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00:00Viewers. Viewer discretion is advised.
00:08Imagine a sport where the whole game is played in your pants.
00:15Your goal is to stand there for as long as possible while having ferrets root around in your pants.
00:21It's got claws, fangs, and it's got the bite force of a pit bull terrier.
00:28We're going toe-to-toe with a cannon.
00:33That cannonball weighs 104 pounds.
00:37Frank is standing 10 feet away from the cannon wearing goggles.
00:41What are the goggles going to do?
00:44How about a hobby where one mistake means certain death?
00:49People are thinking, this is crazy. He's 7,500 feet in the air. Who is this guy?
00:54A lot can go wrong. Davis feels like he's going to throw up as he's walking between these two balloons.
01:01These are the pastimes that are so strange, they are truly unbelievable.
01:06Back in 19th century London, the rich and trendy are always looking for fresh forms of entertainment,
01:25like a wildly popular new stage show with an unusual star attraction.
01:30On January 15th, 1834, performer Thomas Pettigrew is preparing to appear before a sold-out crowd in London.
01:40Pettigrew isn't the main attraction. He's more of the emcee and the host of the whole situation.
01:46The person that everyone's really there to see is someone named Horsiesi, who is an Egyptian priest.
01:53But Horsiesi, the priest, won't be reciting any lines because he's been dead for 1,400 years.
02:02Behold, the bizarre 19th century pastime of unwrapping mummies.
02:11Egyptomania has been sweeping England now for 20 years or so.
02:16People are fascinated with everything about Egypt.
02:19They want to see these exotic things from this faraway place.
02:25In the early 1800s, a lot of men were sent to Africa, specifically Egypt, to fight Napoleon's army.
02:34And when a lot of those soldiers came home, they brought back their own little piece of antiquity.
02:40Pieces of mummies were being sold, hands, feet, heads.
02:44And if you possess an entire mummy and could put that on display, that was the headline act.
02:51That was what people wanted to see.
02:53While Pettigrew wasn't the first to unwrap a mummy, his show quickly becomes the most popular.
03:00Pettigrew has this whole system down.
03:04He slowly unwraps these mummies as he's talking about the history of Egypt and specifically mummification.
03:11He is an incredible entertainer, and part of it is that he's a trained surgeon.
03:17So it lends this air of credibility to the whole thing.
03:20It's all part of the thrill.
03:22He's setting it up for the final thing, which is going to be the exposure of this dead body on stage.
03:28People are fascinated.
03:30One of the highlights of these unwrappings is the jewelry and other valuables that are sometimes found wrapped with the body and later sold off, of course, as valuable antiquities.
03:44Sure, the big ticket items get all the attention, but the audience walks away with a different kind of treasure.
03:50People are given snippages, so little pieces of the bandages, they can take them home as souvenirs.
03:57You're going to be able to handle and touch something that is from ancient Egypt.
04:02It's thousands of years old in some cases.
04:06But the real showstopper is still to come.
04:09Once this body has been revealed, Ben Pettigrew switches into surgeon mode,
04:14because as part of the show, you also get to watch him perform an autopsy.
04:20Pettigrew starts severing limbs, muscles, skin, pointing out the survival and color of hair,
04:29the pliability of the skin itself.
04:32The audience is just awestruck.
04:36Pettigrew becomes so famous that the Duke of Hamilton actually hires him to mummify his corpse after death.
04:45Pettigrew's mummy unwrapping attracts large audiences for many years,
04:53and he publishes books, gives talks, and eventually simply becomes known as Mummy Pettigrew.
05:03Eventually, the unwrapping spectacles fall out of favor,
05:07though our fascination with mummies lives on.
05:10A lot of authors were influenced by this.
05:13Edgar Allan Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle wrote a mummy story.
05:17In the early days of Hollywood, you had a lot of mummy stories.
05:20The spookiness of it, the creepiness of it, stays with us even today.
05:26Revealing what's under the bandages of an ancient mummy is certainly exhilarating.
