March 25, 2024

TRX | S5E02 | LOST

Do you often lose things like your keys or your wallet? While that’s frustrating there are a lot of lost items--from technologies, a missing plane, missing people, to even a lost head--that fascinate us with their mysteries. I’m your host, Leah…I’m Phil…and I’m Steve. Today we’ll be talking about those missing items. This is Season Five, Episode 2: LOST

Can you recall a time when you lost something? That’s probably not a terribly difficult question as losing things is quite central to the human condition. My father was always philosophical about losing things. Once when I was looking for a lost pocketknife he advised me, “You will find it when you are looking for something else.” He knew well as he was quite an expert at losing things.

It’s true, we lose things both individually and collectively. A recent article from independent.co.uk lists ten lost technologies that we would like to find again. I won’t go into all ten of them, but some of the more interesting including how the Romans made concrete, how the ancient Egyptians managed to move heavy stones, and the recipe for Damascus steel which made exceptionally sharp and strong swords. These ancient people did not pass along their information and thus the knowledge is lost.

Today we are going to explore a variety of lost items as well as quite a few lost people. Hopefully we won’t get lost in the process.

Lost Movies

I don’t know about you all, but I really love old movies. When I was in high school two of my friends and I discovered that our town library had a collection of 8mm copies of silent movies. We spent many a happy evening watching these old flicks flicker from an 8mm projector that my friend Randy owned. That’s where I discovered and have become a lifelong fan of Laurel and Hardy, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Fatty Arbuckle, Harold Lloyd, The Keystone Cops, and many more of the terrific stars of the silent movie era. When we think of silent movies, we are talking about the period between 1895 and 1929. Wikipedia states the very first movie in which audiences were charged admission to watch was a film of a boxing match between Young Griffo and Battling Charles Barnett in 1895.

Sadly, many of the movies made in this era have been lost. According to an article from filmfoundation.org it is estimated that 90% of movies made before 1929 have been lost forever. In addition, as many as 50% of those made between 1929 and 1950 have also been lost. One major contributing factor in the loss of these films is fire. The same article details that before 1950 movie film was made of nitrate which is very flammable.

Turner Classic Movies – I love that channel – on their website tcm.com has a page listing major vault fires that destroyed many of these old and historic films. Some of the most notable ones include the following:

A 1914 fire at the Lubin studio in Philadelphia destroyed Oliver Hardy’s first film as well as the only known footage of the ambulance carrying President McKinley to the hospital after he was shot in 1901,

A 1933 fire at Warner Brothers destroyed all its first talking pictures from 1928 – 1930,

A 1937 fire at 20th Century Fox destroyed all its pre 1935 films,

Also at 20th Century Fox a 1961 fire and explosion which could be heard for three miles destroyed all of the works of Theta Bara who was perhaps the most famous and popular silent film star. Her portrayal of Cleopatra is at the top the American Film Institute’s most wanted lost movie list,

And a 1965 fire at MGM which destroyed many silent classics.

In addition to fire, incompetence has also played a role in these lost films. In 1948 Universal decided to toss out all its silent library. They thought the old films had no value. The films were melted down for their silver content.

Now it should be noted that the movies that were destroyed in these fires were the original film prints as well as copies. Originally, many copies of these films were made and distributed to movie theaters throughout the country and around the world. At the end of their run, they were supposed to be returned to the studio, but there is always the chance, and the hope, that some of the copies of these movies might not have been returned and could still be in the hands of private collectors. In fact, some movies that were thought lost have been found in this way. Tune in to the next episode for more on that.

Ambrose Bierce

In the same era as those silent movies that you were describing there occurred a real-life mystery that grabbed the attention of people nationwide. It involved the strange disappearance of a somewhat well-known writer and journalist named Ambrose Bierce.

Bierce was born in Ohio in 1842. Not much is known about his early life, but when the Civil War began in the 1860s Bierce joined the Union forces. He was engaged in several battles including Shiloh and he was wounded three times. He was also promoted to Lieutenant. In the years after the Civil War Bierce began producing novels that were related to the conflict. Three of his stories; The Devil’s Dictionary, The Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, and The Death of Halpin Fraser became somewhat well known. His stories had a dark brooding nature about them which certainly didn’t appeal to everyone, but he did have a small following.

