Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you so much
Speaker 1: for tuning in now. Before we begin this episode, you
Speaker 1: should make sure that you've listened to the preceding episode,
Speaker 1: Part one of the Great Diamond Hoax of eighteen seventy two. Hi,
Speaker 1: I'm Ben, I'm Noel. And this is super producer Casey Pegram.
Speaker 1: That's that's him in in sound effect for him. There
Speaker 1: he is, there's his his lilting laugh. It's it warms
Speaker 1: my heart. But hey, let's not preamble this too much.
Speaker 1: Let's just jump right back into the Great Diamond Sounds. Good.
Speaker 1: Arnold is still in the game. He gets another one
Speaker 1: fifty grand because he was promised that if the mining
Speaker 1: engineer was impressed, they would get that payments like a bonus.
Speaker 1: And so he sells another three hundred thousand dollars worth
Speaker 1: of stock to Harpending, meaning that uh minus is expenses.
Speaker 1: He has made over uh five hundred thousand dollars. And
Speaker 1: how much is that in today's money. Well, I've been
Speaker 1: in today's dollars, that would be close to eight million
Speaker 1: dollars um. And he was do more like I mean,
Speaker 1: based on this arrangement, he had more coming his way. Uh.
Speaker 1: It was just an absolute stroke of luck that he
Speaker 1: had not been found out. And it just goes to
Speaker 1: show people kind of see what they want to see,
Speaker 1: especially when greed is concerned. You know, you might think
Speaker 1: you're doing your due diligence, but you you want it
Speaker 1: so bad to be real that you're willing to kind
Speaker 1: of suspend your disbelief almost And that's exactly what these
Speaker 1: suckers did. That's exactly what happened. So he was smart, right,
Speaker 1: he was also the brains of the operation. Uh, if
Speaker 1: this is a movie, then what happens next? Has the
Speaker 1: song take the Money and Run playing in the background.
Speaker 1: That's the soundtrack? Who who did that song? Casey? Do
Speaker 1: you know Steve Miller? Right? Yeah, okay, so picture that
Speaker 1: Steve Miller take the Money and Run. He says, look,
Speaker 1: I could probably sell more shares, but you can only
Speaker 1: get lucky for so long. He already moved his family
Speaker 1: back to Kentucky from San Francisco in eighteen seventy two,
Speaker 1: and by the time people found out this was a sham,
Speaker 1: he's left town. How did they figure out that this
Speaker 1: diamond field it seemed too good to be true, was
Speaker 1: in fact a hoax. It was yet another piece of
Speaker 1: happenstance in a story just chuck full of seventy two.
Speaker 1: On a train heading for Oakland from San Francisco, Jane
Speaker 1: and the mining engineer encountered some folks from a government
Speaker 1: survey team led by one Clarence King, who was uh
Speaker 1: something of an adventurer, an ivy league man from Yale,
Speaker 1: uh and a cracker jack geologists. Um. He would actually
Speaker 1: become one of the most well known scientists in California
Speaker 1: at the time. See, he began to suspect that the
Speaker 1: the the guy heading up Clarence King, guy heading up
Speaker 1: the the government survey team that uh Janeen's jewels came
Speaker 1: from this mind that they had just surveyed this two
Speaker 1: d square kilometer area um. And he was concerned that
Speaker 1: a big discovery like that would call himTo question the
Speaker 1: thoroughness with which he and his colleagues surveyed the land
Speaker 1: for the government. So they decided they were going to
Speaker 1: go back and check it out again. Yeah, because again
Speaker 1: they say, it sounds too good to be true, and
Speaker 1: if it is true, that means that we're bad at
Speaker 1: our jobs. That's the problem. They don't want to look bad.
Speaker 1: They're not trying to make money, they're trying to defend
Speaker 1: their credibility. So they sniff around, they find the whereabouts
Speaker 1: of the mine there on the Colorado Wyoming border. They
Speaker 1: start digging and they find gems. So the guys must
Speaker 1: have slacking Arnold must have at least put the gems
Speaker 1: a little bit in the ground, right somewhere shallow grave exactly.
Speaker 1: And these are geologists that we have to remember. So
Speaker 1: they find a ton of gems, but the pattern in
Speaker 1: which they are found doesn't make sense. Every time King
Speaker 1: finds a diamond, he sees twelve rubies. But when people
Speaker 1: dig deeper, they don't find any gems at all. And
Speaker 1: because these guys are geologists, they know that certain gems
Speaker 1: are not found in the same place. They don't naturally
Speaker 1: occur together. And they found these things that would normally,
Speaker 1: if you're just digging them out of the ground, you
Speaker 1: would you would never find in the same mind. And
Speaker 1: then they said, okay, we're seeing more stuff that doesn't fit.