05:30However, there's another British pastime that will really get your blood flowing.
05:34Imagine a man standing in front of a live audience.
05:39He is wearing baggy white pants tucked into socks,
05:44and there is something in the pants moving around.
05:51The man winces as he's nipped and bitten.
05:55Perhaps drops of blood even appear on his pant legs.
05:59Painful? Yes.
06:01But that's the price you pay if you want to indulge in the unbelievable sport...
06:06Ready for? Yes.
06:07...of ferret legging.
06:09The object of ferret legging is rather simple.
06:12Your goal is to stand there for as long as possible
06:14while having ferrets root around in your pants.
06:17Ferret legging may be simple in concept, but make no mistake about it, it ain't easy.
06:26Why ferrets? And why down your pants?
06:29The answer goes back centuries.
06:32In medieval Europe, ferrets are increasingly used for hunting.
06:38The ferret is the most underrated hunting animal in the world.
06:43It's got claws, fangs, the speed and flexibility of a snake,
06:52and it's got the bite force of a pit bull terrier.
06:58However, ferrets were a hunting animal only for royalty.
07:03If you were a commoner that owned a ferret, you were breaking the law.
07:09So if a game warden came by, people would often hide the ferrets in their pants
07:15until the authorities went away.
07:17And that suddenly became a matter of bravery.
07:22Something like, hey, you know, the authorities came
07:26and I held these guys in my pants for X amount of time
07:29while they were clawing and biting me.
07:31This gives the ferret-stashing hunters in Yorkshire an idea.
07:36What if we willingly stuffed ferrets down our pants
07:40and we had a competition to determine who could withstand it the longest?
07:44And everyone's like, sign me up.
07:47With any contest, there have to be rules.
07:50And the number one rule of ferret legging
07:52is that you can't have any undergarments.
07:54Now, once you put a ferret in an enclosed space, it's trying to escape.
08:00It will resort to clawing and scratching and biting.
08:03Just how many minutes those early ferret leggers lasted
08:06and what traumas they endured are lost to history.
08:09But when the sport enjoys a resurgence during the 20th century,
08:13a heroic figure emerges.
08:14Reg Mellor is a guy that frequently hunts with ferrets.
08:22And as a way to keep them dry if it's cold or rainy,
08:25he'll just take the ferret and stuff it into his pants.
08:29In the 1970s, Mellor catches wind of people competing at ferret legging,
08:36something he's already been doing.
08:38Reg sees other Yorkshire men ferret legging.
08:41They really can't do it for more than a minute or so.
08:44He thinks, I can do it for a lot longer than that.
08:48He doesn't just last for a few minutes.
08:51He can actually endure ferret legging for hours.
08:55With a record of five hours, 26 minutes,
08:59Reg becomes the undisputed ferret legging champion.
09:03If they bite so hard and hurt you, why do you do it?
09:05Well, that's it. It's a challenge.
09:08Oh, yeah.
09:11The question people always ask Reg is,
09:14does his you-know-what get bitten?
09:17Yes, absolutely it does.
09:20In 1987, Reg passes away as the reigning king of ferret legging,
09:25an oddly coveted title that still holds a strange allure today.
09:31Ferret legging is still around in many places.
09:33And 28 years after Reg's record, it's finally broken in 2010.
09:39During his heyday, people used to ask Reg,
09:41how do you do it?
09:42What is your secret?
09:43To which Reg would nonchalantly respond,
09:45you know, sometimes you just got to have your manhood
09:48bitten and just not really care.
09:51Words to live by, for sure.
09:55But Reg is hardly the only brave soul
09:58to turn bodily suffering into a show.
10:02Most pastimes are about relaxing,
10:04maybe catching a game, reading a book,
10:06something easy on the body.
10:08But not for Frank Richards.
10:10His idea of a good time?
10:13Let's just say it isn't for the faint of heart or stomach.
10:19Around 1900, Frank Richards is a kid growing up in Kansas
10:23who gets into lots of fights.
