Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of
Speaker 1: the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all
Speaker 1: of these amazing tales right there on display, just waiting
Speaker 1: for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'll admit it. I'm a sucker for those videos about
Speaker 1: animals forming unlikely friendships. I recently saw one where a
Speaker 1: German shepherd raised a bunch of tiny, fluffy ducklings, and
Speaker 1: the sheer amount of adorableness in that sixty second clip
Speaker 1: has sustained me for the last two weeks. But of course,
Speaker 1: dogs and ducks are not the only odd couples in
Speaker 1: the world. I did a little digging around and I
Speaker 1: found a story about one of history's most unlikely herrings,
Speaker 1: a bond between a giant of literature and a literal giant.
Speaker 1: The tale begins in nineteen fifty three in the small
Speaker 1: French village of Mollan, about forty miles outside of Paris.
Speaker 1: Samuel Beckett's, a famous Irish playwright, had just purchased some
Speaker 1: land there, and Beckett arrived in France with quite a reputation.
Speaker 1: You might recognize his name or the title of his
Speaker 1: most famous play, Waiting for Goodot Beckett was one of
Speaker 1: the biggest names in the absurdist theater, a genre that
Speaker 1: explored existentialism, meaninglessness, and illogical nature in our world. He
Speaker 1: went on to win the nineteen sixty nine Pulitzer Prize
Speaker 1: in Literature for his work. In nineteen fifty three, though
Speaker 1: he was just looking for a quiet place to write.
Speaker 1: Beckett was a native English speaker, but a big Francophile.
Speaker 1: He spent a lot of time in Paris and often
Speaker 1: wrote plays in French, so that's why he decided to
Speaker 1: buy land in the French countryside. Once he got there,
Speaker 1: he realized that he was going to need help building
Speaker 1: his cottage. He looked to hire some low craftsman, which
Speaker 1: is how he met a man who lived just down
Speaker 1: the street, a Belgian born handyman and farmer named Boris Russimov.
Speaker 1: Boris was happy to offer his services while he worked
Speaker 1: on building Beckett's new home. The men became close friends.
Speaker 1: Even after the playwright's cottage was finished. They kept in
Speaker 1: touch and Boris sometimes invited Beckett over to play cards.
Speaker 1: One evening, the playwright sat at the handyman's kitchen table,
Speaker 1: shuffling the deck. As Beckett dealt the cards, Boris confided
Speaker 1: in him about something he was struggling with. He said
Speaker 1: that his son, who was just twelve years old, wouldn't
Speaker 1: stop growing. He wasn't even a teenager yet, but he
Speaker 1: was already six feet two inches tall and weighed two
Speaker 1: hundred and forty pounds. He was so big that he
Speaker 1: didn't fit on the school bus, which meant that he
Speaker 1: had to walk over a mile to class and back
Speaker 1: every weekday, and Beckett's immediately offered to help. He said
Speaker 1: that he drove a convertible. If he rolled the top down,
Speaker 1: there would be plenty of room for Boris's son in
Speaker 1: the passenger seat. From that point forward, Beckett picked Boris
Speaker 1: his son up for school each morning and drove him
Speaker 1: home each afternoon. This went on for two years until
Speaker 1: the younger Rusimov quit school at the age of fourteen
Speaker 1: to work on his dad's farm. Over the next few years,
Speaker 1: Boris's son just kept growing. When he turned eighteen, he
Speaker 1: was seven feet four inches tall and weighed over five
Speaker 1: hundred pounds. As you might imagine, He was a huge
Speaker 1: help around the farm. They was said that he could
Speaker 1: do the work of three men all by himself. But
Speaker 1: after four years of manual labor, he wanted to move on,
Speaker 1: and it's hard to blame him. Boris's son knew that
Speaker 1: his size made him unique. He dreamt of doing something
Speaker 1: big no pun intended, like maybe working in showbiz. So
Speaker 1: around nineteen sixty he packed up and he moved to Paris.
Speaker 1: There he landed a job as a professional wrestler. After
Speaker 1: establishing himself in France, he moved to the United States,
Speaker 1: where he joined the Worldwide Wrestling Federation. He quickly became
Speaker 1: an international star, but his fame would be on the
Speaker 1: ring too. He also appeared in movies, most notably the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty seven classic The Princess Bride. You see. Boris's
Speaker 1: Son's name was Andrey Russimov, better known as Andre the Giant.
