Make It Count

Unique people who notice curious things in the world around them often leave a lasting mark, as these stories show so well.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Aaron Manke'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 right there on display, just waiting
for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.

(00:36):
On July eighth of eighteen fifty three, American commodore Matthew
Perry sailed four ships into Tokyo Bay, essentially declaring Japan
open to Western business. Whether they wanted it or not.
Japan had been relatively isolated for about two hundred years,
but Perry's unceremonious gate crashing led to huge changes for
the country and the world at large. Now I doubt

(00:58):
very much that Perry and tissated that his actions, however indirectly,
would lead to thousands of lives being saved. But let's
make sure creda goes to those who deserve it. In
nineteen thirty nine, the Axis Powers faced down the Allies
for the revenge sequel no one really wanted. Germany had
created an alliance with the Soviet Union, which absolutely no
one thought would last, including the Soviets and the Germans.

(01:21):
As the Germans rolled over Europe, Japan was dominating the Pacific,
but there were a few Japanese officials posted in Europe
as well, including Shiyuni Sugihara. Now. Sugihara was a career diplomat,
and in November of nineteen thirty nine was posted to
the then capital of Lithuania to serve as Japanese consul.
Part of that job included monitoring the Germans movements so

(01:42):
that the Japanese could prepare for the Germans attack on
the Soviets. Remember, Japan had their own beef with the
Soviets and it wouldn't do well for them to be
caught unawares. Sugihara was born on January first of nineteen
hundred and grew up at a time when Japan was
asserting itself globally. Unlike many Japanese children, Sugihara was exposed
to different cultural influences from a young age, even choosing

(02:04):
to study English literature in Tokyo rather than becoming a
doctor like his father wanted. He received diplomatic training after graduation,
becoming deputy consul in Manchuria and helping the Soviet Union
win control over the Manchurian Railroad, which neded Japan a
fat profit. But the Chinese living in the area were
treated terribly by the Japanese, and that turned Sugihara's stomach.

(02:27):
He resigned in nineteen thirty four, returning to Tokyo to
ask for hopefully quieter assignments in Europe. He had no
idea what was coming, though. While he was in Tokyo
he met a woman named Yukiko Kikuchi and married her
before he was shipped out to his next post. Of course,
Lithuania was about to suffer a double occupation by the
Soviets and the Nazis, but for about ten months at

(02:49):
the start of the war, it was still an independent
country full of spies and refugees fleeing the destruction wrought
by world powers. Nineteen thirty nine found the Sugihara fans
in the city of Canues now with two young children,
and they became close with many of their neighbors. Some
were Jewish families who quietly explained their fears of the Nazis.
Maybe it was this close contact that pushed Sugihara to act,

(03:13):
or maybe he was just trying to be a good
person in the face of unimaginable evil. Sugihara began interfacing
with the Polish underground, getting information from the resistance as
he watched the Jewish refugees from Poland and other areas
pour in by the day and begin flocking to the
Japanese consulate that doubled as the Sugiharas home. Now, before
we continue, it's important to point out that World War

(03:35):
II has a nasty history with refugees, even without the
benefit of hindsight that we have today. It's difficult to
read all the articles that discussed how the mighty United States,
you know, the land of give me your poor, you're
tired your huddled masses, was turning refugees away. But it's
true the United States turned away hundreds of thousands of
Jewish refugees before, during, and even after the war. Most

(04:00):
returned to Europe to their doo. Sugihara's position was complicated. Technically,
he could give out visas, but there were protocols and
his government would certainly never accept the number of people
who turned up daily begging for an escape. One of
the only ways out was through the Soviet Union to Japan.
There was very little safety, but there was a chance,

(04:21):
and so Sugihara decided that he would do what he could,
in clear violation of repeated orders. He sat down, picked
up a pen, and began to write, and he didn't
stop for days. His wife joined in too, working day
and night to give visas to anyone who came. Sugihara
knew that he didn't have much time. The Soviets were
closing in and there was a rapidly approaching deadline for

(04:42):
foreign staff to get out of the country. He worked
right up until he was forced out. According to one story,
he was still writing and stamping visas as he was
loaded onto the train when it began to pull away,
throwing the precious papers out the window to the folks
who were waiting for them. From there, Sugihara and his
family returned to Ja Pan and he was assigned to
several Nazi occupied territories. When the Soviets took Romania his

(05:05):
final posting, the Sugihara family was arrested, although not treated badly.
Rather than receive a hero's welcome, when he returned to
Japan in nineteen forty seven, he was pressured to resign.
He always believed that it was because of those visas.
We don't know exactly how many people Sugihara managed to save.
Some estimated it could have been as many as six thousand,

