Speaker 1: Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history
Speaker 1: is an open book, all of these amazing tales are
Speaker 1: right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Cabinet of curiosities. Our time on this
Speaker 1: earth is often short. Disease and unforeseen circumstances can make
Speaker 1: it even shorter. Compared to the Red Sea urchin, which
Speaker 1: is known to live for as long as two hundred years,
Speaker 1: our lives can be seen as a blip, a gust
Speaker 1: of wind coming in and blowing out in an instant.
Speaker 1: It's rare for a person to live past ninety years
Speaker 1: of age, even rarer for and one hundred is reserved
Speaker 1: for only the most special people. Less than one percent
Speaker 1: of the American population lives to be one hundred, and
Speaker 1: that entage goes down from there as their ages go up.
Speaker 1: But one man beat the odds. If someone had written
Speaker 1: a novel about him, readers would have called it science fiction.
Speaker 1: He was a man out of time, with firsthand knowledge
Speaker 1: of experiences that the rest of us could only read
Speaker 1: about in books. And his name was Sylvester. His story
Speaker 1: is one of a kind. Born on a North Carolina
Speaker 1: plantation in eighteen forty one. Sylvester's younger years were tough.
Speaker 1: He was a slave, as were his parents, and he
Speaker 1: worked alongside them until he turned nineteen. That's when his
Speaker 1: owner sold him to another plantation in Mississippi. When the
Speaker 1: Civil War started, he assisted the owner in securing guns
Speaker 1: for the Confederate Army, which automatically made the young slave
Speaker 1: a Confederate soldier. Yeah, Sylvester had unknowingly been enlisted to
Speaker 1: the side trying to keep him a slave. It's not
Speaker 1: like he had a choice, but he eventually got the
Speaker 1: upper hand a few years later when he escaped north
Speaker 1: and joined the Union Army. Once away from his old life,
Speaker 1: Sylvester soon found himself alongside almost scores of other soldiers
Speaker 1: as part of General Grant's Vicksburg's Campaign and the Battle
Speaker 1: of Champion Hill. He had no fighting experience and he'd
Speaker 1: never been in a war before, but he held on
Speaker 1: to his faith, which helped him calm some of the
Speaker 1: more frightened soldiers around him. Sylvester was freed after the
Speaker 1: war and went back to Mississippi, where he found work
Speaker 1: on a farm, eventually settling down to work at a
Speaker 1: local sawmill, and that's where his story ended well, ended
Speaker 1: is the wrong word. Paused is more like it. You see,
Speaker 1: many years later, the people of Collins, Mississippi held a
Speaker 1: birthday party for him. A five layer cake was brought
Speaker 1: in adorned with a lot of candles. That's because this
Speaker 1: party was held in nineteen sixty five. Yes, the Civil
Speaker 1: War veteran had lived to the unheard age of one
Speaker 1: hundred twenty four and naturally his story reached the historian
Speaker 1: named Alfred Andrews, who helped get so investor classified officially
Speaker 1: as a veteran of the Civil War, despite there being
Speaker 1: no record of his ever having served. But Sylvester didn't
Speaker 1: need a piece of paper saying he'd been a soldier.
Speaker 1: He told Andrews stories about the war, about specific battles
Speaker 1: no one else would have known. He spoke in exceptional
Speaker 1: detail about his experiences, establishing himself as the oldest and
Speaker 1: last surviving former American slave. When you think about a
Speaker 1: life as long as Sylvester McGee's, you realize he didn't
Speaker 1: just survive one war. He also lived through two World wars,
Speaker 1: the Korean War and Vietnam, until finally passing away in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy one. And what makes his story even more
Speaker 1: powerful is what else he witnessed. He began his life
Speaker 1: in servitude, only to see the end of the Civil
Speaker 1: War and the end of slavery in the United States.
Speaker 1: One years later, he saw the signing of the Civil
Speaker 1: Rights Act of nineteen sixty four, a law that prohibited
Speaker 1: discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.
Speaker 1: He watched the first black woman win an Academy award.
Speaker 1: He saw schools desegregate, and sadly, he lived to see
Speaker 1: the assassination of Dr Martin Luther King. Despite the bad
Speaker 1: news he witnessed, though there was a lot of good too.
