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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how

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Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.

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Speaker 1: I'm Katie Lambert and I'm Sarah Dowdy, and today we're

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Speaker 1: gonna be talking about an expedition with a very unusual

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Speaker 1: packing list. Um, some of the items on the Champagne

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Speaker 1: French novels, what else, truffles, silk pajamas. Yeah, they sound

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Speaker 1: pretty nice. We liked them a lot, and we think

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Speaker 1: that if we were going to go on a safari

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Speaker 1: or a trip, we might bring similar items, but we'd

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Speaker 1: also make sure that our trip was in cars and

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Speaker 1: that it was also on paved roads, not pack horses

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Speaker 1: in the mud, unlike the Champagne Safari, which was technically

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Speaker 1: known as the Bideaux Canadian Subarctic Expedition. So for all

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Speaker 1: of you people who have been clamoring for Canadian history,

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Speaker 1: here you go. And we've mentioned Charles Bideaux in our

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Speaker 1: podcast about the Nazi king because he owned the Chateau

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Speaker 1: de Conde where the Duke and Duchess of Windsor were married.

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Speaker 1: But his life is far more interesting than just that

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Speaker 1: one small episode, and the safari is part of that.

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Speaker 1: So to talk a little bit about his life before Safari.

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Speaker 1: He was born in Paris and either eighteen eighty six

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Speaker 1: or eighteen eighty seven and dropped out of school fairly

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Speaker 1: young when he started working with a pimp. Yeah, he

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Speaker 1: helped the pimp find girls for business, and the guy

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Speaker 1: helped him get you know, rare, flashy clothes and learned

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Speaker 1: to fight and all that until the pimp was shot

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Speaker 1: and started out there where their working relationship ended. And

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Speaker 1: that's when he moved to the United States. He was

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Speaker 1: about nineteen or twenty. All he had with him was

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Speaker 1: a dollar in his pocket, and so he started working

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Speaker 1: as a manual laborer and then is a dishwasher until

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Speaker 1: he took up entrepreneurship and he was really fantastic at it.

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Speaker 1: Apparently he sold all sorts of strange inventions, like a

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Speaker 1: toothpaste that removed ink stains, and then he went on

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Speaker 1: to become an efficiency expert and he worked with some

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Speaker 1: huge companies like DuPont. Yeah, he invents the Bideaux system,

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Speaker 1: and employers and managers love this thing. Employees and unions

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Speaker 1: hate it because basically it establishes a Bideaux unit, which

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Speaker 1: is how much work you can do in a minute,

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Speaker 1: and if you complete sixty Bideaux units in an hour,

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Speaker 1: well then good job. You've done your job adequately and

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Speaker 1: you can keep it. So we're really hoping our boss

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Speaker 1: won't pick up on that because I don't even know

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Speaker 1: what a Bideaux unit. How many podcasts do we do

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Speaker 1: in a Bideaux unit, Katie, I have no idea. But

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Speaker 1: Bideaux made millions from this venture, so he was really

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Speaker 1: living the American dream. He'd shown up as an immigrant

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Speaker 1: with a dollar in his pocket and now he was

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Speaker 1: a millionaire, hanging out with people like the Duke and

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Speaker 1: Duchess of Windsor and working with big companies. Do Yeah.

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Speaker 1: But the money and the famous friends weren't enough for Bideaux,

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Speaker 1: and he needed adventure in he was the first man

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Speaker 1: to cross the Libyan Desert. He'd sailed the South Pacific,

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Speaker 1: you know, hunted, big game, did all those thrilling, adrenaline

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Speaker 1: rush types of activities. But then he had a big idea.

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Speaker 1: He's going to go through the Rockies and the Keen

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Speaker 1: Mountains to the Pacific from Edmonton, Alberta. So this is

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Speaker 1: a big trip all the way to Telegraph Creek, British Columbia,

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Speaker 1: and we've gotten different numbers for just how long that was,

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Speaker 1: depending on what we're reading, um anywhere from kilometers to

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Speaker 1: eighteen hundred. So if you've got a more solid number,

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Speaker 1: feel free to send it to us. But this trail

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Speaker 1: hadn't been attempted since the Scottish explorer Alexander Mackenzie did

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Speaker 1: it in seventee. Much of it had no roads at

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Speaker 1: all and was unmapped. But Bidou said, it's fun to

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Speaker 1: do things others call impossible. So Bidow brings along his

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Speaker 1: wife Fern and his mistress, the Italian Swiss Countess Belogna Kisa.