Speaker 1: They're ant hills that have rubies inside them, but they're
Speaker 1: also holes in the side of these aunt hills where
Speaker 1: stones have been shoved in with a stick. Also, it
Speaker 1: doesn't make sense that rubies and diamonds will be found
Speaker 1: so closely together. Hang on, guys, stop the presses, says
Speaker 1: Clarence King. This is a scam. Yes, that aha moment
Speaker 1: for sure, the whole thing is revealed to be a
Speaker 1: massive fraud. King books it for San Francisco to get
Speaker 1: with his investors, his his fellow built investors, to let
Speaker 1: them know they had all been totally screwed. So all
Speaker 1: of them in a tizzy. They find a group in
Speaker 1: town and they I didn't understand that's been They deputized
Speaker 1: them to kind of back them up and and go
Speaker 1: to the fields. What's that? Those were the days? Okay,
Speaker 1: so back then certain people in society imagine this having
Speaker 1: no certain people in society, usually like sheriff's or marshals,
Speaker 1: can deputize citizens in the event of a crisis. You
Speaker 1: need you you need to gang the men to fight
Speaker 1: back against another gang of bad people. Then you just
Speaker 1: find some civilians you trust and you deputize them. Uh
Speaker 1: temporarily the best way to say that as like, imagine
Speaker 1: if uh in Atlanta City police officer or a Fulton
Speaker 1: County sheriff burst into our podcast studio and said, you,
Speaker 1: Casey Pegram, I need you on the case with me.
Speaker 1: Something bad's going down here. How are you with a gun?
Speaker 1: And he tosses you a badge and a gun, Casey,
Speaker 1: and then he says he's deputizing you. Would you what
Speaker 1: would you do? I guess I have to accept, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're not Amanda Shirt. Uh your civic duty right? None
Speaker 1: of that's right. And um, I'm not much of a marksman,
Speaker 1: but you know, I've been to target practice like once
Speaker 1: or twice in my life, So I guess I do
Speaker 1: what I could. I have only ever held the twenty
Speaker 1: two when I was a little I really want to
Speaker 1: shoot a ham gun on one of these days, but
Speaker 1: I don't know if I ever will get to it.
Speaker 1: I did not like the experience, I have to say,
Speaker 1: but I was like, you know, pretty young at the time,
Speaker 1: and my dad was like insistent on, you know, teaching me,
Speaker 1: uh firearm stage you want to make you a man? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I just you know, not to not to do dumb
Speaker 1: stuff with guns. Basically, yeah's smart, that's smart. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it makes sense. And also I want to tell you guys,
Speaker 1: if you ever want to hang out, there are some
Speaker 1: pretty cool indoor ranges not far from here at all.
Speaker 1: We can go. We can you can rent some firearms
Speaker 1: if you want, and then we can you know, I
Speaker 1: don't know, we can practice marksman chip and then we
Speaker 1: can go get lunch somewhere. No no takers. I'll go
Speaker 1: by myself. I'm just you guys could go with you
Speaker 1: like to go. So it's it's good practice for a
Speaker 1: zombie apocalypse, right. Actually, one of the indoor ranges does
Speaker 1: have some of the shooting targets or zombies. That's that's
Speaker 1: kind of fun. Have you seen this thing that's all
Speaker 1: the rage now that the kids are doing it? Acts throwing? Yeah,
Speaker 1: we've got three acts throwing bars and the bars though,
Speaker 1: that's the kicker. You get drunk and throw axes terrifying.
Speaker 1: I don't seem like a really bad idea. They don't
Speaker 1: think they let you throw the axes drinking heavily or anything.
Speaker 1: I mean, if it's a bar, I think it's like
Speaker 1: you can hang out at the bar if they serve alcohol.
Speaker 1: One of them probably doesn't, but if they serve alcohol,
Speaker 1: you can hang out at the bar. And then the
Speaker 1: peep axe throwing is a separate thing, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean? I don't know how you could keep the
Speaker 1: two apart. Is it a separate space? Like? Are their
Speaker 1: axes like flying over towards the bar from people who
Speaker 1: have poor aim? Hang on, No, by the way, keep
Speaker 1: all this in the episode let's check. Can you drink
Speaker 1: alcohol and throw axes? Where there's a will, there's a way.
