WEBVTT - Thinking Sideways: Time Travelers 0:00:04.320 --> 0:00:16.079 Think sideways. I don't interesting, you've never known stories of 0:00:16.200 --> 0:00:21.680 things we simply don't know the answer to. Hey, everybody's 0:00:22.480 --> 0:00:27.960 thinking Sideways the podcast. I'm Devin, joined as always by 0:00:28.000 --> 0:00:30.880 and Steve, and we're going to do a group show 0:00:30.920 --> 0:00:34.200 again this week. We do these every once in a while, 0:00:34.479 --> 0:00:37.440 not not too frequently. We don't want to bore you 0:00:38.640 --> 0:00:42.440 with our format, but they bore them. We tend to 0:00:42.479 --> 0:00:47.000 do our group shows on a theme, and this week 0:00:47.280 --> 0:00:50.320 our theme is time travel. Don't worry, it won't be 0:00:50.320 --> 0:00:52.560 the only episode we ever do on time travel. Calm down, 0:00:52.760 --> 0:00:55.320 but we've been getting a lot of time travel requests 0:00:55.360 --> 0:00:57.560 and I can hear you hyperventilating. But we all have 0:00:58.200 --> 0:01:00.960 stories that we really liked that we thought maybe didn't 0:01:00.960 --> 0:01:04.240 make up an entire episode. So we're just gonna each 0:01:04.280 --> 0:01:07.000 talk about our stories. Are you guys ready to do this? 0:01:07.400 --> 0:01:10.120 Let's do it? Okay. Oh and before we get too 0:01:10.120 --> 0:01:12.800 far into this, we always like to say big shout 0:01:12.840 --> 0:01:15.600 out to this listener for suggesting this, but literally all 0:01:15.640 --> 0:01:18.520 of these have literally been suggested like five or six times, 0:01:19.480 --> 0:01:23.760 So if you suggested it, congratulations your a suggestor for 0:01:23.840 --> 0:01:31.840 the Team Sideways Time Travel group show. Special Travaganza. That's 0:01:31.840 --> 0:01:35.920 what we're calling this one, right, travel Travaganza. No, I know, 0:01:36.080 --> 0:01:37.800 it was a longer name than not to try and 0:01:37.959 --> 0:01:42.679 time travel, time travel paloza, time travel ploza. That's okay, alright, 0:01:42.800 --> 0:01:45.080 let's start the time travel plus. So I think Joe 0:01:45.200 --> 0:01:49.160 is going to start first. We're gonna just do chronological right, Yeah, exactly. 0:01:49.160 --> 0:01:52.120 People have been popping into the twentieth century at various times, 0:01:52.160 --> 0:01:54.840 and so we'll start with the earliest one. This one 0:01:54.920 --> 0:01:59.320 starts in nineteen fifty one night in mid June, at 0:01:59.320 --> 0:02:03.360 about ten pm in New York City, witnesses, including a 0:02:03.360 --> 0:02:06.120 police officer, saw a man standing in the middle of 0:02:06.160 --> 0:02:09.520 a busy intersection near Times Square. Some accounts just put 0:02:09.520 --> 0:02:13.600 it right in Times Square, but anyway, somewhere close by there. 0:02:14.120 --> 0:02:16.960 He Nobody had noticed him walking out into the street, 0:02:17.080 --> 0:02:18.919 but they saw him standing there, and he was staring 0:02:18.919 --> 0:02:22.320 around him quote gawking at the signs as if he 0:02:22.360 --> 0:02:25.240 had never seen an electric sign before, unquote, as one 0:02:25.280 --> 0:02:27.960 witness put it, And they seemed to notice that he 0:02:28.000 --> 0:02:30.880 was surrounded by fast moving metal boxes and started to 0:02:31.360 --> 0:02:34.040 started to move towards the sidewalk, but unfortunately was run 0:02:34.040 --> 0:02:35.760 over by a cab and he died at the scene. 0:02:36.520 --> 0:02:39.160 This is why I don't like cabs. Yeah, so a 0:02:39.200 --> 0:02:42.720 short trip for this guy, this time traveler, a policeman. 0:02:43.400 --> 0:02:45.800 The policeman that was there noticed that the man was 0:02:45.880 --> 0:02:48.760 dressed oddly, and then he had some very unstylish mutton 0:02:48.800 --> 0:02:51.560 chopped sideburns, like we're popular like way back when. Yeah, 0:02:51.560 --> 0:02:53.680 but it's New York, so it's hard to tell when 0:02:53.680 --> 0:02:57.440 they're popular today. But he was wearing old style clothes. 