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00:01Warning, what you're about to see could be disturbing to some viewers.
00:05Viewer discretion is advised.
00:13Imagine a sport where the whole game is played in your pants.
00:19Your goal is to stand there for as long as possible while having ferrets root around in your pants.
00:25It's got claws, fangs, and it's got the bite force of a pit bull terrier.
00:34We're going toe-to-toe with a cannonball.
00:38That cannonball weighs 104 pounds.
00:42Frank is standing 10 feet away from the cannon wearing goggles.
00:46What are the goggles going to do?
00:49How about a hobby where one mistake means certain death?
00:55People are thinking, this is crazy.
00:56He's 7,500 feet in the air.
00:58Who is this guy?
00:59A lot can go wrong.
01:01Davis feels like he's going to throw up as he's walking between these two balloons.
01:06These are the pastimes that are so strange.
01:09They are truly unbelievable.
01:23Back in 19th century London, the rich and trendy are always looking for fresh forms of entertainment,
01:29like a wildly popular new stage show with an unusual star attraction.
01:36On January 15th, 1834, performer Thomas Pettigrew is preparing to appear before a sold-out crowd in London.
01:45Pettigrew isn't the main attraction.
01:48He's more of the emcee and the host of the whole situation.
01:51The person that everyone's really there to see is someone named Horsiesi, who is an Egyptian priest.
01:58But Horsiesi, the priest, won't be reciting any lines because he's been dead for 1,400 years.
02:07Behold, the bizarre 19th century pastime of unwrapping mummies.
02:15Egyptomania has been sweeping England now for 20 years or so.
02:21People are fascinated with everything about Egypt.
02:24They want to see these exotic things from this faraway place.
02:30In the early 1800s, a lot of men were sent to Africa, specifically Egypt, to fight Napoleon's army.
02:38And when a lot of those soldiers came home, they brought back their own little piece of antiquity.
02:45Pieces of mummies were being sold, hands, feet, heads.
02:49And if you possess an entire mummy and could put that on display, that was the headline act.
02:56That was what people wanted to see.
02:58While Pettigrew wasn't the first to unwrap a mummy, his show quickly becomes the most popular.
03:05Pettigrew has this whole system down.
03:08He slowly unwraps these mummies as he's talking about the history of Egypt and specifically mummification.
03:17He is an incredible entertainer.
03:20And part of it is that he's a trained surgeon.
03:22So it lends this air of credibility to the whole thing.
03:25It's all part of the thrill.
03:27He's setting it up for the final thing, which is going to be the exposure of this dead body on
03:32stage.
03:33People are fascinated.
03:36One of the highlights of these unwrappings is the jewelry and other valuables that are sometimes found wrapped with the
03:44body and later sold off, of course, as valuable antiquities.
03:49Sure, the big ticket items get all the attention.
03:52But the audience walks away with a different kind of treasure.
03:56People are given snippages, so little pieces of the bandages they can take them home as souvenirs.
04:02You're going to be able to handle and touch something that is from ancient Egypt.
04:07It's thousands of years old in some cases.
04:10But the real showstopper is still to come.
04:14Once this body has been revealed, Ben Pettigrew switches into surgeon mode.
04:19Because as part of the show, you also get to watch him perform an autopsy.
04:25Pettigrew starts severing limbs, muscles, skin, pointing out the survival and color of hair, the pliability of the skin itself.
04:37The audience is just awestruck.
04:40Pettigrew becomes so famous that the Duke of Hamilton actually hires him to mummify his corpse after death.
04:51Pettigrew's mummy unwrapping attracts large audiences for many years.
04:58And he publishes books, gives talks, and eventually simply becomes known as Mummy Pettigrew.
05:08Eventually, the unwrapping spectacles fall out of favor.
05:12Though our fascination with mummies lives on.
05:16A lot of authors were influenced by this.
05:18Edgar Allan Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle wrote a mummy story.
05:22In the early days of Hollywood, you had a lot of mummy stories.
05:25The spookiness of it, the creepiness of it, stays with us even today.
05:31Revealing what's under the bandages of an ancient mummy is certainly exhilarating.
