor. Then his father's health failed. The family needed someone to assume the executioner's office.

Charles-Henri was pressed into the profession.
His first execution was one of the most infamous in eighteenth-century France. Robert-François Damiens had attempted to assassinate King Louis XV. His punishment was hanging, drawing, and quartering, an exceptionally brutal form of execution reserved for the most serious crimes. When the horses failed to tear Damiens's body apart, the executioners were forced to intervene with knives and sever his tendons themselves.

There are few sources on Charles-Henri's personal life, outside of the moments when he was at work. What we do have suggests that Charles-Henri was no sadist, but a professional.

A nineteenth-century article in The Irish Monthly described him as a man who “seems to have been a humane man, doing everything in his power to spare the condemned unnecessary suffering.” His grandson later wrote that Charles-Henri “had a strong aversion to the family business and desired to become a doctor,” and that the early execution of Damiens caused him to “manifest very early a marked aversion for the profession.”

And then came 1789. Charles-Henri was a hated man performing a hated profession on behalf of a monarchy that was itself becoming increasingly hated.

Revolutionary journalist Camille Desmoulins attacked him in his publication Révolutions de France et de Brabant, portraying Sanson as an extension of the Crown and a monarchist who could not be trusted.

Sanson responded publicly. How could he be a loyalist when, as an executioner, he himself had long occupied a legally and socially marginalized position? He had not enjoyed the same rights and privileges as ordinary citizens, much less the aristocracy whose privileges the Revolution was now attacking.

The monarchy fell. The Republic was proclaimed. And Sanson's employer changed.

He executed Citizen Louis Capet, formerly King Louis XVI. Sanson later described Louis as having borne his final moments “with a composure and a firmness.”

He would also execute the King's widow. Marie Antoinette stumbled as she climbed the scaffold and accidentally stepped on Sanson's foot.

“Pardon me, sir,” she reportedly said. “I did not do it on purpose.”

Sanson replied: “Courage, Madame.”

Charlotte Corday, who assassinated Jean-Paul Marat. The Girondins. Georges Danton. Jacques Hébert. Camille Desmoulins, the same journalist who had once accused Sanson of being a royalist.

And finally, Maximilien Robespierre. On July 28, 1794, Robespierre arrived at the Place de la Révolution with his jaw horriblyshattered from the previous night. When Sanson removed the bandage to position him beneath the guillotine, Robespierre's broken jaw reportedly fell loose.
Robespierre cried out in agony. Then the blade fell. He screamed no more.

By the time Charles-Henri Sanson retired on August 30, 1795, he had presided over thousands of executions. One retrospective scholarly count puts the number at 2,918. A Sanson family diary gives 2,548 executions during the Revolution, including 370 women, 22 children and adolescents, and nine people over the age of eighty. Historian Émile Campardon counted 2,791 capital sentences carried out by guillotine between March 10, 1793, and May 31, 1795.

If you're interested, I cover the French Revolution through the eyes of the executioner, Charles-Henri Sanson: https://aid2000.substack.com/p/hare-brained-history-vol-134-sanson?r=4mmzre&utm\_medium=ios

By July 1794, Maximilien Robespierre had spent years wielding words as his greatest weapon. He was widely regarded as eloquent, direct, unyielding, and capable of imbuing his speeches with a sense of personal virtue and incorruptibility that convinced thousands to follow his course, a course known as the Reign of Terror.

Robespierre did not create the Reign of Terror by himself, nor did he personally control every execution carried out in its name. But as one of the leading members of the Committee of Public Safety, Robespierre became one of its most prominent political architects. Under the revolutionary government, extraordinary powers were concentrated in committees, courts, and local authorities tasked with identifying and destroying enemies of the Republic.

And the definition of an “enemy” became increasingly broad. Royalists were obvious targets. So were suspected counter-revolutionaries, refractory priests, suspected conspirators, and political opponents.

By the height of the Terror, tens of thousands had been executed, died in prison, or been killed in revolutionary violence. More than 17,000 people were officially executed during the Terror, although estimates of the total number of deaths associated with the period are considerably higher.

On June 10, 1794, the Law of 22 Prairial dramatically expanded the Revolutionary Tribunal's power and curtailed the rights of defendants. Trials became faster, defenses were restricted, and the number of people sent to the guillotine increased dramatically. In Paris alone, roughly 1,400 people were executed in the seven weeks between the law's passage and Robespierre's fall.

This was the period that became known as the Great Terror. And it frightened the people who had created the Terror.

On July 26, 1794, Robespierre gave another speech. Robespierre attempted to defend himself against rumors, attacking several deputies of the National Convention by name and condemning many more without naming them. That may have been his greatest mistake.

The deputies did not know who would be next. They knew only that Robespierre was talking about corruption and enemies of the Republic, and that the guillotine had already claimed countless men who had once believed themselves untouchable, men about whom Robespierre had said similar things.