0:02:57.480 --> 0:03:01.040 A suitcoat had a high cut us with lapels. He 0:03:01.080 --> 0:03:04.640 had black and white checked pants and high button shoes, 0:03:04.720 --> 0:03:08.120 and essentially he was wearing nineteenth century clothing in nineteen 0:03:08.160 --> 0:03:11.440 fifties New York. So that seemed a little odd. He 0:03:11.520 --> 0:03:13.919 was taken to the morgue. His body was taken to 0:03:13.960 --> 0:03:16.560 the morgan It was searched and some things were found 0:03:16.600 --> 0:03:19.639 in his pockets. Number one some business cards with the 0:03:19.720 --> 0:03:23.200 name Rudolph Fence was F E N t Z, So 0:03:23.320 --> 0:03:26.919 that is our time traveler, Rudolph Fence. The cards also 0:03:26.960 --> 0:03:29.280 had an address on Fifth Avenue. There was a letter 0:03:29.320 --> 0:03:32.200 to him sent to that Fifth Avenue address, dated June 0:03:32.639 --> 0:03:36.720 eighteen seventy six from Philadelphia, a copper token, and some 0:03:37.120 --> 0:03:39.560 and some accounts of this, I've seen it as a 0:03:39.600 --> 0:03:42.200 brass token, but as as it was a beer token, 0:03:42.240 --> 0:03:45.160 for it was a five five cent beer token from 0:03:45.160 --> 0:03:49.320 a saloon which was unknown, it didn't exist. He also 0:03:49.360 --> 0:03:53.320 had seventy dollars in old currency, old American currency, which 0:03:53.360 --> 0:03:56.000 is no longer in circulation. And he had a bill 0:03:56.040 --> 0:03:59.280 from a livery stable on Lexington Avenue in New York 0:03:59.680 --> 0:04:02.560 would was made out quote to the feeding and stable 0:04:02.560 --> 0:04:05.720 in one horse and the Washington one carriage, and the 0:04:05.760 --> 0:04:08.600 bill was for three dollars. That was a lot cheaper 0:04:08.600 --> 0:04:10.800 back then, way cheaper. And of course the Liberty Stable 0:04:10.840 --> 0:04:14.360 didn't exist either. Of course, that was interesting about the stuff. 0:04:14.400 --> 0:04:16.520 It wasn't like that the letter, for example, wasn't old 0:04:16.560 --> 0:04:18.440 and wasn't aged or anything like that, even though it 0:04:18.480 --> 0:04:20.440 was a seventy five year old letter. But that was 0:04:20.480 --> 0:04:21.640 the one thing I was going to say, is I 0:04:21.680 --> 0:04:24.440 know that that's what stood out in most of the 0:04:24.480 --> 0:04:27.480 accountings of this that I read, is the letter and 0:04:27.560 --> 0:04:30.400 the money. None of it seemed to be stuff that 0:04:30.440 --> 0:04:33.960 ted just stood the test of time. It wasn't all 0:04:34.000 --> 0:04:37.080 antiqued and stuff, and it were they able to actually 0:04:37.160 --> 0:04:39.120 date it to those times or was it just kind 0:04:39.120 --> 0:04:40.919 of like, oh, and has this date on it, so 0:04:40.960 --> 0:04:44.240 it must be from this time. You know, our currency 0:04:44.440 --> 0:04:47.520 does has been changed changed over the years. Sure, and 0:04:47.560 --> 0:04:50.400 most of it's taken out of circulation, So it would 0:04:50.400 --> 0:04:53.159 be fairly long con for somebody to have just had 0:04:53.200 --> 0:04:57.080 these laying around, right, Yeah, I can't see why. What 0:04:57.080 --> 0:04:59.280 what game you would be playing to have that on you? Well, 0:04:59.360 --> 0:05:02.200 you hit it under your shoe box, under your shoe box, 0:05:02.720 --> 0:05:09.040 in your yeah, exactly. No, it is actually um entirely 0:05:09.080 --> 0:05:12.520 possible that this guy, this guy actually got assembled this 0:05:12.600 --> 0:05:15.960 whole thing, very elaborate thing, and then deliberately committed suicide 0:05:15.960 --> 0:05:18.320 but plueing himself in front of a cat. Well, like 0:05:18.360 --> 0:05:21.240 we did talk about this in the Voytage manuscripts. Right, 0:05:21.400 --> 0:05:24.560 is that it's possible that somebody hoarded all of that paper, Right, 0:05:24.640 --> 0:05:26.280 we were having a hard time dating it. Blah blah 0:05:26.279 --> 0:05:29.000 blah blah blah. It's possible that somebody hoarded all that paper. 