10:25Not all that unusual,
10:27except that in the course of all this fighting,
10:29he discovers something.
10:30He can take a punch to the stomach,
10:32no matter how hard it is.
10:35His ab muscles are ridiculously strong.
10:38Later on, while serving in World War I,
10:41Frank becomes known for putting on these exhibitions
10:44where he takes punch after punch to the gut
10:47from his fellow soldiers.
10:48And sometimes Frank gets hit in the stomach
10:50a thousand times a day.
10:54After the war, Frank thinks,
10:56hey, maybe people will pay to watch this.
10:59And so he joins a vaudeville company
11:00basically as a strongman,
11:02where he puts on exhibitions
11:03challenging anybody in the crowd
11:05to punch him in the stomach.
11:07Soon, promoters bring in
11:09big-time heavyweight boxers to test Frank.
11:12Like the 6'6 behemoth, Jess Willard.
11:16And even the world-famous champ, Jack Dempsey.
11:20Now, when Jack Dempsey goes up against Frank,
11:23he's not expecting what happens,
11:25which is, after 75 punches to the gut,
11:29Frank's standing there like,
11:30what else you got?
11:33Frank's incredible display is a blessing and a curse.
11:36All of a sudden, fans are expecting something new,
11:39bigger, better.
11:40He tries to up the ante,
11:42taking two-by-fours to the stomach,
11:44battering rams,
11:45even sledgehammers.
11:46Frank gets inspired by a popular spectacle at carnivals and fairs,
12:02and that is the human cannonball.
12:03A human being climbs into a cannon and then is shot over a great distance and lands in a net.
12:10That stunt gives Frank Richards an idea.
12:13What if he flips the script?
12:14He thinks, instead of being a human cannonball, what if he withstands the blow of a cannonball?
12:22Of course, these cannons aren't real cannons. They're not loaded with gunpowder to fire you at the enemy.
12:30They're catapults. They're compressed air.
12:32But this is still a daunting stunt.
12:34That cannonball he chooses weighs 104 pounds.
12:39All eyes and cameras are on Frank, as he gears up for what may be his most outrageous and dangerous feat ever.
12:47Frank is standing 10 feet away from the cannon, wearing goggles.
12:51It's not exactly clear how fast the cannonball is traveling, but this thing is really heavy.
13:05And it's obvious from the way he's knocked backwards that it is hitting him with an incredible force.
13:13But Frank gets up, and he's totally okay.
13:15Frank begins performing this stunt all across America,
13:18and soon he has a nickname that cements his place in history, Cannonball Richards.
13:26Frank continues to do this for many years, well into middle age,
13:30and really he can only perform this twice a day, because it's so hard on his body.
13:35Well now, in the internet age, Frank gets famous again because his cannonball videos are going viral,
13:40and people never get tired of seeing a guy get hit in his superhuman stomach.
13:45Today, millions are familiar with the footage of Frank's painful gut shot.
13:48But if you think that's dangerous, how about a spectacle that makes the tightrope walk you'd see in a circus look like child's play?
13:56It's a big resort area with lots of beaches and spas, and it's also known for great hot air balloon rise overlooking the coasts of these amazing canyons.
14:10One day in August 2023, two balloons take off with a group of tourists.
14:17This is a pretty typical ride to get a beautiful view of the landscape and the terrain.
14:24At least that's what they think.
14:25As the balloons begin to ascend, some tourists notice a line tethering the two balloons together.
14:33Suddenly, one of the passengers steps toward the rim of the basket and attaches a harness to the line,
14:39and then they step out of the basket and begin walking on the line toward the other balloon.
14:48People are thinking, this is crazy. He's 7,500 feet in the air. Who is this guy? Like, what is going on?
14:54He's 23-year-old Davis Hermes, and what's happening is a pastime with a new dizzying spin.
15:02Davis is an expert slackliner.
15:05Slacklining is similar to tightrope walking, but the line is a little bit looser.
