38 - The Great Goldfish Eating Craze of 1939

Not only were western cultures happily eating raw fish for ages, at one point they were uh, in fact eating it so raw as for it still, in fact, to be alive.

That’s right, today we’re talking about the 1939 craze of college students competing to swallow as many as they could of the humble goldfish.

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To make it easy, Athletic Greens will give you a FREE 1 year supply of immune-supporting Vitamin D AND 5 FREE travel packs with your first purchase. All you have to do is visit www.athleticgreens.com/EMERGING to take ownership of your health and pick up the ultimate daily nutritional insurance!

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References:


https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/great-goldfish-swallowing-craze-1939-180954429/#:~:text=The%20Great%20Goldfish%20Swallowing%20Craze%20of%201939%20Never%20Really%20Ended,-A%20Harvard%20undergrad's&text=One%20of%20the%20weirdest%2C%20most,once%20eaten%20a%20live%20fish.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldfish_swallowing
https://americanhistory.si.edu/blog/2011/01/1939-the-year-of-goldfish-swallowing.html
https://www.ripleys.com/weird-news/goldfish-swallowing/
https://dutchreview.com/news/live-goldfish-swallowing/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odori_ebi
https://www.businessinsider.in/india/news/the-fish-prasadam-remedy-annual-festival-where-thousands-swallow-live-fish-to-cure-asthma/articleshow/91811468.cms#:~:text=In%20Hyderabad%2C%20fish%20prasadam%20is,that%20fish%20prasadam%20cures%20asthma.

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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
By now, I'm sure that many, if not most, of you have
at least tried that now most westernizedof Japanese delicacies, sushi. The concept
of eating raw fish seems like itmay have taken a while to catch on
amongst Western cultures. For the truthis, as we'll find out in far
more detail to day, not onlywere Western cultures happily eating raw fish for

(00:21):
ages at one point, they werem in fact eating it so raw as
for it is still in fact tobe alive. Now, we aren't talking
about great, big bluefin tuna,or heaven forbid, a sword fish,
although that would take sword swallowing toa whole new level. No, we're
talking about a fish that, unfortunatelyfor it, had the two qualities needed

(00:42):
for it to become the chosen fish. Firstly, it was small enough to
be easily gulped down in one go. And secondly, they were fairly ubiquitous,
found in homes, bedrooms, colleges, and pet stores everywhere. That's
right. Today, we're talking aboutthe nineteen thirty nine craze of college students
competing to swallow as many as theycould of the humble goldfish. Welcome to

(01:11):
the fantastic history of food. Strangebut true stories from history that in some
way involved food. I'm your host, Nick Charlie Key. In nineteen thirty
nine, in the hallowed halls ofHarvard University, boredom was brewing. A

(01:36):
freshman student by the frankly ridiculous nameof Lothrop Wthington Junior began bragging to his
friends that he had, in factonce eaten alive fish. At first,
his friends just rolled their eyes atwhat was clearly just another classic Wthington Junior
tall tale. But Lothrop was adamanthe had done and if they didn't believe
him, he would do it again. All right, They said, put

(01:59):
your money where you're fishy mouth is. So he bet them ten dollars that
he could do it again, Andfrom that moment it was on. This
wasn't just going to be a quickaxe done in a dorm room. No,
this was going to be a spectaclefor the whole student body to witness.
Not only that, but they had'teven organized for some members of the
press to attend and cover the event. So a few days later, on

(02:20):
the third of March, he gotup into a raised platform in front of
a grinning crowd, of his peers. He surveyed the scene in front of
him, and there on a smallside table was a ball with a little
three inch goldfish happily and thankfully obliviouslyswimming around. He looked up again at
the crowd and said, everyone ready. The chair that erupted was all the

(02:42):
encouragement he needed to go ahead.He plucked the doomed goldfish out of its
ball and dropped it right down histhroat in one giant gulp. Everyone was
silent as they watched His eyes widenedbriefly as he suppressed his gag reflex.
Then he opened his mouth and proudlythrust his tongue out for everyone to see
there was no longer any fish inhis mouth. The crowd went wild,

