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: If you've ever worked in any sort of service job,
Speaker 1: you've probably heard the phrase the customer is always right.
Speaker 1: It's a truism that is hard to believe when you're
Speaker 1: dealing with an irate person or someone who simply doesn't
Speaker 1: like you, and the saying isn't true in the literal sense.
Speaker 1: The customer is rarely actually right all the time. But
Speaker 1: the customer is the one with the money, so they're
Speaker 1: the one who must be appeased. And if you failed
Speaker 1: to do so, you may still hear from a customer
Speaker 1: for days, weeks, or months later, especially if they're not
Speaker 1: happy with your product or your behavior. To quote one
Speaker 1: particularly irate customer complaint, what do you take me for
Speaker 1: that you treat me with such contempt. Actually, that's not
Speaker 1: something a recent customer said. That's a customer from over
Speaker 1: three thousand years ago. I like to take you back
Speaker 1: to seventeen fifty BCE to the ancient city states of
Speaker 1: Er in ancient Mesopotamia. There a man named Nanni spoke
Speaker 1: to a merchant about purchasing some copper ingots. The merchant,
Speaker 1: whose name was a Nasir, wasn't just a copper trader.
Speaker 1: He also sold textiles and foodstuffs on occasion, but his
Speaker 1: primary specialty was copper, at least that's the impression he
Speaker 1: gave to Nanni. He assured Nani that he would provide
Speaker 1: him with copper of excellent quality as soon as he
Speaker 1: got back from del Munn. He made the trip end
Speaker 1: Upon his return, he sent word to Nanni that the
Speaker 1: copper was ready. Nanni dispatched a servant to pick up
Speaker 1: the copper and to pay the merchant for his services.
Speaker 1: It should have been a fairly simple transaction. However, when
Speaker 1: the servant arrived, he had a far less pleasant interaction
Speaker 1: with the merchant than his master had. A Noasir set
Speaker 1: the copper before him, and the servant quickly realized that
Speaker 1: the ingots were not the right grade that Nanni had requested.
Speaker 1: When he pointed this out, Anasir told the servant that
Speaker 1: he can take or leave the copper. If he doesn't
Speaker 1: want it, then he should get out of his sight.
Speaker 1: The servant, not knowing what else to do, paid for
Speaker 1: the copper and returned to his master. Hearing what had
Speaker 1: happened to his servants by this merchant, Nani was outraged.
Speaker 1: He wrote to a Nasir, accusing him of being rude
Speaker 1: and callous and demanding that he sent his money back
Speaker 1: as he would not accept poor quality copper from him.
Speaker 1: And I wish that I could give you more of
Speaker 1: this dramatic story, but we know little else about it
Speaker 1: because all of the information that we have comes from
Speaker 1: the written complaint that Nanni wrote to the merchant a Nasir.
Speaker 1: It was on a clay tablet written in Akkadian Kuneiform.
Speaker 1: The tablet was unearthed between nineteen twenty two and nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty four by an expedition from the British Museum to
Speaker 1: modern day Iraq. At around three thousand, seven hundred and
Speaker 1: seventy five years old. It's thought to be the oldest
Speaker 1: surviving customer complaint in history, and it wasn't the only
Speaker 1: one that they found there. The building they found it
Speaker 1: in contained several more tablets, also addressed to a nosir.
Speaker 1: They were all fairly irate, with some asking about the
Speaker 1: status of their orders, about undelivered orders or the copper
Speaker 1: they were promised by the merchant. Others were requests for
Speaker 1: a batch of copper to pick from. But even if
Speaker 1: most of these dozen or so tablets were all annoyed
Speaker 1: at this one merchant, none were as thoroughly frustrated as
Speaker 1: Nani's message. Will likely never know if a nasir responded
Speaker 1: to the storm of messages and complaints and accusations. Archaeologists
Speaker 1: seemed to think that his business waned in the later years,
Speaker 1: with his house being relatively small compared to other neighboring units.
Speaker 1: The fact that he kept all of his customer complaints
Speaker 1: implied that they were either from the latter days of
Speaker 1: his business or he had a fairly petty nature. Few
Speaker 1: of us get to choose the way that we are remembered.
Speaker 1: Leaving behind a monument or a tomb is beyond even
Speaker 1: the wildest dreams of the ordinary person, so it's curious
Speaker 1: to think about how something like a customer complaint can
Speaker 1: preserve names across the millennia, to the point where you
Speaker 1: can read Nanni's complaint tablet yourself in the British Museum,
Speaker 1: or at least a translation of it. We know just
Speaker 1: how incensed this man was by the merchant's rudeness, making
Speaker 1: the past a little more relatable in spite of the
Speaker 1: vast gulf of time between us. It just goes to
Speaker 1: show when you treat people rudely, they remember it. Perhaps
Speaker 1: a nasir should have remembered the Golden Rule, or well,
Speaker 1: maybe in this case we should say the Copper Rule.
Speaker 1: A man walks into a pet shop in nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: seven and stumbles upon his fortune. It sounds like the
Speaker 1: start of some vaudevillian joke, but this is a true
Speaker 1: story of a man who took the lowest of creatures
Speaker 1: and with them built an empire of novelty, before making
Speaker 1: a strange turn that nearly tore it all down. This
Speaker 1: man was Harold von Braunhutt, born into a Jewish family
Speaker 1: of toymakers in Memphis, Tennessee. In early life he was
Speaker 1: something of a daredevil, racing motorcycles under the name the
Speaker 1: Green Hornet before taking on clients as a talent agent.
