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Even More Random Shit Found on the Internet


nameraka

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I just ran into a reference about this guy for the first time, and this is a lot:

Tarrare

Tarrare ([taʁaʁ]; c. 1772 – 1798), sometimes spelled Tarar, was a French showman and soldier noted for his unusual appetite and eating habits. Able to eat vast amounts of meat, he was constantly hungry; his parents could not provide for him and he was turned out of the family home as a teenager. He travelled France in the company of a band of prostitutes and thieves before becoming the warm-up act for a travelling charlatan. In this act, he would swallow corks, stones, live animals, and a whole basketful of apples. He then took this act to Paris where he worked as a street performer.

At the start of the War of the First Coalition, Tarrare joined the French Revolutionary Army, where even quadrupling the standard military ration was unable to satisfy his large appetite. He would eat any available food from gutters and rubbish heaps but his condition still deteriorated through hunger. He was hospitalised due to exhaustion and became the subject of a series of medical experiments to test his eating capacity, in which, among other things, he ate a meal intended for 15 people in a single sitting, ate live cats, snakes, lizards, and puppies, and swallowed eels whole without chewing. Despite his unusual diet, he was underweight and, with the exception of his eating habits, he showed no signs of mental illness other than what was described as an apathetic temperament.

General Alexandre de Beauharnais decided to put Tarrare's abilities to military use, and employed him as a courier for the French army, with the intention that he would swallow documents, pass through enemy lines, and recover them from his stool once safely at his destination. Tarrare could not speak German, and on his first mission, he was captured by Prussian forces, severely beaten, and underwent a mock execution before being returned to French lines.

Chastened by this experience, he agreed to submit to any procedure that might cure his appetite, and was treated with laudanum, tobacco-pills, wine-vinegar, and soft-boiled eggs. The procedures failed, and doctors could not keep him on a controlled diet; he would sneak out of the hospital to scavenge for offal in gutters, rubbish heaps and outside butchers' shops, and attempted to drink the blood of other patients in the hospital and to eat the corpses in the hospital's morgue. After being suspected of eating a toddler, he was ejected from the hospital. He re-appeared four years later in Versailles with a case of severe tuberculosis and died shortly afterwards, following a lengthy bout of exudative diarrhoea.

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12 hours ago, hornedlizardman said:

I think I found a certain...replacement. >_> (Kidding. lol)

sophia_1.jpg

 

::points:: Whhhhhhitch!!!!

 

 

Actually I know exactly who that is.  Beautifully, magnificant scam "A.I." that she is.  Part of me hopes they make it a reality and then part of me don't want my descendants to have battle for the lives during the Take-over.

Will AI take over? Quantum theory suggests otherwise

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26 minutes ago, Vela said:

 

::points:: Whhhhhhitch!!!!

 

 

Actually I know exactly who that is.  Beautifully, magnificant scam "A.I." that she is.  Part of me hopes they make it a reality and then part of me don't want my descendants to have battle for the lives during the Take-over.

Will AI take over? Quantum theory suggests otherwise

I'm glad you saw that I was joking. lol (Also, check your messages. >_>)

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  • 1pooh4u changed the title to Even More Random Shit Found on the Internet

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