WEBVTT - Complicated 0:00:04.080 --> 0:00:07.440 Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of 0:00:07.480 --> 0:00:14.440 iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of 0:00:14.480 --> 0:00:18.400 the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all 0:00:18.480 --> 0:00:22.119 of these amazing tales are right there on display, just 0:00:22.200 --> 0:00:28.840 waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. 0:00:36.360 --> 0:00:38.840 If you've ever worked in any sort of service job, 0:00:38.880 --> 0:00:42.200 you've probably heard the phrase the customer is always right. 0:00:42.520 --> 0:00:45.120 It's a truism that is hard to believe when you're 0:00:45.159 --> 0:00:48.519 dealing with an irate person or someone who simply doesn't 0:00:48.680 --> 0:00:51.960 like you, and the saying isn't true in the literal sense. 0:00:52.000 --> 0:00:56.120 The customer is rarely actually right all the time. But 0:00:56.200 --> 0:00:58.920 the customer is the one with the money, so they're 0:00:58.920 --> 0:01:01.880 the one who must be appeased. And if you failed 0:01:01.880 --> 0:01:04.560 to do so, you may still hear from a customer 0:01:04.560 --> 0:01:07.920 for days, weeks, or months later, especially if they're not 0:01:08.040 --> 0:01:11.280 happy with your product or your behavior. To quote one 0:01:11.319 --> 0:01:15.080 particularly irate customer complaint, what do you take me for 0:01:15.319 --> 0:01:18.760 that you treat me with such contempt. Actually, that's not 0:01:18.920 --> 0:01:22.119 something a recent customer said. That's a customer from over 0:01:22.200 --> 0:01:24.920 three thousand years ago. I like to take you back 0:01:24.959 --> 0:01:28.640 to seventeen fifty BCE to the ancient city states of 0:01:28.880 --> 0:01:33.279 Er in ancient Mesopotamia. There a man named Nanni spoke 0:01:33.319 --> 0:01:36.840 to a merchant about purchasing some copper ingots. The merchant, 0:01:36.880 --> 0:01:40.400 whose name was a Nasir, wasn't just a copper trader. 0:01:40.640 --> 0:01:44.399 He also sold textiles and foodstuffs on occasion, but his 0:01:44.560 --> 0:01:48.440 primary specialty was copper, at least that's the impression he 0:01:48.480 --> 0:01:51.320 gave to Nanni. He assured Nani that he would provide 0:01:51.400 --> 0:01:54.200 him with copper of excellent quality as soon as he 0:01:54.240 --> 0:01:56.960 got back from del Munn. He made the trip end 0:01:57.040 --> 0:01:59.480 Upon his return, he sent word to Nanni that the 0:01:59.480 --> 0:02:02.760 copper was ready. Nanni dispatched a servant to pick up 0:02:02.760 --> 0:02:05.760 the copper and to pay the merchant for his services. 0:02:06.120 --> 0:02:09.920 It should have been a fairly simple transaction. However, when 0:02:09.919 --> 0:02:13.079 the servant arrived, he had a far less pleasant interaction 0:02:13.200 --> 0:02:16.560 with the merchant than his master had. A Noasir set 0:02:16.560 --> 0:02:19.480 the copper before him, and the servant quickly realized that 0:02:19.520 --> 0:02:22.720 the ingots were not the right grade that Nanni had requested. 0:02:23.040 --> 0:02:26.080 When he pointed this out, Anasir told the servant that 0:02:26.160 --> 0:02:28.600 he can take or leave the copper. If he doesn't 0:02:28.600 --> 0:02:30.359 want it, then he should get out of his sight. 0:02:31.120 --> 0:02:33.880 The servant, not knowing what else to do, paid for 0:02:33.919 --> 0:02:37.320 the copper and returned to his master. Hearing what had 0:02:37.360 --> 0:02:41.200 happened to his servants by this merchant, Nani was outraged. 0:02:41.480 --> 0:02:44.360 He wrote to a Nasir, accusing him of being rude 0:02:44.400 --> 0:02:47.160 and callous and demanding that he sent his money back 0:02:47.320 --> 0:02:50.239 as he would not accept poor quality copper from him. 0:02:50.760 --> 0:02:52.680 And I wish that I could give you more of 0:02:52.720 --> 0:02:55.760 this dramatic story, but we know little else about it 0:02:55.800 --> 0:02:58.639 because all of the information that we have comes from 0:02:58.639 --> 0:03:02.520 the written complaint that Nanni wrote to the merchant a Nasir. 