Stuff You Should Know - SYSK Selects: How Human Cannonballs Work

Episode Date: July 27, 2019

There's no question that human cannonballs are daredevils. They pack themselves into the confines of huge cannons, which shoot them into the air. But how does it work? Join Josh and Chuck to learn more about the bizarre performances of human cannonballs. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hi everyone, it's Saturday and it's Chuck with a Little Saturday Select episode for ya. I dug deep in the archives, everyone, to talk about human cannonballs. This part of our circus suite, circus art suite, rather.

And it's good stuff, how human cannonballs work from July, 2011, an oldie bit of goodie. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. Kaboom and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. What are you doing?

How you doing the cheeks, huh? Yeah, people asked for it. Have we ever captured that? Yeah, we did it once and then people have asked, occasionally, like, do the cheek thing again and I don't want to do it like once every 150 shows, literally. That's a good pace.

Don't want to overdo that. So that'll be the third time soon, coming up. I think so. Yeah, show 450 right around the corner. Right around the corner. Chuckers, have you ever had Kaboom cereal? No, dude, it was such a thing. Good.

No, it wasn't good. The marshmallows were good. It was basically like Lucky Charms. I don't know who ripped off who. But it was clown themed rather than Irish themed. That's genius. But there was a clown on front and he had a cannon and that's where the name came from, Kaboom.

It was a circus clown, circus cannon, Kaboom. But then they realized clowns were scary as heck to most people, so it failed miserably. I wrote this blog post recently. Did you read it? I did. That was a good one. The clown giving clown therapy.

People seem to like it too. Yeah, I thought it was a nice one. That was my intro. My intro was about 100 T. Oh, well, let's hear it. Do you remember? Well, sure. You're probably gonna reference his death wish.

Yes, so he comes down with the cancer and shoots himself in the head. And regardless of how you feel about suicide, what happened next was his, as you said, I guess his death wish, which he made in life, ironically. Yeah, there's two kinds of death wishes. There's a wish that you make upon your death that you would like for things to happen after you die.

And then there's the Jolly Bronson death wish. Nice. That was a good Chuck Bronson. Well, that's a Simpsons character too, but it's a Simpsons character. Right, the mustachioed sales clerk. Yes, but he clearly references Gerald Bronson. Yeah, anyway, what happened to 100 T was he was cremated

and he had his remains shot out of a cannon. Yeah. Have you seen it? Yeah, thanks to Johnny Depp helped that dream come true because he has tons and tons of money to make that happen. Yes, he does. It was quite a cannon too. Oh yeah.

And we've talked before about how I want my dead body shot out of a cannon. We have indeed. I'm not so sure anymore, maybe, who knows? It would be, after reading this article and the physical requirements, it would be kind of gruesome. It wouldn't be like, unless they stiffened you up somehow,

you would come out in a big, like a dead body would. That's what I've always imagined, though. That's what I see flying through the air. Oh, I thought you saw yourself shooting through like a rocket toward the stars. No, like flopping through the air and doing like half-summer salts and twists. I remember I think it was gonna be naked too.

I was gonna land on the Kansas prairie and let the vultures finish me off. All right. We'll see. It's still an idea. Bring it. I got a backyard for you. I think that's how we met Koop.

He offered, he was like, hey, I live in Kansas and I can get this done, yeah. All right. So we'll see, but I think that that's an image that people can have in their head while we talk about how human cannonballs work, right? Because like you said, there's a lot to it. But one of the things that's not to it,

and I think it's funny that people wonder how you can shoot somebody out of a cannon and the gunpowder doesn't blow them up, there's no gunpowder. Of course there's not. I don't understand how someone can not understand that intuitively. Yeah, because I think people wanna believe

that they're being fired out of a cannon instead of a long piston enclosed in a tube. Yeah. With a fake boom and a flash. Yes. For effect. Okay, so I guess it's the fake boom and the flash, they're buying it.

