The Unbelievable with Dan Aykroyd - Season 3 Episode 08- Unusual Pastimes
#EnglishMovie #cdrama #drama #engsub #chinesedramaengsub #movieshortfull
#EnglishMovie #cdrama #drama #engsub #chinesedramaengsub #movieshortfull
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00Viewers, viewer discretion is advised.
00:08Imagine a sport where the whole game is played in your pants.
00:14Your goal is to stand there for as long as possible while having ferrets root around in your pants.
00:20It's got claws, fangs, and it's got the bite force of a pitbull terrier.
00:30We'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?
00:55A lot can go wrong.
00:56Davis 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.
01:43He'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.
02:15People 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.
03:15And 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.
03:47But 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, the pliability of the skin itself.
04:32The audience is just awestruck.
04:35Pettigrew becomes so famous that the Duke of Hamilton actually hires him to mummify his corpse after death.
04:47Pettigrew's mummy unwrapping attracts large audiences for many years.
04:52And he publishes books, gives talks, and eventually simply becomes known as Mummy Pettigrew.
05:02Eventually, the unwrapping spectacles fall out of favor.
05:07Though our fascination with mummies lives on.
05:11A 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.
05:36Imagine a man standing in front of a live audience.
05:39He is wearing baggy white pants tucked into socks.
05:45And 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?
06:00Yes.
06:01But that's the price you pay if you want to indulge in the unbelievable sport...
06:06Ready for?
06:06Yes.
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 while 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?
06:28And why down your pants?
06:30The answer goes back centuries.
06:32In medieval Europe, ferrets are increasingly used for hunting.
06:37The ferret is the most underrated hunting animal in the world.
06:45It's got claws, fangs, the speed and flexibility of a snake, and 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 until the authorities went away.
07:17And that suddenly became a matter of bravery.
07:22Something like, hey, you know, the authorities came and I held these guys in my pants for X amount of time while 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 and 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 is 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 and what traumas they endured are lost to history.
08:09But when the sport enjoys a resurgence during the 20th century, a heroic figure emerges.
08:15Retired coal miner Reg Meller.
08:17Reg Meller is a guy that frequently hunts with ferrets.
08:22And as a way to keep them dry if it's cold or rainy, he'll just take the ferret and stuff it into his pants.
08:29In the 1970s, Meller catches wind of people competing at ferret legging, something 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.
08:46He 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, Reg 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.
09:09Oh, yeah.
09:10The question people always ask Reg is, does his you-know-what get bitten?
09:17Yes, absolutely it does.
09:20In 1987, Reg passes away as the reigning king of ferret legging, an oddly coveted title that still holds a strange allure today.
09:29Ferret legging is still around in many places.
09:34And 28 years after Reg's record, it's finally broken in 2010.
09:39During his heyday, people used to ask Reg, how do you do it?
09:42What is your secret?
09:43To which Reg would nonchalantly respond, you know, sometimes you just got to have your manhood bitten and just not really care.
09:51Words to live by, for sure.
09:55But Reg is hardly the only brave soul to turn bodily suffering into a show.
10:02Most pastimes are about relaxing, maybe catching a game, reading a book, something 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.
10:17Around 1900, Frank Richards is a kid growing up in Kansas who gets into lots of fights.
10:25Not all that unusual, except that in the course of all this fighting, he discovers something.
10:30He can take a punch to the stomach, no matter how hard it is.
10:35His ab muscles are ridiculously strong.
10:37Later on, while serving in World War I, Frank becomes known for putting on these exhibitions where he takes punch after punch to the gut from his fellow soldiers.
10:48And sometimes Frank gets hit in the stomach a thousand times a day.
10:54After the war, Frank thinks, hey, maybe people will pay to watch this.
10:59And so he joins a vaudeville company, basically as a strongman, where he puts on exhibitions challenging anybody in the crowd to punch him in the stomach.
11:07Soon, promoters bring in big-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, he's not expecting what happens.
11:25Which is, after 75 punches to the gut, Frank's standing there like, what else you got?
11:31Frank's incredible display is a blessing and a curse.
11:36All of a sudden, fans are expecting something new, bigger, better.
11:40He tries to up the ante, taking two-by-fours to the stomach, battering rams, even sledgehammers.
11:48Yet, his fans still want more.
11:52So, in the late 1920s, he sets out to conceive the most unbelievable body blow possible.
