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 are right there on display, just
Speaker 1: waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
Speaker 1: One of the most famous locations in all of video
Speaker 1: games is Rapture, an underwater city built by a libertarian
Speaker 1: named Andrew Ryan from the video game BioShock. The idea
Speaker 1: that anyone would go to such lengths just to be
Speaker 1: free of government regulation seems like the stuff of fiction,
Speaker 1: but there is one similar case from actual history that
Speaker 1: shows us some people will do anything to avoid pain taxes.
Speaker 1: Georgio Rosa was an engineer living in northern Italy in
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties. By nineteen fifty seven, he had decided
Speaker 1: to build his own island in the Adriatic Sea east
Speaker 1: of Bologna. The law said that Italy's sovereignty ended about
Speaker 1: seven miles off the coast, and he wanted to be
Speaker 1: free of the uptight rules and regulations of post war society.
Speaker 1: Since he was an engineer, he actually had the ability
Speaker 1: to accomplish his goal. Working with his team of friends,
Speaker 1: he invented a system that would allow for easy construction
Speaker 1: of the island. They took long, strong pipes and secured
Speaker 1: them to the ocean floor. After that, they filled them
Speaker 1: with cement, providing a strong foundation for the island. But
Speaker 1: of course, the Italian government immediately began to get in
Speaker 1: their way, forcing them to stop until they placed signs
Speaker 1: warning boats of their construction. They continued to build after that,
Speaker 1: although they were briefly stopped once again when the harbormaster
Speaker 1: tried to claim that a utility company actually owned the
Speaker 1: land that they were working on. But Georgio was able
Speaker 1: to pre that this wasn't the case. He persevered through
Speaker 1: all this, finishing the concrete foundation before installing a dock
Speaker 1: and stairs leading up to a metal platform. The structure
Speaker 1: was four hundred square meters. This is maybe about the
Speaker 1: size of a basketball court, but Georgia was able to
Speaker 1: fit a lot within this space. The island contained a dock,
Speaker 1: a bar and restaurant, living quarters, and a post office.
Speaker 1: It was completed in nineteen sixty seven after nearly ten
Speaker 1: years of planning and construction. Georgia would invite partiers from
Speaker 1: the mainland to hang out with them on the island,
Speaker 1: which he named Rose Island as a play on his
Speaker 1: last name and because he saw it as a rose
Speaker 1: on the sea. But he got more ambitious the following year,
Speaker 1: declaring that Rose Island was its own nation, exempt from
Speaker 1: Italian law. He started to issue his own stamps and
Speaker 1: even made plans to print his own currency. Naturally, tourists
Speaker 1: began to flock to Rose Island, and he started to
Speaker 1: rake in a profit, profits that he believed he didn't
Speaker 1: owe any tax on. Needless to say, the Italian government
Speaker 1: didn't like this one bit. Now it's hard to say
Speaker 1: exactly what their true concern was. They were missing out
Speaker 1: on some tax revenue, yes, and maybe some political figures
Speaker 1: in the country were simply jealous that they hadn't thought
Speaker 1: of this before. But they claimed that the real issue
Speaker 1: was that the island was in the Adriatic between Italy,
Speaker 1: a member of NATO, and Croatia, which was a communist country,
Speaker 1: and so Italy saw Rose Island as a security risk,
Speaker 1: even claiming that they thought that there might be a
Speaker 1: Russian submarine hidden below the island, so they accused Georgio
Speaker 1: of using the island to smuggle drugs or conduct other
Speaker 1: illegal activity. Again, it's hard to know what the real
Speaker 1: issue was, but clearly they were incensed by the challenge
Speaker 1: to their authority. In June of nineteen sixty eight, just
Speaker 1: a few months after Georgio declared independence, the Italian Navy
Speaker 1: blockaded Rose Island. They demanded that all of its inhabitants leave.
Speaker 1: Georgio and his friends and family had no choice but
Speaker 1: to comply. The Navy then sent divers beneath the waves,
Speaker 1: planting explosives on the foundation that Georgio had worked so
Speaker 1: hard to build. However, when they detonated these, they actually
Speaker 1: failed to destroy the island. This was a testament to
Speaker 1: how well it was constructed. Next, they bombed the platform
Speaker 1: from a distance, but incredibly this still didn't bring the
Speaker 1: island down. However, it was no longer habitable and had
Speaker 1: at the very least been hollowed out. Shortly after, a
Speaker 1: large storm passed through the area, and that finally sunk
Speaker 1: the island into the ocean floor. Georgio tried to appeal
Speaker 1: his case to the European Union, but since he had
Speaker 1: never been recognized by any other nation, he had no
Speaker 1: real legal standing. It has always more or less been
Speaker 1: the case throughout human history that you have to kind
Speaker 1: of force other nations to accept your sovereignty. And if
Speaker 1: you're just one guy with no military or significant resources,
Speaker 1: that's virtually impossible. And so Rose Island faded from memory.
Speaker 1: But while Europe lost track of the curious tale of
Speaker 1: a brief island nation in the Adriatic Sea, history never forgets.
