Born to a hardhearted carpenter in Bridgeport, Connecticut on January 4, 1838, little Charles Sherwood Stratton would go on to be the most famous midget in history. When he was discovered at the age of four by P. T. Barnum little Charles stood a mere 25 inches in height and weighed 15 pounds. His father, long embarrassed by the miniscule stature of his ...
Of all the trials and tribulations endured by those born unique, few equal the horrors chronicled by Elizabeth Ovitz as she and her siblings were tortured and experimented upon by the infamous Nazi “Angel of Death” Josef Mengele. The Ovitz family were Transylvanian Jews. Their patriarch, Shimshon Isaac Ovitz, was a respected Rabbi and
In the history of the world, little Pauline Musters is the smallest mature woman ever officially recorded. Pauline was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as having stood only 1 foot 11.2 inches in height. Born on February 26, 1876 in Ossendrecht in the Netherlands Pauline Munster’s was almost half of ...
Over one thousand years before Homer, there exists a written account by Egyptian Pepy II of the 6th dynasty in which he urges one of his generals to look after a pygmy discovered on an expedition to the south.Furthermore, Amenemope at the end of the 2nd millennium B.C.E. set down laws to protect those born different from the norm:
In 1930 MGM announced that Tod Browning, the man behind the Universal horror film Dracula, would be a sideshow picture loosely based on the Tod Robbins short story ‘Spurs’. The film was intended to be MGM’s big launch into the horror genre. Few realized the controversy that Freaks would soon stir up. Browning was born Charles Albert Browning, Jr. in Kansas ...