15:10The key here is that slacklining is usually done just a few feet off the ground.
15:15This is very different than what Davis is doing.
15:18Now, slacklining in and of itself is incredibly difficult to do, but Davis is a part of a select
15:25group of people that do a more extreme version of slacklining called highlining.
15:31Highlining is slacklining, but done at an incredible height.
15:36Highlining is typically done between fixed structures.
15:41Davis has kicked it up a notch. He's deciding to slackline between two hot air balloons that are in
15:47constant motion.
15:50You have to realize why this is so difficult. The line is constantly shifting and changing
15:55tensions as it gets looser or tighter as the balloons move.
15:59If walking across two moving objects over 7,000 feet in the air wasn't exciting enough,
16:05Davis also does tricks.
16:10In slacklining, you have things that are known as static tricks, and this is when the slackliner
16:15makes it to the middle of the line, and then they stop, and then they either pose or they do some
16:20type of gymnastic movement. And some of these movements have some pretty interesting names.
16:25You've got your butt flip. You've got your churro bounce. You've got your nasty squeezer.
16:34Perhaps the most unbelievable part of this past time, Davis isn't the only person doing it.
16:40So the first person to ever highline between two hot air balloons is a Brazilian named Rafa
16:45Britti the year before. And he does it at a height of 6,500 feet.
16:50So what Davis is actually setting out to do is break Britti's altitude record.
16:57A lot can go wrong. Even Davis, who's been on high lines numerous times before,
17:02feels like he's going to throw up as he's walking between these two balloons.
17:05Dazzling the crowd along the way, Davis successfully breaks the record, although it might not last
17:12long. The world record for a man in a hot air balloon is 69,000 feet. So I guess in this case,
17:19the sky is the limit. Balancing on a line thousands of feet in the air is one way to pass the time.
17:27Our next hobby trades danger for dollhouses.
17:30When you live in a remote mountain village, it can seem like you're the last person on earth.
17:37Unless your favorite pastime is creating your own neighbors.
17:44Driving through the Japanese village of Nagaro, you'll see some pretty idyllic scenes.
17:51Farmers harvesting crops, people fishing by a stream, families waiting at the bus stop.
17:58But if you take a closer look, this village is not what it seems.
18:03Almost all of its hundreds of residents are life-size dolls.
18:13Is this some sort of a military testing site? Is it a movie set? Why would a village be populated
18:22by full-scale life-size dolls? Other than the dolls, there's not a lot of human activity going on,
18:30and you start to wonder, who did this? The dolls are actually the work of one woman, Ayano Tsukimi.
18:39Ayano Tsukimi is a native of Nagoro. She was born and grew up there in the 1950s, and at the time,
18:46it was a bustling village of about 300 people. By the 2000s, the population of 300 has decreased to
18:53about 50. And Ayano looks around and realizes this is not at all the place that she grew up. It feels
19:01very lonely and empty. Then in 2002, while tending the family garden, a run-in with some pesky crows gives
19:09her an idea. Crows are stealing the vegetables, and she realizes that she has to put up a scarecrow.
19:18Ayano's father loved working in his garden, so she decides to make the scarecrow look like him.
19:24It's a sort of sentimental commemoration. It's not long until neighbors start to call out to him,
19:31thinking it's really her father. This kind of spurs an idea to start making more of these dolls
19:40as sort of a tribute to the people in town. And at first, it's the people who passed away.
19:47She'll make a doll in their honor and put it near a place they'd love to go or where they used to sit
19:54or near their home. Since it only takes her about three days to complete a doll, she wonders,
20:02why not repopulate the entire village with imaginary people from construction workers to school teachers?
20:11She creates whimsical scenes like celebrants at a wedding party. Eventually, she creates about 300
20:19dolls which outnumber living villagers 10 to one. Nagoro becomes an internet sensation nicknamed
20:28Village of the Dolls. And as a result, a funny thing happens. Suddenly, Nagoro is a massive tourist
20:35destination. Roughly 3,000 people visit the village every year. Without meaning to do it, Ayano has brought
20:43this town back to life. It's no longer this dying, empty village. It's a very busy, lively place once again.
