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Transcription: [00:04:00]
{SPEAKER name="Maya Foo"}
cane with him as well.
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He visited different churches every Sunday even though he was raised in the Jewish faith,
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so he wouldn't show favoritism towards any religion or church in San Francisco.
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In 1869, when the transcontinental railroad was completed, people came to San Francisco to see the emperor and journalists reported on Norton. His reputation was known nationally at that point.
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And he became so popular that other cities like Portland, Oregon tried to lure him away by sending him walking sticks which was his favorite accessory to try and lure him away.
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Stores made a lot of money selling Norton merchandise. There were dolls and photos and tourist trinkets.
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And around this time Norton also began issuing bonds frequently, as well as notes and IOUs, all of which became souvenirs for tourists.
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A couple years later in 1872, he issued possibly his most well known proclamation which was that a suspension bridge should be built from Oakland to Goat Island, which is now Yerba Buena Island, and then on to San Francisco.
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The- everyone thought this was a crazy idea and who would ever want to build a bridge between Oakland and San Francisco and that was just ridiculous but the Bay Bridge was completed in the 1930s.
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His intelligent ideas were often followed by insane actions, shortly after issuing this proclamation, he decided that he didn't like the term "Frisco" when referring to the city so he issued an edict declaring that people would be fined and the money would also go to Norton if they used this word.
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There is no doubt that Norton was an intelligent man; he had some brilliant and forward looking ideas.
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Many believe that Norton's bankruptcy caused him to suffer a nervous or mental breakdown and contemporary diagnoses range from paranoid schizophrenia to eccentricity.
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He had also claimed that he descended from the royal Bourbon line.
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Whatever his condition may have been, he was a colorful character in the history of the West. He suffered a stroke in-
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Transcription Notes:
---------- Reopened for Editing 2023-03-30 16:04:03 ---------- Reopened for Editing 2023-03-30 12:15:13