11:58Frank gets inspired by a popular spectacle at carnivals and fairs, and that is the human cannonball.
12:05A human being climbs into a cannon and then is shot over a great distance and lands in a net.
12:11That stunt gives Frank Richards an idea.
12:13What if he flips the script?
12:15He thinks, instead of being a human cannonball, what if he withstands the blow of a cannonball?
12:24Of course, these cannons aren't real cannons.
12:27They're not loaded with gunpowder to fire you at the enemy.
12:30They're catapults.
12:31They're compressed air.
12:32But this is still a daunting stunt.
12:35That cannonball he chooses weighs 104 pounds.
12:38All 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.
12:51What are the goggles going to do?
12:53Put a girdle on!
12:54It'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, and soon he has a nickname that cements his place in history.
13:22Cannonball Richards.
13:23Frank 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?
15:57And they're tighter as the balloons move.
15:59If walking across two moving objects over 7,000 feet in the air wasn't exciting enough, Davis also does tricks.
16:07In slacklining, you have things that are known as static tricks.
16:14And this is when the slackliner makes it to the middle of the line, and then they stop.
16:18And then they either pose or they do some type of gymnastic movement.
16:22And some of these movements have some pretty interesting names.
16:24Perhaps the most unbelievable part of this pastime, Davis isn't the only person doing it.
16:41So the first person to ever highline between two hot air balloons is a Brazilian named Rafa Britti the year before.
16:47And 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.
16:58Even Davis, who's been on high lines numerous times before, feels like he's going to throw up as he's walking between these two balloons.
17:06Dazzling the crowd along the way, Davis successfully breaks the record, although it might not last long.
17:13The world record for a man in a hot air balloon is 69,000 feet.
17:18So I guess in this case, the sky is the limit.
17:21Balancing on a line thousands of feet in the air is one way to pass the time.
17:27Our next hobby trades danger for dollhouses.
17:32When 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.
17:42Driving 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.
17:59But if you take a closer look, this village is not what it seems.
18:04Almost all of its hundreds of residents are life-size dolls.
18:08Is this some sort of a military testing site?
18:16Is it a movie set?
18:18Why would a village be populated by full-scale, life-size dolls?
18:26Other than the dolls, there's not a lot of human activity going on.
18:30And you start to wonder, who did this?
18:33The dolls are actually the work of one woman, Ayano Tsukimi.
18:39Ayano Tsukimi is a native of Nagoro.
18:42She was born and grew up there in the 1950s.
18:45And at the time, it was a bustling village of about 300 people.
18:49By the 2000s, the population of 300 has decreased to about 50.
18:55And Ayano looks around and realizes this is not at all the place that she grew up.
19:00It feels very lonely and empty.
19:02Then in 2002, while tending the family garden, a run-in with some pesky crows gives her an idea.
19:12Crows are stealing the vegetables.
19:14And she realizes that she has to put up a scarecrow.
19:18Ayano's father loved working in his garden.
19:21So she decides to make the scarecrow look like him.
19:24It's a sort of sentimental commemoration.
19:26It's not long until neighbors start to call out to him, thinking it's really her father.
19:33This kind of spurs an idea to start making more of these dolls as sort of a tribute to the people in town.
19:43And 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 or near their home.
19:55Since 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 schoolteachers?
20:10She creates whimsical scenes, like celebrants at a wedding party.
20:17Eventually, she creates about 300 dolls, which outnumber living villagers 10 to 1.
20:25Nagoro becomes an internet sensation, nicknamed Village of the Dolls.
20:29And as a result, a funny thing happens.
20:33Suddenly, Nagoro is a massive tourist destination.
20:36Roughly 3,000 people visit the village every year.
20:39Without meaning to do it, Ayano has brought this town back to life.
20:45It's no longer this dying, empty village.
20:49It'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.
21:03As a boy, young Walter Potter experiences a death that affects him profoundly.
21:09And it's the death of his pet parakeet.
21:13So to keep the animal's memory alive, he turns to the art of taxidermy.
21:18Today, we mostly associate taxidermy with hunter's trophy kills.
21:23Or 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 commemorate them.
21:36Stuffing and preserving animals is a very specialized skill.
21:40But Potter, a total taxidermy novice, decides to try this himself.
21:46He manages to cobble together a stuffed version of his deceased parakeet.
