A History Teacher Reacts | Joshua Norton, the Only United States Emperor by Sam O'Nella Academy

[Music] hey youtube it's mr. teacher mr. Terry here once again with another history teacher reacts video today we are headed back to everyone's favorite channel which is the Salmonella Academy and today's video that we're gonna check out is titled Joshua Norton the only United States Emperor so that's a pretty fascinating premise right there so I'm excited to check out one of the you know many interesting historical stories that Sam always has for us now before we begin make sure that you click his link it's down below to the original video so you can give him the like I'm sure I'll subscribe and make sure you're watching the video game the view time all the support that needs to happen over to his awesome channel over there and if you haven't stuff to my channel love to have you around our community as well you can also join our discord server to interact more with our community also if you're a gamer check out the new mr. Terry gaming channel we do a lot of Let's Plays and videos related to gaming over there all right with that let's go ahead and get started I'll see you who the heck is Joshua Norton is this video is sponsored by Wix big brain music good good only United States let me ask you do you watch the news often have you attended a school in your life sure you ever look at a dollar if the answer to any of these questions is yes then chances are you're familiar with at least a couple of United States presidents but if you're like me prior to look all week you've probably never heard of a United States Emperor no excuse me good sir but I should inform you that we're actually living under an emperor as we speak at least according to my degree from the University of Reddit hey whoa look over there reddit sequel criticizing Elon Musk there are worse type of these making typos in a police story about a man named Joshua Norton I don't go on reddit like ever so but all I ever hear is that's like who read it people are was born in England at some point in the 1810s very little is known about the guy's younger years other than the fact that he spent most of his youth in South Africa as part of the UK's colonization programs he had colonization programs yeah eat some tan that's a huge still a huge era for the British Empire they basically lost control of the United States by then the United States revolutions over they saw independence but South Africa was a huge colony for them and the most important overseas colony was definitely India he came to San Francisco in 18-49 with a modest amount of wealth to his name and worked his way up in the real estate and commodities markets to become one of the city's wealthiest citizens all was normal in the life of mr. Norton until one day when he got a little too big for his britches you see in 1852 China was facing a huge famine so they completely banned the export of rice naturally San Fran's rice price began to skyrocket in response to the reduced supply Peak usually the British have not responded well when the Chinese government you would be ching dynasty here would have done anything economically that would hurt like Britain as a trade partner so if you see that with like rice where you know that's gonna come a lot of foods gonna come out of there you're not going to export it make sense for China because they don't to be exporting food when they are starving to death right and then you look also something like when they banned opium right very addictive drug and the British said no that's like a fifth of our economy is dealing drugs essentially so we're gonna make enforce you to keep trading that with the opium wars so the British are very serious about protecting their economic interests all over the world you get 36 cents per pound norton saw this and decide to buy a twenty-five thousand dollar rice shipment from peru at 12 cents per pound thinking he'd corner the market keep in mind that's around seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars in today's money little did he know that wasn't the only shipment coming out of Peru and by the time he was able to sell it rice was already back down to three cents a pound now according to my calculus at a net loss of a whole freaking lot he subsequently got into a year's battle with the vendor who sold him the shipment which only cost them more money and ultimately left the man destitute this guy can become with anybody would do after losing everything he drank a nice hefty dose of [ __ ] it all and said you know what the courts can eat my shorts the house can eat my blouse Peru can eat my shoe I declare myself emperor of these united states and I'm telling every newspaper in this city about it and then he did now the papers yep's my alcohol be involved there's declare yourself Emperor I've talked to my in in classes before about what declaring anything does which is often nothing right talk about like okay the Americans declared independence from Britain okay nothing happened right and then there was had to be a war ever over it and then eventually the governing body being Britain had to you know agree to that I guess and then your I guess kind of a country bit go outside and declare I've said that before like or just yeah like just go outside be like I am yeah the king of something I declare independence from something or just show up somewhere and be like this is mine now nothing happens so my question is did he actually get some I guess go through some type of I don't know you know what you would would call it steps to have this somehow become official and did anyone acknowledge it what's good have just been like what a lunatic and that would have been the end of it let's go back now the papers could have just been like what a lunatic and that would have been the end of it but instead they said you know what this guy's kind of a meme let's publish his declaration just forgets in shackles people across the city and extra lives and Norton's rise to power began from here he issued several more commands to kind of making fun of them I'm like nowadays people loved having regular Norton updates shoved in their face among these announcements was the decree in 1859 to formally abolish the United States Congress he also gave out a mandate to both the Protestant and Roman Catholic churches to formally ordain him as Emperor Oh okay hold on let's see whereas a body of men calling themselves the National Congress are now in session in Washington City in violation of our imperial edict on the 12th of October last declaring this said Congress abolished he abolished it nice oh gosh what's this not actual kami my big boy mr. Pope and Santa come touch my sweet LED and call me a good boy you milkie's and we can watch Thomas also okay although these edicts were ultimately ignored by the powers they were addressed to they still served to build Norton's reputation around the city and before long he was a fully fledged local celebrity he was easy I feel like today if you sent something like that to the government you're probably gonna get the Secret Service the FBI somebody's gonna come knocking on your door because you don't seem to be well and you could be an actual threat but I back then they probably just like that but don't don't I don't want to try this now unless you are ready to face the powers that be fully recognized by passerby typically sporting a blue naval uniform and a beaver hat with a peacock feather in it