Latest / Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities / Fall From Grace

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Fall From Grace · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Welcomed Aaron Menkey's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of I
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  Speaker 1: Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world is full
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  Speaker 1: of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book,
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  Speaker 1: all of these amazing tales are right there on display,
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  Speaker 1: just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet
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  Speaker 1: of Curiosities. The story of man's ascent towards the heavens
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  Speaker 1: has been told for ages. The ancient Greeks wrote of Icarus,
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  Speaker 1: who flew on wings his father made out of wax.
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  Speaker 1: Icarus had been warned not to fly too close to
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  Speaker 1: the sun, but did so anyway, and fell into the
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  Speaker 1: sea and drowned when his feathers melted. Master artist Leonardo
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  Speaker 1: da Vinci sketched numerous flying machines of his own design,
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  Speaker 1: perhaps hoping one day he might learn to soar like
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  Speaker 1: the birds. And of course the Wright brothers, Orville and Wilbur,
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  Speaker 1: who flew their revolutionary airplane at Kitty Hawk in h three.
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  Speaker 1: History declares their efforts as the first recorded powered flight,
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  Speaker 1: but one man in might consider them a little late
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  Speaker 1: to the party. It happened on April seventeenth near Aurora,
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  Speaker 1: a small town in northeastern Texas. The incident was first
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  Speaker 1: reported by S. E. Hayden in the Dallas newspaper. The
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  Speaker 1: article described what had befallen Judge Proctor's farm early that morning.
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  Speaker 1: Something fell out of the sky and crashed into the
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  Speaker 1: Judge's windmill, skittting along the dirt and past his house,
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  Speaker 1: taking out his precious flower bed in the process. People
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  Speaker 1: from all over Aurora came to gawk at the strange
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  Speaker 1: craft that had plummeted to earth. What struck them as
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  Speaker 1: even more interesting was the person who had been flying
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  Speaker 1: at well, what remained of him. The body had been
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  Speaker 1: badly burned upon impact, but even in such a horrible state,
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  Speaker 1: it was clear that the pilot was not human. It
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  Speaker 1: was something else. Proctor believed his farm had fallen victim
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  Speaker 1: to an invading Martian. The vehicle had been heavy and
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  Speaker 1: made of a silver metallic substance that hadn't been seen before.
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  Speaker 1: Inside the cockpit, Proctor and the others discovered objects with
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  Speaker 1: bizarre figures drawn on them, like a language from another
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  Speaker 1: time or another world. All of this had occurred before
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  Speaker 1: the start of things like the Cold War or World
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  Speaker 1: War Two. Government agents didn't storm the town and abscond
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  Speaker 1: with the wreckage or the body for the sake of
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  Speaker 1: national security. Left with no other options, the people of
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  Speaker 1: Aurora did the only thing they could think of, with
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  Speaker 1: the help of a traveling preacher, they gave the pilot
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  Speaker 1: a Christian burial. A makeshift tombstone was erected out of
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  Speaker 1: a square, misshapen rock. And as for the wreckage, that
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  Speaker 1: was hauled away and dumped into the well beneath Judge
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  Speaker 1: Proctor's now destroyed windmill, and there it stayed for about
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  Speaker 1: thirty five years until the farm was bought by a
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  Speaker 1: new owner, a man named Brawley Oates. Oates decided the
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  Speaker 1: well would make a good water source for both himself
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  Speaker 1: and the rest of the farm, so he cleaned it
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  Speaker 1: out and brought it back to its former glory. He
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  Speaker 1: drank the water from the well for the next ten
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  Speaker 1: years and used it around the property. In that time,
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  Speaker 1: Oates developed some odd side effects, namely crippling arthritis, but
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  Speaker 1: his hands didn't just ache or lose their strength. His
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  Speaker 1: fingers became gnarled like the branches of an old tree.
