A History Teacher Reacts | "Timothy Dexter: The Dumbest Rags-to-Riches Story" by Sam O'Nella

hey youtube welcome back to another history teacher reacts video of mr. Terry's continued my search for historical knowledge here on the Internet IRA headed back to Salmonella he just did an episode not too long ago as to when I recorded this and it is Timothy Dexter the dumbest rags to riches story so the seminal series a lot of fun he had some really interesting more like quirky historical things there I'm excited to check this out make sure if you like this original video go down to the description give his video a like sub to him if you haven't alright let's go ahead and get started [Music] [Music] this video is sponsored by Skillshare [Music] Timothy Dexter the dumbest rags-to-riches kids now we all know that fate is a fickle thing some of us may try to defy its will but there's enough small businesses with Pizza Hut roofs out there to tell you that such a thing is ultimately futile as for most of us we tend to have our fair share of good and bad luck throughout our lives but every now and then rnjesus smiles upon some drooling little loaf child and says you know my son you know without a they one way though the figgy pudding that child was Timothy Dexter Dexter okay I have so I have no idea what is going on here but it's a rags to riches story okay we're going back to Massachusetts it's gonna be like older time I was born in Malden Massachusetts in 1707 he had a humble upbringing dropping and so 1747 we're dealing with it see what so 1547 so I mean we got colonial America Britain in French rivalry at this time pre pre American Revolution obviously but good to be in the midst of seven years war so we'll see you though school as an eight year old to work as a farmhand and a leather worker but Dexter thought he deserved better so when he grew up he married one Elizabeth frothingham a rich widow in need of company gold-digging achieved he began his quest to become a true aristocrat as his first step you think's mmm all the rich guys I know are in positions of power I should run for office now the town of Malden wasn't much keen on appointing a bumbling second grade dropout but after rejecting dozens of petitions sent in by dexstar they eventually gave up and decided to just make some [ __ ] up leading to Dexter becoming the official informer of dear tasking him with keeping alongs on the local deer population and over statistics of dough's and bucks a lake Dexter ruled with an iron fist triumphantly concluding what many had already known that there weren't any deer in Malden Massachusetts could be a boring job then right the deer a counter so this is one of these falling fare failing upwards kind of people will see it satisfied with his political career Dexter then set his sights on greater financial ventures so a little history and fifteen seventy five as part of our growing independence from Britain the Continental Congress decided to establish their own currency known as the Continental dollar real creative there then the Revolution yeah it was one of the things that the Continental Congress decided to do there's a couple of Continental congresses but one of the first things I decided to do is try to get a American currency it'd be hard to use maybe the British Pound but have something unify it was First Continental Congress very very basic a lot of basic things like all right I guess we should have an army and we'll get George Washington to do it we should probably get a universal currency it was until the later one of course that you get the actual Declaration of Independence though so looks like colonies are stabbing the British okay so let's go back and see that again versus new money established their own currency known as the Continental dollar real creative there then the Revolutionary War started and it dawned on people that these pieces of paper wouldn't be very useful in a giant pile of wet tea and smoldering Patriots causing their value to do one of those horny ego death spirals then the Congress did you know that stupid thing that every high schooler learns is stupid not invading Russia and winter but the other one practically making them worth less than their weight and paper and ink and what you know so what printing more money that's been a historically thing I get that I get it ass all the time from students or something they'll be like man if we're just out of money why don't we just print it and usually they if someone has the guts to ask that in an open forum they're like that it doesn't take very long I go oh yeah I guess that would devalue it right and people yeah so over over printing Germans went notoriously did that during the Depression after World War one we're doing that which completely devalued their money almost to virtually nothing so no a good portion of the Continental Army was paid with these so by the time the war ended many veterans were left totally destitute the aristocrats were like well this grass-eating interventions did kind of give us a country so whatever we'll throw him a few cents and take this trash off their hands Dexter was like oh I'm a wealth man I'm gonna do that too and he spent the majority of his savings buying a boat load after boatload of the 1780s equivalent of blockbuster gift cards by all accounts this should have been his ruin but by some stroke of luck after the Constitution was ratified the new government decided that they trade content it was for Treasury bonds worth 1% of their face value doesn't a lot of these stories of people you know the the reactor riches do