August 31, 2023 • 14 mins
For today's story we will be diving into the life of a truly extraordinary man named William V McKenna, and while he fits the category of “people who eat random things”, those things that he ate can’t really be classified as food.
So let's see just how this man, William McKenna first discovered his talented digestive system.
-------------------
Please support me on Patreon for just $2 a month : patreon.com/foodhistorypod
-------------------
Sources for this episode's research:
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-fantastic-history-of-food--3591729/support.
So let's see just how this man, William McKenna first discovered his talented digestive system.
-------------------
Please support me on Patreon for just $2 a month : patreon.com/foodhistorypod
-------------------
Sources for this episode's research:
- https://www.picuki.com/tag/humanostrich
- https://www.weirdhistorian.com/appetite-for-intestinal-destruction-the-man-who-ate-glass-nails-tacks-and-frogs/
- https://historianandrew.medium.com/william-mckenna-the-human-ostrich-who-made-a-living-eating-nails-glass-and-live-frogs-dd1697a3c7d5
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-fantastic-history-of-food--3591729/support.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
On this show, we are byno means strangers. Too long forgotten tales
of men and women eating almost anythingand everything they can lay their hands on.
We've had stories of the man whoate King Louis dried up old heart,
a craze of people eating live goldfish, and even the story of Nicholas
Wood, the man who in thesixteen hundreds once ate eighty four rabbits in
(00:21):
one sitting. But what all thesehave in common is that all of those
things could at least kind of beclassified as actual food, although you do
need to kind of do some squintingto try to make the dried up heart
meet the criteria, but at onestage it would have been somewhat meat like.
For today's story, however, wewill be diving into the life of
a truly extraordinary man named William V. McKenna, and while he fits the
(00:46):
category of people who eat random things, those things that he ate can't really
be classified as food. But let'sgo all the way back to the beginning
and see just how this man,William McKenna, first discover his talented digestive
system. These are the bizarre buttrue stories from history and in some way
(01:15):
involved food. I'm Nick Charlie Key, and this is the fantastic history of
food. Now. Very little isknown about the birth and childhood of William
(01:40):
V. McKenna. As best aswe can determine, he was born sometime
in the late eighteen sixties and grewup in the suburb of Long Island.
As was the custom of the day, young men were sent out to work
and earn a living for their familiesas soon as they were physically able.
Young William was no different, andas soon as he became a teenage he
was sent to work in the localMyer's glass making factory in Brooklyn. Every
(02:05):
day it was the same. He'dget up, go to work, perform
his duties, break for lunch,work some more, and then head home
to rest just enough to wake upthe next day and do it all over
again. Now, it's fair toassume that factory work wasn't particularly lucrative in
the eighteen eighties, and being bythis point a young fourteen year old boy
living in New York City, wassure that William spent a lot of his
(02:28):
time day dreaming about making it bigand making a name for himself in the
city that Never sleeps. William wasa particularly scrawny young man, all bones
and sharp edges, but he stillhad a healthy appetite and looked forward each
day to his lunch break, wherehe could kick back, dream his big
dreams, and stuff his face withwhatever he had brought along with him that
(02:51):
day. But on one fateful dayin the eighteen eighties, his life was
about to take a distinct turn.But I'll leave it to you to decide
if it was for the better orfor the worse. He arrived at work
that morning, clocked in, andbegan working just like he always did.
The hours ticked by slowly, andhe occasionally would glance up at the clock
(03:12):
in the factory to try and workout how much longer he had until he
could take his lunch break. Finally, the factory whistle blue, and men
and boys everywhere downed their tools,collected their lunch packets, and went to
find somewhere to sit quietly and eatin peace. William was starving, and
as soon as the whistle blew,he unwrapped his lunch and took a bite.