Speaker 1: It's oddly inspirational. Um, I wouldn't see if there's a
Speaker 1: specific uh law? Is it like a cat cafe where
Speaker 1: there's like a delineation between the cafe part and the
Speaker 1: cat part. Never the twain shall meet kind of thing?
Speaker 1: But again, I think you have a hard time having
Speaker 1: those twains not me. Okay, So there are a couple
Speaker 1: There are a couple of different answers at kick ax throwing.
Speaker 1: Think about it. Uh. The owner says, patrons can drink beer,
Speaker 1: wine and malt beverages, but they can only get a
Speaker 1: maximum of three and there's some safeguards. Hardly they're looking
Speaker 1: out for the looking out for the people. I don't know, man,
Speaker 1: I don't want someone three drinks deep throw at acts
Speaker 1: is absolutely not No. I don't think anybody wants that ben,
Speaker 1: so what ended up happening to to our our hoaxters.
Speaker 1: So they are persuaded to return to the fields with
Speaker 1: their deputized party and general David Colton is the company's
Speaker 1: general manager in addition to being a actual general, he's
Speaker 1: leading this party. In this posse. He finds some rubies
Speaker 1: on top of a rock, and he says it would
Speaker 1: have been as impossible for nature to have deposited them
Speaker 1: as for a person standard in San Francisco to toss
Speaker 1: a moble in the air and have it fall on
Speaker 1: Bunker Hill Monument, which was a very specific disc for
Speaker 1: him and UH. And so when they get this evidence,
Speaker 1: these investors say, all right, this is terrible. We fell
Speaker 1: for it. We are dissolving our company. Everybody in San Francisco,
Speaker 1: UH makes fun of them because this has already been
Speaker 1: in the news. It also like, imagine doing something that
Speaker 1: makes you look so dumb that every media outlet in
Speaker 1: the country spends a week making fun of you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's true. There was there. There was even an article
Speaker 1: in the New York Times UM, which apparently had already
Speaker 1: been reporting on this and thought it was fraud the
Speaker 1: whole time. So there was a real self righteous kind
Speaker 1: of I told you so. Article published on December six,
Speaker 1: or reporters wrote the most remarkable part of the scam
Speaker 1: was that the perpetrators had succeeded in deceiving businessmen and
Speaker 1: capitalists so proverbially shrewd as those of San Francisco, and
Speaker 1: then several years after the hoax was uncovered, Ralston unfortunately
Speaker 1: took his own life. I mean, this was the kind
Speaker 1: of This wasn't just some mean spirited Josh and I mean,
Speaker 1: this was basically like ruined his reputation. In eighteen seventy nine,
Speaker 1: King who was already on his way to becoming a
Speaker 1: legendary adventurer and geologists he founded the U S Geological Survey. So,
Speaker 1: you know, pretty interesting trajectory for some of these characters. Um,
Speaker 1: some sadder than others. Yeah, but we know the question
Speaker 1: on everybody's mind. What happened to Slack and Arnold, the
Speaker 1: original hoaxters themselves, We have a story for you. John
Speaker 1: Slack was assumed to have disappeared from the historical record.
Speaker 1: He fled the country, or some people if he died
Speaker 1: soon after leaving the mining fields, at least at the time,
Speaker 1: but in nineteen sixty seven, a guy named Bruce A.
Speaker 1: Woodard is an accountant that's obsessed with this hoax. Says
Speaker 1: that Slack took a job building caskets in St. Louis
Speaker 1: and eventually moved to White Oaks, New Mexico, where he
Speaker 1: became an undertaker, lived alone, died in eighteen ninety six,
Speaker 1: and left behind in a state of only one thousand,
Speaker 1: six hundred dollars. That's a Woodard's book, Diamonds and the Salt. Again,
Speaker 1: the guy's not a historian, he's an accountant, but he
Speaker 1: dug into this pretty pretty tenaciously. He mind the primary sources. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then another article uh in eighteen seventy two that
Speaker 1: wood are dug up seems to say that Philip Arnold
Speaker 1: bought a two story brick house in Kentucky and he
Speaker 1: moved to his family there. He got five hundred acres
Speaker 1: of property, all in his wife's name, and then became
Speaker 1: a horse breeder who also raised sheeps and pigs. Even
Speaker 1: though Arnold and Slack were indicted in San Francisco for fraud, um,
Speaker 1: nothing came of it. And again, what are the author
Speaker 1: of Diamonds and in the Salt thinks that maybe the
Speaker 1: investors squashed the legal proceedings because they didn't want to
Speaker 1: keep getting clowned in the news. I can see that,
Speaker 1: like they're not getting that money back. It's ober for them.