0:05:29.000 --> 0:05:32.840 It's possible that somebody hoarded old currency, for instance, thinking oh, 0:05:32.880 --> 0:05:36.159 it'll gain value some other time. I mean, that is 0:05:36.160 --> 0:05:41.200 a thing. But it seemed like the clothes seems wrong 0:05:41.320 --> 0:05:44.120 and I don't know. Sorry, I'll let you continue. I'm 0:05:44.120 --> 0:05:46.839 gonna let you finish. But okay, anyway, not back to 0:05:46.880 --> 0:05:50.960 our mystery, our mysterious time traveler. Here. Um, there's a 0:05:51.040 --> 0:05:56.919 captain Hubert rim I'm gonna call him Rim, right, Yeah, 0:05:57.080 --> 0:06:00.520 sob the Missing Person's Department of the end yep D 0:06:01.400 --> 0:06:04.719 tried to identify Rudolph fence Um and tried to track 0:06:04.800 --> 0:06:07.000 him down and see where he came from. They looked 0:06:07.000 --> 0:06:09.360 on the phone book and he was not in the 0:06:09.400 --> 0:06:13.279 phone book. Weird. Yeah, we just pull out the old 0:06:13.279 --> 0:06:15.400 phone book here. See this is one of those times 0:06:15.400 --> 0:06:19.640 where Joe's phone book comes in handy. Makes sense, But yeah, 0:06:19.680 --> 0:06:24.920 I mean the eighteen hundreds impersonator. No, that's one thing 0:06:25.600 --> 0:06:27.600 not in the phone book. We can't just find him 0:06:27.640 --> 0:06:30.120 under that. You would look him up in the phone 0:06:30.120 --> 0:06:34.600 book under like eighteen hundreds impersonator. That would be in 0:06:34.640 --> 0:06:37.920 the pages. Hope. I'm so sorry. That's okay, don't worry 0:06:37.920 --> 0:06:40.880 about it. Uh. They were looking at the white pages, 0:06:40.920 --> 0:06:43.880 not the yellow pages. They also ran his fingerprints. They 0:06:43.880 --> 0:06:47.080 couldn't find any any record of his fingerprints, and they 0:06:47.320 --> 0:06:49.360 they would check the missing person's report to see if 0:06:49.360 --> 0:06:53.160 somebody reported him missing and nobody had. He wants to 0:06:53.200 --> 0:06:57.920 the address that was on the fifth the fifth Avenue address. Yeah, yeah, 0:06:57.920 --> 0:07:01.000 it says you rim want to that address on Fifth 0:07:01.000 --> 0:07:03.760 Avenue and it was a store and the current owner 0:07:03.800 --> 0:07:06.479 didn't know of any Rudolph Fence. So his next bright 0:07:06.480 --> 0:07:09.200 idea was to go through old phone books, which you know, 0:07:09.520 --> 0:07:11.360 I don't know if the library stores those are the 0:07:11.680 --> 0:07:14.200 police departments it keeps a stash of those or what. 0:07:14.760 --> 0:07:17.280 I have no idea what the protocol would be at 0:07:17.320 --> 0:07:21.480 that time for for I mean, their their documentation. There's 0:07:21.520 --> 0:07:24.720 something that I imagine at the time we're useful, but 0:07:24.840 --> 0:07:28.040 I have no idea where you would go to find 0:07:28.080 --> 0:07:32.160 those in nineties the library you think it was library, Well, 0:07:32.400 --> 0:07:34.280 that's where they you know, archive all of the old 0:07:34.280 --> 0:07:38.240 newspapers and things like that. I presume you would keep 0:07:38.240 --> 0:07:40.160 records like that as well. That's put him on the 0:07:40.280 --> 0:07:43.200 what's what's the tape that they put it on? Yeah? 0:07:43.600 --> 0:07:48.280 How old is that? That's fifties right, Well, I'm guessing yeah, yeah, 0:07:49.480 --> 0:07:52.480 it had been around, so already we're way off track, 0:07:53.560 --> 0:07:55.560 by the way. That's just assume that the NYPD had 0:07:55.560 --> 0:07:58.280 a stash of phone books for purposes like this, and 0:07:58.320 --> 0:08:00.400 so I started going through old phone books and finally 0:08:00.440 --> 0:08:04.040 found a from a phone book dated ninety found a 0:08:04.120 --> 0:08:07.000 Rudolph Fence Junior with the New York address. He went 0:08:07.080 --> 0:08:08.840 to that address, this is a room, and our our 0:08:08.920 --> 0:08:12.240 policeman and found it. It It was an apartment building, and 0:08:12.280 --> 0:08:15.000 he found a few residents of the building who remembered Fence. 