The next day, July 27, the Convention turned against Robespierre and his faction, voting to arrest them. The city officials, seemingly more confused than anything else, failed to carry out the arrests. Robespierre and his allies instead gathered on the first floor of the Hôtel de Ville.

The National Convention, learning that the men had not been secured, sent armed forces to the building. At around 2:30 in the morning, they entered.

Philippe François Le Bas grabbed a pistol and shot himself, killing himself according to the conventional account. Robespierre apparently tried to do the same. Another account claims he was shot by one of the arresting officers.

Whatever happened, Robespierre did not die.
The shot shattered his jaw instead, leaving the bullet lodged in the wound.

For the rest of the night, he lay in agony on a table, his head resting on a pine box, blood dripping from his horribly mangled jaw as his enemies came in, looked at him, and laughed. At around five in the morning, two of his men, one of them his brother Augustin, were allowed to go to the hospital. Robespierre was not. Five hours later, a military doctor was finally summoned. He extracted some of Robespierre's teeth and fragments of his shattered jaw before roughly securing what remained with a bandage.

From there, things moved quickly. Robespierre was confined to a cell. The Revolutionary Tribunal assembled at noon. By two in the afternoon, he and his allies had been sentenced to death without even a cursory hearing.

At six in the evening, Robespierre and several others were conveyed in three open carts to the Place de la Révolution. A furious mob followed them, hurling curses and rotten food at the condemned.

Robespierre was the tenth man to be executed.
long time Parisein executioner Charles-Henri Sanson prepared him for the guillotine. To clear the way for his neck, he pulled away the bandage holding Robespierre's shattered jaw together.

The jaw fell loose. Robespierre cried out in agony as Sanson positioned him beneath the blade. Then the blade fell. Robespierre screamed no more.

And the crowd erupted. The jubilation continued for nearly fifteen minutes.

If you're interested, I cover the French Revolution through the eyes of the highly worked Parisian executioner, Charles-Henri Sanson: https://aid2000.substack.com/p/hare-brained-history-vol-134-sanson?r=4mmzre&utm\_medium=ios

Born sometime in the 1530s or 1540s, John White became a well-regarded London artist and illustrator. He joined Sir Ralph Lane’s expedition to Virginia as “Gentleman Artist,” tasked with mapping the land and “drawing to life” its inhabitants. His watercolors provide some of the only European visual records of Indigenous societies along the eastern seaboard for more than two centuries.

Sir Walter Raleigh then named him “John White of London Gentleman, to be the chief Governor of the Cittie of Raleigh of Virginia.” After the disastrous first attempt at a colony at Roanoke, it’s sponsor, Raleigh, concluded that the area was no longer viable. They instead proposed the Chesapeake.

White recruited 113 colonists, mostly middle-class people hoping that Virginia might turn them into wealthy landowners. Among them was his 19-year-old daughter, Eleanor, recently married to 27-year-old Ananias Dare and already pregnant. This expedition was different from Lane’s: rather than soldiers, it was largely families attempting to establish a permanent settlement.

They first stopped at Roanoke to collect men left behind from the previous expedition, only to find the settlement abandoned. Worse, pilot Simon Fernandes deserted them there. With the help of Manteo, a Croatoan who had spent time in England and was friendly with the English, the colonists established peaceful relations with the Croatoan.

The situation quickly deteriorated. The colonists were woefully unprepared. They had barely planted crops, had little in the way of defenses, and had antagonized several of the surrounding communities. The colonists therefore petitioned White to return to England and beg Raleigh and Queen Elizabeth for supplies and assistance. White reluctantly agreed, leaving behind his daughter, granddaughter, and the rest of the colony.

He sailed on August 27, 1587, arriving in England on November 5. Unfortunately, England was now preparing for a Spanish invasion. The country was effectively on a war footing, and ships were desperately needed for defense. White was stuck.

Eventually, he convinced Sir Richard Grenville to let him accompany a privateering expedition to the Caribbean, with the intention of diverting to Virginia on the return journey. But Grenville received orders to remain in England. Two ships were deemed unsuitable for combat, however, and White was allowed to take them to Roanoke. Raleigh loaded them with supplies, and they departed on April 22, 1588.

The captains spotted Spanish ships and diverted from their course to pursue them, only to be intercepted by French privateers. Nearly two dozen Englishmen were killed, the ships were looted, and White lost all the supplies intended for Roanoke. White concluded that he had been born beneath “an unlucky star.”
He returned to England just in time for the Spanish Armada. White spent another year unable to return to his family.

Finally, in 1590, Raleigh secured permission for White to accompany the privateer John Watts to the Caribbean, with two ships allowed to divert to Roanoke. After months of fighting and privateering, White finally reached Croatoan Island on August 12. He did not contact the Croatoan. Which, in retrospect, was probably not ideal.

