Stranger Than Fiction

except for maybe a partner or a close friend. Chris Cardini was also two people, but he made sure that everyone was aware of all of his different sides. He kept nothing secrets. Chris was born in London in May of nineteen one e two. His father was a World War One veteran and his mother was an Edwardian beauty who inspired numerous portraits and sculptures from the greatest artists of her time. Sadly, his parents were not happily married, and they divorced by the time he was six years old.

He went to live with his mother and older sister in Switzerland, where he developed an interest in acting. His first role was as the title character in a grade school production of rumpel Stiltskin. As he got older, he continued to act, but eventually took a break to focus on his studies. Chris took up fencing and crickets, and even tried his hand at sports like rugby and boxing, although he wasn't particularly good at those. Chris was forced to get a job during his last year at school

when both of his parents lost their incomes. He took a position at a shipping company as a mail clerk, and then in nineteen thirty nine, he followed in his father's footsteps and joined up with the Finnish Army. Their winter war had begun against the Soviets three months after the start of World War Two. He didn't serve long, though he and the other volunteers had been hosted his guards far from the front lines. They spent two weeks

in Finland before coming home again. Chris went back to work at the shipping company for a short time and then enlisted in World War two after his father died from pneumonia. In this time, Chris joined the Royal Air Force. He traveled to southern Rhodesia with plans to fly solo, but those plans crashed and burned after a series of headaches and I problems forced him to give up his dream. Despite being grounded, though, Chris found other ways to support

the war effort. For one, he became a reliable intelligence officer, making a name for himself as a man who could not only get things done, but also rallied the troops and keep everyone on task. He spoke several languages as well, including German, Italian, and French, which made him a valuable asset to the military. His tour of duty sent him everywhere South Africa, Libya, Tunicia, Italy, and countless other parts of the globe during his years with the Royal Air Force.

After the war, he hunted down and interrogated Nazi war criminals. Chris's time in the Royal Air Force had changed him. Upon returning home, he no longer felt like the office life was for him, but he was at a loss for what to do next. It was his cousin, Niccolo, who suggested that he'd try his hand at acting. Niccolo even knew of a producer who could help him break into the business. Shortly after meeting with the few producers, Chris signed a seven year contract with an agent named

David Henley. The roles Henley would be able to get him were small at first, a line here, an unspoken part there. He performed alongside some of the greatest actors who had ever graced the screen, including Lawrence Olivier and Gregory Peck, but hardly said a word. He didn't break

out until the early nineteen fifties. Several years into his career, he began starring in horror films made by Hammer, British studio that had cast him as Frankenstein's Monster, as well as a career defining role as a certain famous vampire. From there, Chris's roles only got better. He appeared in critically and commercially successful films, including an installment in the James Bond franchise, Peter Jackson, Lord of the Rings trilogy,

and the Star Wars prequels. In two thousand and ten, when he was eighty eight years old, Chris released a hit heavy metal album. It was the first of several. He loved to sing and took a particular interest in metal after hearing Black Sabbath perform in the nineteen seventies. It seems that there wasn't anything this man could do. By the time he died in two thousand fifteen, Christopher Frank Parendini Lee had been an actor, singer, author, audiobook narrator,

voiceover artist, and of course, a war hero. He had seen and experienced more than most people, perhaps evident best in an interaction between Lee and director Peter Jackson on the set of the third Lord of the Rings film, The Return of the King. Jackson was instructing Lee on how to act after being stabbed by another character. Lee, calling back to his time during the war, turned to Jackson and said, have you any idea what kind of noise happens when somebody's stabbed in the back? Because I do.

The year is eighteen sixty six and a seven year old boy walks along a street near his family home on Street in Lower Manhattan. He's recently been diagnosed with asthma, and being raised in a world that teaches the superiority of a manly man, he isn't quite feeling on top of things. After all, his aspirations lay in doing the things his father did, all those manly things like hunting, boxing,

and athletics. And while his family has not given up on curing his asthma, providing him numerous doctor recommended practices, such as strong coffee and midnight carriage rides. These symptoms still threatened to hamper the boy's life. As he passes a small market, he sees a display out front with

the harbor seal carcass on ice. Now this may sound strange to the modern listener, but at the time, harbor seals were common in New York Harbor and could be found at just about any market that sold food goods. Fascinated by the carcass, the boy asked the vendor how much for the whole thing. The vendor looked at him quizzically, perhaps questioning how the boy would even carry it, even if he could afford it, and then he gave him a price, a price that is, unfortunately out of the

budgets of the young boy. It's important to point out at this point that a full grown harbor seal weighs on average a hundred and thirty pounds, and the average seven year old, never mind the frailties of an asthmatics, seven year old ways maybe fifty. Regardless, Determined not to be defeated yet again, the boy countered how much for

just the head. By this point, the vendor is so amused by the whole ordeal that he agrees to give the boy the seal's head as a gift, and promptly cuts it off and hands it over, Carrying it home with a gleeful smile, The boy goes straight to the kitchen and pulls out his mom's cooking pot, filling it with water and heating it to a rolling boil, before dropping the seal's head into the pot and waiting as

it slowly boiled off, ski in sinew and gristle. In time, there was nothing left but the skull, exactly as the boy had planned. After bearing the brunt of his mother's frustrations at the soiling of her cookware, the boy begins his collection in his bedroom, the seal head the first of what would become many more such items. He enlisted the help of two cousins and officially formed his own mini museum of, for lack of a better description, dead

animal parts. Raised in a family with plentiful members and household staff, many of whom frequented his room to clean and simply pass through, the boy was often begged to move his collection to somewhere more out of the way so they wouldn't have to see all of them a Cobb pieces anymore, and the boy listened, moving his growing collection of now twelve items to the less frequented back

stairwell of the three story family home. By the age of nine, he had codified his collection of insects in a paper titled The Natural History of Insects, and at the ripe age of twelve, he donated some of his items a dozen mice, at a turtle, four birds, eggs, and the skull of a red squirrel to the Museum of Natural History. But this was just the beginning for this asthmatic young man who had suddenly found his calling

in life. Just eleven short years later, he would donate six hundred and twenty two preserve birds to the Smithsonian. This young boy would go on to found nearly three natural preserves, parks and forests during his lifetime, as well as expanding the reach of the Museum of Natural History, including making numerous donations to the museum himself. He went on fabled expeditions into the Amazon, into Africa, and into

the American West. He danced with death more than his fair share, and even today remains one of the most fabled characters of American history, not to mention the role he's best known for being President of the United States. The boy's name Theodore Roosevelt. 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, Ye