Smoking Gun

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Welcome to Aaron Menke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim and Mild.

Our world is full of the unexplainable.

And if history is an open book, all of these amazing tales are right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.

Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.

Every form of art has to earn its legitimacy.

Whether it's theater, film, comic books, or video games, for some reason, it's a very human trait to look down upon emerging forms of entertainment as lesser to what came before.

Theater seems like the most prestigious medium in modern entertainment, but there was a time when the theater was seen as a disreputable place where actors were seen as little better than thugs.

In 1597, theaters throughout London closed due to an outbreak of the plague.

For those of us who can remember the year 2020, this sounds familiar.

An actor named Richard Burbage ran his own theater company, the Lord Chamberlain's Men, and when theaters reopened later that year, the company was anxious to get back to work.

But there was a problem.

Although Richard owned the theater they performed at, literally just called The Theater, he did not own the land.

That belonged to one Giles Allen, a Puritan that Richard had a history of fighting with.

Giles decided that he didn't want to contribute to the sinful world of the theater any longer, and so he refused to allow the Lord Chamberlain's men to resume their performances.

Not only that, but he claimed that since the theater was on his land, it belonged to him.

And obviously this stung Richard, as the theater had been in his family for decades.

Now, all his company could do was move to a different theater his family owned and resume their performances.

But he couldn't just let go of what happened with Giles.

It was an injustice, an insult to his family's name.

So he reached out to the members of his company, offering them a business deal.

If they could each cover 10% of the costs of constructing a new theater, then they could receive 10% of all the profits going forward.

Not only that, but Richard knew a way that they could cut down on their construction costs if they were willing to do some of the legwork themselves.

Late at night on December 28th of 1518, Richard and his troop of actors armed themselves with various construction tools and with swords.

They set out in the night, arriving at the site of their old theater.

Then they proceeded to dismantle it piece by by piece.

When surrounding onlookers began to notice what they were doing, they chased them off.

They didn't worry about someone alerting Giles Allen, as Richard had made sure that he was away in the country celebrating Christmas.

Now, history differs here on just how quickly the men were able to take down the theater.

It was rather large, with a stage and a three-sided triple-decker proscenium.

Some accounts say that, despite its size, they deconstructed the whole thing in one night.

Some historians are more conservative, though, and say that it took them a few days.

Regardless, when Giles Allen returned to London, he was furious to find that his land was empty.

He sued Richard, claiming that he had caused a huge stir in the neighborhood, violently threatened the locals, and trespassed on his land.

But the courts wouldn't hear it.

They found that the original contract between Richard's family and Giles stated that they definitely owned the theater and could do with it as they pleased.

With Giles defeated, Richard and his men could finally construct their new theater on new land that they leased from a much more reasonable landlord.

In the coming months, one of Richard's young playwrights produced several plays that were big hits with audiences.

Richard pioneered many of the leading roles, including characters such as Julius Caesar, Romeo, Hamlet, and King Lear.

The young playwright was William Shakespeare, and the new theater was The Globe.

Now, not everything was sunshine and roses from there on out.

Although the theater became immensely profitable, it did have its ups and downs.

In 1613, for example, a cannon misfired during a production of Henry VIII, igniting the theater and burning it to the ground.

The theater was rebuilt, but by this point Shakespeare had retired.

He died just a few years later in 1616.

Richard Burbage followed in 1619.

Both men were in their early 50s when they passed away, and although they experienced great success later in life, they spent many years struggling to be respected in a fickle culture that wasn't sure how they felt about the theater.

In fact, just a few decades after their deaths in 1642, the new right-wing, ultra-conservative Puritan government in England shut down all theater for nearly two decades before the monarchy was restored and ended this oppressive policy.

If Giles Allen had still been alive, he might have seen this as a bit of revenge.

But of course, Richard and Shakespeare won out in the end.

with their work going on to become some of the most impactful art in Western civilization.

It's curious to think that this would never have been possible if they didn't set out one night in 1518 to steal back what was rightfully theirs.

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In the American court system, truth is supposed supposed to be sacrosanct, but there's something even more important, the jury.

In a criminal case, you either win over 12 people or you lose them all.

And because the stakes are so high, lawyers will go to extreme lengths to make their arguments as clear and persuasive as possible.

They'll bring in diagrams, models, charts, videos, posters, and even put on live reenactments, anything that will help communicate their version of the events.

Now, in the legal world, these are known as demonstrative evidence, and while they may not be as indisputable as physical evidence, they can be powerful tools in swaying a jury's opinion.

In 1871, for example, a particularly ambitious lawyer put together an unconventional courtroom demonstration, one that he thought was sure to help him win the case, but it wound up backfiring spectacularly.

It all started one fateful night in July of 1871, in a crowded saloon in the town of Lebanon, Ohio.

The scene was straight out of an old western, with a piano player pounding out a ragtime tune, the bartender slinging drinks, and a group of regulars huddled around a poker game.

The tension rose with every wager, and when the last hand was revealed, accusations of cheating erupted.

Voices rose, fists flew, and chairs were tossed aside as the saloon devolved into an outright brawl.

At the center of the melee were two men, Tom McGeean and Tom Myers.

They wrestled and clawed at one another until their companions finally managed to pull them apart.

As the men scrambled back to their feet, a gunshot rang out.

The saloon fell silent as Myers crumpled to the ground, clutching his bloody stomach.

He was dead within minutes, and his opponent was arrested and charged with murder.

The next day, McGeean reached out to a well-known lawyer named Clement Vallandingham.

He was a seasoned attorney with a reputation for bold ideas and a big mouth.

and he'd even spent a short stint in Congress.

After hearing McGeean's version of the events, he agreed to take the case on, and then he headed straight to the saloon to investigate.

He interviewed the bartender and the patrons who had witnessed the brawl.

Then he studied the bloodstains still marking the spot where Myers fell.

The more he examined the scene, the more convinced he became his client was innocent.

Both McGeean and Myers had been armed that night, and in the heat of the brawl, both men had reached for their pistols.

With Myers dead, everyone assumed that McGeean had drawn and fired first.

But after studying the evidence, Vallandingham had a different theory.

He believed that Myers had accidentally shot himself while drawing his pistol as he scrambled to his feet.

Now, convincing a jury of this would not be easy, but Vallandingham put together a bold plan to do just that.

He would reenact the shooting right there in the courtroom and demonstrate exactly how Myers might have accidentally fired his own weapon.

The demonstration was carefully planned and rehearsed.

Vallandingham knew that a convincing performance would mean the difference between life and death.

In the end, it was, but not the person he expected.

In a cruel twist of fate, the lawyer made a terrible oversight.

He forgot to check whether the gun he was using was loaded.

You can probably guess what happened next.

In the midst of demonstrating how someone might accidentally shoot themselves, Vallandingham did just that.

When he pulled the trigger, the demonstration pistol went off.

and shot him in the gut.

He was rushed to the doctor, but the flow of blood could not be stemmed.

Volangingham died the next day.

But perhaps he would have been heartened to know that his sacrifice was not in vain.

The jury was convinced Tom McGeean was acquitted of the murder charges, thanks in no small part to his attorney's unconventional demonstration.

Looking back, it was anything but a flawless execution.

But in the end, the lawyer got his smoking gun.

I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities.

Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts or learn more about the show by visiting CuriositiesPodcast.com.

This show was created by me, Aaron Mankey, in partnership with How Stuff Works.

I make another award-winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show.

And you can learn all about it over at theworldoflore.com.

And until next time, stay curious.

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