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- [00:00]
Dr. Joy Hardin Bradford
This is Dr. Joy Hardin Bradford from Therapy for Black Girls. You know that Amazon has millions of books, so you can find one that gives you just the reading feeling you're looking for. You know, like if you're looking for a relaxed feeling, like with a beach read, Amazon has got it covered. Or if you're looking for more of a terrified ah with evil twins or things lurking in the woods or something, Amazon's got you. I mean, even if you want an aw teen romance, Amazon has it covered too. Amazon Books that reading feeling awaits.
- [00:42]
Aaron Manke
Welcome to Erin Menke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of iHeartRadio 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. Sleep can be elusive. For a lot of us. It might be a busy job keeping us up at night, or a new baby, even a noisy neighbor. But on those rare occasions when we can sleep for more than a few hours, we wake up feeling fresh and ready to tackle whatever's ahead of us. One man, though, didn't believe in a good night's sleep. For him, 40 winks was about 39 too many. His name was Albert Herpin, and while he was from Trenton, New Jersey, he was born in France in 1862. Very little is known about his life up until the turn of the 20th century, but that's when things began to get interesting. In 1904, an article was published in the New York Times about Mr. Herpin. It he listed his occupation as hostler or someone who tends to the horses at an inn. But that's not what made him newsworthy. The reason he was in the papers was because he did not sleep. This wasn't a one off occurrence either, like staying up all night to cram for a big test the next day. Albert Herpen had not slept in 10 years. Now, according to the National Institute of Health, we need sleep for a variety of reasons. These include keeping our metabolism in check, fighting illness, and improving our brain health. We're at risk of a number of diseases and complications if we don't get enough sleep each night. But Herpin didn't care. In fact, he advocated against sleep. Another article published in 1912 in New York's the Evening World newspaper stated how he, quote, believes a nap of only 5 minutes duration would give him new life. Apparently, he would sit in an armchair every night and read the newspaper, never closing his eyes to him, he was resting but never sleeping. For anyone else, this would have severely affected a person's health and well being. Experts say that losing even an hour and a half of sleep each night can impact our alertness, our moods, our memory. We can feel fatigued and become uncoordinated. But Herpin said that he never felt any negative effects. Papers like the New York Times claimed, I quote, he is in perfect health and does not seem to suffer any discomfort from his remarkable condition. But the reason for his chronic insomnia is troubling to say the least. A reporter for the Times Picayune in New Orleans quoted him as saying that he hadn't slept since his son was born. Four years later, his wife died and the shock of losing her left him struck with anxiety. It had gotten so bad he couldn't sleep, but he still went through the motions of getting ready for bed, crawling under the covers and laying his head down. He just wouldn't close his eyes. Instead, he would rest fully awake, and then get up at 5 o'clock every morning to start the day again. Herben's condition was so strange, it piqued the curiosity of a facility in Vienna which offered him $10,000 to study him. Pretty soon other institutions followed suit, but he rejected most of their offers. He even received a few marriage proposals here and there, but instead chose to remain unwed. And yet, according to some reports, Herpen did allow himself to be observed by at least one group of doctors who watched him for one week. Not once during those seven days did he catch a nap or get a full night's sleep. He remained awake and alert the whole time, confusing everyone looking on. Sadly, none of the attention he received had panned out into something lucrative. Later on in Herpin's life, he found himself broke and living in a one room shed by himself. He had no bed and would stay up every night reading newspapers to pass the time. During the day, he'd perform random jobs around town like street sweeping. But it doesn't seem like his lack of sleep hurt him that much. He died in 1947 at the age of 94. So were the reports true? Was this one man able to beat the odds and stay awake for three decades? It's hard to say. One teen in 1964 managed to stay awake for 11 days straight to win his school science fair. And the effort earned him a world record, which still hasn't been beaten. But there's also the idea that Herpon suffered from something called paradoxical insomnia, in which he only thought that he'd been awake when in fact he'd been asleep the whole time. Whatever the case, Albert Herpen was a unique individual. He ignored the experts and even his own body to chart his own path. But whether he really did stay awake for almost 30 years or not remains to be seen. And trying to figure out the answer to that question, well, that's enough to keep you up at night.