For three days, the ships remained offshore, partly because of terrible weather, until smoke was spotted on Roanoke. White led a landing party through a storm, during which seven sailors drowned. The men eventually reached the island, singing English songs along the way in the hope that someone might hear them.

On August 18, 1590, his granddaughter Virginia Dare’s third birthday, White finally reached Roanoke. They found fresh footprints in the sand. Then they found the letters CRO carved into a tree.

The settlement itself had been fortified with a palisade, but it was completely deserted. The houses had been dismantled, and anything useful had been taken. White found his own possessions scattered and ruined. Then he found the word carved into the palisade:
CROATOAN.

White was convinced this meant the colonists had gone to live with the Croatoan. He and the colonists had previously agreed that, if they were forced to leave, they would carve a message indicating where they had gone. If they had been attacked or forced out, they were supposed to carve a cross alongside it. There was no cross.

Unfortunately, White was apparently cursed by the universe. The weather turned “fouler and fouler.” One ship lost its anchor cable, leaving it dangerously dependent on its backup. The captains decided they had to leave. They compromised on sailing south to the Caribbean, spending the winter there, and returning to Roanoke in the spring.

They never made it back. Storms repeatedly blew them off course. Eventually, the sailors gave up and sailed for England, arriving in Plymouth on October 24, 1590.

White was devastated. He wrote that he had to leave the fate of his family “to the merciful help of the Almighty.” He spent the remainder of his life in Raleigh’s employ, never abandoning hope that his daughter, granddaughter, and the other colonists had survived. He never found out.

If interested I explore the story of the Lost Colony here: https://aid2000.substack.com/p/hare-brained-history-vol-133-roanoke?r=4mmzre&utm\_medium=ios

Early on the morning of January 31st 1921, C.P. Brady sipped his lukewarm cup of coffee as he stared out into the morning haze. The biting Atlantic wind cut through his layers as he scanned the horizon from the United States Coast Guard Station at Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. The night had been quiet, save for the occasional howl of the wind coming off the Atlantic and whipping along the shore.

Then, through the haze, he spotted a ship in the distance. All sails were set, as if she were making for open water, yet she was sailing straight toward the outer edge of Diamond Shoals. He raised his binoculars. The ship was ghostly quiet.

Due to bad weather, common along the Outer Banks in winter, no one was able to approach the Carroll A. Deering until February 4, after several days of being battered by the Atlantic. When they finally boarded her, they found her steering equipment damaged, her wheel shattered, the binnacle box stoved in, and the rudder disengaged. The log and navigation equipment were gone. So was the crew.

Their personal effects were gone, too, as were the ship’s two lifeboats. Curiously, in the galley, a meal that had been in the process of being prepared had simply been abandoned. Attempts to salvage the Deering proved impossible, and on March 4, she was destroyed with dynamite.

The Deering company had recruited Captain Willis B. Wormell, a retired, grizzled 66-year-old sea captain, to take command of the schooner. The Deering carried coal bound for Rio de Janeiro, and Charles B. McLellan was hired as first mate.

They set sail from Lewes, Delaware, on September 8 and arrived in Rio without incident. Wormell gave his crew leave and met with a friend who happened to have captained another schooner to Rio. Wormell told him that he did not trust his crew.

The ship left Rio on December 2, 1920, stopping in Barbados. There, First Mate McLellan got drunk and complained to a captain he was drinking with that Captain Wormell was useless, who was too old and had to rely on McLellan for navigation. As he became increasingly drunk, McLellan was heard to say, “I’ll get the captain before we get to Norfolk, I will.”

He then caused such a drunken ruckus in Bridgetown that he was arrested. Wormell bailed him out.

They set out for Hampton Roads, Virginia, on January 9. The next time the Deering was seen was at the Cape Lookout lightship on January 28, three days before Brady spotted her off the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse.

Captain Jacobson, keeper of the lightship, reported that a tall, thin man with red hair and a Scandinavian accent spoke through a megaphone and told him that they had lost their anchors in a storm off Cape Fear. He asked Jacobson to relay the information to his employer, the Deering Company.

The next day, another ship spotted a schooner sailing directly toward Diamond Shoals. They saw no one aboard.

Brady was the next man to spot the Carroll A. Deering. None of the crew were ever seen again, dead or alive. There is no official explanation for what happened to them, but several theories were considered during the investigation.

The National Weather Bureau strongly believed that a series of powerful storms raging in the Atlantic had caused the men to abandon ship. But the Deering was moving away from the path of the storm, and the evidence aboard suggested that, in taking the logbook and navigational tools, they had abandoned ship in at least a somewhat orderly fashion, not in a panic in the middle of a storm.

Captain Parker of the U.S. Marine Shipping Board, as well as Wormell’s widow, advocated for piracy. But there was no evidence.

