The Ghosts Between Us

or a pearly white smile. Beauty is not limited to someone's look or style. As the old saying goes, it's in the eye of the beholder. But some people might be the total package. At least that's what two men thought of the girl they saw on the beach one day. Her name was Alo Pinero, and she was something of a fixture on the sandy shores of Brazil, well one particular shore. She was born in Rio de Janeiro in

nineteen forty three. As a teen, she would hang out on the beach in her neighborhood, walking up and down the sand. She kept to herself as she passed the shops and restaurants along the way. Little did she know, however, she would become the obsession of two men lurking nearby. Their names were Antonio and Venicius. Alo would often stroll past the Valso Bar cafe, where the two men often drank and talked. At the time, Antonio was thirty five and married, while Vensius was fifty and already had a

few marriages under his belt. So this wasn't some schoolyard crush among teenagers. It was actually kind of creepy. To make matters worse, Elyo had to deal with them every time she came into the bar to buy cigarettes for her mother. These grown men, with their bellies full of alcohol, would cat call and whistle at her, and she just kept going, not paying them any attention. But then something strange happened. Alo spoke to them. Eventually the three became friends,

and Antonio wanted more. He even promised to leave his wife for her and asked a Loo for her hand in marriage, and she did not accept, but that didn't quell his desire for her, so he partnered with Vnisius to immortalize her the only way he knew how. In song, the pair had been collaborators for several years already. In nineteen fifty six, their musical play Orpheus of the Conception premiered on the Brazilian stage, with songs by Antonio and

lyrics by Vnisius. In fact, Vnicius was already working on lyrics for an upcoming musical and was in need of a song for the show, and Antonio had been tinkering with a new tune on his piano, which he titled Menina Capasa. The words were different at first, until Vnsius changed them to honor Alo's Beauty and Charm the BASSA nova song he came up with was then released in nineteen sixty two and was sung by Brazilian artist Perry Rebbeo.

Two years later, though, it found new life in America when jazz saxophonist Stan Getz decided to include it on a new album of his. He was in a New York City recording studio working on the song with Brazilian guitarist Jauel Gilberto. That was when someone suggested putting out an English version. Lyricist Norman Gimble reworked the lyrics for an English speaking audience, but they still needed a singer

Gilberto's wife, Ostrud stepped up to the mic. She spoke English well enough and had a clean, clear voice that seemed perfect for the song's simple melody, and their last minute idea paid off. The song became a massive hit in America, landing at number one on the Billboard Adult Contemporary Charts and number fifty one on the Hot one hundred for nineteen sixty four. Since then, it has become one of the most recorded pop songs in history, second

only to Yesterday by the Beatles. Alo Pinero, despite being the song's inspiration, did not see any financial gain from its success. She did, however, go on to become a model and a businesswoman and did quite well for herself. In fact, she had no idea that she had been the muse for the song until after its release. To her friends and family, she was a low but to the rest of the world she would forever be known as the girl from Ipanema. When people reach a certain

level of celebrity, everything changes. Travel becomes more complicated. Simply eating out or going for a walk can be difficult. So much of day to day life is affected, So it makes sense why many celebrities find that they relate best to other famous people. This has spawned some unusual friendships, like Snoop Dogg and Martha Stewart or Elton John and Eminem. But one of the most unlikely celebrity pairings in history was between two men who couldn't have had less in common,

Harry Houdini and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. One was a famous illusionist who made elephants disappear, and the other was the creator of the great literary detective Sherlock Holmes. Houdini was a Hungarian immigrant to America who grew up living hand to mouth and started working as a vaudeville performer when he was just a kid. Doyle went to a private school and had careers as a medical doctor and

a botanist before becoming an author. But for all their differences, they had at least one thing in common, a fascination with the parent normal. Of course, they weren't the only ones. After the mass death caused by World War One, people all around the world were hungry for answers about the afterlife. Many turned to spiritualism, a movement that believed that the souls of the dead could contact the living, usually through

seances performed by psychic mediums. Houdini and Doyle were both fascinated by spiritualism before they met at one of Houdini's performances in nineteen twenty, they were already two of the most notable speakers on the top, and their shared interest sparked in immediate friendship. But it wasn't all rose colored glasses, because while they were both fascinated by the possibility of an afterlife, they held sharply different perspectives. Doyle was a

passionate believer. Since the death of his son, he had made it his mission to spread spiritualism to the public. His wife, Jean, was even a medium who performed automatic writing, summoning spirits to guide her in writing out messages to their loved ones. Houdini, on the other hand, grew up working in vaudeville acts, where fake psychics were a dime a dozen. He had peeked behind the curtain and had

come to see most mediums as Charlatan's. So his goal wasn't to spread the message of spiritualism, but to debunk it, and this led to some healthy, heated debates that first, the conversations were friendly, then in nineteen twenty two, Doyle invited the illusionists to participate in a seance at his home. During the experience, Doyle's wife claimed to have been contacted by the spirits of Houdini's mother, who then proceeded to transcribe a long letter from the dead woman to her son.

Houdini seemed shaken when he left, and Doyle thought that his friend was finally convinced, But soon after Houdini published an account of the experience in which he claimed he did not believe the seance had been successful. His reasoning his mother's English had never been very good, so he couldn't see how she would manage a fifteen page letter in that language. Also, she had failed to mention that

it was her birthday that day. Harry Houdini and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's friendship was never the same after that. In the coming years, they only became more entrenched in their points of view. They remained rivals until Halloween of nineteen twenty six, when Houdini died of a ruptured appendix, and that should have put an end to their feud, But in nineteen thirty Doyle published his belief that Houdini

had possessed psychic powers all along. If true, that would make the illusionist a special kind of fraud, one who denied the benefits of spiritualism in order to profit from them. It was quite the accusation and difficult for Houdini to deny now that he was dead right, and yet still he managed a small rebuttal as a sort of final test of spiritualism. Before his death, Houdini and his wife created a secret code that only they knew. For years afterwards,

she held seances trying to contact him. If he reached out and gave her the code, they'd have proof of an afterlife. But he never did, and the meaning of it all is a matter of perspective. This was either evidence against spiritualism and psychic mediums, or that Houdini's ghost didn't want to admit that he was wrong. Either way, he got the last word from beyond the grave. 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 Theworldoflore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.