A Lady of Stature

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Born to normal parents in 1846, Anna Haining Swan had reached nearly her mother’s height by age 6. She topped out at 7 feet 5 inches, 350 pounds, shortly after signing up with P.T. Barnum, who paid her handsomely.

Like other “freaks,” Anna was cultured and educated. She studied literature, music and acting, even playing Lady Macbeth. Still, her size presented problems. She was nearly trapped by a fire at Barnum’s museum in 1865 because she couldn’t fit through a third-floor window. Eventually she was lowered by block and tackle, with 18 men holding the end of the rope.

Anna was fortunate in love, though. She met Martin Van Buren Bates when the two were paired for a tour, and they were married in 1871, towering over the priest, who was 6 foot 3. They retired to a custom house with 8-foot doors, where she bore two children, one of which weighed 22 pounds at birth (neither survived). She was buried in an oversize coffin in 1888.

At her full height, Anna was nearly five times as tall as Caroline Crachami (1815-1824), the smallest person in recorded history. Born with primordial dwarfism, Caroline was only 19.5 inches tall. Her skeleton is on display at Scotland’s Hunterian Museum, and her story is recorded in Gaby Wood’s wonderfully titled Smallest of All Persons Mentioned in the Records of Littleness.

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Coral Castle

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Image: Wikimedia Commons

When Edward Leedskalnin’s fiancée left him at the altar, the Latvian eccentric moved to Florida and started building a castle to win her back. A very, very heavy castle: The structure is made of megalithic stones, mostly coral, each of which weighs several tons.

How he did it is something of a mystery, as the 100-pound artist worked only alone and at night. Some teenagers who glimpsed the construction said that he moved the blocks like hydrogen balloons. Leedskalnin gave no details but spoke of a “perpetual motion holder” and said he knew the secret of the Egyptian pyramids.

Anyway, did it work? Sadly, no. Leedskalnin spent 28 years building his castle, but when his erstwhile fiancée heard about it, she said, “I didn’t want to marry Edward when I was 16, and I don’t want to marry him now.” He died a few years later.

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“Wonders of Minute Workmanship”

In the twentieth year of Queen Elizabeth, a blacksmith named Mark Scaliot, made a lock consisting of eleven pieces of iron, steel and brass, all which, together with a key to it, weighed but one grain of gold. He also made a chain of gold, consisting of forty-three links, and, having fastened this to the before-mentioned lock and key, he put the chain about the neck of a flea, which drew them all with ease. All these together, lock and key, chain and flea, weighed only one grain and a half.

Oswaldus Norhingerus, who was more famous even than Scaliot for his minute contrivances, is said to have made 1,600 dishes of turned ivory, all perfect and complete in every part, yet so small, thin and slender, that all of them were included at once in a cup turned out of a pepper-corn of the common size. Johannes Shad, of Mitelbrach, carried this wonderful work with him to Rome, and showed it to Pope Paul V., who saw and counted them all by the help of a pair of spectacles. They were so little as to be almost invisible to the eye.

Johannes Ferrarius, a Jesuit, had in his posession cannons of wood, with their carriages, wheels, and all other military furniture, all of which were also contained in a pepper-corn of the ordinary size.

An artist, named Claudius Callus, made for Hippolytus d’Este, Cardinal of Ferrara, representations of sundry birds setting on the tops of trees, which, by hydraulic art and secret conveyance of water through the trunks and branches of the trees, were made to sing and clap their wings; but, at the sudden appearance of an owl out of a bush of the same artifice, they immediately became all mute and silent.

— Burroughs’ Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889

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Fainting Goats

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In the early 1800s, a reclusive farm worker sold four goats to Dr. H.H. Mayberry of Marshall County, Tenn. Mayberry discovered that the goats had an odd quality: When startled they would stiffen for about 10 seconds, often falling over.

Mayberry bred them, and today it’s understood they have a hereditary genetic disorder called myotonia congenita. There’s even an International Fainting Goat Association.

