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.
Speaker 1: Everyone believes that their kids are special, but in August
Speaker 1: of eighteen forty six, a couple in Nova Scotia, Canada,
Speaker 1: had a truly extraordinary baby. Her name was Anna Heining Swan,
Speaker 1: and she was born weighing sixteen pounds. To put that
Speaker 1: in perspective, the average newborn weighs about seven pounds. Anna
Speaker 1: Swan was huge, and it seems like she would never
Speaker 1: stop growing. By the time when she was six years old,
Speaker 1: Anna was taller than her mom. At eleven, she towered
Speaker 1: over her dad too. She finally topped out at seventeen
Speaker 1: years old, by which point she stood at a whopping
Speaker 1: seven feet eleven inches tall and weighed over four hundred pounds.
Speaker 1: As you might imagine being nearly eight feet tall, post
Speaker 1: some logistical problems, especially in the eighteen hundreds, the world
Speaker 1: just wasn't built to accommodate a person of Anna's size.
Speaker 1: It was hard for her to get around, hard to
Speaker 1: make friends, and practically impossible to get a job. That
Speaker 1: is until she crossed paths with the famous circus master P. T. Barnum.
Speaker 1: When Barnum saw Anna, he saw dollar signs. She was
Speaker 1: exactly the kind of curiosity that people would pay money
Speaker 1: to see. And if that sounds a little dehumanizing, well
Speaker 1: it was, but it was also an opportunity that Anna
Speaker 1: couldn't pass up. At seventeen years old, she moved from
Speaker 1: Canada to New York, where she became a side show
Speaker 1: at Barnum and Bailey's Museum. Five years later, P. T.
Speaker 1: Barnum invited Anna on a nation War circus tour. Anna
Speaker 1: probably had an inkling that traveling in the United States
Speaker 1: would change her life, but she didn't realize just how much.
Speaker 1: While performing in Kentucky in eighteen sixty eight, twenty two
Speaker 1: year old Anna met a man. His name was Martin
Speaker 1: Van Buren Bates, a Southerner through and through. He'd been
Speaker 1: a Confederate captain in the Civil War, and he prided
Speaker 1: himself on his chivalry, and Anna was smitten. It didn't
Speaker 1: hurt that Martin was seven feet nine inches tall. The
Speaker 1: towering pair hit it off. Before long, they were both
Speaker 1: traveling with the circus, making a good living, and seeing
Speaker 1: the nation together. Less than a year after they met,
Speaker 1: they took a trip to London where they got married,
Speaker 1: officially earning them the Guinness World Record for the tallest
Speaker 1: married couple in history. Their nuptials made the news, of course,
Speaker 1: and the couple skyrocketed to international fame. Queen Victoria herself
Speaker 1: sent Anna and Martin a pair of watches made out
Speaker 1: of diamonds and gold. In eighteen seventy one, the newly
Speaker 1: minted Bates couple moved to the small town of Seville, Ohio,
Speaker 1: where Martin set to work building a house. Everything had
Speaker 1: to be scaled up from the average right. Their ceilings
Speaker 1: were fourteen feet tall and each doorway measured at least
Speaker 1: eight feet high. Their countertops had to be raised, their
Speaker 1: chairs had to be extra large and extra strong. It
Speaker 1: was a massive amount of work, but when it was
Speaker 1: all said and done, Anna, who had never really fit anywhere,
Speaker 1: finally had a place that fit her. But as beautiful
Speaker 1: as their love story was, the Baits faced more than
Speaker 1: their fair share of tragedy. Anna soon became pregnant and
Speaker 1: gave birth to a girl who weighed eighteen pounds. That's
Speaker 1: two more than Anna herself weighed as a newborn. Sadly,
Speaker 1: the baby died almost immediately. The following year, Anna gave
Speaker 1: birth to a second child, a boy they called Babe.
Speaker 1: Babe was twenty eight inches long and weighed twenty two pounds.
Speaker 1: In Martin's own words, he looked at birth like an
Speaker 1: ordinary child of six months. This made Babe baits the
Speaker 1: largest newborn in recorded history, but just like his he
Speaker 1: didn't live long. Babe died just eleven hours after he
Speaker 1: was born. Anna and Martin never had any more children
Speaker 1: after that. They continued to tour with the circus until
Speaker 1: eighteen eighty eight, when Anna passed away at forty one
Speaker 1: years old. She left behind a legacy of truly gargantuan proportions,
Speaker 1: with world records for both her marriage and her son
Speaker 1: that haven't been surpassed in one hundred and fifty years. Martin,
Speaker 1: of course, was devastated to lose the woman who had
Speaker 1: taken up such a big space in his heart and
Speaker 1: his life. He had a statue custom made to put
Speaker 1: atop Anna's grave, It showed his wife as he saw her,
Speaker 1: a fifteen foot tall Greek goddess. These days, life sized
Speaker 1: replicas of Anna and Martin are on display at the Seville,
Speaker 1: Ohio Historical Society. You can stand right next to the
Speaker 1: curious couple, although if you want to see their faces,
Speaker 1: you're gonna have to look up pretty far. In the
Speaker 1: course of human history, the line between science and magic
Speaker 1: has almost always been blurred. Take alchemy, for example, Aristotle
Speaker 1: wanted to turn lead into gold. Nicholas Flamel, who was
Speaker 1: a real person, by the way, sought the Philosopher's Stone.
