The stray cat king | Historical Legends Part 5

no matter how absurd this story gets remember it's true but before we get into today's story if you're a fan of the strange dark and mysterious deliberated story format then you come to the right channel because that's all we do and we upload three or four times every week so if that's of interest to you please sneak into the like button's house and lightly toast all of their bread and then put it back in the bag also please subscribe to our channel and turn on all notifications so you don't miss our weekly uploads alright let's get into today's story in the winter of 1748 timothy dexter was born in a town just north of boston massachusetts called malden despite being incredibly dim-witted timothy always believed he was going to strike it rich one day but looking around at his family who were a bunch of poor farm laborers timothy realized he would need to make some big moves if he wanted that dream to become a reality when he was just eight years old he decided he would make the first of his many big moves and this move was to drop out of second grade and go to work on a farm and then on to a leather tannery for years he worked hard earning more money than his family had ever made but he knew this line of work was not going to make him rich and so when he was 19 years old he decided it was time to make yet another big move he sold his best suit and used the money to relocate farther north to another massachusetts town called newburyport he believed with their booming economy he was bound to make some additional money there and he was right but his payday would not come from a higher paying job when he arrived there he met a lonely wealthy widow named elizabeth frothingham and he promptly married her becoming rich overnight after moving into her mansion and dubbing himself lord timothy dexter he suddenly felt lost he had spent his entire life pursuing wealth and now that he suddenly had it he didn't know what to do with it and so he looked around newburyport at the other rich people and saw what they were doing and he found that many of them held political positions and so timothy decided he would run for office too but unfortunately the voters caught on to the fact that he was a second grade dropout who couldn't read or write or think critically so he didn't win the election but instead of accepting his defeat timothy began petitioning the town to let him have his political office anyways and the town said no that's not how democracy works but timothy didn't really understand and he just continued to send these carefully outlined petitions explaining exactly why they needed to appoint him the town had to bring in experts that were able to decipher what he wrote because timothy was deeply illiterate and his petitions were so riddled with spelling mistakes and were so confusing that at first glance it looked like it was written in a foreign language after they deciphered them they would immediately deny them but timothy just continued to send them and so finally the town got so fed up with all of his petitions that they decided they would just give him a fake political title just to get him to stop and to low key humiliate him they offered him the title of the informer of dear and they told him his job was to look high and low all over newburyport for any signs of deer activity and the joke was in newburyport there are no deer but timothy did not find this humiliating he did not see the joke in it he took it very seriously and believed his petitions had worked and so he took his political title and with great enthusiasm he got to work spending all hours running all around the town carefully documenting all deer activity of which there was none at the end of his term timothy felt like he had accomplished a lot as the informer of dear and was ready to move on from political office and so he turned in his official informer of dear logbook to the town and told them they should pass it along to the next informer of dear to get them up to speed unfortunately when the town opened that log book they found it contained only crude pictures of deer and then illiterate ramblings about deer that were so difficult to decipher that even the experts weren't able to do it and so the log book was thrown away and the informer of dear position was never filled again shortly after the american revolutionary war broke out between the colonies in america and great britain america began printing their own money to pay for their troops but this money called the continental dollar it wasn't backed by silver or gold it was just backed on the promise of future value if america won the war that combined with over printing this money led to rampant inflation and very quickly the continental dollar was worthless some of the wealthy folk in newburyport decided they would do the troops a faber who were now destitute because they held all of this worthless currency and these wealthy people offered to buy all of their continental currency for a fraction of the price which was better than nothing when timothy saw all these rich people doing that he quickly jumped on the trend but he didn't view this as doing a favor for these troops that needed the money he viewed this as a great investment opportunity he believed america was going to win this war and that eventually this currency was going to have lots of value and so he invested all of his savings into buying back the continental dollar when word spread that timothy had made this terrible investment because at the time nobody was predicting this currency would have any worth really even if america won the war when they found out that timothy had made this ridiculous investment his peers the other wealthy folk in newburyport they were thrilled they were so annoyed by timothy and they didn't like the fact that he was kind of on their level because he had some money and so they were excited to see him go bankrupt but sure enough at the end of the american revolution when america won the war congress made good and backed the currency making timothy one of the richest people in america overnight right away timothy used his second big windfall of cash to purchase the most luxurious mansion in the richest neighborhood in all of newburyport but beyond that purchase he didn't really know what to do with all of this money it was very overwhelming and so after several weeks of deep introspection where he tried to figure out you know who he was now and what he wanted to be it suddenly became clear to him he needed to construct 40 wooden statues of random famous men on his front lawn these statues included george washington napoleon bonaparte thomas jefferson and of course himself the inscription under his statue read the first in the east the first in the west and the greatest philosopher in the western world after a sculptor was done timothy went out to inspect all 40 statues and he discovered what he believed to be a huge discrepancy on one of them underneath thomas jefferson's replica it said the author of the declaration of independence which is accurate but he told the sculptor that he was supposed to put down the author of the constitution and the sculptor very gently said that's not right it should be the declaration of independence timothy became irate he was not having it and so he ran into his mansion and came out with his oversized hunting rifle and began firing at the sculptor's feet until he made the change after jefferson's title was fixed timothy noticed another discrepancy on another statue he walked over to the george washington replica and looked underneath it at the inscription which said george washington and timothy just shook his head got out of paintbrush covered it up and wrote one word pit just pit because periodically timothy would confuse george washington's name with pitt and nobody could convince him otherwise by now the other wealthy folk