something that was definitely against modern thought process right it's all a stock market or any anything worked any kind of investment works right you have to either have some kind of privileged information or oftentimes get lucky on something that will have value in the future that's what that guys doing is this money will eventually have value and he has a literal boatloads of it I guess doesn't sound like much but keep in mind dexter bought thousands of crates of bills for fractions of pennies apiece so as buybacks began across the country his stockpile appreciated massively in value and this informer of dear realized that for the first time there were a lot of bucks and Mauldin but just because he was now a man of the upper crust doesn't mean he let it go to his head sure he might have purchased the most luxurious Chateau that money could buy her daily Playboy Mansion style ragers and commissioned over 40 statues of America's greatest heroes one of which was of himself with a plaque calling him quote the greatest philosopher in the Western world despite his incredibly tacky displays of wealth his contemptuous contemporary still saw him for the loud illiterate rube he was so they started giving him deliberately awful investment tips in order to get him to bankrupt himself one such piece of advice was that he should ship worming pants to the Caribbean for those of you born after 1850 a warming pants doesn't diminish on a long pole that you fill up with hot coals to warm up your bed not much used in a tropical paradise the Dexter was undeterred by such frivolous things as logic went ahead and sent over 40,000 of them to the West Indies when they arrived the locals didn't really know what they were looking at and decided to use them as ladles for the sugar and molasses refineries and by the end of it Dexter sold every single one lack of of nearly eighty percent first failing upwards they like he'll who like he'll lose all his money cuz you know obviously don't need to heat your bed and the Caribbean but they were like the people down there oh these actually are perfect ladles these are awesome here take our money and buy some more straighted that their plan backfired the elites then told him to literally carry coal to Newcastle which is an old idiom used to describe a pointless task based off the fact that Newcastle was one the world's biggest producers of coal the only idioms Dexter knew about all involved different animals [ __ ] in the woods so we took their word on good faith and went along with it but by some divine providence by the time the shipment arrived the Newcastle coal miners had all gone on strike once again cleared the entire shipment with a hefty profit he was like man I am so smart by this point he was pretty confident in his speculation skills so we started making seemingly far-fetched ventures all by yeah we're just I mean we're all waiting will he actually fail at something here is that gonna happen like it thought he's failing upward one time he had a bunch of stray cats rounded up for basically free which sounds like herding cats but what do I know and he sent her to the Caribbean where they were gobbled up and mast not alike eaten but purchased to deal with all the rat infestations in another instance he bought up just about every whale bone in Boston and coincidentally at the same time in France men started wearing corsets to for some reason demand went way up Dexter's laughing now from an outside perspective at the end of the day Dexter was a very shrewd merchant so at this point of my research I was like wait a minute is he smart then I learned about his life outside of business Dexter considered himself extremely knowledgeable in just about every topic keywords considered himself for example he once stumbled upon a guy painting a sign to go along with the newly built statue of Jefferson and when he saw that the sign called Jefferson the writer of the Declaration of Independence Dexter lost his frickin mind and insisted that Jefferson did not pen the DOI but rather the Constitution spoiler alert not remotely true he was in France at the time an easy mistake I beat James Madison ya know Jefferson so I mean he's obviously like overly confident himself because he's achieved all these things even though he doesn't understand that how lucky he's actually compared but he's actually trying to rewrite history to make today sure but this was only like 10 years after the fact that's like someone today saying Obama didn't kill bin Laden dumbass that was Bill Clinton anyway when the painter refused to change the inscription and Dexter started shooting at him with a long rifle until he complied real Jean teal Dexter made sure to surround himself with the requisite number of weirdos my name is look why does he care why does he care about that level of delusion one of which was Jonathan Plummer a man whom Dexter paid to be his poet laureate writing only the most laudatory ODEs in his honor mind you this wasn't just your run-of-the-mill writing only the book this was a man from Malden who thought the Paulding he got some Rogaine and grew such a Mane that when they can it would follow how did Tory ODEs in his honor mind you this wasn't just your run-of-the-mill wiesen wizened wordsmith Jonathan sold fish for a living and porn he just kind of went along with the whole thing for the pocket change besides his entourage Dexter occasionally spent time with the total deeds known as his family he had two children whom the New England Historical Society describes as a half mad drunk and a completely mad drunk respectively and