Curio Cabinet

Rags to riches is an understatement. Madam C.J. Walker, the daughter of two former slaves, worked her way up the ladder of a prejudiced society to earn enormous riches as an entrepreneur. Today we're celebrating her birthday with a look back at her remarkable career.
 
As a young black woman living in St. Louis in the 1890s, Walker didn't start out looking for the "next big idea." She was eking out a living for her and her daughter as a washerwoman. It wasn't until she found a job as a sales agent with a haircare company that things started taking off. The role was personal for her, as she suffered from scalp rashes and balding. Plus, her brothers worked in the hair business as barbers.
 
Walker was successful selling other people's hair products, but employment was getting in the way of her dream. Literally: a man who visited her in a dream inspired her to start her own company, selling hair and beauty products geared towards black women. The Madam C.J. Walker Manufacturing Company, of which Walker was the sole stakeholder, made its fortunes on sales of Madam Walker’s Wonderful Hair Grower. 19th-century hygiene called for only infrequent hair washing, which led to scalp infections, bacteria, lice, and—most commonly—balding. Walker's Hair Grower combatted balding and was backed by Walker's own guarantee that she used it to fix her own hair issues. A marketing strategy focused on black women, a neglected but growing portion of consumers, was a key ingredient for success.
 
As the business grew, Walker revealed bigger ambitions. “I am not merely satisfied in making money for myself," she said. "I am endeavoring to provide employment for hundreds of women of my race." Her company employed some 40,000 “Walker Agents” to teach women about proper hair care. Walker stepped beyond the boundaries of her business as a social activist and philanthropist. She donated thousands to the NAACP and put her voice behind causes like preserving Frederick Douglass's home and fighting for the rights of black World War I veterans.
 
It's often claimed that Walker was America's first black female self-made millionaire. But when she passed away in 1919, assessors found out her estate totaled around $600,000. Not that the number matters at all, really; Walker's legacy is priceless. We're guessing the businessmen and women she inspired could more than make up the difference.

Cults are dangerous at the best of times, and 1995 was not the best of times. On March 20 of that year, a group then known as the AUM Shinrikyo terrorized Tokyo with a series of deadly sarin gas attacks on the city's subway system. The cult, which mixed some aspects of Buddhism and Christianity while emphasizing a series of doomsday prophecies, was seemingly attempting to speed up the apocalypse with their attacks. Now known as Aleph, the cult carried out the attacks during morning rush hour, targeting several different trains and subway lines, leading to 14 deaths and around 6,000 injuries. It’s considered one of the worst terrorist attacks in postwar Japan, and to this day many survivors continue to deal with the health consequences of being exposed to the gas.
 
Sarin was invented in 1938 and was originally meant to be used as a pesticide. When it was discovered that the gas worked as a deadly nerve agent, some considered using it as a chemical weapon during WWII, but the idea was scrapped. The consequences would have been disastrous, since sarin can taint water supplies and contaminate food in addition to killing people via inhalation. The gas is a deadly neurotoxin that affects the function of muscles and the respiratory system.
 
Even three decades later, many survivors of the subway attacks experience severe nerve pains, fatigue, dizziness, and other debilitating symptoms. While there are antidotes against the toxin, there is unfortunately no cure or universal treatment available for those who suffer permanent damage. As for the attacks themselves, they were the deadly climax to a series of smaller-scale attacks by members of the cult, one of which claimed eight lives and injured around 500 people. Luckily, many members involved with the attacks—including the leader—were arrested, though the very last suspect wasn't caught until 2012. Better for justice to come late than never.

Who put the "art" in escape artist? Harry Houdini, of course! The Hungarian-American magician was born this month in 1874, and nearly a century after his untimely death, his name remains synonymous with the type of escape performances that he popularized. Yet, when he wasn’t wowing audiences, Houdini was a surprisingly grounded man. It might seem an unlikely role for a magician, but Houdini was a vocal skeptic in his time, especially as a spiritualist movement swept through America. This movement convinced many people that they could speak to dead loved ones, or pay someone to do so, but Houdini was having none of it.
 
Houdini started performing at an early age. By the time he was nine, he was part of a trapeze act. Starting from the age of 17, he adopted his stage name, Harry Houdini (his birth name was Ehrich Weisz) and started performing magic acts. As his career exploded around the turn of the century, Houdini became particularly famous for his escape acts. These death-defying stunts, in which Houdini was often chained underwater with seemingly no way out, seemed like magic when he managed to slip his bonds and survive. However, Houdini was a vocal critic of anyone who claimed to have true supernatural powers, especially spiritual mediums.
 
Houdini felt that, as a performer himself, he had a duty to expose the fraudulent practices rife in the spiritualism industry. His criticism reached the point of activism when he testified before Congress to call for the criminalization of fortune-telling and similar practices. Houdini's skepticism also led to public tensions with his longtime friend, Sherlock Holmes author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Doyle was a believer of spiritualism and regularly held seances with his wife, who claimed to be a medium herself. Sometime before he died, Houdini and his wife devised a way to prove to themselves whether mediumship was actually real. They created a coded message that they agreed to pass to each other from beyond the grave, should they ever truly be contacted. In the decade following Houdini’s death (at Halloween, no less), his wife held seances, challenging any medium to pass along their secret message. None succeeded, and on the 10th anniversary of his death, the widow announced to the world that her husband was unable to be reached. Even in death, Houdini was still putting on a show and keeping skepticism alive.

 
[Image description: Harry Houdini making a mysterious face with one hand raised near his cheek.] Credit & copyright: Library of Congress, 1925. This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published (or registered with the U.S. Copyright Office) before January 1, 1930.