05:35However, there's another British pastime that will really get your blood flowing.
05:41Imagine a man standing in front of a live audience.
05:44He is wearing baggy white pants tucked into socks.
05:50And there is something in the pants moving around.
05:57The man winces as he's nipped and bitten.
06:00Perhaps drops of blood even appear on his pant legs.
06:03Painful?
06:04Yes.
06:05But that's the price you pay if you want to indulge in the unbelievable sport...
06:10Ready for?
06:11Yes.
06:12Of ferret legging.
06:14The object of ferret legging is rather simple.
06:17Your goal is to stand there for as long as possible while having ferrets root around in your pants.
06:24Ferret legging may be simple in concept, but make no mistake about it.
06:29It ain't easy.
06:31Why ferrets?
06:32And why down your pants?
06:34The answer goes back centuries.
06:37In medieval Europe, ferrets are increasingly used for hunting.
06:42The ferret is the most underrated hunting animal in the world.
06:49It's got claws, fangs, the speed and flexibility of a snake, and it's got the bite force of a pit
07:01bull terrier.
07:02However, ferrets were a hunting animal only for royalty.
07:08If you were a commoner that owned a ferret, you were breaking the law.
07:14So if a game warden came by, people would often hide the ferrets in their pants until the authorities went
07:21away.
07:22And that suddenly became a matter of bravery.
07:27Something like, hey, you know, the authorities came and I held these guys in my pants for X amount of
07:34time while they were clawing and biting me.
07:36This gives the ferret stashing hunters in Yorkshire an idea.
07:40What if we willingly stuffed ferrets down our pants and we had a competition to determine who could withstand it
07:48the longest?
07:49And everyone's like, sign me up.
07:52With any contest, there have to be rules.
07:54And the number one rule of ferret legging is that you can't have any undergarments.
07:59Now, once you put a ferret in an enclosed space, it's trying to escape.
08:04It will resort to clawing and scratching and biting.
08:08Just how many minutes those early ferret leggers lasted and what traumas they endured are lost to history.
08:14But when the sport enjoys a resurgence during the 20th century, a heroic figure emerges.
08:20Retired coal miner Reg Meller.
08:23Reg Meller is a guy that frequently hunts with ferrets.
08:26And as a way to keep them dry, if it's cold or rainy, he'll just take the ferret and stuff
08:32it into his pants.
08:34In the 1970s, Meller catches wind of people competing at ferret legging, something he's already been doing.
08:43Reg sees other Yorkshire men ferret legging.
08:46They really can't do it for more than a minute or so.
08:48He thinks, I can do it for a lot longer than that.
08:53He doesn't just last for a few minutes.
08:55He can actually endure ferret legging for hours.
09:00With a record of five hours, 26 minutes, Reg becomes the undisputed ferret legging champion.
09:07If they bite so hard and hurt you, why do you do it?
09:10Well, that's it.
09:11It's a challenge.
09:15The question people always ask Reg is, does his you-know-what get bitten?
09:21Yes, absolutely it does.
09:24In 1987, Reg passes away as the reigning king of ferret legging, an oddly coveted title that still holds a
09:32strange allure today.
09:36Ferret legging is still around in many places, and 28 years after Reg's record, it's finally broken in 2010.
09:44During his heyday, people used to ask Reg, how do you do it?
09:47What is your secret?
09:48To which Reg would nonchalantly respond, you know, sometimes you just gotta have your manhood bitten and just not really
09:56care.
09:58Words to live by, for sure.
10:00But Reg is hardly the only brave soul to turn bodily suffering into a show.
10:07Most pastimes are about relaxing, maybe catching a game, reading a book, something easy on the body.
10:13But not for Frank Richards.
10:15His idea of a good time?
10:17Let's just say it isn't for the faint of heart or stomach.
10:24Around 1900, Frank Richards is a kid growing up in Kansas who gets into lots of fights.
10:30Not all that unusual, except that in the course of all this fighting, he discovers something.
10:35He can take a punch to the stomach, no matter how hard it is.
10:39His ab muscles are ridiculously strong.
