September 27, 2018 • 13 mins
Each of today's stories offers us a chance to answer the same question: how much of yourself would you be willing to give up in exchange for an extraordinary life? One of our subjects had no choice, while the other rushed in head-first.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history
is an open book, all of these amazing tales are
right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.
Welcome to the Cabinet of curiosities. Everyone needs a hero.
(00:30):
I think it's fair to say that many of us
have been inspired by the amazing lives of other people.
Heroes give us a target, a destination that we might
try and reach for ourselves. They drive us forward and
call us to action. So it's no wonder that Charlie
fell in love with the story of Sir John Franklin.
He was a British naval officer in the first half
(00:51):
of the nineteenth century who had a taste for adventure.
This was a time when people were still trying to
find an easier way to get from the Atlantic Ocean
to the Pacific fick then sailing all the way around
the tip of South America. They called this elusive route
the Northwest Passage and assumed that it was somewhere north
of Canada through the icy waters of the Arctic. Franklin
(01:12):
had the experience to get the job done too. He
was a rear admiral had served as governor of Tasmania
and over the years had already helped explore the Hudson
Bay in North America. He wasn't a slouch, that's for sure,
and he was a fighter too. On one expedition that
ended in eighteen twenty two, he and his crew got
into such dire straits that at one point they were
(01:35):
forced to try and eat their own leather shoes. But
it was his last journey that he's best known for.
His own expedition to find that undiscovered Northwest passage. He
was given a large crew, food for three years, and
two sturdy ships that you might have heard of, the
Terror and the Arabas, named after the Greek god of darkness.
(01:56):
If you know your history, then you know that the
voyage was a failure. In fact, Franklin and his crew
were never heard from again. And that's the story of
inspiration that caught Charlie's attention. He read about it in
his local Vermont newspaper when it happened in eighteen forty seven,
and it stuck with him every day after that. He
(02:17):
wanted to be an explorer like Franklin. In fact, he
wanted to be the explorer who found Franklin. So he
set out aboard a ship in eighteen sixty to do
just that. He and the others made it about as
far as Baffin Island, up in Frobisher Bay, and then
winter caused them to stop and wait. He heard about
(02:37):
Franklin from the local Inuit people and got the impression
that the legendary explorer and his crew might actually still
be alive. So after returning from that first voyage in
eighteen sixty two, he immediately began planning a return trip.
He was this close to learning the truth and possibly
even making his own great contribution to the world of exploration.
(02:59):
Arlie could feel it in his bones. His second expedition
began in July of eighteen sixty four and lasted five
whole years on King William Island. Charlie was able to
find the remains of Franklin's expedition, but it was nothing
more than artifacts. No one had survived the tragedy of
the Terror and the Erebus, and that was a realization
(03:22):
that must have crushed Charlie's spirits. He didn't give up,
though in some ways he'd succeeded. He gave the world
a definitive answer about the Franklin expedition and closure was
a good thing, but it also left Charlie believing that
he was somehow faded to follow in Franklin's footsteps to
leave his own mark on history through brave daring exploration,
(03:45):
So he planned yet another trip. With funding from the
US Congress and a ship of his own, Charlie headed
out in July of eighteen seventy one to try and
reach the North Pole. He had a crew of twenty
five men with him, including a German physician named Dr Bessels,
who was there to serve as his science officer. But
even with all of those resources, things were rocky. His
(04:09):
sailing master was a drunk who kept sneaking alcohol from
the cargo area. Dr Bessels was constantly arguing with him,
and the weather wasn't cooperating with their plans. In fact,
even though they had gone farther north than any previous expedition,
the sea ice was becoming too thick to move forward,
so they guided their ship into a nearby bay for arrest.
(04:32):
Side note, Charlie was so grateful for that bay that
he named it Thank God Harbor, because why not? Right? Anyway,
things didn't improve. In fact, as the winter got colder,
the ice got thicker, and so their weight got longer.
Days became weeks, weeks became months, and patient people became unbearable.