0:03:02.960 --> 0:03:06.760 It was on a clay tablet written in Akkadian Kuneiform. 0:03:07.120 --> 0:03:10.560 The tablet was unearthed between nineteen twenty two and nineteen 0:03:10.680 --> 0:03:13.959 thirty four by an expedition from the British Museum to 0:03:14.080 --> 0:03:17.600 modern day Iraq. At around three thousand, seven hundred and 0:03:17.680 --> 0:03:20.240 seventy five years old. It's thought to be the oldest 0:03:20.280 --> 0:03:24.160 surviving customer complaint in history, and it wasn't the only 0:03:24.200 --> 0:03:26.440 one that they found there. The building they found it 0:03:26.560 --> 0:03:30.800 in contained several more tablets, also addressed to a nosir. 0:03:31.160 --> 0:03:33.920 They were all fairly irate, with some asking about the 0:03:34.000 --> 0:03:37.720 status of their orders, about undelivered orders or the copper 0:03:37.760 --> 0:03:40.840 they were promised by the merchant. Others were requests for 0:03:40.960 --> 0:03:43.560 a batch of copper to pick from. But even if 0:03:43.600 --> 0:03:46.560 most of these dozen or so tablets were all annoyed 0:03:46.600 --> 0:03:50.120 at this one merchant, none were as thoroughly frustrated as 0:03:50.240 --> 0:03:54.160 Nani's message. Will likely never know if a nasir responded 0:03:54.160 --> 0:03:58.760 to the storm of messages and complaints and accusations. Archaeologists 0:03:58.760 --> 0:04:01.560 seemed to think that his business waned in the later years, 0:04:01.600 --> 0:04:05.480 with his house being relatively small compared to other neighboring units. 0:04:05.600 --> 0:04:08.200 The fact that he kept all of his customer complaints 0:04:08.240 --> 0:04:10.680 implied that they were either from the latter days of 0:04:10.720 --> 0:04:13.800 his business or he had a fairly petty nature. Few 0:04:13.880 --> 0:04:16.480 of us get to choose the way that we are remembered. 0:04:16.720 --> 0:04:19.680 Leaving behind a monument or a tomb is beyond even 0:04:19.680 --> 0:04:23.200 the wildest dreams of the ordinary person, so it's curious 0:04:23.240 --> 0:04:25.920 to think about how something like a customer complaint can 0:04:26.000 --> 0:04:29.200 preserve names across the millennia, to the point where you 0:04:29.240 --> 0:04:33.040 can read Nanni's complaint tablet yourself in the British Museum, 0:04:33.240 --> 0:04:36.520 or at least a translation of it. We know just 0:04:36.600 --> 0:04:40.240 how incensed this man was by the merchant's rudeness, making 0:04:40.279 --> 0:04:43.080 the past a little more relatable in spite of the 0:04:43.200 --> 0:04:46.000 vast gulf of time between us. It just goes to 0:04:46.040 --> 0:04:49.680 show when you treat people rudely, they remember it. Perhaps 0:04:49.720 --> 0:04:53.280 a nasir should have remembered the Golden Rule, or well, 0:04:53.440 --> 0:04:56.520 maybe in this case we should say the Copper Rule. 0:05:09.720 --> 0:05:12.360 A man walks into a pet shop in nineteen fifty 0:05:12.400 --> 0:05:15.680 seven and stumbles upon his fortune. It sounds like the 0:05:15.680 --> 0:05:18.400 start of some vaudevillian joke, but this is a true 0:05:18.440 --> 0:05:20.800 story of a man who took the lowest of creatures 0:05:21.080 --> 0:05:24.800 and with them built an empire of novelty, before making 0:05:24.839 --> 0:05:28.000 a strange turn that nearly tore it all down. This 0:05:28.080 --> 0:05:31.479 man was Harold von Braunhutt, born into a Jewish family 0:05:31.520 --> 0:05:35.000 of toymakers in Memphis, Tennessee. In early life he was 0:05:35.040 --> 0:05:38.240 something of a daredevil, racing motorcycles under the name the 0:05:38.320 --> 0:05:42.000 Green Hornet before taking on clients as a talent agent. 