(03:34):
Suddenly he felt the call of nature, and so left his unwrapped lunch
on his workspace and trundled off tothe bathroom to relieve himself. Once he
was finished, he returned, collectedhis food, and took an outside to
eat in the sunshine. He seatedhimself on a bench near some coworkers and
began tucking in to the remainder ofhis packed lunch. The first bite was
(03:55):
fine, as he daydreamed about somethingor other, but on the second bite,
he realized that something didn't feel quiteright in his mouth. What had
originally been a fairly soft sandwich nowfelt rather crunchy. He took another bite,
trying to work out what could behappening, and realized that whatever it
was, he rather enjoyed this newtexture. He lifted his sandwich up to
(04:17):
the sun, and there, coveringhis lunch was a coating of tiny glass
shods that had obviously settled on hisunwrapped lunch while he was in the bathroom.
Oblivious to the dangers this posed,and rather enamored by this interesting new
(04:38):
turn of events, he heartily tuckedinto or was left of his sandwich,
while commenting to his co workers thathe was eating a glass sandwich. They
were taken aback at this news andtold him to prove it. He showed
them the sparkling flecks on his sandwich, but they were dubious. Someone at
the back told him that he wouldneed to eat a bigger piece of glass
to prove that he wasn't lying.William accepted the challenge. He took the
(05:02):
larger glass shard in his hand andcrunched a piece off with his teeth.
He chewed it up somewhat carefully,but went on to swallow it, apparently
without any discomfort whatsoever. Now thisis where most people would have stopped.
You've made your point. Your olderco workers were suitably impressed, and you
had somehow managed to achieve this featwithout shredding your throat or intestines. But
(05:26):
William suddenly understood that, for whateverreason, he was built different. He
popped the rest of the glass inhis mouth and chewed that up as well,
to the utter astonishment of those aroundhim. The whistle blew once more,
and the men, still shaking theirheads, slowly returned to their posts,
talking loudly amongst themselves about what theyhad just witnessed. At lunch time
(05:48):
the next day, the men daredWilliam to eat some more glass, even
betting him small amounts of money asto whether or not he'd be able to
successfully consume whatever weird item or glassshard they produced. This became a fairly
lucrative side hustle for William, andsoon he was eating so much glass on
his lunch breaks that the management ofthe factory began to notice that their stocks
(06:12):
of glass were inexplicably disappearing. Itall became clear sometime in the following week
when one of the owners was walkingaround the factory and heard cheering coming from
outside. He followed the noise andcame upon a crowd mesmerized by the sight
of William devouring an entire glass winebottle. At first, he was stunned
(06:32):
his eyes couldn't truly be seeing whathe thought they were seeing, but slowly
adorned in him what was happening,and he finally managed to put two and
two together. The owner, somewhatshortsightedly, managed to get over the initial
shock of the fact that one ofhis factory workers could seemingly ingest glass unharmed,
and went straight to the capitalist nightmarescenario that this man was in fact
(06:56):
embezzling company glass inside his stomach eachday. Needless to say, William was
summarily fired from his job. Initially, he was upset at the loss of
income, but soon realized that ifhis coworkers had been willing to pay to
see him perform what he was nowconsidering a type of circus style act,
well, then surely there would bemany more people who would pay for that
(07:16):
privilege as well. So the nextday he approached the owner of a local
dime museum that displayed interesting artifacts andcurious attractions, where he believed he would
fit right in. He performed hisact for the owner, who watched on
in amazement and signed him right upon the spot. As the words spread,
more and more people paid to comeand see him perform. He realized
(07:41):
that he would need to broaden hisrepertoire if he was to keep them coming
back again and again. He evenapproached a local reporter to follow him for
a day and to do a fullstory of a day in the life of
what he was now calling himself thehuman Ostrich. The reporter agreed and excitedly
met up with him early in themorning, just after William arose for the
(08:01):
day. He watched as William devoureda large plate of eggs and sausage before
heading to the museum to perform hisact. The reporter watched aghast as William
mckennas started off his act by performinghis classic glass eating routine. From there,
he moved on to eating a livebull frog, a handful of carpet
tacks, two fistfuls of paper,and for dessert, finished off the show
(08:24):
with his favorite, a whole glasswhiskey tumbler. What made this all the
more impressive was that McKenna was asmall statured man, standing just five foot
(08:45):
six inches tall and weighing in atjust one hundred and thirty eight pounds up
sixty two kilograms. The reporter thenfollowed him to lunch, where once again
he ate a full and hearty mealbefore his afternoon performances began that night.