(04:54):
At one point, Charlie left the ship on a short
solo expedition to look around and see if there might
be an their way through the ice. But after reading
about all the personal issues on the trap ship, I
also think he just needed some space to think. When
he returned, he was exhausted and cold. The first thing
he apparently did was asked for a cup of hot coffee,
(05:16):
which was quickly rounded up for him and delivered to
his cabin. A short while later, though, he began to
complain about not feeling well. Within days he could barely
talk or sit up in bed, and a short while
after that he was dead. Later the crew took his
body to shore and managed to dig a shallow gray
for his coffin. They held a little funeral there in
(05:38):
the frigid cold, and then waited for their chance to
go home. It's interesting to note that Franklin was killed
by the elements, but Charlie Charles Francis Hall, as history
will remember him, was killed by something else. At least
that's what two historians believed back in nineteen so they
traveled north to Greenland Halloween in Charlie's footsteps, to the
(06:02):
very shore of Thank God Harbor, where they searched for
his frozen grave. And they found it. They found it,
and they dug it up. Inside Charlie's corpse was little
more than a skeleton with a bit of skin and
tissue still attached, his head resting on a pillow as
if sleeping. An American flag was draped over his body,
(06:23):
but the entire coffin had flooded and was frozen, perfect
conditions for preserving a body for certain kinds of testing.
The two scholars, doctors Loomis and Paddock, took samples of
Charlie's hair and fingernails and then brought them to Toronto
for examination. What they discovered was that Charlie hadn't gotten
(06:43):
sick and died at all. He'd been murdered. The trouble
is on a ship as big as his, with twenty
five other tired, trapped, and angry shipmates. Anyone could have
been the suspect. Charles Francis Hall left Vermont to solve
the history of what really happened to Franklin's expedition, and
he managed to do that, but in the process he
(07:06):
left us with a mystery of his own. We may
never know for sure who killed Charlie, but maybe that's okay.
Maybe this new mystery will inspire someone else to do
great things as well. Everyone needs a hero, after all,
even a dead one. There's so much advice out there
(07:37):
that involves our heads. Keep a level head, don't lose
your head, do your best to get a head in life.
It's all in your head. You get the idea, I'm sure,
But this focus isn't without justification. Think of all the rulers, traders, criminals,
and soldiers who have literally lost their heads over the
span of history, and well, it's all has become normal.
(08:02):
In November of nineteen o four, Michigan business owner Herbert
Hughes was getting ready for his hotel's weekly Sunday dinner.
Part of that involved slaughtering the chickens that would be
part of that night's meal. While it wasn't the most
pleasant process, at least it was efficient. With a whack,
he would remove the chicken's head and then pass the
body to a maid for cleaning and gutting. Everything had
(08:24):
been going fine, that is until she started screaming. With
a shriek, the maid bolted from the room, leaving Hughes
alone to figure out what had frightened her. It was,
as you might expect, one of the chickens that had
driven her away, but not for the reasons you might
have assumed. No it wasn't the blood, and no it
wasn't the process of gutting the bird or cleaning the
(08:46):
feathers off. It was something a lot less expected. One
of the chickens was still walking around the room without
its head. I imagine there was a moment of shock
for Hughes, but after he recovered, he began to see
things in a more positive light. He decided to keep
the hen around and even gave her a name, Biddy.
(09:09):
He put his new headless chicken in a cage, gave
her space to walk around that even fed her using
a syringe to inject food down into her open esophagus.
Biddy could do lots of normal chicken like things, such
as flap her wings and sit on a perch, and
most surprising of all, she showed no signs of pain
or disease. Hughes new business opportunity when he saw one.
