High and Low

exponentially higher. Studios place a lot of pressure on certain stars to deliver big box office numbers. It must seem bad enough for an actor to feel responsible for a film success, but imagine being an actor and being responsible for an entire economy. That's Adam Chang's burden to bear. Chang was the star of a Chinese television drama a debut in late nineteen two titled The Greed of Man. The series focused on two childhood friends and their influence

on the Asian stock exchange once they reached adulthood. It was a soap opera about power, corruption, and family, and even though it only ran for a short time, it became a huge hit. Forty episodes aired, and the show can still be watched in reruns today. Adam Chang played the character of Ting Hi, a man who spoiler alert, killed the corrupt leader of the Asian Stock Exchange over a woman they both loved. The murder resulted in a

catastrophic economic crash, sparking poverty, violence, and even war. And that was just on the TV show, But reality wasn't much different. When the series first aired on October, Hong Kong's Hang Sang index fell by almost six hundred points. In September two thousand, an unofficial sequel titled Divine Retribution aired, and the index dropped a total of one thousand, seven hundred fifteen points, a crash so powerful that it led

to instability across other markets. Fifteen years later, television stations began airing reruns of The Greed of Man and Divine Retribution, and the Hang Sang fell once more, by almost five hundred sixty points that day. If the stock market crashed every time these television shows aired, then why did networks show them at all? That's because the eerie phenomenon wasn't

limited to just these two series. The Hang Sang fell more than two thousand points in November after the series Instinct first aired, followed by another sharp drop of three hundred points two years later when a series called Once Upon a Time in Shanghai debut. The trend continued for shows like Cold Blood, Warm Heart, Blade Heart, and Master

of Play. Master of Play alone triggered a ten percent drop from October of all the way to April of two thousand fifteen, there were fifteen separate instances of the Hang Sang index posting significant losses, all of which were tied to the premieres of various television shows, and the X factor tying them all together Adam Chang. The ting Hai effect, as it's called, has such a reputation that academic papers have been written trying to explain where the

phenomenon came from and why it keeps happening. Some economists believe that superstitious brokers in China sell off stock right before a change series premiere, thus inadvertently triggering the crash themselves. What started out as a market anomaly seems to have become a self fulfilling prophecy, but die hard believers don't buy that explanation. To them a new Adam Chang series

is a harbinger of doom for their portfolios. Bloggers have you and called for stations airing Chang series to be charged with manipulating the markets and for any future projects of his to be canceled. But the ting high effect hasn't affected the man supposedly behind it. Despite the pleas from bloggers and investors, Chang still acts in films and television shows today with over seventy credits to his name, and he's not bothered by what people say about him either.

It just can't be true, but I'm used to it now, he said to him. The whole thing is nothing but a bit of dramatic fiction. We tend to believe what we learn in history class is set in stone, it's unchanging. We don't think about implicit biases or who is writing the history we read. The going philosophy is if it's in a text book, it must be true. Nowadays we know that's not always the case, and that history literally

is written by the victors. Cultures have been lost or whitewashed due to controversy or inconvenience for those holding the pens. Take Australia, for example. According to the history books. The Dutch were the first group of Europeans to set foot in Australia. In sixteen o six, William Joan Soon and twenty nine other Dutch sailors navigated its coasts, calling it New Holland. Years later, the British did what they always did upon arriving in a new land. They colonized it.

Pretty soon all of Australia belonged to England. Mike I said, that's what the history books tell us, But the history books don't tell us everything. If reports are true, Even the Dutch weren't the first to stroll across Australia's shores. A century earlier, a group of Portuguese explorers were said to have crashed off the southern coast, their ship going lost in what is now Armstrong, but what happened to

the men aboard remains a mystery even now. Reports of a shipwreck it didn't appear until the nineteenth century, when dozens of eye witnesses claimed to have seen its surface from beneath the waves. One moment, it's jagged wooden frame would rise from the depths, the next it had slipped away again like a mirage. The mahogany ship, they called it, though it wasn't actually made of mahogany, its unique design appeared to be made of a dark wood different from

other vessels. Rumors swirled as stories of the wreck circulated around the region. It was a Spanish galleon filled with gold the bloons, or it was really three separate holes that came and went with the tide. Accounts were varied, but there was enough consistent detail across all of them to lend credibility to the original claim that a small ship not of Dutch origin had crashed and sunk off

the coast of Australia. Original witnesses claimed it came from Spain or Peru, given the prominence of such ships as the Santa Isabelle or the Santa Anna. However, the theory of it being Portuguese was first proposed in in nineteen seventy seven book by Australian historian Kenneth McIntyre. According to McIntyre, the mahogany ship had joined two others from Portugal on a secret expedition to find the Isles of Gold, led

by Portuguese explorer Christa val de Mendonza. The ships set sail into Spanish owned waters, careful to avoid upsetting Spain by claiming land within its territory. Upon discovering Australia, one of the ships crashed, which spooked Mendonza and forced him and his men to return to Portugal. Any records of the crash or the voyage were locked away forever never since. The stories surrounding the Mahogany Ship have turned it from a myth into a full blown legend. Searches for its

remains have been ongoing since the late eighteen nineties. Towns, private companies, and nonprofits have all sponsored investigations into the ship's whereabouts, but nothing has ever turned up. Any artifacts or wooden pieces dredged up from the water have been debunked as parts of other wrecks, which have made searching

for this particular ship very difficult. Speculations surrounding the Mahogany ships provenance has also changed with the passing decades, as one set of evidence negates another, and historians all over

the world argue as to the vessel's origin. But the one thing everyone can agree on is that somewhere beneath the sand and sea is a ghost ship haunting the minds of those who dare to believe, and one day, when it finally surfaces for good, it may very well change everything we know about an entire continent, and for modern historians, that's sure to give them arise. 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 Curiosities podcast dot com. The 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 the World of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.