Yeah, well, that's the idea. From the beginning, that was the idea. So yes, it has long roots. Indeed. Back to the 19th century, back to the UK, which by the way I've noticed, did you notice from like this article in doing any supplementary research,

the UK is big into human cannonballs. I think they're big on just this whole circus experience. Okay. They were the original showmen. Yeah. Sure, they own the world. Yeah, that's true. You know?

Yeah. And they sold it. And when you own the world, you have an obligation to entertain the world. And they did so by human cannonballs. That's right. Specifically, something called a projector is the, I guess, grandfather of the human cannonball cannon.

Right? Yeah, the Farini projector. Right. 1871, George Farini. Basically, it was like a more like a catapult, like a spatula that would just flip people and stop dying and people would go flopping and flying through the air.

Yeah. And they go. Oh, God, I regret this. Yeah. Specifically, Lulu, who was a man dressed as a woman, because that always adds to the comic effect. Right. Put a dude in a dress.

And he was the first person in America to get flapjacked with Farini's contraption there. Yeah. And not only did he do that, he sailed 25, 30 feet into the air and was caught by someone on a trapeze. Yeah. So as we go through this,

I don't want you to just think about my dead body being shot onto the Kansas prairie. I want you to think about how difficult it is to catch somebody on a trapeze who's just been shot out of a cannon. While you're on a trapeze, you're swinging at just the right point, hitting them just the right way, and then taking their forward momentum

and yanking them another way on the trapeze. Yeah. Well, this in fairness, Lulu wasn't caught by someone. She, he just actually grabbed hold of the trapeze. But there are people later on in this article who were caught by people on the trapeze. Right. I just want to get that.

So someone out there was like, no, no, Lulu. I wonder. There'd be one person who knew that. So the Farini projector was invented in 1871. It was obsolete by 1880, because this is the year that a 14-year-old girl named Rosa Marie Richter, whose stage name was Zazzle, right? Great, great grandmother to Andy Richter.

No. I'm just kidding. Okay. But great stage name though, right? Oh, sure. Zazzle, she's 14, and she, at the behest of one PT Barnum, climbed into the first cannon, human cannonball cannon, that is designed like today's modern cannons.

Well, yeah, sure. And she was shot out of it. And shortly after that, within a few performances, she broke her back and was the first casualty of the human cannonball phenomenon. Yes, and this first cannon used springs, and they employed the blast, the fire, and the boom to make people think, and back then,

they probably really bought it. Oh, yeah, but people were so dumb back then. And there's a very famous picture of her climbing into the cannon. It's called Beautiful Girl and Huge Gun or something like that. I love that our forefathers invented everything and built the world.

And we're like, they're so dumb. What a bunch of stupid people. Well, it's harder and harder to build and discover new things now because that was all the easy stuff. You and I could have discovered all this stuff, right? Now it's just more and more difficult. You have to really look for subtleties. You're right, yeah.

So we say thanks to no one. Yeah. So the late 19th century is just the human cannonball idea just takes off, right? Thanks to Zazzle. Thanks to George Loyal. He was the one who was shot out of a cannon and would be caught by a woman on a trapeze.

That's right. At the Yankee Robinson Circus, right? Yes, that's incredibly difficult. It is, and you think about it like, I think I've even seen that before, like in person at a circus when I was a kid. But now that I've researched and read this, I'm like, I can't imagine how difficult that has to be,

how everything has to be totally precise and that these circus performers must spend like all day practicing every day just to make sure. Yeah, and not just the timing. There's a lot of other stuff that you have to take into account, right? That's right. It's not just get in this cannon,

we're gonna push you out. No, Josh, because the little sled that you're basically in goes forward at a force of 3,000 to 6,000 pounds per square inch of pressure. Right. We should say compressed air is now the preferred means of shooting that little piston forward, right? Yeah, yeah.

And you're in a little capsule, like imagine Morc's egg, okay, but with the top cutoff. Yeah. So you're in the barrel in what amounts to a bullet in the barrel, a bullet with the top cutoff. And that bullet is attached to the cannon. So when the compressed air shoots it out, the cannon stops, but you keep going.

