Unique people who notice curious things in the world around them often leave a lasting mark, as these stories show so well.
Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all of these amazing tales right there on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. On July eighth of eighteen fifty three, American commodore Matthew Perry sailed four ships into Tokyo Bay, essentially declaring Japan open to Western business. Whether they wanted it or not. Japan had been relatively isolated for about two hundred years, but Perry's unceremonious gate crashing led to huge changes for the country and the world at large. Now I doubt very much that Perry and tissated that his actions, however indirectly, would lead to thousands of lives being saved. But let's make sure creda goes to those who deserve it. In nineteen thirty nine, the Axis Powers faced down the Allies for the revenge sequel no one really wanted. Germany had created an alliance with the Soviet Union, which absolutely no one thought would last, including the Soviets and the Germans. As the Germans rolled over Europe, Japan was dominating the Pacific, but there were a few Japanese officials posted in Europe as well, including Shiyuni Sugihara. Now. Sugihara was a career diplomat, and in November of nineteen thirty nine was posted to the then capital of Lithuania to serve as Japanese consul. Part of that job included monitoring the Germans movements so that the Japanese could prepare for the Germans attack on the Soviets. Remember, Japan had their own beef with the Soviets and it wouldn't do well for them to be caught unawares. Sugihara was born on January first of nineteen hundred and grew up at a time when Japan was asserting itself globally. Unlike many Japanese children, Sugihara was exposed to different cultural influences from a young age, even choosing to study English literature in Tokyo rather than becoming a doctor like his father wanted. He received diplomatic training after graduation, becoming deputy consul in Manchuria and helping the Soviet Union win control over the Manchurian Railroad, which neded Japan a fat profit. But the Chinese living in the area were treated terribly by the Japanese, and that turned Sugihara's stomach. He resigned in nineteen thirty four, returning to Tokyo to ask for hopefully quieter assignments in Europe. He had no idea what was coming, though. While he was in Tokyo he met a woman named Yukiko Kikuchi and married her before he was shipped out to his next post. Of course, Lithuania was about to suffer a double occupation by the Soviets and the Nazis, but for about ten months at the start of the war, it was still an independent country full of spies and refugees fleeing the destruction wrought by world powers. Nineteen thirty nine found the Sugihara fans in the city of Canues now with two young children, and they became close with many of their neighbors. Some were Jewish families who quietly explained their fears of the Nazis. Maybe it was this close contact that pushed Sugihara to act, or maybe he was just trying to be a good person in the face of unimaginable evil. Sugihara began interfacing with the Polish underground, getting information from the resistance as he watched the Jewish refugees from Poland and other areas pour in by the day and begin flocking to the Japanese consulate that doubled as the Sugiharas home. Now, before we continue, it's important to point out that World War II has a nasty history with refugees, even without the benefit of hindsight that we have today. It's difficult to read all the articles that discussed how the mighty United States, you know, the land of give me your poor, you're tired your huddled masses, was turning refugees away. But it's true the United States turned away hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees before, during, and even after the war. Most returned to Europe to their doo. Sugihara's position was complicated. Technically, he could give out visas, but there were protocols and his government would certainly never accept the number of people who turned up daily begging for an escape. One of the only ways out was through the Soviet Union to Japan. There was very little safety, but there was a chance, and so Sugihara decided that he would do what he could, in clear violation of repeated orders. He sat down, picked up a pen, and began to write, and he didn't stop for days. His wife joined in too, working day and night to give visas to anyone who came. Sugihara knew that he didn't have much time. The Soviets were closing in and there was a rapidly approaching deadline for foreign staff to get out of the country. He worked right up until he was forced out. According to one story, he was still writing and stamping visas as he was loaded onto the train when it began to pull away, throwing the precious papers out the window to the folks who were waiting for them. From there, Sugihara and his family returned to Ja Pan and he was assigned to several Nazi occupied territories. When the Soviets took Romania his final posting, the Sugihara family was arrested, although not treated badly. Rather than receive a hero's welcome, when he returned to Japan in nineteen forty seven, he was pressured to resign. He always believed that it was because of those visas. We don't know exactly how many people Sugihara managed to save. Some