The Juggler

Published Aug 25, 2020, 9:00 AM

It's amazing what you can make out of unusual materials. Whether the end result is a work of art, or a life-long career, those unique ingredients always make for a great story.

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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. People who strive for success often juggle multiple jobs and hobbies, hoping for their big break. For Claude, keeping multiple balls in the air was what brought him that success in the first place. Claude was born in Darby, Pennsylvania. In His father had served in the Civil War before settling down to manage a hotel part time and to sell produce. He also had a short fuse, especially when it came to his son. It got so bad between the two of them that Claude often ran away to live with relatives, but he always came back. When he was twelve, Claude started working odd jobs around Pennsylvania. However, he didn't find his true calling until he discovered juggling. After watching a juggler perform at a theater near his home, Claude discovered what he wanted to do for the rest of his life. He devoted the next several years to perfecting his talent juggling for churchgoers and local audiences. Before leaving home for the last time. At the age of eighteen, he played vaudeville, adopting the persona of a tramp juggler based on a similar character created by fellow performer at James Edward Harrigan. Claude soon moved on to bigger stages and brighter lights all over the world. He eventually joined Zigfield Follies and enhanced his juggling act with comedy. He juggled everything too, from balls and cigarette boxes hats. If a ball didn't land exactly the right way, he would scold it in front of a laughing crowd. If his cigar missed his mouth, he'd curse it under his breath to hilarious effect. After a few years of working as a comic juggler, Claude branched out. He exchanged his hats and cigar boxes for a script in the Broadway musical The ham Tree. He never acted before, but it suited him well and it only led to bigger and better bills. He even performed for King George the Fifth and Queen Mary of England. Claude never slowed down, and he didn't rest his laurels either. He was always looking to make his act bigger and better. In nineteen fifteen, he went on Broadway with a new kind of show, involving a specially made pool table and cues of various shapes, which he used to make impossible shots. It was in the same year when Claude made the jump from the stage to the silver screen. He started in two silent films before taking another stage role, where he adopted his iconic part of a smarmie kan man in a top hat and a coat. Once he made the jump to the screwing though, the ladder of success only took Claude higher and higher. His silent work carried over into the talkies and he became a full fledged movie star. His greatest performance, however, never took place on stage or screen. Claude made waves, so to speak. During the summer of the eighteen year old was recommended for a gig in Atlantic City by a friend with a connection there. The pay was ten dollars a week and all he had to do was juggle, oh and drown. When he wasn't tossing balls and hats into the air. Claude would swim out into the ocean and start drowning. A co conspirator would jump into save him, drawing a crowd. Once he was saved. Onlookers who had worked up a hunger watching the daring rescue would buy themselves a hot dog at the nearby vendor who just happened to be in on the whole thing. Many years later in life, he bought a house in Hollywood, and it came with a pool out back, and one day he was entertaining some friends who asked him why he never swam in it. It said that he replied, would you like to swim if you had drowned? One? Sixty eight times? That drowning routine had brought in big business for the eateries on the pier, but it wasn't what made a celebrity out of William Claude Ducinfield. We have his over at the top antics on stage and on screen to thank for that. By then, though the world didn't know him as William Claude Ducinfield. No, the juggler, pool hustler and professional drowner was better known by his stage name legendary performer W. C. Fields. Beauty is fleeting when we visit museums and galleries. We don't think about the inevitable that the paintings and sculptures we love now will one day disappear. Time will eventually take the from us, which is probably for the best. They're beautiful because they're temporary. Naturalist and cartographer Girolamo Sagato didn't believe that beauty should be temporary. Born in the tiny village of Sasaparolo, Italy, in seventeen ninety two, Sagato grew up interested in a variety of subjects, including mathematics, chemistry, and exploration. On a trip to Egypt in his mid twenties, Sagato was captivated by the ancient mummies. He wanted to practice his own kind of preservation, so he and his partner wrote a book about what they discovered during their travels. They made some money from their work and were on their way to real success, but the good times wouldn't last for long. Sagato's partner ran off to Paris with everything, all the money, the notes, and the research they had collected. Crushed by the loss of his life's work and his friendship, Sigado retreated into cartography. It was time to move on, and so he carved a new path in life. He made maps for roughly a decade before finding his true calling and making art. In fact, that two of his finest pieces were a set of tables. The first table was simple, but pristine and well made. The second was a true work of art. It was decorated on top with a marble mosaic inlay of different shapes diamonds, circles, squares, and rectangles, all adorned with colored stones of varying sizes. The lines of each section were crisp, as though they were crafted by a machine, but every part embedded within the table top had been crafted by hand, his hand. After he made those tables, Saggato moved on to sculpture. His first piece was that of a young woman. Her proportions were exact, and he managed to make her look alive, as though her skin might react to the slightest touch. Another work was that of a woman's head with long flowing hair. It garnered him widespread acclaim in popular magazines like Harper's. His sculptures were compared to those of famous artists like Hiram powers, as well as the iconic Grecian Venus to Edgy statue. But he didn't produce a lot during his short life, and he passed away at the young age of forty four, and very few of his pieces still exist today. Sagato had come up with a specialized technique for working with his preferred materials. After a break in and attempted theft of his research, he destroyed every last scrap of paper that he had. Because of his secrecy, no one has ever been able to replicate his methods, not that they would want to. The world probably isn't ready for more furniture made from corpses. You see, Girolamo Sgado didn't stick to only using wood for his tables. He didn't make his master works out of marble either. Utilizing knowledge from his archaeological digs in Egypt and his research on ancient mummies, the former cartographer had developed a brand new way to preserve the human body. It wasn't mummification, though, it was called mineralization or petrification. He took a body that was very recently deceased and injected a special substance into a to preserve its flesh and organs. Everything would harden to stone, and Sigato would then manipulate it like a material for his own purposes. Sometimes he would leave the bodies as is. Other times he would slice and carve the skin, spleen, liver, and other organs into different shapes, as he did with his famous table. The result was a maccab checkerboard pattern inlaid against a wooden backdrop. His pieces were more artistic than morbid, but many who witnessed the creations were still dismayed. They didn't understand the science behind his petrification methods. Instead, they claimed that Sigato had learned Egyptian magic. So, in a fit of anger and self doubt, the unconventional artist destroyed all traces of his formula. His surviving pieces now reside in the Museum of the Department of Anatomy in Florence. The table we described can be found at the Royal Palace of Caserta in southern Italy. Others throughout history have tried to create his formula for human mineralization, and some have come close, but so far no one has been able to match it exactly. Giro Lamo Sagato was one of a kind, and by taking his secret to the grave. He made sure he would stay that way. With the formula gone, his remains never had the chance at longevity he offered to the rest of his subjects. Ironic absolutely, but more than that, it sure was curious. 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 at the World of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay cure sarious um.

Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

From the creator of the hit podcast Lore comes a new, bite-sized storytelling experience. Each twice 
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