Thinking William would surely be too stuffedto eat anything more, the reporter noted
with amazement that the human ostrich finishedhis day by yet again devouring another fool
(09:09):
sized dinner. The reporter wrote uphis article and published it the next day
with the following headline, the humanOstrich a living, breathing man ordinary in
all things save one. It wenton to read his stomach, which is
like that of an ostrich can withthe utmost safety eat anything from a cambric
(09:31):
needle to a five inch spike,a boiler plate, or a railway sleeper.
We'll needless to say this stirred upa flurry of interest in William's act,
and soon he was performing nine timesa day just to service all of
the people who were queuing up tosee this modern marvel perform. From his
factory days, where he was earningbetween five and eight dollars a week,
(09:52):
he was now raking in around eightydollars a week, ten times what he
was previously making. He knew thevalue of good press coverage and so performed
stunts out in the streets to drumup business. One of his favorites,
which would often land him in troublewith the law, was to shimmy up
a nearby lamp post and eat theglass right out of the lamptop itself.
(10:15):
As his popularity grew, he beganto take his show on the road,
leaving New York and traveling to nearbycities and states to impress and mesmerize his
patrons there too. As his performancechanged, he switched the live bull frog
portion of his act to be hisgrand finale, he would make a big
show of letting the bull frog hoparound on the table before carefully swallowing it
(10:35):
whole. To top it all off, he would invite the audience to come
on stage and feel the poor frog, still kicking wildly inside his stomach.
We could only hope that William,like other curious eaters of his time,
who also did live frog swallowing,would simply bring it back up again directly
after the show. Not. Despitehim having turned this talent into a somewhat
(10:58):
luctive career, it soon became evidentthat the lifestyle was taking a toll on
him. As one paper wrote abouthim a few years later, mister mc
kenna was not calculated to impress theordinary observer very favorably. His collar had
been divorced from the band of hisshirt and rode ungracefully up under his ears,
and the bottom of his vest showeda disposition to keep the waistband of
(11:18):
his trousers at a distance. Theodor of many cigarettes, blended with the
perfume of macerated garlic, enveloped himlike a nebulous halo, and his unkempt
hair stood on end like the woolof an end man's wig. It seems
that maybe it did all become abit too much for him, as just
ten years after discovering his talent,William mc kenna suddenly disappears from the history
(11:41):
books and is never heard from again. My hope is that he'd made enough
money to pack it all up andmove somewhere quiet to live out the rest
of his life, but I suspecthe probably went the same way as another
act who, having seen the moneythat could be made by William, had
begun copying his act. This poorman, named Joseph Kennedy from Saint Louis,
Missouri, had also been making aliving from eating tacks, nails,
(12:05):
screws, and other assorted bits ofhardware. His body quickly began to shut
down, and when it became clearthat he was near the end, medical
examiners offered to pay his family fivethousand dollars to examine his body. They
quickly agreed, and the findings wereboth curious and shocking. They found that
the walls and lining of the man'sstomach were entirely normal, but he had
(12:28):
failed to pass through any of theitems he ingested. This meant that his
insides were literally packed to the brimwith broken glass, nails, screws,
and so much more. But evenso, not one piece of evidence showing
any tearing or perforation of the stomachat all. Now, for this episode,
I'll leave you with a somewhat incredibleflier describing the human Ostrich himself,
(12:54):
William mc kenna, a pampered,well fed, volant and veracious epicure,
a greater feaster than Helioglabus, andan odder human than the voluptuous Apecius.
He swallows living kicking frogs with anastonishing crassitude. He will empty a paper
of carpet tacks down his ponderous throat. He will eat a pound of green
(13:15):
glass and let it crash zigzagging downhis gullet. He will eat tenpenny nails
and make one think they are temptingand tasty morsels. He will eat the
blades off your pocket knife and thendaintily swallow the handle. To him.
