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On this show, we are by
no means strangers. Too long forgotten tales

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of men and women eating almost anything
and everything they can lay their hands on.

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We've had stories of the man who
ate King Louis dried up old heart,

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a craze of people eating live goldfish, and even the story of Nicholas

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Wood, the man who in the
sixteen hundreds once ate eighty four rabbits in

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one sitting. But what all these
have in common is that all of those

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things could at least kind of be
classified as actual food, although you do

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need to kind of do some squinting
to try to make the dried up heart

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meet the criteria, but at one
stage it would have been somewhat meat like.

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For today's story, however, we
will be diving into the life of

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a truly extraordinary man named William V. McKenna, and while he fits the

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category of people who eat random things, those things that he ate can't really

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be classified as food. But let's
go all the way back to the beginning

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and see just how this man,
William McKenna, first discover his talented digestive

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system. These are the bizarre but
true stories from history and in some way

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involved food. I'm Nick Charlie Key, and this is the fantastic history of

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food. Now. Very little is
known about the birth and childhood of William

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V. McKenna. As best as
we can determine, he was born sometime

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in the late eighteen sixties and grew
up in the suburb of Long Island.

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As was the custom of the day, young men were sent out to work

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and earn a living for their families
as soon as they were physically able.

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Young William was no different, and
as soon as he became a teenage he

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was sent to work in the local
Myer's glass making factory in Brooklyn. Every

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day it was the same. He'd
get up, go to work, perform

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his duties, break for lunch,
work some more, and then head home

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to rest just enough to wake up
the next day and do it all over

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again. Now, it's fair to
assume that factory work wasn't particularly lucrative in

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the eighteen eighties, and being by
this point a young fourteen year old boy

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living in New York City, was
sure that William spent a lot of his

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time day dreaming about making it big
and making a name for himself in the

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city that Never sleeps. William was
a particularly scrawny young man, all bones

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and sharp edges, but he still
had a healthy appetite and looked forward each

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day to his lunch break, where
he could kick back, dream his big

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dreams, and stuff his face with
whatever he had brought along with him that

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day. But on one fateful day
in the eighteen eighties, his life was

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about to take a distinct turn.
But I'll leave it to you to decide

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if it was for the better or
for the worse. He arrived at work

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that morning, clocked in, and
began working just like he always did.

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The hours ticked by slowly, and
he occasionally would glance up at the clock

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in the factory to try and work
out how much longer he had until he

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could take his lunch break. Finally, the factory whistle blue, and men

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and boys everywhere downed their tools,
collected their lunch packets, and went to

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find somewhere to sit quietly and eat
in peace. William was starving, and

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as soon as the whistle blew,
he unwrapped his lunch and took a bite.

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Suddenly he felt the call of nature, and so left his unwrapped lunch

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on his workspace and trundled off to
the bathroom to relieve himself. Once he

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was finished, he returned, collected
his food, and took an outside to

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eat in the sunshine. He seated
himself on a bench near some coworkers and

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began tucking in to the remainder of
his packed lunch. The first bite was

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fine, as he daydreamed about something
or other, but on the second bite,

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he realized that something didn't feel quite
right in his mouth. What had

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originally been a fairly soft sandwich now
felt rather crunchy. He took another bite,

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trying to work out what could be
happening, and realized that whatever it

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was, he rather enjoyed this new
texture. He lifted his sandwich up to

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the sun, and there, covering
his lunch was a coating of tiny glass

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shods that had obviously settled on his
unwrapped lunch while he was in the bathroom.

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Oblivious to the dangers this posed,
and rather enamored by this interesting new

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turn of events, he heartily tucked
into or was left of his sandwich,

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while commenting to his co workers that
he was eating a glass sandwich. They

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were taken aback at this news and
told him to prove it. He showed

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them the sparkling flecks on his sandwich, but they were dubious. Someone at

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the back told him that he would
need to eat a bigger piece of glass

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to prove that he wasn't lying.
William accepted the challenge. He took the

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larger glass shard in his hand and
crunched a piece off with his teeth.