0:05:42.240 --> 0:05:45.599 These early forays into entertainment wouldn't pan out, and so 0:05:45.880 --> 0:05:50.440 Harold changed his career path, looking for something new, and 0:05:50.520 --> 0:05:53.240 so on one fateful day, he walked into that pet 0:05:53.279 --> 0:05:56.119 shop where his eyes landed on a bucket that would 0:05:56.160 --> 0:05:59.239 change his life forever. The bucket was filled with water, 0:05:59.360 --> 0:06:03.080 and it contained thousands upon thousands of tiny, little swimmers. 0:06:03.279 --> 0:06:06.240 They were Brian shrimp, which are a type of crustacean. 0:06:06.720 --> 0:06:10.279 Brian shrimp, whose scientific name is Artemia selina, are a 0:06:10.360 --> 0:06:13.640 species who have evolved to live inland in brine pools 0:06:13.720 --> 0:06:17.159 and other salty inland waters. They're very small, the largest 0:06:17.200 --> 0:06:20.159 of them grow only to about fifteen millimeters in length. 0:06:20.680 --> 0:06:24.200 In nature, the tiny arthropods serve an important function in 0:06:24.240 --> 0:06:27.800 their ecosystem. They eat green algae and so keep the 0:06:27.839 --> 0:06:31.280 waters clean, and then they serve as food for migrating birds. 0:06:31.440 --> 0:06:34.479 They've remained little changed since they appeared in the Triassic 0:06:34.520 --> 0:06:38.480 period two hundred and fifty million years ago, and Harold 0:06:38.600 --> 0:06:41.159 was fascinated by the tiny creatures. But what got his 0:06:41.240 --> 0:06:45.520 imagination reeling was a curious biological trait. Their eggs are 0:06:45.520 --> 0:06:48.559 capable of survival of up to two years out of water, 0:06:48.920 --> 0:06:52.360 and are resistant to both heat and cold. This survival 0:06:52.400 --> 0:06:56.120 mechanism made them perfect for shipping long distances. Harold saw 0:06:56.160 --> 0:06:59.520 potential in these shrimp and hired a marine biologist to 0:06:59.560 --> 0:07:03.440 breed the Brian shrimp to best endure shipping conditions. They 0:07:03.480 --> 0:07:06.640 were sold in small kits, complete with packets which included 0:07:06.680 --> 0:07:10.360 the desiccated eggs, an agent to purify the water and salt, 0:07:10.560 --> 0:07:13.760 and instructions to create the perfect environment for the shrimp 0:07:13.840 --> 0:07:17.200 to thrive. And he branded them as sea monkeys and 0:07:17.280 --> 0:07:21.880 hired well known cartoonist Joe Orlando to design all new advertisements. 0:07:22.080 --> 0:07:26.320 These ads showed a fantastical underwater wonderland with a family 0:07:26.400 --> 0:07:30.760 of anthropomorphized pink Brian shrimp smiling up from the page. 0:07:31.040 --> 0:07:33.280 They looked nothing like the product that would arrive to 0:07:33.320 --> 0:07:36.520 eager children's doors, but that mattered very little to sales, 0:07:36.560 --> 0:07:40.000 which skyrocketed as the first ads were released in nineteen 0:07:40.040 --> 0:07:42.960 sixty four. And as a side note, as a kid 0:07:43.000 --> 0:07:46.240 growing up in the eighties who frequented yard sales where 0:07:46.280 --> 0:07:49.760 boxes of old comic books were sold, I distinctly remembered 0:07:49.800 --> 0:07:53.280 these ads over and over again in almost every issue 0:07:53.320 --> 0:07:56.480 I read, and as you'd imagine, Sea Monkeys became a 0:07:56.560 --> 0:08:00.679 smash success, with sales rivaling ant farms and so Harold 0:08:00.760 --> 0:08:03.680 used the same type of marketing for all new inventions, 0:08:04.000 --> 0:08:07.640 selling a seemingly endless line of novelty toys, including X 0:08:07.760 --> 0:08:11.520 ray specs, which ensnared the adolescent mind with promises of 0:08:11.600 --> 0:08:15.400 seeing through clothing, and Crazy Crabs, which were hermit crabs 0:08:15.440 --> 0:08:18.360 