0:08:15.520 --> 0:08:18.520 Because I remember this is only eleven years before. I 0:08:18.560 --> 0:08:20.280 don't think people moved as off and back in those 0:08:20.320 --> 0:08:22.960 days as they do now. That would make sense. Yeah, 0:08:23.240 --> 0:08:25.040 they said when they last they last remembered, it was 0:08:25.040 --> 0:08:27.160 being a man of around sixty years or so who 0:08:27.240 --> 0:08:29.800 worked who had worked at a bank somewhere close by, 0:08:30.160 --> 0:08:32.240 and they said that he moved out after his retirement 0:08:32.240 --> 0:08:35.720 in nineteen forty and moved away and nobody knew where, 0:08:36.559 --> 0:08:39.120 but that that was a clue. Rim contacted the bank 0:08:39.280 --> 0:08:42.040 that Fence had worked at. The banks said that Fence 0:08:42.040 --> 0:08:44.079 had died five years before. But there's what it was 0:08:44.080 --> 0:08:46.800 still alive and living in Florida, isn't it always Florida 0:08:46.960 --> 0:08:49.679 right now? Well, it's down there at the bottom, so 0:08:49.720 --> 0:08:52.880 that's where everything sort of like goes downhill, just sort 0:08:52.880 --> 0:08:56.040 of rolls downhill and winds up there. That's how that works. 0:08:56.559 --> 0:08:59.360 Rim tracked the track the widow down and they had 0:08:59.360 --> 0:09:01.920 they studied stuff. He didn't travel to Florida, but they 0:09:02.000 --> 0:09:07.240 established a correspondence and she told him that Rudolph Fence Senior, 0:09:07.760 --> 0:09:10.880 which would be her late husband's father, had disappeared in 0:09:10.920 --> 0:09:13.760 the spring of eighteen seventy six at the age of 0:09:13.800 --> 0:09:19.360 twenty nine. Very mysterious. Yea seventy or four years before. 0:09:20.840 --> 0:09:25.400 The guy was okay, I was doing the same thing. 0:09:26.080 --> 0:09:30.800 Mental math, not my high stand. Let me get a calculator. 0:09:32.000 --> 0:09:34.680 Rudolph Fence Senior had a wife who did not like 0:09:34.800 --> 0:09:38.040 him smoking his cigars in the house, so he got 0:09:38.200 --> 0:09:40.319 in the habit of taking a stroll around the neighborhood 0:09:40.320 --> 0:09:43.559 while smoking, and he'd always do it at night for 0:09:43.640 --> 0:09:45.360 going to bed. It's his last smoke of the day. 0:09:45.800 --> 0:09:47.920 One night, he left for his walk around ten pm 0:09:47.960 --> 0:09:52.520 and he was never seen or heard from again. Next up, 0:09:52.600 --> 0:09:56.000 our our policeman, Captain Rim checked the NYPD's missing person's 0:09:56.040 --> 0:09:59.320 files for eighteen seventy six, and sure enough, there was 0:09:59.400 --> 0:10:02.959 Rudolph Weird Yeah, and the missing person's reported it. In 0:10:03.320 --> 0:10:06.200 the clothes that he was last seen wearing, we're identical 0:10:06.760 --> 0:10:10.160 to the ones that he was found in nineteen. So 0:10:10.240 --> 0:10:13.720 this is like a dead Ringer match, same guy, Rudolph 0:10:13.760 --> 0:10:17.120 Fence disappears and then reappears and then at the still 0:10:17.160 --> 0:10:20.000 at the age of seventy four years later. So he 0:10:20.200 --> 0:10:24.679 just went wandered into like a wormhole in time and this. Yeah, 0:10:24.720 --> 0:10:27.320 I had a time portal and boom hate those things. 0:10:27.320 --> 0:10:31.600 They always That's why I always, you know, just in 0:10:31.640 --> 0:10:33.640 case I get transported into the past. You know, I 0:10:33.679 --> 0:10:35.960 always carry a block nine millimeter in a thousand rounds 0:10:36.000 --> 0:10:39.240 of just in case I'm transported back to medieval times, 0:10:39.760 --> 0:10:44.760 I'll be the king of everything. That's true. Yeah, yeah, 0:10:44.920 --> 0:10:50.720 this is my boomstick. Yeah but what what movie was 0:10:50.800 --> 0:10:53.040 that from where the guy called it his boomstick? It 0:10:53.120 --> 0:10:56.800 was the sounds like something Arnold would say. Was it 0:10:56.840 --> 0:11:00.520 Evil Dead? Bruce? Bruce Campbell? Yeah it was Bruce Campbell? 0:11:00.600 --> 0:11:02.440 Did it an evil Dead? And he had a he 0:11:02.480 --> 0:11:04.200 had a gun and he called it his boomstick. That's 0:11:04.240 --> 0:11:06.040 the worst thing I ever heard in my entire life. 0:11:06.760 --> 0:11:11.600 That's a great movie. It's a good movie. Soy solved mystery. 