TAI DJIN – Kung Fu Werewolf

Sometimes a story comes along that contains so many fanciful elements one must assume that it is the work of fiction. Such is the story of Su Kong Tai Djin.
Tai Djin was born in China in 1849. He was born unique, afflicted with hypertrichosis. Unlike Jo-Jo, who would be born a few decades later, Tai Djin was born into a highly superstitious family. As A result they saw his affliction as the work of demons and he was left in the forest to die.
A Shaolin monk traveling through the forest discovered the child and took him back to the Fukien Shaolin Temple. There Tai Djin was raised by the monks.
He was trained in martial arts and it quickly became apparent that he was exceptional in both appearance and ability. The boy must have been a sight practicing kung-fu with his face covered in fine fur. He quickly became a favorite of many of the Shaolin masters and, as a result, each master passed their knowledge on to Tai Djin.
He was a sponge and mastered every technique shown to him. He became the first to master over 200 different empty hand systems and over 140 weapon systems. His various specialties included the infamous Chi Ma, or ‘Death Touch’. After several years of extensive training he became the first Grandmaster of Shaolin-Do and one of the first to master all skills of the seven Shaolin temples.
He became known as Su Kong Tai Djin. Su Kong simply means, Grand Master.
Perhaps the most amazing part of that much the story is true. Su Kong Tai Djin was a real man, he really did have hypertrichosis and he was associated with Shaolin.  Some have built and embellished upon his legend but the kernel of truth is there.  Tai Djin was witnessed in the flesh by many, and revered by many more. He lived on for many years and passed away in 1928 after reaching a ripe old age and teaching others to be masters.

CAPTAIN COSTENTENUS – The Tattooed Prince

The Great Captain Costentenus is often regarded as the first tattooed man to be exhibited in the United States. That, however, is not true. The first tattooed man is believed to have been James F. O’Connel. Evidence indicates that O’Connel appeared at Barnum’s American Museum in 1842 and Constentenus didn’t appear until the 1870’s. O’Connel was also the first tattooed man to write and publish his embellished origin, as an extra source of income, under the title ‘The Life and Adventures of James F. O’Connel, The Tattooed Man’.
While Constentenus was not the first, he was by far the most remarkable tattooed man of the 1800’s. In fact, he was likely the most heavily tattooed man in the world during that century. Even today, the magnitude of his tattoo coverage remains rather remarkable. The Captain was the first man to display a full body tattoo with his face, scalp, genitals and finger webbing all tattooed. The only part of his body not tattooed were the soles of his feet.
The designs were Burmese in origin, blue and red in color and depicted mostly animals native to Burma and eastern mythology.
Little is known of Constentenus, rumor has it that he was born in Albania in 1836, and it is believed that he tattooed himself for the sole purpose of exhibition. Exactly who did the work is unknown. His origin story involves the same ‘kidnapped and forcibly tattooed by island natives’ story that was par for the tales told by his European contemporaries and it was, of course, completely false. The same story alleged that Captain Costentenus was actually an Albanian prince.
The person, or persons, who actually did the tattoo work were masters of their craft as the quality of his tattoos were the most elaborate ever exhibited at that point. As a result, Constentenus enthralled doctors and skin specialists and he was even extensively studied by the University of Vienna on several occasions.
In America, Constentenus was exhibited by Great Farini and P. T. Barnum and he proved to be a very successful attraction. He eventually commanded a weekly base salary of $1000, which he further augmented with sales of his mostly fictional biography.
At the time of his death he was a wealthy man. According to legend he willed half of his fortune to the Greek Church of London. The other half of his fortune he divided amongst his fellow showmen and peers.

