Nightmare Fuel

he wasn't just the first. He was the only member of a very exclusive club, one he probably had no interest in joining in the first place. He was born in Mayfair, Middlesex, in seventeen sixty two, to a very wealthy family. His father and Earl, was closely involved in British politics. His mother was a baroness whose family had

also been elected to numerous high positions within Parliament. It only seemed natural that their son, Spencer would join the family business and with their influence to help him along the way. Of course, except he was born during his father's second marriage and had an older stepbrother, his parents didn't really support him. He could barely live on his yearly stipend, and he knew that he couldn't rely on

inheriting anything when they died. Anything that his father owned would default to his first son, so Perceval focused on his schooling. He studied hard, choosing a future in the legal profession. Once he'd graduated and passed the bar. After the death of his mother, Perceval fell in love with a young woman whose father didn't approve of her suitor's lack of money or property, especially compared to his brother

at Lord Arden, a rich member of parliament. Perceval waited until she was twenty one, and against her father's wishes, the two eloped. They started their life together, living humbly above a carpet shop while he worked his way up in his career. Coming from such a wealthy and influential family had its benefits, even if Perceval couldn't take advantage of all of them, but they came through in the

networking department. Thanks to his connections. He went from the lowly position of Deputy Recorder in Northampton all the way up to the Board of Admiralty in sevente Then two years later, opportunity came knocking, and Perceval answered His uncle who had also been an earl, had passed away, and his cousin had left his seat in Parliament to take the man's place. In order to keep the seat in

the family, Perceval took over his cousin's duties. For thirteen years, he established himself as a formidable politician and a fierce debater, earning him the title of Chancellor of the Exchequer, the head of the British Treasury. Through hard work and determination, he had achieved a status previously bestowed upon his other family members at birth. Perceval had earned his place, and his success eventually led him all the way to the top. In eighteen o nine, he became Prime Minister of England

while also retaining his position as Chancellor. For three years, he worked to keep the government running smoothly, but no matter what he did, someone somewhere would be upset that not enough was being done. Meanwhile, a man named John Williams was living in a small parish on the coast of England and was having a nightmare. It was May eleven and he'd woken up in the middle of the night, his wife still sleeping soundly beside him. He jarred her

awake and told her what he dreamt. That he'd been standing in the lobby of the House of Commons when a man walked up to the Chancellor and shot him. He tried going back to sleep, but soon was visited by the same dream. By the time the sun rose the next morning, he had been startled out of sleep by that terrifying dream three separate times. As it so happened earlier that evening, Perceval was on his way to an inquiry at the House of Commons. He'd entered the

lobby at five pm. A man who had been sitting by the fireplace stood up and pulled a pistol from his coat. No one saw him coming, and no one could stop him in time. He took aim and fired, shooting the Prime Minister in the chest and killing him. Word about the assassination wouldn't reach Williams until the next day, when he would tell his friends about his strange dream. They had heard the news and informed him that the Prime Minister also the Chancellor, had indeed been killed the

night of William's dream. Six weeks later, Williams paid a visit to the House of Commons lobby where Perceval had been shot. He'd never been there before in his life, but he recognized it immediately. As he stood there, he identified both where the shooter had fired from and where

Perceval had been standing at the time. He knew exactly what the late Prime Minister had been wearing and the manner in which he'd fallen after being shot, everything down to the smallest detail, details that only the police and the people who had been there at the time would have known. Like I said, Spencer, Percival had joined a very exclusive club. He became the first and only British Prime Minister to have ever been assassinated, a nightmare both

he and John Williams had experience together. The only difference was that Williams had seen it all happen from almost three hundred miles away. Perfect pitch is quite the gift for the musically inclined. Not everyone can identify a note by name simply from hearing the tone, but those who can are very special. Somewhere between one and five people per ten thousand can do it. Because of this, perfect pitch and its sibling relative pitch, have been used to

study how our brains developed. But one man goes beyond perfect pitch. He can do something arguably more difficult, yet also not particularly useful these days. Still, his talent is something to behold, especially in an age when we can't really hold our music anymore. His name is Arthur Lynchen, a doctor from Philadelphia who can recognize a song simply by looking at it. But he doesn't read the notes on a page the way a musician would. That would

be too easy. No. From behind a pair of thick glasses, he can pick up a vinyl record and, without looking at the label or artwork, can identify the songs embedded within its grooves. He started doing it to impress his friends at parties when he was younger. They would hand him an album and he would hold it in front of his face, turning it over in his hands to

get a look at its grooves from all angles. He'd note their depth and length along the vinyl, recognizing where the music got louder and softer, and in some cases he could even tell who was conducting. And that's the catch with Arthur's talent. Because of his deep knowledge of European classical music, he can only discern songs from composers such as Bach and Beethoven. Give him a copy of Sergeant Pepper and it's like handing him a blank piece

of paper. It doesn't look like much of anything. Once he was asked to identify a modern rock record, he took one look at it and called it disorganized gibberish. It had been, in fact, an album by Alice Cooper are There. Also has trouble with chamber music and classical music from before Beethoven's time, as its structure doesn't change much throughout the record. This makes picking out individual songs

or instruments almost impossible. He also has better luck with newer pressings, finding it easier to make out the grooves than with older records, which don't show much variation. Still, even with those caveats, Arthur seems to be one of a kind. He had a brief moment of fame in the nineteen eighties after The New York Times wrote an article about him, followed by pieces in Time Magazine and

the Los Angeles Times. He was invited on popular television programs of the day, such as That's Incredible and Paul Daniels Magic Show. But Arthur would eventually find himself defending his abilities before the most discerning audience of his life, James Randy Randy is a noted magician and debunker of paranormal and pseudo scientific oddities. He spent a good part of his career challenging extraordinary people to prove the validity of their talents, going after his supposed fortune tellers and

mind readers, and eventually he crossed paths with Arthur. He gave the physician a record with an obscured label and asked him to identify it. Arthur held it up and examined the grooves, declaring it to be a recording of a particular Stravinsky piece. But that wasn't all he did. He also identified which version it was and what German orchestra had recorded it, and James Andy was confounded. Not

an easy thing to do, believe me. There isn't much of a demand anymore for someone who can read vinyl records, not that there ever was before, so it's probably smart that Arthur kept his day job as a doctor all these years. Still, that hasn't stopped the occasional fan from shoving an album in his face and asking him to identify it. The most common challenge he gets Beethoven's Fifth. In fact, it's so popular that he once guessed it without even looking at the record. Now that's what i'd

call curious. 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 Manky in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and tell division show, and you can learn all about it over at the World of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious. H