That's right. But it shoots you out at a, what did you say, like 3,000 to 6,000 pounds per square inch of pressure? Yeah. Yeah, that produces some force. That's a lot. And that's why you can't just be like,

I'll limp, that would crush you. You have to be extremely strong and rigid and your legs have to be taught. Like you can't just be like, all right, shoot it off. Or like your dead body, that's why it would be so gruesome. Yeah. I wonder if I'd just explode in blood

at the end of the cannon. I don't know, maybe. That'd be sweet. But with the big daddy cannons these days, you can go horizontally about 200 feet or vertically, which they say that's where the ooze and odds come from as high as 200 feet. And then speeds up to 60 to 70 miles an hour.

Right. So you're hauling. You're hauling. You're also under some tremendous force, right? Oh, yes. So you've got about nine Gs during launch and 12 Gs at impact. And we'll talk about that later.

But Chuck, the Dodonpaw, right? It's a roller coaster in Japan. It has the highest acceleration. It's 2.7 Gs. Gs. Yeah. So imagine nine, right? Yeah, yeah.

You're putting this human body under a lot of stress right then. Yes, and you fly out a long way and that's why you have to take into account the things we briefly mentioned, like wind speed, body weight, obstacles, like the guy wires and the tent for the net and the poles for the tent.

And we mentioned that in Sniper, remember? Yeah. We're talking about the bullet trajectory and they have to take into account like humidity. So do people who set up human cannonball cannons. And usually I get the impression the human cannonball is the manager in charge of this whole act.

They don't just come out and they're like, all right, I'll get in. Is it already? I hope you guys did it right. Yeah, and some Carney puts out a cigarette and's like, yeah, it looks good to me. Yeah, right. No, that's not the case.

A lot of planning goes in because they make a point. It's pretty easy to get into a cannon and get shot out, although like we said, you got to be really strong and stuff. But the landing part is the crucial part, obviously. Right. Because a 50 by 25 foot net might look pretty big when you're standing on it,

but when you're 200 feet away and 200 feet up, it might look like a postage stamp to you. Right. And I mean, this is a big deal. And you want to hit that net. You want to hit it in just the right place too. Sure. Yeah, so to make sure that the person hits the net,

test dummies are used. A test dummy is a human cannonball's best friend because you can shoot a test dummy out as much as you want until you figure out whether or not you've got the barrel trajectory just right, if the temperature is a problem, what have you? Make your adjustments early. Right.

And so they just shoot a test dummy at the net until they have it just right. And then I guess they feel that they're confident. They're going to try their luck at it. Yeah, and like you said, you got to hit the net at the proper place too, which is generally the rear third because when you hit something going down at an angle like that,

you're going to bounce backwards, not like pop straight up or go forward. Right. So you don't want to hit it on the first third because then you'll bounce backwards off the net. So yeah, it's pretty specific. It is. It is.

It is. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back

into the decade of the 90s. We lived it. And now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster?

Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there

when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you.

Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy.

You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts.

So Chuck, who does this? Crazy circus people. Circus families. It's always families. Yeah. You know? Like once you get into circus, then you've almost guaranteed that your kid is going to do that.

So you want to talk about some of them? Well, yeah. The one, I think I'd heard of these people even before this, um, this, uh, article. But the Zucchini family, Zucchini and Zucchini. The Zucchinis. The Zucchinis have been doing, uh, while they've been performing in circuses since the 1920s, and apparently they stopped

in the 90s. They're like 70 years is enough for us. The Zucchinis are hanging up our little fancy shoes. Right. And in that time, um, there were seven brothers in the family. Five of them became human cannonballs. And that's just the brothers. There was also a sister, too, who did human cannonballing.

Yeah. I'm just dying to know what those other two dudes, it's like, uh, uh, uh, Eli and, uh, Peyton Manning's brother that most people go, Todd. There's another brother. Right. Like, well, what does he do? He, he's the oldest, wasn't he?