MIRIN DAJO – The Extreme Human Pincushion

The man in the video is Dutch Fakir Mirin Dajo. He was born in 1912 as Arnold Gerrit Henskes and adopted his name, an Esperanto term that translates to mean ‘wonderful’. In 1947, at the Corso Theatre in Zurich, Mirin Dajo allow an assistant to plunge a fencing foil right through his body. The foil appeared to have pierced several vital organs and yet, the fakir remained relatively unharmed.
Needless to say, people were shocked, amazed and terrified by what they saw.
As word of his remarkable talent spread, a Swiss doctor Hans Naegeli-Osjord invited Mirin Dajo to the Zurich Cantonal hospital for study. Many people, including Naegeli-Osjord, the chief of surgery Dr. Werner Brunnerand as well as several other doctors, students and members of the press witnessed these tests. All were dumbfounded by what they saw.
In front of the witnesses assembled Mirin Dajo stripped naked to the waist and, following a period of meditation, once again had his assistant plunge the steel rapier through him. He then stood for some time, impaled, while the doctors examined him.
The doctors could find no evidence of trickery but many still refused to believe what they saw. Mirin Dajo agreed to an x-ray with the foil in place. The resulting image confirmed the legitimacy of his abilities.
Later that same year, Mirin Dajo was again submitted to examination , this time in Basel. There he actually allowed the doctors themselves to pierce him. Again, there was no evidence of trickery. Not only did Mirin Dajo insist that the doctors treat him roughly, he later jogged several laps while still impaled to illustrate his complete tolerance of pain.
Mirin Dajo was a very religious man and some media outlets labeled him a ‘Messiah’. According to some reports, Mirin Dajo could hear voices, a spiritual guide. His public displays were often concluded with a lecture and a message of peace.
How was Mirin Dajo able to survive this repeated trauma? Who knows. Luck, faith, unique biology, mind over matter – your guess is as good as mine. He kept performing his feat for audiences. Eventually, to prove his talent was real while on stage, he took to being impaled by three hollow skewers. He would then pump water through those skewers. He became a human fountain.
It is not uncommon for eastern fakirs to pierce themselves with swords, many of them can push swords completely through their bodies. However, the majority of them do so through the fatty and ‘safe’ areas their body. The piercing feats of Mirin Dajo were extreme.
It is important to note that his unique skill may have resulted in his demise on May 26, 1948. An autopsy revealed that Dajo died of an aortic rupture.
images: 1. promotional photo of Mirin Dajo – no known original source. 2. the x-ray image that shocked the medical world.

MORTADO – The Human Fountain

Mirin Dajo used his unique talent to turn himself into a ‘human fountain’.

Mortado actually had holes bored through his feet and hands. These holes were not traditional piercings and, while seated in a specially constructed chair, copper tubes were feed through the wounds. Water was then pumped through those pipes at high pressure and Mortado became a fountain.
Remarkably, there was no trickery in Mortado’s crucifixion-like wounds. When not seated in his chair, Mortado placed corks into his wounds to keep them from healing over. On occasion, Mortado did reenact a biblical crucifixion. After placing small bags of red fluid into his open wounds, he would then allow an assistant to drive nails into those same holes. The bags would break, the ‘blood’ would flow, and people would proceed to faint.
Not much is known of Mortado’s history. His pitch biography is mostly fictional and that makes reconstructing his true origin difficult. According to his biography he was born in Berlin and served in World War I. He first exhibited himself in Berlin in January of 1929 before meeting a New York Agent and signing a deal with Dreamland circus for their 1930 summer season. But, according to the same biography, his wounds were the result of torture at the hands of savage natives.
How Mortado got the idea for his bizarre act, how he managed to create the holes or even his eventual fate remains unknown. Mortado dropped in popularity and disappeared from public exhibition.
Mortado does live on in Ripley’s Museum at Fisherman’s Wharf as an exhibit featuring a statuesque fountain.

BARBARA URSLERIN – The Hairy Maid

Barbara Urslerin presents one of the earliest and most well documented historical cases of hypertrichosis on record. ‘The Hairy Maid’ was born in February of 1629 near the village of Kempten, Germany. She was purported to be the only member of her family afflicted with the mutation which is rather unique situation and quite different from the case of her nearest predecessor Petrus Gonzales.
All records indicate that Barbara was exhibited from a very early age. Her displays centered around her skill on the harpsichord, which she played happily and skillfully. Her existence was first confirmed in 1639 when anatomist Thomas Bartholin saw her exhibited in Copenhagen. Bartholin had opportunity to examined Barbara and he wrote that her ‘entire body was covered with soft, blond hair and a luxuriant beard’.
In 1655, Barbara was documented in London and English writer John Evelyn visited Barbara her there in 1657. He wrote that she was married to a German man by the name of Johann Van Beck and had one normal child. In 1660 records show that Barbara was touring France and her husband was acting as her agent. When she came to Beauvais, her husband applied to the local bailiff for permission to exhibit a ‘strange prodigy of nature’.
In 1668 Barbara returned to London. She was examined there by the Dane, Holger Jacobsen. He hypothesized that Barbara was the result of a mating between woman and ape. His idea was outdated for even his time. His notes indicated he examined her fully for any similarities to a monkey.
Following her 1668 visit to London, Barbara Urslerin disappeared from record. Given he unique appearance, this disappearance is incredible. Still, her final history remains unknown.