Another explanation was that the Deering had been held up by rum runners. This was in the middle of Prohibition, and the ship was large enough to hold millions of dollars' worth of liquor. The theory went that rum runners in the Caribbean seized the ship, only to be caught in a storm. Except the Deering was too slow to be particularly useful to rum runners. And again, there was no evidence.

Lastly, there was mutiny. There were Wormell’s comments about his crew. There were McLellan’s drunken threats. And Captain Jacobson had been hailed by a man who was almost certainly neither the captain nor the first mate.

If interested, I cover mysteries like the Carroll A Deering here: https://aid2000.substack.com/p/hare-brained-history-vol-132-triangles?r=4mmzre&utm\_medium=ios

Harry Houdini was born Erik Weisz on March 24, 1874, in Budapest, Austria-Hungary, into a Jewish family. When he was four, his family emigrated to the United States to escape antisemitic prejudice, eventually settling in Wisconsin and fell into brutal poverty. Ehrie, as he was nicknamed, had to leave school after the third grade to work as a shoe shiner and message boy. He ran away from home twice, taking the Americanized name Harry, but returning each time.

His love, and his escape, was acrobatics, inspired by early trips to the circus. At eight, he was introduced to the world of magic at a circus performance. After the family moved to New York, their financial situation became more secure, allowing Ehrie to join athletic clubs, where he became an accomplished athlete. He remained in excellent shape throughout his life.

At 16, Ehrie read the autobiography of Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin and became fascinated by magic. Dreaming of stardom in the mold of Houdin, he took the name Harry Houdini in homage to him.

In 1891, Houdini formed an act, first with a friend and then his younger brother Theodore, who would later gain renown as Hardeen. “The Brothers Houdini” developed their first illusion, The Metamorphosis, in which Houdini would have his hands tied, be roped into a sack, and locked inside a trunk. The trunk was then pushed behind a curtained cabinet. The attendant, initially Hardeen, would clap three times, and Houdini would immediately appear free. When the trunk was opened, Hardeen would be inside with his hands tied.

They had little success, performing in dime museums and sideshows, where Houdini even masqueraded as a “Wild Man.” Aside from The Metamorphosis, Houdini initially focused on card tricks and tried to bill himself as the “King of Cards.” As the Brothers Houdini performed for “near-starvation wages,” Harry began experimenting with escape acts, breaking free from restraints and traps.

In 1894, while performing at Coney Island, Hardeen met Wilhelmina “Bess” Rahner, an 18-year-old chorine and the daughter of German immigrants. Hardeen was taking her on a date and introduced her to his brother. Within three weeks, she and Houdini were married.

Early reporters described Houdini as having a “sharp-chinned, sharp-cheekboned face, bright blue eyes and thick, curly, black hair,” as “happy-looking,” and as “the young Hungarian magician with the pleasant smile and easy confidence.”

With Bess replacing his brother, “The Houdinis” played beer halls, dime museums, and traveled with circuses for years, doing practically anything they could to make ends meet.
After years of struggle, in 1898, Harry Houdini tried to sell his entire act, including everything he had collected and his Metamorphosis trick. There were no buyers.

Losing faith in himself, his lowest point came on the night of January 11, 1899, at Middleton’s Clark Street Dime Museum in Chicago. After breaking free from six pairs of handcuffs, an audience member, an Evanston police officer, offered up his own cuffs. Houdini struggled to escape for 20 minutes while the audience jeered. The officer had read about Houdini and concluded that he was using some form of sleight of hand on the cuffs’ springs.

Soon afterward, while performing in St. Paul, Minnesota, Houdini’s handcuff act impressed theater owner and booking agent Martin Beck.
He advised Houdini to drop the card tricks and other stereotypical magic acts and focus on escaping. Beck soon telegraphed him:

“You can open Omaha, March twenty-sixth, sixty dollars, will see act probably make you proposition for all next season.”

The show went well, and Beck kept Houdini on for his national tour. Harry promoted his appearances by making escape attempts from handcuffs and jail cells in police stations. Notably, in San Francisco and Chicago, he did so nude to prove he had no keys on him. He confounded local police and made headlines.

His first American tour was a complete success, and within a year he was a millionaire. If you’re interested, I cover Houdini’s life here: https://aid2000.substack.com/p/hare-brained-history-vol-131-houdini?r=4mmzre&utm\_medium=ios

Oxana Malaya was born in the Ukrainian SSR and, according to doctors and her medical records, was a normal child at birth. But Malaya was severely neglected by her alcoholic parents and spent much of her time outside, living among the family’s dogs.

By the time authorities found her at seven and a half, she had essentially adopted their behavior. She ran on all fours, barked, slept on the floor, ate like a dog, and even used her mouth and tongue for basic hygiene. She could not speak and lacked many basic social and developmental skills.