Speaker 1: These early forays into entertainment wouldn't pan out, and so
Speaker 1: Harold changed his career path, looking for something new, and
Speaker 1: so on one fateful day, he walked into that pet
Speaker 1: shop where his eyes landed on a bucket that would
Speaker 1: change his life forever. The bucket was filled with water,
Speaker 1: and it contained thousands upon thousands of tiny, little swimmers.
Speaker 1: They were Brian shrimp, which are a type of crustacean.
Speaker 1: Brian shrimp, whose scientific name is Artemia selina, are a
Speaker 1: species who have evolved to live inland in brine pools
Speaker 1: and other salty inland waters. They're very small, the largest
Speaker 1: of them grow only to about fifteen millimeters in length.
Speaker 1: In nature, the tiny arthropods serve an important function in
Speaker 1: their ecosystem. They eat green algae and so keep the
Speaker 1: waters clean, and then they serve as food for migrating birds.
Speaker 1: They've remained little changed since they appeared in the Triassic
Speaker 1: period two hundred and fifty million years ago, and Harold
Speaker 1: was fascinated by the tiny creatures. But what got his
Speaker 1: imagination reeling was a curious biological trait. Their eggs are
Speaker 1: capable of survival of up to two years out of water,
Speaker 1: and are resistant to both heat and cold. This survival
Speaker 1: mechanism made them perfect for shipping long distances. Harold saw
Speaker 1: potential in these shrimp and hired a marine biologist to
Speaker 1: breed the Brian shrimp to best endure shipping conditions. They
Speaker 1: were sold in small kits, complete with packets which included
Speaker 1: the desiccated eggs, an agent to purify the water and salt,
Speaker 1: and instructions to create the perfect environment for the shrimp
Speaker 1: to thrive. And he branded them as sea monkeys and
Speaker 1: hired well known cartoonist Joe Orlando to design all new advertisements.
Speaker 1: These ads showed a fantastical underwater wonderland with a family
Speaker 1: of anthropomorphized pink Brian shrimp smiling up from the page.
Speaker 1: They looked nothing like the product that would arrive to
Speaker 1: eager children's doors, but that mattered very little to sales,
Speaker 1: which skyrocketed as the first ads were released in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty four. And as a side note, as a kid
Speaker 1: growing up in the eighties who frequented yard sales where
Speaker 1: boxes of old comic books were sold, I distinctly remembered
Speaker 1: these ads over and over again in almost every issue
Speaker 1: I read, and as you'd imagine, Sea Monkeys became a
Speaker 1: smash success, with sales rivaling ant farms and so Harold
Speaker 1: used the same type of marketing for all new inventions,
Speaker 1: selling a seemingly endless line of novelty toys, including X
Speaker 1: ray specs, which ensnared the adolescent mind with promises of
Speaker 1: seeing through clothing, and Crazy Crabs, which were hermit crabs
Speaker 1: sold with their own small tanks. In all, he had
Speaker 1: one hundred and ninety five patents registered with the US government,
Speaker 1: although none of them ever came close to the success
Speaker 1: of Sea Monkeys. One of those patents was very unlike
Speaker 1: the others, though, It was a spring loaded baton used
Speaker 1: for defense, which was named the Kyoga Agent M five.
Speaker 1: The baton had early success when it was used in
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighty one Burt Reynolds film Sharky's Machine. It
Speaker 1: was another success, albeit a modest one, but it uncovered
Speaker 1: and ugly truth about the inventor. Although born into a
Speaker 1: Jewish family, it turns out that von broun Hutt was
Speaker 1: a rabid white nationalist who had added the Vaughan to
Speaker 1: broun Hut to distance himself from his own heritage. In fact,
Speaker 1: he used the proceeds from the Kyoga Agent sales initially
Speaker 1: on a legal defense fund of one Richard G. Butler,
Speaker 1: who happened at the time to be the leader of
Speaker 1: the Aryan Nations Group. When Butler included a mention of
Speaker 1: von Bronhut's donations, it caused a scandal, and further digging
Speaker 1: by national papers discovered that he was well immeshed with
Speaker 1: white nationalist causes. He annually attended the Aryan Nations World
Speaker 1: Congress and had helped buy firearms for the KKK in Ohio.
Speaker 1: His reputation was in tatters, but he abandoned neither his
Speaker 1: ties to white nationalists nor his drive to create and
Speaker 1: market new inventions. When he died from a fall in
Speaker 1: two thousand and three, he was still working on ideas
Speaker 1: for a pet lobster and what he called an instant frog.
Speaker 1: In following years, the company would be sold, and litigation
Speaker 1: over payments to his widow would last for years. By
Speaker 1: the end, she was destitute, although Sea Monkeys continued to
Speaker 1: sell well under the new ownership. Harold von Bronhut's legacy
Speaker 1: is a paradox, a visionary entrepreneur who turned a humble
Speaker 1: Brian shrimp egg into a cultural phenomenon, yet whose personal
Speaker 1: flaws and covert alliances cast a long, unsettling shadow over
Speaker 1: his achievements. In the end, his story serves as a
Speaker 1: reminder that brilliance and moral blindness sometimes coexist. Harold wasn't
Speaker 1: a good man, but he made something that people loved,
Speaker 1: making him a curious example of just how complex and
Speaker 1: sometimes horrible human beings can be. I hope you've enjoyed
Speaker 1: today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for
Speaker 1: free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show
Speaker 1: by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created
Speaker 1: by me Aaron Mankey in partnership with how Stuff Works.
Speaker 1: I make another award winning show called Lore, which is
Speaker 1: a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can
Speaker 1: learn all about it over at the Worldolore dot com.
Speaker 1: And until next time, stay curious. Noo.