WILD MEN OF BORNEO

In typical sideshow fashion, the Wild Men of Borneo were pure gimmick. The Davis Brothers, Hiram and Barney, were not from Borneo at all. Hiram was born in 1825 in England and Barney in 1827 in New York. The dynamic duo were dwarves, each standing only three and a half feet tall.
The brothers began their exhibition career in 1852 after showman and promoter Lyman Warner purchased the brothers from their destitute and widowed mother. Warner created an intricate persona for the tiny brothers. Renaming them Waino and Plutano – he billed them as savages from darkest Borneo. Audiences at the time had likely heard of Borneo, but the area was still veiled in great mystery. As a result, the public swallowed the story completely and Warner was inspired to elaborate the fictional biography further. He created a promotional booklet, entitled ‘What We Know About Waino and Plutano, Wild Men of Borneo’, and within its pages their ‘capture’ was detailed.
For their part, the brothers played their roles to the hilt. During exhibitions the ‘Wild Men’ acted wild and spoke a strange gibberish language. Over time, the brother began to develop characters. Waino played a gentle savage character who read poems while Plutano played a trickster and stubborn character. Both brothers were remarkable strong for their size and would often lift volunteers from the audience off their feet.
Warner passed away in 1871. His son Hanford took over possession of the duo until their retirement in 1903. In 1905 Hiram (Waino) died of natural causes. Seven years later, in March of 1912, Barney joined his brother at the age of eighty-five.
Today, the brothers rest side by side in Mount Vernon, Ohio.

WEREWOLF SYNDROME – Hypertrichosis

The Wolf Boy, Living Werewolf or Dog-Faced Boy have been fixtures of the sideshow world for centuries. Jo-Jo, the Dog-Faced Boy is likely the most famous of the lot however cases of hypertrichosis have been reported and documented long before Jo-Jo.
Hypertrichosis is really a blanket medical term that refers to excessive body hair. It can actually be generalized, symmetrically affecting most of the torso and limbs, or localized, affecting only a small area or location. The term is, however, usually reserved to refer to very above-average amount of normal body hair that is unwanted.
Nearly all the skin of the human body – with the exception of the palms and soles of the feet – are covered with hairs or hair follicles. The density of the hairs per square centimeter, the thickness of the hairs, color of the hairs, speed of hair growth, and qualities such as kinkiness tend to vary from one part of the body to another and also from one person to another. But in hypertrichosis all of the various controllers for the regulation of that genetic information are these lacking, damaged or none existent. Furthermore, there are a few subcategories of hypertrichosis.
Congenital hypertrichosis terminalis is the variation most people associate with the condition. This version involves all over body hair growth. Interestingly this form of hypertrichosis is almost always associated with gingival hyperplasia – meaning these ‘savage and vicious’ wolf men often posses very few teeth. Furthermore persons afflicted are said to have soft, smooth and gentle voices. Naevoid hypertrichosis is an unusual form of hypertrichosis where a solitary circumscribed area of hair growth occurs. It is not usually associated with any other diseases, except if it arises as a faun-tail on the lower back, then it may indicate underlying spina bifida. Naevoid hypertrichosis can occur at birth or appear later in life and symptoms can range from hairy tufted ears, tails, a heavy unibrow or excessive beard growth in females and males alike. Finally, Congenital hypertrichosis lanuginosa is a very rare form of hypertrichosis with only about 50 cases reported worldwide since the Middle Ages.
The condition is characterized by excessive hair growth on a child at birth. Most of the body is covered with lanugo hair, which is a fine, soft and silky hair that covers the fetus and which is usually shed at around 8 months gestation and replaced with fine vellus hair. In this condition the hair continues to grow throughout life. The initial shock of a fur covered infant, however, is luckily a very rare occurrence.
The exact cause of hypertrichosis is unknown. But it is believe to be a genetic disorder that is inherited or occurs as a result of spontaneous mutation.

