Did You Know? The Beard Tax

As hard as it may be to believe, there was an actual tax called the Beard Tax.

King Henry VIII imposed beard tax in 1535 to abolish wearing beards, even though he himself wore a beard.  

   King Henry VIII taxed beards even though he wore one too

In 1698, Peter the Great created a beard tax to abolish beard-wearing because he was trying to westernize Russian nobility.  

Peter The Great, Tsar of Russia 

The amount of the tax to be paid depended on the beard wearer's social position.  The higher he was in society, the larger tax he had to pay.  This made facial hair a status symbol.

  

Henry VIII's daughter, Queen Elizabeth I of England brought the beard tax back. 

Queen Elizabeth I of England

She was very strict and taxed anyone with a beard longer than two week's growth.  Facial hair was no longer a status symbol.


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Did You Know? Rules For Married Women

The ancient Olympic Games are said to date back to a footrace held in 776 B.C. where athletes competed in the nude.

Banned

 



Women were banned from participating in the ancient Olympics - and married women were banned from watching or even attending the games. The penalty for any married woman caught sneaking a peek was execution.




More modern Olympic games were revived in 1896 in Athens Greece -- where athletes competed with their clothes on.

You can read more interesting Olympic facts at this link:

https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93632621

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Did You Know? Legal, But Poisoned Alcohol

Cause of death - Alcohol Poisoning

In the 1920s through to the mid-1930s, bootlegged whiskey and liquor that was made in homemade stills and gins often made people sick. That's because the liquor produced in these well-hidden stills frequently came tainted with metals and other impurities.  

But on December 24, 1926, it wasn’t tainted gin that poisoned them. It was the U.S. government.


To keep people from drinking during Prohibition, the government reverted to poison: redistilled industrial-grade alcohol.  This was liquor that was initially produced for things like cleaning supplies and paint. 

When they added unpleasant chemicals so that people wouldn't drink it, they called it "denaturing." It was tactic that had been used once before, back in 1906 for manufacturers who wanted to avoid taxes on spirits.


During Prohibition, people would steal the industrial alcohol and re-process it into a somewhat palatable liquor,  then sell it to thirsty Americans, like Antonio Rizzo, who was arrested in Brooklyn in 1922 at the Eureka Chemical Company when he had in his possession 25 gallons of denatured alcohol and a reprocessing machine.  They threw him in jail.


But pretty soon, the government decided that jailing these offenders wasn’t enough.

So in 1926, the President Calvin Coolidge's Administration decided to make the booze more toxic in the hopes that this would deter people from drinking the stuff. 

The government ordered companies to add even more additives to the industrial alcohol, which actually made it lethal. 

The government wanted to scare people into giving up drinking.


It didn’t work. 

Instead, by the end of Prohibition in 1933, the federal poisoning program had killed at least 10,000 people.


There was an incident in 1928 in which 33 people in Manhattan died in three days, mostly from drinking wood alcohol.

Bootleggers

The government made no attempt to pretend that increasing the denaturing formula wouldn’t lead to deaths.  

Seymour M. Lowman, the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in charge of Prohibition, told citizens of the upper echelon of society that drinkers were "dying off fast from poison 'hooch' and that if the result was a more sober America, "a good job will have been done."


Industrial alcohol itself was a deadly cocktail of chemicals. A list of the additives and their uses from studies done by the New York City medical examiner in 1928 included the following:


Kerosene: A fuel made of distilled petroleum used today in jet engines, lamps, and cleaning solvent.

Brucine: A bitter and extremely poisonous alkaloid found in the seeds of the nux vomica plant that is used as an additive in lubricants and local anesthetics.

Gasoline: Refined petroleum used for internal combustion engines.

Benzene: A liquid from coal tar and petroleum that used to be in solvents, but is no longer used because it’s extremely carcinogenic.

Cadmium: A metal that resembles tin that’s used in plating, metal alloys, batteries, and pigments.

Zinc: A metal found in brass and used to galvanize iron and steel to protect against corrosion.


Mercury salts: A chemical compound of mercury and chlorine.

Nicotine: The chief active ingredient of tobacco that is also used in insecticides.


Ether: A highly flammable liquid used as an anesthetic and as a solvent.


Formaldehyde: A compound made from oxidized methyl alcohol that’s used as a disinfectant and preservative in resins and plastics.


Chloroform: A liquid used as a solvent that used to also be used as a general anesthetic.


Camphor: A crystalline compound used in insect repellent, as well as plastic and explosive production.


Carbolic acid: Also known as phenol, carbolic acid is a highly poisonous compound in antimicrobial and anesthetic solutions.


Quinine: A bitter alkaloid used to treat forms of malaria.


Acetone: A liquid made from oxidized isopropanol used as a solvent.


Just reading that list of additives is enough to make you sick.  The government added rat poison, which is defies logic how the government didn't think that 'liquor' wasn't lethal enough to kill.

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Did You Know? Ancient Inventions You Thought Were Modern

 

It is surprising how many things we use every day that have been in use by humans for thousands of years. This list of ten things all predate the birth of Christ and they are all things that we are familiar with and might be regular users of some.

Plastic surgery was performed in India in 2000 BC,
but its successfulness was in the eyes of the beholder

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.

