Bone to Pick

It's rare for a person to live past ninety years of age, even rarer for and one hundred is reserved for only the most special people. Less than one percent of the American population lives to be one hundred, and that entage goes down from there as their ages go up. But one man beat the odds. If someone had written a novel about him, readers would have called it science fiction. He was a man out of time, with firsthand knowledge of experiences that the rest of us could only read

about in books. And his name was Sylvester. His story is one of a kind. Born on a North Carolina plantation in eighteen forty one. Sylvester's younger years were tough. He was a slave, as were his parents, and he worked alongside them until he turned nineteen. That's when his owner sold him to another plantation in Mississippi. When the Civil War started, he assisted the owner in securing guns for the Confederate Army, which automatically made the young slave

a Confederate soldier. Yeah, Sylvester had unknowingly been enlisted to the side trying to keep him a slave. It's not like he had a choice, but he eventually got the upper hand a few years later when he escaped north and joined the Union Army. Once away from his old life, Sylvester soon found himself alongside almost scores of other soldiers as part of General Grant's Vicksburg's Campaign and the Battle

of Champion Hill. He had no fighting experience and he'd never been in a war before, but he held on to his faith, which helped him calm some of the more frightened soldiers around him. Sylvester was freed after the war and went back to Mississippi, where he found work on a farm, eventually settling down to work at a local sawmill, and that's where his story ended well, ended is the wrong word. Paused is more like it. You see, many years later, the people of Collins, Mississippi held a

birthday party for him. A five layer cake was brought in adorned with a lot of candles. That's because this party was held in nineteen sixty five. Yes, the Civil War veteran had lived to the unheard age of one hundred twenty four and naturally his story reached the historian named Alfred Andrews, who helped get so investor classified officially as a veteran of the Civil War, despite there being

no record of his ever having served. But Sylvester didn't need a piece of paper saying he'd been a soldier. He told Andrews stories about the war, about specific battles no one else would have known. He spoke in exceptional detail about his experiences, establishing himself as the oldest and last surviving former American slave. When you think about a life as long as Sylvester McGee's, you realize he didn't

just survive one war. He also lived through two World wars, the Korean War and Vietnam, until finally passing away in nineteen seventy one. And what makes his story even more powerful is what else he witnessed. He began his life in servitude, only to see the end of the Civil War and the end of slavery in the United States.

One years later, he saw the signing of the Civil Rights Act of nineteen sixty four, a law that prohibited discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. He watched the first black woman win an Academy award. He saw schools desegregate, and sadly, he lived to see the assassination of Dr Martin Luther King. Despite the bad news he witnessed, though there was a lot of good too. And one thing is certain, Sylvester McGhee lived a full life,

perhaps more than any other American citizen. Time is a funny thing, after all, But if we managed to stick around long enough, there's no telling the kinds of stories we'll be able to tell. Sylvester McGee knew that better than anyone else. Benjamin Franklin is best known as one of America's founding fathers, partly responsible for our independence from great Written a politician, inventor, author, and Polly Maath, Franklin

was a man with an insatiable curiosity. However, behind his striking wit and boundless intellect beat the heart of someone with more than a few secrets. Remember, Franklin's work took him all over the world. In seventeen sixty four, he traveled to London to advocate on behalf of the American colonists against new taxes being imposed on them. For ten years, he tried to make the case for lower taxes on

his people back home, but found himself blocked at every turn. However, while living in England during this period of time, Franklin needed to occupy his days with other pursuits. He was used to expanding his mind with scientific and artistic endeavors back in Philadelphia, so he continued to invent and write. But it was inside his London home that evidence of

some of his more questionable work would be discovered. Over two hundred years later, in a group calling them selves the Friends of Benjamin Franklin, House had started turning Franklin's former London abode into a museum all about him. A worthy pursuit and a noble cause, for sure. A few weeks into the process, though, one of the construction workers who had been renovating the basement came across a pit

in the floor, big enough to hold a person. It was in the middle of a room devoid of windows and positioned far from the street, a room that was for all intents and purposes hidden and soundproof. And down in the pit, sticking straight out like a weed, was a human bone. The worker called the police, who allowed

the team to continue their work. Bit by bit, a team of workers carefully uncovered over one thousand bone fragments in Franklin's basement, some of which had been carved into, while others had been sawed straight through, and there was evidence someone had drilled into several of the skulls. They found. The shards belonged to ten victims, six of whom were children, all of which were over two hundred years old. Perhaps the charming diplomat who had invented bifocals and the glass

armonica also pursued a career as a serial killer. The police, upon learning of the age of the bones, chose not to pursue an investigation. After all, how do you prosecute a founding father. But historians were curious. They documented all the fragments and began running tests. It was clear something heinous had gone down in Franklin's home well heinous by today's standards. No, Benjamin Franklin was not a serial killer. He didn't cut up people in his basement. He let

his friend William Houston do that. Houston was a medical student with a passion for studying the internal workings of the human body. However, once he and his former teacher parted way, Houston was left without a laboratory to continue his work. Luckily, his friend Benjamin Franklin lived nearby with a basement large enough for him to dissect his bodies in peace. It's best. Woman's were hard to come by,

so Houston resorted to grave robbing. He'd sneak the bodies in under cover of night, perform his work, and then bury what remained so he wouldn't get caught trying to get rid of the evidence. He never killed anyone on his own, but that didn't mean his methods were ethical. It's not clear whether Franklin participated or even knew about the experiments going on in his basement. When he returned to America, he continued to let Houston use the house

for his work. If only his friend had been more careful. In the spring of seventeen seventy four, while dissecting a cadaver, Dr Houston cut himself and contracted an infection which eventually turned into sepsis. He died a short while later, but don't worry, his bones were not among the others found

in Franklin's house. Dr William Houston was given a proper burial in Saint Martin in the Fields Churchyard in London, and Franklin, well, he really didn't have any skeletons in his closet after all, but he did keep quite a few in his basement. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by me

Aaron Manky in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can learn all about it over at the World of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.