GRADY STILES JR. – The Murderous Lobster Man

Grady Stiles Jr. is a rarity in the world of Human Marvels. By many accounts, this teratological terror was every bit the monster he appeared to be.
The Stiles family has been afflicted for over a century with ectrodactyly, a condition commonly known as ‘Lobster Claw’ syndrome. It is a rare congenital deformity of the hand where the middle digit is missing and the hand is cleft where the metacarpal of the finger should be. This split often gives the hands the appearance of lobster claws although cases range in severity. Often this condition occurs in both the hands and the feet and, while it is an inherited condition, it can skip a generation. While the term ectrodactyly sounds medically sterile when compared to ‘Lobster Claw Syndrome’.
William Stiles was apparently the first in the family to display the condition in 1805. He was followed by Jacob Stiles, Elisha Stiles and Grady Stiles Sr. Grady Sr. was a sideshow attraction and when Grady Franklin Stiles, Jr., ‘The Lobster Boy’, was born in Pittsburgh on July 18, 1937 his father added him to the show at a young age.
Grady’s condition was severe and he was unable to walk. He learned to use his hands and arms for locomotion and, as a result, developed incredible upper body strength. He married twice and had four children. Two of those children, a girl, Cathy, and a boy, Grady III, were born with variations of ectrodactyly. Although the siblings were from different mothers, they sometimes toured together as The Lobster Family.
Grady had a dark side. He was known to be a highly abusive drunk. He often used his frightening strength to beat his wives and his children. When his oldest daughter Donna fell in love and became engaged with a young man in 1978, Grady didn’t approve with her choice. Perhaps the young man stuck up for Donna, perhaps he confronted Grady. The night before the pair was to be married; Grady picked up a shotgun and murdered the young groom in cold blood.
The trial was a media circus. In court Grady openly confessed to his crime and showed little remorse. However, he did not serve any time for the murder. He used his condition to his advantage. It was stated that since the prison system was not equipped to deal with his ‘disability’, confining him to such an institution would constitute cruel and unusual punishment. Grady was let off on 15 years probation.
Following these events, Grady felt invincible. When he resumed beating his family one of his favourite taunts was ‘I killed before and got away with it, I can do it again’. Amazingly, during this time Stiles remarried his first wife Maria. She left her new husband, a sideshow dwarf, to remarry Grady and almost instantly regretted the choice.
Eventually, the family had had enough. On November 29, 1993 Grady was gunned down by a hired assassin. The hitman was then 19 year old sideshow performer Chris Wyant, a neighbor to the Stiles family. He was paid $1500 in cash by Maria and her stepson Harry, to put three bullets into the skull of Grady Stiles Jr.
Wyant was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to twenty-seven years. Harry was considered the mastermind behind the plot. He was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. Maria was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder and was sentenced to twelve years in prison.
In her defense, Maria stated ‘My husband was going to kill my family. I believe that from the bottom of my heart. I’m sorry this happened, but my family is safe now’.

The family has carried on. Grady III has a daughter, Sara, who does not have ectrodactyly. Cathy is married and has a lobster-clawed daughter named Misty. The three of them still perform on occasion.

POLYDACTLY MARVELS

The trait of polydactyl (also known as supernumerary fingers) is an inherited trait and these occurrences have been carefully documented for centuries. Some extreme cases include: an instance of 13 fingers on each hand and 12 toes on each foot, an infant at the Htel-Dieu in Paris in 1687 which had 40 digits, ten on each member, a woman who had six fingers and two thumbs on each hand, and another who had eight toes on one foot.

The Foldi family (pictured above) was first written of in the 1896 publication Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine. The family of Foldi, part of the Hyabites tribe living in Arabia, confine their marriages to their tribe and they all have 24 digits.

The inhabitants of the village of Eycaux in France, at the end of the last century, had nearly all supernumerary digits either on thier hands or feet. Being isolated in an inaccessible and mountainous region, they had intermarried for many years and perpetuated the anomaly.

