Each of today's stories offers us a chance to answer the same question: how much of yourself would you be willing to give up in exchange for an extraordinary life? One of our subjects had no choice, while the other rushed in head-first.
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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. Everyone needs a hero. I think it's fair to say that many of us have been inspired by the amazing lives of other people. Heroes give us a target, a destination that we might try and reach for ourselves. They drive us forward and call us to action. So it's no wonder that Charlie fell in love with the story of Sir John Franklin. He was a British naval officer in the first half of the nineteenth century who had a taste for adventure. This was a time when people were still trying to find an easier way to get from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific fick then sailing all the way around the tip of South America. They called this elusive route the Northwest Passage and assumed that it was somewhere north of Canada through the icy waters of the Arctic. Franklin had the experience to get the job done too. He was a rear admiral had served as governor of Tasmania and over the years had already helped explore the Hudson Bay in North America. He wasn't a slouch, that's for sure, and he was a fighter too. On one expedition that ended in eighteen twenty two, he and his crew got into such dire straits that at one point they were forced to try and eat their own leather shoes. But it was his last journey that he's best known for. His own expedition to find that undiscovered Northwest passage. He was given a large crew, food for three years, and two sturdy ships that you might have heard of, the Terror and the Arabas, named after the Greek god of darkness. If you know your history, then you know that the voyage was a failure. In fact, Franklin and his crew were never heard from again. And that's the story of inspiration that caught Charlie's attention. He read about it in his local Vermont newspaper when it happened in eighteen forty seven, and it stuck with him every day after that. He wanted to be an explorer like Franklin. In fact, he wanted to be the explorer who found Franklin. So he set out aboard a ship in eighteen sixty to do just that. He and the others made it about as far as Baffin Island, up in Frobisher Bay, and then winter caused them to stop and wait. He heard about Franklin from the local Inuit people and got the impression that the legendary explorer and his crew might actually still be alive. So after returning from that first voyage in eighteen sixty two, he immediately began planning a return trip. He was this close to learning the truth and possibly even making his own great contribution to the world of exploration. Arlie could feel it in his bones. His second expedition began in July of eighteen sixty four and lasted five whole years on King William Island. Charlie was able to find the remains of Franklin's expedition, but it was nothing more than artifacts. No one had survived the tragedy of the Terror and the Erebus, and that was a realization that must have crushed Charlie's spirits. He didn't give up, though in some ways he'd succeeded. He gave the world a definitive answer about the Franklin expedition and closure was a good thing, but it also left Charlie believing that he was somehow faded to follow in Franklin's footsteps to leave his own mark on history through brave daring exploration, So he planned yet another trip. With funding from the US Congress and a ship of his own, Charlie headed out in July of eighteen seventy one to try and reach the North Pole. He had a crew of twenty five men with him, including a German physician named Dr Bessels, who was there to serve as his science officer. But even with all of those resources, things were rocky. His sailing master was a drunk who kept sneaking alcohol from the cargo area. Dr Bessels was constantly arguing with him, and the weather wasn't cooperating with their plans. In fact, even though they had gone farther north than any previous expedition, the sea ice was becoming too thick to move forward, so they guided their ship into a nearby bay for arrest. Side note, Charlie was so grateful for that bay that he named it Thank God Harbor, because why not? Right? Anyway, things didn't improve. In fact, as the winter got colder, the ice got thicker, and so their weight got longer. Days became weeks, weeks became months, and patient people became unbearable. At one point, Charlie left the ship on a short solo expedition to look around and see if there might be an their way through the ice. But after reading about all the personal issues on the trap ship, I also think he just needed some space to think. When he returned, he was exhausted and cold. The first thing he apparently did was asked for a cup of hot coffee, which was quickly rounded up for him and delivered to his cabin. A short while later, though, he began to complain about not feeling well. Within days he could barely talk or sit up in bed, and a short while after that he was dead. Later the crew took his body to shore and managed to dig a shallow gray for his coffin. They held a little funeral there in the frigid cold, and then waited for their chance to go home. It's interesting to note that Franklin was killed by the elements, but Charlie Charles Francis Hall, as history will remember him, was killed by something else. At least that's what two historians believed back in nineteen so they traveled north to Greenland Halloween in Charlie's footsteps, to the very shore of Thank God Harbor, where they searched for his frozen grave. And they found it. They found it, and they dug it up. Inside Charlie's corpse was little more than a skeleton with a bit of skin and tissue still