Malaya was removed from her parents’ custody and eventually placed in a specialized foster home, where she spent years receiving therapy and education. She gradually learned to walk upright, speak, and interact with other people, although she continued to have intellectual disabilities and some dog-like behaviors. She was a severely neglected human child who had spent her formative years surrounded by dogs and adapted to the environment available to her.

As an adult, she worked on a farm caring for animals and became capable of speaking fluently. In a 2013 Ukrainian television interview, she pushed back against being called a “dog-girl,” saying that she wanted to be treated like a normal human being.

Her story is one of the clearest examples of just how profoundly a child’s environment can shape their behavior, and of how difficult it can be to undo the damage caused by extreme neglect.

I explore such cases here: https://aid2000.substack.com/p/hbh-bites-vol-1-raised-by-wolves?r=4mmzre&utm\_medium=ios

In the dense, mountainous jungle on the outskirts of Bulandshahr, India, a band of hunters moved cautiously through the brush, pale moonlight breaking through the canopy overhead. They were hunting wolves.

Eventually, they came upon a clearing and a cave believed to be a wolf den. As they approached, they spotted a lone figure crouched on all fours, completely still. Then it noticed them.

The hunters claimed it growled. They stopped. It was no wolf. It was a small child. The men took the boy, who appeared to be no older than six. He whined and twisted in their arms, trying to escape, responding to neither questions nor instructions. That night, they brought him to the Sikandra Mission Orphanage in Agra.

It was February 1867. A Saturday. The missionaries named him Dina, and because he had been found on a Saturday, gave him the surname Sanichar, meaning “Saturday.” Before long, he acquired another name: “Wolf Boy.”

The name seemed appropriate. Dina walked on all fours and struggled to stand upright. The orphanage’s superintendent, Erich Lewis, wrote, “the facility with which they get along on four feet is surprising.”

Dina ate raw meat. Before eating, he would smell his food and reject anything he disliked. He was reportedly fond of gnawing on bones.

He never learned to speak. Over the years, he learned to recognize gestures and eventually understand some spoken language. He learned to stand and walk on two feet and gradually accepted wearing clothing. But human society remained profoundly difficult for him, and he spent the rest of his life in institutional care.
He did apparently take to cigarettes, though.
Dina died of tuberculosis in 1895, somewhere in his mid-thirties.

There is also a persistent claim that Dina influenced Rudyard Kipling when he later wrote The Jungle Book. The connection is difficult to establish, but the timing and circumstances make it an intriguing possibility.

Dina is only one of several strange cases of children supposedly raised by wolves.

I explore such cases here: https://aid2000.substack.com/p/hbh-bites-vol-1-raised-by-wolves?r=4mmzre&utm\_medium=ios

Born into a prominent Liberian family, Taylor was well educated, attending prep schools in Liberia before moving to the United States, where he graduated from Bentley College in Massachusetts. He also became a prominent activist and organizer with the Union of Liberian Associations.

Taylor eventually earned a position in the Liberian government. He survived the 1980 coup that brought General Samuel Doe to power and was placed in charge of government expenditures. But in 1983, Taylor was ousted and fled into exile after being accused of embezzling nearly $1 million from the government and transferring the money into his personal Citibank account.

He returned to Massachusetts, where he was arrested in early 1984. While awaiting extradition to Liberia, Taylor escaped from Plymouth County Correctional Facility with four other men. They sawed through a metal bar covering a window, climbed roughly 20 feet to the ground using knotted bedsheets, scaled the prison fence.

Taylor's exact movements after that are difficult to reconstruct, but he eventually made his way to Libya, where he came under the wing of Muammar Gaddafi, receiving military training and support. In 1989, he launched an insurgency into Liberia against Doe's brutal regime.

This was the beginning of the First Liberian Civil War, a conflict marked by immense brutality, widespread use of child soldiers, and systematic sexual violence. Warlords controlled much of the country for nearly six years, while Doe was captured, tortured, and murdered in 1990, with the killing recorded on video.

Following international intervention and a ceasefire, Taylor won the 1997 presidential election running on the slogan: “He killed my ma, he killed my pa, but I will vote for him.”

As president, Taylor lived lavishly, diverting government resources toward his personal use and reportedly accumulating homes, cars, expensive clothes, and other luxuries. He was also accused of diverting around $100 million from the Liberian government while funding, arming, and directing the brutal Revolutionary United Front in neighboring Sierra Leone. Taylor empowered his son to lead the Anti-Terrorist Unit, better known as the “Demon Force,” a notorious paramilitary unit accused of torture, murder, and other abuses.

Taylor's downfall came much like his rise. Armed groups eventually carved up much of Liberia. In 2003, with rebels besieging Monrovia and West African states intervening, Taylor resigned and fled into exile in Nigeria.