And he used to like, he was like a big man on campus at Ole Miss, right? That was it. He didn't, he just partied. Didn't play football, though. No. So he's not beloved by his father Archie. Right.

Yeah. So not true, probably. Uh, they worked with the Ringling Brothers. The Zucchinis did, who obviously had a big name in circuses, and, uh, they sort of pushed the envelope. Uh, Hugo and Victor, the brothers, did a little double barrel, uh, gag that went over pretty well, and Mario, uh, would get shot over Ferris wheels, like two Ferris wheels, Mario Zucchini. Two Ferris wheels.

Not on top of one another. No. One after the other. Right. That's quite a, quite a feat. And then, um, John Weiss, human bullet. Yeah. He started out as a clown, apparently.

Oh, really? Yeah, five years as a clown, and then made the very rare jump to human cannonball. From clown to cannonball this year? Yeah. And apparently, uh, his first, first shot, uh, sent him six feet. Really? Yeah. Oh boy.

Yeah, that was his first one. Did he do it as a clown? Do you know? No, I don't think so. Okay. I think that that would have been a mockery to the human cannonball, um, tradition. Okay. Yeah.

Don't want to do that. Here's the Smith family, also a very popular circus cannonball family. Well, did you talk about John Weiss? Well, he was, he was one of the most prolific cannonballers. Yeah. Did he die doing it? No. Okay.

Did you mention how many times he's done it? No. Five thousand? That is a lot of time to be shot out of a cannon. I did just kind of breeze over that. Yeah. Right. Five thousand times, and he started in 1987.

Yeah. So he was doing it for a little while there for years, I guess. He was doing it once a day, six days a week, 50 weeks a year. Yeah. You're right. That's a lot of blasters. That is a lot. That's a lot of, I mean, especially what we know about what the pressure it exerts

on a body. Yeah. Sure. I mean, that's, that's rough work. Yeah. And it's a, I mean, we've pointed out how it is safe, but more than 30 people have died doing this over the years. Okay.

So the, that, that, that pops up in this article, 30 people have died as human cannonballs. Yeah. And the British historian who died a few years back, his name is A.H. Cox. He says that there's been only about 50 people to ever be human cannonballs. What? 30 have died. Really? Yeah.

I thought that was kind of significant enough to be put into this article. Enough to ward me off of human cannonballing. So 30 out of 50 have died. And that's just who died. Others, you know, like, what was, Zazzle-Berker back. Yeah. Yeah. We'll get into that gruesomeness soon.

Was it Louie? 30 of 50. Or Zazzle. Zazzle. Okay. All right. So back to the Smith family. They are the modern cannonball family that are pretty awesome.

David Cannonball Smith Jr. has spent much of his life inside of a cannon. Yes. Have you been on their website? No. Was it awesome? It's pretty funny. He just, he's described as having a dynamic personality. I like that.

It's better than saying he has a dynamite personality than me. Pretty bad. Yeah. But David, the bullet Smith Jr. is his son and he- Oh, I'm sorry. He's the one with the dynamic personality. Oh, okay. His dad was a real snooze.

I don't know. He bested his dad's record of by flying 193 feet. Yeah. So that's a lot. But his dad still holds the highest, I think, 203. 201, yeah. 201 feet. 61.2 meters for our friends outside of America.

Yeah, that's one that was over two Ferris wheels. Yeah. That's crazy. Yeah. Oh, should you mention the DARPA thing? I thought that was completely stupid and ridiculous. Did you think so? Yeah.

I think it's kind of cool. I think if DARPA could perfect this, then it could take the human cannonball art to a whole new level. Spill it. But basically DARPA, the defense research project, right? Yeah. There's an A in there somewhere. Advanced.