Birece relocated to the West Coast and in 1887 became the editor of William Randolph Hearst’s San Francisco Examiner. As editor Bierce became quite a muckraker and wasn’t immune to participating in yellow journalism. His biting sarcasm and caustic wit tended to polarize the reading public in San Francisco. Folks either loved him or hated him.

Adding to his reputation, Bierce was well known for his volatile temper and short fuse. And he was very skilled with a 44 caliber pistol. He didn’t age gracefully as his drinking and bitter attitude drove away what few friends he had. By 1913 at the age of 71 he had lost his job with Hurst’s newspaper and his recent novels were not selling well. He appeared to be destined to oblivion as a bitter self-centered old man.

But then, according to the L.A. Times Bierce made a brilliant career move. He took a train to El Paso, Texas, purchased a horse, and rode off into Mexico searching for the legendary revolutionary Pancho Villa. And then he vanished. His disappearance became front page news nationwide and stirred a new interest in his novels, but he wasn’t around to enjoy any of this success.

Or was he? Most likely he wasn’t.

One of Bierce’s associates, a San Francisco dentist named Adolph DeCastro, wrote a brief biography of Bierce. In it, DeCastro claims to have traveled to Mexico himself and wrangled an uncomfortable dinner with Pancho Villa at his hacienda. DeCastro pretended to be an enemy of Bierce, claiming that he had stolen his girlfriend, and stated that he would have been happy to shoot Bierce himself. At this, the famous revolutionary said, “I knew him. He will not bother you and your woman anymore. He has passed.” Villa also told DeCastro that Bierce had not changed his drunken, loudmouth ways and had criticized nearly all the officers in his army. After the dinner broke up, Pancho Villa’s brother Hipolito told DeCastro, “This old cabron (bastard) sat for days drinking tequila, and in his drunkenness criticized my brother--imagine this!”

If DeCastro’s account is true, then it is likely that Bierce died in Mexico of a bullet from Pancho Villa’s own pistol. But we don’t know for sure, and there is a recent development which provides a potential alternative ending to Bierce’s life.

According to howstuffworks.com in 2002 a researcher named Jake Silverstein came across an old letter to the editor of a Marfa, Texas newspaper that had been written by a man who had a different story. According to this letter, the man stated that when he was a teenager back in 1914 he and some friends had been out riding near the Rio Grande River and had come across an older man who was in bad shape. The man identified himself as Ambrosia and claimed to have been the author of several books, one of which had Devil in its title. This fellow paid the young man and his friends to help him get to the nearest railway station, however by the time they reached Marfa, the man had died. The letter claims that he was buried in an unmarked grave in Marfa.

Another theory claims that Bierce quietly reentered the U.S. and made his way to Saratoga N.Y. where he married and lived out his life in peace. A nice thought, but highly unlikely. Still another theory is that instead of going to Mexico, Bierce traveled to his favorite destination, The Grand Canyon, and jumped off the cliff. Evidently this had been the fate of a character in one of his stories. But this too is highly unlikely.

In one of his final letters before he disappeared, Bierce wrote, “Good-bye. If you hear of my being stood up against a Mexican stone wall and shot to rags, please know that I think it is a pretty good way to depart this life. It beats old age, disease, or falling down the cellar stairs.”

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Pancho Villa’s Head

That’s a really interesting story, Leah, and it has a connection to our next Lost story. And yes, it involves that famous revolutionary Pancho Villa. Before we get to the lost part, let’s learn a bit about this legendary figure.

Born Jose Doroteo Arango Arambula in the Mexican state of Durango in 1878 he was left in charge of his peasant family after his father died in the 1890s. One morning in 1901 he arrived home to a scene of chaos. It appears that the owner of the land on which his family were peasant farmers had attempted to rape his 15-year-old sister. Taking his father’s pistol he shot the man three times, killing him. In the confusion that resulted from this killing, he fled into the mountains and began life as fugitive.

