Sometimes the most amazing stories are about people who found a way to stand out in a crowd, and both of the subjects of today's tour certainly fit that bill.
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Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all of these amazing tales are right there on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. Sleep is a vulnerable state. While we slumber. Any number of things can happen. We might not hear the pop of a pipe as it fills the basement with water, or the subtle steps of a burglar hunting for whatever is within reach. Some of us might even raid the fridge in a half conscious state, hunting for a snack that will satisfy our midnight cravings. And then there's Ansel. He was a man with a complicated relationship with sleep. In the late nineteenth century, Ansel worked as a carpenter and an evangelical preacher in Rhode Island. He had a wife and two adult daughters with families of their own. He was well known around town too, but not for his woodworking skills or even his sermons. No, Ansel was prone to certain episodes ones where he would briefly forget who or where he was. It was a form of temporary amnesia known as dissociative fugue or sleepwalking. Now, some at the time might have called it somnambulism, which was a scary word. Those who suffered often fell downstairs or hurt themselves due to their semi consciousness, but ansel usually came back to himself after a short time. That is until one day in March of eighteen eighty seven, when locals noticed the preacher had disappeared. Meanwhile, two d fifty miles away, the small town of Norristown, Pennsylvania, was trying to solve a mystery of their own. It seemed that an older gentleman named A. J. Brown had been running a stationary and confectioner shop, and he was a bit confused. He'd taken to showing up on his landlord's door asking him questions like who am I and how did I get here? It just so happened that Mr. Brown had woken up in the middle of ringing a customer in his store, and he couldn't remember how he got there. In fact, his situation was so unusual and frightening to him that he called a local doctor for help, a man by the name of Louis Reid, and soon enough they got to work looking for answers. The story Mr. Brown told him was a wild one. It was the story of a man who had gone into a FuG state and traveled south from Rhode Island into Pennsylvania, where he ran his own store for two months as a completely different person. Dr Reid then asked him about the last thing he remembered before he woke up. It had been January eighteenth, and he had taken a horse and carriage to a bank in Providence. He was on his way to visit his son. He remembered the ride to the bank, withdrawing the money, and even the street signs he passed on the way, but after a brief it with a nephew, it was all blank. The next thing Ansel knew two months had gone by and he'd become the owner of a new business. Ansel's amnesia was obviously worse than he'd known, so his nephew was called to collect him, and not long after returning home, he was able to learn more about his condition. Because it just so happened that William James, often called the father of American psychology, was teaching at Harvard University. He heard about Ansel's incidents and traveled from Massachusetts to Rhode Island to study him. Using hypnosis, Dr James was able to draw out either Ansel or Mr Brown from the poor man's consciousness, and neither personality had any recollection of what the other had done. It was as if Ansel had a whole other person living a completely separate life right inside his mind. But there's something else. Ansel's story was so interesting that other people started to take notice outside of academic circles. One of those people was an author with an idea for a character suffering from amnesia, a character who, upon waking on board a fishing boat with no memory of what happened to him, would end up traveling the world to learn who he really was. Oh and if I told you that Ansel's last name was Born, you might be able to guess the name of the writer. But if your memory has failed you, you're not alone. The writer was none other than Robert Ludlam, author of The Born Identity. William Buckland wanted to do it all. One look at his life and it's clear that he had a dream to be the most interesting person in the world. Born in England in four William found a home and education, but he wasn't content with merely being a teacher. He also named the non avian dinosaur Megalosaurus, and then in eighteen twenty three, while exploring a cave in South Wales, he came across a skeleton that he dubbed the Red Lady of poppy Land, known today as the oldest modern human found in the United Kingdom. William was also unique in his teaching style, as he was prone to shouting questions at his students while shoving a hyenas skull in front of them to throw them off. Obviously, William had a knack for standing out, but he felt there was more for him out there, another way to be the first to rise above his peers in a meaningful and lasting way, So he turned to one of his greatest passions food. It's probably safe to say that William was the only man around known for eating mice on toast. He often threw parties where he served panther and dolphin, among other unconventional meats to his guests, and his friends didn't seem to mind. In fact, they supported him in his ultimate goal to eat one of every animal on earth. He sampled cea slugs, crunched on kangaroo, and munched on mole, the last of which he claimed was one of the worst things that he had ever tasted. Well, that and the blue bottle fly. No animal was off limits, though, including hedgehog, ostrich and even crocodile. But William didn't just eat animals. He kept many of them as pets too. Sure. There were guinea pigs and frogs and ferrets, the usual fair that you might find in a child's bedroom or kindergarten class, but he also kept hawks, owls, and a pet hyena in his house. It seemed his eccentricities were not limited to the dinner table or the classroom, But eventually William's palette grew tired of even the most exotic creatures he could get his teeth on. On a trip to Italy in the early eighteen hundreds, he was touring a local cathedral and asked about the wet floor. It was slippery, but not from water. The priest told him about the blood spilled by saints that slashed beneath their feet. William, skeptical of the priest story, dropped to the floor and lapped up some of the fluid, only to realize that it hadn't been blood at all. It was bat yurine. However, perhaps the most egregious act William Buckland ever performed came during a visit to see British politician Lord Hardcourt. The Lord was in possession of a locket that held within it a small parcel of brown pummus, a stone by the looks of it. One evening, the Hardcourts held a dinner party for many important guests and put the piece on display for all to admire. And eventually, perhaps while they served assert and brandy, the locket was passed around the table for everyone to admire. Each dinner guest took turns opening it to gaze upon the hardened walnut size remnant of King Louis the fourteen mummified heart. But William, not one to let the attention drift away from himself, didn't merely want to look at the piece of heart, ever, the showman, He announced to the group, I have eaten many strange things, but I have never eaten the heart of a king before, and then popped the little nugget into his mouth. Believe it or not, the eccentric gourmand wasn't immediately ostracized from high society. No one knows how the hard courts handled their prized king's heart being devoured like a common peanut. But William Buckland eventually went on to great success in a claim as a scientist and an educator. Upon his death in eighteen fifty six, he was buried in Westminster Abbey, and his son Francis, continued his father's legacy by also eating as many different animals as possible. He also tried becoming a full fledged scientist just like his father, but decided a life spent traveling the world and writing about the animals he ate was much more fulfilling. William had been an academic, a man of letters who enjoyed teaching and discussing his field of study with his peers. His son, though it turns out he just didn't have the stomach for it. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership with How Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show. And you can learn all about it over at the world of lore dot com, and until next time, stay curious.