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He chewed it up somewhat carefully,
but went on to swallow it, apparently

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without any discomfort whatsoever. Now this
is where most people would have stopped.

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You've made your point. Your older
co workers were suitably impressed, and you

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had somehow managed to achieve this feat
without shredding your throat or intestines. But

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William suddenly understood that, for whatever
reason, he was built different. He

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popped the rest of the glass in
his mouth and chewed that up as well,

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to the utter astonishment of those around
him. The whistle blew once more,

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and the men, still shaking their
heads, slowly returned to their posts,

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talking loudly amongst themselves about what they
had just witnessed. At lunch time

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the next day, the men dared
William to eat some more glass, even

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betting him small amounts of money as
to whether or not he'd be able to

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successfully consume whatever weird item or glass
shard they produced. This became a fairly

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lucrative side hustle for William, and
soon he was eating so much glass on

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his lunch breaks that the management of
the factory began to notice that their stocks

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of glass were inexplicably disappearing. It
all became clear sometime in the following week

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when one of the owners was walking
around the factory and heard cheering coming from

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outside. He followed the noise and
came upon a crowd mesmerized by the sight

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of William devouring an entire glass wine
bottle. At first, he was stunned

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his eyes couldn't truly be seeing what
he thought they were seeing, but slowly

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adorned in him what was happening,
and he finally managed to put two and

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two together. The owner, somewhat
shortsightedly, managed to get over the initial

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shock of the fact that one of
his factory workers could seemingly ingest glass unharmed,

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and went straight to the capitalist nightmare
scenario that this man was in fact

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embezzling company glass inside his stomach each
day. Needless to say, William was

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summarily fired from his job. Initially, he was upset at the loss of

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income, but soon realized that if
his coworkers had been willing to pay to

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see him perform what he was now
considering a type of circus style act,

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well, then surely there would be
many more people who would pay for that

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privilege as well. So the next
day he approached the owner of a local

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dime museum that displayed interesting artifacts and
curious attractions, where he believed he would

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fit right in. He performed his
act for the owner, who watched on

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in amazement and signed him right up
on the spot. As the words spread,

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more and more people paid to come
and see him perform. He realized

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that he would need to broaden his
repertoire if he was to keep them coming

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back again and again. He even
approached a local reporter to follow him for

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a day and to do a full
story of a day in the life of

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what he was now calling himself the
human Ostrich. The reporter agreed and excitedly

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met up with him early in the
morning, just after William arose for the

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day. He watched as William devoured
a large plate of eggs and sausage before

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heading to the museum to perform his
act. The reporter watched aghast as William

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mckennas started off his act by performing
his classic glass eating routine. From there,

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he moved on to eating a live
bull frog, a handful of carpet

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tacks, two fistfuls of paper,
and for dessert, finished off the show

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with his favorite, a whole glass
whiskey tumbler. What made this all the

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more impressive was that McKenna was a
small statured man, standing just five foot

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six inches tall and weighing in at
just one hundred and thirty eight pounds up

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sixty two kilograms. The reporter then
followed him to lunch, where once again

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he ate a full and hearty meal
before his afternoon performances began that night.

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Thinking William would surely be too stuffed
to eat anything more, the reporter noted

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with amazement that the human ostrich finished
his day by yet again devouring another fool

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sized dinner. The reporter wrote up
his article and published it the next day

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with the following headline, the human
Ostrich a living, breathing man ordinary in

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all things save one. It went
on to read his stomach, which is

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like that of an ostrich can with
the utmost safety eat anything from a cambric

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needle to a five inch spike,
a boiler plate, or a railway sleeper.