The following year, 1902, he was captured and forcibly inducted into the Mexican Army. A few months later he killed an army officer, stole his horse, and fled north to Chihuahua. There he changed his name to Francisco Pancho Villa and claimed to be the illegitimate son of the famous bandit Augustin Villa.

At this time, Mexico was suffering under the dictatorship of a stern ruler named Porfirio Diaz. Over the next several years, Pancho Villa led a group of some 1500 revolutionaries in numerous attacks against the Diaz government, but they also likely raided and murdered anyone who got in their way. It is difficult to separate fact from legend concerning Pancho Villa as his history is a mixture of tall tales and actual events.

One actual event that is well established involved a raid into the United States. In 1916 Villa and his army were severely lacking in horses and ammunition. The U.S. Army had a fortress near the town of Columbus, New Mexico which is just three miles north of the border. Villa led a group of 600 men on a midnight raid of the town and its garrison. The raid did result in some captured ammunition, but Villa lost between 90 and 100 men. On the U.S side, some ten soldiers and eight civilians were killed. The raid enraged the American public and President Wilson authorized troops to go into Mexico to capture Villa, a task they did not manage to complete.

In 1920 Villa cut a deal with the newly elected president of Mexico. He agreed to cease his revolutionary activities in exchange for a 25,000 acre hacienda, a car, amnesty for himself and some 200 of his soldiers, and 500,000 gold pesos. Sounds like a fine deal, doesn’t it! Ah, but just because you make peace with the government doesn’t mean you don’t still have enemies. One morning in 1923 while running errands in the nearby town of Parral, Chihuahua, Villa’s car was ambushed, and he was shot 40 times. Several suspects were arrested and given short sentences. Villa’s body was buried in the Parral Cemetery.

Now we come to the Lost part. One morning in 1926 a cemetery worker discovered something that shocked all of Mexico. Pancho Villa’s grave had been dug up in the middle of the night, the casket was opened, and the revolutionary’s head was missing. Thus began the mystery of Pancho Villa’s lost head.

The Mexican Police settled on one suspect, an Iowa-born Swedish-American named Emil Lewis Holmdahl who had been part of the U.S. Army search for Villa after the Columbus raid. He said that he was staying in the Parral area because he was looking for lost treasure. Holmdahl was arrested and detained, however a search of his hotel room and belongings came up empty. He claimed that he had spent the night in question in a cantina, a fact which was verified by many of the cantina’s patrons. After a couple of days, Holmdahl was released, and he left town and went to El Paso, Texas

A few weeks later a gentleman named L. M. Shadbolt met Holmdahl in a hotel bar in El Paso. Shadbolt claimed later that he and Holmdahl became good drinking buddies. One night the well besotted Holmdahl invited Shadbolt to his hotel room to show him something. Once inside the room, Holmdahl produced from a box the head of Pancho Villa. Holmdahl claimed that he was being paid for the head by a buyer who was associated with a college in the U.S. If this is true, then Holmdahl had hidden the head before his arrest and then retrieved it upon his release. But who would buy it, and what college was he associated with?

In 1984 a biography was published of a West Texas Rancher named Ben Williams. Williams claimed to have struck up a friendship with Holmdahl in his later years. According to Williams, Holmdahl sold the head of Pancho Villa for $25,000 to a man named Frank Brophy who had close ties to Yale University. Brophy also had close ties to none other than one Prescott Bush, the father of George H W Bush and the grandfather of George W Bush. Brophy as well as all three Bushes and many other prominent Yale alumni were part of a secret society on campus called Skull and Bones. If this story is true, then Pancho Villa’s missing head may reside at the Skull and Bones headquarters on the Yale campus in New Haven, Connecticut. True or not, the story of Pancho Villa’s missing head remains one of the biggest mysteries in Mexican history.

This information came primarily from a website called yucatantimes.com and also form Wikipedia.com

Barbara Follett

Barbara Follett was an amazing young woman. She was born in 1914 in New Hampshire. Her father was an editor and literary critic. Her mother was a children’s book author. Barbara was truly a child prodigy. At age twelve she published her first novel called A House Without Windows. In it she expressed her deep love and appreciation for nature. Two years later her second novel called The Voyage of the Norman D which was a part true and part fictitious account of a trip she took to Nova Scotia. Both of these efforts netted Barbara critical acclaim including glowing reviews from the New York Times and a personal letter of encouragement from the writer H. L. Mencken. But she was most proud of the praise of her father who had been most influential to her writing.