Yes. Thank you. So today we're looking at, I think they filed a patent for a basically human cannonball cannon that has like a sled chair, right? That shoots you up. I think they said they can get a first responder, special ops, a firefighter on top of a five story building in two seconds. So basically their idea is to take the human cannonball concept and just shoot people on

top of buildings to go fight fires or to go snipe people or whatever. So I get that. It's the landing thing that they say is the hardest part in real cannonballing. So what's going on there? Well, that's what I'm saying. I have no idea. I don't know if they were like, well, we've got this part and now let's go figure out the other part.

But that's kind of the big joke or the big underscore among human cannonballers is it's not a problem shooting somebody out of a cannon. It's the landing that's the important part, right? Or in this case, if you're shooting someone on a building, if you're off there, then all of a sudden you're a cartoon and you smack into the building and then slide very slowly down. Except unlike a cartoon, you leave a trail of blood when you slide down. Yeah.

And you slide down fast. And then there's more blood and body parts on the street. Yes. Which has happened. I'm sure it has. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and

dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it. And now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips?

Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? You'll leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever

you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help.

This I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael.

And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Uh-huh. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen.

So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. There's been a lot of accidents, as we've said, out of 50, 30 human cannonballs have died. Right? It's a lot. And, um, to, to prevent this, you know, these people stay in tip top shape, right?

Sure. Um, you have to work out your core. You have to have a strong back. You need to be able to brace yourself, like you said, and really just go totally rigid so when you're shot out, you don't just, you're not crushed. You need to become a projectile. Right. Um, because all you're wearing is a helmet, maybe a little padding.

Yeah. But a helmet's not going to do much if you miss your net. No. Um, and the, the net is very important. A lot of people use airbags as well, right? Yes. Um, there is a guy, uh, who's named, uh, Elvin Bale. Yeah.

He's the human space shuttle. Poor Elvin Bale. He used airbags and he is a victim of circumstance if there ever has been one, right? He was big in the seventies and eighties until, uh, I believe 1986, 87, 87 when he went through all the, the, um, tests, shot his crash test dummy out, um, it landed fine in these airbags where he, he calculated they should be. And, um, what he didn't know is that his crash test dummy had gotten wet, which made it much heavier, which completely changed the dynamics of its test run.

So when he shot himself out, he missed the airbags, right? He did. He was, he sailed right over them. This is in Hong Kong and he said that he knew, quote, I could see where I was going and that it was too far too fast. So he knew in midair, he was conscious enough to be like, oh crap, I'm not going to hit the airbag. And apparently the dummy, cause when I read that, I was like, well, how does this happen?

Yeah. When that's the only safety thing you can do, how do you have a soaked dummy? Apparently it was left in the rain and they're filled with sand. And so the outside of it dried and, but the sand was still wet on the inside. So it didn't like feel wet to the touch when they were testing it. And he said he remembered it feeling like it was in slow motion and that his brain actually thought he could solve this problem in midair, aerodynamically, like do something. Like I can do this and shorten the trip and land upright, which might save me.

But instead he overshot it by just a few yards and slam feet first into the floor, shattered his ankles, knee, a leg and his spine. And he's paralyzed from the waist down. And that is very sad. Yeah. He mentions the aerodynamics, right? Like there is a specific way you want to land. Yeah.

You want to do that little easy somersault and land on your back. Yeah. Which is, that's the way to land. You said it. You also said something that brought to mind the idea that this, the G force that we talked about earlier, it's been shown to produce a loss of consciousness in people. So that's another danger that you, you know, when you're sailing, you want to like stay like a projectile.

And if you're blacked out, you're going to be like a dead body. Like you? Yes. And Elvin Bale is not the only person that something horrible has happened to, obviously. Yeah. Matt Cranch just this year, in April, he, and this is just a nightmare scenario. He got blasted off and right after he blasted off, the net collapsed. Yeah.

So how does that happen? I don't know. That's probably what he's asking. Well, he died. He landed on his head and died. He did die. So that is not what he's asking. That is what his family is asking probably via a lawsuit, it would be my guess.