(09:33):
Believing the notion that a living, breathing, headless chicken might
bring in more patrons than ever before, he put Biddy
on display for his guests, and it worked too. People
flocked to his hotel no pun intended, I swear, and
enjoyed watching the show. Sadly, though, it would all come
to an end. Less than a month after it all began,
(09:55):
poor headless Biddy passed away on novemb You might think
that Biddy was one of a kind bird, but you'd
be wrong. Roughly forty years later, in September of nineteen,
a similar thing happened. A Colorado man named Lloyd Olsen
tried slaughtering one of his chickens in the same way
(10:15):
Herbert Hughes had and was just as surprised when his
bird got back up and walked away sants head. Of course,
Olson named his walking miracle Mike the Chicken. There didn't
seem to be much the bird couldn't do either. He
would walk around the yard, flap his wings, even crow
like the other birds, except well without a head. It
(10:37):
just sort of sounded like a low gurgling noise. But
you get the idea. Maybe it was the more modern
world that Mike lived in compared to Biddy, or perhaps
Olsen had a better sense for publicity. But word about
the Headless Chicken traveled far and wide. He even landed
on the covers of magazines like Life and Time. Olsen
(10:57):
took the bird on the road to traveling with sideshows
and giving folks across the country a chance to lay
eyes on the bird who lived sadly. In March of ninety,
nearly two years after losing his head, Mike got a
kernel of corn caught in his throat while out on
the road. Olsen had forgotten his cleaning and feeding tools
(11:19):
at the show the day before, and so he was
helpless to remove the corn. With no way of saving
his beloved bird, Olson had no choice but to say goodbye.
Even now, seventy years later, Mike's hometown of Fruda, Colorado,
remembers the remarkable chicken with a special holiday held in
his honor. Mike the Headless Chicken Day celebrates the creatures
(11:43):
short yet determined life with a series of events including
a five k run, egg tosses, and live music, including
of course, the Chicken Dance. It sounds unbelievable, I know,
one chicken surviving a beheading is amazing, but two chickens, well,
that almost seems too good to be true. Scientists say
(12:04):
it has to do with the way a chicken's brain
sits inside their head. Unlike our own brains, there's rests
at a forty five degree angle near the top of
the skull, and basic motor functions are carried out by
the brain stem. So if the head is removed in
a sloppy manner at just the right angle, the brain
stem might actually remain intact, giving the chicken a second
(12:26):
chance at life. Some might say chickens represent the best
of us. They're carrying social creatures, they share child raising duties,
and they fiercely protect their own. But perhaps there's one
new lesson that Biddy and Mike can teach us even
after all these years. Don't lose your head, but if
(12:48):
you do, try to make the best of it. I
hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities.
Subscribe for free on 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.
(13:10):
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 the world of Lore
dot com. And until next time, stay curious.
Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history
is an open book, all of these amazing tales are
right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.
Welcome to the Cabinet of curiosities. Everyone needs a hero.
(00:30):
I think it's fair to say that many of us
have been inspired by the amazing lives of other people.
Heroes give us a target, a destination that we might
try and reach for ourselves. They drive us forward and
call us to action. So it's no wonder that Charlie
fell in love with the story of Sir John Franklin.
He was a British naval officer in the first half
(00:51):
of the nineteenth century who had a taste for adventure.
This was a time when people were still trying to
find an easier way to get from the Atlantic Ocean
to the Pacific fick then sailing all the way around
the tip of South America. They called this elusive route
the Northwest Passage and assumed that it was somewhere north
of Canada through the icy waters of the Arctic. Franklin
(01:12):
had the experience to get the job done too. He
was a rear admiral had served as governor of Tasmania
and over the years had already helped explore the Hudson
Bay in North America. He wasn't a slouch, that's for sure,
and he was a fighter too. On one expedition that
ended in eighteen twenty two, he and his crew got
into such dire straits that at one point they were
(01:35):
forced to try and eat their own leather shoes. But
it was his last journey that he's best known for.
His own expedition to find that undiscovered Northwest passage. He
was given a large crew, food for three years, and
two sturdy ships that you might have heard of, the
Terror and the Arabas, named after the Greek god of darkness.
(01:56):
If you know your history, then you know that the
voyage was a failure. In fact, Franklin and his crew
were never heard from again. And that's the story of
inspiration that caught Charlie's attention. He read about it in
his local Vermont newspaper when it happened in eighteen forty seven,
and it stuck with him every day after that. He
(02:17):
wanted to be an explorer like Franklin. In fact, he
wanted to be the explorer who found Franklin. So he
set out aboard a ship in eighteen sixty to do
just that. He and the others made it about as
far as Baffin Island, up in Frobisher Bay, and then
winter caused them to stop and wait. He heard about
(02:37):
Franklin from the local Inuit people and got the impression
that the legendary explorer and his crew might actually still
be alive. So after returning from that first voyage in
eighteen sixty two, he immediately began planning a return trip.