Then one day when she was 16, her world came crashing down. Her father announced that he was leaving Barbara’s mother for another woman. Furthermore, he was taking with him the means for their support. Barbara and her mother relocated to a small apartment in New York City and began looking for work which was hard to find as it was 1930, the beginning of The Great Depression. Barbara did find work as a typist, but her writing spark had been extinguished.

A few years later she met and married a man named Nickerson Rogers, an outdoorsman who shared her love for nature. It was a happy marriage at first. The couple enjoyed nature hikes and even backpacked through Europe. But as time went along the marriage began to sour. Barbara suspected Nickerson of having an affair. Then after an argument on a cold winter day in December 1939 Barbara walked out of her Brooklyn apartment and was never seen again.

Barbara’s disappearance is still surrounded by questions. Why would a promising young author simply walk out on her life? Why would she take only $30 and a notebook? Why did her husband wait for two weeks before he reported her disappearance, and why did he list her under his last name rather than her more famous maiden name? It wasn’t until 1966 that the press picked up on the fact that Barbara Follett had actually gone missing. To this day, there is still no clue as to what happened to her.

The information came from crimereads.com and npr.com

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Television Shows

Earlier we touched on lost movies. Now let’s look at lost television shows.

Television came on the scene in the late 1930s but did not become common fixtures in American households until the early 1950s. The emergence in that decade of the three main television networks gave those early viewers a limited variety of shows to select from. Unfortunately, most of those early shows are lost. According to an article on mentalfloss.com many of the early shows were on live television. This included the news of course, but also game shows, soap operas, talk shows, and even comedy and variety shows. Sometimes shows were video taped to show at a later time, but then those tapes were erased to be reused again later. Video tape was expensive, and it wasn’t thought that anyone would want to see old reruns once they had been aired. It wasn’t until the 1970s that it became commonplace for the networks to keep copies of taped episodes. The Tonight Show debuted in the early 1950s with Steve Allen as the host. He was replaced in the late 50s by Jack Paar who famously got angry and walked off the set in 1962. That October a slender kid from Nebraska named Johnny Carson became the host, a position that he held for thirty years until he retired in 1992. Very few episodes of the Steve Allen and Jack Paar versions of the tonight show still exist, and nearly the entire first decade of the Johnny Carson Show is also lost.

But wait a minute, you interrupt, what about I Love Lucy, Leave It To Beaver, and other popular shows from the 50s that we still have? How did they survive? Well, that was due to the fact that Lucille Ball, Desi Arnez, and a handful of other early forward-thinking TV show producers decided to use movie film to record their episodes instead of video tape. The episodes were shot with movie cameras, and that is why those old episodes are still sharp and clear today. These include all the shows that were filmed at the DesiLu Studios which include I Love Lucy, The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Andy Griffith Show and later Star Trek and Hogan’s Heroes. Shows that were recorded with movie film generally survived whereas those that were live or were recorded with early video tape generally did not. Thus, many of the programs from the first decades of television are lost.

While we are on the subject of old television shows, allow me to get on my soapbox for just a second. Can we stop this ridiculous practice of trying to colorize those wonderful old beautiful black and white productions? I know, I know, people say that kids today won’t watch things in black and white. Balderdash! (Pardon my language) In my junior high classroom I would routinely show my students what I would call a pre-test-de-stress. Right before they took a unit test, I would show them a brief comedy clip. It would always be an old black and white comedy clip that they had likely never seen before; and they loved them. It’s really so refreshing to watch junior high school kids belly laugh at Lucile Ball’s Vitameatavegamin routine or Jack Benny and Mel Blanc’s Si Sie skit or Abbott and Costello’s Who’s On First. Kids are smart and when given a chance they can spot quality material and appreciate amazing talent from 70 years ago without someone washing out the picture with faded funeral home looking color. There, I said it and I feel better now!

