The Unbelievable with Dan Aykroyd - Season 3 Episode 08- Unusual Pastimes
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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 pit bull 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.
02:09Egyptomania has been sweeping England now for 20 years or so.
02:16People are fascinated with everything about Egypt.
02:20They want to see these exotic things from this faraway place.
02:24In 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.
02:45And 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.
03:12He 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.
03:21It'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.
04:08Once this body has been revealed, Ben Pettigrew switches into surgeon mode, because as part of the show, you also get to watch him perform an autopsy.
04:19Pettigrew starts severing limbs, muscles, skin, pointing out the survival and color of hair, the pliability of the skin itself.
04:31The audience is just awestruck.
04:36Pettigrew 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, and he publishes books, gives talks, and eventually simply becomes known as Mummy Pettigrew.
05:01Eventually, the unwrapping spectacles fall out of favor, though 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...
06:05Ready for?
06:06Yes.
06:07...of ferret legging.
06:08The 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.
06:19Ferret legging may be simple in concept, but make no mistake about it.
06:24It ain't easy.
06:26Why ferrets?
06:27And why down your pants?
06:30The answer goes back centuries.
06:31In medieval Europe, ferrets are increasingly used for hunting.
06:38The ferret is the most underrated hunting animal in the world.
06:44It's got claws, fangs, the speed and flexibility of a snake.
06:52And it's got the bite force of a pit bull terrier.
06:56However, 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.
07:32This 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.
07:46With any contest, there have to be rules.
07:50And the number one rule of ferret legging is that you can't have any undergarments.
07:55Now, once you put a ferret in an enclosed space, it's trying to escape.
08:00It will resort to clawing and scratching and biting.
08:04Just 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 Mellor.
08:18Reg Mellor is a guy that frequently hunts with ferrets.
08:21And 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, Mellor catches wind of people competing at ferret leggings, 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.
08:48He 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, 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.
09:07Oh, yeah.
09:11The 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, and 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.
10:00Most 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.
10:58And 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?
11:33Frank'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.
11:49Yet, 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.
12:03A 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?
12:22Of 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, Cannonball 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?
14:00Praia Grande, Brazil is a big resort area with lots of beaches and spas.
14:05And it's also known for great hot air balloon rise, overlooking the coasts of these amazing canyons.
14:13One day in August 2023, two balloons take off with a group of tourists.
14:18This 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.
14:47People are thinking, this is crazy.
14:50He's 7,500 feet in the air.
14:52Who is this guy?
14:53Like, what is going on?
14:55He's 23-year-old Davis Hermes.
14:58And what's happening is a pastime with a new, dizzying spin.
15:03Davis 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.
15:16This is very different than what Davis is doing.
15:19Now, slacklining in and of itself is incredibly difficult to do.
15:22But Davis is a part of a select group 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.
15:39Davis has kicked it up a notch.
15:42He's deciding to slackline between two hot air balloons that are in constant motion.
15:50You have to realize why this is so difficult.
15:52The line is constantly shifting and changing tensions as it gets looser or tighter as the balloons move.
15:58If 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.
16:25You've got your butt flip.
16:27You've got your churro bounce.
16:29Perhaps the most unbelievable part of this past time, 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.
16:56A 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.
17:20Balancing 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, and 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, and at the time, it was a bustling village of about 300 people.
18:50By 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.
19:03Then in 2002, while tending the family garden, a run-in with some pesky crows gives her an idea.
19:12Crows 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.
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, why not repopulate the entire village with imaginary people, from construction workers to school teachers?
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.
20:40Without 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.
21:01As a boy, young Walter Potter experiences a death that affects him profoundly.
21:10And it's the death of his pet parakeet.
21:13So to keep the animal's memory alive, he turns to the art of taxidermy.
21:17Taxidermy.
21:19Today, we mostly associate taxidermy with hunter's trophy kills.
21:24Or 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.
21:35Stuffing 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.
21:57He 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?
22:23He begins his diorama at age 19, but it takes him several years to complete because it's incredibly intricate.
22:29Over 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.
22:50But one piece stands above the rest.