The original breeder disappeared, rumored to have returned to Nova Scotia. No one knows his name.

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A Premature Burial

In the 1850s, a girl contracted diphtheria while visiting Edisto Island, S.C. Amid fears of an outbreak, she was pronounced dead and hastily interred in a local mausoleum:

Some days afterwards, when the grave in which she had been placed was opened for the reception of another body, it was found that the clothes which covered the unfortunate woman were torn to pieces, and that she had even broken her limbs in attempting to extricate herself from the living tomb. The Court, after hearing the case, sentenced the doctor who had signed the certificate of decease, and the Major who had authorized the interment each to three month’s imprisonment for involuntary manslaughter.

(Reported in the British Medical Journal, 1877)

| Death · Oddities

Curse of the Ninth

Anton Bruckner died after writing his ninth symphony. So did Beethoven, Schubert, and Dvořák. In the 19th century, a superstition arose that a quick death awaited anyone who wrote nine symphonies.

Arnold Schoenberg wrote: “It seems that the ninth is a limit. He who wants to go beyond it must pass away. It seems as if something might be imparted to us in the Tenth which we ought not yet to know, for which we are not ready. Those who have written a Ninth stood too close to the hereafter.”

Mahler figured he could escape the curse with a decoy: When he finished his ninth, he retitled it “The Song of the Earth” and wrote a second “ninth” symphony. When nothing happened, he told his wife “the danger is past,” started a new work — and died.

| Art · Death · Oddities

Mary the Elephant

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1916 came to a black end for Sparks World Famous Shows, a circus that was traveling through the American South. In Kingsport, Tenn., an amateur trainer named Red Eldridge was leading a 5-ton Asian elephant to a local pond when she stopped to nibble a watermelon rind. He grew impatient and prodded her behind the ear. She flung him against a drink stand and stepped on his head.

What followed can only be described as a lynching. A crowd began to chant, “Kill the elephant!” A local blacksmith fired two dozen rounds into Mary, with little effect. The local sheriff impounded her, newspapers reported (falsely) that she had killed several workers in the past, and nearby towns threatened to boycott the show. By most accounts Mary had calmed down after killing Eldridge, but that didn’t seem to matter.

So on Sept. 13, owner Charlie Sparks took Mary to a local railroad yard and hanged her from an industrial crane in front of 2,500 people, including most of the town’s children. The chain snapped on the first attempt, causing Mary to fall and break her hip. The second attempt killed her, and she was buried beside the tracks.

“Cruelty, like every other vice, requires no motive outside of itself,” wrote George Eliot. “It only requires opportunity.”

| History · Oddities · Society

A War in the Sky

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At sunrise on April 14, 1561, the citizens of Nuremberg, Germany, witnessed a strange aerial spectacle. According to a contemporary broadsheet, large numbers of red, blue and black “globes” or “plates” appeared near the sun, “some three in a row, now and then four in a square, also some standing alone. And amongst these globes some blood-colored crosses were seen.” Two great tubes also appeared, “in which three, four and more globes were to be seen. They then all began to fight one another.”

After an hour, “they all fell … from the sun and sky down to the earth, as if everything were on fire, then it slowly faded away on the earth, producing a lot of steam.”

Strangely, the same thing happened five years later in Basel, Switzerland. On Aug. 7, 1566, also at sunrise, “many large black globes were seen in the air, moving before the sun with great speed, and turning against each other as if fighting. Some of them became red and fiery and afterwards faded and went out.”

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Turnspit Dogs

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Well, here’s a cheery scene. Laughing children, a bright fire, and … wait a minute, is that a dog on a treadmill?

Once common, turnspit dogs were specially bred to run on wheels and turn meat. Typically they were kept in pairs so they could take turns at the hot and unpleasant work, which largely went unappreciated. In Of English Dogs (1576) they’re described as “long-bodied, crooked-legged and ugly dogs, with a suspicious, unhappy look about them.”

Perhaps fortunately, the breed is extinct now, made obsolete by the mechanized kitchen.

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