It is surprising that the trait of extra digits is not all that uncommon. In fact, it is estimated that about one in three thousand Europeans are born with an extra finger or toe.

The trait is even more common in Africa, with about one in three hundred displaying the trait. 

The French mathematician Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis (1968-1758) wrote about a doctor he knew named Jacob Ruhe who not only had six fingers and toes – but so did his most of his family including his grandmother, three siblings and two of his children. The Russian Geneticist E.O. Manoiloff published a paper in 1931 on one Viaceslav Michailovic de Camio Scipion who was able to document his multi-digit lineage back over six centuries.

MARY ANN BEVANS – The Homeliest Woman

Mary Ann Bevans, commonly referred to as ‘The Homeliest Woman in the World’, likely suffered from acromegaly. She was born Mary Ann Webster in London, England in 1874 as one of eight children. She was employed as a nurse and began to display characteristics of acromegaly shortly after her marriage in 1903.

Following the passing of her husband in 1914, found herself solely financially responsible for her four children. In an attempt to make some money, she entered and subsequently won an ‘Ugly Woman’ contest.
She was quickly hired by Coney Island’s Dreamland Circus in 1920 and there she remained, excluding a few short appearances for Ringling Bros and a 1926 World’s Fair spot, until her death at the age of 59 on December 26, 1933.
More recently, a Hallmark Birthday card featuring the image of Mary Ann Bevans launched a feeling of outrage in UK shops. A Dutch doctor complained that the card was inappropriate. Hallmark realized their error and promptly removed the offensive cards.

THE FRENCH ANGEL – Maurice Tillet

Perhaps most well know under the name ‘The French Angel’, Maurice Tillet was born in France in 1903 as a completely average and healthy child. He aspired to become an actor and was highly intelligent, allegedly speaking 14 languages and being quite gifted in prose. However, in his twenties, Maurice developed acromegaly.
Acromegaly is a rather rare hormonal disorder that occurs when the pituitary gland produces excess growth hormone. Usually, the condition is caused by a pituitary tumor, and results in bones growing wildly and uncontrollably. The word ‘acromegaly’ is derived from Greek and literally translates as ‘large extremities’. Because the disease is slow to progress, it is difficult to diagnose in the early stages and is often missed for many years. In the case of Maurice Tillet a diagnosis was long in coming and his body, and his face in particular, were disfigured significantly. Unable to endure the constant gawking and humiliation, Maurice fled France.
In America, Maurice crafted a new identity befitting his disfigured appearance as a rough and villainous professional wrestler. Renamed ‘The French Angel and often called the ‘freak ogre of the ring’, Maurice was a great success finishing off adversaries with his patented Bear Hug. On August 1, 1944 The French Angel defeated Steve ‘Crusher’ Casey for the American Wrestling Association World Championship.
Ten years later, almost to the day, on April 4th 1954 Maurice died prematurely at the age of 51. In life, Maurice was a private and reclusive man however, on his death bed; he gave permission to have a cast made of his face. One subsequent ‘death mask’ currently resides at the USA Weightlifting Hall of Fame inside the York Barbell Building in York, Pennsylvania.

 

ALLIGATOR-SKINNED MARVELS

Persons with unusual skin conditions often used their affliction to their financial advantage in the world of the sideshow. The alligator-skinned (sometimes called elephant-skinned) individual became a very common attraction in the golden age of sideshow – in fact few popular sideshows were without at least one such individual. Not to be confused with the common gaff (faked display) Jake the Alligator Boy.
Ichthyosis is a life long skin disorder which causes the formation of dry, fish-like scales on the surface of the skin. It is an recessive inherited disease – and therefore not a contagious skin condition – however the exact defect that causes the skin to lose moisture is currently unknown. The degree of scaling can vary, as there are twenty five variations of the disease. Some forms of ichthyosis result in little more than ‘dry skin’ and can treated with simple drugstore lotions. However, most forms of ichthyosis are far more severe – and rare – and the scaling can be very heavy causing restriction of movement, deep cracks or fissures at the joints.
The most severe and shocking form of congenital ichthyosis is Harlequin ichthyosis, also know as Harlequin fetus – as until recently survival of the condition was limited to mere hours after birth. Many of the children born with Harlequin ichthyosis ended up in Victorian pickled punk shows as ‘devil children’ but with the advent of modern anti-inflammatory and disinfectants some children have survived more than a decade. The affected child is born not with skin, but instead massive, diamond-shaped scales. Furthermore the eyes, ears, mouth, and other appendages can be abnormally contracted and even ‘turned inside out’. The eyelids especially can appear very disturbing. The scaly armor restricts movement to an alarming degree and because the skin is cracked where normal skin would fold, bacteria and other contaminants easily pass into the cracks and can cause lethal infections.
The term harlequin refers to the baby’s facial expression and the diamond-shaped pattern of the scales. The jester and harlequins of the 17th century wore costumes with diamond patterns on them, as well as a particular style of face paint. The features of the harlequin fetus mimic this stylized makeup, and their faces are often pulled tight into grim parodies of a clown’s smile.