10:43Later on, while serving in World War I, Frank becomes known for putting on these exhibitions where he takes punch
10:50after punch to the gut from his fellow soldiers.
10:53And sometimes Frank gets hit in the stomach a thousand times a day.
10:59After the war, Frank thinks, hey, maybe people will pay to watch this.
11:03And so he joins a vaudeville company, basically as a strongman, where he puts on exhibitions challenging anybody in the
11:10crowd to punch him in the stomach.
11:12Soon, promoters bring in big-time heavyweight boxers to test Frank.
11:17Like the 6'6 behemoth, Jess Willard.
11:21And even the world-famous champ, Jack Dempsey.
11:25Now, when Jack Dempsey goes up against Frank, he's not expecting what happens, which is, after 75 punches to the
11:33gut, Frank's standing there like, what else you got?
11:38Frank's incredible display is a blessing and a curse.
11:41All of a sudden, fans are expecting something new, bigger, better.
11:45He tries to up the ante, taking two-by-fours to the stomach, battering rams, even sledgehammers.
11:54Yet, his fans still want more.
11:57So, in the late 1920s, he sets out to conceive the most unbelievable body blow possible.
12:03Frank gets inspired by a popular spectacle at carnivals and fairs, and that is the human cannonball.
12:09A human being climbs into a cannon and then is shot over a great distance and lands in a net.
12:16That stunt gives Frank Richards an idea.
12:18What if he flips the script?
12:20He thinks, instead of being a human cannonball, what if he withstands the blow of a cannonball?
12:29Of course, these cannons aren't real cannons.
12:32They're not loaded with gunpowder to fire you at the enemy.
12:35They're catapults.
12:36They're compressed air.
12:37But this is still a daunting stunt.
12:40That cannonball he chooses weighs 104 pounds.
12:44All eyes and cameras are on Frank, as he gears up for what may be his most outrageous and dangerous
12:50feat ever.
12:51Frank is standing 10 feet away from the cannon, wearing goggles.
12:56What are the goggles going to do?
12:58Put a girdle on!
12:59It's not exactly clear how fast the cannonball is traveling, but this thing is really heavy.
13:10And it's obvious from the way he's knocked backwards that it is hitting him with an incredible force.
13:18But Frank gets up, and he's totally okay.
13:20Frank begins performing this stunt all across America, and soon he has a nickname that cements his place in history,
13:27Cannonball Richards.
13:31Frank continues to do this for many years, well into middle age, and really he can only perform this twice
13:37a day, because it's so hard on his body.
13:40Well now, in the internet age, Frank gets famous again because his cannonball videos are going viral, and people never
13:46get tired of seeing a guy get hit in his superhuman stomach.
13:50Today millions are familiar with the footage of Frank's painful gut shot.
13:55But if you think that's dangerous, how about a spectacle that makes the tightrope walk you'd see in a circus
14:01look like child's play?
14:05Praia Grande, Brazil is a big resort area with lots of beaches and spas, and it's also known for great
14:12hot air balloon rides overlooking the coasts of these amazing canyons.
14:18One day in August 2023, two balloons take off with a group of tourists.
14:23This is a pretty typical ride to get a beautiful view of the landscape and the terrain.
14:28At least that's what they think.
14:31As the balloons begin to ascend, some tourists notice a line tethering the two balloons together.
14:37Suddenly one of the passengers steps toward the rim of the basket and attaches a harness to the line.
14:44And then they step out of the basket and begin walking on the line toward the other balloon.
14:52People are thinking, this is crazy.
14:54He's 7,500 feet in the air.
14:57Who is this guy?
14:58Like, what is going on?
15:00He's 23-year-old Davis Hermes.
15:03And what's happening is a pastime with a new, dizzying spin.
15:07Davis is an expert slackliner.
15:10Slacklining is similar to tightrope walking, but the line is a little bit looser.
15:15The key here is that slacklining is usually done just a few feet off the ground.
15:20This is very different than what Davis is doing.
15:24Now, slacklining in and of itself is incredibly difficult to do,
15:27but Davis is a part of a select group of people that do a more extreme version of slacklining called
15:34highlining.