20:54Believe it or not, filling a village with living dolls isn't the only unusual hobby out there.
21:00Aiming to freeze time.
21:01As a boy, young Walter Potter experiences a death that affects him profoundly. And it's the death of his pet parakeet.
21:13So to keep the animal's memory alive, he turns to the art of taxidermy.
21:19Today, we mostly associate taxidermy with hunter's trophy kills, or it's used in museums for displays.
21:27But back then, it was actually fairly common for people to use taxidermy on their pets as a way to
21:34commemorate them. Stuffing and preserving animals is a very specialized skill. But Potter, a total taxidermy
21:43novice, decides to try this himself. He manages to cobble together a stuffed version of his deceased
21:50parakeet. It's not the greatest. But he becomes hooked on this hobby. He starts preserving more
21:58animals and displaying them at a local inn owned by his father. What Potter lacks an experience,
22:04he more than makes up for in his attention to detail.
22:10One of Potter's most notable works is a painstaking and elaborate depiction of a bird funeral called
22:16The Original Death and Burial of Cock Robin, based off of the notable nursery rhyme,
22:21Who Killed Cock Robin? He begins his diorama at age 19, but it takes him several years to complete,
22:27because it's incredibly intricate. Over a hundred native birds of Great Britain illustrate all 56
22:35verses of that children's rhyme. Potter goes on to create other memorable works,
22:40like a squirrel serving cocktails, rabbits in a classroom, and of course, hamsters playing cricket.
22:51But one piece stands above the rest. The kitchen wedding is really meticulous and detailed.
22:57Twenty kitchens are dressed to absolutely impress. They're in tuxedos and frilly dresses. Even though
23:04you can't see their knickers, Potter went to the extent of making sure that they had them, which is a
23:09testament to how much love he put into his work. Potter soon has more pieces than his father's inn can
23:17accommodate. So he opens up a space in the village of Bramber called Potter's Museum, full of taxidermy
23:24wonders and efforts. Visitors to Potter's Museum seem to ask the same question. Where does he get all
23:33these animals to stuff? Potter has made arrangements with farms and other places that encounter dead
23:41animals frequently, and he assures visitors that he has never killed an animal for his creations.
23:48Eventually, taxidermy falls out of favor with the public and the museum is closed. His works are sold
23:54off to individual collectors, but they continue to make appearances in museums to this day.
24:00By the time he dies in 1918, Walter Potter has given 10,000 creatures
24:07a second life. Creepy? Perhaps. Unbelievable? Absolutely.
24:16Since humans first began domesticating dogs 30,000 years ago, we've invented contests to determine which
24:23pooch is the best, from Westminster to the Editarod. But one unbelievable contest is dedicated to the
24:30premise that your pup can't be the best until they look their best.
24:37Every year since 1988, there's something called the Groom Expo, held in Hershey, Pennsylvania.
24:44Thousands of dog groomers descend on the chocolate capital. They exchange trade secrets, they talk about
24:51business. But at the heart of this is an unbelievable competitive dog grooming competition.
24:58Who's a pretty poodle?
25:01These groomers don't just cut hair from around the eyes or clip nails. No, they are creating three-dimensional
25:09works of art on dogs. Sometimes if a dog has a really thick coat, they'll paint it so it looks like he or
25:19she has other animals clinging to it. So a panda or a sloth hanging off of the dog, all made of hair.
25:29But creating these furry masterpieces doesn't happen overnight. They take serious time and skill.