Speaker 1: They just want to like move on with their lives.
Speaker 1: But here's the thing. This, this entire debacle really had
Speaker 1: some serious, like societal implications. It was just kind of
Speaker 1: a sign that this whole prospecting gold rush mentality, you know,
Speaker 1: had a clock on it, you know, that it was
Speaker 1: in fact a bubble, right because California had experienced so
Speaker 1: many of these frauds. Think about it, Think about all
Speaker 1: of the frauds that would go with, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: the gold rush itself, and of faking reports of oil.
Speaker 1: For example, UM defraud investors of millions of dollars in
Speaker 1: the eighteen sixties. UM. This is from an article from
Speaker 1: Smithsonian mag that goes into all of the implications with
Speaker 1: the Great Diamond Hoax. And in that article, Patricia O'Toole,
Speaker 1: the author of Money and Morals in America History, has
Speaker 1: some great quotes that sums this idea. I see the
Speaker 1: diamond hoax as one of a long line of scams
Speaker 1: made possible by the fact that the United States truly
Speaker 1: was a land of opportunity. Many a legitimate fortune seemed
Speaker 1: to be made overnight, so it was particularly easy for
Speaker 1: a con artist to convince a gullible American that he
Speaker 1: too could wake up a millionaire. Yeah. Yeah, I want
Speaker 1: to point out too that Arnold was aware of this
Speaker 1: indictment and had a had a crazy quote he told
Speaker 1: the paper in Louisville when when they asked him to
Speaker 1: go on record about these indictments, he said this. He said,
Speaker 1: I've employed counsel myself a good Henry rifle, So he
Speaker 1: basically that's such a Kentucky thing to say. Eventually does
Speaker 1: he does settle out of court with William Lentz, specifically
Speaker 1: for a hundred and fifty grand. That's the only time
Speaker 1: he ever did something like admitting he had anything to
Speaker 1: do with his diamond hoax. Eighteen seventy three, he becomes
Speaker 1: a banker, and then he gets in a fight with
Speaker 1: another banker in eighteen seventy eight that leads to a shootout.
Speaker 1: Three people are injured. Arnold gets a shotgun blast to
Speaker 1: the shoulder. This is back when banking disagreements were much
Speaker 1: more heated. Oh yeah, stuff in the streets, um, and
Speaker 1: then I'm sorry, and then what happens, Oh, he just
Speaker 1: gets pneumonia and dies. Okay, that's a little enticlimactic, but
Speaker 1: it happens. It comes for us all. Yeah, well, uh,
Speaker 1: there is a mystery because we still don't know what
Speaker 1: happened to some of those hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Speaker 1: There's a treasure story buried in here somewhere them. Well,
Speaker 1: they definitely weren't reporting it on their taxes. You know.
Speaker 1: That's the end of the diamond hoax. I think you're
Speaker 1: I think you're right that this was the the tipping
Speaker 1: point or watershed moment that that it kind of took
Speaker 1: the rose tendant glasses off people's eyes. There was one
Speaker 1: scam too many, and I think it was you know
Speaker 1: again like like we like we quoted from that Smithsonian article.
Speaker 1: These types of scams were wide rife, as they say
Speaker 1: in brass I, a British comedy show that I love
Speaker 1: very much, But they weren't to this degree. They weren't
Speaker 1: this magnitude of hoax that just kept going and kept
Speaker 1: pulling more people in. And all of the perfect storm
Speaker 1: of circumstances that led to this being perpetrated for as
Speaker 1: long as it was and to just builk so many
Speaker 1: people have so much money. Uh, that really opened some
Speaker 1: people's eyes. Agreed, Yeah, agreed. And uh, you know, I
Speaker 1: think the big lesson that we can all take away
Speaker 1: from this while we listen here today in is that,
Speaker 1: by God, if you're starting a posse deputy, pegram is
Speaker 1: uh is the guy you just can't go wrong with,
Speaker 1: you know? Uh, Casey, I have this vision of you
Speaker 1: being in like a director's cut of Tombstone. You guys
Speaker 1: remember Tombstone. I'm your Huckleberry? Yeah yeah, Casey, pegram is
Speaker 1: our is the new Huckleberry You? Okay? With that? Noll
Speaker 1: I always wanted to be the Val Kilmer too. It's
Speaker 1: like the best one. Who's Who's what what is he
Speaker 1: referring to? And he says, I'm your huckleberries. I mean
Speaker 1: like the pie. He's like, I'm I'm Finn. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: probably a referenced the Huckleberry Finn. He's He's saying, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm the guy will hang out with you. That makes sense? Okay, Casey.