15:36Highlining is slacklining, but done at an incredible height.
15:41Highlining is typically done between fixed structures.
15:45Davis has kicked it up a notch.
15:47He's deciding to slackline between two hot air balloons that are in constant motion.
15:55You have to realize why this is so difficult.
15:57The line is constantly shifting and changing tensions as it gets looser or tighter as the balloons move.
16:04If walking across two moving objects over 7,000 feet in the air wasn't exciting enough, Davis also does tricks.
16:15In slacklining, you have things that are known as static tricks.
16:19And this is when the slackliner makes it to the middle of the line, and then they stop.
16:23And then they either pose or they do some type of gymnastic movement.
16:27And some of these movements have some pretty interesting names.
16:30You've got your butt flip.
16:32You've got your churro bounce.
16:35You've got your nasty squeezer.
16:39Perhaps the most unbelievable part of this pastime, Davis isn't the only person doing it.
16:46So the first person to ever highline between two hot air balloons is a Brazilian named Rafa Britti the year
16:51before.
16:52And he does it at a height of 6,500 feet.
16:55So what Davis is actually setting out to do is break Britti's altitude record.
17:02A lot can go wrong.
17:03Even Davis, who's been on high lines numerous times before, feels like he's going to throw up as he's walking
17:09between these two balloons.
17:11Dazzling the crowd along the way, Davis successfully breaks the record, although it might not last long.
17:17The world record for a man in a hot air balloon is 69,000 feet.
17:23So I guess in this case, the sky is the limit.
17:26Balancing on a line thousands of feet in the air is one way to pass the time.
17:31Our next hobby trades danger for dollhouses.
17:37When you live in a remote mountain village, it can seem like you're the last person on earth.
17:41Unless your favorite pastime is creating your own neighbors.
17:49Driving through the Japanese village of Nagaro, you'll see some pretty idyllic scenes.
17:56Farmers harvesting crops.
17:58People fishing by a stream.
18:01Families waiting at the bus stop.
18:04But if you take a closer look, this village is not what it seems.
18:08Almost all of its hundreds of residents are life-size dolls.
18:17Is this some sort of a military testing site?
18:21Is it a movie set?
18:23Why would a village be populated by full-scale life-size dolls?
18:31Other than the dolls, there's not a lot of human activity going on.
18:35And you start to wonder, who did this?
18:39The dolls are actually the work of one woman, Ayano Tsukimi.
18:44Ayano Tsukimi is a native of Nagoro.
18:47She was born and grew up there in the 1950s, and at the time, it was a bustling village of
18:53about 300 people.
18:54By the 2000s, the population of 300 has decreased to about 50.
19:00And Ayano looks around and realizes this is not at all the place that she grew up.
19:05It feels very lonely and empty.
19:08Then in 2002, while tending the family garden, a run-in with some pesky crows gives her an idea.
19:16Crows are stealing the vegetables.
19:19And she realizes that she has to put up a scarecrow.
19:23Ayano's father loved working in his garden, so she decides to make the scarecrow look like him.
19:29It's a sort of sentimental commemoration.
19:33It's not long until neighbors start to call out to him, thinking it's really her father.
19:39This kind of spurs an idea to start making more of these dolls as sort of a tribute to the
19:47people in town.
19:48And at first, it's the people who passed away.
19:52She'll make a doll in their honor and put it near a place they'd love to go or where they
19:58used to sit or near their home.
20:01Since it only takes her about three days to complete a doll, she wonders,
20:07why not repopulate the entire village with imaginary people, from construction workers to school teachers?
20:16She creates whimsical scenes, like celebrants at a wedding party.
20:21Eventually, she creates about 300 dolls, which outnumber living villagers 10 to 1.
20:30Nagoro becomes an internet sensation, nicknamed Village of the Dolls.
20:34And as a result, a funny thing happens.
20:38Suddenly, Nagoro is a massive tourist destination.
20:41Roughly 3,000 people visit the village every year.
20:45Without meaning to do it, Ayano has brought this town back to life.
