No Cigar

Trickery abounds on today's tour through the Cabinet!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcomed Aaron Mankey's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of I
Heart Radio 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

(00:27):
of Curiosities. In the Superman film starring Christopher Reeve, Lex
Luthor delivers a speech to his henchman and henchwoman about
what truly matters in life. He says, and I quote,

(00:48):
stocks may rise and fall, utilities and transportation systems may collapse,
and people are no damn good, but they will always
need land, and they'll pay through the nose to get it.
And he wasn't wrong. Look back at the legend of
Johnny Appleseed, for example, he was a real man named
John Chapman who hailed from Massachusetts. A nursery man by trade,

(01:08):
Chapman spent much of his life working around plants and flowers.
He set out in the late seventeen hundreds to plant
vast apple orchards in states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana,
and even up north into Ontario, Canada. But Contrary to
the stories told in school, he wasn't doing it randomly.
You see, the government recognized new orchards on unclaimed land

(01:30):
as proof of ownership. In other words, Chapman planted apple
trees to build up his real estate portfolio. But Johnny
Appleseed had gone about things the right way. He'd been
a shrewd businessman who worked within the law to earn
himself a hefty income. Another man, on the other hand,
found a much different way to acquire land, although he
might have fared better if he had just stuck with

(01:51):
apples Don Miguel de Peralta was born in seventeen o
eight and joined the military in sevente He became a
lieutenant into dragoons, a class of infantry that traveled by horseback,
as part of the King of Spain service. Fifteen years later,
he traveled to New Spain, a portion of North and
Central America that encompassed modern day Arizona and Mexico. He

(02:13):
had been appointed a royal inspector by King Philip the Fifth,
who also happened to be his cousin. Although on paper,
Peralta had been sent to merely hash out financial issues
in the region, he was also there on a separate
secret mission. The king wanted him to observe the Jesuits,
as there had been rumblings about them wanting independence from Spain,
and Philip wanted proof, and Peralta delivered. He sent back

(02:37):
the evidence his cousin needed to expel all the Jesuits
from New Spain, which worked in Peralta's favor. He was
given the new title of baron day Arizonac and three
hundred square leagues of land. Peralta lived to be one
hundred and sixteen years old and had only one child,
a son, who had a daughter of his own name Sophia,
and as you might imagine, he listed his progeny in

(02:59):
his ill as the heirs to the barony of Arizonac,
the tract of land that makes up most of modern
day Arizona. One hundred and thirty years later, that land
was suddenly under the purview of one James Rivas, a
former Confederate soldier turned land barren. He had come into
possession of several grants, one of which happened to be
the Peralta grant, which gave him ownership of the territory,

(03:23):
and it was a massive territory to the grant specified
a breathtaking eighteen thousand, seven hundred fifty square mile area
that was bigger than Maryland, New Jersey, and Washington d C. Combined.
Rivas quickly established himself as a force to be feared
among settlers and the indigenous people's occupying the territory. Many

(03:43):
left for greener pastures, while railroad and mine owners had
to pay steep taxes to operate on his lands. Anyone
who defied him was either beaten or had their homes
set ablaze, sometimes both. If the newspapers ever wrote anything
bad about him, Rivas's men would show up the next
day and destroy their printing presses. He was a tyrant,
and eventually his tactics could no longer be ignored. The

(04:05):
press stopped being afraid and started printing expose s on
the shady deals that he had been inking behind the scenes.
The governments also then stepped in to assess whether the
land really belonged to him in the first place. Desperate
to hold onto his status in power, Rivas presented Sophia Treadway.
He had met fifteen year old Sophia on a train
trip and noted her uncanny resemblance to Miguel de Peralta's granddaughter, Sophia.

(04:30):
After getting to know one another over several months, he
learned the truth. The girl's mother, Sophia de Peralta, had
died giving birth to her and her twin brother, who
had also passed away. Her father had run off to
Spain and sent her to be raised by his friend
John Treadway in California. She was the true heiress to
the Peralta fortune. Rivas was thrilled by the discovery and

(04:52):
married Sophia on December thirty one, eighteen eighty two. He
was now officially bona fide royalty. He and so Via
traveled to Spain and enjoyed living in the lap of luxury,
rubbing elbows with all kinds of nobles and elites while
they were there, But their extended honeymoon soon came crashing
to a halt when Rivas learned that his barony was

(05:12):
being challenged. Back home, President elect Grover Cleveland's new Democratic
administration was taking a long look at the Peralta grant,
especially since its owner had been in the pockets of
the previous Republican administration, and after a long drawn out lawsuit,
the truth finally came out, Rivas did not officially own
any claim to the land in Arizona, nor did his wife,

(05:35):
the Heiress. In fact, she wasn't related to the Peraltas
at all, because there had never been any Peraltas to
begin with. Sophia had been upon and one of the
greatest con jobs in American history. Rivas, you see, had
made the whole Peralta family up. He had invented Miguel
the son and the granddaughter, the relationship to King Philip,

(05:56):
all of it. He had also spent a decade forging
all kinds of official documents as his way to legitimize
his claim, and it had almost worked. Unfortunately, Rivas had
made a lot of enemies along the way, including a
surveyor general named Royal Johnson, who had nearly brought his
scam to an end years earlier. It was his investigation

(06:17):
that had forced Revas to invent a living air in
the first place. Six years after opening up the case,
Johnson came back with proof that all the documentations surrounding
the Peralta grant was fictional. They was full of spelling
and grammatical errors, and had been written with a modern pen.
Rivas lost everything his land his money and his freedom.

