Her feet grew to be 17 inches long, and she wore a size 30 shoe! Her father took out an advert offering $5,000 and a well-stocked farm to any respectable man that would marry his daughter!

We begin with the most scandalous circus performer of them all. Grady Stiles Jr. came from a long line of circus performers with ectrodactyly––which fuses fingers and toes together to form claw-like hands and feet. Unfortunately, the mental anguish of being displayed in “freak shows” and being called Lobster Boy took its toll on Grady, and he became a cruel and abusive alcoholic, often using his colossal upper body strength to beat his wife and daughters.

Next up is perhaps the most tragic of all exhibits, The Elephant Man. Joseph Merrick lived a woeful life––after both his siblings died, he developed terrible physical deformities. He left school at 13 and worked in a factory rolling cigars until his right hand became so deformed, he couldn’t work. Aged 17, he lived in a workhouse, but by the time he was 20, his face was so disfigured; he had difficulty eating.

Annie Jones was born in 1865 in Virginia. As a result of her hirsutism, she joined P.T. Barnum’s circus aged just nine months! Her parents received a $150-a-week salary. When she was just a kid, a New York phrenologist kidnapped her in what was almost certainly a Barnum publicity stunt. The police, along with Barnum, found her being exhibited at a church fair. When the man claimed Annie was his daughter, the matter went to court.

Chang and Eng Bunker were conjoined twins born in Thailand in 1811. The brothers are the reason conjoined twins became known as Siamese Twins because back then, the country was still called Siam. As in: “Are you the King of Thailand?” – “Yes, Siam!” They came to the USA around 1830 and toured as a curiosity act. Then, in 1839, they settled down in North Carolina, became US citizens, and married a pair of sisters.

This 1935 photograph shows the Giraffe Necked Woman of Bertram Mills’ “Freak Show” being examined by doctors. Unfortunately, there’s not much information available about this long-necked lady, but it’s most likely she comes from the Kayan or Karen tribes of Myanmar and northwest Thailand. Although, like Thailand used to be Siam, Myanmar was still known as Burma back then. For centuries, the tribeswomen have been lengthening their necks with brass rings.

Krao Farini was a hirsute woman born with hypertrichosis. Legend says she was he was captured as a child in the jungles of Laos––then part of Siam––by the explorer Carl Bock in 1885. P.T. Barnum falsely advertised her as a primitive human and billed her the missing link between humans and apes. Her name purportedly means “ape” in Siamese. She lived in New York until her death in 1926, aged 50.

Fannie Mills was born in Sussex, England, around 1859. She had Milroy Disease, which caused her legs and feet to grow to gigantic proportions. Indeed, her feet grew to be 17 inches long, and she wore a size 30 shoe! Her parents emigrated to the USA, where she became known as The Ohio Big Foot Girl. Her father took out an advert offering $5,000 and a well-stocked farm to any respectable man that would marry his daughter!

Remember Marvel’s The Fantastic Four? Their spacecraft was bombarded by cosmic radiation granting the four astronauts their superpowers. Reed Richards gained the ability to stretch his body into any shape and became Mister Fantastic. But how do you become a super-stretchy superhero without cosmic radiation? Well, Felix Wehrle was born in Wisconsin in 1858 with a condition called Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. He discovered he could stretch his skin to great lengths as a child.

Isaac Sprague was born in Massachusetts in 1841. He enjoyed a normal childhood, but after falling ill after swimming in a lake when he was 12, he began irreversibly losing weight despite having a healthy appetite. In 1865, he joined P.T. Barnum’s American Museum and was billed as the Living Human Skeleton until the museum burned down in 1868, with Sprague narrowly managing to escape with his life!

As a child, Russian performer Fedor Jeftichew went by the name Jo-Jo the Dog-Faced Boy and toured Europe with his father, The Wild Man from the Kostroma Forest. In 1884, that man again––P.T. Barnum brought him to Stateside, where he became known as… you guessed it: Jo-Jo the Dog-Faced Man. Barnum invented a story that he and his father were captured and kept in a cave by a hunter. Barnum forced Fedor to bark and growl as part of the act.

Now, many men joke about having a third leg, but Frank Lentini didn’t have to lie! Born in 1889 with a parasitic twin, his family moved from Sicily to the United States. Frank joined several circuses; the famous Ringling Brothers Circus, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, and Barnum and Bailey. He was known as The Great Lentini. As well as having three legs, Frank had four feet and two sets of genitals!