October 17, 2024 • 10 mins
Don't sleep through today's pair of curious tales. You're likely to find them arresting.
Pre-order the official Cabinet of Curiosities book by clicking here today, and get ready to enjoy some curious reading this November!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Aaron Menke'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 are right there on display, just
waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
(00:36):
Sleep can be elusive for a lot of us. It
might be a busy job keeping us up at nights,
or a new baby, or 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, forty
winks was about thirty nine too many. His name was
(00:58):
Albert Herpin, and while he was from Trenton, New Jersey,
he was born in France in eighteen sixty two. Very
little is known about his life up until the turn
of the twentieth century, but that's when things began to
get interesting. In nineteen oh four, an article was published
in The New York Times about mister Herpin. It listed
his occupation as hustler, or someone who tends to the
horses at an inn. But that's not what made him newsworthy.
(01:21):
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 Herpin had not slept in
ten 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
(01:44):
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 nineteen twelve in New York's The
Evening World newspaper stated how he quote believes a nap
of only five minutes duration would give him new life. Apparently,
(02:06):
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
(02:29):
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
(02:52):
wife died, and the shock of losing her left him
struck with anxiety. It had gotten so bad he couldn't sleep.
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 five o'clock every morning
to start the day again. Herpin's condition was so strange
(03:15):
it piqued the curiosity of a facility in Vienna, which
offered him ten thousand dollars 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, Herpin did allow himself to be observed by
(03:35):
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.
(03:57):
He had no bed and would stay up every night
reading news papers 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 nineteen forty seven at the
age of ninety four. So were the reports true. Was
this one man able to beat the odds and stay
(04:18):
awake for three decades? It's hard to say. One teen
in nineteen sixty four managed to stay awake for eleven
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 Herpin suffered from something
called paradoxical insomnia, in which he only thought that he'd
(04:38):
been awake, when in fact he'd been asleep the whole time.
Whatever the case, Albert Herpin 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 thirty 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. It's one
(05:14):
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
(05:36):
in nineteen eighty five, 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
(05:57):
name for itself. It was known as Flagship International Sports Television,
and it sent out three thousand 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 ten
(06:17):
Redskins season tickets and for one lucky winner, a trip
to New Orleans for Super Bowl twenty. Not everyone was
able to make their way to the Washington Convention Center
for the game, but one hundred and sixty seven people
called the special number on the invitation to let the
organizers know that they were coming. Finally, on December fifteenth
of nineteen eighty five, the big day arrived. Guests had
(06:40):
been told to come to the Convention Center at nine am,
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 events for the local papers,
and so after their meals, groups of ten to twenty
guests were whisked off to a special room, or the
(07:00):
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 US Marshals, who took each
winner into custody. There had never been any tickets, nor
a raffle. Mister McKinney had actually been the chief of
(07:21):
Enforcement Operations for the US 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
(07:43):
there was a Fugitive Investigative Strike Team, an elite group
of US 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
(08:04):
and US Marshall Herbert Rutherford the Third developed a coordinated
effort to send invitations to the last known addresses of
about three thousand 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 Dettna,
(08:27):
whose last name was the word wanted is spelled backwards.
There was also the business manager who handled calls from
the criminals saying that they were coming. His name was
Marcus Kran that's nark 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
(08:47):
the warning signs that this was a setup, over one
hundred 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 and 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
(09:07):
schemes were also conducted in New York and Connecticut. In total,
over thirty three hundred wanted fugitives were caught by the
Fugitive Investigative Strike Team during the nineteen eighties. Because sometimes
the swift hand of justice needs to become a fist
to take on crime. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided
(09:31):
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
(09:52):
about it over at the Worldolore dot com. And until
next time, stay curious.
Welcome to Aaron Menke'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 are right there on display, just
waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
(00:36):
Sleep can be elusive for a lot of us. It
might be a busy job keeping us up at nights,
or a new baby, or 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, forty
winks was about thirty nine too many. His name was
(00:58):
Albert Herpin, and while he was from Trenton, New Jersey,
he was born in France in eighteen sixty two. Very
little is known about his life up until the turn
of the twentieth century, but that's when things began to
get interesting. In nineteen oh four, an article was published
in The New York Times about mister Herpin. It listed
his occupation as hustler, or someone who tends to the
horses at an inn. But that's not what made him newsworthy.
(01:21):
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 Herpin had not slept in
ten 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
(01:44):
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 nineteen twelve in New York's The
Evening World newspaper stated how he quote believes a nap
of only five minutes duration would give him new life. Apparently,
(02:06):
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
(02:29):
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
(02:52):
wife died, and the shock of losing her left him
struck with anxiety. It had gotten so bad he couldn't sleep.
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 five o'clock every morning
to start the day again. Herpin's condition was so strange
(03:15):
it piqued the curiosity of a facility in Vienna, which
offered him ten thousand dollars 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, Herpin did allow himself to be observed by
(03:35):
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.
(03:57):
He had no bed and would stay up every night
reading news papers 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 nineteen forty seven at the
age of ninety four. So were the reports true. Was
this one man able to beat the odds and stay
(04:18):
awake for three decades? It's hard to say. One teen
in nineteen sixty four managed to stay awake for eleven
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 Herpin suffered from something
called paradoxical insomnia, in which he only thought that he'd
(04:38):
been awake, when in fact he'd been asleep the whole time.
Whatever the case, Albert Herpin 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 thirty 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. It's one
(05:14):
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
(05:36):
in nineteen eighty five, 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
(05:57):
name for itself. It was known as Flagship International Sports Television,
and it sent out three thousand 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 ten
(06:17):
Redskins season tickets and for one lucky winner, a trip
to New Orleans for Super Bowl twenty. Not everyone was
able to make their way to the Washington Convention Center
for the game, but one hundred and sixty seven people
called the special number on the invitation to let the
organizers know that they were coming. Finally, on December fifteenth
of nineteen eighty five, the big day arrived. Guests had
(06:40):
been told to come to the Convention Center at nine am,
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 events for the local papers,
and so after their meals, groups of ten to twenty
guests were whisked off to a special room, or the
(07:00):
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 US Marshals, who took each
winner into custody. There had never been any tickets, nor
a raffle. Mister McKinney had actually been the chief of
(07:21):
Enforcement Operations for the US 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
(07:43):
there was a Fugitive Investigative Strike Team, an elite group
of US 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
(08:04):
and US Marshall Herbert Rutherford the Third developed a coordinated
effort to send invitations to the last known addresses of
about three thousand 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 Dettna,
(08:27):
whose last name was the word wanted is spelled backwards.
There was also the business manager who handled calls from
the criminals saying that they were coming. His name was
Marcus Kran that's nark 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
(08:47):
the warning signs that this was a setup, over one
hundred 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 and 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
(09:07):
schemes were also conducted in New York and Connecticut. In total,
over thirty three hundred wanted fugitives were caught by the
Fugitive Investigative Strike Team during the nineteen eighties. Because sometimes
the swift hand of justice needs to become a fist
to take on crime. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided
(09:31):
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
(09:52):
about it over at the Worldolore dot com. And until
next time, stay curious.
Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities News
Host
Aaron Mahnke
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