A junk shop is loaded with delicaciesto tickle his terrible palets. This show
(13:39):
is made entirely by me, NickCharlie Key, with our theme music having
been made by the Enigma that is, the mysterious Breakmaster cylinder. If you'd
like to support the show, thesimplest way to do that is over on
our Patreon account. There's just oneoption. For just two bucks a month,
(14:01):
you'll help me keep producing this show, and in return, you'll get
your name forever etched onto our supportersWall of Fame over on our website and
then maybe listen out for your namein an upcoming episode. So until next
time, bona petito. Wow.Yeah
On this show, we are byno means strangers. Too long forgotten tales
of men and women eating almost anythingand everything they can lay their hands on.
We've had stories of the man whoate King Louis dried up old heart,
a craze of people eating live goldfish, and even the story of Nicholas
Wood, the man who in thesixteen hundreds once ate eighty four rabbits in
(00:21):
one sitting. But what all thesehave in common is that all of those
things could at least kind of beclassified as actual food, although you do
need to kind of do some squintingto try to make the dried up heart
meet the criteria, but at onestage it would have been somewhat meat like.
For today's story, however, wewill be diving into the life of
a truly extraordinary man named William V. McKenna, and while he fits the
(00:46):
category of people who eat random things, those things that he ate can't really
be classified as food. But let'sgo all the way back to the beginning
and see just how this man,William McKenna, first discover his talented digestive
system. These are the bizarre buttrue stories from history and in some way
(01:15):
involved food. I'm Nick Charlie Key, and this is the fantastic history of
food. Now. Very little isknown about the birth and childhood of William
(01:40):
V. McKenna. As best aswe can determine, he was born sometime
in the late eighteen sixties and grewup in the suburb of Long Island.
As was the custom of the day, young men were sent out to work
and earn a living for their familiesas soon as they were physically able.
Young William was no different, andas soon as he became a teenage he
was sent to work in the localMyer's glass making factory in Brooklyn. Every
(02:05):
day it was the same. He'dget up, go to work, perform
his duties, break for lunch,work some more, and then head home
to rest just enough to wake upthe next day and do it all over
again. Now, it's fair toassume that factory work wasn't particularly lucrative in
the eighteen eighties, and being bythis point a young fourteen year old boy
living in New York City, wassure that William spent a lot of his
(02:28):
time day dreaming about making it bigand making a name for himself in the
city that Never sleeps. William wasa particularly scrawny young man, all bones
and sharp edges, but he stillhad a healthy appetite and looked forward each
day to his lunch break, wherehe could kick back, dream his big
dreams, and stuff his face withwhatever he had brought along with him that
(02:51):
day. But on one fateful dayin the eighteen eighties, his life was
about to take a distinct turn.But I'll leave it to you to decide
if it was for the better orfor the worse. He arrived at work
that morning, clocked in, andbegan working just like he always did.
The hours ticked by slowly, andhe occasionally would glance up at the clock
(03:12):
in the factory to try and workout how much longer he had until he
could take his lunch break. Finally, the factory whistle blue, and men
and boys everywhere downed their tools,collected their lunch packets, and went to
find somewhere to sit quietly and eatin peace. William was starving, and
as soon as the whistle blew,he unwrapped his lunch and took a bite.
(03:34):
Suddenly he felt the call of nature, and so left his unwrapped lunch
on his workspace and trundled off tothe bathroom to relieve himself. Once he
was finished, he returned, collectedhis food, and took an outside to
eat in the sunshine. He seatedhimself on a bench near some coworkers and
began tucking in to the remainder ofhis packed lunch. The first bite was
(03:55):
fine, as he daydreamed about somethingor other, but on the second bite,
he realized that something didn't feel quiteright in his mouth. What had
originally been a fairly soft sandwich nowfelt rather crunchy. He took another bite,
trying to work out what could behappening, and realized that whatever it
was, he rather enjoyed this newtexture. He lifted his sandwich up to
(04:17):
the sun, and there, coveringhis lunch was a coating of tiny glass
shods that had obviously settled on hisunwrapped lunch while he was in the bathroom.
