Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of
Speaker 1: the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all
Speaker 1: of these amazing tales right there on display, just waiting
Speaker 1: for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
Speaker 1: People are more than just what we see every day.
Speaker 1: They're made up of successes and failures. Books they've read,
Speaker 1: films they've watched, music they've listened to, and schools they've attended.
Speaker 1: Under a comedian's jokes might be pain and anguish. Behind
Speaker 1: a teacher's quiet demeanor could reside someone outgoing and spontaneous.
Speaker 1: In other words, people have layers to them. Benjamin Kubelski,
Speaker 1: for sample, was full of layers. Born in Chicago, Illinois,
Speaker 1: in eighteen ninety four, Kubelski was raised by Jewish immigrant
Speaker 1: parents who wanted the best for him. They got him
Speaker 1: started on violin lessons when he was just six years old,
Speaker 1: with a dream of him playing professionally as he got older.
Speaker 1: Kobelski loved the violin, he just hated practicing. In fact,
Speaker 1: any kind of mental work was off putting to him,
Speaker 1: to the point that when he was a teenager he
Speaker 1: was expelled from high school for doing so poorly in
Speaker 1: his classes. But he eventually found his calling playing violin
Speaker 1: for vaudeville audiences. He made pretty good money at it, too,
Speaker 1: about seven dollars and fifty cents per week in nineteen eleven.
Speaker 1: At the same time, he met a group of brothers
Speaker 1: well on their way to superstardom, led by their mother Minnie.
Speaker 1: There was Julius, Adolph, Milton, Herbert, and the eldest of
Speaker 1: them all, Leonard, although the world would come to know
Speaker 1: them one day as a different title, the Marx Brothers.
Speaker 1: Koubelski and the Marxis built up a long and lucrative friendship,
Speaker 1: which he needed at as he worked his way up
Speaker 1: the vaudeville ladder. In nineteen twelve, he found a musical
Speaker 1: partner and started striking out on his own, which upset
Speaker 1: another violinist by the name of Jan Kublik. It seems
Speaker 1: that vaudeville just wasn't big enough for two violinists with
Speaker 1: very similar names. Fearing a major lawsuit, one that he
Speaker 1: could not afford, Kubelski changed his name. He continued to
Speaker 1: perform for several more years, although he didn't do too
Speaker 1: well on the circuit. As the US entered World War One,
Speaker 1: Kubelski enlisted with a navy to serve his country, and
Speaker 1: he took his violin with him. He would often entertain
Speaker 1: his fellow sailors during recreational times. Unfortunately, not everyone loved
Speaker 1: his performances, and one night they almost booed him right
Speaker 1: off the stage. Thinking on his feet, he started telling
Speaker 1: jokes and add libbing to the audience. He had them
Speaker 1: rolling on the decks, and it was then that he
Speaker 1: realized that he could combine two things that he loved
Speaker 1: to make a living music and comedy. After the war,
Speaker 1: Koubelski ran into yet morely trouble regarding his name and
Speaker 1: was forced to change it yet again, but this time
Speaker 1: it stuck. He continued to perform, playing in theaters and
Speaker 1: even making the jump to films in the nineteen twenties.
Speaker 1: But the nineteen twenties marked more than just a career
Speaker 1: change for Kubelski. In nineteen twenty two, at a passover
Speaker 1: Satyr he attended with a friend, Zeppo Marx, he met
Speaker 1: the woman who would one day be his wife. Sadie Marx,
Speaker 1: unrelated to the Marx brothers, but they didn't hit it
Speaker 1: off at first. He upset her when he tried to
Speaker 1: sneak out while she was playing the violin for other guests.
Speaker 1: A few years later, though, in nineteen twenty seven, they
Speaker 1: did fall in love and married. She eventually joined him
Speaker 1: on his routines and took on the stage name Mary Livingstone.
Speaker 1: Not long after, the pair had a daughter, Joan, and
Speaker 1: Benjamin continued to climb in popularity with American audiences, except
Speaker 1: by this time he wasn't known as Benjamin Kubelski anymore.
Speaker 1: He'd gone on to great acclaim as radio, television and
Speaker 1: movie star Jack Benny. Over the course of their lives,
Speaker 1: Jack and Mary Mary built their marriage on love and tolerance.
Speaker 1: He loved her deeply, but he also had a wandering eye. Still,
Speaker 1: he knew how important she was to his success in
Speaker 1: show business and in life. Thanks to her involvement, Benny's
Speaker 1: character became something of a family affair. Her brother even
Speaker 1: produced several of his radio and TV shows. So when
Speaker 1: Jack died in nineteen seventy four from pancreatic cancer, it
Speaker 1: was understandable that Mary was despondent. She had lost the
Speaker 1: love of her life in the worst possible way. But
Speaker 1: then something happened. A day or two after he had died,
Speaker 1: she got a knock at the door. It was a
Speaker 1: courier with one red rose just for her. The next
Speaker 1: day another rose arrived, and after that another. She called
Speaker 1: up the Flores to ask what was going on, and
Speaker 1: that's when she learned the truth. The Flores told her
Speaker 1: that Jack had put a special clause into his will
Speaker 1: following his death. Mary was to receive one rose every
Speaker 1: day for the rest of her life, and she did
Speaker 1: until her own passing in nineteen eighty three. Jack Benny
Speaker 1: wasn't just a comedian and an entertainer. He was also
Speaker 1: a romantic. Like I said, he had layers. Some people
Speaker 1: don't wait for opportunity to strike. They go out and
Speaker 1: make their own luck. They bootstrap their ideas, they risk
Speaker 1: their money and reputation, and they work hard to become successful.
