Treasure Island

One tale of tricks, and another of treasure. Both are more than entertaining, and both are part of today's tour through 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. Scene is believing. It's a

(00:29):
well known phrase that has come to me in the
opposite of its original intent. Writer and physician Thomas Fuller
originated the quote in seventeen thirty two when he said
scenes believing, but feelings the truth, meaning your eyes may
deceive you, but what you can touch and feel will
be the true test of what's real. Students and faculty
at Cornell University got a test in truth in the

(00:52):
early nineteen twenties. After a major storm coated the campus
in snow. Someone noticed to set a footprints, large footprints
bigger than any human could make. The Prince started on
campus and traveled until they reached nearby bb Lake, where
they stopped. The lake had frozen over, but something had
opened up a wide hole in the ice, presumably whatever

(01:13):
creature had made the footprints. A zoologist at the university
rushed to the scene and identified the kind of animal
that could have made such imprints and such a large
hole in the ice it was, he said a rhinoceros.
Authorities were called in to drag the water for a body.
The local paper announced that a rhinoceros had drowned in
bb Lake, and nobody on campus, students or staff would

(01:37):
drink water from the tap, as the university's water supply
came directly from that lake. A few people who did
drink it claim that they could taste the rhinoceros. One
thing is true about the story. A rhinoceros did make
those tracks, well part of one. Professor Louis Agassi was
an ornithologist at Cornell. He had traveled all over the

(01:57):
world and brought back many souvenirs from his jarnie. One
such item was a waste basket made from a hollowed
out leg from a rhinoceros. But I guess he didn't
make the tracks. That was all the work of a
prankster and Cornell student, Hugh Troy. Troy had snuck into
the professor's office to borrow the leg for his stunt.
He and a friend filled it with scrap metal to

(02:18):
weigh it down, then tied a thirty foot clothesline to it,
which they held at each end. Together, the friends walked
to the lake, pressing the basket into the snow to
give the illusion of rhino tracks. Then Troy cut away
a part of the ice over the lake to make
it look like the rhino had simply walked in and drowned.
It wasn't until much later when an anonymous letter penned

(02:39):
by Troy explained the hoax to everyone on campus. Troy
was a mastermind of pranks, and fooling an entire university
was only the beginning. He once painted bare feet on
a lecturer's galoshes, then covered them in soot. After the
lecture was over, the owner of the shoes put them
back on and stepped outside into the rain, which washed
away the soot, making it look like the speaker was

(03:00):
walking around campus without his shoes on. He also once
cut a piece of corned beef to look like a
human ear, then hung it at a Van Go exhibit
in New York's Museum of Modern Art. The plaque that
he had made to go with it claimed that the
ear had been the one van Go himself had cut
off before he died. Museum goers swarmed the display until
employees realized what had been done. But perhaps the greatest

(03:23):
trick this devil ever pulled happened in New York City's
Central Park. Troy had purchased a park bench for himself
and decided to walk through the park carrying it. The police,
upon seeing a man hauling a park bench by himself,
thought he was stealing it. However, every time they tried
to arrest him, Troy pulled out the receipt to show
them that he had in fact legally purchased the item.

(03:44):
He did it so often the authorities eventually stopped arresting him.
That's when Troy put the real prank at emotion. He
organized a group of friends to go through the park
and take the real city benches. The various cops on
the beat thought that it was Troy up to his
old tricks again, so they let them go, and all
the benches were carried off from Central Park. From rhinoceros

(04:05):
prints in the snow and a severed ear hanging in
a museum, to coordinating a mass theft of park benches,
Hugh Troy pulled off so many practical jokes he could
talk about them for hours to impact auditorium. That is,
of course, if the audience could find a seat first.

(04:45):
It lies just three d miles off the coast of
Costa Rica, a lush green paradise. Crystal blue waters lap
at golden shores, while hundreds of species of insect and
nineties species of birds coexist in a tropical wonder in.
Step foot on Cocos Island and you'll think you're standing
in the middle of a mirage. An island so beautiful

(05:06):
it might be too good to be true. Well, depending
on who you ask, it is. English pirate Edward Davis
first landed on Cocos Island in seventeen o nine, albeit
by accident. He and his crew were sailing their ship,
The Bachelor's Delight, to the Galapagos Islands, hauling ten years
worth of gold and jewels, in search of a hiding spot.