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  Speaker 1: He blamed his condition on the wreckage that had been
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  Speaker 1: living in the well for the last several decades, blaming
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  Speaker 1: it had contaminated the water supply. To avoid further use,
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  Speaker 1: he had the well covered with the concrete slab. Then
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  Speaker 1: he built a shed on top of that. It remained
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  Speaker 1: dormant for years. Then, in the nineteen eighties, a story
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  Speaker 1: about the town and its other worldly visitor made it
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  Speaker 1: into Time magazine. Ed a pegu who had been a
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  Speaker 1: child at the time of the incident made a shocking
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  Speaker 1: admission se Hayden had made the whole story up. According
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  Speaker 1: to this resident, the piece had been a pr stunt,
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  Speaker 1: a way to bring in tourists since the railroad companies
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  Speaker 1: had decided not to build tracks through their town. Subsequent
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  Speaker 1: investigations by magazines, newspapers, and television shows uncovered other truths
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  Speaker 1: regarding the tale. Judge Procer never had a windmill on
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  Speaker 1: his farm, and the well wasn't built until ninety The
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  Speaker 1: logical next place to get information would have been the cemetery,
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  Speaker 1: but that proved a dead end as well. No pun intended,
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  Speaker 1: I promise the pilot's grave had been robbed sometime in
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  Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies, although the locals often walked by the headstone,
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  Speaker 1: speculating about whether an alien had really been buried beneath
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  Speaker 1: their feet. Clearly, someone decided to see for themselves and
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  Speaker 1: dug up the grave and took whatever had been inside,
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  Speaker 1: including three big pieces of metal that had been placed
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  Speaker 1: with the body. Today the story remains a mystery. The
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  Speaker 1: only artifacts left behind are the news articles of the time.
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  Speaker 1: As for what really happened, well, it all comes to speculation,
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  Speaker 1: and there the skies the limit. The human body is
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  Speaker 1: capable of incredible feats. In two thousand, nineteen, nineteen year
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  Speaker 1: old girl saved her father when the truck he was
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  Speaker 1: working under slipped and pinned him to the ground. Gasolene
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  Speaker 1: spilled and caught fire, threatening the man's life and his home.
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  Speaker 1: His daughter, encountering the scene in her own garage, ran
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  Speaker 1: to his side and lifted the truck off him, then
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  Speaker 1: drove it down the street away from the house. Daniel
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  Speaker 1: Kish lost his eyes to cancer by the time he
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  Speaker 1: was thirteen months old, but today he navigates the world
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  Speaker 1: in a way not often seen outside the animal kingdom.
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  Speaker 1: With a click of his tongue, he can orient himself
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  Speaker 1: in any direction using echo location. Like a bat, he
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  Speaker 1: can determine how far away something is and what's in
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  Speaker 1: front of him by measuring the time it takes for
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  Speaker 1: the sound of his clicks to bounce back to his ears.
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  Speaker 1: Many people throughout history have tested their limits too, but
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  Speaker 1: few of them like Mirror and Dajo. Danjo was born
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  Speaker 1: Arnold Henski's in the Netherlands, and he didn't start out
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  Speaker 1: by dazzling spectators with miraculous feats. He was a normal guy,
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  Speaker 1: one who worked in an office as a designer for
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  Speaker 1: over ten years. But something happened in his early thirties.
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  Speaker 1: Hensk Has discovered that he was special, more than special, invincible.
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  Speaker 1: He quit his job and moved to Amsterdam, a big
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  Speaker 1: city for a man with big dreams of stardom. However,
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  Speaker 1: instead of singing or dancing on stage, Hensks displayed a
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  Speaker 1: different kind of talent. He would swallow swords and other
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  Speaker 1: sharp objects, not unlike a side show performer in a
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  Speaker 1: traveling circus. Then Henskes took his act even further, calling
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  Speaker 1: himself Mirror and Dajo, inspired by the Esperanto word meaning wonder,
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  Speaker 1: and presented the audience with a series of long, sharp skewers.
