P.T. Barnum knew how to spot someone special.

Barnum's career as a showman taught him that the public wanted to be surprised.

He knew the general public delighted in novelty and horror, and tales almost too fantastical to believe.

In Phineas Gage, Barnum found all of those things.

Barnum drew up a contract for Phineas and hired him to stand on stage at his Great American

Museum alongside bearded ladies and giant men. But while Phineas had become a traveling celebrity,

his origins were unremarkable. He had been a foreman on a railroad construction

team, responsible for laying tracks across Vermont. He was humble and respected. He worked hard

and had a career ahead of him, blasting away pathways through the rugged landscape. But all of that

changed in an instant, or in a flash, if you will.

Here's what we know.

While preparing to clear some rock for the rail line, Phineas jammed his iron tamping rod down into a hole filled with gunpowder, just like he had done a thousand times before.

But this time, inexplicably, it exploded.

The three-foot-long piece of metal shot straight back through his cheek,

tore through the top of his head, and sailed through the air like a javelin. It landed about

100 feet away, reportedly slickened with blood and bits of greasy brain matter.

Phineas, if you can believe it, never lost consciousness. Even more unbelievably still,

he was up, walking and talking just a few minutes later. Even though almost all of the front

left side of his brain had been obliterated, Phineas seemed to be doing just fine, save for the

massive hole in his head. He told the attending doctors that he'd be back to blasting

rock in two days. But this didn't quite work out the way that Phineas had hoped. You see, he

bled massively and contracted a fungal infection in his brain. He slipped in and out of comas. But after

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