attached, his head resting on a pillow as if sleeping. An American flag was draped over his body, but the entire coffin had flooded and was frozen, perfect conditions for preserving a body for certain kinds of testing. The two scholars, doctors Loomis and Paddock, took samples of Charlie's hair and fingernails and then brought them to Toronto for examination. What they discovered was that Charlie hadn't gotten sick and died at all. He'd been murdered. The trouble is on a ship as big as his, with twenty five other tired, trapped, and angry shipmates. Anyone could have been the suspect. Charles Francis Hall left Vermont to solve the history of what really happened to Franklin's expedition, and he managed to do that, but in the process he left us with a mystery of his own. We may never know for sure who killed Charlie, but maybe that's okay. Maybe this new mystery will inspire someone else to do great things as well. Everyone needs a hero, after all, even a dead one. There's so much advice out there that involves our heads. Keep a level head, don't lose your head, do your best to get a head in life. It's all in your head. You get the idea, I'm sure, But this focus isn't without justification. Think of all the rulers, traders, criminals, and soldiers who have literally lost their heads over the span of history, and well, it's all has become normal. In November of nineteen o four, Michigan business owner Herbert Hughes was getting ready for his hotel's weekly Sunday dinner. Part of that involved slaughtering the chickens that would be part of that night's meal. While it wasn't the most pleasant process, at least it was efficient. With a whack, he would remove the chicken's head and then pass the body to a maid for cleaning and gutting. Everything had been going fine, that is until she started screaming. With a shriek, the maid bolted from the room, leaving Hughes alone to figure out what had frightened her. It was, as you might expect, one of the chickens that had driven her away, but not for the reasons you might have assumed. No it wasn't the blood, and no it wasn't the process of gutting the bird or cleaning the feathers off. It was something a lot less expected. One of the chickens was still walking around the room without its head. I imagine there was a moment of shock for Hughes, but after he recovered, he began to see things in a more positive light. He decided to keep the hen around and even gave her a name, Biddy. He put his new headless chicken in a cage, gave her space to walk around that even fed her using a syringe to inject food down into her open esophagus. Biddy could do lots of normal chicken like things, such as flap her wings and sit on a perch, and most surprising of all, she showed no signs of pain or disease. Hughes new business opportunity when he saw one. Believing the notion that a living, breathing, headless chicken might bring in more patrons than ever before, he put Biddy on display for his guests, and it worked too. People flocked to his hotel no pun intended, I swear, and enjoyed watching the show. Sadly, though, it would all come to an end. Less than a month after it all began, poor headless Biddy passed away on novemb You might think that Biddy was one of a kind bird, but you'd be wrong. Roughly forty years later, in September of nineteen, a similar thing happened. A Colorado man named Lloyd Olsen tried slaughtering one of his chickens in the same way Herbert Hughes had and was just as surprised when his bird got back up and walked away sants head. Of course, Olson named his walking miracle Mike the Chicken. There didn't seem to be much the bird couldn't do either. He would walk around the yard, flap his wings, even crow like the other birds, except well without a head. It just sort of sounded like a low gurgling noise. But you get the idea. Maybe it was the more modern world that Mike lived in compared to Biddy, or perhaps Olsen had a better sense for publicity. But word about the Headless Chicken traveled far and wide. He even landed on the covers of magazines like Life and Time. Olsen took the bird on the road to traveling with sideshows and giving folks across the country a chance to lay eyes on the bird who lived sadly. In March of ninety, nearly two years after losing his head, Mike got a kernel of corn caught in his throat while out on the road. Olsen had forgotten his cleaning and feeding tools at the show the day before, and so he was helpless to remove the corn. With no way of saving his beloved bird, Olson had no choice but to say goodbye. Even now, seventy years later, Mike's hometown of Fruda, Colorado, remembers the remarkable chicken with a special holiday held in his honor. Mike the Headless Chicken Day celebrates the creatures short yet determined life with a series of events including a five k run, egg tosses, and live music, including of course, the Chicken Dance. It sounds unbelievable, I know, one chicken surviving a beheading is amazing, but two chickens, well, that almost seems too good to be true. Scientists say it has to do with the way a chicken's brain sits inside their head. Unlike our own brains, there's rests at a forty five degree angle near the top of the skull, and basic motor functions are carried out by the brain stem. So if the head is removed in a sloppy manner at just the right angle, the brain stem might actually remain intact, giving the chicken a second chance at life. Some might say chickens represent the best of us. They're carrying social creatures, they share child raising duties, and they fiercely protect their own. But perhaps there's one new lesson that Biddy and Mike can teach us even after all these years. Don't lose your head, but if you do, try to make the best of it. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on 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.