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  Speaker 1: He would then invite individuals to take them and plunged
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  Speaker 1: them through his skin, one by one the daggers would
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  Speaker 1: enter his back, travel through his abdomen, and come out
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  Speaker 1: the other side with no visible effect. Spectators thought it
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  Speaker 1: was an illusion. Of course, as he gained popularity and notoriety,
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  Speaker 1: he was required to undergo examinations by a series of
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  Speaker 1: doctors who checked both his physical and mental states. Dajo
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  Speaker 1: believed he was being used by a god to show
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  Speaker 1: the world a better path, a path that didn't revolve
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  Speaker 1: around materialistic desires. His ability to withstand being punctured by
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  Speaker 1: sharp objects was thanks to his devotion. The doctors performed
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  Speaker 1: many tests on him. They took X rays of his
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  Speaker 1: midsection while he had fencing foils pushed through him from
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  Speaker 1: back to front. It was no trick. The foils clearly
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  Speaker 1: penetrated the skin, muscle, and several organs on their way
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  Speaker 1: to the other side, all without affecting the performer in
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  Speaker 1: the slightest. Magicians who studied his methods assumed that he
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  Speaker 1: had learned a way to mentor at least subdue the
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  Speaker 1: pain he was feeling. Dajo even admitted he had traveled
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  Speaker 1: to India. He had learned from mystics called fok ears,
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  Speaker 1: who were experienced in the ways of testing the limits
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  Speaker 1: of their flesh. However, none did what Dajo was able
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  Speaker 1: to do. Doctors were stumped. One man had inexplicably survived
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  Speaker 1: numerous piercings and stabbings for years, the kinds that would
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  Speaker 1: have killed other men. Without a definitive explanation, some experts
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  Speaker 1: believed Ajo had learned more from the fox ears than
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  Speaker 1: he'd let on. It was known that one way performers
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  Speaker 1: like him would endure repeated punctures was through the use
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  Speaker 1: of scar tissue that would form around a post, similar
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  Speaker 1: to how an ear piercing might heal. As long as
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  Speaker 1: there was something inserted into the hole, it would remain open,
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  Speaker 1: and so they believed it was possible that Dajo had
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  Speaker 1: built numerous holes in his midsection with tiny objects left
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  Speaker 1: inside to keep them open. When it came time to perform,
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  Speaker 1: he'd remove them and fill the tunnels with a long
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  Speaker 1: needle or dagger, and when he was done, put the
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  Speaker 1: tiny plugs back in once again. Of course, this was
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  Speaker 1: just speculation. No one knew how he did what he
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  Speaker 1: did for sure, but one thing was certain. He didn't
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  Speaker 1: perform such harrowing acts for long. In the spring of night,
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  Speaker 1: when Dago was only thirty five, he swallowed a steel needle.
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  Speaker 1: He wasn't performing, though he claimed a voice had told
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  Speaker 1: him to do it. Two days later, a surgeon removed
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  Speaker 1: the needle from his stomach. Danjo was told to take
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  Speaker 1: it easy. Recovery would not happen overnights, but he wouldn't listen.
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  Speaker 1: He went home and entered a meditative state for several days.
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  Speaker 1: He was later found by his assistant dead from a
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  Speaker 1: rupture caused by the needle he had swallowed. Mirror and
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  Speaker 1: Dago believed that he could do the impossible, and for
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  Speaker 1: a while he proved he could, But he wasn't as
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  Speaker 1: invincible as he thought. Reality, it seems, was a little
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  Speaker 1: too hard for him to swallow. I hope you've enjoyed
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  Speaker 1: today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: by me Aaron Mankey in partnership with how Stuff Works.
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: I make another award winning show called Lore, which is
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can
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  Speaker 1: learn all about it over at the World of Lore
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  Speaker 1: dot com. And until next time, stay curious, Yeah,