20:50It's no longer this dying, empty village.
20:53It's a very busy, lively place once again.
20:59Believe it or not, filling a village with living dolls isn't the only unusual hobby out there.
21:04Aiming to freeze time.
21:08As a boy, young Walter Potter experiences a death that affects him profoundly.
21:15And it's the death of his pet parakeet.
21:17So, to keep the animal's memory alive, he turns to the art of taxidermy.
21:23Today, we mostly associate taxidermy with hunter's trophy kills, or it's used in museums for displays.
21:32But back then, it was actually fairly common for people to use taxidermy on their pets as a way to
21:39commemorate them.
21:41Stuffing and preserving animals is a very specialized skill.
21:45But Potter, a total taxidermy novice, decides to try this himself.
21:50He manages to cobble together a stuffed version of his deceased parakeet.
21:56It's not the greatest, but he becomes hooked on this hobby.
22:01He starts preserving more animals and displaying them at a local inn owned by his father.
22:06What Potter lacks in experience, he more than makes up for in his attention to detail.
22:14One of Potter's most notable works is a painstaking and elaborate depiction of a bird funeral called The Original Death
22:22and Burial of Cock Robin,
22:24based off of the notable nursery rhyme, Who Killed Cock Robin?
22:27He begins his diorama at age 19, but it takes him several years to complete, because it's incredibly intricate.
22:35Over a hundred native birds of Great Britain illustrate all 56 verses of that children's rhyme.
22:43Potter goes on to create other memorable works, like a squirrel serving cocktails, rabbits in a classroom,
22:51and, of course, hamsters playing cricket.
22:55But one piece stands above the rest.
23:00The kitchen wedding is really meticulous and detailed.
23:03Twenty kitchens are dressed to absolutely impress.
23:06They're in tuxedos and frilly dresses.
23:09Even though you can't see their knickers, Potter went to the extent of making sure that they had them,
23:13which is a testament to how much love he put into his work.
23:19Potter soon has more pieces than his father's inn can accommodate.
23:23So he opens up a space in the village of Bramber called Potter's Museum, full of taxidermy wonders and efforts.
23:32Visitors to Potter's Museum seem to ask the same question.
23:37Where does he get all these animals to stuff?
23:40Potter has made arrangements with farms and other places that encounter dead animals frequently,
23:47and he assures visitors that he has never killed an animal for his creations.
23:53Eventually, taxidermy falls out of favor with the public, and the museum is closed.
23:58His works are sold off to individual collectors, but they continue to make appearances in museums to this day.
24:07By the time he dies in 1918, Walter Potter has given 10,000 creatures a second life.
24:13Creepy? Perhaps.
24:16Unbelievable? Absolutely.
24:21Since humans first began domesticating dogs 30,000 years ago, we've invented contests to determine which pooch is the best,
24:29from Westminster to the Editarod.
24:31But one unbelievable contest is dedicated to the premise that your pup can't be the best until they look their
24:39best.
24:41Every year since 1988, there's something called the Groom Expo, held in Hershey, Pennsylvania.
24:49Thousands of dog groomers descend on the chocolate capital.
24:53They exchange trade secrets, they talk about business, but at the heart of this is an unbelievable, competitive dog grooming
25:01competition.
25:03Who's a pretty poodle?
25:06These groomers don't just cut hair from around the eyes or clip nails.
25:11No, they are creating three-dimensional works of art on dogs.
25:19Sometimes, if a dog has a really thick coat, they'll paint it so it looks like he or she has
25:25other animals clinging to it.
25:27So, a panda or a sloth hanging off of a dog, all made of hair.
25:34But creating these furry masterpieces doesn't happen overnight.
25:38They take serious time and skill.
25:40They have to keep in mind that just like topiary work with hedges, you have to wait for the dog's
25:46hair to get to the point where you can do with it what you want.
25:49Poodles are the most common dogs in these competitions because their thick fur lends itself to intricate design.
25:57They have tightly compact fur that you can trim and shape and make into all of these fantastical shapes.