Speaker 1: I I'd love it if you would be our collective huckleberry.
Speaker 1: You are kind of I'd be honored now, which one
Speaker 1: am I Wyatt? Or Who's who? Who? Val Kilmer? He
Speaker 1: was Doc Holiday? Or yeah, yeah he's so h oh
Speaker 1: wait then that with me, Casey the dotic, I would
Speaker 1: only want to be Doc. It's the best character. In
Speaker 1: my opinion, I gotta cut down on my drinking if
Speaker 1: I'm Doc Holiday. That's true. You know, don't you have
Speaker 1: the consumption? Yeah? Yeah, you also have a very complex
Speaker 1: romantic situation. Yeah. Doc Holiday had some had some. Uh.
Speaker 1: He's a very interesting character. He's the most fleshed out
Speaker 1: in my opinion. Not to be confused with the Michael J.
Speaker 1: Fox vehicle Doc Hollywood, right, And not to be confused
Speaker 1: with uh, what was it Kurt Russell in Tombstone he
Speaker 1: was Yeah, okay. Not not to be confused with his
Speaker 1: other Western bone Tomahawk, which is a whole different vibe
Speaker 1: that one gets a little, uh gets a little grizzly
Speaker 1: a bit yes, um, but but check it out. It's
Speaker 1: definitely not for everyone. It's it's very it's like it's
Speaker 1: like a green Inferno level violence. But it's strange, isn't it.
Speaker 1: Did Arnold learn anything? He got out weigh clean pretty much.
Speaker 1: He didn't even have to give that a hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty thou dollars back. We're not condoning his actions, folks,
Speaker 1: but we have to admit that these scams and these
Speaker 1: cons are historically fascinating. Thank you so much for tuning in.
Speaker 1: Let us know some of your favorite lesser known scams
Speaker 1: or cons throughout world's history. We are all ears, the
Speaker 1: as usual. The more ridiculous, the better. Uh. If you
Speaker 1: want to join the conversation, you can talk to us
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Speaker 1: gonna ask you a question when you when you click
Speaker 1: on the link to join, you have to name either
Speaker 1: Noel or Casey or myself or all three of us,
Speaker 1: or just say something that made us laugh. I think
Speaker 1: somebody recently when it said name one of the hosts,
Speaker 1: they say cookie monster, and I was like, that's fine.
Speaker 1: You know we've all been a cookie monster at one
Speaker 1: point in our lives. Yeah. He probably referring to me, though,
Speaker 1: I think so. I think you're being unfair to yourself.
Speaker 1: I eat more cookies than you. Yeah, but I don't
Speaker 1: really have a sweet tooth. Nope. Wait, I ate a
Speaker 1: cookie a week and a half ago. Okay, was it good?
Speaker 1: What kind of cookie was. It was like oatmeal chocolate chip.
Speaker 1: It just wasn't my You know, hey, if you want
Speaker 1: to check us out outside of the Facebook, you can
Speaker 1: do so on Instagram. For me, I am at how
Speaker 1: Now Noel Brown, and I am at Ben Bolan on
Speaker 1: Instagram I see some of my recent misadventures. And I
Speaker 1: am at Ben Bolan hs W on Twitter, where I
Speaker 1: recently recently learned I've been studying Mandarin off and on.
Speaker 1: I recently learned on the Internet that the characters and
Speaker 1: Mandarin for Penguin translate to something like business goose. So
Speaker 1: that's the level of discourse you'll find on my Twitter.
Speaker 1: I just want to keep everybody's expectations low. Huge thanks
Speaker 1: to super producer Casey Pegram, Alex Williams, who composed our theme,
Speaker 1: Christopher Hascio is always here in Spira and that devious
Speaker 1: quister who are you here from him again one of
Speaker 1: these days? Oh yeah. Huge Thanks to Eve's Jeff Cote.
Speaker 1: Huge thanks to Gabe you see out our research associate
Speaker 1: who you know. Obviously you'd be cool to have Gabe
Speaker 1: on the show at some point. I would love that.
Speaker 1: Let's do that. We'll see the folks. For more podcasts
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