That was in Great Britain too. Very sad. And remember I mentioned a Zikini sister. She, the Zikinis used to do these double barrels stunts where they two would be shot out at the same time, usually next to one another, along parallel to one another. Well, she and another brother had a, had an act where they'd be shot in the same direction as one another. And passed by in like high five.

Yeah. And she died and she broke her back. That's just a bad idea. That was a bad idea. But the sad thing is, is if you look at modern people, like modern cannonballers, they are safety conscious. They were just like a net collapsed or the dummy was wet, which that makes it even sadder to me.

If you could shot, you know, 200 feet into the air at your brother at 60 miles an hour. I wonder how close. They were back then something, that was part of the equation. I wonder how close they intended to go to one another, because obviously the closer, the better. Like if they were 20 feet apart, it's like, yeah, it's not, it's impressive. So they probably wanted to get it tight for the effect. But can you imagine all of a sudden, like when you see that coming straight at you,

you probably have the same realization like, oh crap, this, I'm going to die by hitting my brother. Brother, brother, very sad. Yeah. Anything else? That's it, man. I did a, did we ever do the thing on Daredevil's? No.

I wrote an article on Daredevil's and maybe we should do that at some point. Or we've been talking about our evil, can evil podcast, maybe because he's a big part of that one. Maybe we can just cover it all. Okay. Sans human cannonball. Yeah. We've got that one covered.

Done. If you want to learn more about human cannonballs, including how long it takes to accelerate a human cannonballer to their top speed, do you want to know? One fifth of a second. Really? Yeah. You can find all that by typing human cannonball onto the search bar at howstoveworks.com. And from what you say, Chuck, it sounds like that'll bring up more than just one article.

Yeah. My Daredevil sing like pop up. I said handy search bar at howstoveworks.com. That means it's time for listener mail. That's right, Josh. I'm going to call this Underground Railroad. I'm riding in about Underground Railroad. Want to share a little bit of my childhood summers in upstate New York.

My great-grandfather, Louie Loveland, made a home in Johnsburg, New York in the Adirondacks. What's so funny? Like you know him. Yeah, Louie. The home itself is incredibly cool and haunted. There's a very cluttered and dimly lit room hidden away behind the kitchen, which has a small organ buried beneath decades of stored and forgotten items. Family legend has it that the organ would mysteriously start playing at all hours of

the night, thanks to spirits. As if that weren't enough, there's a very large barn behind the home, which has seen its better days. My sister and I are always warned to be careful when we went near the barn because the earth beneath our feet could give away at any moment. Well, this sounds like a terrifying summer house. But there's a hidden tunnel beneath the barn, because there's a hidden tunnel beneath the barn running from the back of the home below the barn and out into the mountains right

next to a strawberry patch that my great-grandfather planted a hundred years ago. The tunnel was a part of the Underground Railroad. And I've been told it's one of the last stops in the Adirondacks that is still intact today. Although it varies, the tunnel is roughly three to four feet below the ground, about five feet tall, four feet wide, and 75 yards long, packed with dirt and rocks and an absolute death trap to navigate without a flashlight. Geez. The entrance from the home is just too dangerous to use anymore, but there is a way to drop

into the tunnel via a hidden door in the barn, so long as you don't mind a many landslide of dirt and hay falling into the tunnel, which I would. That's it. Once you carefully make your way through the tunnel, you emerge into sunlight and a strawberry field. Nice. A nice little treat if you're on the end of the tunnel. Somebody can do a warm, wet towel, a moist towel to refresh.

And that is from Alice in St. Louis. Wow. Thanks, Alice. You could do that. Couldn't you, Chuck? You've gone caving before. I could do that. You can handle it.

Not me. As long as it's buttressed. I wonder if it is buttressed. If Charles Bronson had anything to do with it, it is. If you have a great recipe for fresh strawberries, we want to hear it. You can wrap it up in an email, spank it on the bottom, kiss it goodnight, and send it to stuffpodcast at howstuffworks.com. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio's How Stuff Works.

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