26:06Of course, every year these designs on these dogs get more and more outrageous and the groomers are going to
26:12more and more outrageous lengths to compete and win.
26:16Like one woman, Angela Kumpi, who's been called the Michael Jordan of dog grooming.
26:23Perhaps her masterpiece is done on a white poodle named Moses and is based off of the Stephen King novel,
26:29It.
26:30She's designed a super creepy portrait of Pennywise on the dog's right side and the rest of the dog is
26:36groomed to look like he's in Pennywise costume.
26:39Some people see this competition as bad for dogs and some states have even banned the use of dyes on
26:48dogs, but fans of the dog grooming competition push back.
26:53The dogs are not harmed by the food coloring dyes that are not toxic to them and they love all
27:00the attention they're getting, whether they realize why they're getting it or not.
27:07Dog grooming isn't the only mundane task that's been turned into unbelievable performance art.
27:14It's 1997 in Leicester, England, and Phil Shaw is just getting off of work at a factory.
27:19He wants to have some fun after work, so he decides to go do something that he loves, rock climbing.
27:25The thing that's standing in his way is that Phil's got a long list of chores that he has to
27:30get done at home.
27:32And one of those chores is ironing.
27:35In a flash, Phil has an epiphany.
27:38Why not combine the activities?
27:41Now, to you and me, this makes zero sense.
27:43But what he's thinking in the moment is that this might make for a hilarious photo op.
27:47So, he takes his iron, his ironing board, and his wrinkled shirts, grabs his roommate, and they head to his
27:52favorite rock base.
27:54This rock climbing excursion produces a pretty hilarious photo.
27:58So, Phil decides to take photos ironing in various other places.
28:02Now, we haven't quite reached the viral age at this point.
28:05So, people start hearing about Phil's crazy pastime mostly through email and word of mouth.
28:09But he's encouraged, so he keeps doing it.
28:12Phil gives this new pastime a name.
28:16Extreme ironing.
28:17Soon, Phil embarks on an international tour to promote his passion.
28:22So, this seems like a joke, right?
28:24What's crazy is that all over the world, people love extreme ironing.
28:28They start doing it everywhere.
28:30On mountains, up in trees, and even ridiculously underwater.
28:37Extreme ironing continues to gain steam.
28:40And in 2002, the very first world championship is held in Germany.
28:47Twelve teams from different countries iron various garments in five different settings.
28:53These locations include a fast-flowing river on top of a tree and a freestyle location of each team's choosing.
29:01Now, not only are the teams judged by how they handle these crazy, precarious locations,
29:06they're actually judged on their ironing.
29:09A good press, a sharp crease, and so on.
29:11Since it is the birthplace of extreme ironing, Team Britain takes home the first world championship in 2002.
29:19Worldwide, there are some 1,500 extreme ironing competitors, or ironists, as Phil calls them.
29:24There's even brief talk about including it in the Olympics.
29:29Unfortunately, Phil can't chase ironing glory forever.
29:33Eventually, the demands of family and work force him to hang up his board, at least competitively.
29:39But ironists around the world continue to keep up the pastime,
29:43taking it to even more extreme lengths beyond what I'm sure Phil could even imagine.
29:49If ironing on cliffs wasn't extreme enough, wait until you see what's next.
29:56In the mid-1800s, Americans are besieged by death.
30:01The Civil War and diseases like tuberculosis combine to kill millions.
30:05So you'd think that any reminder of this grim reality would have no place in a leisure activity.
30:10Well, think again.
30:15At this time, people want to go relax somewhere pretty with their family and close friends.
30:21So the big social event of any given week is to go out and have a picnic on the weekends.
30:28But these picnics aren't taking place in grassy, shaded parks or rolling country fields.
30:34They're happening somewhere else.
30:37On any given weekend, you'd find people with picnic baskets and blankets and pitchers of tea just relaxing in cemeteries.
30:49When we're looking at pictures during this time, you see women out at a park-like setting.
30:53They have parasols.
30:54They have big hats.
30:55They are dressed to absolutely impress.
30:58And when you look closer, you realize, oh, that's a headstone.
31:01And these were big social events.