0:11:11.640 --> 0:11:14.559 Not so it's a huge mystery. Yeah, it was. You 0:11:14.800 --> 0:11:17.240 got published quite a large number of times. It got 0:11:17.280 --> 0:11:19.160 published all over the place, and then of course after 0:11:19.240 --> 0:11:23.800 the after the Internet arose, it got published even more so. 0:11:24.160 --> 0:11:26.840 Two thousand, the year two thousand of Spanish magazine published 0:11:27.600 --> 0:11:30.480 the same story and the published it as a factual report, 0:11:30.920 --> 0:11:33.199 and that caught the attention of a folklore researcher named 0:11:33.280 --> 0:11:38.240 Chris Aubeck. Wait, so before that, everybody had been printing 0:11:38.280 --> 0:11:42.120 it is kind of an anecdotal story. Yeah, it's basically, 0:11:42.280 --> 0:11:44.880 like you know, it's circulated like an urban legend. It was. 0:11:45.320 --> 0:11:47.160 It was like this story and and a lot of 0:11:47.280 --> 0:11:50.640 a lot of like unsolved mysteries websites and things like that, 0:11:50.760 --> 0:11:54.319 would you know, published period magazines and books and stuff 0:11:54.360 --> 0:11:58.960 like that, fiction stuff like that, tales from the strange. Yeah. 0:11:59.280 --> 0:12:02.560 In two thousand I discovered that the tale actually began 0:12:02.679 --> 0:12:04.559 life as part of a short story that was written 0:12:04.559 --> 0:12:06.680 by a sci fi author named Jack Finney. I don't 0:12:06.679 --> 0:12:09.719 know if you guys have heard of Yeah, so that's 0:12:09.760 --> 0:12:11.760 something interesting about Jack Finney. I didn't know until I 0:12:11.760 --> 0:12:15.280 started researching this is that his book bought the body 0:12:15.360 --> 0:12:20.880 Snatchers was adapted in the movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Really, yeah, 0:12:21.080 --> 0:12:22.760 I didn't know that. I did not know that. I 0:12:22.800 --> 0:12:24.360 didn't know it was him. I didn't I didn't know 0:12:24.440 --> 0:12:25.920 he was the one who came up with a story 0:12:26.600 --> 0:12:29.839 sci fi classic, right. Yeah, I guess that's what you 0:12:29.880 --> 0:12:32.640 get from for having a mom like mine. I just 0:12:32.720 --> 0:12:37.280 grew up on B movies. Any Way, back to Jack Finney. 0:12:37.320 --> 0:12:40.520 So he published the story a short story in Collier's 0:12:40.600 --> 0:12:44.400 magazine in ninety one that was in September. The story 0:12:44.520 --> 0:12:47.439 was called I'm Scared. Then two years later a guy 0:12:47.520 --> 0:12:51.439 named Terrible title. Yeah, well it must have been from 0:12:51.559 --> 0:12:54.079 the point of view offense, right um. I haven't read 0:12:54.120 --> 0:12:55.920 the story yet. I don't know if I will actually, 0:12:56.040 --> 0:12:59.280 but I probably will at some point. Two years later, 0:12:59.320 --> 0:13:02.120 a guy named Alph Holland came along. He was part 0:13:02.160 --> 0:13:05.880 of a group of people called the Borderland Sciences Research Foundation, 0:13:05.960 --> 0:13:08.880 which was dedicated to the UFOs and you know and 0:13:08.920 --> 0:13:14.400 all sorts of weird phenomenon stuff like that. Half Yeah, 0:13:15.080 --> 0:13:17.040 these guys are still around, and they have a website. 0:13:17.640 --> 0:13:19.440 I've got I've got a link here to their their 0:13:19.559 --> 0:13:23.040 thing on Rudolph fence. I'll click that right here on 0:13:23.120 --> 0:13:24.679 this paper. I just have to put your finger on 0:13:24.760 --> 0:13:26.960 that and go click click. That's how that works right now. 0:13:27.080 --> 0:13:29.240 And you know, on this one after account of the 0:13:29.280 --> 0:13:31.839 whole story of fence, say they explain how these time 0:13:31.920 --> 0:13:35.880 travel events happen, how well, it's like, imagine it's the 0:13:36.000 --> 0:13:39.520 fourth dimension essentially what they say, so the third dimension. 