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We'll needless to say this stirred up
a flurry of interest in William's act,

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and soon he was performing nine times
a day just to service all of

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the people who were queuing up to
see this modern marvel perform. From his

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factory days, where he was earning
between five and eight dollars a week,

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he was now raking in around eighty
dollars a week, ten times what he

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was previously making. He knew the
value of good press coverage and so performed

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stunts out in the streets to drum
up business. One of his favorites,

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which would often land him in trouble
with the law, was to shimmy up

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a nearby lamp post and eat the
glass right out of the lamptop itself.

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As his popularity grew, he began
to take his show on the road,

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leaving New York and traveling to nearby
cities and states to impress and mesmerize his

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patrons there too. As his performance
changed, he switched the live bull frog

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portion of his act to be his
grand finale, he would make a big

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show of letting the bull frog hop
around on the table before carefully swallowing it

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whole. To top it all off, he would invite the audience to come

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on stage and feel the poor frog, still kicking wildly inside his stomach.

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We could only hope that William,
like other curious eaters of his time,

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who also did live frog swallowing,
would simply bring it back up again directly

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after the show. Not. Despite
him having turned this talent into a somewhat

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luctive career, it soon became evident
that the lifestyle was taking a toll on

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him. As one paper wrote about
him a few years later, mister mc

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kenna was not calculated to impress the
ordinary observer very favorably. His collar had

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been divorced from the band of his
shirt and rode ungracefully up under his ears,

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and the bottom of his vest showed
a disposition to keep the waistband of

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his trousers at a distance. The
odor of many cigarettes, blended with the

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perfume of macerated garlic, enveloped him
like a nebulous halo, and his unkempt

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hair stood on end like the wool
of an end man's wig. It seems

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that maybe it did all become a
bit too much for him, as just

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ten years after discovering his talent,
William mc kenna suddenly disappears from the history

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books and is never heard from again. My hope is that he'd made enough

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money to pack it all up and
move somewhere quiet to live out the rest

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of his life, but I suspect
he probably went the same way as another

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act who, having seen the money
that could be made by William, had

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begun copying his act. This poor
man, named Joseph Kennedy from Saint Louis,

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Missouri, had also been making a
living from eating tacks, nails,

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screws, and other assorted bits of
hardware. His body quickly began to shut

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down, and when it became clear
that he was near the end, medical

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examiners offered to pay his family five
thousand dollars to examine his body. They

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quickly agreed, and the findings were
both curious and shocking. They found that

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the walls and lining of the man's
stomach were entirely normal, but he had

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failed to pass through any of the
items he ingested. This meant that his

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insides were literally packed to the brim
with broken glass, nails, screws,

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and so much more. But even
so, not one piece of evidence showing

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any tearing or perforation of the stomach
at all. Now, for this episode,

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I'll leave you with a somewhat incredible
flier describing the human Ostrich himself,

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William mc kenna, a pampered,
well fed, volant and veracious epicure,

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a greater feaster than Helioglabus, and
an odder human than the voluptuous Apecius.

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He swallows living kicking frogs with an
astonishing crassitude. He will empty a paper

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of carpet tacks down his ponderous throat. He will eat a pound of green

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glass and let it crash zigzagging down
his gullet. He will eat tenpenny nails

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and make one think they are tempting
and tasty morsels. He will eat the

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blades off your pocket knife and then
daintily swallow the handle. To him.

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A junk shop is loaded with delicacies
to tickle his terrible palets. This show

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is made entirely by me, Nick
Charlie Key, with our theme music having

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been made by the Enigma that is, the mysterious Breakmaster cylinder. If you'd

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like to support the show, the
simplest way to do that is over on

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00:13:56,080 --> 00:14:01,320
our Patreon account. There's just one
option. For just two bucks a month,

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you'll help me keep producing this show, and in return, you'll get

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your name forever etched onto our supporters
Wall of Fame over on our website and

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then maybe listen out for your name
in an upcoming episode. So until next

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time, bona petito. Wow.
Yeah