in newburyport had really grown to resent timothy and now he was just showing off his wealth with his totally ridiculous mansion and all of his statues and so some of these aristocrats wanted to find a way to just ruin timothy and so knowing he was not a very bright man they decided they would start giving him deliberately terrible investment tips the first being that he should buy a whole bunch of warming pans and send them to the caribbean a warming pan is like this big frying pan that you load up with hot coals and you slide under your bed to stay warm at night this works really well in a cold environment like newburyport but is completely worthless in a warm tropical environment like the caribbean but timothy believed he was being given some great insider trading information and absolutely took this to the bank and he went and bought two ships and he loaded them up with 40 000 of these huge warming pans and he fired him off to the caribbean and when they got there the locals didn't know what they were or what they were for but they found these warming pans served as great ladles for molasses and they all sold out for a huge profit and so timothy went to those aristocrats and he thanked them for their incredible investment tip these rich people were furious that their plan had backfired and so they decided they would pitch him another even worse investment tip that was bound to ruin him they told him why don't you buy up a whole bunch of coal and send it to newcastle england newcastle being the cold capital of the world where there was so much coal there there was actually an expression at the time that's like sending coal to newcastle which meant you're doing something completely pointless but these fine rich folks had never done timothy wrong and so he took their advice and once again took it to the bank he loaded up his ships with coal and he sent him off to newcastle and this would have ruined him had it not been for the coal workers strike that occurred right before his shipment arrived and so when timothy's coal arrived on the shores of newcastle there was a coal shortage and all of his coals sold out for another huge profit and so once again timothy went back to the aristocrats and said thank you for the incredible advice now truly irate that their plan has backfired two times these aristocrats got together and said okay we gotta set him up for something that's going to make him fail and so they pitched him one more terrible investment tip this was hey timothy why don't you go buy all the whale bone you possibly can just hoard it keep it in your house because someday it's going to get really valuable at the time whalebone was extremely expensive and losing its value every single day but again timothy thinks these people have never done me wrong i'm gonna do just that and so he went out and he collected thousands of pounds of these rotting whale bones and made a huge stockpile in his basement and shortly after he had built up this mountain of bone over in france it became fashionable for men to wear corsets and wouldn't you know it these corsets were made out of whale bone and so once again timothy's investment completely paid off and so he tipped his hat for a third time to these rich folks that just keep making him more and more money after these three big investment wins timothy was very confident and he viewed himself as a shrewd investor and so he began to believe that he could identify winning investments himself and so the first winning investment that he identified was to purchase all these stray cats in newburyport that were lined up for euthanization timothy figured these mangy sick feral animals would make great house pets in the caribbean and so he loaded them all onto his two ships he fired them across the sea and wouldn't you know what they sold like hotcakes not because they were cute and cuddly but because unbeknownst to timothy the caribbean had a huge rat infestation problem in their warehouses and so his shipment of stray cats arrived at the perfect time at some point after all these successful investments timothy started to wonder about his legacy how would people remember him after he was gone and so there was only one way to find out timothy very elaborately faked his own death and as he hid watching his funeral he noticed his wife elizabeth wasn't as sad as he thought she should be over the death of her husband and so he leapt out in front of the thousands of people that were there and he began beating his wife with his cane after this timothy decided he didn't really like his wife anymore and so he decided he would just tell people she was dead even though she was not dead and so when people came to timothy's mansion and they saw his wife walking around clearly alive timothy would tell them oh she's a ghost and because at this point timothy was so wealthy and so influential people just kind of accepted this and began viewing elizabeth as a ghost before timothy's actual death he penned an autobiography called a pickle for the knowing ones a title that to this day people still don't really understand inside the book were 24 pages of completely illiterate ramblings with absolutely zero punctuation the book was so terrible that it actually sold out very quickly because people thought it was funny to buy this book after people criticized timothy for not using any punctuation timothy printed a second edition where at the very end he included a single page with 13 lines of just random punctuation marks with a note at the bottom that said go ahead and sprinkle these in as you see fit in 1806 just a few years after publishing his book lord timothy dexter the informer of dear quietly passed away this time for real so that's gonna do it guys if you found the secret in today's video let us know in the comments what it is and where you found it so give us the time stamp and if you're the first to do that we'll pin you at the top of the comment section if you enjoyed today's video and you haven't done this already please sneak into the like button's house and lightly toast all of their bread and then put it back in the bag also please subscribe to our channel and turn on all notifications so you don't miss any of our weekly three or four video uploads if you want to get in touch with me you can direct message me on twitter or on instagram my username on both platforms is the same it's johnballin416 i also have a ton of content over on tiktok where my username is mr ballen i also have a second youtube channel called mr ball and shorts where i post random short videos and lost episodes if you have a story suggestion please submit it to our subreddit just called mr ballen it's linked in the description below so whether i see you on instagram twitter tick tock reddit youtube or some combination just know that i really appreciate your support and until next time that's gonna do it see ya and so after several weeks of deep introspection about who he was and what he was going to be it became clear to him he needed i can't even say it he needed to build 40 wooden statues of random famous men timothy figured these mangy sick feral animals timothy figure of these mangy sick animals is mangy sick for really first

Channel: MrBallen

Views: 725,781

Rating: 4.9724913 out of 5

Keywords: strange, dark, mysterious, true, story, scary, scary story, horror story, disturbing, narration, narrator, storyteller, storytime, storytelling, unsolved mystery, solved mystery, true crime, oof, nope, funny story, Timothy Dexter, historical, American history, American revolution, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, whale bone, baleen, fortune, rich, mansion, Newburyport, malden, Massachusetts, 1700s, constitution, rags to riches, funny, mrballen story, true story, haha, cats, cat, stray cat, kitty, feline

Id: pCvx4jikmsI

Length: 14min 45sec (885 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 25 2021