pretty soon Norton Cadet class who received the royal treatment wherever he went people started to address him formally on the streets he had to ride public transport for free and he even got occasional tax payments from people sympathetic to his in poverty living situation it sounds like people just kind of giving in to his joke kind of like hey keep this up cuz yeah it is kind of like a meme like leading him on you want they really took it seriously they just kind of was humoring him oh and get this Norton became so famous that toy stores in the city began selling dolls of the man for kids to play with people can you think of that we're so underrated they got dolls made after them you got someone let me know if they can buy them or something on eBay or something Emperor Norton mr. T and the bear that Teddy Roosevelt decided not to shoot that's it really also there's not backed by actual also taking mr. t donations came to because I'm mister to me seriously by the populace around him for example according to me using the Josh Brisco instead of San Francisco would be punishable by a twenty five dollar fine talk to any Frisco native in your father this attitude survives to this day with the help of a local printing firm Norden even issued his own currency which was actually accepted by many residents of the city despite having no backing behind it whatsoever in fact a few Norton bucks are still floating around city well interesting way people talk about how money today has no backing it used to be the case like in the United States that your dollar was backed up by a dollars worth of gold that the government held and technically speaking you're supposed to be able to exchange it but using paper money is a lot easier to exchange than actual gold and then eventually that what they call our moving the gold standard so that doesn't you don't have that tight anymore which does make inflation all more common because money is now only largely valued by how much of it exists is not backed by anything else you just have to live in a society that will commonly agree that money has a value and we all basically trust what that money is valued at it's highly valued collectors items I tried doing that's cool in a while back but unfortunately own Ella rubles are still only worth their weight no nella rubles of course it was a no Magpies and molasses sure they're expensive now some people watch that's arrested by a policeman named Armand bar ba oh come on Armand omen an asylum for his apparent insanity needless to say when the public called when to this they lost their [ __ ] minds irate citizens wrote complaints intro I love them newspapers published skating editorials towards the police department stray cats were thrown into wood chippers I don't have any evidence for that last one I'm just looking assuming based on what I would do in this scenario anyway pretty soon the chief of police got the memo and Emperor Lauren was released unscathed thankfully Norton issued a public behind them what's the man who arrested him and from that point onward whenever Norton passed a member of the force they would stop and salute him so although in many ways he appears loops like Norton was for Norton Wordle and Mr Norrell sometimes do Emperor Norton decided to drop dead on a street corner in January of course uneventful reign he left behind a legacy the likes of which most of us could only dream of beyond just the comedic value of his many exploits Norton definitely had his prophetic moments with some of his orders actually coming true decades after they were given on multiple occasions ordered a bridge to be built between San Francisco and the Oakland Bay Area which was eventually granted in the 1930s he also told people to form a League of Nations to uphold international interests unfortunately a man yelling in California wasn't quite enough to convince the leaders of the world that such a thing was necessary but who knows maybe the little nerdo could have stopped World War one if he had been just a bit louder I hope this tale has inspired some of you young important kids out there not because I expect any of you to succeed in the same way Norton did but just because it's my personal belief that the world could always use more oddball vagrants wait a minute oddball vagrants product placement sponsor time questions segue literally anything if the answer is yes then chances are you can get a lot of use out of a website powered by Wix you can give your small business the professional makeover it deserves or show off your art and other hobbies in any style or layout you can imagine even if you don't do anything with your life then hey today's is good today is any to try your hand at web development which does all the heavy lifting for you meaning even a novice can create stunning pages of all sizes beyond just the aesthetic aspect Wix also and know what to do for other services for your site like custom domain names and email services oh and did I mention it's free so please try Wix today sorry cannot see true today until next time I'm salmonella and thank you for watching well that was great I love those stories amends me like that the the duty talked about that I like kept eating Torah or whatever his name was he like couldn't stop eating and there's the guy that like kept failing and like making money and stuff like that know how he finds all these interesting people throughout history but now the most interesting part was that he seemed to kind of be beloved by the community I think the people thought I guess he was like harmless and just kind of like indulged him I guess the people of San Francisco in the 1800s had that kind of sense of humor towards someone that may have been clinically insane or something like that but it seemed like at first maybe yet his wits about him because he made this take big business deal you know to get the rice and all that and then it backfired and I don't know it sounds like maybe that's what like tipped him off with that sort of thing there so pretty cool so historical context and San Francisco was was buzzing at that time you have going back to 1840s and 50s a huge population boom of course with the gold rush which really put that whole area on the map Sacramento San Francisco as a port city for a lot of that development and also becomes a huge entry point for immigrants especially Chinese ones that came across during a lot of these famines and stuff like that some of the Chinese people are able to make it out very tumultuous time in China coming over and working in all kinds of industries famously the railroad industry you know and a lot of hazardous jobs that came across that so San Francisco this is where we really see a San Francisco kind of got on the map and it looks like I had some interesting characters as well that you could have met I guess going up and down the street there what about interesting guy I'm sure you would have interesting to talk to and just get his opinions on stuff so would you have observed him as your emperor of the United States of America let me know in the comments what you think about this guy all right well we're gonna head out here the ritual video link again is down below links to other stuff down below and thanks for supporting the channel here and we'll see you next time bye [Music] [Music]

Channel: Mr. Terry History

Views: 207,531

Keywords: react, history

Id: xvqG9dXj-Ck

Length: 14min 27sec (867 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 17 2020