0:13:39.520 --> 0:13:42.240 Imagine the third dimension is a sphere, a rotating sphere 0:13:42.320 --> 0:13:47.720 and circle, and it's nestled inside another sphere, the larger sphere, 0:13:47.720 --> 0:13:50.280 which is a fourth dimension. Both of these spheres have 0:13:50.480 --> 0:13:53.560 holes in the small and large, and when they're all 0:13:53.600 --> 0:13:55.600 they're both turning. And when they on two of those 0:13:55.640 --> 0:13:58.560 holes in line, well you got your time portal, which 0:13:58.600 --> 0:14:01.800 is why it's so in freak went in unheard of. Yeah, 0:14:01.920 --> 0:14:04.040 I mean, time portals could be opening up all over 0:14:04.080 --> 0:14:06.720 the place. But if just say, you know, a piece 0:14:06.760 --> 0:14:08.959 of cloud steps into one, well it's you know, it's 0:14:09.000 --> 0:14:11.680 not a huge thing. Maybe you know, maybe a squirrel 0:14:11.760 --> 0:14:14.800 jumps into a time pork was transported a hundred years 0:14:14.800 --> 0:14:16.679 into the future. Or I certainly loved the idea of 0:14:16.720 --> 0:14:23.400 time traveling squirrels. I didn't find their explanation terribly convincing myself. Yeah, 0:14:23.800 --> 0:14:27.600 Moorland Sciences published a regular pamphlet promoting their views. It 0:14:27.720 --> 0:14:31.280 was called the Journal of Borderland Research, and this story 0:14:31.360 --> 0:14:34.400 appeared in it in nineteen seventy two, and it was 0:14:34.440 --> 0:14:37.800 footnoted if what't The source of the story was a 0:14:37.880 --> 0:14:41.120 book called A Voice from the Gallery, which was published 0:14:41.160 --> 0:14:44.000 in nineteen fifty three by Ralph Holland. He took He 0:14:44.360 --> 0:14:47.560 took the Finney story and essentially reworked it so it 0:14:47.640 --> 0:14:50.080 didn't appear to be an actual short story, made it 0:14:50.160 --> 0:14:52.960 sound like it was the real deal, documented defense and 0:14:53.040 --> 0:14:56.760 of course didn't give Jack Finney any credit, and claimed 0:14:56.800 --> 0:14:58.760 that it was all true and put it in his book. 0:14:59.480 --> 0:15:02.680 Chris Obb trace the story back as far as the 0:15:02.800 --> 0:15:05.240 nineteen fifty three book and then if you published an 0:15:05.280 --> 0:15:08.160 article about the fence story and what he had found. 0:15:08.560 --> 0:15:11.120 He was contacted by a pastor named George Murphy who 0:15:11.120 --> 0:15:13.920 would recognize the story. I guess, he wrote, I guess 0:15:13.960 --> 0:15:16.920 he was a sci fi fan or a regular reader 0:15:16.920 --> 0:15:18.960 of Colliers whatever, but he'd recognize the story. And he 0:15:19.040 --> 0:15:21.800 told I back about the original Finny story and Collier's 0:15:21.880 --> 0:15:26.800 magazine n the mystery was solved. So it started out 0:15:26.800 --> 0:15:28.840 as a short story, and then a guy, a guy 0:15:28.920 --> 0:15:32.320 plagiarized it two years later, and that's somebody and then 0:15:32.400 --> 0:15:34.320 and then it was circulating around and then it got 0:15:34.400 --> 0:15:38.120 replagiarized in seventy two. But Borderland's guys who Holland was 0:15:38.240 --> 0:15:40.640 affiliated with the next thing. You know, it's this big 0:15:40.680 --> 0:15:44.480 old urban legend. So this is why you don't steal. Yeah, 0:15:44.680 --> 0:15:47.200 well yeah, plagiarism is not it's not a classic thing 0:15:47.240 --> 0:15:51.840 to do. So one further little twist of the story is, 0:15:52.360 --> 0:15:54.120 and I'm not sure if this is true. I didn't, 0:15:54.720 --> 0:15:57.920 I was not able to. Actually I found it as 0:15:58.120 --> 0:16:01.600 me too exactly. But that's it anyway, for fun. In 0:16:01.680 --> 0:16:04.440 two thousand seven, researcher who was working for the Berlin 0:16:04.800 --> 0:16:08.320 Berlin News Archive found a newspaper story in their archives 0:16:08.360 --> 0:16:10.480 in German, of course, but it was from April nineteen 0:16:10.600 --> 0:16:14.720 fifty one, reporting the story almost exactly as it's reported today. 0:16:14.960 --> 0:16:17.440 Now this this would have been printed months prior to 0:16:17.680 --> 0:16:22.680 the finny story appearing in Colliers. Yeah, well, but it's 0:16:23.080 --> 0:16:28.680 entirely likely that the story had been put out several times. 