31:04Picnicking in these cemeteries becomes incredibly popular.
31:08And this is happening all over the country.
31:11Why are people choosing to make merry in a place where they're surrounded by markers of death?
31:18For most of us today, it's easy to find a park or an open space to spend time with friends
31:25or family.
31:26These Victorian Americans didn't have that, so they invented it, making makeshift use of spaces dedicated to the dead to
31:35enjoy life.
31:37There's also another more sentimental reason.
31:42When you have the number of folks in your family die, very often unexpectedly, you want to stay close.
31:48You want to have those memories maintained.
31:52Death to them was something held much more closely because it was so common.
31:57There is even a really interesting interview in a paper in 1884 with a young man who says they're celebrating
32:04Thanksgiving with his father.
32:06It doesn't matter that his father died the year before.
32:08They're there and they're going to celebrate with him.
32:10Even though it seems so strange to us today, it's their way to show that they loved and cared about
32:15somebody.
32:17Gotta hand it to Victorians, they did some pretty weird stuff.
32:21But partying with the dearly departed isn't just a 19th century thing.
32:28Every March, a raucous festival is held in the foothills of the Colorado Rockies.
32:36It attracts 25,000 revelers for sports, contests, partying, merrymaking.
32:48So there are activities like snow sculptures or even frozen salmon tossing.
32:54But there are other features of this big party that are really odd.
32:57One of the big things is the coffin races.
33:01And there are signs everywhere that say FDGD.
33:04So what does FDGD stand for?
33:06It stands for frozen dead guy days.
33:10And it has an unbelievable backstory.
33:14In 1989, in Norway, a man named Bredo Morstel passes away in his sleep.
33:21Bredo is a much-beloved father and grandfather.
33:24And in fact, his grandson, Trigva Boge, wants to find a way to truly commemorate his grandfather.
33:31Now, Bredo's grandson, who lives in Colorado, also happens to have a bit of a fascination with something known as
33:36life extension.
33:38So he decides the best way to extend his grandfather's legacy is to freeze him.
33:45This is a time when cryonics, which is freezing the human body to preserve it, is more and more in
33:50the public eye.
33:51There are a handful of companies that do this.
33:53Of course, at some point in the future, the frozen bodies might be able to be brought back to life.
34:00And Trigva is really into this idea.
34:03Trigva travels to Norway, takes his grandfather's body, puts it on a bed of dry ice, and flies him to
34:10a cryonics lab in California,
34:12where the body is then frozen with liquid nitrogen for three years.
34:17But Trigva has a plan that does not involve it staying in California.
34:21He actually wants to start his own cryogenics company in Colorado.
34:27Trigva decides to launch this venture by moving Bredo's body to a kind of improvised cryonics facility.
34:35Trigva's mother, Aud, has also moved to Colorado in this little tiny town of Nederland.
34:40And they set up in her backyard a little shack with the intention that they will keep him there until
34:47the science exists that they can wake him up.
34:51This is slightly a bit more low-tech than the cryonics facility in California.
34:57It's basically packing his grandfather in a metal sarcophagus with dry ice.
35:02All seems well until local town officials pass an ordinance prohibiting keeping frozen dead guys in your backyard.
35:14Trigva is deported to Norway.
35:17His mother, Aud, is permitted to remain in Colorado.
35:22But what to do with Grandpa's body?
35:27A local businessman steps up and offers to build a new facility.
35:33It's essentially still a shack, but it is a place where she can continue to preserve her father's body, which
35:40miraculously is actually still frozen.
35:43This story remains on ice until 2002, when the Nederland Chamber of Commerce is struggling to find a theme for
35:51their new spring festival.
35:53One resident brings up the story of Mike the Headless Chicken.
36:00Mike was decapitated by a local farmer, but continued to live.
36:05And so the chicken ultimately is their main attraction.
36:10So the officials in Nederland are starting to think, okay, well, what is our Mike the Headless Chicken?
36:14And then they remember, oh, wait, we got a frozen dead guy in a shack in our town.
36:21Festival goers don't see Bredo's body, but they can go and do tours of his shack, and sometimes people even
36:28toast him with whiskey.