Speaker 1: While on set for The Princess Bride, Andrea talked about
Speaker 1: Samuel Beckett driving him to school. It struck his co
Speaker 1: stars as a bizarre connection. They asked Andre what he
Speaker 1: and Beckett would talk about. I mean, you'd imagine the
Speaker 1: Pulitzer Prize winning playwrights and a future wrestling star would
Speaker 1: have plenty to discuss, right Well, Andre said that their
Speaker 1: conversations were curiously limited. They never mentioned theater, or wrestling,
Speaker 1: or existentialism. All they ever really talked about was the
Speaker 1: game of cricket. In the FBI's vast collection of records,
Speaker 1: there's a fifteen page file labeled with the name that
Speaker 1: might surprise you Colonel har Lynn Sanders, as in the
Speaker 1: man who turned his recipe for Kentucky Fried Chicken into
Speaker 1: a multimillion dollar fast food empire. Now you might be asking,
Speaker 1: how did the founder of KFC end up in the
Speaker 1: FBI's radar. Well, the story is a curious one. Indeed,
Speaker 1: well starts at the beginning. In eighteen ninety. Sanders was
Speaker 1: born on a farm in Indiana. His early years were
Speaker 1: marked by struggle. His father died when he was six,
Speaker 1: and his mother had to work multiple jobs to keep
Speaker 1: the family afloat. As the oldest of three children, Sanders
Speaker 1: was forced to step up. He started working on the
Speaker 1: farm and cooking meals for his siblings at just seven
Speaker 1: years old. I know this sounds like a setup for
Speaker 1: his future career as a fried chicken salesman, but the
Speaker 1: Colonel's path wasn't that simple. He had a long way
Speaker 1: to go before becoming the white haired chef we know today.
Speaker 1: When Sanders was twelve, his mom married another man. Apparently
Speaker 1: this guy wasn't too fond of his step children, and
Speaker 1: Sanders ended up leaving home. He found work on another
Speaker 1: farm in Indiana, but life was tough. He went to
Speaker 1: school in the mornings, then came home, fed the chickens,
Speaker 1: and shut corn until eight or nine at night. When
Speaker 1: he reached the seventh grade, thirteen year old Sanders decided
Speaker 1: that he had had enough of the classroom. He quit
Speaker 1: school and worked on the farm full time until he
Speaker 1: was fifteen years old. Then he started job hopping. He
Speaker 1: was a streetcar conductor, he joined the army. He worked
Speaker 1: as a fireman, an insurance agent, a secretary, a steamboat operator,
Speaker 1: a lighting manufacturer. If there was a job to be done,
Speaker 1: Colonel Harlan Sanders would do it. In the nineteen thirties,
Speaker 1: when Sanders was around forty years old, he started cooking
Speaker 1: as a side hustle. At the time, he was working
Speaker 1: at a vehicle service station on the edge of a
Speaker 1: busy highway in Kentucky. He would cook food in the
Speaker 1: back room and sell it to travelers who happened to
Speaker 1: stop by, and the words soon spread that the Colonel's
Speaker 1: fried chicken, okra and biscuits were worth pulling over for.
Speaker 1: Seeing this as his newest job opportunity, Sanders quit the
Speaker 1: service station and opened up his own restaurant, the first
Speaker 1: ever KFC. Despite his flighty job history, he took this
Speaker 1: new endeavor very seriously. A later profile in The New
Speaker 1: Yorker outlined his goals, saying that the Colonel wanted to
Speaker 1: create and I quote, fried chicken so golden and delicious
Speaker 1: that it will bring tears to the eyes of a
Speaker 1: grown man. Well, I don't know if the drumsticks moved
Speaker 1: anyone to tears. It was clear that Colonel Sanders had
Speaker 1: finally found his calling. Over the next few years, he
Speaker 1: perfected his famous recipe, the one with eleven different herbs
Speaker 1: and spices. Right then, for about two decades he focused
Speaker 1: on expanding his business and establishing franchise locations. Colonel Sanders
Speaker 1: had gone from an Indiana farmboy to a multi millionaire
Speaker 1: chicken connoisseur. Now well into his sixties, he put on
Speaker 1: that white suit, styled his white goatee and played the
Speaker 1: part of a fast food mogul. But in his heart,
Speaker 1: Sanders was still a simple countryman. He didn't love the
Speaker 1: pressure of running such a large business. In nineteen sixty four,
Speaker 1: he sold the company for a large one time payout
Speaker 1: plus a modest yearly salary. And with plenty of money
Speaker 1: and even more free time on his hands, the colonel
Speaker 1: soon developed a curious new obsession. Chicken no longer occupied
Speaker 1: his every waking thought. Instead, he spent an inordinate amount
Speaker 1: of time thinking about j Edgar Hoover. At the time,
Speaker 1: j Edgar Hoover was the director of the FBI. The
Speaker 1: colonel was a big fan of his policies and his actions.
Speaker 1: He took to writing what was essentially fan mail, sending
Speaker 1: Hoover multiple letters of praise once he requested an autographed picture.
Speaker 1: In nineteen seventy, he invited the FBI director to his
Speaker 1: eightieth birthday party. If you're curious, it appears that j
Speaker 1: Edgar Hoover did not attend the shindig. In fact, he
Speaker 1: didn't seem to reciprocate the colonel's affections at all. Hoover
Speaker 1: took every single one of those letters and just put
Speaker 1: them into an FBI file. But here's the really strange part.
Speaker 1: Although the file explicitly states that Colonel Sanders was never
Speaker 1: the subject of an FBI investigation, multiple paragraphs have been redacted,
Speaker 1: which leaves me wondering what's been covered up. Is it
Speaker 1: the Colonel's recipe for perfect fried chicken or something more curious.
Speaker 1: I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet
Speaker 1: of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn
Speaker 1: more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com.
Speaker 1: The show was created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership
Speaker 1: with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show
Speaker 1: called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show,
Speaker 1: and you can learn all about it over at the
Speaker 1: Worldoflore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.