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Bottomless Pit · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Welcomed Aaron Manky'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. Open up your high school yearbook and you
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  Speaker 1: might find a section called senior Superlatives, where certain members
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  Speaker 1: of the outgoing class are giving descriptive titles such as
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  Speaker 1: class clown or most likely to succeed. Charles Dahmer wasn't
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  Speaker 1: given a senior superlative upon graduating, but if he had,
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  Speaker 1: it probably would have been something like most likely to
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  Speaker 1: put in all you can eat buffet out of business.
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  Speaker 1: Born in Poland in seventy eight, Charles grew up in
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  Speaker 1: a house with eight other brothers, and all nine children
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  Speaker 1: seemed to suffer from the same condition. They loved to eat. Actually,
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  Speaker 1: love is the wrong word. Charles and his brothers had
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  Speaker 1: to eat constantly. When he was thirteen, young Charles started
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  Speaker 1: gaining a reputation for his unusual appetite, which involved eating
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  Speaker 1: his parents out of house and home, and that's insatiable
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  Speaker 1: hunger often caused him to make unwise decisions. Thirteen happened
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  Speaker 1: to be the age at which Charles joined the Prussian Army,
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  Speaker 1: which he quickly regretted. There was a food shortage at
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  Speaker 1: the time, and even though he'd been granted extra rations,
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  Speaker 1: the young soldier couldn't handle not being able to gorge
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  Speaker 1: himself at a moment's notice. During one particular battle, Charles
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  Speaker 1: traps to cross enemy lines and surrendered himself to the French.
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  Speaker 1: The opposing commander was taken with the boy's tenacity and
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  Speaker 1: offered him a melon. Charles wolfed it down immediately. Ryand
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  Speaker 1: and all the French general then buttered him up with
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  Speaker 1: even more delicious eats, all of which culminated in Charles
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  Speaker 1: switching sides. He joined the French revolution Army, but even
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  Speaker 1: their offer of double rations wasn't enough for him. While
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  Speaker 1: stationed near Paris for a year, Charles allegedly ate over
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  Speaker 1: seventy cats, and he didn't always kill them first, and
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  Speaker 1: when he couldn't find any real food stray or otherwise,
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  Speaker 1: he filled his belly with four to five pounds of
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  Speaker 1: grass each day. But surprisingly, he wasn't a large person well,
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  Speaker 1: not around the middle. As an adult, he was tall
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  Speaker 1: for the time, measuring six ft three inches in height.
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  Speaker 1: His hair was long and brown, and it framed a
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  Speaker 1: pair of cool gray eyes, all which sat upon an
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  Speaker 1: average sized body. Charles's eating habits only grew more atrocious
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  Speaker 1: as he got older, though he wasn't known to cook
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  Speaker 1: his meat. In fact, he often threw it up if
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  Speaker 1: it was boiled or roasted first, and he didn't care
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  Speaker 1: what kind of meat it was. He ate anything and everything.
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  Speaker 1: While surfing aboard the French ship oh, Charles witnessed one
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  Speaker 1: of his fellow sailors lose a leg to cannon fire.
