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pair of wool socks. All you had to do was drag your feet and then watch as that balloon magically stuck to your head until you zapped your friend with your finger. That is, but not everyone has been limited to tools such as carpet and balloons. You know, some people have had much more power at their disposal. And no one, it seems, had more than a fourteen year

old French girl named Angelique. She was born in eighteen thirty one in the town of La Perier, and as far as I can tell, her early years were unremarkable. But in eighteen forty five something changed. She had been working with other women in a clothier that manufactured gloves on oak weaving frames, and for a very long while things were normal and safe But suddenly all of that changed when she reached for the oak frame and it

moved away from her hand. Some of the women working near her claimed that even if she simply stood near the equipment, it would vibrate and rattle, as if an invisible hand were thrashing it around. Now, this was the nineteenth century in Europe, in a very deeply Catholic region, so what happened next makes a bit of sense. Her parents and employer all agreed that Angelique must be possessed by a demon. I mean, what else could produce those kinds of effects. So a priest was called for and

an exorcism was performed. But when it was over, thing had changed. In fact, things seemed to be getting worse rather quickly. Once she entered a room and approached a large chair that witnesses estimated to have weighed at least sixty pounds, but the power inside her forced the chair across the floor and then up the opposite wall, as if it were repelled by a powerful magnet. There were

medical tests, of course. One physician determined that when the unusual events like that were taking place, Angelique's heart rate would increase dramatically. Others noticed that one side of her body was warmer than the other. Good record keeping and a lot of experimenting also taught them that her powers were more active in the evening and would sometimes vanish

altogether for a couple of days before returning unannounced. Eventually, Angelique was studied by the smartest people in the land, and they all had no idea what was happening inside her body. Finally, in eighteen forty six, French physicist Francois Arago published his findings in a scholarly journal, concluding that the girls simply suffered from an abundance of electromagnetism. There were more tests and more experiences, and all of them,

I have to say, were more than a little shocking. Once, hoping that they could test the limits of her powers, two strong men were charged with holding down a chair while Angelique approached it to sit. Before she could reach it, though the chair splintered into dozens of pieces, Thankfully, the men weren't harmed by the accident. The life was becoming difficult for Angelique because furniture moved away from her. She was unable to sleep in a bed or sit in

a chair. The best her parents could manage was a stone slab covered in cork, something her powers apparently couldn't affect. It seemed as though she was doomed to a life of difficulty and unintended accidents. Thankfully, all of that changed later in eighteen her parents finally decided that they could find answers in Paris, and so they packed her up as best they could and began the law difficult journey across France. Once there, though the greatest scientific minds were

stumped by a different problem. Angelique's amazing magnetism seems to have vanished. What it was will never know, but it's clear that Angelique Cotine had a special gift, if even just for a little while. But looking back, I can't blame her or her family for being frightened and confused. She was doing things that no person should be able to do, and if that happened to you or me, I'm sure that we'd probably be more then a little shocked.

Few things are truly limitless. Sure it might be fun to imagine winning the lottery and bringing home a check for a hundred million dollars, but depending on how you spend it, that well could run dry before you retire. It used to be thought that there was a nearly endless supply of buffalo in the American West. But human activity and over hunting put an end to that idea pretty quickly, and nearly put an end to the buffalo itself.

And it's that search for the limitless that's at the root of so many of histories, great quests too, the philosopher's stone that so many alchemists were looking for. It would have dispensed limitless life, the recipe that finally would transform led to gold. You guessed it, limitless wealth. But at the beginning of the eighteenth century, Johan was looking for something different. For him, the ultimate pursuit was unlimited energy. To be more specific, he dreamed of a device that

could generate more energy than he put into it. It's one of the holy grails of physics and has been for centuries. And you've heard of it too. They referred to it as a perpetual motion machine. Well as it happened in late seventeen seventeen, Johan believed that he had cracked it. He was working under the patronage of a wealthy count in what is now modern Germany, and after

a handful of less successful attempts. He had finally built a machine that he kept locked in a room, safe from prying eyes and mettlesome hands, and if he was correct, he had made history. His first attempt at perpetual motion took place in seventeen twelve at the young age of just thirty two. His device resembled a large wheel about three feet in diameter and four inches thick. But Johan was a paranoid sort of guy. Yes, he wanted to demonstrate his efforts, but he was also worried about all

the other scientists who came to inspect it. The following year, he displayed a new and improved version of the device in Leipzig. This one was also a wheel, but over six feet in diameter. All one needed to do was give the wheel a gentle spin and the mechanism inside would take over, increasing the speed over time. It could even be connected to gears that would allow the rotational force to raise and lower heavy objects, all without slowing

down or needing another wish. In seventeen fifteen, that wheel was tested by a group of experts, much to Johann's chagrin when they were done, though their report was glowing, Johan's perpetual motion machine was real, but the response from others in the scientific community was less than encouraging. People who had never examined the device made fun of Johan, calling him a crackpots and a fraud. Naturally, that didn't

sit well with him. Still, he had enough success to convince him that it was a good idea to change his name to something that sounded a lot more like a Greek philosopher and began referring to himself as or Furious. And then he retreated to Germany and took funding from

that wealthy count that I mentioned earlier. After building his third and final perpetual motion device in a gardening shed on the count's property, he moved the contraption indoors, where it could be locked up and guarded around the clock. When he finally felt that his masterpiece was ready, he sent out new invitations to have it inspected just as before, and a number of scientists took him up on the offer.

Sometime in the winter of seventeen seventeen to seventeen eighteen, those investigators arrived, Johan unlocked the door to the room where his magical device awaited them, and then let the men get to work. And needless to say, they were impressed. One of the men, Willem Jacob Graveshand, actually wrote up his findings and sent them to the English mathematician Sir Isaac Newton. As far as everyone who witnessed it was concerned,

Johan had done it. Of course, everyone wanted to know how it all worked, but Johan was a stubborn guy. These were smart men, and they could very easily take his explanation and go make their own. No, he wanted payment for access to their inner workings, and he named his sum an exorbitant amount of money. From what I've read, no one took the bait. In fact, no one even nibbled, and with no payment offered, Johan decided that if he couldn't sell the devices secrets, then no one should ever

scovered them for free. So that night he locked himself in the machines room with nothing more than his distraught mental state and a large axe, and proceeded to chop the device to pieces. As you might imagine, Johan's wealthy patron didn't like what the inventor had done. How could he get a return on his investment if the machine was in pieces. A short while later Johan found himself

out on the street. Poor Johan Bessler would be an aimless wanderer for another twenty seven years, finally passing away in seventeen. Then all of that effort, all that time and money and energy that he poured into his device, well, in the end, it netted him nothing in return, quite the opposite of what his device was designed to accomplish. 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 Mankey 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. Yeah,