he couldn't stand his wife on account of her perceived constant nagging to the point where he would tell guests he was unmarried and that he just had a ghost in his house it's like oh yeah it's a Sea Hag Indian shipwreck or something Timmy please I'm cold in my hands a romantic find it in your heart to light the fireplace for me yeah plenty of that in heylia banshee [ __ ] one day in a massive stroke of ego Dexter decided to fake his own death complete with a lavish funeral service just to see who would show up lucky for him about 3,000 people from all walks of life turned up though initially staying out of sight he soon noticed that his wife wasn't crying so in response he jumped out and started hitting her upside the head with a cane in front of everybody but as his true mortality grew closer Dexter knew he needed a legacy and decided to pen his memoirs titled a pickle for the knowing once which was basically just 20 pages of unhinged ranting about politics religion his wife and whatever else came to mind no punctuation random capitalization the most amazing spelling I've ever seen he sounds like the papers I get in class mm-hmm if some excerpts George Washington attitude philosopher tobacco general and this is all just from the first few lines the entire book is written like this and just like everything else the guy did the things so like [ __ ] hotcakes why does anybody even try the best part is that when he got complaints about the total lack of grammatical anything in the second edition of the book he put an extra page at the end full of nothing but punctuation marks with a little note saying that anyone who felt like whining could just stick them wherever they wanted died in 1806 and by and large he probably should ended up Davy Jones's Locker but given the circumstances I imagine the big man upstairs dropped his big deck immortal soul trading cars at just the right moment letting him slip through the pearly gates undetected and legend has it that to this day if you pray to the name Timothy Dexter I look upon you kindly and share his skills with you all wait a minute share skill skill share is an online learning community with over 25,000 classes in design business technology and more Premium Membership gives you unlimited access to high-quality classes on must know topics so you can improve your skills unlock new opportunities and do the work you love if you're like me you're probably tired of sitting in a festering miasma of boy stink and jewel clouds all day such a thing can be easily remedied with a houseplant known to improve air quality but you don't know which few species can survive on what meager light slips through the cracks of your squalid cave if you give happy houseplants a try I'm sure your dorm or apartment will start to show signs of non insect life before you know it join the more than seven million people already learning today with a special offer just for my viewers while skill shares normally less than $10 a month export analysts around in the description can get two months of unlimited access to their 25,000 plus classes for absolutely free so please quit your public mcclure ition and get your private free tuition today anyway that's all for today until next time I am salmonella and thank you for watching cool little Sam's videos are they're funny I do feel like when I when I do or record from these videos how much I can add right because it's always so bizarre and things like that but again interesting a little side story those you know failing upwards stories that you have they're interesting that putting in the context of the American Revolution and stuff in that whole era being able to in a way kind of benefit from that and like with the money alright the Continental money that was seemingly going to be worthless but ends up making him a fortune from the pure the standpoint of how much he ended up buying for you know very little fractions of a cent or something like that he got from that so that that's that's interesting there I loved his book his book and it's just like full of errors and bad philosophy and then when people got mad at the lack of punctuation because people are very you know formal in their writing right and people talk about that like you compared today's writing with older writing it seems far more sophisticated and stuff that you probably I probably would have got just marine and just adds an appendix or whatever in the in the other and it's the second edition and yeah just throw in the punctuation wherever you want so anyway is inflated ego trying to basically rewrite history of know it was it was Jefferson they wrote the Constitution not you know not the Declaration of Independence forcing the people to do that one of those random weird stories right in history and Sam does a great job doing that hey if you like the original video the link to the original video will be down below so make sure you go over there give a like they haven't subscribed to his channel definitely do that it's great hoots funny little history things that go along with that you have it's up to my channel I'd love to have you there enable notifications taking part of live premieres and live streams it can be a more common face in our community join our discord server down below if you have not either if I want to be part of another history community and thanks again for watching I hope to see you again very soon bye [Music] you

Channel: Mr. Terry History

Views: 810,390

Keywords: react, history

Id: xIEah_lpHnQ

Length: 15min 28sec (928 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 03 2020