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Speaker 1: The wife and the mistress, it sounds like an awkward

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Speaker 1: trip already, but he also had with him a bunch

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Speaker 1: of other people, a Swiss skiing instructors, some cowboys, a

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Speaker 1: dental student, a bush pilot, geologist, guides, a surveyor, his

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Speaker 1: pet fox terrier, a gamekeeper and a mechanic, and lots

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Speaker 1: of cameramen, including Floyd Crosby, who eventually goes on to

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Speaker 1: be the cinematographer for High News and win an Oscar

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Speaker 1: for it. They also brought along with them five Citron

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Speaker 1: half tracks. There were these all terrain vehicles, that had

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Speaker 1: wheels in front, but caterpillar tracks and back, kind of

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Speaker 1: like a tank. They also brought along a hundred pack

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Speaker 1: horses and fifteen tons of supplies, some of which Sarah

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Speaker 1: and I had already mentioned. The champagne, candied fruits, French novels, truffles,

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Speaker 1: silk pajamas, flatwear, one pack horse that just carries Mrs

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Speaker 1: Bideaux Fern her shoes for park As, Devonshire cream, and

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Speaker 1: chicken livers, which I think that's the one item I

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Speaker 1: might leave off this list. I don't know. I like

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Speaker 1: my my livers. But we were saying this reminded of

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Speaker 1: of the Birke and Wills Expedition podcast and all the

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Speaker 1: bizarre things they brought them unnecessary arry for your rustic

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Speaker 1: trek across the wilderness. But on July six they set

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Speaker 1: off for this big trip with all of their stuff.

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Speaker 1: They've got a champagne breakfast and a big send off

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Speaker 1: in Edmonton in the rain, which also starts off with

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Speaker 1: two limousines escorting them. So this is not just any safari. Well,

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Speaker 1: they obviously ditched the limos pretty quickly because the roads

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Speaker 1: that they're traveling on are made of something that the

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Speaker 1: cowboys called gumbo. It's more like clay than mud, and

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Speaker 1: it sticks to everything. It's impossible to get through, and

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Speaker 1: it's kind of like a bog. They actually call it muskeg.

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Speaker 1: And these wonderful citrons who are supposed to be, you know,

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Speaker 1: so fabulous and don't actually do so great on the terrain.

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Speaker 1: They have to haul them through a swamp. They're so

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Speaker 1: slow their gas guzzlers, so things aren't proceeding quite as

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Speaker 1: blithely as you might wish. And it just rains and

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Speaker 1: rains and rains. He should just imagine this rain for

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Speaker 1: the rest of the podcast. That's how I feel in

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Speaker 1: Georgia Ray now. So they're not gonna lie. They do

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Speaker 1: make it through eight hundred kilometers of mud roads though,

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Speaker 1: so you know, despite their difficulties, they make it through.

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Speaker 1: But that's the point when they hit the wilderness and

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Speaker 1: there are no roads anymore, there are no maps. They're

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Speaker 1: on the round. This is Monteney, British Columbia, and it's

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Speaker 1: the last outpost from this Depression relief cut trail. So

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Speaker 1: it's the edge of the wilderness. And Bide turns out

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Speaker 1: to be tough to deal with, perhaps not surprising considering

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Speaker 1: who he is, but he likes, you know, everything done

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Speaker 1: his way. He likes it done right then, even if

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Speaker 1: that's not the way it needs to go. And when

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Speaker 1: he was called on it, he said, this is the

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Speaker 1: sort of thing you must be prepared to put up

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Speaker 1: with when you pack a millionaire through the wilderness, which

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Speaker 1: you know, I guess he had a point. I'm not

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Speaker 1: gonna lie. That kind of reminds me of Gilligan's Island.

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Speaker 1: That's exactly what I was thinking too. Um Bdoll fires

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Speaker 1: his radio operator to which makes his team mad, understandably

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Speaker 1: because without the radio, the surveyor can't get a Greenwich

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Speaker 1: time signal and do his job. Bidous come back for

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Speaker 1: that was that they never heard anything from the radio

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Speaker 1: other than the fact that John Dillinger had been shot

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Speaker 1: sore and again. The citrons are even worse in the mountains,

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Speaker 1: are always getting stuck, they're slow, they're eating all that fuel.

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Speaker 1: They decide, you know what, we're gonna pull a plug

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Speaker 1: on this whole thing. It hasn't worked out for us,

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Speaker 1: but we're not going to do it just any old way,

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Speaker 1: and to go out with a bang. So they get

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Speaker 1: Crosby to start recording and they send one of these

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Speaker 1: vehicles down the river on a raft and the idea

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Speaker 1: is that it would bang into this cliff that had

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Speaker 1: been rigged with dynamite and then explode and you would

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Speaker 1: have the spectacular cinematic Yeah, it didn't really work out.