COUNT ORLOFF – The Transparent Man

Few Human Marvels can ever compare to the unusual case of Count Orloff. He was a human oddity sometimes incorrectly billed as ossified, and correctly touted as being transparent.
Ivannow Wladislaus von Dziarski-Orloff was born in Hungary in 1864. While he was completely normal during his childhood, at the age of 14 he began to experience an unknown wasting disease. By early adulthood, Orloff was little more than a living skeleton – unable to stand and in constant pain. To deal with his tragic pain, Orloff took to the opium pipe – strangely enough the pipe became something of a trademark as many of his pitch cards pictured him puffing away and ‘chasing the dragon’.

While during his career Orloff was known as an ossified man, his condition was actually quite the opposite. Orloff actually had a lack of bone density and this allowed his bones to bend and twist. Furthermore, his skin was paper thin and his musculature so atrophied that – with the aid of a bright spotlight – spectators could actually see the blood coursing through his veins. Not only that, but when a bright light was placed behind Orloff, the warm glow could actually been seen from the other side.

As strange as Orloff was – many promoters felt a need to further embellish it. As a result – to this day, some still claim that a person could read a newspaper through the body of Orloff. A claim made in an early pamphlet.

Orloff was known primarily as the Living Ossified and Transparent Man, but later in life he adopted the moniker of ‘The Human Window Pane’. His tendency to show himself as a medical specimen allowed him to travel around the world. Eventually he went into business for himself – he owned his own successful sideshow.

Orloff died in 1904.

THE STONE PEOPLE – Living Statues

In the 17th century the French physician Patin described the case of a local woman who had ‘turned to wood’. This ‘wood’ was actually bone and the woman possessed an incredibly rare condition that caused her muscles to be slowly turned to bone.
Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva or FOP, as the condition is know by today, affects 1 of 2 million people with varied severity. The condition is a genetic mutation in which the bodies of those affected cannot switch off the mechanism that grows the skeleton in the womb. Also, any small injury to connective tissue – muscles, ligaments, and tendons – results in the formation of hard bone around the damaged site. As it is a spontaneous genetic mutation, a FOB child can be born of normal parents – however persons with the condition have a 50% chance of passing the traits on to their offspring. As the hereotopic (extra) bone growth only becomes painfully obvious after a few years – 10 being the average – the only sign of the condition observable in an infant is malformed big toes. It is not until the second skeleton begins to form and mobility becomes severely restricted that the condition becomes evident.
Persons with FOP have been involved in sideshow and curio displays for centuries. Those with the condition were commonly called ‘ossified men’ or ‘stone men’, ‘The Ossified Man’ became a popular attraction. An ossified woman named Miss Emma Shaler once even shared billing with Harry Houdini in 1894. Strangely enough the ossified individual became quite a common attraction – likely due to the fact that it was a Marvel easily faked.
For those with the condition, life was far from easy. Movement was severely hampered and, in many cases, movement involved little more than lips and inner workings. The money these ossified men and women earned while on display paid for much needed medical attention. Many were often attended to during display by hired nurses. Few were able to eat anything, and their jaws became fused, and many had to sustain themselves on liquid diets. Thus many individual with the condition appeared incredibly gaunt and sickly. Most died quite young of pneumonia or other ailments that fed upon the sickly.
Harry Raymond Eastlack (pictured above) was born in the early 1930’s and was one of the last modern ossified men presented as a curiosity. He died of pneumonia in 1973, and his case is particularly notable because shortly before his death, he made it known that he wanted to donate his body to science. The gesture was in the hopes that in death he would be able to help find a cure for this rare and somewhat cruel disease. As per his wishes, his preserved skeleton now resides in The Mütter Museum in Philadelphia. Mr. Eastlack remains the best documented Stone Man in history.
Update 09/06/2006
Another FOP skeleton, belonging to a veteran Peter Cluckey, lives at the National Museum of Health and Medicine on the Walter Reed campus in Washington.
From public affairs officer Steven Solomon  at the Kircher Society:
Peter Cluckey was born in 1882, enlisted in the Army at age 17 just after the Spanish-American War, retired from the service after 3 years, and rejoined in 1904. Two months after his second enlistment he experienced joint pain and stiffness after a horseback mounted drill held in cold rain. After several medical examinations he was diagnosed with “rheumatism chronic, articular, affecting both hips, knees, and ankle joints, and the right elbow.” Over the next 20 years his condition worsened to the point where every joint in his body became fused. Cluckey was moved into a sitting position so that he could be placed in a chair or on his side in bed to sleep. His front teeth were removed so that he could be fed soft foods. In his will, Cluckey donated his body to the museum and his skeleton has been on display seated in a wooden chair in the museum since his death in 1925.

