Ravenous

For fisherman Frank Samuelson and George Harbow, they're calling was the Open Sea, well, the open Sea and ten thou dollars. You see, both men were born in Norway in the latter half of the nineteenth century and joined the Merchant Marines in their youth. They sail all over the world together as they served their country, but took particular liking to the East coast of the United States, specifically Jersey City,

New Jersey. So after they had completed their tours, both men made their homes in New Jersey, where they built quiet lives for themselves, trawling for clams up and down the coast. Surprisingly, digging for clams did not prove to be as glamorous as it sounded, and soon Frank and George found themselves wanting more. They missed the wind in their faces and the salt in their hair, the opportunity

for action around every corner. It was just before the turn of the century when George stumbled upon something that would catapult them back into what they loved. He'd been reading a popular men's lifestyle magazine called The National Police Gazette when he came across an open letter from the magazine's publisher, a man named Richard Fox. In it, Fox offered anyone brave enough to row across the Atlantic Ocean a prize of ten thousand dollars that's over quarter of

a million dollars in today's currency. This was it just the thing to get them out of their rut and find their true purpose again. The men quickly set to work building their majestic skiff, which they dubbed the Fox after their intended beneficiary. They drained their savings accounts constructing the eighteen foot rowboat out of oak and South Jersey pine, fitting it with two benches, several watertight compartments for supplies, and a rail along the bottom in case it tipped over.

They didn't take a lot with them other than the food they brought with them. The men carried only what they needed to navigate and steer, including a compass, a sextant, ores, and special suits made of oil skins. If you've ever seen the image of a fisherman on a box of frozen fish sticks, you'll know what oil skins are. George and Frank left New York bright and early on the

morning of June six. From there they rode for fifty five days over thirty two hundred nautical miles Great Britain, covering on average about fifty miles per day, and boy were their arms tired. National Police Gazette publisher Richard Fox met the duo in Paris at the dinner held in their honor, where he presented each of them with a gold medal to mark their journey. Conspicuously absent though we're the ten thousand dollars he'd promised them, but for some

reason that didn't bother George and Frank. They used their fifteen minutes of fame to go on a lecture tour around the world, talking about how they had built their boat and accomplished their feet. It was the ted talks of their time. However, it was on their return trip

home when trouble arose like a rogue wave. Now, one might have thought that a journey of almost thirty two hundred miles in a rickety old roboat would have helped them to overcome any problem thrown their way, and sure they had their fair share nothing that couldn't be overcome with a little elbow grease and some ingenuity. They battled forty ft waves, heavy rains, avoided collision with an ie sburg,

and countless other perils on their voyage. So it's no surprise that when it came time for the men to return to the United States, they decided to let someone else do the sailing. George and Frank, as well as their famous rowboats, boarded a steamship home. The idea was to give their exhausted arms arrest after such a long and arduous journey. Unfortunately, fate had other ideas. Just as the steamer reached Cape Cod, it ran out of coal. George and Frank were stuck with no idea as to

when they'd be able to get moving again. But they weren't too bothered by it because they had a plan. They did what no one else on the ship was prepared for. They located their trusty rowboat, lowered it into the water, and then settled in for the most enjoyable activity possible. They rode themselves home. Some talents have a universal appeal. A good musical performance, a beautiful painting, a functional and inspiring architectural design. These are things that almost

everyone can appreciate. Other talents, though, are a bit less mainstream. They sit at the edges, and while a few people might find them interesting, the vast majority of the world is either disinterested, unprepared, or both. In the case of one man, it might be easier to say that his skill was simply not their cup of tea or slice of cake. Well, you'll get the idea in a moment. The world had never seen someone quite like Tarre, and

they certainly weren't ready for him. He was born in France in the seventeen hundreds, and from the very beginning everyone could tell he was different. It wasn't in his looks or the way he spoke. It was how his stomach was kind of a bottomless pit. By the time he was a teenager, he could easily eat his weight in beef, each day and somehow never gain a pound. His mouth could stretch wider than average, and people who knew him at the time described his figure as of

all things skinny. However, his appetite was so grand his family couldn't afford to feed him. That meant that they couldn't afford to keep him either, and just like that, Tarar was on his own. He didn't starve, though. To be honest, it wasn't a challenge for someone with a talent for stuff in his face to find work as a sideshow act. He fell in with a group of street performers who kept him fed and quickly exploited his

outrageous metabolism. Audiences didn't just want to see him eat hundreds of pounds of steak and chicken, though, the man with the iron stomach began varying his diet with less edible additions, including rocks, corks, and live animals. If he could fit it in his mouth, he ate it and got paid pretty well to do it too. Unfortunately, he also paid for it. You see, Tarar was a notoriously foul smelling individual who ran into serious intestinal troubles because

of his sideshow work. After a particularly long hospital stay, he realized he needed to do better for himself and his stomach, so he joined the French military. But although his newfound sense of purpose should have been enough to sustain him, he became just as sick, not eating as he did when he was It was while he was wandering around the bases medical ward when military scientists decided

to perform some tests on Tarar's incredible appetite. They realized that when his enormous stomach was empty, it became a perfect way of transporting messages to imprison soldiers across enemy lines. If only they'd train him a little better before sending him out into the field. You see, it didn't take long for Tarar to be spotted and captured. Soon after he was being questioned about his reasons for being there, Tarar, naive and afraid, told them all about the box in

his stomach that contained a note. So they chained him to a toilet and waited patiently for his um deposit. If only it had been worth the weight, the message said nothing, well, nothing that meant anything of a great deal to the enemy nor the imprisoned soldier. The entire ordeal had been nothing more than a test to see whether his gut would be a viable way of smuggling

information in the long term. Tarar was eventually released to France, where he resumed his civilian life, searching for food wherever he could find it. And he was sick of it. He had been studied and exploited and all it had gotten him was the torture of an upset stomach. Soon after, he checked himself into a local hospital in hopes of

a cure. He couldn't live with this affliction any longer. Unfortunately, medicine at the time just wasn't very advanced, and treatments consisted of filling his insides with illicit drugs to see how they performed, but nothing helped. Tar spent his nights wandering the halls looking for something to eat. He branched out from his usual fare of everyday objects and started eating off menu. He drank patients blood and ate limbs

in the morgue. Sometimes he escaped and feasted on the entrails discarded behind butcher shots or stray dogs and cats in the neighborhood. One day of fourteen month old child went missing, and although Tarar was never accused of anything outright, it was enough to have him evicted from the hospital. Years later, Tarar would find himself back there one last time as a corpse. Doctors tried performing an autopsy on him, but they didn't get too far. The odor coming off

of his body simply made a full examination all but impossible. Now, any number of things could have killed the man who literally ate everything in his path. After all, his gigantic stomach was riddled with countless infections caused by his strange dining habits. But no, Tarar wasn't undone by rocks or corks or even human limbs. It wasn't cats or dogs

or all those rotten butcher cast offs. No, the man who seemed to be able to eat anything without consequence died of something entirely unrelated, taking his reputation for an iron stomach with him to the grave completely intact. So what did kill the man who seemingly could consume anything he wanted? Tuberculosis, a sickness known through popular culture by a very different name, consumption. 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.