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Speaker 1: The dynamite did not explode and instead of just kept

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Speaker 1: on going down that river where a rancher found it

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Speaker 1: and drove it for the next thirty years. So not

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Speaker 1: a bad vehicle. And two others were pushed off cliffs

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Speaker 1: and two were abandoned. One ends up in a Saskatchewan museum.

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Speaker 1: You can apparently see it today if you want to.

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Speaker 1: I want to get us ends for the Champagne Safar,

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Speaker 1: I do want to. Bidou told The New York Times

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Speaker 1: that he'd lost the vehicles in a freak accident, which

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Speaker 1: I mean it was a freakish incident, not a freak out.

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Speaker 1: So now they've just got their horses, and around August four,

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Speaker 1: their hundred horses crossed the Arctic Halfway River and then

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Speaker 1: they all come down with half rot, which is a

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Speaker 1: really really painful thing for a horse to go through.

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Speaker 1: And apparently from what I've read, if I'm wrong, please

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Speaker 1: let me know, once like a whole herd of horses

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Speaker 1: comes down with it, you're pretty much screwed there. You

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Speaker 1: can treat them with antibiotics, but once it spreads through

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Speaker 1: the whole thing, you're done. One. Of course, they wouldn't

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Speaker 1: have had antibiotics with them, No, they did have trouffles tobiotics. Now, Um,

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Speaker 1: by September eighth, they crossed the Cudata River and toast

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Speaker 1: with champagne. Because what do you do when you've abandoned

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Speaker 1: your vehicles and your horses are sick. But this is

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Speaker 1: they'll blown a little bit out of proportion. They have

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Speaker 1: a case of champagne which is twelve bottles and actually

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Speaker 1: one is sadly broken. But still just something about tasting

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Speaker 1: with champagne at this dire point, when it just became

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Speaker 1: one of those moments by which the entire expedition was known,

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Speaker 1: when people were trying to paint him as being ridiculous,

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Speaker 1: It's like, well, look what they did with the champagne.

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Speaker 1: I don't know if that's fair or not. I guess

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Speaker 1: we'll see. Because in mid September they start shooting their horses. Um,

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Speaker 1: they're exhausted, they're hungry. They started running out of horse feed,

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Speaker 1: and of course they all have half rot and they

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Speaker 1: start shooting two or three horses a day, which takes

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Speaker 1: its toll on everyone in the expedition. It was very difficult. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: And it also gets the wolves attention, and so packs

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Speaker 1: start following them and they don't have any fresh meat

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Speaker 1: for themselves. Things aren't going well, and they finally get

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Speaker 1: to the point where they decide they're not going to

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Speaker 1: make it. They're going to turn around go back home,

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Speaker 1: even though there's several hundred kilometers from where they wanted

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Speaker 1: to be, So they hired canoe and head back. The

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Speaker 1: funny thing is that when Bideaux returned, he tried to

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Speaker 1: paint the expedition as a success, but the public's reaction

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Speaker 1: was more along the lines of okay, so you spent

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Speaker 1: two hundred and fifty thousand dollars for what, Like, what

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Speaker 1: did we get out of this? It was a trip, right,

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Speaker 1: And after the trip he got into some some sketchy business.

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Speaker 1: For one thing, he arranged for Hitler and the Duke

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Speaker 1: of Windsor to meet, which we talked about in our

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Speaker 1: other podcast. Yeah, and he did business with some pretty

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Speaker 1: shady characters and um, yeah, any any Nazi connection during

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Speaker 1: this time is they're disturbing. He worked a lot with

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Speaker 1: France's Vichy government. He did one weird experiment and roke

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Speaker 1: four where instead of money, he suggested they all use

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Speaker 1: a unit called the backs. There would be no confined

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Speaker 1: In his head, what that unit, You're going back to

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Speaker 1: the bidou units. There was no commerce, and he thought

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Speaker 1: of it, I guess his capital as within communism. He

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Speaker 1: called it the theory of equivalism, and some have said

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Speaker 1: it was a reaction to to his Bideux system. It

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Speaker 1: really bothered him how many people thought his system was

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Speaker 1: cruel to workers, and this was his his answer to

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Speaker 1: that and more utopian idea. Yeah, I mean, especially from

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Speaker 1: somebody who's coming from such humble beginnings, you can imagine

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Speaker 1: how it would bother him that he was hated by

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Speaker 1: the working man exactly. Some of the shady business dealings

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Speaker 1: we were talking about too. He may have given financial

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Speaker 1: information to the Nazis about the companies he worked for,

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Speaker 1: So I mean, remember these companies that we're talking about,

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Speaker 1: DuPont and Ge I mean huge American companies. Um, And

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Speaker 1: the Nazi connection goes even further. There's a bust of

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Speaker 1: him shown with those of Hitler and Goring, so not

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Speaker 1: a company you want to keep Master Bidoux. He also

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Speaker 1: got in trouble for something we have yet to verify.