(03:05):
cheering him on as his friends happilyproduced the ten dollars there had bet him.
In a comment to the local presswho had attended, he mentioned that
the toughest part about it had beenthe scales catching in his throat as the
fish went down, In an amusingjuxtaposition to his activities that day, He
followed up his stunt by eating friedfish and chips for dinner that night.
Newspapers and magazines all over the countryran with the story, with Time and

(03:30):
Life magazines featuring the stunt in articlesof theirs, and with this reporting came
a level of fame and notoriety,both for Lothrop himself and for Harvard as
an institution. Now we all knowhow competitive it can get between the country's
top colleges when it comes to anyform of sport or competition, but it
seems that even football, basketball,and baseball briefly took a back seat to

(03:52):
the new goldfish swallowing craze that beganto sweep the country's institutions. The University
of Pennsylvania, looking to put theirnames in the hat, chose their champion,
who set the bar for future attemptsby swallowing twenty five poor goldfish one
after the other. Mit not tobe outdone, took the title themselves of
the newly coined Intercollegiate Goldfish Swallowing Championwhen one of their students, Albert Hayes,

(04:17):
smashed Pennsylvania's record of twenty five byupping his intake to forty two goldfish.
Hayes would take almost a minute perfish in his attempt, as he
reportedly struggled with the fish flopping aroundin his mouth and once or twice having
a jump clear out as the fishsought its freedom from Albert's gaping more at

(04:45):
colleges and universities all around the country, the craze spread like wildfire. Girls
began joining in two and fierce rivalriesbegan to emerge between historically competitive schools.
Most struggled to match the totals setby MIT, but tent to simply be
ahead of their closest rivals. Therecord would be broken later that same year
by a student named Joseph Deliberato,who attended Clark University. He was not

(05:11):
content with simply beating the record offorty two. He wanted to obliterate it
so completely it would possibly never bebeaten again. So on his Fateful day,
he steadied himself in front of themassed crowd and began swallowing goldfish after
goldfish. He started strong, keepingup a fairly steady pace and rhythm of
goldfish being plucked from the tank andsubsequently plopped into his mouth. When he

(05:36):
was in the thities and nearing therecord, people began to notice him starting
to sweat, and he was graduallyslowing down a little. He plopped the
fortieth goldfish into his mouth, andthe crowd cheered even louder. Just three
more to go to break the recordfor Clark University. In went number forty
one, then forty two. Thecrowd waited in silence as he closed his

(05:59):
eyes lifted number forty three high intothe air above his open mouth. He
let the fish go, and hegulped it down, just like he had
the others before it. The crowderupted. He had done it, he
had broken the record, but hewasn't stopping. He plucked another, and
then another, and in another,swallowing each one with gusto and a renewed

(06:20):
vigor. By the time Joseph wasdone, not only had he broken the
previous record, he had smashed itto bits by more than doubling it,
eventually calling it quits after swallowing arecord eighty nine goldfish in one sitting.
As with most fads, its popularityburned brightly for a short while, but

(06:41):
quickly began to die out. Itsdemise was partly due to the Massachusetts state
Senator George Krapp, filing a billto outlaw the practice in his state in
order to preserve the fish from crueland wanton consumption. The Public Health Service
doubled down on this by issuing astatement that live fish could contain tape worms
and were there four unsuitable for consumptionat all. Interestingly, the universities themselves

(07:03):
fired back by publishing studies that showedthat adult males could consume around one hundred
and fifty live fish seemingly without consequence. Fifty years after the fad exploded onto
the scene, the record is saidto have been smashed yet again and set
at a frankly eyewatering three hundred livegoldfish consumed in one sitting. This is

(07:24):
still somewhat in the realm of urbanlegend, though, but if true,
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(07:46):
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(08:11):
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things of this nature, it nevertruly dies out for good, and there

(09:18):
are many stomach churning videos on YouTubeof people attempting the goldfish challenge. In
the UK, however, you cannow face legal prosecution for doing this.
Recently, a twenty year old fromSuffolk was fined two hundred pounds and banned
from owning any live animals for ayear after police found a video of him
swallowing too live goldfish. Luckily forthese two goldfish, howiver, he couldn't