21:51It's not the greatest.
21:53But he becomes hooked on this hobby.
21:56He starts preserving more animals and displaying them at a local inn owned by his father.
22:01One of Potter's most notable works is a painstaking and elaborate depiction of a bird funeral called
22:17The Original Death and Burial of Cock Robin, based off of the notable nursery rhyme, Who Killed Cock Robin?
22:22He begins his diorama at age 19, but it takes him several years to complete, because it's incredibly intricate.
22:30Over a hundred native birds of Great Britain illustrate all 56 verses of that children's rhyme.
22:38Potter goes on to create other memorable works, like a squirrel serving cocktails, rabbits in a classroom, and of course, hamsters playing cricket.
22:49But one piece stands above the rest.
22:54The kitchen wedding is really meticulous and detailed.
22:58Twenty kitchens are dressed to absolutely impress.
23:01They're in tuxedos and frilly dresses.
23:04Even though you can't see their knickers, Potter went to the extent of making sure that they had them,
23:09which is a testament to how much love he put into his work.
23:14Potter soon has more pieces than his father's inn can accommodate.
23:18So he opens up a space in the village of Bramber called Potter's Museum, full of taxidermy wonders and efforts.
23:27Visitors to Potter's Museum seem to ask the same question.
23:32Where does he get all these animals to stuff?
23:36Potter has made arrangements with farms and other places that encounter dead animals frequently,
23:42and 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.
23:53His works are sold off 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 a second life.
24:09Creepy?
24:10Perhaps.
24:11Unbelievable?
24:12Absolutely.
24:13Since humans first began domesticating dogs 30,000 years ago, we've invented contests to determine which pooch is the best,
24:24from Westminster to the Editarod.
24:27But one unbelievable contest is dedicated to the premise that your pup can't be the best until they look their best.
24:35Every year since 1988, there's something called the Groom Expo, held in Hershey, Pennsylvania.
24:44Thousands of dog groomers descend on the chocolate capital.
24:48They exchange trade secrets, they talk about business, but at the heart of this is an unbelievable, competitive dog grooming competition.
24:58Who's a pretty poodle?
24:59These groomers don't just cut hair from around the eyes or clip nails.
25:05No, they are creating three-dimensional works of art on dogs.
25:14Sometimes, if a dog has a really thick coat, they'll paint it so it looks like he or she has other animals clinging to it.
25:22So, a panda or a sloth hanging off of a dog, all made of hair.
25:28But creating these furry masterpieces doesn't happen overnight.
25:33They take serious time and skill.
25:36They have to keep in mind that just like topiary work with hedges, you have to wait for the dog's hair to get to the point where you can do with it what you want.
25:44Poodles are the most common dogs in these competitions because their thick fur lends itself to intricate design.
25:52They have tightly compact fur that you can trim and shape and make into all of these fantastical shapes.
26:00Of course, every year, these designs on these dogs get more and more outrageous, and the groomers are going to more and more outrageous lengths to compete and win.
26:12Like one woman, Angela Kumpi, who's been called the Michael Jordan of dog grooming.
26:17Perhaps her masterpiece is done on a white poodle named Moses and is based off of the Stephen King novel, It.
26:25She's designed a super creepy portrait of Pennywise on the dog's right side, and the rest of the dog is groomed to look like he's in Pennywise costume.
26:34Some people see this competition as bad for dogs, and some states have even banned the use of dyes on dogs, but fans of the dog grooming competition push back.
26:47The dogs are not harmed by the food coloring dyes that are not toxic to them, and they love all the attention they're getting, whether they realize why they're getting it or not.
27:00Dog grooming isn't the only mundane task that's been turned into unbelievable performance art.
27:09It's 1997 in Leicester, England, and Phil Shaw is just getting off of work at a factory.
27:14He wants to have some fun after work, so he decides to go do something that he loves, rock climbing.
27:20The thing that's standing in his way is that Phil's got a long list of chores that he has to get done at home, and one of those chores is ironing.
27:30In 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 for a hilarious photo op.
27:42So, he takes his iron, his ironing board, and his wrinkled shirts, grabs his roommate, and they head to his favorite rock face.
27:49This rock climbing excursion produces a pretty hilarious photo, so Phil decides to take photos ironing in various other places.