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Speaker 1: Sarah and I keep finding different accounts some sort of

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Speaker 1: trans Saharan pipeline, either for we found different things, edible

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Speaker 1: peanut oil, um actual oil, or perhaps a railroad. But

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Speaker 1: either way, it was to be able to transport things

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Speaker 1: to German occupied lands. And kind of hope in it's

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Speaker 1: the edible peanut oil because that would be more interesting. Yes,

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Speaker 1: but he was seen in North Africa drinking brandy with

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Speaker 1: a German officer and on December five, Nino he was

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Speaker 1: arrested as a collaborator, and because he's an American citizen,

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Speaker 1: he goes on trial for treason in Miami, and while

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Speaker 1: he's awaiting trial, he kills himself with peano barbital on

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Speaker 1: February fourteenth, Valentine's Day in nine. This is where it

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Speaker 1: gets a little crazy again, because he left a very

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Speaker 1: cryptic note saying that he couldn't tell the truth about

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Speaker 1: what happened because of powerful people, and said that he

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Speaker 1: was a good American and that he loved his wife.

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Speaker 1: And some think that maybe he was murdered because he

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Speaker 1: wouldn't talk about the wartime activities of certain industrialists, or

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Speaker 1: because he couldn't talk about the wartime activities of these

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Speaker 1: very powerful people. So we have a little history mystery

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Speaker 1: ei there. Um he's ultimately buried in Cambridge, Massachusetts. And uh.

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Speaker 1: One other sort of strange little factoid about this is

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Speaker 1: some people say that the Citron half tracks were being

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Speaker 1: tested from military use. So if you know anything about

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Speaker 1: this kind of stuff, please send us an email at

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Speaker 1: history podcast at how stuffworks dot com. From what Sarah

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Speaker 1: and I were reading, it sounded like this was a

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Speaker 1: particularly compelling period of Canadian history, or you know, just

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Speaker 1: one of those fun stories that people know. So if

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Speaker 1: you know anything more about it than we do, drop

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Speaker 1: us a line. Years after this whole thing went down,

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Speaker 1: film footage from all of these filmmakers who are along

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Speaker 1: in the trip was actually found and a documentary was made.

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Speaker 1: So Katie and I know, I know, we're in s

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Speaker 1: did in and checking this out explosion, and it turned

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Speaker 1: out the whole thing wasn't awash. Some of the information

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Speaker 1: from this trip was used to make the Alaska Highway,

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Speaker 1: so it did indeed have a purpose besides the fantastic

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Speaker 1: title of the Champagne's Ring. But I think that's about it,

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Speaker 1: and I guess it's time for a listener mail now.

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Speaker 1: Sarah and I got a couple of corrections on our

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Speaker 1: Haitian Revolution podcast about Tucson Luberture and the first one

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Speaker 1: is from Doug, who might be my favorite because he

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Speaker 1: starts off with small correction pun intended, and we do

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Speaker 1: love a pun. He says, during Napoleon's autopsy, it was

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Speaker 1: concluded that he was five ft two inches. These measurements were, however,

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Speaker 1: given in French feet and measure that was slightly larger

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Speaker 1: than a standard foot. Napoleon in current terms was about

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Speaker 1: five feet six And we got another comment on the

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Speaker 1: blog from David Markham, who is president of the International

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Speaker 1: Napoleon Anxiety, who said the same thing. So we're sorry

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Speaker 1: for saying that Napoleon was short. I would, however, like

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Speaker 1: to say that he is shorter than the both of us.

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Speaker 1: So short time. That's the story and we're sticking to it.

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Speaker 1: So if you'd like to learn more about the Champagne

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Speaker 1: Safari and all sorts of interesting adventure stories, come to

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Speaker 1: our website at www dot how stuff works dot com

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Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics. Does

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Speaker 1: it how stuff works dot com and be sure to

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Speaker 1: check out this stuff you missed in the History Class

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Speaker 1: blog on the how stuff works dot com home page