Hale Boggs and Company

Our listeners might recall our S2E24 titled Incredible Survival. One of the stories featured in that episode was that of 21 year old Helen Klaben who was a passenger in a small plane piloted by 45 year old Ralph Flores. In February of 1963 the pair were flying from Fairbanks, Alaska to Seattle, Washington when their plane made a forced landing in mountainous terrain during a snowstorm. Not only did they survive the crash landing, but also for the next forty-two days which is how long it took for them to be rescued. An incredible survival story indeed.

Alaska is our 49th state and the largest by area. Its mountainous terrain and notoriously unpredictable weather make all kinds of travel there difficult, and perhaps especially so for small airplanes, which brings us to our next story.

On October 16, 1972 three passengers and a pilot took off from Anchorage heading southeast toward the state’s capital Juneau. They have never been heard from since.

Most strikingly, two of the three passengers on this flight were United States Congressmen. One of these was the U.S. House Majority leader, a man from Louisiana named Hale Boggs. The other congressman was Alaska’s only representative in the House Nick Begich (Bagitch). The third passenger was Begich’s aid, Russel Brown. The 1972 election was just a few weeks away and Boggs was in Alaska campaigning for Begich.

The plane was a twin propellor Cesna 310 operated by Pan Alaska Airways. It piloted by an experienced pilot named Don Jonz (Johns). Jonz also was the owner of Pan Alaska Airways. He had logged over 17,000 hours of flying time and had been flying in Alaska for over a decade.

But, Jonz also had a bit of a reputation for flaunting the rules. According to a website called airfactsjournal.com, one anonymous source quoted in the Anchorage Daily News said Jonz was “… a crackerjack pilot, but unorthodox. He’s a good guy in a tight spot, but one who doesn’t care for all the rules and regulations.” Jonz had written an article for Flying Magazine which was published just a month before his disappearance. Concerning ice forming on the plane’s wings, Jonz wrote, “If you are sneaky, smart and careful, you can fly 350 days a year and disregard 99 per cent of the [b.s.] you hear about icing.” Many have speculated that Jonz was overconfident in choosing to fly that day.

When the plane didn’t arrive in Juneau an immediate search was conducted. It became the largest and most expensive search operation in Alaskan history. Due to the high profile passengers, even SR71 spy planes were involved in the search. Nearly 3,500 search flights were conducted over the next 39 days by both military and civilian pilots. Mountain passes were searched on foot by mountain climbing specialists. No trace of the lost plane or its passengers has ever been located.

In addition to airfactsjournal.com some information also came for sitnews.us which is based in Ketchikan, Alaska

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Lost Languages

We have talked about languages before, particularly in our S3E20 called Say What? which focused on idioms. We’ve mentioned many times that languages are constantly changing and adapting to new situations. A website called swaplanguage.com has some interesting facts about language. They define a language as a communication system that people use in a particular country. They further clarify that a dialect is a language form that is used in a specific part of a country. Languages are usually written and spoken whereas dialects are usually just spoken. They also list the top 5 languages in the world according to the number of speakers.

English with 1.35 billion
Mandarin Chinese 1.12 billion
Hindi 600 million (India has 23 official languages)
Spanish 543 million and is the official language of 20 countries
Modern Standard Arabic 274 million

Would you like to take a guess as to how many languages exist in the world? According to ethnologue.com there are currently 7,168 languages spoken in the world. That’s not languages and dialects, that is just languages alone. But the number of living languages is declining. The ethnologue.com article estimates that 40% of languages have less than a thousand speakers and will likely die out in this century. In fact some already have.

A website called atomicscribe.com contains an article describing six languages that have died out since the year 2000. These include the following:

Plains Apache, also known as Kiowa Apache. The last speaker of this language, a gentleman named Alfred Chalepah Jr., died in 2008. Some recordings of him were made before he died, but there are no more known speakers of this language.

Aka-Cari was one of ten languages spoken in the Andaman Islands located in the Bay of Bengal in the far southeast part of India. Eight of the ten languages disappeared in the 1900s. The last speaker of Aka-Cari was a person named Licho who died in April of 2020. The only other island language is called Aka-Jeru and it is believe to have only three remaining speakers. The ten tribes have now comingled and speak a language called Present Great Andamanese which is a blend of the ten original languages.