36:30What would Bredo think if he knew his frozen corpse inspired such a bizarre pastime?
36:36Maybe one day he'll tell us himself.
36:41Some pastimes may be strange, creepy, or even hazardous to their participants.
36:46But they pose no threat to the public at large.
36:49Unless it's the early 1990s, and you happen to be living in the town of Golf Manor, Michigan.
36:58It's the early 1990s, and you have a 17-year-old boy by the name of David Hahn,
37:02who is ferociously working on a scientific experiment in the shed in his parents' backyard.
37:10He wants to raise his ranks in the Boy Scouts so he can become an Eagle Scout.
37:14And this project is going to help him do it.
37:17The problem here is David isn't your average kid, and he's not doing your average experiment.
37:25In fact, David is definitely the only Boy Scout in America who is attempting to build a nuclear reactor.
37:33This isn't some model nuclear reactor.
37:36We're talking a real, full-blown nuclear reactor.
37:42This all starts when the super-smart Boy Scout is 10 years old,
37:46and his grandfather gives him a 1960 children's publication called The Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments.
37:53This is a book that fascinates David to no end,
37:56because it's talking about a lot of chemicals and experiments that are incredibly dangerous to do at home.
38:03But his family thinks it's a healthy interest for such a highly intelligent kid.
38:08He's only 10, but he starts reading his father's college chemistry books with no problem,
38:12and doing his own experiments.
38:14Now, this becomes his favorite pastime, pretty much to the exclusion of all else.
38:19When he chooses the Eagle Scout badge that he's going after,
38:23David doesn't pick photography or ice skating.
38:27He chooses atomic energy.
38:29By the age of 14, David has two clear goals.
38:32Make Eagle Scout and collect every single element on the periodic table,
38:38even the ones that are radioactive.
38:40So where does a kid in the 90s collect a bunch of radioactive materials?
38:45It turns out you can find radioactive materials in a lot of everyday objects,
38:50things like smoke detectors and old clocks, gas camping lanterns, and even gun sights.
38:55So David starts cobbling all these things together in his parents' backyard shed,
39:00and goes straight to work.
39:03Now, David may be incredibly smart, but he's not terribly careful.
39:08He used coffee filters and pickle jars to handle radioactive materials.
39:12He uses a very crude mask and improvised lead apron,
39:16neither of which is very protective.
39:18The experiments give him radiation burns, turns his hair green at one point,
39:23and even knocks him unconscious.
39:26Despite the burns and close calls, David's unconventional methods lead to a breakthrough
39:31when he uses a clever ruse to gain crucial intel from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
39:38He writes them posing as a high school physics professor,
39:43and they give him shockingly revealing information,
39:47information that he's able to use to solve some of the puzzle
39:52of how he can build his nuclear reactor he's working on in his backyard shed.
40:00In 1994, amidst all of this, David successfully creates a rudimentary nuclear reactor
40:08that is held together by things like duct tape and aluminum foil.
40:13David's creation is so successful,
40:16his Geiger counter gives him strong radioactive readings five houses away.
40:21Unfortunately, a chance encounter is about to make his hobby front page news.
40:27One day, police are investigating reports of a bunch of stolen and missing tires.
40:32They see David parked on the street, and they decide to search his car.
40:37When officers speak to him, he warns them not to go touching the stuff in the back.
40:42It's radioactive.
40:43The discovery prompts local, state, and federal authorities to descend on the area,
40:48dismantle David's atomic shed, and initiate an expensive cleanup.
40:54Eventually, they have to bring in the EPA,
40:56and they declare David's backyard a Superfund site.
41:02The community does not suffer from David's experiments.
41:07Luckily, disaster is averted.
41:09Although David never got to finish building his reactor,
41:13he did attain Eagle Scout rank shortly after his lab was taken apart.
41:18From putting ferrets down your pants to tinkering with radiation and dolls,
41:23these are the bizarre, dangerous, and sometimes quite painful pastimes
41:27that are truly unbelievable.
41:29Ellie-
41:30Ellie-
41:30Jumot
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