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An incredible person and an incredible object are both part of the tour on today's journey into the Cabinet.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
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. Tom had been sentenced to

(00:29):
die born a blind slave in eighteen fifties Georgia. He
couldn't perform the typical duties of the other slaves. However,
the infant and his family were sold to Neil James Bethune,
newspaper editor and secessionist, who let the infant live rather
than joining his parents in the field. Though the young
Tom was allowed to wander around the plantation by himself.

(00:51):
One day, while walking the grounds, the toddler came across
a new sound he'd never heard before. It was beautiful,
a tinkling of ivory against taut strings. The plantation owners
daughters were having their piano lessons, and Tom listened intently
as they played. He found ways to eavesdrop on their
lessons and whenever someone would sit down to play for company.

(01:12):
By the time he was four years old, he was
allowed to use the piano and could plunk out the
songs that he'd heard. A year later, he was composing
his own tunes. His first was inspired by the sound
of rain hitting a tin roof. As he got older,
his skills advanced, and Bethune took notice. Tom played his
first concert when he was only eight years old. After that,

(01:33):
Bethune started hiring Tom out as a slave musician, charging
fifteen thousand dollars per performance. You see, Tom possessed an
incredible talent, one that he'd had since he was only
a few years old. He only needed to hear a
song once before he could play it on the piano.
His memory extended to more than music, though poems and
foreign text were also retained after a single listen. In fact,

(01:56):
when he was just a boy, Tom could listen to
a conversation and repeat each person's side verbatim for up
to ten minutes, and he was an impeccable mimic, even
going so far as to impersonate the birds he heard
on the plantation, like the roosters and the crows. When
he was sixteen years old, Tom could sit down at
the piano and play Beethoven, Bach and Chopin with ease

(02:18):
again after hearing the songs just one time. He even
got a chance to perform his original songs for Mark
Twain and President Buchanan. He'd played one of his own
melodies once, then repeated exactly the same way to prove
he wasn't faking it. He was a marvel. Several years later,
Tom's tour was put on hold for the war effort,

(02:38):
where he helped his owner raise money for the Confederacy.
It was a gross injustice and a poor use of
his talents, but sadly one that he had no way
of avoiding. After the war, Wiggins was still indentured to
the Bethuns and continued to live on the plantation. As
their ward, they traveled overseas to Europe, where Tom would
give performances to great acclaim. He and the Bethuns eventually

(03:01):
moved to a farm in Virginia, where they would stay
during the summer, but then tour all over North America
the rest of the year. After the turn of the century,
Tom took his act of vaudeville. He performed his first
concert at the Orpheum Theater in Brooklyn. Over the next year,
Tom toured extensively, putting increased strain on his body. His
frenetic schedule caught up with him only one year later.

(03:24):
In nineteen o four, he suffered a massive stroke that
caused partial paralysis. By December of that year, his days
of performing were over. A few years later, James passed
away and his wife Eliza gained custody of Tom. The
two of them moved up to Hoboken, New Jersey, where
Tom continued to practice the piano from dawn tell dusk,

(03:45):
much to the consternation of the neighbors. He was hit
by another stroke in nineteen o eight, and in June
of nineteen o nine, Blind Tom Wiggins finally passed away
at the age of fifty nine. By that time, he
had officially become a freeman, so his death, plays, films, poems,
and biographies have all been written about Tom. His compositions

(04:07):
have also been performed by musicians from all over the world.
The Bethoons treated Tom as a side show actor and
a cash cow, but unbeknownst to any of them, Tom
was changing the face of music every time he sat
down at the piano. Some may remember him simply as
blind Tom Wiggins, but he was so much more than that.

