Читать книгу The Book Of Lists - David Wallechinsky - Страница 52

Ricky Jay is an author, actor, sleight-of-hand artist and scholar of the unusual. Most of the performers listed here are included in his histories of remarkable entertainers, Learned Pigs & Fireproof Women and Jay’s Journal of Anomalies.

(In no particular order)

1 TOMMY MINNOCK Shortly before the end of the nineteenth century, this ‘human horse’, a subject able to withstand excruciating pain, was literally nailed to a cross in a Trenton, New Jersey, music hall. While he was crucified he regaled the audience with his rendition of the popular tune ‘After the Ball Is Over’.

2 THEA ALBA This German schoolgirl wrote with both hands, both feet and her mouth, simultaneously; for a finale she wrote 10 different numerals at the same time with pieces of chalk extending from pointers on each of her fingers.

3 DANIEL WILDMAN This eighteenth-century equestrian beekeeper rode around the circus ring on the back of a horse while swarms of bees surrounded his face then moved away to specific locations at his command.

4 MATTHEW BUCHINGER Born in Germany in 1674, this remarkable man was one of the most well-known performers of his day. He played a dozen musical instruments, danced the hornpipe, and was an expert pistol shot, bowler, calligrapher and magician. His accomplishments seem even more remarkable when one realises he stood only 28 in. high and had no arms or legs.

5 ORVILLE STAMM Billed as the ‘Strongest Boy in the World’, he played the violin with an enormous bulldog suspended from the crook of his bowing arm. As an encore he lay on the ground and a piano was placed on his chest; a keyboardist stood on his thighs and pounded out the accompaniment as Orville sang ‘Ireland Must Be Heaven ’cause Mother Comes from There’.

6 SIGNORA GIRARDELLI Entertained audiences in the early nineteenth century by cooking eggs in boiling oil held in her palm, running a red-hot poker over her limbs, and attending to baked goods while inside a blazing oven.

7 ARTHUR LLOYD Astounded vaudeville fans by producing from his capacious pockets any item printed on paper. Admission tickets to the White House, membership cards to the Communist Party, and ringside tickets to the Dempsey-Carpentier championship fight were among the 15,000 items he could instantly retrieve from his clothing.

8 JEAN ROYER A seventeenth-century native of Lyons, he swallowed an enormous quantity of water and then spewed it out in continuous graceful arcs for as long as it took to walk 200 paces or recite the 51st Psalm.

9 CLARENCE WILLARD As ‘Willard, the Man Who Grows’, he had an act that consisted of his growing six inches in height while standing next to a volunteer from the audience. A master of manipulating his body, Willard used no trick apparatus of any kind.

10 JOSEPH PUJOL ‘Le Petomane’, as he was called, was the legendary French musical farter who issued sonorous but odourless notes from his body’s most secret orifice.