History is filled with great individuals who are remembered for their deeds and accomplishments. But today's tour might shed some light on just how curious those heroes can be.
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Welcome to Aaron Menkey's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. 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. Author, educator and presidential advisor Booker T. Washington once said, those who are happiest are those who do the most for others, and Jean Eugene Robert lived up to that, doing a lot for others over the course of his relatively short life, but he would never know the influence he would have on the people he met, nor on those who came long after him. Born in blue As, France in December of eighteen o five, Jean Eugeene lost his mother at a very young age. His father, in turn, sent him off to boarding school. Is He the older man, had plans for his son. He wanted him to be more, more successful, more wealthy, and have more status among the social elites. He wanted him to become a lawyer. Jean Eugene obliged out of respect for his father and found work as a clerk for a local attorney. However, he quickly realized that law wasn't the right fit for him. Instead, Jean Eugene spent his hours working with gears and tools in his hands. He wanted to be more like his father, a watchmaker, but his father had retired by this time, so Jean Eugene became apprentice to his cousin instead, also in the watch trade, he had grander ambitions, though, John Eugene wanted to branch out from watches and work on bigger projects. He bought himself a set of expensive and educational books on clockmaking, a trade he would dedicate most of his life too. Jean Eugene would go on to invent a new kind of clock, known as a mystery clock or impossible clock. On first glance, those creations were marvels of modern mechanics. They appeared to have no inner workings. In fact, their hands weren't attached to anything that would rotate them too. Many who saw them then they were magic, which made sense, seeing as how Jean Eugene never got the books he had ordered in the first place. The shopkeeper hadn't wrapped up two volumes on hore logical engineering rather, Jean Eugene had accidentally taken home two books on scientific amusements, in other words, magic. The books demonstrated how tricks were accomplished, but didn't show him how to actually perform that. For help, Jehan Eugene sought help from a magician in town who performed at local gatherings. The watchmaker turned a magician learned sleight of hand, juggling and common routines like cups and balls. He practiced for hours a day, building his skill as a magician as well as his business making watches and clocks. Around eighteen thirty, he started touring around Europe and the United States, performing his magic for small gatherings at parties. It is on one particular trip when he met a young woman named Joseph Cecile Hudan. She was the daughter of a prominent watchmaker. In fact, her family had hailed from the same town in France as Jean Eugene. A happy coincidence, right, or had fates planned this little meeting all along? It didn't matter, though. The young couple immediately fell in love and were married in July of that year. Jean Eugene hyphenated his name to include hers now going by Jean Eugene Robert Huddon, and then the couple moved to Paris, where they started their new life together. He began working for his father in law, making watches and inventing different mechanical trinkets like toys and automatons. On one of his walks through the city, one day, Jean Eugene happened upon a small shop that sold magic supplies. Frequent visitors to the store included magicians of all kind, from seasoned pros to folks just starting out. He talked with them about their techniques and took their advice on how to improve his own. The future seemed bright for Jean Eugene until i Otober of eighteen forty three, when his Ailien wife passed away. She had been only thirty two at the time. Pushing through the pain, Jean Eugene continued to pursue his dream. He attended magic performances and rehearsed his own routine. He also used the money he was making from his watches and automatons to fund new tricks of his own invention. And if you'll pardon the pun, it seems that the time had come to bring his side hobby into the spotlight. With help from a private loan, Jean Eugene built himself a theater at the Palais Royal, a palatial former residence of cardinals and aristocrats. He brought his vision to life with new curtains, fresh paint, and other accouterments that gave off an air of sophistication to anyone who stepped inside. Jean Eugene gave his first performance on July three of eighteen forty five. It was a rousing failure. The theater was practically empty. Though he had practiced his tricks from months beforehand in front of the mirror and for party guests at small gatherings, he had never done them in a large the It her, even one that was half empty. His stage fright got the better of him. Not a single newspaper mentioned the event. He had bombed into anonymity. He didn't let it stop him, though. He kept performing, getting better with each new show, new illusions he thought would bring them in. John Eugene developed tricks of his own design to draw in the crowds. For example, he had a mind reading trick where his son would stand on stage blindfolded while Jean Eugene walked into the audience. People would hold up random objects for him to touch, and his son would describe them perfectly, even though he couldn't see them. Another of his illusions involved a bottle of ether, which he claimed could make anyone lighter than air if they simply took a whiff. With three stools arranged on stage, he had a son's stand on the center one. A cane was placed on each of the opposite stools, then tucked under his son's arms. His son would sniff the bottle of ether and pass out, standing up. John Eugene would then remove the middle stool, leaving him hanging by the two canes. Then he would take one cane away, and yet his son would never fall. Finally, Jean Eugeene would use his pinkie to pull the boy up by his legs until he was parallel with the floor, just hanging there in the air, and the crowds went wild. It was the start of a career that spanned almost a decade until his retirement at the age of forty eight. But he wouldn't stay out of the magic game for long. Napoleon the Third had