Oblivious to the dangers this posed,and rather enamored by this interesting new
(04:38):
turn of events, he heartily tuckedinto or was left of his sandwich,
while commenting to his co workers thathe was eating a glass sandwich. They
were taken aback at this news andtold him to prove it. He showed
them the sparkling flecks on his sandwich, but they were dubious. Someone at
the back told him that he wouldneed to eat a bigger piece of glass
to prove that he wasn't lying.William accepted the challenge. He took the
(05:02):
larger glass shard in his hand andcrunched a piece off with his teeth.
He chewed it up somewhat carefully,but went on to swallow it, apparently
without any discomfort whatsoever. Now thisis where most people would have stopped.
You've made your point. Your olderco workers were suitably impressed, and you
had somehow managed to achieve this featwithout shredding your throat or intestines. But
(05:26):
William suddenly understood that, for whateverreason, he was built different. He
popped the rest of the glass inhis mouth and chewed that up as well,
to the utter astonishment of those aroundhim. The whistle blew once more,
and the men, still shaking theirheads, slowly returned to their posts,
talking loudly amongst themselves about what theyhad just witnessed. At lunch time
(05:48):
the next day, the men daredWilliam to eat some more glass, even
betting him small amounts of money asto whether or not he'd be able to
successfully consume whatever weird item or glassshard they produced. This became a fairly
lucrative side hustle for William, andsoon he was eating so much glass on
his lunch breaks that the management ofthe factory began to notice that their stocks
(06:12):
of glass were inexplicably disappearing. Itall became clear sometime in the following week
when one of the owners was walkingaround the factory and heard cheering coming from
outside. He followed the noise andcame upon a crowd mesmerized by the sight
of William devouring an entire glass winebottle. At first, he was stunned
(06:32):
his eyes couldn't truly be seeing whathe thought they were seeing, but slowly
adorned in him what was happening,and he finally managed to put two and
two together. The owner, somewhatshortsightedly, managed to get over the initial
shock of the fact that one ofhis factory workers could seemingly ingest glass unharmed,
and went straight to the capitalist nightmarescenario that this man was in fact
(06:56):
embezzling company glass inside his stomach eachday. Needless to say, William was
summarily fired from his job. Initially, he was upset at the loss of
income, but soon realized that ifhis coworkers had been willing to pay to
see him perform what he was nowconsidering a type of circus style act,
well, then surely there would bemany more people who would pay for that
(07:16):
privilege as well. So the nextday he approached the owner of a local
dime museum that displayed interesting artifacts andcurious attractions, where he believed he would
fit right in. He performed hisact for the owner, who watched on
in amazement and signed him right upon the spot. As the words spread,
more and more people paid to comeand see him perform. He realized
(07:41):
that he would need to broaden hisrepertoire if he was to keep them coming
back again and again. He evenapproached a local reporter to follow him for
a day and to do a fullstory of a day in the life of
what he was now calling himself thehuman Ostrich. The reporter agreed and excitedly
met up with him early in themorning, just after William arose for the
(08:01):
day. He watched as William devoureda large plate of eggs and sausage before
heading to the museum to perform hisact. The reporter watched aghast as William
mckennas started off his act by performinghis classic glass eating routine. From there,
he moved on to eating a livebull frog, a handful of carpet
tacks, two fistfuls of paper,and for dessert, finished off the show
(08:24):
with his favorite, a whole glasswhiskey tumbler. What made this all the
more impressive was that McKenna was asmall statured man, standing just five foot
(08:45):
six inches tall and weighing in atjust one hundred and thirty eight pounds up
sixty two kilograms. The reporter thenfollowed him to lunch, where once again
he ate a full and hearty mealbefore his afternoon performances began that night.
Thinking William would surely be too stuffedto eat anything more, the reporter noted
with amazement that the human ostrich finishedhis day by yet again devouring another fool
(09:09):
sized dinner. The reporter wrote uphis article and published it the next day
with the following headline, the humanOstrich a living, breathing man ordinary in
all things save one. It wenton to read his stomach, which is
like that of an ostrich can withthe utmost safety eat anything from a cambric
(09:31):
needle to a five inch spike,a boiler plate, or a railway sleeper.