22:55The kitchen wedding is really meticulous in detail.
22:57Twenty 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.
23:26Visitors 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.
23:47Eventually, 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.
24:02By the time he dies in 1918, Walter Potter has given 10,000 creatures a second life.
24:09Creepy? Perhaps.
24:11Unbelievable?
24:12Absolutely.
24:13Since humans first began domesticating dogs 30,000 years ago,
24:20we've invented contests to determine which pooch is the best, from 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,
24:52but at the heart of this is an unbelievable competitive dog grooming competition.
24:57These 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.
25:29But 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,
25:39you 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.
26:01Of course, every year these designs on these dogs get more and more outrageous
26:05and 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.
26:18Perhaps 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
26:30and 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.
26:40And some states have even banned the use of dyes on dogs.
26:44But fans of the dog grooming competition push back.
26:48The dogs are not harmed by the food coloring dyes that are not toxic to them.
26:54And 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.
27:19The 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.
27:27And one of those chores is ironing.
27:30In a flash, Phil has an epiphany.
27:33Why not combine the activities?
27:36Now, to you and me, this makes zero sense.
27:38But 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.
27:53So, Phil decides to take photos ironing in various other places.
27:58Now, we haven't quite reached the viral age at this point.
28:00So, people start hearing about Phil's crazy pastime mostly through email and word of mouth.
28:05But he's encouraged, so he keeps doing it.
28:07Phil gives this new pastime a name.
28:11Extreme ironing.
28:13Soon, Phil embarks on an international tour to promote his fashion.
28:17So, this seems like a joke, right?
28:19What's crazy is that all over the world, people love extreme ironing.
28:24They start doing it everywhere.
28:25On mountains, up in trees, and even ridiculously underwater.
28:32Extreme ironing continues to gain steam.
28:35And in 2002, the very first world championship is held in Germany.
28:4012 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.
28:56Now, 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.
29:43If ironing on cliffs wasn't extreme enough, wait until you see what's next.
29:51In the mid-1800s, Americans are besieged by death.
29:56The Civil War and diseases like tuberculosis combine to kill millions.
29:59So you'd think that any reminder of this grim reality would have no place in a leisure activity.
30:06Well, think again.
30:10At 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.
30:22But 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 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.
30:50They 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.
31:31When 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.
31:45Death 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.
32:10Got to hand it to Victorians, they did some pretty weird stuff.
32:16But 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.
32:43So 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.
32:56And there are signs everywhere that say FDGD.
32:59So what does FDGD stand for?
33:02It stands for frozen dead guy days.
33:05And it has an unbelievable backstory.
33:09In 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.
33:39This 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.
33:57Trigva travels to Norway, takes his grandfather's body, puts it on a bed of dry ice, and flies him to a cryonics lab in California,
34:07where 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.
34:17He actually wants to start his own cryogenics company in Colorado.
34:21Trigva 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 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.
34:57All seems well until local town officials pass an ordinance prohibiting keeping frozen dead guys in your backyard.
35:08A 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.
35:38This story remains on ice until 2002,
35:42when the Nederland Chamber of Commerce is struggling to find a theme for their new spring festival.
35:49One resident brings up the story of Mike the Headless Chicken.
35:55Mike was decapitated by a local farmer, but continued to live.
36:01And so the chicken ultimately is their main attraction.
36:04So 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, but they can go and do tours of his shack.
36:22And 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.
36:36Some 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.
36:53It'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.
37:04He 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, 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.
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 called The Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments.
37:48This is a book that fascinates David to no end,
37:51because it's talking about a lot of chemicals and 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.
38:10Now, this becomes his favorite pastime, pretty much to the exclusion of all else.
38:14When he chooses the Eagle Scout badge that he's going after,
38:19David doesn't pick photography or ice skating.
38:21He 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?
38:39It 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 and 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, neither of which is very protective.
39:14The 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
39:26when 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,
39:42information that he's able to use to solve some of the puzzle
39:47of 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
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 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.
40:28They 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.
40:37It'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,
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 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
41:22that are truly unbelievable.
41:25S sammy8
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