a small problem brewing in French Algeria. The French army had taken over the region and was keeping the peace, but the local religious leaders were undermining their authority. Interestingly, they performed magic of their own to keep their tribes loyal and rebellious. Napoleon wanted John Eugene to come out of retirement to show the indigenous population that his magic was more powerful. The former watchmaker did as he was told, performing two shows a week and holding parties for the tribe's leaders. He demonstrated the tricks that made him famous in Paris. The tribes and their leaders were dumbfounded. He was even invited to give private performances as well. During a meeting with the head of one of the tribes, Jehan Eugene invited the man to shoot him. He caught the bullet with his teeth. It seemed as if his mission had been accomplished. There was no way the rebels were going to fight now. Jehan Eugene had saved the day. He spent his final years writing his memoirs on magic and clockmaking before dying of pneumonia in eighteen seventy one. He was just sixty five years old. His legacy lives on today. In his house in Bluas, which has since been converted into a museum dedicated to him and his work. And then there is his name, Jean Eugene Robert Who Done? You see? He was an inspiration to folks all over Europe and the America's even after his death. One such person was an up and coming magician named Eric Weiss, who, in eighteen ninety, at the age of sixteen, read Jean Eugene's book. He liked the name who Done, but he knew he couldn't use it outright. Instead, he added a letter to the end, which he incorrectly believed translated to like who Done. That's what he wanted, after all, to be like Robert Houdon. But in doing so he became a household name in his own right. We know him today as Harry Houdini. On April fourteenth of seventeen twenty one, the town of Port Tobacco Parish, Maryland, welcomed John into the world. John was born into a wealthy family of slave owners and politicians, and, like many of those in his era, his father, Samuel, had John educated privately at home until he came of age, and that education seems to have equipped him for a career in government. John entered the political arena at the age of twenty nine in seventeen fifty, where he held the position of sheriff for seven years until his election to the lower house of the Maryland General Assembly. Now from the beginning, John opposed Britain's heavy hand in colonial affairs. He chaired a committee dedicated to undermining the Stamp Act, which imposed attacks on American colonies and forced them to print written materials on English made paper. He also signed a resolution that kept goods from Britain out of the colony until the Towns and Acts were repealed. In seventeen sixty nine, he took a break from the General Assembly and moved back to Frederick County in western Maryland, and over the next five years he held a variety of much smaller public positions and led a quieter, more business focused life. After his earlier career, it must have felt like a needed break. Unfortunately, the rift between the colonies and the Crown had been growing wider and it seemed that war was on the horizon. So John jumped back into the fight for freedom, holding meetings in Frederick County and helping to pass new resolutions in opposition to England's onerous taxes. John also found himself to be a talented recruiter. While he had hoped England and the Colonies would eventually mend their fences, he prepared for the worst. He put out a call to patriots in his area to join him, and even gave them guns and other supplies, and then he sent them to George Washington to bolster the general's efforts against the British. Though he had lived a privileged life up until then, mostly funded by his family's plantation, John didn't see himself being of much use behind a desk in Congress. Instead, he stayed in Maryland to recruit more soldiers and raise additional funds. In fact, he even paid those enlisted out of his own pockets when necessary, and his assistance didn't go unnoticed by the people of Maryland. In seventeen seventy seven, John was elected to the States House of Delegates, where he served for five years. Two years into his term, he was sent to Philadelphia to represent the colony in the Second Continental Congress. Among his achievements there, John had a hand in ratifying the Articles of Confederation, which functioned as a precursor to the Constitution. According to the Articles, there was no executive branch of the United States government. Still, someone needed to make decisions, sign important documents, and moderate discussions among committees and congressional members. It wasn't as sition of true leadership, but it wasn't necessary one, and none had proved themselves more worthy of it than John Hanson. As a great organizer and financier of the Revolution, he was more than qualified to step up and represent this new country. He didn't much like the job, though, The work was so tedious to him that he almost quit after just one week. He was an older man by then and just wanted to spend his remaining years with his family, not stuck in an office in Philadelphia signing papers. On November five, John Hanson was elected President of Congress under the Articles of Confederation, a position he held until he stepped down a year later. Though he only remained in office for a short time, he still holds quite a lasting legacy to this day. First, it was John Hanson who proclaimed that Thanksgiving would be held on the last Thursday in November every year, a practice that is still observed today. And Secondly, he wasn't the only president of the Continental Congress. His role may have been poorly defined by the articles, but he was considered by many to be the first true president of the United States, and on November one, just a couple of weeks after taking office, he received a letter from an old friend. I congratulate your excellency, the senator wrote on your appointment to fill the most important seat in the United States. And the author of that note of congratulations for John's election to the office of presidents, our other first presidents of the United States, George Washington. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Manky in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can learn all about it over the world of Lore dot Come and until next time, stay curious. Yeah h