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  Speaker 1: He then picked up the leg and went to town
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  Speaker 1: on it, ripping the flesh from the bone with his teeth,
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  Speaker 1: chomping away like it was one of those Renaissance fair
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  Speaker 1: turkey legs. Another crewmate saw what was happening and fought
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  Speaker 1: Charles for the limb. He pried it from his hands
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  Speaker 1: and tossed it overboard. When he was taken prisoner by
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  Speaker 1: the British and sev Charles's captors were forced to feed
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  Speaker 1: him more and more rations each day. He was eventually
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  Speaker 1: eating enough for ten men on a daily basis. He
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  Speaker 1: even ate the rats that crawled through his cell. The
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  Speaker 1: head of the prison eventually saw what he was capable
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  Speaker 1: of and placed him in the care of the Royal
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  Speaker 1: Navy's doctors, who conducted experiments on Charles. They wanted to
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  Speaker 1: see how much he could really put away. Everything kicked
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  Speaker 1: off on September see Dr J. Johnston and his colleagues
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  Speaker 1: began by feeding Charles four pounds of rock how utter,
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  Speaker 1: at four o'clock in the morning. Several hours later, he
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  Speaker 1: ate a dozen large tallow candles, five pounds of raw beef,
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  Speaker 1: and then drank an entire bottle of Porter, all within
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  Speaker 1: the span of just one hour. At lunchtime, he swallowed
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  Speaker 1: another pound of tallow candles and five more pounds of beef,
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  Speaker 1: all of which he washed down with three more bottles
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  Speaker 1: of Porter. He ate like someone who had never known
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  Speaker 1: what it was like to be full. Charles finished the
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  Speaker 1: rest of the beer and candles just after six pm
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  Speaker 1: and finally felt satiated. But the doctors weren't just shocked
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  Speaker 1: by the amount of food he had consumed. Not once
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  Speaker 1: did Charles vomits or go to the bathroom during the
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  Speaker 1: entire ordeal. He even danced a bit before heading to
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  Speaker 1: bed that night. So what caused this man to eat
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  Speaker 1: an army's worth of food every day? His condition was
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  Speaker 1: attributed to everything from hyper thyroidism to a damaged amygdala,
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  Speaker 1: but the fact was that nobody knew exactly why one
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  Speaker 1: person could devour everything in his path without any negative
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  Speaker 1: side effect. Charles dum was the kind of guy who
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  Speaker 1: could on ironically say I'm so hungry I could eat
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  Speaker 1: a horse, and then do so right before your eyes.
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  Speaker 1: If social media has taught us anything it's that people
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  Speaker 1: will perform increasingly dangerous and stupid stunts as long as
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  Speaker 1: others are watching. Jumping off the roof into a pool,
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  Speaker 1: swallowing laundry detergent capsules, and dangling off high rise buildings
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  Speaker 1: are just some of the idiotic things people have done
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  Speaker 1: for nothing more than a little Internet cleft. But before
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  Speaker 1: people were risking their lives for strangers online, they were
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  Speaker 1: doing it for strangers in real life, and one particular
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  Speaker 1: activity seemed to capture the world by storm during the
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  Speaker 1: nineteenth and early twenty century, walking backward Among the earliest
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  Speaker 1: attempts at long distance backward walking was in a stunt
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  Speaker 1: performed by Englishman Darby Stevens in eighteen seventeen he made
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  Speaker 1: a bet for fifty guineas that in twenty days he
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  Speaker 1: would walk five hundred miles apologies if the song is
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  Speaker 1: now stuck in your head. He was aided by a
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  Speaker 1: six hundred foot long rope that he held onto whenever necessary,
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  Speaker 1: but no one today knows whether he actually completed the trip.
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  Speaker 1: Daniel Crisp decided to try his luck the following day.
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  Speaker 1: He showed up at the same spot, but didn't use
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  Speaker 1: the rope. He managed to leisurely stroll two hundred and
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  Speaker 1: eighty miles backward in just a week. The press was
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  Speaker 1: less than enthused by the effort, with one paper writing
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  Speaker 1: that walking backward and I quote is encouraged for the
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  Speaker 1: very worst purposes, and the public disgust will be still
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  Speaker 1: more excited when we state that it was meant to
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  Speaker 1: continue these vicious scenes throughout the whole of the summer.
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  Speaker 1: Several years later, another gentleman named John Townsend pulled off
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  Speaker 1: a number of backward walking feats. Townsend, who hailed from England,
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  Speaker 1: started with a distance of twenty one miles in just
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  Speaker 1: six hours and forty five minutes. He followed it up
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  Speaker 1: with a second walk measuring thirty eight miles, which he
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  Speaker 1: completed in twelve hours. In eighteen twenty three towns in
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  Speaker 1: traversed seventy three miles in just twenty four hours across Bristol,
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  Speaker 1: followed by a record breaking seventy four miles a few
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  Speaker 1: months later. During one busy period that year, he also
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  Speaker 1: managed to walk backwards sixty four miles every day for
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  Speaker 1: nearly two weeks and frequent listeners to this podcast may
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  Speaker 1: remember Plenty Wingo, who walked around the world between April
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  Speaker 1: of nineteen thirty one and October of nineteen thirty two.