(06:39):
He went to prison for six years, after which he
spent his remaining days homeless on the streets of Phoenix,
a far cry from the mansion that he had lived
in not long before. James Rivas was a career criminal,
always looking for the next con. Had he applied half
the effort that he'd put into forging an entire Spanish family,
he might have gone on to do great things. Unfortunately,

(07:01):
he'll be remembered as the artificial land baron who was
left with nothing, no money, no spouse, and no land.
A baron baron, now, I'd call that curious. Each of

(07:26):
the assassination attempts so far had failed miserably, but the
CIA wasn't going to give up. They had Marita Lawrence
in the perfect position, and if everything went according to plan,
they wouldn't have to deal with del Castro anymore. Castro
once said, if surviving assassination attempts were an Olympic event,
I would win the gold medal, and he was right.

(07:48):
There were six hundred and thirty seven attempts on his
life as leader of Cuba, spurred on by years of
Spanish colonization and violence followed by dictators and presidents. Castro
and his recruits waged a guerrilla war against the Batista dictatorship,
culminating in the ousting of Batista on January one of
nineteen fifty nine. Castro took control of the government, rounded

(08:10):
up Batista's supporters, and consolidated power. Batista's supporters were tried
and executed, which helped Castro cement his foothold. The elections
Castro had called for never materialized, and he seemed to
install himself as a new leader for life. At first,
the United States had a friendly relationship with the new
governments and with Castro himself. He visited Washington, d c.

(08:33):
Not long after he took power, where he met Vice
President Nixon and saw the sites and Americans watched Cuba
with interest. That interest turned to anger and fear when
Cuba began reaching out to the other superpower of the day.
The USSR AS relations continued to dissolve through the nineteen sixties,
including the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion and the Cuban

(08:54):
Missile crisis. The United States became desperate to rid themselves
of Castro. The U. S government knew that there wasn't
likely going to be a serious challenge to Castro's regime
from the inside, but they hoped that they might be
able to help the dictator shuffle off his mortal coil
so to speak. Now, you would assume that this would
lead to serious meetings with serious outcomes as they discussed

(09:15):
how best to handle the Cuba problem. And maybe there were,
but the results were something that seemed to come more
from the ACME Corporation's boardroom than any shadowy CIA office.
Marita Lawrence was just one of the CIA's attempts to
assassinate Castro, called Operation Mongoose and costing four point four
million dollars. Young Cuban exiles were recruited to infiltrate Castro's Cuba,

(09:37):
and Lawrence was among them. You see, she was Castro's
ex girlfriend, and even though she had been spurned years earlier,
she still had an intimate access to his home. The
CIA gave her poison pills that would dissolve quickly into
food or drink and we're entirely lethal. Unfortunately, Lawrence decided
to smuggle them inside a jar of cold cream, which
dissolved them. She panicked and confess to everything to Castro,

(10:01):
who lost his temper. He proceeded to rail against the
United States for several minutes before handing over his forty
five and telling her to finish the job. She claimed
to have thrown down the gun and left both Castro
and the CIA to their own devices. Now, clearly this
plan failed due to bad luck, but the CIA had
others in store that probably would only have worked against

(10:22):
the likes of Wiley Coyote and Yosemite Sam. In the
early nineteen sixties, for example, the CIA poured money and
time into researching cigars that would be rolled with explosives
so that they would blow up in Castro's face when
he smoked one. Other sources say that they thought about
coding one of Castro's ever present cigars with a nerotoxin
that would take care of the job. Looking back, the

(10:44):
CIA seemed to be enamored with the idea of explosives,
so when the cigar plan wasn't successful, they decided to
focus on his love of diving. Based on CIA documents,
they debated painting a conk shell with bright colors to
catch his attention, and when he swam over to pick
it up, it would be an explosive. They also tried
a poison pen which apparently failed because the inside man

(11:07):
thought that it was a stupid plan. That attempt to
pass the poison pen off happened on the day that
JFK was assassinated, so the CIA decided to do away
with that one entirely. And there were other crazy ideas
as well. They tried thallium in his shoes, hoping that
he would lose his beard, because in the CIA's mind,
that was the true source of his influence. They tried

(11:28):
blowing up a podium while he was giving a speech
in Panama, which was foiled by Cuban security. For all
the dynamite happy, proactive poisoners that seemed to be operating
the CIA, their most spectacular attempt came when they tried
to hire the real professionals to help. The mob was
extremely bitter about Castro's control of Cuba because they lost

(11:49):
several profitable casinos, and so a CIA agent went undercover
and approached three members of the mafia, pretending to be
an international businessman who had lost money to Castro's gam
billing band. Apparently, poison pills were passed over to the
mafiosi and they tried to get the drugs into Castro's
food for months until the plot was called off due
to the extreme heat and the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion.

(12:13):
Of course, we know that Castro managed to dodge every
assassination attempt that came his way, ridiculous as some of
them may have been, and lived to the rifled age
of ninety. The CIA may have been successful at toppling
regimes all around the world, but in Cuba they hit
a wall that they never quite overcame. As more historical
files are released to the public, maybe we'll come across

(12:34):
something stranger than poison pens and exploding seashells. But for now,
as Porky Pig always said, that's all folks. 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

(12:58):
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 the World
of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious. Yeah,