Sideshow Facts

Mike the Headless Chicken lived for 18 months after a Colorado farmer swung an axe in 1945. The axe missed his jugular vein and left most of his brain stem and one ear intact. Farmer Lloyd Olsen kept him alive by feeding him with an eyedropper. Scientists at the University of Utah examined Mike and confirmed the story was real. Fruita, Colorado still holds a festival in his honor every May.

Martin Couney ran a Coney Island sideshow. Visitors paid 25 cents to watch premature babies living in incubators. Hospitals were turning preemies away as weaklings. Couney's exhibit gave them state-of-the-art care for free. Parents paid nothing. Over 40 years, roughly 6,500 of the 8,000 babies in his care went home. He wasn't even a licensed doctor.