Speaker 1: These were learned men who indulged what we might consider
Speaker 1: to be silly fantasies. But ancient alchemy wasn't a total wash.
Speaker 1: In fact, the idea that one element can be transmuted
Speaker 1: into another is central to our understanding of modern chemistry.
Speaker 1: You see, things are usually only ever considered magical until
Speaker 1: we understand how they work. That's why history is full
Speaker 1: of scientists turned spiritualists who explore both the physical and
Speaker 1: the metaphysical world. Among them are Marie Currie and her
Speaker 1: husband Pierre. In nineteen oh three of the Curies were
Speaker 1: awarded the Nobel Prize in physics for their work researching radioactivity.
Speaker 1: They were a scientific power couple. Marie was the first
Speaker 1: woman to earn a doctorate degree in France and Pierre
Speaker 1: was a professor of a prestigious university. But despite their achievements,
Speaker 1: they were quick to admit how much they did not know.
Speaker 1: In a joint statement from nineteen oh two, they said,
Speaker 1: and I quote, we know little about the medium that
Speaker 1: surrounds us, since our knowledge is limited to phenomena which
Speaker 1: can affect our senses directly or indirectly. In other words,
Speaker 1: Marie and Pierre left open the possibility that there were
Speaker 1: forces in the world beyond human perception, and for much
Speaker 1: of history, radioactivity was one of those forces. It was invisible,
Speaker 1: it was powerful, It was in a word, magical. But
Speaker 1: Marie and Pierre had harnessed that radioactive magic and begun
Speaker 1: to understand it. They wanted to learn even more about
Speaker 1: the world's unseen dimensions, which is why in nineteen oh
Speaker 1: five they attended a seance with a renowned Italian medium
Speaker 1: named Eusapia Palladino. Palladino's reputation preceded her. She was known
Speaker 1: as one of the best psychics in Europe, and she
Speaker 1: held seances with a number of scientists, including the French
Speaker 1: physicist and astronomer Camille Flammarion. Palladino claimed that she could
Speaker 1: summon spirits, make objects move without touching them, and directly
Speaker 1: communicate with the dead. Now, not everyone believed in Palladino's power.
Speaker 1: She'd actually been caught using her hands, feet, and even
Speaker 1: hidden strings to move supposedly haunted objects in the past.
Speaker 1: But nevertheless, when the self proclaimed psychic came to Paris,
Speaker 1: the curies were curious and true to form, they approached
Speaker 1: the seance scientifically. It wasn't the shadowy candlelight affair that
Speaker 1: you might expect. Instead, the lights were bright. That way,
Speaker 1: if Palladino tried to play any tricks, it would be
Speaker 1: easy to see. People held down her hands and feet,
Speaker 1: so she wouldn't be able to pull any secret strings.
Speaker 1: And even with these precautions, things inside the seance room
Speaker 1: got spooky. In a letter written to a friend, Pierre
Speaker 1: said that he saw and I quote, tables raised from
Speaker 1: all four legs, movement of object from a distance, hands
Speaker 1: that pinch or caress you, and luminous apparitions. The curies
Speaker 1: were so impressed by Palladino's abilities that they kept attending
Speaker 1: her seances. Despite their initial skepticism, they couldn't find any
Speaker 1: proof that the medium was faking it then, so Marie
Speaker 1: and Pierre became some of her biggest supporters. The following year,
Speaker 1: in nineteen oh six, Pierre wrote, these phenomena really exist,
Speaker 1: and it is no longer possible for me to doubt it.
Speaker 1: There is here, in my opinion, a whole domain of
Speaker 1: entirely new facts and physical states in space of which
Speaker 1: we have no conception. Thanks to Eusapia Palladino, the Nobel
Speaker 1: Prize winning physicists became entirely convinced that magic in some
Speaker 1: form was real. Just a few months after that, though,
Speaker 1: Pierre suffered a sudden and heartbreaking death. He was walking
Speaker 1: down a busy street in Paris when he slipped and fell,
Speaker 1: and a horse drawn carriage rolled over him, killing him instantly.
Speaker 1: In the wake of this horrible loss, Marie's grief seemed
Speaker 1: to amplify her spiritual beliefs. Shortly after Pierre's death, she
Speaker 1: wrote in her journal, then I quote, I put my
Speaker 1: head against the coffin and I spoke to you. I
Speaker 1: told you that I loved you, and that I had
Speaker 1: always loved you with all my heart. It seemed to
Speaker 1: me that from this cold contact of my forehead with
Speaker 1: the casket, something came to me, something like a calm
Speaker 1: and an intuition that I would yet find the courage
Speaker 1: to live. Maybe, Marie continued, this feeling of calm was
Speaker 1: energy coming from her late husband. She could feel his
Speaker 1: love emanating even from beyond the grave. It was the
Speaker 1: most beautiful kind of radiation, almost like magic. I hope
Speaker 1: you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities.
Speaker 1: Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about
Speaker 1: the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show
Speaker 1: was created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership with how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works. I make another award winning show so called Lore,
Speaker 1: which is a podcast, book series, and television show, and
Speaker 1: you can learn all about it over at Theworldoflore dot com.
Speaker 1: And until next time, stay curious.