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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

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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,