sold with their own small tanks. In all, he had 0:08:18.400 --> 0:08:21.800 one hundred and ninety five patents registered with the US government, 0:08:21.920 --> 0:08:24.240 although none of them ever came close to the success 0:08:24.560 --> 0:08:27.640 of Sea Monkeys. One of those patents was very unlike 0:08:27.680 --> 0:08:30.640 the others, though, It was a spring loaded baton used 0:08:30.680 --> 0:08:33.960 for defense, which was named the Kyoga Agent M five. 0:08:34.400 --> 0:08:36.760 The baton had early success when it was used in 0:08:36.760 --> 0:08:40.480 the nineteen eighty one Burt Reynolds film Sharky's Machine. It 0:08:40.640 --> 0:08:44.280 was another success, albeit a modest one, but it uncovered 0:08:44.280 --> 0:08:47.320 and ugly truth about the inventor. Although born into a 0:08:47.400 --> 0:08:50.440 Jewish family, it turns out that von broun Hutt was 0:08:50.480 --> 0:08:53.600 a rabid white nationalist who had added the Vaughan to 0:08:53.840 --> 0:08:57.680 broun Hut to distance himself from his own heritage. In fact, 0:08:57.720 --> 0:09:01.719 he used the proceeds from the Kyoga Agent sales initially 0:09:01.800 --> 0:09:05.000 on a legal defense fund of one Richard G. Butler, 0:09:05.040 --> 0:09:07.040 who happened at the time to be the leader of 0:09:07.080 --> 0:09:10.680 the Aryan Nations Group. When Butler included a mention of 0:09:10.760 --> 0:09:14.520 von Bronhut's donations, it caused a scandal, and further digging 0:09:14.559 --> 0:09:17.680 by national papers discovered that he was well immeshed with 0:09:17.720 --> 0:09:22.000 white nationalist causes. He annually attended the Aryan Nations World 0:09:22.080 --> 0:09:26.319 Congress and had helped buy firearms for the KKK in Ohio. 0:09:26.880 --> 0:09:30.160 His reputation was in tatters, but he abandoned neither his 0:09:30.280 --> 0:09:33.360 ties to white nationalists nor his drive to create and 0:09:33.480 --> 0:09:36.480 market new inventions. When he died from a fall in 0:09:36.480 --> 0:09:39.160 two thousand and three, he was still working on ideas 0:09:39.200 --> 0:09:42.440 for a pet lobster and what he called an instant frog. 0:09:43.120 --> 0:09:46.120 In following years, the company would be sold, and litigation 0:09:46.280 --> 0:09:49.000 over payments to his widow would last for years. By 0:09:49.000 --> 0:09:52.319 the end, she was destitute, although Sea Monkeys continued to 0:09:52.360 --> 0:09:56.240 sell well under the new ownership. Harold von Bronhut's legacy 0:09:56.600 --> 0:10:00.280 is a paradox, a visionary entrepreneur who turned a humble 0:10:00.360 --> 0:10:04.720 Brian shrimp egg into a cultural phenomenon, yet whose personal 0:10:04.760 --> 0:10:09.120 flaws and covert alliances cast a long, unsettling shadow over 0:10:09.160 --> 0:10:12.280 his achievements. In the end, his story serves as a 0:10:12.320 --> 0:10:17.320 reminder that brilliance and moral blindness sometimes coexist. Harold wasn't 0:10:17.360 --> 0:10:20.080 a good man, but he made something that people loved, 0:10:20.360 --> 0:10:24.040 making him a curious example of just how complex and 0:10:24.240 --> 0:10:31.320 sometimes horrible human beings can be. I hope you've enjoyed 0:10:31.320 --> 0:10:35.040 today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for 0:10:35.080 --> 0:10:37.880 free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show 0:10:37.960 --> 0:10:42.960 by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created 0:10:43.000 --> 0:10:46.320 by me Aaron Mankey in partnership with how Stuff Works. 0:10:46.760 --> 0:10:49.880 I make another award winning show called Lore, which is 0:10:50.000 --> 0:10:53.360 a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can 0:10:53.440 --> 0:10:57.320 learn all about it over at the Worldolore dot com. 0:10:57.360 --> 0:11:01.760 And until next time, stay curious. Noo.