We'll needless to say this stirred upa flurry of interest in William's act,
and soon he was performing nine timesa day just to service all of
the people who were queuing up tosee this modern marvel perform. From his
factory days, where he was earningbetween five and eight dollars a week,
(09:52):
he was now raking in around eightydollars a week, ten times what he
was previously making. He knew thevalue of good press coverage and so performed
stunts out in the streets to drumup business. One of his favorites,
which would often land him in troublewith the law, was to shimmy up
a nearby lamp post and eat theglass right out of the lamptop itself.
(10:15):
As his popularity grew, he beganto take his show on the road,
leaving New York and traveling to nearbycities and states to impress and mesmerize his
patrons there too. As his performancechanged, he switched the live bull frog
portion of his act to be hisgrand finale, he would make a big
show of letting the bull frog hoparound on the table before carefully swallowing it
(10:35):
whole. To top it all off, he would invite the audience to come
on stage and feel the poor frog, still kicking wildly inside his stomach.
We could only hope that William,like other curious eaters of his time,
who also did live frog swallowing,would simply bring it back up again directly
after the show. Not. Despitehim having turned this talent into a somewhat
(10:58):
luctive career, it soon became evidentthat the lifestyle was taking a toll on
him. As one paper wrote abouthim a few years later, mister mc
kenna was not calculated to impress theordinary observer very favorably. His collar had
been divorced from the band of hisshirt and rode ungracefully up under his ears,
and the bottom of his vest showeda disposition to keep the waistband of
(11:18):
his trousers at a distance. Theodor of many cigarettes, blended with the
perfume of macerated garlic, enveloped himlike a nebulous halo, and his unkempt
hair stood on end like the woolof an end man's wig. It seems
that maybe it did all become abit too much for him, as just
ten years after discovering his talent,William mc kenna suddenly disappears from the history
(11:41):
books and is never heard from again. My hope is that he'd made enough
money to pack it all up andmove somewhere quiet to live out the rest
of his life, but I suspecthe probably went the same way as another
act who, having seen the moneythat could be made by William, had
begun copying his act. This poorman, named Joseph Kennedy from Saint Louis,
Missouri, had also been making aliving from eating tacks, nails,
(12:05):
screws, and other assorted bits ofhardware. His body quickly began to shut
down, and when it became clearthat he was near the end, medical
examiners offered to pay his family fivethousand dollars to examine his body. They
quickly agreed, and the findings wereboth curious and shocking. They found that
the walls and lining of the man'sstomach were entirely normal, but he had
(12:28):
failed to pass through any of theitems he ingested. This meant that his
insides were literally packed to the brimwith broken glass, nails, screws,
and so much more. But evenso, not one piece of evidence showing
any tearing or perforation of the stomachat all. Now, for this episode,
I'll leave you with a somewhat incredibleflier describing the human Ostrich himself,
(12:54):
William mc kenna, a pampered,well fed, volant and veracious epicure,
a greater feaster than Helioglabus, andan odder human than the voluptuous Apecius.
He swallows living kicking frogs with anastonishing crassitude. He will empty a paper
of carpet tacks down his ponderous throat. He will eat a pound of green
(13:15):
glass and let it crash zigzagging downhis gullet. He will eat tenpenny nails
and make one think they are temptingand tasty morsels. He will eat the
blades off your pocket knife and thendaintily swallow the handle. To him.
A junk shop is loaded with delicaciesto tickle his terrible palets. This show
(13:39):
is made entirely by me, NickCharlie Key, with our theme music having
been made by the Enigma that is, the mysterious Breakmaster cylinder. If you'd
like to support the show, thesimplest way to do that is over on
our Patreon account. There's just oneoption. For just two bucks a month,
(14:01):
you'll help me keep producing this show, and in return, you'll get
your name forever etched onto our supportersWall of Fame over on our website and
then maybe listen out for your namein an upcoming episode. So until next
time, bona petito. Wow.Yeah
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