(04:28):
Tom was a revolutionary. Take a look around and you're
certain to find something you take for granted. However, if

(04:49):
you woke up one day to find that it had disappeared,
your life might be changed forever. If the coffee shop
where you get your morning cup, or the grocery store
where you do your weekly shopping, were sudden they gone,
you'd be lost, at least for a short while. More importantly,
you'd be reminded just how valuable these things really were
when you had them. In nineteen eleven, something else had disappeared,

(05:12):
but nobody really knew how valuable it was until it
was gone. It was a Monday in August, and Vicenzo
Perugia had an idea. He was going to walk into
a museum and steal a painting. Perugia had gained work
for a short time at the museum as a handyman.
He'd helped install the glass covers that protected the paintings

(05:32):
from visitors grubby, dirty fingers. He'd also kept the white
smock he'd worn as his uniform, which he wore as
he strolled into the building with two helpers that morning.
They were brothers, Michelle and Vicenzo Lancelotti, who followed Perugia
right into the building. No one gave them a second look.
Perhaps they fit right in or maybe everyone was just

(05:54):
a little hungover from their celebrations the night before. As
the other employees moved achingly around the floor, Perugia and
his accomplices made their way to the room where the
painting hung. They picked it up off its hooks as
Perugia took off his smock, wrapping it around the glass
enclosed frame to hide it as they hurried outside with
their loot. It had been that easy. For one, this

(06:18):
was nineteen eleven, before electronic sensors and cameras were able
to detect so much as a strong sneeze near a painting. Secondly,
no one really cared much about the piece outside of
a few arts scholars. It wasn't particularly memorable or noticeable
among the larger, more impressive works surrounding it. Believing that

(06:38):
he had gotten away with a perfect crime, perugi erased
home with the painting and stashed it away. He had
hoped to sell it quickly and split the earnings with
the two brothers who had helped him, but the painting
they had stolen was more important than they realized. News
about the theft spread across the world within days. The
New York Times reported that sixty detectives had been tasked

(06:59):
with loque the missing work of art, while conspiracy theories
began to emerge. Some believed a millionaire like JP Morgan
had purchased it for his private collection. Others thought artist
Pablo Picasso had committed the theft out of jealousy, and
there were even rumors that the Kaiser had orchestrated the
whole thing. In the lead up to the First World War,

(07:20):
no one had expected three average joes to simply walk
into a museum and walk out with the painting. But
the museum shut down for a week to help the
police as they began their investigation. When it reopened, crowds
of hundreds flocked to see the empty space on the wall.
In fact, that open spot on the wall had become
more popular than the painting that had once hung there.

(07:43):
Perugia panicked, he couldn't sell it now, not while everyone
was looking for it. He held onto it for two
years until the heat surrounding it finally died down. Perugia
had become paranoid, and the longer the painting was in
his possession, like a telltale heart beating in his floor boards,
the worse he felt. He booked a trip for himself

(08:03):
and the painting back to his home country of Italy,
where he met with gallery owner Alfredo Jerry. Jerry couldn't
believe it. Seriously, he could not believe Perugia had been
in possession of the painting everyone was talking about, so
he asked another gallery owner to examine it with him,
and they confirmed it. Perugia had been the owner of
the most famous painting in the world for the last

(08:25):
two years. Perugia clearly wanted to get rid of the
cursed thing, and they told him to leave it with them.
They would make sure that it got back to the
museum without anyone knowing who had stolen it or how
just kidding. They called the police, who arrested Mr. Perugia
that day. When asked why he had taken it in
the first place, Perugia claimed that he had been performing

(08:46):
his patriotic duty to return the painting to its country
of origin. It had been born in Italy and it
should be hung there. But that had turned out to
be a lie. Perugia's grand plan had always been to
sell the pain teen and make a boatload of money. Instead,
he got seven months in prison. After his release, he
fought in World War One, and once the fighting had ended,

(09:09):
he settled down to start a family. His life of
crime was over. The painting also got a new lease
on life once it was returned to the museum. It's
picture has been printed in hundreds of newspapers all over
Europe and the United States. For two years, it was
all anyone could talk about, and the frenzy surrounding it

(09:29):
had not quieted. In fact, ever since then, it's only
gotten louder Today. The iconic work of art can be
seen hanging in the louver, but you better get there
early if you want to set your eyes on it.
The famous smiling Lady on the canvas always draws a
massive crowd, attracting millions each year from around the globe.
Even to this day, the Mona Lisa still steals the show.

(09:57):
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,

(10:19):
and you can learn all about it over at the
world of lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious. Yeah,