Hey, true weirdos, at the end of this episode, stick around if you want for a little bonus

content and conversation.

She was the most famous of her kind in the whole world. As clever as she was magnificent,

she even learned to blow the harmonica and what other creature like her could make that claim.

Weighing in at five tons tons gypsy was one of the largest elephants in the world and one of the most famous gypsy was a star the single biggest

animal attraction in the w h harris nickel plate. People lined up by the thousands to see her.

She was used to crowds, used to noise, used to traveling by train, used to parading through the

streets of big cities and small towns. And then came one terrible night in Valdosta, Georgia.

A man lost his life, and Gypsy became a fugitive.

Was it all animal instinct?

Or was Gypsy capable of murder?

And they got a small beam of light against the mirror.

True. stuff.

Wild animals weren't always part of the circus.

It took a Frenchman named Henri Martin to kick off a craze that would become a circus tradition right up through the early part of this century.

Legend has it that during a performance in Germany in 1831,

Unreem Martin boldly entered a tiger's cage and lived to tell.

The crowd, as they say, went wild.

It didn't take long for an American

animal trainer named Isaac A. Van Amberg to up the Annie by sticking his head into the mouth of a lion.

What a showstopper that was. In 1838, Van Amberg took his act across the Atlantic to Great Britain,

dazzling 19-year-old Queen Victoria.

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