Speaker 1: And one thing is certain, Sylvester McGhee lived a full life,
Speaker 1: perhaps more than any other American citizen. Time is a
Speaker 1: funny thing, after all, But if we managed to stick
Speaker 1: around long enough, there's no telling the kinds of stories
Speaker 1: we'll be able to tell. Sylvester McGee knew that better
Speaker 1: than anyone else. Benjamin Franklin is best known as one
Speaker 1: of America's founding fathers, partly responsible for our independence from
Speaker 1: great Written a politician, inventor, author, and Polly Maath, Franklin
Speaker 1: was a man with an insatiable curiosity. However, behind his
Speaker 1: striking wit and boundless intellect beat the heart of someone
Speaker 1: with more than a few secrets. Remember, Franklin's work took
Speaker 1: him all over the world. In seventeen sixty four, he
Speaker 1: traveled to London to advocate on behalf of the American
Speaker 1: colonists against new taxes being imposed on them. For ten years,
Speaker 1: he tried to make the case for lower taxes on
Speaker 1: his people back home, but found himself blocked at every turn. However,
Speaker 1: while living in England during this period of time, Franklin
Speaker 1: needed to occupy his days with other pursuits. He was
Speaker 1: used to expanding his mind with scientific and artistic endeavors
Speaker 1: back in Philadelphia, so he continued to invent and write.
Speaker 1: But it was inside his London home that evidence of
Speaker 1: some of his more questionable work would be discovered. Over
Speaker 1: two hundred years later, in a group calling them selves
Speaker 1: the Friends of Benjamin Franklin, House had started turning Franklin's
Speaker 1: former London abode into a museum all about him. A
Speaker 1: worthy pursuit and a noble cause, for sure. A few
Speaker 1: weeks into the process, though, one of the construction workers
Speaker 1: who had been renovating the basement came across a pit
Speaker 1: in the floor, big enough to hold a person. It
Speaker 1: was in the middle of a room devoid of windows
Speaker 1: and positioned far from the street, a room that was
Speaker 1: for all intents and purposes hidden and soundproof. And down
Speaker 1: in the pit, sticking straight out like a weed, was
Speaker 1: a human bone. The worker called the police, who allowed
Speaker 1: the team to continue their work. Bit by bit, a
Speaker 1: team of workers carefully uncovered over one thousand bone fragments
Speaker 1: in Franklin's basement, some of which had been carved into,
Speaker 1: while others had been sawed straight through, and there was
Speaker 1: evidence someone had drilled into several of the skulls. They found.
Speaker 1: The shards belonged to ten victims, six of whom were children,
Speaker 1: all of which were over two hundred years old. Perhaps
Speaker 1: the charming diplomat who had invented bifocals and the glass
Speaker 1: armonica also pursued a career as a serial killer. The police,
Speaker 1: upon learning of the age of the bones, chose not
Speaker 1: to pursue an investigation. After all, how do you prosecute
Speaker 1: a founding father. But historians were curious. They documented all
Speaker 1: the fragments and began running tests. It was clear something
Speaker 1: heinous had gone down in Franklin's home well heinous by
Speaker 1: today's standards. No, Benjamin Franklin was not a serial killer.
Speaker 1: He didn't cut up people in his basement. He let
Speaker 1: his friend William Houston do that. Houston was a medical
Speaker 1: student with a passion for studying the internal workings of
Speaker 1: the human body. However, once he and his former teacher
Speaker 1: parted way, Houston was left without a laboratory to continue
Speaker 1: his work. Luckily, his friend Benjamin Franklin lived nearby with
Speaker 1: a basement large enough for him to dissect his bodies
Speaker 1: in peace. It's best. Woman's were hard to come by,
Speaker 1: so Houston resorted to grave robbing. He'd sneak the bodies
Speaker 1: in under cover of night, perform his work, and then
Speaker 1: bury what remained so he wouldn't get caught trying to
Speaker 1: get rid of the evidence. He never killed anyone on
Speaker 1: his own, but that didn't mean his methods were ethical.
Speaker 1: It's not clear whether Franklin participated or even knew about
Speaker 1: the experiments going on in his basement. When he returned
Speaker 1: to America, he continued to let Houston use the house
Speaker 1: for his work. If only his friend had been more careful.
Speaker 1: In the spring of seventeen seventy four, while dissecting a cadaver,
Speaker 1: Dr Houston cut himself and contracted an infection which eventually
Speaker 1: turned into sepsis. He died a short while later, but
Speaker 1: don't worry, his bones were not among the others found
Speaker 1: in Franklin's house. Dr William Houston was given a proper
Speaker 1: burial in Saint Martin in the Fields Churchyard in London,
Speaker 1: and Franklin, well, he really didn't have any skeletons in
Speaker 1: his closet after all, but he did keep quite a
Speaker 1: few in his basement. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided
Speaker 1: tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by visiting
Speaker 1: Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by me
Speaker 1: Aaron Manky in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make
Speaker 1: another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast,
Speaker 1: book series, and television show, and you can learn all
Speaker 1: about it over at the World of Lore dot com.
Speaker 1: And until next time, stay curious.