0:16:28.960 --> 0:16:31.520 I mean, writers do that they submitted to more than 0:16:31.640 --> 0:16:35.920 one place, but probably most German language German magazine. I 0:16:35.960 --> 0:16:39.080 don't know, well, was the was the article? Was it? 0:16:39.600 --> 0:16:42.920 It was the story entirely in German? It wasn't. It 0:16:43.080 --> 0:16:45.880 wasn't like they got it somewhere and they translated it 0:16:46.000 --> 0:16:48.920 to reprint it themselves. Is that what I'm to understand? 0:16:49.160 --> 0:16:51.720 You know, it's entirely possible that he actually actually wrote 0:16:51.760 --> 0:16:53.400 the story a couple of years before, and he'd been 0:16:53.440 --> 0:16:56.280 shopping it around to a number of periodicals. And that's 0:16:56.400 --> 0:16:58.720 that's what I'm I'm getting at. Yeah, And as somebody 0:16:58.800 --> 0:17:01.960 ripped him off and finds that somebody, somebody, some of 0:17:02.080 --> 0:17:04.560 some German guys, says, hey, let's translate this to German 0:17:04.560 --> 0:17:06.959 because we're even less likely to get caught, get busted 0:17:07.000 --> 0:17:13.600 for plagiarism. Story got ripped off many times. Yeah. Another 0:17:13.680 --> 0:17:16.240 another odd fact, and this is against something I can't 0:17:16.480 --> 0:17:19.600 I can't corroborate, but researchers have actually claimed to have 0:17:19.680 --> 0:17:22.960 found evidence of the real Rutolf Fense who at a 0:17:23.040 --> 0:17:28.879 real Rutolf Fense who disappeared in eighteen seventy six at nine. Yeah. Again, 0:17:29.040 --> 0:17:31.439 this is I think this is something somebody probably made up, 0:17:31.520 --> 0:17:33.560 but they never know. Yeah, I would want to know 0:17:33.680 --> 0:17:36.080 how they found. That sounds like something we should probably 0:17:36.119 --> 0:17:40.000 set the interns on. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely. So it's 0:17:40.040 --> 0:17:42.560 just a story. It's just a made up story. But 0:17:42.720 --> 0:17:45.280 maybe not. We'll find out when the interns come back 0:17:45.320 --> 0:17:47.960 with their information. They're gonna dig into it. They'll they'll 0:17:48.000 --> 0:17:52.959 find something. Well, next up is my story, So okay, 0:17:53.160 --> 0:17:59.639 why not. July nineteen fifty four, Tokyo officials are monitoring 0:18:00.000 --> 0:18:03.800 ssengers who are deplaning or maybe also checking passports. It's 0:18:03.840 --> 0:18:07.040 hard to tell. The nineteen fifties security was like, okay, 0:18:07.480 --> 0:18:09.920 not existent. No, I mean it existed. You know, this 0:18:10.080 --> 0:18:12.800 was just post World War Two. It's kind of the 0:18:12.920 --> 0:18:16.560 time when security was higher. Most of the time that 0:18:16.640 --> 0:18:19.879 I've read the story, I've read that the officials were just, 0:18:20.119 --> 0:18:22.639 for whatever reason, watching people deplane, and they spot a 0:18:22.720 --> 0:18:27.520 man that they, for reasons unknown, find suspicious. Um he's 0:18:27.560 --> 0:18:31.440 a fairly conventional looking Caucasian mail but they decide to 0:18:31.520 --> 0:18:34.040 employ the very first line of defense in this situation. 0:18:34.200 --> 0:18:38.640 They check a passport. But on they check his passport. 0:18:39.040 --> 0:18:41.120 That's what you usually do if somebody's looking a little 0:18:41.119 --> 0:18:43.920 suspiciousty excuse me, sir, Can I check your passport? Easy 0:18:43.960 --> 0:18:47.040 way to stop somebody. So it's clearly a passport, a 0:18:47.160 --> 0:18:50.359 real passport that bears all of the typical security indicators 0:18:50.440 --> 0:18:53.320 which I guess you can't forge and aer like international, 0:18:53.440 --> 0:18:55.280 which I think that's true. Most of the passports you 0:18:55.359 --> 0:18:58.520 see look basically the same. They have a different color cover, 0:18:58.960 --> 0:19:01.440 different seal on the front, unt but for the most 0:19:01.520 --> 0:19:06.760 part they're organized basically the same. Yeah, and they country 0:19:06.840 --> 0:19:09.760 they all have very typical security things that you can't 0:19:09.960 --> 0:19:13.359 forge necessarily. I don't know, I'm not you know, like 0:19:13.400 --> 0:19:15.359 they'd have the foil and lays and the seals and 0:19:15.400 --> 0:19:17.920 all of that stuff that you're not passports are not 0:19:18.040 --> 0:19:21.560 forgeable by nature. Well, but this is ninety four. But 0:19:21.680 --> 0:19:23.639 even then, there's no point in issuing something that you 0:19:23.720 --> 0:19:28.640 can easily forge. Actual Yeah, so visa stamps, but also 0:19:28.880 --> 0:19:31.200 you know, the stamps over the picture of the passport, 0:19:31.680 --> 0:19:34.960 things like that, impressions in the Yeah, it looked really official. 