(05:26):
well worth a few ignored telegrams and a reprimand he
spent the rest of his life in relative obscurity. The
world moved on from the war, and he worked odd
jobs to keep his family afloat. He never even spoke
of what he did in Lithuania, but some never forgot.
In nineteen sixty eight, one visa recipient tracked him down,
and Sugihara even visited Israel shortly before he passed away

(05:48):
in nineteen eighty six, and there the country honored him
at their official Holocaust memorial with the title Righteous among
the Nations, which goes to show you sometimes the Kuri
path is the best one to take. Humans have a

(06:17):
tendency to look for patterns and meaning where there shouldn't
be any. For example, we might look at the holes
on a wall outlet and see a face, or stare
at a cloud and see an animal of some kind.
That's called paradolia. But there's a related concept called apophenia,
which are connections made between unrelated stimuli, like the recurring
appearance of a certain number. Back in nineteen sixty four,

(06:40):
two California college students set out to prove that one
particular number shows up far more than any other, and
as a result, their academic exercise took on a life
of its own. Lori Metz and Bruce Elgin joined forces
on a research project while attending Pomona College in Claremont, California.
Their premise whether the number forty seven appears more regularly

(07:03):
in the world than it should be expected to Now,
the number forty seven is interesting in its own rights.
It's a prime number. It also appears in the Lucas sequence,
a sequence of integers named after mathematician Frescois Eduard Anatol Lucas,
as its sixth prime number. But look deeper and you
might begin to understand what Metz and Elgin we're getting at.

(07:24):
Because the number forty seven is more than a mathematical digit.
It's a world unto itself. The planet Mars slides into
the same position relative to the Sun and the Earth
every forty seven years. One of the most used military
rifles on the planet is the AK forty seven. There
is also the CH forty seven, Chinook tandem rotor helicopter

(07:45):
and the P forty seven Thunderbird fighter plane, which was
used during World War Two. The number also occurs throughout
pop culture. For example, on the television series Lost, forty
seven people initially survived the crash of Oceanic Flight eight fifteen.
Then in the Pixar movie Monsters, Inc. There's a sign
at the Scare Factory that reads accident free for forty

(08:07):
seven days. But what was it about this number that
made it so appealing to two college students in California, Well,
because it was important to the school. You see exit
forty seven off the sand Berddino Freeway will take you
straight to Pomona College, and the organ in the Ralph H.
Lymanhall Auditorium is equipped with forty seven pipes on its

(08:27):
top row. Perhaps most intriguing is the fact that in
eighteen ninety four, the year of the school's first graduating class,
forty seven students were enrolled at the college. Over a
century later, the freshman class of the year two thousand
had forty seven valedictorians. Meanwhile, forty seven even appears in
places that you might not expect. The tropic of Cancer

(08:48):
and the Tropic of Capricorn are forty seven degrees apart
on a map. Depending on the version, forty seven sentences
have been tabulated within the Declaration of Independence, and Julius
Caesar was believed to have coined the phrase ven a
vdvici in the year forty seven BC. It's no wonder
that Elgin and mets decided to focus their efforts on
this strangely popular number, but they didn't exactly go into

(09:11):
it with scholarly intentions. You see, Lori Metz and Bruce
Elgin approached their research project with their tongues firmly planted
in their cheeks. It was kind of a joke. Even
a professor at the school was in on it. By
creating false mathematical proof where forty seven was equal to
every other integer, and they didn't have the Internet to
spread their satirical project to the rest of the school,

(09:32):
they went viral organically, eventually becoming a meme among other students,
even those who would enroll at Pomoma later on. What
started in nineteen sixty four carried on for decades to come,
which is partly why the number forty seven shows up
in so many TV shows and movies. Television writer Joe
Minoski wrote for several Star Trek shows in the eighties

(09:53):
and nineties. He managed to squeeze the number forty seven
into practically every script he wrote. He also grat situated
Pomona College in nineteen seventy nine. Since then, other Star
Trek riders have carried on the tradition, even those who
never attended Pomona. And if you watch the old Disney
film The Absent Minded Professor, you might notice the number

(10:13):
show up on the scoreboard of a scene set at
a college basketball game. The final score is forty seven
to forty six. Oh and one last thing. That scene
was shot at Pomona College, but three years before Metz
and Elgin's research project had even started. Was it just
a coincidence or is there something about the school that

(10:34):
attracts the number forty seven? The debate rages on to
this day, and it probably will for another forty seven years.
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.

(10:56):
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 about it over at
Theworldoflore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.