27:57Now, we haven't quite reached the viral age at this point, so people start hearing about Phil's crazy pastime mostly through email and word of mouth, but he's encouraged, so he keeps doing it.
28:07Phil gives this new pastime a name. Extreme Ironing. Soon, Phil embarks on an international tour to promote his passion.
28:17So, this seems like a joke, right? What's crazy is that all over the world, people love extreme ironing.
28:23They 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 Germany.
28:42Twelve teams from different countries iron various garments in five different settings.
28:48These locations 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 judged on their ironing.
29:04A good press, a sharp crease, and so on.
29:06Since it is the birthplace of extreme ironing, Team Britain takes home the first world championship in 2002.
29:14Worldwide, there are some 1,500 extreme ironing competitors, or ironists, as Phil calls them.
29:20There's even brief talk about including it in the Olympics.
29:23Unfortunately, Phil can't chase ironing glory forever.
29:28Eventually, the demands of family and work force him to hang up his board, at least competitively.
29:34But ironists around the world continue to keep up the pastime, taking it to even more extreme lengths beyond what I'm sure Phil could even imagine.
29:44If ironing on cliffs wasn't extreme enough, wait until you see what's next.
29:49In the mid-1800s, Americans are besieged by death.
29:56The Civil War and diseases like tuberculosis combine to kill millions.
30:00So you'd think that any reminder of this grim reality would have no place in a leisure activity.
30:06Well, think again.
30:07At this time, people want to go relax somewhere pretty with their family and close friends.
30:16So the big social 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.
30:28They're happening somewhere else.
30:31On any given weekend, you'd find people with picnic baskets and blankets and pitchers of tea just relaxing in cemeteries.
30:44When we're looking at pictures during this time, you see women out at a park-like setting.
30:48They have parasols.
30:49They have big hats.
30:51They are dressed to absolutely impress.
30:53And when you look closer, you realize, oh, that's a headstone.
30:57And these were big social events.
31:00Picnicking in these cemeteries becomes incredibly popular.
31:03And this is happening all over the country.
31:06Why are people choosing to make merry in a place where they're surrounded by markers of death?
31:12For most of us today, it's easy to find a park or an open space to spend time with friends or family.
31:21These Victorian Americans didn't have that, so they invented it, making makeshift use of spaces dedicated to the dead to enjoy life.
31:32There's also another more sentimental reason.
31:35When 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.
31:47Death to them was something held much more closely because it was so common.
31:52There is even a really interesting interview in a paper in 1884 with a young man who says they're celebrating Thanksgiving with his father.
32:01It doesn't matter that his father died the year before.
32:03They're there and they're going to celebrate with him.
32:05Even though it seems so strange to us today, it's their way to show that they loved and cared about somebody.
32:12Gotta hand it to Victorians, they did some pretty weird stuff.
32:15But partying with the dearly departed isn't just a 19th century thing.
32:23Every March, a raucous festival is held in the foothills of the Colorado Rockies.
32:30It attracts 25,000 revelers for sports, contests, partying, merrymaking.
32:42So 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.
32:56And there's signs everywhere that say FDGD.
32:59So what does FDGD stand for?
33:01It stands for frozen dead guy days.
33:05And it has an unbelievable backstory.
33:08In 1989, in Norway, a man named Bredo Morstel passes away in his sleep.
33:16Bredo is a much-beloved father and grandfather.
33:19And in fact, his grandson, Trigva Boge, wants to find a way to truly commemorate his grandfather.
33:25Now, Bredo's grandson, who lives in Colorado, also happens to have a bit of a fascination with something known as life extension.
33:33So he decides the best way to extend his grandfather's legacy is to freeze him.
33:40This is a time when cryonics, which is freezing the human body to preserve it, is more and more in the public eye.
33:46There are a handful of companies that do this.
33:49Of course, at some point in the future, the frozen bodies might be able to be brought back to life.
33:55And Trigva is really into this idea.
33:58Trigva travels to Norway, takes his grandfather's body, puts it on a bed of dry ice,
34:04and flies him to a cryonics lab in California, where the body is then frozen with liquid nitrogen for three years.
34:12But Trigva has a plan that does not involve it staying in California.
34:16He actually wants to start his own cryogenics company in Colorado.
34:22Trigva decides to launch this venture by moving Bredo's body to a kind of improvised cryonics facility.