Speaker 1: Hollywood is filled with tragic legends and myths. Take for example,
Speaker 1: the case of one of Hollywood's earliest stars, an actor
Speaker 1: named Roscoe Fatty Arbuckle, who suffered a catastrophic fall from
Speaker 1: grace when a young actress, Virginia Rape died at a
Speaker 1: party that he hosted. There's also the story of Peg
Speaker 1: and Whistle, a British born stage actress who moved an
Speaker 1: ocean and a continent away to pursue a life on film,
Speaker 1: only to despair and jump from the Hollywood sign. One
Speaker 1: of the more modern of these stories concerns Toby Hooper's
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty two paranormal classic Poltergeist and the franchise that
Speaker 1: it sprouted. Some people, it seems, think that this classic
Speaker 1: tale of a family hunted by the supernatural may have
Speaker 1: been victim to a supernatural curse of its own. Although
Speaker 1: many Hollywood legends seem to have murky origins, there's almost
Speaker 1: a universal agreement on this curse's origin story. According to
Speaker 1: numerous accounts, the production team of the original nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: two film, in order to save money, decided to forego
Speaker 1: making what was at the time very expensive plastic bones.
Speaker 1: So to get around the high cost of fake skeletons,
Speaker 1: they simply bought real ones, the kinds that are used
Speaker 1: in medical schools, and you can see them in the
Speaker 1: climax of the film, floating in the pool. But while
Speaker 1: the reasoning was purely economic, it created a fertile soil
Speaker 1: for superstition. The idea that the filmmakers had desecrated the
Speaker 1: dead to save money became the supernatural seed of the curse,
Speaker 1: although it wasn't until after a series of tragic deaths
Speaker 1: of some connected to the franchise that the idea of
Speaker 1: that curse took cold. You see, the Poltergeist trilogy saw
Speaker 1: the early passing of four cast members, statistically an anomaly
Speaker 1: and one that fueled the fire of superstition. The first
Speaker 1: of these tragedies would strike shortly after the film was
Speaker 1: released in theaters. Actor Dominique Dunn, who played the eldest
Speaker 1: daughter of the beleaguered Freeling family, was murdered by her
Speaker 1: ex boyfriend. The sudden, violent death cut short a rising
Speaker 1: talent and was plastered across the headlines for weeks following
Speaker 1: the release of the second film. Actor Julian Beck, who
Speaker 1: portrayed the terrifying villain Reverend Henry Kane, passed from stomach
Speaker 1: cancer in nineteen eighty five, and Will Sampson, the actor
Speaker 1: who played the shaman Taylor, passed from kidney failure and
Speaker 1: post operative complications two years after that. But perhaps the
Speaker 1: most heartbreaking and widely known event occurred in nineteen eighty eight,
Speaker 1: when Heather O'Rourke, the child actress who played the iconic
Speaker 1: Carol Anne Freeling, died at the age of twelve, the
Speaker 1: result of septic shock caused by an undiagnosed intestine stenosis.
Speaker 1: O'Rourke had been filming Poltergeist three at the time, and
Speaker 1: her death occurred mere weeks before the film's release. Despite
Speaker 1: the emotional power of these tragedies, skeptics and historians have
Speaker 1: urged caution in attributing them to these supernatural The curse
Speaker 1: is often viewed through the lens of confirmation bias. In
Speaker 1: any large ensemble cast spanning three films over six years,
Speaker 1: the probability of illness and accident increases, and the trouble
Speaker 1: with something like a curse is that it romanticizes tragedy
Speaker 1: and ignores the mundane realities of mortality and misfortune. It
Speaker 1: flattens lives down to their most macabre details. The same
Speaker 1: was true for Fatty Arbuckle, once one of comedy's great
Speaker 1: lights and mentor to the legendary Buster Keaton. He was
Speaker 1: largely known before the death of Virginia Rape as a kind,
Speaker 1: friendly individual and was found innocent by a court of law,
Speaker 1: but the damage was done. He was purged from the industry,
Speaker 1: spending the rest of his life as a pariah, then
Speaker 1: a cautionary tale. Ultimately, though, these tragedies serve as fascinating
Speaker 1: case studies in how folklore evolves in the modern age.
Speaker 1: It transforms a series of unfortunate events into a cohesive mythos,
Speaker 1: a shadow cast by the movie industry. The curse persists
Speaker 1: because it adds a layer of meta reality to the fiction.
Speaker 1: The fear of the movie bleeding into life is perhaps
Speaker 1: the ultimate horror. While the deaths of Dunn, Beck, Sampson,
Speaker 1: and O'Rourke remain profound tragedies that deserve to be remembered
Speaker 1: with dignity rather than sensationalism, the Curse remains a powerful
Speaker 1: piece of cinematic mythology. It's a story born from a
Speaker 1: mix of cheap production decisions, the randomness of fate, and
Speaker 1: the enduring desire to believe that the stories we tell
Speaker 1: have the power to shape reality. I hope you enjoyed
Speaker 1: today's guided tour through the Cabinet of Curiosities. This show
Speaker 1: was created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership with iHeart Podcasts,
Speaker 1: researched and written by the Grim and Mild team, and
Speaker 1: produced by Jesse Funk. Learn more about the show and
Speaker 1: the people who make it over at Grimandmild dot com
Speaker 1: slash Curiosities. You'll also find a link to the official
Speaker 1: Cabinet of Curiosity's hardcover book, available in bookstores and online,
Speaker 1: as well as ebook and audiobook, and if you're looking
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Speaker 1: patreon dot com. Slash Grimandmild, and until next time, stay curious,