25:35Now you have to keep in mind that just like topiary work with hedges, you have to wait for the dog's hair
25:41to get to the point where you can do with it what you want. Poodles are the most common dogs in these
25:46competitions because their thick fur lends itself to intricate design. They have tightly compact fur that
25:55you can trim and shape and make into all of these fantastical shapes. Of course, every year,
26:02these designs on these dogs get more and more outrageous. And the groomers are going to more
26:08and more outrageous lengths to compete and win. Like one woman, Angela Kumpi, who's been called the
26:16Michael Jordan of dog grooming. Perhaps her masterpiece is done on a white poodle named Moses and is based
26:23off of the Stephen King novel, It. She's designed a super creepy portrait of Pennywise on the dog's right
26:30side and the rest of the dog is groomed to look like he's in Pennywise costume. Some people see
26:36this competition as bad for dogs. And some states have even banned the use of dyes on dogs. But fans of
26:45the dog grooming competition push back. The dogs are not harmed by the food coloring dyes that are not toxic
26:53to them. And they love all the attention they're getting, whether they realize why they're getting
26:59it or not. Dog grooming isn't the only mundane task that's been turned into unbelievable performance
27:08art. It's 1997 in Leicester, England, and Phil Shaw is just getting off of work at a factory. He wants to
27:15have some fun after work. So he decides to go do something that he loves, rock climbing. The thing that's
27:20standing in his way is that Phil's got a long list of chores that he has to get done at home.
27:27And one of those chores is ironing. In a flash, Phil has an epiphany. Why not combine the activities?
27:36Now to you and me, this makes zero sense. But what he's thinking in the moment is that this might make
27:41for a hilarious photo op. So he takes his iron, his ironing board and his wrinkled shirts, grabs his
27:46roommate, and they head to his favorite rock face. This rock climbing excursion produces a pretty
27:52hilarious photo. So Phil decides to take photos ironing in various other places. Now we haven't
27:58quite reached the viral age at this point. So people start hearing about Phil's crazy pastime mostly
28:03through email and word of mouth. But he's encouraged, so he keeps doing it. Phil gives this new pastime a
28:09name. Extreme ironing. Soon, Phil embarks on an international tour to promote his passion.
28:18So this seems like a joke, right? What's crazy is that all over the world, people love extreme ironing.
28:24They start doing it everywhere. On mountains, up in trees, and even ridiculously underwater.
28:30Extreme ironing continues to gain steam. And in 2002, the very first world championship is held in
28:39Germany. 12 teams from different countries iron various garments in five different settings. These
28:48locations include a fast-flowing river on top of a tree and a freestyle location of each team's choosing.
28:55Now not only are the teams judged by how they handle these crazy precarious locations, they're actually
29:02judged on their ironing. A good press, a sharp crease, and so on. Since it is the birthplace of extreme
29:08ironing, Team Britain takes home the first world championship in 2002. Worldwide, there are some
29:151,500 extreme ironing competitors, or ironists, as Phil calls them. There's even brief talk about
29:21including it in the Olympics. Unfortunately, Phil can't chase ironing glory forever. Eventually,
29:28the demands of family and work force him to hang up his board, at least competitively. But ironists
29:35around the world continue to keep up the pastime, taking it to even more extreme lengths beyond what
29:41I'm sure Phil could even imagine. If ironing on cliffs wasn't extreme enough, wait until you see what's next.
29:52In the mid-1800s, Americans are besieged by death. The Civil War and diseases like tuberculosis combine
29:59to kill millions. So you'd think that any reminder of this grim reality would have no place in a leisure
30:05activity. Well, think again.
30:10At this time, people want to go relax somewhere pretty with their family and close friends. So the big
30:17social event of any given week is to go out and have a picnic on the weekends.
30:23But these picnics aren't taking place in grassy, shaded parks or rolling country fields.
30:29They're happening somewhere else.
30:32On any given weekend, you'd find people with picnic baskets and blankets and pictures of tea just
30:40relaxing in cemeteries. When we're looking at pictures during this time, you see women out
30:47at a park-like setting. They have parasols. They have big hats. They are dressed to absolutely
30:52impress. And when you look closer, you realize, oh, that's a headstone.