most body piercings

Brent Moffatt from Winnipeg, Canada, pierced himself with surgical needles to set a Guinness record for most body piercings, in Montreal, December 13, 2003. Moffatt inserted 900 needles into his legs to break his previous record of 702 piercings.

“The Big Drizzle”

 Chicago Bulls Center Drew Gooden aspires to overtake Dennis Rodman as weirdest NBA player in history. He wants to be called “The Big Drizzle”, whatever that means, and had a weird haircut of a small patch of hair–which he says he tore off of Rasheed Wallace's head–on the back of his head. Now, the 6'10″ player is sporting this bizarre new beard that has seven or eight tentacles.

It's being called the “Octobeard”, for lack of a better name.

The Woman Who is Allergic to Modern Technology

For most people talking on a mobile phone, cooking dinner in the microwave or driving in a car is simply part of modern living in 21st century Britain. But completing any such tasks is impossible for Debbie Bird - because she is allergic to Cell Phones and Microwaves.

The 39-year-old is so sensitive to the electromagnetic field (emf) or 'smog' created by computers, mobile phones, microwave ovens and even some cars, that she develops a painful skin rash and her eyelids swell to three times their size if she goes near them. As a consequence, Mrs Bird, a health spa manager, has transformed her home into an EMF-free zone to try and stay healthy. 'I can no longer do things that I used to take for granted,' Mrs Bird said. "My day-to-day life has been seriously affected by EMF".

The Girl That Collapses Every Time She Laughs

Kay Underwood, 20, has cataplexy, which means that almost any sort of strong emotion triggers a dramatic weakening of her muscles. Exhilaration, anger, fear, surprise, awe and even embarrassment can also cause sufferers to suddenly collapse on the spot.

Kay, of Barrow-upon-Soar, Leicestershire (UK), who was diagnosed with the condition five years ago, once collapsed more than 40 times in a single day. She said: "People find it very odd when it happens, and it isn't always easy to cope with strangers' reactions. "

Like most cataplexy sufferers, Ms Underwood is also battling narcolepsy - a condition that makes her drop off to sleep without warning. Narcolepsy affects around 30,000 people in the UK and about 70 per cent of them also have cataplexy.

The Musician Who Can't Stop Hiccupping

 

Chris Sands, 24, from Lincoln, hiccups as often as every two seconds - and sometimes even when he is asleep. He has tried a variety of cures, including hypnosis and yoga, but nothing has worked. Mr Sands thinks his problem stems from an acid reflux condition caused by a damaged valve in his stomach. "If the acid levels are severe enough they are going to do keyhole surgery and grab part of my stomach and wrap it around the valve to tighten it," he said.

Mr Sands, who is a backing singer in the group Ebullient, said the condition has hampered his career as he has only been able to perform four times. In the next couple of weeks --as of the day of the report--, doctors at Nottingham's Queen's Medical Centre will put a tube into his stomach to monitor acid levels and decide if keyhole surgery is possible.