He was this close to learning the truth and possibly
even making his own great contribution to the world of exploration.
(02:59):
Arlie could feel it in his bones. His second expedition
began in July of eighteen sixty four and lasted five
whole years on King William Island. Charlie was able to
find the remains of Franklin's expedition, but it was nothing
more than artifacts. No one had survived the tragedy of
the Terror and the Erebus, and that was a realization
(03:22):
that must have crushed Charlie's spirits. He didn't give up,
though in some ways he'd succeeded. He gave the world
a definitive answer about the Franklin expedition and closure was
a good thing, but it also left Charlie believing that
he was somehow faded to follow in Franklin's footsteps to
leave his own mark on history through brave daring exploration,
(03:45):
So he planned yet another trip. With funding from the
US Congress and a ship of his own, Charlie headed
out in July of eighteen seventy one to try and
reach the North Pole. He had a crew of twenty
five men with him, including a German physician named Dr Bessels,
who was there to serve as his science officer. But
even with all of those resources, things were rocky. His
(04:09):
sailing master was a drunk who kept sneaking alcohol from
the cargo area. Dr Bessels was constantly arguing with him,
and the weather wasn't cooperating with their plans. In fact,
even though they had gone farther north than any previous expedition,
the sea ice was becoming too thick to move forward,
so they guided their ship into a nearby bay for arrest.
(04:32):
Side note, Charlie was so grateful for that bay that
he named it Thank God Harbor, because why not? Right? Anyway,
things didn't improve. In fact, as the winter got colder,
the ice got thicker, and so their weight got longer.
Days became weeks, weeks became months, and patient people became unbearable.
(04:54):
At one point, Charlie left the ship on a short
solo expedition to look around and see if there might
be an their way through the ice. But after reading
about all the personal issues on the trap ship, I
also think he just needed some space to think. When
he returned, he was exhausted and cold. The first thing
he apparently did was asked for a cup of hot coffee,
(05:16):
which was quickly rounded up for him and delivered to
his cabin. A short while later, though, he began to
complain about not feeling well. Within days he could barely
talk or sit up in bed, and a short while
after that he was dead. Later the crew took his
body to shore and managed to dig a shallow gray
for his coffin. They held a little funeral there in
(05:38):
the frigid cold, and then waited for their chance to
go home. It's interesting to note that Franklin was killed
by the elements, but Charlie Charles Francis Hall, as history
will remember him, was killed by something else. At least
that's what two historians believed back in nineteen so they
traveled north to Greenland Halloween in Charlie's footsteps, to the
(06:02):
very shore of Thank God Harbor, where they searched for
his frozen grave. And they found it. They found it,
and they dug it up. Inside Charlie's corpse was little
more than a skeleton with a bit of skin and
tissue still attached, his head resting on a pillow as
if sleeping. An American flag was draped over his body,
(06:23):
but the entire coffin had flooded and was frozen, perfect
conditions for preserving a body for certain kinds of testing.
The two scholars, doctors Loomis and Paddock, took samples of
Charlie's hair and fingernails and then brought them to Toronto
for examination. What they discovered was that Charlie hadn't gotten
(06:43):
sick and died at all. He'd been murdered. The trouble
is on a ship as big as his, with twenty
five other tired, trapped, and angry shipmates. Anyone could have
been the suspect. Charles Francis Hall left Vermont to solve
the history of what really happened to Franklin's expedition, and
he managed to do that, but in the process he
(07:06):
left us with a mystery of his own. We may
never know for sure who killed Charlie, but maybe that's okay.
Maybe this new mystery will inspire someone else to do
great things as well. Everyone needs a hero, after all,
even a dead one. There's so much advice out there
(07:37):
that involves our heads. Keep a level head, don't lose
your head, do your best to get a head in life.
It's all in your head. You get the idea, I'm sure,
But this focus isn't without justification. Think of all the rulers, traders, criminals,
and soldiers who have literally lost their heads over the
span of history, and well, it's all has become normal.
