Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Menke'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: Sleep can be elusive for a lot of us. It
Speaker 1: might be a busy job keeping us up at nights,
Speaker 1: or a new baby, or even a noisy neighbor. But
Speaker 1: on those rare occasions when we can sleep for more
Speaker 1: than a few hours, we wake up feeling fresh and
Speaker 1: ready to tackle whatever's ahead of us. One man, though,
Speaker 1: didn't believe in a good night's sleep. For him, forty
Speaker 1: winks was about thirty nine too many. His name was
Speaker 1: Albert Herpin, and while he was from Trenton, New Jersey,
Speaker 1: he was born in France in eighteen sixty two. Very
Speaker 1: little is known about his life up until the turn
Speaker 1: of the twentieth century, but that's when things began to
Speaker 1: get interesting. In nineteen oh four, an article was published
Speaker 1: in The New York Times about mister Herpin. It listed
Speaker 1: his occupation as hustler, or someone who tends to the
Speaker 1: horses at an inn. But that's not what made him newsworthy.
Speaker 1: The reason he was in the papers was because he
Speaker 1: did not sleep. This wasn't a one off occurrence either,
Speaker 1: like staying up all night to cram for a big
Speaker 1: test the next day. Albert Herpin had not slept in
Speaker 1: ten years now. According to the National Institute of Health,
Speaker 1: we need sleep for a variety of reasons. These include
Speaker 1: keeping our metabolism in check, fighting illness, and improving our
Speaker 1: brain health. We're at risk of a number of diseases
Speaker 1: and complications if we don't get enough sleep each night.
Speaker 1: But Herpin didn't care. In fact, he advocated against sleep.
Speaker 1: Another article published in nineteen twelve in New York's The
Speaker 1: Evening World newspaper stated how he quote believes a nap
Speaker 1: of only five minutes duration would give him new life. Apparently,
Speaker 1: he would sit in an armchair every night and read
Speaker 1: the newspaper, never closing his eyes. To him he was resting,
Speaker 1: but never sleeping. For anyone else, this would have severely
Speaker 1: affected a person's health and well being. Experts say that
Speaker 1: losing even an hour and a half of sleep each
Speaker 1: night can impact our alertness, our moods our memory. We
Speaker 1: can feel fatigued and become uncoordinated, but Herpin said that
Speaker 1: he never felt any negative effects. Papers like The New
Speaker 1: York Times claimed, I quote, he is in perfect health
Speaker 1: and does not seem to suffer any discomfort from his
Speaker 1: remarkable condition, But the reason for his chronic insomnia is troubling,
Speaker 1: to say the least. A reporter for The Times Picayune
Speaker 1: in New Orleans quoted him as saying that he hadn't
Speaker 1: slept since his son was born. Four years later, his
Speaker 1: wife died, and the shock of losing her left him
Speaker 1: struck with anxiety. It had gotten so bad he couldn't sleep.
Speaker 1: He still went through the motions of getting ready for bed,
Speaker 1: crawling under the covers and laying his head down. He
Speaker 1: just wouldn't close his eyes. Instead, he would rest fully
Speaker 1: awake and then get up at five o'clock every morning
Speaker 1: to start the day again. Herpin's condition was so strange
Speaker 1: it piqued the curiosity of a facility in Vienna, which
Speaker 1: offered him ten thousand dollars to study him. Pretty soon,
Speaker 1: other institutions followed suit, but he rejected most of their offers.
Speaker 1: He even received a few marriage proposals here and there,
Speaker 1: but instead chose to remain unwed. And Yet, according to
Speaker 1: some reports, Herpin did allow himself to be observed by
Speaker 1: at least one group of doctors who watched him for
Speaker 1: one week. Not once during those seven days did he
Speaker 1: catch a nap or get a full night's sleep. He
Speaker 1: remained awake and alert the whole time, confusing everyone looking on. Sadly,
Speaker 1: none of the attention he received had panned out into
Speaker 1: something lucrative. Later on in Herpin's life, he found himself
Speaker 1: broke and living in a one room shed by himself.
Speaker 1: He had no bed and would stay up every night
Speaker 1: reading news papers to pass the time. During the day,
Speaker 1: he'd perform random jobs around town, like street sweeping, but
Speaker 1: it doesn't seem like his lack of sleep hurt him
Speaker 1: that much. He died in nineteen forty seven at the
Speaker 1: age of ninety four. So were the reports true. Was
Speaker 1: this one man able to beat the odds and stay
Speaker 1: awake for three decades? It's hard to say. One teen
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty four managed to stay awake for eleven
Speaker 1: days straight to win his school science fair, and the
Speaker 1: effort earned him a world record, which still hasn't been beaten.
Speaker 1: But there's also the idea that Herpin suffered from something
Speaker 1: called paradoxical insomnia, in which he only thought that he'd
Speaker 1: been awake, when in fact he'd been asleep the whole time.
Speaker 1: Whatever the case, Albert Herpin was a unique individual. He
Speaker 1: ignored the experts and even his own body to chart
Speaker 1: his own path. But whether he really did stay awake
Speaker 1: for almost thirty years or not remains to be seen,
Speaker 1: and trying to figure out the answer to that question, well,
Speaker 1: that's enough to keep you up at night. It's one
Speaker 1: of the most well known and watched sporting events in America.