The Eyak are a Native American Tribe living in the southeast part of Alaska. The last full blooded Eyak, a woman named Marie Smith Jones, died in January of 2008. By her name, you can tell that European colonization of Alaska had an impact on the culture. The language not only declined due to loss of population, but the northward migration of the Tlingit people also replaced Eyat as the primary language for many in the area.

Nushu Script was a unique language that existed in southern China and was only used by women. In fact, the name Nushu means Women’s Script. It was a way for women to use a coded script to speak freely among their own sex while defying the patriarchal society. It is believed to have been used by peasant women and passed down generationally. The last known speaker, Yang Huanyi, died in September of 2004. However, there are groups of scholars who are attempting to revitalize the script. The first Nüshu dictionary was published in 2003, and there is now a museum in the village of Puwei dedicated to the script’s history.

Now while we are on the topic, let’s look at some older dead languages. An interesting article from thelanguagedoctor.com titled Top Six Dead Language List – When and How They Died has caught our attention. Unsurprisingly Latin is the first dead language on the list.

Latin was the official language of the Roman Empire. The Romans controlled all of the area surrounding the Mediterranean Sea and their territory stretched from England to the Middle East and everywhere in between. To become a Roman citizen, it was expected that a person would at least attempt to learn Latin. The language began to disappear after the Romans were defeated by the Barbarians in 476 A.D. Today there are no native Latin speakers, however many medical texts are written in Latin and The Vatican considers Latin its official language. Spanish, French, Portuguese and Italian are strongly influenced by Latin, and it is estimated that more than half of English words come from Latin also.

Sanskrit was the original language of the Indian subcontinent. It was used in the early days of Buddhism and Sikhism. Many of these religious texts are written in Sanskrit. When the British came to India in the 1600s Sanskrit was slowly replaced with English. Today no one is a native speaker of Sanskrit, but it is still used by priests in religious ceremonies.

Now when we think of ancient Egypt we think of hieroglyphics. But there is another ancient Egyptian language that dates back to the invasion of Alexander the Great in the 300s B.C. Coptic Egyptian was a written and spoken Egyptian language that utilized the Greek alphabet. The Christian apostle Mark is believed to have established a church in Alexandria, Egypt using the Coptic language to translate the Bible for believers to read. Today Egypt’s small Christian population are still known as Coptic Christians, but they do not learn the language. Arabic replaced the Coptic language in the Middle Ages.

Biblical Hebrew and also Ancient Greek were the languages that the Christian Bible was written in. (The Old Testament was written in Hebrew, the New Testament in Greek) Modern Hebrew and Modern Greek have virtually no connection to their ancient forerunners. While these two ancient languages are studied by religious scholars, they do not have any native speakers any longer. Biblical Hebrew was spoken by religious Jews and rabbis up into the 20th century, but the practice largely died out as a result of the Holocaust which targeted Jewish rabbis.

We mentioned Egyptian hieroglyphics earlier, but there is a written language thought to be even older, and that is Cuneiform which was used in ancient Mesopotamia or present-day Iraq and Iran. While cuneiform was written, the Mesopotamians, also had a spoken language called Akkadian. Akkadian was spoken from 2800 BC up to around 500 AD. It was slowly replaced by Aramaic which evidently was simpler to learn. As mentioned above, the New Testament was written in Ancient Greek, but Jesus and his disciples actually spoke Aramaic.

Harold Holt

Going back to the theme of lost politicians, there may not be one more prominent than that of Harold Holt. Who is Harold Holt, you ask? Well, let’s learn a bit about him before we get to his disappearance.

Harold Holt was born in Sydney, Australia in 1908. He went to law school in Melbourne and briefly practiced law until becoming one of Australia’s youngest members of Parliament at age 27. He served a brief stint in the Australian Army during World War II, but was called back as his service in the Parliament was deemed more essential. He gradually rose to prominence and power in Australia’s government, culminating with him being voted Australia’s Prime Minister in 1966.