0:19:35.720 --> 0:19:39.440 Just to say it wasn't clearly forgery or anything like that. 0:19:39.560 --> 0:19:42.560 It's generally accepted. It looked like it was real. The 0:19:42.720 --> 0:19:48.280 only problem was that the country of issuance was tarad. 0:19:50.280 --> 0:19:52.160 That's how we're saying it. I'm going with either of those. 0:19:53.000 --> 0:19:56.080 And as you're probably aware, I know you guys are, 0:19:56.520 --> 0:20:00.400 most of our listeners probably are. That's not a country, yeah, 0:20:00.920 --> 0:20:03.040 not one that we know I could see in the town. No, 0:20:03.440 --> 0:20:06.439 and not on Earth at least, and definitely not currently 0:20:06.520 --> 0:20:11.080 and not in the fifties either. So obviously they decided 0:20:11.119 --> 0:20:12.879 to take this guy in for a little more questioning. 0:20:13.160 --> 0:20:15.040 He's got a passport from a place that doesn't exist. 0:20:17.960 --> 0:20:21.240 But apparently this man spoke fluent Japanese, and upon further 0:20:21.320 --> 0:20:23.800 inspection of his passport, they found that it had lots 0:20:23.840 --> 0:20:25.520 of those stamps that we were just talking about, the 0:20:25.680 --> 0:20:28.600 visa stamps, many of which were actually from Tokyo. So 0:20:28.720 --> 0:20:32.119 he'd been through Tokyo with no problem before, apparently on 0:20:32.240 --> 0:20:37.159 this passport, which is odd. Right. The officials continue to 0:20:37.240 --> 0:20:40.119 question the man, and they asked him just you know, 0:20:40.200 --> 0:20:42.320 to show him where they're where he's from. You know. 0:20:42.880 --> 0:20:46.080 Maybe I guess the rationale is, maybe he's a speech impediment. 0:20:46.119 --> 0:20:48.359 May maybe he's just saying it weird. Also, there's a 0:20:48.440 --> 0:20:51.800 lot of countries in the world. May we missed one, 0:20:52.160 --> 0:20:55.080 but it wasn't just saying it though it was written 0:20:55.080 --> 0:20:58.520 on his passport. But if, but if English is not 0:20:58.680 --> 0:21:02.920 their first language, they be questioning what, Oh, he was 0:21:03.760 --> 0:21:05.800 in Japanese? You know. I if English is not his 0:21:05.960 --> 0:21:10.200 first language and he's saying a word that they don't know, 0:21:10.760 --> 0:21:13.000 they're going to presume it's something native to him. I 0:21:13.040 --> 0:21:16.360 would guess if Japanese isn't his first language. Correct. Yeah, 0:21:16.440 --> 0:21:20.879 so it's possible that he's pronouncing it weird or whatever. Yeah. Sure, although, 0:21:20.880 --> 0:21:24.399 as Joe points out, it is written right. So they 0:21:24.400 --> 0:21:27.680 show him a map or a globe or something, and 0:21:27.760 --> 0:21:30.120 they say, al right, just point tell us where you're from. 0:21:30.280 --> 0:21:34.879 Point at it. And he points um at a place, 0:21:35.280 --> 0:21:38.840 confidently at the nation of his origin. It's been there forever. 0:21:38.920 --> 0:21:41.720 That's where he's from, but becomes very confused and angry 0:21:41.760 --> 0:21:43.760 when he actually looks at the map because the country 0:21:43.800 --> 0:21:51.120 that he was pointing out was not Tarude, tired, Tarid, Tarude. 0:21:51.240 --> 0:21:53.720 I'm gonna say Tarude because that's how I say in 0:21:53.760 --> 0:21:58.320 my brain. It's not his beloved homeland, but instead it's 0:21:58.359 --> 0:22:03.320 the principality of Dora. And it's really small, you guys, 0:22:03.480 --> 0:22:07.600 this is let's let's talk about Andra for a second. Yeah, 0:22:07.720 --> 0:22:10.840 for those of you who don't know, it's the sixth 0:22:11.080 --> 0:22:14.680 smallest country in Europe and it is a hundred and 0:22:14.760 --> 0:22:19.080