He was eventually transferred to the Special Court for Sierra Leone, where in 2012 he was found guilty on all 11 counts, including acts of terrorism, murder, rape, sexual slavery, cruel treatment, other inhumane acts, conscripting or enlisting child soldiers, enslavement, and pillage.

If you're interested, I cover the life of Charles Taylor here: https://aid2000.substack.com/p/hare-brained-history-vol-130-charles?r=4mmzre&utm\_medium=ios

Born into a prominent Liberian family, Taylor was well educated, attending prep schools in Liberia before moving to the United States, where he graduated from Bentley College in Massachusetts. He also became a prominent activist and organizer with the Union of Liberian Associations.

Taylor eventually earned a position in the Liberian government. He survived the 1980 coup that brought General Samuel Doe to power and was placed in charge of government expenditures. But in 1983, Taylor was ousted and fled into exile after being accused of embezzling nearly $1 million from the government and transferring the money into his personal Citibank account.

He returned to Massachusetts, where he was arrested in early 1984. While awaiting extradition to Liberia, Taylor escaped from Plymouth County Correctional Facility with four other men. They sawed through a metal bar covering a window, climbed roughly 20 feet to the ground using knotted bedsheets, scaled the prison fence.

Taylor's exact movements after that are difficult to reconstruct, but he eventually made his way to Libya, where he came under the wing of Muammar Gaddafi, receiving military training and support. In 1989, he launched an insurgency into Liberia against Doe's brutal regime.

This was the beginning of the First Liberian Civil War, a conflict marked by immense brutality, widespread use of child soldiers, and systematic sexual violence. Warlords controlled much of the country for nearly six years, while Doe was captured, tortured, and murdered in 1990, with the killing recorded on video.

Following international intervention and a ceasefire, Taylor won the 1997 presidential election running on the slogan: “He killed my ma, he killed my pa, but I will vote for him.”

As president, Taylor lived lavishly, diverting government resources toward his personal use and reportedly accumulating homes, cars, expensive clothes, and other luxuries. He was also accused of diverting around $100 million from the Liberian government while funding, arming, and directing the brutal Revolutionary United Front in neighboring Sierra Leone. Taylor empowered his son to lead the Anti-Terrorist Unit, better known as the “Demon Force,” a notorious paramilitary unit accused of torture, murder, and other abuses.

Taylor's downfall came much like his rise. Armed groups eventually carved up much of Liberia. In 2003, with rebels besieging Monrovia and West African states intervening, Taylor resigned and fled into exile in Nigeria.

He was eventually transferred to the Special Court for Sierra Leone, where in 2012 he was found guilty on all 11 counts, including acts of terrorism, murder, rape, sexual slavery, cruel treatment, other inhumane acts, conscripting or enlisting child soldiers, enslavement, and pillage.

If you're interested, I cover the life of Charles Taylor here: https://aid2000.substack.com/p/hare-brained-history-vol-130-charles?r=4mmzre&utm\_medium=ios

The Chicago White Sox were one of the best teams in baseball in the late 1910s. They won the 1917 World Series behind some of the league’s best players: ace Eddie Cicotte, star outfielders “Shoeless” Joe Jackson and Oscar “Happy” Felsch, and a talented supporting cast. After a down year in 1918, they returned to the top of the American League in 1919.

But all was not well in the dugout. White Sox owner Charles Comiskey was not a pleasant man. He was stern, demanding, and notoriously cheap. Even his defenders called him “frugal.” He reportedly made his players pay to have their own uniforms washed. The White Sox paid less than other teams, and because of baseball’s reserve system, players had little leverage to demand more. They could accept Comiskey’s wages or risk being blacklisted from professional baseball.

The players were badly underpaid by a man they despised. The resentment finally boiled over after the White Sox clinched the 1919 pennant. Comiskey had promised his players a bonus if they won the pennant and brought him back to the World Series. They did exactly that.
Their reward? A case of champagne.

Eddie Cicotte had another reason to be furious. He entered the final week of the season with 29 wins and a $10,000 bonus clause in his contract if he reached 30. Instead he was sat.

On September 18, the White Sox arrived in Boston for one of their final regular-season series. At the Hotel Buckminster, first baseman Chick Gandil and Cicotte met with Boston bookmaker Joe “Sport” Sullivan, who proposed a plan: throw the World Series in exchange for $80,000, roughly $1.6 million today.

On September 20, in Gandil’s New York hotel room, Gandil, Cicotte, Williams, Weaver, Risberg, and Felsch met with Sullivan, several other gamblers, and Sleepy Bill Burns. The gamblers pitched them on throwing the World Series for a $100,000 payout.

The players agreed. Shoeless Joe Jackson was not at the meeting, but Gandil later said Jackson had verbally agreed to participate. Weaver, however, wanted the money up front. When Sullivan couldn't provide it, Weaver backed out. He refused to participate in the fix, but he also refused to betray his teammates.