In his private life Holt was an outdoorsman with spearfishing being his favorite sport. He was an excellent swimmer and diver. It is rumored that he practiced holding his breath during sessions of Parliament in order to endure the boredom and also to be able to dive deeper and fish longer underwater on his next opportunity.

Australia, being in the Southern Hemisphere, experiences the Christmas holidays at the beginning of summer. On December 17, 1966, Holt decided to celebrate the Parliament holiday break by going swimming with some friends. After finalizing his last cabinet meeting for the year just days prior, it was a fitting way for the famously private politician to unwind. He selected an isolated location called Cheviot Beach, near Melbourne. Accompanying Holt was his neighbor, Marjorie Gillespie, and three other friends.

Some members of Holt’s staff had shown concern about him engaging in potentially risky hobbies. His press secretary Tony Eggleton had confronted him about it earlier that week. Holt replied, “Look, Tony, what are the odds of a sitting prime minister drowning or getting eaten by a shark?”

The beauty of Cheviot Beach is stunning but hidden beneath the lovely blue water are some powerful riptides and under currents. In fact, two swimmers had disappeared without a trace from these waters just the previous year. One of the friends that entered the water with Holt that morning was a young man named Alan Stewart. He later was quoted as saying, "I was out of my depth, and I could feel this terrific undertow, it was very frightening!"

When Holt didn’t return to the beach after several minutes, his neighbor Marjorie Gillespie became concerned. “He doesn’t usually stay out this long,” she told another friend. After a few more minutes she made her way to a pay phone and contacted the local police.

As you can imagine, the disappearance of the Prime Minister caused an immediate response. Within an hour, dozens of police and emergency response teams arrived at Cheviot Beach. They included helicopters, surfers, divers, and rescue boats. The surf was so rough that one rescue boat was overturned, but no one was hurt. By early afternoon, television programs across Australia were interrupted, “It is feared the prime minister has drowned.” Holt’s body has never been recovered.

A memorial service was held on December 22, 1967 at St. Paul’s Anglican Cathedral in Melbourne. It was attended by U.S President Lyndon Johnson, U.K. Prime Minister Harold Wilson and scores of other world leaders. It was the largest collection of heads of state ever to occur in Australia.

Now keep in mind that this occurred during the height of the Cold War. Many people in Australia and elsewhere had trouble believing that the Prime Minister, a good swimmer, could simply drown on a Sunday swim. Unfounded rumors brewed that he was captured by a Chinese submarine or that the CIA had done away with him. However, forty years later his press secretary said, "Basically I think that people just find it very hard to accept that a prime minister can go for a swim on a Sunday, like anyone else, and end up misjudging the situation and drowning, but that's what happened."

The information came from naa.gov.au and from abc.net.au

For a full list of this episode’s sources please visit the transcript linked in our show notes.

O U T R O

Phil here reminding you to check out our Facebook and Instagram pages @RemnantStewPodcast. Drop us an email at StayCurious@RemnantStew.com just to say hi or to let us know about any topics you would like to hear us cover in an upcoming episode.

Remnant Stew is part of Rook & Raven Ventures and is created by me, Leah Lamp. Steve Meeker researches and writes each episode that we then host together. Our audio producer and is Phillip Sinquefield. The Oddity Du Jour is brought to you by Sam Lamp. Theme music is by Kevin MacLeod with voiceover by Morgan Hughes. Special thanks goes out to Brandy Nichols and Judy Meeker.

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Until next time remember to choose to be kind…AND ALWAYS STAY CURIOUS!

--SOURCES ----------------------

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/top-10-lost-technologies-b1956084.html

https://web.archive.org/web/20090615124657/http://fan.tcm.com/_Vault-and-Nitrate-Fires-A-History/blog/346284/66470.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lost_films

https://www.film-foundation.org/columbus-dispatch

https://history.howstuffworks.com/historical-figures/mysterious-disappearance-ambrose-bierce.htm

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-06-25-vw-1440-story.html

https://www.theyucatantimes.com/2018/11/the-beheading-of-pancho-villa-92-years-of-mystery/

https://crimereads.com/what-happened-to-barbara-newhall-follett/

https://www.npr.org/2010/12/18/132135938/barbara-newhall-follett-disappearing-child-genius