(05:27):
They stumbled upon the deserted Cocos Island and decided to
stash their booty there where nobody would find it. Over
one years later, Captain Bloody Sword Bonito and his men
stormed the shores of Cocos Island with one hundred fifty
tons of gold. They'd intercepted a Spanish galleon on its
way to Acacoco, Mexico, capturing its guard and donning their

(05:47):
uniforms as a disguise without killing anyone, They simply unloaded
all of the gold from that ship and loaded it
onto their own before heading west. The pirate captains spread
the gold around Cocos, bearing in some beneath the white sand,
while stashing the rest in a cave. Bonito, not want
to leave any loose ends, blew up the cave's entrance
by igniting some powder kegs from his ship, closing it

(06:10):
for good. And the crewmen who had helped him. He
killed most of them so nobody else would know the
location of the treasure, while the men he had spared
died at sea not long after, Bonito had been the
sole survivor. Then, in eighteen twenty, Cocos lured another captain
to its shores. William Thompson, reputable British sea trader, had
been hired by the Spanish viceroy in Peru to hide

(06:33):
valuable artifacts belonging to over fifty Spanish churches. General Jose
de San Martin had been leading a revolution for South
America's independence from Spain. As his forces marched towards Lima,
the viceroy new San Martin would take everything they had,
so they loaded all their gold and silver onto Thompson's boat.
Also included among the riches was a life size statue

(06:53):
of the Virgin Mary, cast entirely in gold and covered
in jewels. Thompson's instructions had been to eild the ocean
with the viceroys treasure safely hidden aboard his ship, the
Married Deer, until San Martin was out of the picture.
Spanish guards were even brought on board to protect the
bounty in case Thompson got any ideas. But Thompson did
get an idea or two. Carting a load of gold, silver,

(07:16):
and gems worth millions of dollars proved almost impossible to resist.
After they left Lima and the shoreline had disappeared into
the horizon, Thompson and his men killed the guards and
dumped them overboard. Then they sailed to Cocos to hide
what had become known as the Treasure of Lima. The
plan afterward had been for Thompson and his crew to
part ways until things died down, then returned to the

(07:37):
island together and split the treasure among them. However, as
soon as they departed Cocos, the Married Deer was stopped
by Spanish forces who arrested everyone on board. Thompson and
his first mate made a deal to show the Spanish
guard where they buried everything in exchange for their lives,
while the rest of the crew was hanged for piracy.
The two remaining members of the Married Deer escorted the

(07:58):
armed soldiers to the island as promised, and then made
a run for it. They escaped into the dense jungle,
hiding among the trees. The guards searched for hours but
came up empty, eventually sailing away exhausted and embarrassed, Thompson
and his first mate remained behind. As of today, the
treasure of Lima has never been recovered. Cocos Island and

(08:19):
the legends surrounding it have captivated the imaginations of people everywhere,
from treasure hunters to writers. Over three hundred attempts have
been made to find the various caches of gold and
jewels that have been hidden there over the last several
hundred years. Even President Franklin D. Roosevelt took a shot
at it in the nineteen thirties. Since then, Cocos Island's
reputation has only grown, influencing numerous fictional islands in literature

(08:42):
and film. Daniel Dafoe based the Island of Despair in
his novel Robinson Crusoe on Cocos. Treasure Island, as described
by Robert Louis. Stevenson's book of the same name, was
also based in part on Cocos and the story surrounding it,
and author Michael Crichton used Cocos Island as a model
for island knew Are, the location of the ill fated
dinosaur themed resort Jurassic Park. The buried gold hidden around

(09:06):
the island may never be found, especially since the Costa
Rican government has refused to issue any more permits for
treasure hunting. But the island isn't going anywhere, and neither
is the treasure. And if we've learned anything from films
like Jurassic Park, it's that life uh finds away. I

(09:27):
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

(09:49):
you can learn all about it over at the World
of lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.
Ye