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Sea Dragin’ · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

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  Speaker 1: Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history
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  Speaker 1: is an open book, all of these amazing tales right
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  Speaker 1: there on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome
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  Speaker 1: to the Cabinet of Curiosities. Siblings don't always get along.
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  Speaker 1: The younger brother or sister usually wants to tag along
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  Speaker 1: and be part of what the older one is doing,
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  Speaker 1: and the older one doesn't want to be stuck babysitting.
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  Speaker 1: The younger sibling went out with friends, but Chang and
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  Speaker 1: Ang Bunker didn't have that problem. They were stuck with
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  Speaker 1: each other literally. Born in Siam in eighteen eleven, Chang
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  Speaker 1: and Eng were raised in a small village by their
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  Speaker 1: widowed mother. Despite being joined at the stern um, they
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  Speaker 1: played and went about their lives like average children. Then
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  Speaker 1: in eight four a British merchant named Robert Hunt came
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  Speaker 1: to the village. He spotted Chang and Ang swimming in
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  Speaker 1: the Menhum River, originally mistaking them for some kind of,
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  Speaker 1: in his words, strange animal. He'd never seen two people
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  Speaker 1: physically connected to one another in such a way. He
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  Speaker 1: guessed many others hadn't either, and they'd probably pay money
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  Speaker 1: to do so. It took years of convincing, but in
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  Speaker 1: eighteen twenty nine, Hunter and his friend Able Coffin were
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  Speaker 1: eventually able to put them on a boat bound for
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  Speaker 1: the US. Rumors had circulated that their mother had sold
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  Speaker 1: the twins into slavery. However, they had actually entered into
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  Speaker 1: a five year contract with Hunter and Coffin as entertainers.
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  Speaker 1: They traveled to Boston for their unveiling to the world
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  Speaker 1: before setting off for England and Ireland, then finally a
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  Speaker 1: return to the US. As they toured, Chang and Ang
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  Speaker 1: learned English and the American ways of life. Their shows
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  Speaker 1: were a combination of racial stereotypes and sideshow tricks, unfortunate
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  Speaker 1: products of the time, but the young men did carve
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  Speaker 1: out a comfortable living for themselves. Most places were quite
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  Speaker 1: welcoming too. However, not everyone was happy to see the
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  Speaker 1: twins perform. During one stay in Massachusetts in eighteen thirty one,
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  Speaker 1: they were out hunting when they encountered a group of men.
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  Speaker 1: Chang and Ang felt that they were being bullied by
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  Speaker 1: these men, and one of the twins struck an attacker
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  Speaker 1: and anger. They were arrested for public disturbance and had
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  Speaker 1: to pay a bond for good behavior in order to leave.
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  Speaker 1: On a later trip to Alabama, the twins were in
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  Speaker 1: the middle of a performance when a surgeon in the
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  Speaker 1: audience demanded to see the skin that connected them. He
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  Speaker 1: was refused, and he accused Chang and Ang a fraud.
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  Speaker 1: His outburst insided a small riot in the theater. Again,
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  Speaker 1: they were arrested for disturbing the piece, but pay a
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  Speaker 1: fine and quickly escaped. Their relationship with Able Coffin soured
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  Speaker 1: over the years, though, as his wife did more and
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  Speaker 1: more of the negotiating on his behalf. When the twins
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  Speaker 1: would ask for things like a few extra dollars, she
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  Speaker 1: would deny them. In late eighteen thirty one, Mr Coffin
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  Speaker 1: took a trip to Asia that was land to last
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  Speaker 1: into the year. During that time, the twins had grown
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  Speaker 1: tired of his wife's greed and control, and they rebelled.
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  Speaker 1: They traveled to New York, where they experienced true freedom.
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  Speaker 1: They drank alcohol and gambled. Coffin eventually returned to the
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  Speaker 1: States and confronted them about their behavior. After a lengthy discussion, however,
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  Speaker 1: he had no choice but to leave them on their own,
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  Speaker 1: thus ending their contract. After that, the twins made some
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  Speaker 1: changes to their show. Rather than the stereotypical dress they
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  Speaker 1: wore on stage, they started wearing more traditional American clothing,
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  Speaker 1: such as suits and tuxedos. They also changed their stage name.
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  Speaker 1: Coffin had advertised them as boys, but Chang and Ang
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  Speaker 1: now refer to themselves as men, more specifically as the
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  Speaker 1: Siamese Twins. They continued to tour the United States in
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  Speaker 1: Europe for several years before eventually settling down in North Carolina.
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  Speaker 1: They eventually married a pair of sisters, Sarah and Adelaide Yates,
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  Speaker 1: and started having children. Sadly, the lure of the American
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  Speaker 1: dream had captivated Chang and Eng in the worst way.