The fix was on. When the World Series began, Cicotte hit the Cincinnati Reds’ leadoff batter with his second pitch, a signal that the conspiracy had begun. The players were promised $100,000. They never received all of it.

Cicotte committed several costly errors. Lefty Williams lost a record three games in the best-of-nine series. The White Sox lost to the heavily favored Reds, producing one of the biggest upsets in World Series history.

But the story was more complicated than simply eight players deliberately throwing games.
Several of the accused players later insisted that they had not always tried to lose. They did, however, admit to accepting money. Jackson, who had an excellent World Series, received $5,000 from Williams. Weaver never accepted any money and maintained that he had refused to participate.

The public initially celebrated Cincinnati’s stunning victory. Among gamblers, however, the fix was reportedly an open secret. Eventually, word reached Comiskey through an informant. He was furious, but he did not expose the players. In fact, several of the suspected players received raises.

The scandal finally exploded in 1920 amid separate investigations into gambling and game-fixing in baseball. A grand jury investigation followed, and in 1921 the eight players branded the “Black Sox” went on trial.
All eight were acquitted.

Jackson, who had never personally met any of the gamblers and had performed exceptionally well in the Series, was found not guilty. Weaver, who had refused to participate and never accepted money, was also acquitted.
Afterward, the defendants celebrated with the jurors.

Baseball's owners were furious and desperate to restore the sport's credibility. They empowered federal judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis as the first Commissioner of Baseball and gave him unprecedented authority over the game. Despite the players’ acquittal in a public court of law, Landis permanently banned all eight men from professional baseball.

Every attempt to have them reinstated during their lifetimes failed. In 2025, Major League Baseball reinstated the eight players.

If interested I cover the story here: https://aid2000.substack.com/p/hare-brained-history-vol-129-the?r=4mmzre&utm\_medium=ios

The Chicago White Sox were one of the best teams in baseball in the late 1910s. They won the 1917 World Series behind some of the league’s best players: ace Eddie Cicotte, star outfielders “Shoeless” Joe Jackson and Oscar “Happy” Felsch, and a talented supporting cast. After a down year in 1918, they returned to the top of the American League in 1919.

But all was not well in the dugout. White Sox owner Charles Comiskey was not a pleasant man. He was stern, demanding, and notoriously cheap. Even his defenders called him “frugal.” He reportedly made his players pay to have their own uniforms washed. The White Sox paid less than other teams, and because of baseball’s reserve system, players had little leverage to demand more. They could accept Comiskey’s wages or risk being blacklisted from professional baseball.

The players were badly underpaid by a man they despised. The resentment finally boiled over after the White Sox clinched the 1919 pennant. Comiskey had promised his players a bonus if they won the pennant and brought him back to the World Series. They did exactly that.
Their reward? A case of champagne.

Eddie Cicotte had another reason to be furious. He entered the final week of the season with 29 wins and a $10,000 bonus clause in his contract if he reached 30. Manager William Jethro “Kid” Gleason benched him for the remainder of the regular season, ostensibly to rest his arm for the World Series. Resting pitchers was hardly standard practice in 1919, and Cicotte believed Comiskey had simply decided he didn't want to pay the bonus.

On September 18, the White Sox arrived in Boston for one of their final regular-season series. At the Hotel Buckminster, first baseman Chick Gandil and Cicotte met with Boston bookmaker Joe “Sport” Sullivan, who proposed a plan: throw the World Series in exchange for $80,000, roughly $1.6 million today.

Cicotte gave a somewhat different account, saying that he had first approached former professional player William “Sleepy” Bill Burns, a man with extensive underworld connections. According to Cicotte, the players had heard that several members of their crosstown rivals, the Cubs, had received $10,000 apiece to throw the 1918 World Series.

On September 20, in Gandil’s New York hotel room, Gandil, Cicotte, Williams, Weaver, Risberg, and Felsch met with Sullivan, several other gamblers, and Sleepy Bill Burns. The gamblers pitched them on throwing the World Series for a $100,000 payout.

The players agreed. Shoeless Joe Jackson was not at the meeting, but Gandil later said Jackson had verbally agreed to participate. Weaver, however, wanted the money up front. When Sullivan couldn't provide it, Weaver backed out. He refused to participate in the fix, but he also refused to betray his teammates.

Former world featherweight champion Abe Attell, a close associate of the notorious gambler and underworld figure Arnold Rothstein, became involved. Attell told Burns that Rothstein had reconsidered and would finance the operation.

The fix was on. When the World Series began, Cicotte hit the Cincinnati Reds’ leadoff batter with his second pitch, a signal that the conspiracy had begun. The players were promised $100,000. They never received all of it.

Cicotte committed several costly errors. Lefty Williams lost a record three games in the best-of-nine series. The White Sox lost to the heavily favored Reds, producing one of the biggest upsets in World Series history.