(08:02):
In November of nineteen o four, Michigan business owner Herbert
Hughes was getting ready for his hotel's weekly Sunday dinner.
Part of that involved slaughtering the chickens that would be
part of that night's meal. While it wasn't the most
pleasant process, at least it was efficient. With a whack,
he would remove the chicken's head and then pass the
body to a maid for cleaning and gutting. Everything had
(08:24):
been going fine, that is until she started screaming. With
a shriek, the maid bolted from the room, leaving Hughes
alone to figure out what had frightened her. It was,
as you might expect, one of the chickens that had
driven her away, but not for the reasons you might
have assumed. No it wasn't the blood, and no it
wasn't the process of gutting the bird or cleaning the
(08:46):
feathers off. It was something a lot less expected. One
of the chickens was still walking around the room without
its head. I imagine there was a moment of shock
for Hughes, but after he recovered, he began to see
things in a more positive light. He decided to keep
the hen around and even gave her a name, Biddy.
(09:09):
He put his new headless chicken in a cage, gave
her space to walk around that even fed her using
a syringe to inject food down into her open esophagus.
Biddy could do lots of normal chicken like things, such
as flap her wings and sit on a perch, and
most surprising of all, she showed no signs of pain
or disease. Hughes new business opportunity when he saw one.
(09:33):
Believing the notion that a living, breathing, headless chicken might
bring in more patrons than ever before, he put Biddy
on display for his guests, and it worked too. People
flocked to his hotel no pun intended, I swear, and
enjoyed watching the show. Sadly, though, it would all come
to an end. Less than a month after it all began,
(09:55):
poor headless Biddy passed away on novemb You might think
that Biddy was one of a kind bird, but you'd
be wrong. Roughly forty years later, in September of nineteen,
a similar thing happened. A Colorado man named Lloyd Olsen
tried slaughtering one of his chickens in the same way
(10:15):
Herbert Hughes had and was just as surprised when his
bird got back up and walked away sants head. Of course,
Olson named his walking miracle Mike the Chicken. There didn't
seem to be much the bird couldn't do either. He
would walk around the yard, flap his wings, even crow
like the other birds, except well without a head. It
(10:37):
just sort of sounded like a low gurgling noise. But
you get the idea. Maybe it was the more modern
world that Mike lived in compared to Biddy, or perhaps
Olsen had a better sense for publicity. But word about
the Headless Chicken traveled far and wide. He even landed
on the covers of magazines like Life and Time. Olsen
(10:57):
took the bird on the road to traveling with sideshows
and giving folks across the country a chance to lay
eyes on the bird who lived sadly. In March of ninety,
nearly two years after losing his head, Mike got a
kernel of corn caught in his throat while out on
the road. Olsen had forgotten his cleaning and feeding tools
(11:19):
at the show the day before, and so he was
helpless to remove the corn. With no way of saving
his beloved bird, Olson had no choice but to say goodbye.
Even now, seventy years later, Mike's hometown of Fruda, Colorado,
remembers the remarkable chicken with a special holiday held in
his honor. Mike the Headless Chicken Day celebrates the creatures
(11:43):
short yet determined life with a series of events including
a five k run, egg tosses, and live music, including
of course, the Chicken Dance. It sounds unbelievable, I know,
one chicken surviving a beheading is amazing, but two chickens, well,
that almost seems too good to be true. Scientists say
(12:04):
it has to do with the way a chicken's brain
sits inside their head. Unlike our own brains, there's rests
at a forty five degree angle near the top of
the skull, and basic motor functions are carried out by
the brain stem. So if the head is removed in
a sloppy manner at just the right angle, the brain
stem might actually remain intact, giving the chicken a second
(12:26):
chance at life. Some might say chickens represent the best
of us. They're carrying social creatures, they share child raising duties,
and they fiercely protect their own. But perhaps there's one
new lesson that Biddy and Mike can teach us even
after all these years. Don't lose your head, but if
(12:48):
you do, try to make the best of it. I
hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities.
Subscribe for free on 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.
(13:10):
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 the world of Lore
dot com. And until next time, stay curious.
Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities News
Host
Aaron Mahnke
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