Speaker 1: Every February, two football teams go head to head to
Speaker 1: determine who is the biggest and best team of the
Speaker 1: year in a match known as the Super Bowl. Tickets
Speaker 1: can go for thousands of dollars. The halftime show is
Speaker 1: performed by some of the most popular musicians in the world,
Speaker 1: and the biggest draw is, of course, the commercials. But
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty five, the Super Bowl drew a very
Speaker 1: different kind of crowd, a crowd that had no idea
Speaker 1: what it was walking into. It was December of that year,
Speaker 1: and the Washington Redskins had become a pretty popular team.
Speaker 1: Tickets were getting harder to come by, and the waiting
Speaker 1: list for season tickets was impossibly long. But that didn't
Speaker 1: stop one up and coming television station from making a
Speaker 1: name for itself. It was known as Flagship International Sports Television,
Speaker 1: and it sent out three thousand invitations to a special
Speaker 1: brunch along with a pair of complimentary tickets to a
Speaker 1: Redskins Bengals game. But there was more. In addition to
Speaker 1: the meal and the game, attendees could also enter a
Speaker 1: raffle to win a number of prizes. These included ten
Speaker 1: Redskins season tickets and for one lucky winner, a trip
Speaker 1: to New Orleans for Super Bowl twenty. Not everyone was
Speaker 1: able to make their way to the Washington Convention Center
Speaker 1: for the game, but one hundred and sixty seven people
Speaker 1: called the special number on the invitation to let the
Speaker 1: organizers know that they were coming. Finally, on December fifteenth
Speaker 1: of nineteen eighty five, the big day arrived. Guests had
Speaker 1: been told to come to the Convention Center at nine am,
Speaker 1: but a lot of people showed up much earlier, eager
Speaker 1: to eat and secure their chance at winning a trip
Speaker 1: to that year's Super Bowl. Oh and reporters had also
Speaker 1: been invited to document the events for the local papers,
Speaker 1: and so after their meals, groups of ten to twenty
Speaker 1: guests were whisked off to a special room, or the
Speaker 1: MC A man named Louis McKinney spoke for a few
Speaker 1: minutes before giving them their big prize, a pair of handcuffs.
Speaker 1: McKinney would yell the word surprise, and an instant later
Speaker 1: the auditorium would swarm with US Marshals, who took each
Speaker 1: winner into custody. There had never been any tickets, nor
Speaker 1: a raffle. Mister McKinney had actually been the chief of
Speaker 1: Enforcement Operations for the US Marshals. All the people in
Speaker 1: the lobby who had welcomed the winners into the convention
Speaker 1: center had either been local cops or US Marshals as well.
Speaker 1: What everyone had actually won was a one way trip
Speaker 1: to prison, courtesy of a secret plot known as Operation Flagship.
Speaker 1: There was no Flagship International Sports Television or FIST, but
Speaker 1: there was a Fugitive Investigative Strike Team, an elite group
Speaker 1: of US Marshals operating under the same acronym. Their goal
Speaker 1: was to track down and capture the worst of the
Speaker 1: worst when it came to wanted fugitives, but doing so
Speaker 1: on an individual basis was going to be expensive and
Speaker 1: time consuming, so instead, Chief Deputy US Marshal Tobias Roche
Speaker 1: and US Marshall Herbert Rutherford the Third developed a coordinated
Speaker 1: effort to send invitations to the last known addresses of
Speaker 1: about three thousand fugitives. The hope was that the recipients
Speaker 1: would be blinded by the chance of going to the
Speaker 1: Super Bowl and ignore all the red flags in front
Speaker 1: of them. What red flags might those be? You're asking? Well,
Speaker 1: For one, the invitations had been signed by I Michael Dettna,
Speaker 1: whose last name was the word wanted is spelled backwards.
Speaker 1: There was also the business manager who handled calls from
Speaker 1: the criminals saying that they were coming. His name was
Speaker 1: Marcus Kran that's nark spelled backwards, and anyone put on
Speaker 1: hold had to listen to one specially chosen piece of music,
Speaker 1: the song I Fought the Law. And yet, despite all
Speaker 1: the warning signs that this was a setup, over one
Speaker 1: hundred wanted criminals showed up at the Washington Convention Center
Speaker 1: to eat a free meal and watch a football game. Instead,
Speaker 1: they were caught and cuffed and what's become known as
Speaker 1: one of the biggest mass arrest events in US law
Speaker 1: enforcement history. And this wasn't the only one either. Similar
Speaker 1: schemes were also conducted in New York and Connecticut. In total,
Speaker 1: over thirty three hundred wanted fugitives were caught by the
Speaker 1: Fugitive Investigative Strike Team during the nineteen eighties. Because sometimes
Speaker 1: the swift hand of justice needs to become a fist
Speaker 1: to take on crime. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided
Speaker 1: tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by visiting
Speaker 1: Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by me
Speaker 1: Aaron Mankey in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make
Speaker 1: another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast,
Speaker 1: book series, and television show, and you can learn all
Speaker 1: about it over at the Worldolore dot com. And until
Speaker 1: next time, stay curious.