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  Speaker 1: He became a minor celebrity, publishing a book about his
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  Speaker 1: travels and earning himself a spot on Johnny Carson's Tonight
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  Speaker 1: Show in the nineteen seventies. But before Plenty there was
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  Speaker 1: Patrick Harmon. He was born in Ohio in eighteen sixty
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  Speaker 1: five and got into backward walking around nineteen fifteen after
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  Speaker 1: moving to Seattle, Washington with a friend. They had been
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  Speaker 1: through a lot, and we're planning to start their lives over.
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  Speaker 1: Harmon settled into his new life in Washington by exploring
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  Speaker 1: the woods and mountains around his home. Backward it became
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  Speaker 1: a regular hobby for him to walk the various local
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  Speaker 1: trains in reverse. However, in August of that year, he
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  Speaker 1: was nearly fifty years old, and Harmon kicked off the
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  Speaker 1: walk of his life. And of course, it all happened
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  Speaker 1: because of a bet, a big one too. His goal
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  Speaker 1: was to walk backward from San Francisco across the country
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  Speaker 1: to New York City. If he made it in two
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  Speaker 1: hundred and sixty days, he would win a whopping twenty
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  Speaker 1: thousand dollars. Harmon ventured out with his friend William Beltazor,
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  Speaker 1: who walked ahead of him facing forward. Beltazor made sure
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  Speaker 1: that there was nothing in his buddy's path that might
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  Speaker 1: trip him up or cause him injury. Four days into
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  Speaker 1: his journey, Harmon reached California, the official starting point for
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  Speaker 1: his trip. Fifty three days later, he arrived in Salt
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  Speaker 1: Lake City, Utah, covering an average of twenty two miles
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  Speaker 1: per day. Harmon was in fine shape by this point
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  Speaker 1: and attributed his success to the muscles that he had
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  Speaker 1: built up in his ankles. By December, he reached Nebraska,
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  Speaker 1: then Iowa, where he suffered frostbite on his nose and
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  Speaker 1: one of his ears and yet still he kept ongoing,
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  Speaker 1: and for better or worse, his performance inspired others to
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  Speaker 1: follow in his footsteps, so to speak, including two boys
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  Speaker 1: in Iowa. One of those boys, a young man named
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  Speaker 1: Sam Quitno, bet a hundred dollars that he could walk
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  Speaker 1: a mile and fifteen minutes backward. He even put up
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  Speaker 1: the money to show how serious he was. Others got
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  Speaker 1: in on the wager, and after a little bit, Sam
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  Speaker 1: jetted off. Spectators followed him in cars and trucks to
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  Speaker 1: keep track of his movements. He won with the final
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  Speaker 1: time of fourteen minutes at thirty seven seconds. Meanwhile, Harmon
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  Speaker 1: headed off to Chicago, where a movie company made a
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  Speaker 1: film about his arrival in February of nineteen sixteen, and finally,
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  Speaker 1: on May, three months later, Harmon had completed his trip
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  Speaker 1: to New York City. One paper described how he triumphantly
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  Speaker 1: climbed the steps of city Hall, all backward, of course,
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  Speaker 1: and met with the mayor to honor his victory. And
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  Speaker 1: although he told everyone that he had made it in
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  Speaker 1: only two hundred and thirty nine days, the whole twenty
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  Speaker 1: one days under the deadline, he had actually finished his
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  Speaker 1: cross country trek in two hundred and ninety one days,
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  Speaker 1: Harmon eventually returned to Seattle, where he went back to
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  Speaker 1: his old job as a railroad worker. The twenty dollars
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  Speaker 1: that he'd been promised never materialized, and it was believed
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  Speaker 1: that the wager hadn't ever truly existed. Patrick Harman, whose
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  Speaker 1: real name was revealed to be Patrick O'Rourke, seemingly didn't
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  Speaker 1: do it for the money. He simply did it because
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  Speaker 1: he could. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of
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  Speaker 1: the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts,
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  Speaker 1: or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast
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  Speaker 1: dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Manky
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  Speaker 1: in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award
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  Speaker 1: winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series,
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  Speaker 1: and television show, and you can learn all about it
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  Speaker 1: over at the World of Lore dot com. And until
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  Speaker 1: next time, stay curious. Yeah,