(09:41):
keep them down and they were rescuedand then survived after he threw them back
up again. In twenty sixteen,in Rotterdam, a few young Dutchmen,
after having a few too many drinks, began swallowing goldfish live from their home
aquarium. Not to be outdone,a twenty eight year old man among them
scoffed at the simpler city of justswallowing goldfish and plucked a much larger,

(10:03):
and unfortunately for the man, muchspikier, bronze catfish out of the tank.
He put the catfish into a glassof water, and, as can
be seen on a video from theincident, his friends around him started chanting
in Dutch big Fish, Big Fish, He tilts the glass back and swallows
the catfish whole. From here,things quickly turned ugly as the man is

(10:24):
seen struggling to dislodge it from histhroat as he coughs up a bit of
fish and blood. Instead of immediatelyrushing the man to hospital, his friends
try to dislodge the fish by pouringbeer into his mouth, followed by multiple
spoons of honey, and then finallysome ice cream, before admitting defeat and
taking him to the emergency room.At the heart of the argument for or

(10:46):
against this sort of practice is simpleethics. Animal rights groups will understandably say
that it causes needless pain to innocentliving beings, but those in favor of
such shenanigans argue that other foods likeoysters, are eaten live all around the
world. In fact, there aremany cultural traditions that favor the consumption of
live seafood as a delicacy, regardlessof whether it holds any inherent cruelty in

(11:09):
it. In Japan, there isa delicacy known as odori ebi, which
in English is translated as the dancingshrimp. It is considered a form of
sushi, whereby a baby shrimp thatare still alive and able to move their
legs and antennae are dunked into astrong alcoholic bath of sake in order to
render the shrimp intoxicated. Then theyare dipped into a special acidic dipping source

(11:31):
that makes the shrimp's muscles flex andcontract as if it was dancing, before
quickly being eaten whole. In someinstances, the head is removed prior to
serving and brought deep fried as aside dish. There is also a belief
amongst certain chefs that when consuming thespiny lobster, the meat tastes the best
right out of the belly of thecrustacean while its head still unnervingly moves around

(11:54):
on the plate. Thankfully, thisisn't truly alive, but simply the nerve
endings reacting to the acid and salt. In India, there is a particularly
interesting yearly ritual that happens during thefirst week of June. Thousands of asthma
sufferers flock to the city of Nampalaein Hyderabad to take part in a yearly
asthma cure called fish Prucedam. It'sa practice that dates back to eighteen forty

(12:18):
five and all started with one particularfamily. They claim to have perfected a
secret recipe that can cure someone ofasthma, and have passed this recipe down
the generations for almost two hundred years. A few years ago, in twenty
eighteen, more than eighty thousand peopleattended the festival, with a Department of
Fisheries providing almost two hundred thousand fingeringfish. The miracle cure involves a very

(12:41):
specific type of murral fish that hasthe secret recipe yellow herbal paste stuffed into
its mouth. This little fish isthen swallowed whole and alive by the festival
goers. It is said to workeven better if the patient feels the fish
wriggling as it goes down their throat, as this is said to help coat
the throat with a special paste asit descends, making the chances of it

(13:03):
working all the higher. Finally,for this long list of stomach churning examples,
we finish on the Asian delicacy ofsun Nakjee, which is the practice
of eating octopus tentacles served in sesameoil. Now that sounds at least pretty
normal, so why is it onthis list? Well, besides the fact
that even though those octopus tentacles arenot alive because of the oil they are

(13:26):
dastin. They wriggle and writhe asif alive on the plate, but still
they are technically not alive. Sowhy are there on this list? Well,
true to form, people do infact like to eat the whole baby
octopus alive, but this is onedelicacy that likes to fight back. On
average, six people a year arekilled trying to eat these whole baby octopi

(13:48):
as during the swallowing of the creature, it flares the suckers on its tentacles
and grabs hold of the inside ofthe diner's throat. Unable to get it
to release, they unfortunately succumb toa lack of oxygen and become another victim
of the octopus resistance. So beforeyou decide that you two would like to
try quickly downing some form of liveanimal, I'd recommend firstly just not doing

(14:09):
it, but if you're adamant,maybe make sure it doesn't have any spikes
or tentacles that could spell disaster foryour slow moving Saturday afternoon. Thank you

(14:31):
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(14:56):
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