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  Speaker 1: In order to maintain the hundreds of acres of land
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  Speaker 1: they now owned, they also began purchasing slaves. Rumors circulated
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  Speaker 1: that the twins were particularly brutal owners, despite their protest
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  Speaker 1: to the contrary. In eighteen fifty three, to support their
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  Speaker 1: growing brood, the twins came out of retirement for another
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  Speaker 1: world tour. Seven years later, they signed a contract with P. T.
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  Speaker 1: Barnum to put on a show in his American Museum
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  Speaker 1: in New York City. The years passed by, and the
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  Speaker 1: twins continued to travel around the United States, but something
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  Speaker 1: was brewing. The Civil War was on the horizon, and
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  Speaker 1: it would change their lives forever. Though they'd stopped touring
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  Speaker 1: during the war, their conditions served as fodder for political cartoons.
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  Speaker 1: They were often portrayed as rival factions within the Democrat Party,
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  Speaker 1: conjoined in the middle, but separated by their beliefs. The
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  Speaker 1: twins themselves also became the news. Papers made up stories
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  Speaker 1: where one twin favored secession while the others supported preserving
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  Speaker 1: the Union. None of it had been true, but the
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  Speaker 1: public believed every word. It was true that the years
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  Speaker 1: had driven them apart metaphorically speaking, of course. By the
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  Speaker 1: end of the war, they had legally separated their land
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  Speaker 1: their slaves and had drawn up two separate wills, and
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  Speaker 1: the end of the war also brought them financial ruin.
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  Speaker 1: They were forced to resume touring in order to make
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  Speaker 1: ends meet, but audiences in the North saw them as
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  Speaker 1: slave owning Confederate sympathizers. The papers ridiculed them. They took
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  Speaker 1: their show back to Europe, where they were met with
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  Speaker 1: some success. However, Chang suffered a stroke while they were
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  Speaker 1: traveling and became paralyzed on his right side. The side
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  Speaker 1: closest to his brother. The incident ended their tour for good.
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  Speaker 1: The men retired, growing their family and tending to their land.
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  Speaker 1: Between them, Chang and Ang Bunker had become fathers to
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  Speaker 1: twenty one children. In the early morning hours of January
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  Speaker 1: seventeenth of eighteen seventy four, one of Ang's sons entered
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  Speaker 1: his father's bedroom. He discovered that his uncle Chang had
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  Speaker 1: passed away in his sleep. Ang, upon waking up and
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  Speaker 1: seeing what had happened, exclaimed that he would be following
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  Speaker 1: soon enough, and he did. Two hours later. Ang was gone,
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  Speaker 1: and we're pretty sure we know why. As they were
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  Speaker 1: growing up, doctors told them that surgery would mean almost
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  Speaker 1: certain death for both of them. They were not only
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  Speaker 1: joined by flesh and cartilage, but they also shared a liver.
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  Speaker 1: Because of that, the prevailing theory about Ang's death was
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  Speaker 1: that he had suffered from loss of blood as a
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  Speaker 1: result of his brother's circulatory system shutting down, but the
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  Speaker 1: twins legacy lives on. In fact, they had claimed quite
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  Speaker 1: a few honors before they died. They held the record
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  Speaker 1: as the longest living conjoined twins, a record that lasted
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  Speaker 1: all the way up to two thousand twelve, and they
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  Speaker 1: introduced the term Siamese twins into the American lexicon. Chang
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  Speaker 1: and Eng are still entertaining audiences to this day. After
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  Speaker 1: their death, their torsos were cast in plaster and a
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  Speaker 1: mold was made. It's on display alongside their conjoined liver
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  Speaker 1: at the Mooder Museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Even in death,
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  Speaker 1: the two brothers remain inseparable. Here be dragons a phrase
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  Speaker 1: once thought to have been inscribed on ancient European maps
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  Speaker 1: back when unexplored territories may as well have been filled
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  Speaker 1: with any number of mythological beasts. Over time, the phrase
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  Speaker 1: took on different meanings. It's wording even changed. It's sometimes
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  Speaker 1: misquoted as here be monsters. Yet as far as we know,
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  Speaker 1: there are no monsters, at least not like the ones
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  Speaker 1: we tend to imagine in uncharted worlds. Perhaps no world
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  Speaker 1: is more uncharted than that of the ocean. Despite making
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  Speaker 1: up seventy of the earth surface, humanity has only explored
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  Speaker 1: about five percent of it. Beneath its glistening surface is
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  Speaker 1: an untold number of creatures that have never been captured
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  Speaker 1: on camera or by the human eye. To some, that's
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  Speaker 1: proof enough to suggest that there very well maybe a
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  Speaker 1: monster or two down there. It's believed that such a
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  Speaker 1: monster was spotted on December twenty seventh of nineteen twenty four,
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  Speaker 1: and his presence changed the lives of many people. That day,
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  Speaker 1: a pair of killer whales were in the middle of
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  Speaker 1: an intense ocean battle with another creature. Brief glimpses of
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  Speaker 1: black and white were mixed up with something else. According
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  Speaker 1: to eyewitness reports, the creature they were fighting was enormous
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  Speaker 1: and covered in white fur. It had a tail with
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  Speaker 1: a claw like a lobster's at the end of it,
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  Speaker 1: as well as a long trunk. However, the choppy water
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  Speaker 1: and constant movement made getting a good look at it
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  Speaker 1: almost impossible. Their battle raged on for three hours, with
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  Speaker 1: the ocean turning red as the whales took chunk after
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  Speaker 1: chunk out of the beast. Two whales had proven to
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  Speaker 1: be too formidable for the beast, and eventually it washed ashore,
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  Speaker 1: dead and defeated. Onlookers approached it cautiously, unsure as to
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  Speaker 1: whether it was really dead or not. They'd never seen
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  Speaker 1: anything like it before. Upon closer inspection, they estimated its
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  Speaker 1: size to be forty seven feet long by ten feet wide.