Speaker 1: Others simply wait for their moments. For them, luck is
Speaker 1: all about timing and coincidence, like waiting for their lottery
Speaker 1: numbers to get called. But Japanese businessman Sumotu Yamaguchi didn't
Speaker 1: make his own luck, and he didn't wait for it
Speaker 1: to come around either. Depending on how you look at it,
Speaker 1: he was either the luckiest man who ever lived or
Speaker 1: the unluckiest. Yamaguchi was born in Nagasaki, Japan, in March
Speaker 1: of nineteen sixteen. He served as a naval engineer before
Speaker 1: joining the Mitsubishi Corporation in their heavy industries division. Yamaguchi's
Speaker 1: main office was in Nagasaki, but in the summer of
Speaker 1: nineteen forty five he was sent just over two hundred
Speaker 1: and sixty miles to Hiroshima on a business trip. The
Speaker 1: plan was to work there for three months before returning home.
Speaker 1: On August sixth, Yamaguchi left the Hiroshima office along with
Speaker 1: two of his coworkers, bound for the train station, but
Speaker 1: as he started walking, he realized that he'd forgotten his
Speaker 1: identification back at his desk, so he ran back up
Speaker 1: to grab it. With his ID firmly in hand, he
Speaker 1: was on his way to the docks around eight fifteen
Speaker 1: in the morning when he looked up to see an
Speaker 1: American bomber fly overhead, along with two parachutes drifting toward
Speaker 1: the ground, and then suddenly there was a bright flash
Speaker 1: of light, Yamaguchi was sent flying. His ear drums ruptured
Speaker 1: and his vision blinded in the process, and the upper
Speaker 1: left side of his body was burned. He didn't realize
Speaker 1: it at the time, but he had just witnessed the
Speaker 1: detonation of the Little Boy atomic bomb from two miles away.
Speaker 1: The blast had blocked out the sun and the mushroom
Speaker 1: cloud rained fire over the city. He eventually regained his
Speaker 1: sights and got to his feet, finding a place to
Speaker 1: hide and wait out whatever might come next. It took
Speaker 1: some time, but Yamaguchi eventually went back out into the
Speaker 1: city to look for his colleagues. They were okay, but
Speaker 1: they knew that they had to get to safety, so
Speaker 1: the three of them found their way to an air
Speaker 1: raid shelter for the night. The next day, Yamaguchi made
Speaker 1: it back to Nagasaki, where he had his injuries treated
Speaker 1: in a local hospital. Two days later, he was back
Speaker 1: at Mitsubishi ready to work. It was eleven am on
Speaker 1: August ninth when he was called into his boss's office.
Speaker 1: Yamaguchi told him about what he had witnessed, how a
Speaker 1: bomb had melted bodies and rained ash over everything. It
Speaker 1: had destroyed. The city, but the supervisor couldn't believe it.
Speaker 1: He accused Yamaguchi of lying, saying that there was no
Speaker 1: bomb strong enough to wipe a whole city off the map,
Speaker 1: and then, just at that moment, as though it had
Speaker 1: been summoned by the supervisor's disbelief, another flash of lights
Speaker 1: went off outside. Yamaguchi leapt out of his chair and
Speaker 1: dropped to the floor as the windows exploded, with broken
Speaker 1: glass all over him. He would later tell a reporter
Speaker 1: that he thought the mushroom cloud from Hiroshima had followed
Speaker 1: him back to Nagasaki, but what had actually happened was
Speaker 1: that another American bomber had just flown by and dropped
Speaker 1: the fat Man atomic bomb about two miles away. Still,
Speaker 1: Yamaguchi was well within range of the bomb's effects. His
Speaker 1: bandages were contaminated and he was hit with another dose
Speaker 1: of radiation, but he wasn't worried about himself at that moment.
Speaker 1: He fled the Mitsubishi offices and trudged through the rubble
Speaker 1: of Nagasaki, hoping his wife and child were okay. When
Speaker 1: he got to his house, he saw that half of
Speaker 1: it had been destroyed in the blast, and feared that
Speaker 1: they may have been killed, but luck had found him
Speaker 1: for a third time in less than a week. At
Speaker 1: the time the bomb went off, his wife had been
Speaker 1: with their baby at the store buying burn ointment for him.
Speaker 1: They quickly ran and hid in a tunnel until it
Speaker 1: was safe to come out. In a weird twist of fate,
Speaker 1: had Yamaguchi not survived the Hiroshima blast, his wife and
Speaker 1: child might not have been out of the house when
Speaker 1: the bomb fell on Nagasaki and collapsed half of their home.
Speaker 1: Yamaguchi went on to health the Allied forces as a
Speaker 1: translator before going back to his old job at Mitsubishi,
Speaker 1: but in March of two thousand and nine, the Japanese
Speaker 1: government officially recognized him as the only survivor of both
Speaker 1: the Fat Man and Little Boy bombs. One man had
Speaker 1: been through two atomic detonations and lived to tell the tale. Sadly,
Speaker 1: he passed away in twenty ten at the age of
Speaker 1: ninety three from stomach cancer. Considering everything he went through,
Speaker 1: to Tomu Yamagachi may have been the luckiest man on
Speaker 1: earth by living as long as he did, and I
Speaker 1: would call that curious. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided
Speaker 1: tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities, subscribe for free on
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by visiting
Speaker 1: Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by me
Speaker 1: Aaron Mankey in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make
Speaker 1: another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast,
Speaker 1: book series, and television show, and you can learn all
Speaker 1: about it over at the Worldoflore dot com. And until
Speaker 1: next time, stay curious.