34:30Trigva's mother, Aud, has also moved to Colorado in this little tiny town of Nederland.
34:35And they set up in her backyard a little shack with the intention that they will keep him there
34:41until the science exists that they can wake him up.
34:46This 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 dead guys in your backyard.
35:08Trigva is deported to Norway.
35:12His mother, Aud, is permitted to remain in Colorado.
35:17But what to do with Grandpa's body?
35:22A local businessman steps up and offers to build a new facility.
35:28It's essentially still a shack, but it is a place where she can continue to preserve her father's body,
35:35which miraculously is actually still frozen.
35:37This story remains on ice until 2002,
35:42when the Nederland Chamber of Commerce 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.
36:05So the officials in Nederland are starting to think,
36:07OK, well, what is our Mike the Headless Chicken?
36:10And then they remember, oh, wait, we got a frozen dead guy in a shack in our town.
36:16Festival goers don't see Bredo's body,
36:19but they can go and do tours of his shack and sometimes people even toast him with whiskey.
36:24What 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,
36:47and you happen to be living in the town of Golf Manor, Michigan.
36:50It's the early 1990s,
36:55and 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.
37:12The problem here is David isn't your average kid,
37:16and he's not doing your average experiment.
37:20In fact, David is definitely the only Boy Scout in America
37:24who is attempting to build a nuclear reactor.
37:29This isn't some model nuclear reactor.
37:31We're talking a real, full-blown nuclear reactor.
37:37This all starts when the super-smart Boy Scout is 10 years old,
37:41and his grandfather gives him a 1960 children's publication
37:44called The Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments.
37:47This is a book that fascinates David to no end
37:51because it's talking about a lot of chemicals and experiments
37:55that are incredibly dangerous to do at home.
37:59But 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.
38:10Now, this becomes his favorite pastime, pretty much to the exclusion of all else.
38:15When he chooses the Eagle Scout badge that he's going after,
38:19David doesn't pick photography or ice skating.
38:22He chooses atomic energy.
38:24By 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?
38:39It 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 goes 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,
39:11neither of which is very protective.
39:14The experiments give him radiation burns,
39:17turns his hair green at one point,
39:19and even knocks him unconscious.
39:22Despite the burns and close calls,
39:24David's unconventional methods lead to a breakthrough
39:26when he uses a clever ruse to gain crucial intel
39:31from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
39:33He writes them posing as a high school physics professor,
39:38and they give him shockingly revealing information,
39:42information that he's able to use
39:45to solve some of the puzzle
39:47of how he can build his nuclear reactor
39:51he's working on in his backyard shed.
39:53In 1994, amidst all of this,
39:58David successfully creates a rudimentary nuclear reactor
40:03that is held together by things like duct tape and aluminum foil.
40:08David's creation is so successful,
40:11his Geiger counter gives him strong radioactive readings
40:14five houses away.
40:16Unfortunately, a chance encounter
40:18is about to make his hobby front-page news.
40:21One day, police are investigating reports
40:25of a bunch of stolen and missing tires.
40:28They see David parked on the street,
40:29and they decide to search his car.
40:32When officers speak to him,
40:34he warns them not to go touching the stuff in the back.
40:37It's radioactive.
40:39The discovery prompts local, state, and federal authorities
40:42to descend on the area,
40:43dismantle David's atomic shed,
40:46and initiate an expensive cleanup.
40:48Eventually, they have to bring in the EPA,
40:51and they declare David's backyard a Superfund site.
40:57The community does not suffer from David's experiments.
41:02Luckily, disaster is averted.
41:05Although David never got to finish building his reactor,
41:08he did attain Eagle Scout rank
41:10shortly after his lab was taken apart.
41:12From putting ferrets down your pants
41:15to tinkering with radiation and dolls,
41:18these are the bizarre, dangerous,
41:20and sometimes quite painful pastimes
41:22that are truly unbelievable.
41:25That's all in the neighborhood 100% of residents
41:29are in charge of the simulation.
41:30That work tools,
41:34who don't seem to be able to treat children
41:35the most notably from me in the這裡.
41:37You're an old man.
41:41You were an old man.
41:42You're an old man.
41:43You're an old man.
41:44You're an old man.
41:45You're an old man.
41:46You're an old man.
41:47You're an old man.
41:48You're an old one!
41:50You're an old man!
41:51You're an old man!
Be the first to comment