estimated it could have been as many as six thousand, well worth a few ignored telegrams and a reprimand he spent the rest of his life in relative obscurity. The world moved on from the war, and he worked odd jobs to keep his family afloat. He never even spoke of what he did in Lithuania, but some never forgot. In nineteen sixty eight, one visa recipient tracked him down, and Sugihara even visited Israel shortly before he passed away in nineteen eighty six, and there the country honored him at their official Holocaust memorial with the title Righteous among the Nations, which goes to show you sometimes the Kuri path is the best one to take. Humans have a tendency to look for patterns and meaning where there shouldn't be any. For example, we might look at the holes on a wall outlet and see a face, or stare at a cloud and see an animal of some kind. That's called paradolia. But there's a related concept called apophenia, which are connections made between unrelated stimuli, like the recurring appearance of a certain number. Back in nineteen sixty four, two California college students set out to prove that one particular number shows up far more than any other, and as a result, their academic exercise took on a life of its own. Lori Metz and Bruce Elgin joined forces on a research project while attending Pomona College in Claremont, California. Their premise whether the number forty seven appears more regularly in the world than it should be expected to Now, the number forty seven is interesting in its own rights. It's a prime number. It also appears in the Lucas sequence, a sequence of integers named after mathematician Frescois Eduard Anatol Lucas, as its sixth prime number. But look deeper and you might begin to understand what Metz and Elgin we're getting at. Because the number forty seven is more than a mathematical digit. It's a world unto itself. The planet Mars slides into the same position relative to the Sun and the Earth every forty seven years. One of the most used military rifles on the planet is the AK forty seven. There is also the CH forty seven, Chinook tandem rotor helicopter and the P forty seven Thunderbird fighter plane, which was used during World War Two. The number also occurs throughout pop culture. For example, on the television series Lost, forty seven people initially survived the crash of Oceanic Flight eight fifteen. Then in the Pixar movie Monsters, Inc. There's a sign at the Scare Factory that reads accident free for forty seven days. But what was it about this number that made it so appealing to two college students in California, Well, because it was important to the school. You see exit forty seven off the sand Berddino Freeway will take you straight to Pomona College, and the organ in the Ralph H. Lymanhall Auditorium is equipped with forty seven pipes on its top row. Perhaps most intriguing is the fact that in eighteen ninety four, the year of the school's first graduating class, forty seven students were enrolled at the college. Over a century later, the freshman class of the year two thousand had forty seven valedictorians. Meanwhile, forty seven even appears in places that you might not expect. The tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn are forty seven degrees apart on a map. Depending on the version, forty seven sentences have been tabulated within the Declaration of Independence, and Julius Caesar was believed to have coined the phrase ven a vdvici in the year forty seven BC. It's no wonder that Elgin and mets decided to focus their efforts on this strangely popular number, but they didn't exactly go into it with scholarly intentions. You see, Lori Metz and Bruce Elgin approached their research project with their tongues firmly planted in their cheeks. It was kind of a joke. Even a professor at the school was in on it. By creating false mathematical proof where forty seven was equal to every other integer, and they didn't have the Internet to spread their satirical project to the rest of the school, they went viral organically, eventually becoming a meme among other students, even those who would enroll at Pomoma later on. What started in nineteen sixty four carried on for decades to come, which is partly why the number forty seven shows up in so many TV shows and movies. Television writer Joe Minoski wrote for several Star Trek shows in the eighties and nineties. He managed to squeeze the number forty seven into practically every script he wrote. He also grat situated Pomona College in nineteen seventy nine. Since then, other Star Trek riders have carried on the tradition, even those who never attended Pomona. And if you watch the old Disney film The Absent Minded Professor, you might notice the number show up on the scoreboard of a scene set at a college basketball game. The final score is forty seven to forty six. Oh and one last thing. That scene was shot at Pomona College, but three years before Metz and Elgin's research project had even started. Was it just a coincidence or is there something about the school that attracts the number forty seven? The debate rages on to this day, and it probably will for another forty seven years. 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 Mankey 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 at Theworldoflore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.