- [05:45]
Dr. Joy Hardin Bradford
This is Dr. Joy Hardin Bradford from Therapy for Black Girls. There are millions of books on Amazon, so there's a reading feeling for everyone. So if you're after that excited haha feeling, like when you discover you have a lot in common with Vikings or something, Amazon has books for you. Or maybe you enjoy the sort of nervous haha that comes when the hero barely escapes the zombies. Or maybe you like the smug that comes when the villain gets what he deserves. You know Amazon has it all. Amazon Books that reading feeling awaits Gifting.
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US Cellular
Is hard, but here's a hint. Give the gift of connection from US Cellular. Not sure what that means? Here's a slightly more specific hint. You can choose four free phones and get four lines for $90 a month from US Cellular. Your family wants new phones? How do we know? They told us. The good news is that compared to wrapping presents, you're great at getting hints. So take the hint and get them four free phones and four lines for $90 a month. US Cellular built for us.
- [06:56]
Aaron Manke
It's one of the most well known and watched sporting events in America. Every February, two football teams go head to head to determine who is the biggest and best team of the year in a match known as the Super Bowl. Tickets can go for thousands of dollars. The halftime show is performed by some of the most popular musicians in the world, and the biggest draw is, of course, the commercials. But in 1985, the Super bowl drew a very different kind of crowd. A crowd that had no idea what it was walking into. It was December of that year and the Washington Redskins had become a pretty popular team. Tickets were getting harder to come by and the waiting list for season tickets was impossibly long. But that didn't stop one up and coming television station from making a name for itself. It was known as Flagship International Sports Television and it sent out 3,000 invitations to a special brunch, along with a pair of complimentary tickets to a Redskins Bengals game. But there was more. In addition to the meal and the game, attendees could also enter a raffle to win a number of prizes. These included 10 Redskins season tickets and for one lucky winner, a trip to New Orleans for Super Bowl 20. Not everyone was able to make their way to the Washington Convention center for the game, but 167 people called the special number on the invitation to let the organizers know that they were coming. Finally, on December 15th of 1985, the big day arrived. Guests had been told to come to the convention center at 9am But a lot of people showed up much earlier, eager to eat and secure their chance at winning a trip to that year's Super Bowl. Oh, and reporters had also been invited to document the event for the local papers. And so, after their meals, groups of 10 to 20 guests were whisked off to a special room where the MC, a man named Louis McKinney, spoke for a few minutes before giving them their big prize, a pair of handcuffs. McKinney would yell the word surprise, and an instant later, the auditorium would swarm with U.S. marshals who took each winner into custody. There had never been any tickets nor a raffle. Mr. McKinney had actually been the chief of enforcement operations for the U.S. marshals. All the people in the lobby who had welcomed the winners into the convention center had either been local cops or US Marshals as well. What everyone had actually won was a one way trip to prison, courtesy of a secret plot known as Operation Flagship. There was no Flagship, International Sports Television or fist, but there was a Fugitive Investigative Strike Team, an elite group of U.S. marshals operating under the same acronym. Their goal was to track down and capture the worst of the worst when it came to wanted fugitives. But doing so on an individual basis was going to be expensive and time consuming. So instead, Chief Deputy US Marshal Tobias Roche and US Marshal Herbert Rutherford III developed a coordinated effort to send invitations to the last known addresses of about 3,000 fugitives. The hope was that the recipients would be blinded by the chance of going to the super bowl and ignore all the red flags in front of them. What red flags might those be, you're asking? Well, for one, the invitations had been signed by I, Michael Detna, whose last name was the word wanted spelled backwards. There was also the business manager who handled calls from the criminals saying that they were coming. His name was Marcus Cran. That's narc spelled backwards. And anyone put on hold had to listen to one specially chosen piece of music, the song I Fought the Law. And yet, despite all the warning signs that this was a setup, over 100 wanted criminals showed up at the Washington Convention center to eat a free meal and watch a football game. Instead, they were caught and cuffed in what's become known as one of the biggest mass arrest events in US Law enforcement history. And this wasn't the only one either. Similar schemes were also conducted in New York and Connecticut. In total, over 3,300 wanted fugitives were caught by the Fugitive Investigative Strike team during the 1980s. Because sometimes the swift hand of justice needs to become a fist to take on crime, 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 curiositiespodcast.com the show was created by me, Aaron Manke, 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@theworldoflore.com and until next time, stay curious.