30:56And these were big social events. Picnicking in these cemeteries becomes incredibly popular. And this
31:03is happening all over the country. Why are people choosing to make merry in a place where they're
31:09surrounded by markers of death? For most of us today, it's easy to find a park or an open space to spend
31:19time with friends or family. These Victorian Americans didn't have that. So they invented it,
31:25making makeshift use of spaces dedicated to the dead to enjoy life.
31:32There's also another more sentimental reason.
31:37When you have the number of folks in your family die, very often unexpectedly, you want to stay close.
31:43You want to have those memories maintained. Death to them was something held much more closely because
31:50it was so common. There is even a really interesting interview in a paper in 1884 with a young man who
31:57says they're celebrating Thanksgiving with his father. It doesn't matter that his father died the
32:02year before. They're there and they're going to celebrate with him. Even though it seems so strange to
32:07us today, it's their way to show that they loved and cared about somebody.
32:10Gotta hand it to Victorians, they did some pretty weird stuff. But partying with the dearly departed
32:18isn't just a 19th century thing.
32:24Every March, a raucous festival is held in the foothills of the Colorado Rockies.
32:30It attracts 25,000 revelers for sports, contests, partying, merrymaking.
32:43So there are activities like snow sculptures or even frozen salmon tossing.
32:49But there are other features of this big party that are really odd.
32:52One of the big things is the coffin races.
32:55And there are signs everywhere that say FDGD. So what does FDGD stand for?
33:01It stands for frozen dead guy days. And it has an unbelievable backstory.
33:10In 1989, in Norway, a man named Bredo Morstel passes away in his sleep.
33:16Bredo is a much-beloved father and grandfather. And in fact, his grandson, Trigvabogae, wants to find
33:22a way to truly commemorate his grandfather. Now, Bredo's grandson, who lives in Colorado,
33:28also happens to have a bit of a fascination with something known as life extension.
33:32So he decides the best way to extend his grandfather's legacy is to freeze him.
33:39This is a time when cryonics, which is freezing the human body to preserve it, is more and more in
33:45the public eye. There are a handful of companies that do this. Of course, at some point in the future,
33:51the frozen bodies might be able to be brought back to life. And Trigvabogae is really into this idea.
33:57Trigvabogae travels to Norway, takes his grandfather's body, puts it on a bed of dry
34:03ice, and flies him to a cryonics lab in California, where the body is then frozen with liquid nitrogen
34:10for three years.
34:10But Trigvabogae has a plan that does not involve it staying in California. He actually wants to start
34:18his own cryogenics company in Colorado.
34:20Trigvabogae decides to launch this venture by moving Bredo's body to a kind of improvised cryonics
34:28facility. Trigvabogae's mother, Aud, has also moved to Colorado in this little tiny town of
34:34Nederland. And they set up in her backyard a little shack with the intention that they will keep him
34:41there until the science exists that they can wake him up.
34:44This is slightly a bit more low tech than the cryonics facility in California.
34:52It's basically packing his grandfather in a metal sarcophagus with dry ice.
34:58All seems well until local town officials pass an ordinance prohibiting keeping frozen
35:06dead guys in your backyard. Trigvabogae is deported to Norway. His mother,
35:13Aud, is permitted to remain in Colorado. But what to do with grandpa's body?
35:21A local businessman steps up and offers to build a new facility. It's essentially still a shack,
35:30but it is a place where she can continue to preserve her father's body, which miraculously
35:36is actually still frozen. This story remains on ice until 2002, when the Nederland Chamber of
35:44Commerce is struggling to find a theme for their new spring festival.
35:48One resident brings up the story of Mike the Headless Chicken.
35:55Mike was decapitated by a local farmer, but continued to live.
36:00And so the chicken ultimately is their main attraction. So the officials in Nederland are
36:06starting to think, okay, well, what is our Mike the Headless Chicken? And then they remember,
36:10oh wait, we got a frozen dead guy in a shack in our town.