But the story was more complicated than simply eight players deliberately throwing games.
Several of the accused players later insisted that they had not always tried to lose. They did, however, admit to accepting money. Jackson, who had an excellent World Series, received $5,000 from Williams. Weaver never accepted any money and maintained that he had refused to participate.

The public initially celebrated Cincinnati’s stunning victory. But some observers suspected something was wrong. A Chicago sportswriter openly questioned the players’ conduct and suggested that the Series might have been fixed, only to be ridiculed for making the accusation.
Among gamblers, however, the fix was reportedly an open secret. Eventually, word reached Comiskey through an informant. He was furious, but remarkably, he did not immediately expose the players. In fact, several of the suspected players received raises.

The scandal finally exploded in 1920 amid separate investigations into gambling and game-fixing in baseball. A grand jury investigation followed, and in 1921 the eight players branded the “Black Sox” went on trial.
All eight were acquitted.

Jackson, who had never personally met any of the gamblers and had performed exceptionally well in the Series, was found not guilty. Weaver, who had refused to participate and never accepted money, was also acquitted.
Afterward, the defendants celebrated with the jurors.

Baseball's owners were furious and desperate to restore the sport's credibility. They empowered federal judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis as the first Commissioner of Baseball and gave him unprecedented authority over the game. Despite the players’ acquittal in a public court of law, Landis permanently banned all eight men from professional baseball.

Every attempt to have them reinstated during their lifetimes failed. In 2025, Major League Baseball reinstated the eight players. They can now be considered for the Baseball Hall of Fame, with the earliest possible induction coming in December 2027.

If interested I cover the story here: https://aid2000.substack.com/p/hare-brained-history-vol-129-the?r=4mmzre&utm\_medium=ios

Baron Ferenc Nopcsa was a pioneering paleontologist, a Doctor of Geology, one of the foremost scholars of Albania, a spy, a revolutionary, and a man who nearly became King of Albania.

A chance discovery by his younger sister in 1895 would lead Nopcsa toward his first great obsession: paleontology. While excavating fossils near his family's estate in Transylvania, Nopcsa noticed something peculiar. The bones belonged to sauropods, the group that includes the famous Brontosaurus. But the animals he was finding in the region were far smaller than their relatives elsewhere.

Nopcsa named one of these dinosaurs Magyarosaurus, and its diminutive size led him to a remarkable conclusion: the region around Hațeg had once been an island. There, he argued, the scarcity of resources had caused animals to become smaller over generations. In his words, the island environment had the effect of “reducing the size of animals.” He was right.

The phenomenon is now known as insular dwarfism. Hațeg really had been an island during the Late Cretaceous, and it was home to a bizarre collection of animals that evolved in unusual ways under the pressures of island life.
He studied the skulls of lizards and alligators, rearticulating the jaws of fossils and attempting to reconstruct how these animals had actually been built, and how they might have lived.

This was an important departure from the paleontology of his day. Dinosaur research was still largely concerned with excavating, assembling, and classifying bones. Nopcsa increasingly wanted to go further: What did these animals look like when they were alive? How did they move? How did they behave?

Some of his ideas were astonishingly prescient.
Nopcsa theorized that birds had evolved from dinosaurs. By studying living birds and their nesting behavior, he suggested that dinosaurs might likewise have cared for their young and displayed complex social behaviors.

After earning his doctorate in geology from the University of Vienna, his interests expanded beyond fossils. He became fascinated by geology and by the possibility that the Earth's landmasses had not always occupied their present positions. But his attention would soon be captured by another subject entirely:
Albania.

His interest was partly sparked through his “close companion,” Count Louis Draškovic, who had introduced him to stories of the Albanian highlands. After Draškovic's death, Nopcsa became determined to see Albania for himself.
While planning his journey in Bucharest, he met an eighteen-year-old Albanian named Bajazid Elmaz Doda. The two quickly became inseparable and would remain together for the rest of their lives.

Doda became Nopcsa's secretary, companion, traveling partner, and confidant, accompanying him through his numerous adventures across the Balkans. In his memoirs, Nopcsa described Doda as:

“The only person who has truly loved me and in whom I had full confidence.”

Nopcsa discovered an extinct genus of stem turtle in the Upper Cretaceous rocks of the Hațeg Basin. He named it Kallokibotion, from Greek roots roughly meaning “beautiful box,” and named its sole formally described species Kallokibotion bajazidi in honor of Bajazid, or, as put by British paleontologist Gareth Dyke, "the shape of the shell reminded him of Bajazid's arse"

In 1933, the story ended in horror. On April 26, Nopcsa drugged Doda's tea, shot him while he slept, and then killed himself.

If you're interested in reading the story of Baron Nopcsa, I cover it in my latest article here: https://aid2000.substack.com/p/hare-brained-history-vol-127-baron?r=4mmzre&utm\_medium=ios