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  Speaker 1: It's fur was thicker and longer than anything else on land,
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  Speaker 1: and its trunk measured about five feet in length, with
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  Speaker 1: a pig snout at the end. Oddly, there was no
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  Speaker 1: sign of blood anywhere on the sand or near the creature.
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  Speaker 1: It's carcass remained on the beach for over a week
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  Speaker 1: before the water reclaimed it. No one had bothered to
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  Speaker 1: take a photo. No zoologists or marine biologists were summoned
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  Speaker 1: to examine its remains, and that should have been the
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  Speaker 1: end of the story, but word of the creature spread
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  Speaker 1: to the Daily Mail newspaper. Their article found its way
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  Speaker 1: to other papers who were more liberal in their reporting.
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  Speaker 1: Rather than use the eyewitness accounts to inform their story,
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  Speaker 1: one paper out of Pennsylvania reported the opposite, that the
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  Speaker 1: furry monster with the long trunk had slain the whales,
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  Speaker 1: but it had been too badly injured to survive, and
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  Speaker 1: so it beached itself to die on the sand. Regardless
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  Speaker 1: of which version is to be believed, the story of
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  Speaker 1: the long trunked animal became the subject of much debate
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  Speaker 1: for years. Experts didn't think it was some unknown creature
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  Speaker 1: from the depths, but a decomposing whale or elephant seal
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  Speaker 1: that had floated into the Orchest territory. What witnesses thought
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  Speaker 1: was a fight was simply a trip to the seafood buffet.
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  Speaker 1: Others believed that the beast was in fact a new species,
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  Speaker 1: but of some large whale or hybrid without photographic proof,
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  Speaker 1: though there was no way to be sure. It was
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  Speaker 1: a cryptozoologist named Karl Shuker who may have cracked the case.
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  Speaker 1: In two thousand ten. That was the year another man,
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  Speaker 1: Marcus Hemmler, reached out to Schooker with information. As it
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  Speaker 1: turned out, someone had been taking photos the day the
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  Speaker 1: creature washed ashore, and Mr Hemmler had discovered the only
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  Speaker 1: known image in existence. It had been posted to a
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  Speaker 1: German website and gone unnoticed until then. Shooker examined the
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  Speaker 1: photo and then scoured the web for more information. In
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  Speaker 1: his research, he found a few more photos, but they
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  Speaker 1: hadn't been dated for December of nineteen four. They've been
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  Speaker 1: taken in July of the following year and depicted a
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  Speaker 1: massive animal carcass on the beach. The photos were real,
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  Speaker 1: but Shugar wasn't convinced they were of the creature. The
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  Speaker 1: witnesses had described to him the dead animal was nothing
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  Speaker 1: more than a globster. That's what whales are called when
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  Speaker 1: they've rotted to the point where they can no longer
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  Speaker 1: be identified as animals, but more like floating blubber sex
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  Speaker 1: so globsters. Despite Shuger's insistence that the strange animal had
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  Speaker 1: really been a deceased whale, skeptics weren't so quick to
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  Speaker 1: accept his conclusion. No physical tissue was recovered from the corpse,
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  Speaker 1: and the photos were taken from a distance, making the
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  Speaker 1: subjects composition difficult to discern. Still, Shoogar's research into what
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  Speaker 1: washed up on the South African shore did result in
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  Speaker 1: one thing everyone could agree on. It's name. He coined
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  Speaker 1: it in his nineteen six book The Unexplained, and it
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  Speaker 1: ended up sticking for good. He called it trunco. I
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities.
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  Speaker 1: Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about
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  Speaker 1: the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show
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  Speaker 1: was created by me Aaron Manky in partnership with How
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  Speaker 1: Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore,
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  Speaker 1: which is a podcast, book series, and television show, and
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  Speaker 1: you can learn all about it over at the world
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  Speaker 1: of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious, Yeah,