36:15The festival goers don't see Bredo's body, but they can go and do tours of his shack,
36:22and sometimes people even toast him with whiskey.
36:25What would Bredo think if he knew his frozen corpse inspired such a bizarre pastime?
36:31Maybe one day he'll tell us himself.
36:33Some pastimes may be strange, creepy, or even hazardous to their participants.
36:41But they pose no threat to the public at large.
36:44Unless it's the early 1990s, and you happen to be living in the town of Golf Manor, Michigan.
36:50It's the early 1990s, and you have a 17-year-old boy by the name of David Hahn,
36:57who is ferociously working on a scientific experiment in the shed in his parents' backyard.
37:05He wants to raise his ranks in the Boy Scouts so he can become an Eagle Scout,
37:09and this project is going to help him do it.
37:11The problem here is David isn't your average kid, and he's not doing your average experiment.
37:20In fact, David is definitely the only Boy Scout in America who is attempting to build a nuclear reactor.
37:29This isn't some model nuclear reactor. We're talking a real, full-blown nuclear reactor.
37:35This all starts when the super-smart Boy Scout is 10 years old,
37:41and his grandfather gives him a 1960 children's publication called The Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments.
37:48This is a book that fascinates David to no end, because it's talking about a lot of chemicals
37:54and experiments that are incredibly dangerous to do at home.
37:58But his family thinks it's a healthy interest for such a highly intelligent kid.
38:03He's only 10, but he starts reading his father's college chemistry books with no problem,
38:07and doing his own experiments. Now, this becomes his favorite pastime,
38:12pretty much to the exclusion of all else.
38:14When he chooses the Eagle Scout badge that he's going after,
38:18David doesn't pick photography or ice skating. He chooses atomic energy.
38:25By the age of 14, David has two clear goals.
38:28Make Eagle Scout and collect every single element on the periodic table.
38:33Even the ones that are radioactive.
38:36So where does a kid in the 90s collect a bunch of radioactive materials?
38:40It turns out you can find radioactive materials in a lot of everyday objects,
38:45things like smoke detectors and old clocks, gas camping lanterns, and even gun sights.
38:51So David starts cobbling all these things together in his parents' backyard shed,
38:55and go straight to work.
38:58Now, David may be incredibly smart, but he's not terribly careful.
39:03He used coffee filters and pickle jars to handle radioactive materials.
39:07He uses a very crude mask and improvised lead apron, neither of which is very protective.
39:13The experiments give him radiation burns, turns his hair green at one point, and even knocks him unconscious.
39:22Despite the burns and close calls, David's unconventional methods lead to a breakthrough,
39:27when he uses a clever ruse to gain crucial intel from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
39:33He writes them posing as a high school physics professor.
39:39And they give him shockingly revealing information, information that he's able to use
39:45to solve some of the puzzle of how he can build his nuclear reactor he's working on in his backyard shed.
39:53In 1994, amidst all of this, David successfully creates a rudimentary nuclear reactor that is held together by things like duct tape and aluminum foil.
40:09David's creation is so successful, his Geiger counter gives him strong radioactive readings five houses away.
40:16Unfortunately, a chance encounter is about to make his hobby front page news.
40:21One day, police are investigating reports of a bunch of stolen and missing tires.
40:27They see David parked on the street and they decide to search his car.
40:32When officers speak to him, he warns them not to go touching the stuff in the back. It's radioactive.
40:39The discovery prompts local, state and federal authorities to descend on the area,
40:43dismantle David's atomic shed and initiate an expensive cleanup.
40:48Eventually, they have to bring in the EPA and they declare David's backyard a Superfund site.
40:57The community does not suffer from David's experiments. Luckily, disaster is averted.
41:05Although David never got to finish building his reactor, he did attain Eagle Scout rank shortly after his lab was taken apart.
41:12From putting ferrets down your pants to tinkering with radiation and dolls,
41:18these are the bizarre, dangerous and sometimes quite painful pastimes that are truly unbelievable.
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