Teeth were excavated and found to be over 9000 years old

.

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Cataracts are not a new phenomenon.  As early as 6th century BC,
cataract surgeries were performed

.

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Central heating systems were used from 1000 BC
in Ancient Roman civilization and ancient Korea

.

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Ancient Assyrians knew about lenses over 3000 years ago

.

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In 3000 BC, a system of weights and measures was devised
to replace using an arm or hand a guide

.

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Perfume dates back more than 4000 years

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Ice skates date back to 200 AD

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Plumbing Pipes date  back to 2700 BC

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Plywood is not a new invention, it's been made
for thousands of years

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Did You Know? Thomas Jefferson, Inventor

Inventions by Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson loved to invent gadgets. He helped advance the science of agriculture by inventing a plow that was easier to pull. He also created an updated sundial in the form of a sphere. 

Biographical facts about Thomas Jefferson

But his coolest work was to help out American spies during the Revolutionary War. He invented this “wheel cipher,” (see picture) which was an iron pin containing 26 spinning wooden disks that could be used to decipher coded messages. That way, the British couldn't read any messages they managed to intercept.

More inventions by Thomas Jefferson

Among his other inventions were:

- Dumbwaiter for his wine bottles
- The hideaway bed
- The pedometer
- The polygraph (not a lie detector - it was a copying machine)
- A revolving book stand
- The spherical sundial
- An improved swivel chair

Some more inventions by Thomas Jefferson

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DID YOU KNOW? ORIGINS OF GOLF

St Andrew's Golf Club in 1930

 

Scotland was always under threat of invasion in medieval times. To build their army for protection, they started training males at age 12 with archery being the skill they needed for battle.  It is a skill that needs to be practiced every day or it will be lost.    

But instead of practicing their archery skills, Scotland's citizens preferred spending their free time playing golf and football, their archery skills were put aside.  

In 1457, King James II, fearing his army would be unskilled, banned both games and they stayed banned until King James IV lifted it in 1503.  

Future kings were avid golfers so the game came back into vogue in the 1600s and in 1860 the game was spread around the world beginning with the British Open.  You can read more about the history of golf here. 

https://digital.nls.uk/golf-in-scotland/banned/index.html

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ARE YOU A BELIEVER?

Anne Frank died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945 after Nazis discovered her and her family hiding in an attic in Amsterdam because they were trying to avoid persecution for being Jewish.  According to two sisters who witnessed Anne and Margot's burial in a mass grave, Anne and Margot died from typhus sometime in August 1945.

Nine years later, a little girl named Barbro Karlen was born in Sweden on May 24, 1954. 

From the time Barbro Karlén was three years old (around 1957), she told her parents her name was not Barbro, that it was Anne Frank.  She began telling her parents strange stories about events that happened to her when she was named Anne Frank. 

Barbro had terrifying nightmares of men kicking in the door of her home, of hiding in a closet with her relatives and of soldiers taking them all away after they were found. 

Her parents didn't believe her. They had heard of Anne Frank but they didn't think that Anne was a real person. They didn't believe the Holocaust stories, so they thought Anne Frank was a fictitious character. 


Barbro Karlén's young parents were Swedish parents who were raised as Christians and they intended to raise their little daughter as a Christian too.  They didn't believe in reincarnation.  

But they do now.

At three years old, Barbro couldn't yet read and it wasn't likely that she had read about Anne Frank in a newspaper, magazine, or book.  It also wasn't likely that her parents or visiting family members would have spoken about a little German girl named Anne Frank who met her death in a concentration camp.  That's because up until Barbro started talking about her, the family of both Barbro's parents also did not believe there had been a Holocaust and thought Anne Frank was not a real person.  

Tracing the publication of The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank shows it was published in Germany and France in 1950 and in the United Kingdom in 1952.  By 1953, it was out of print because of low sales.  When Barbro was born in 1954, the book was out of print.


   

Anne Frank and Barbro Karlen at age 13 and adult

After Anne Frank's death, the detailed descriptive book Anne Frank penned - "The Diary of a Young Girl" - declared her to be a child prodigy.  Her father Otto Frank was the lone survivor.  He was given Anne's diary and after he read it, he decided in 1950 to have it published. It was published in Germany and France in 1950, and in 1952 in the United Kingdom. 

However, it was out of print by 1953 because of low sales and when Barbro was born on May 24, 1954, the book was out of print.

A small portion of the diary was excerpted in a small German newspaper in 1946 for three days, long before Barbro was born.  

In 1960, the book also became required reading in many school systems around the world. But Barbro had already been saying she was Anne Frank when she was three years old in 1957, which was before the book appeared in schools.


At age 16, Barbro was already an accomplished author of several books and she was also declared a child prodigy by age 12.  

When she was being bombarded with memories of a past life, her parents took her to a psychiatrist. Because she was afraid of being labeled crazy, she didn't share what was going on with her memories and dreams. The psychiatrist pronounced her "normal."

Since early childhood, Barbro had a fear of men in uniforms and it got to the point where she had bad anxiety attacks which continued into adulthood. To get over them, when she came of age as an adult she became a mounted police officer. She remained in the job for ten years and her fear has abated.

To this day, Barbro has an aversion to showers and will only take baths.  She attributes this to the fact that the Nazis herded everyone into a room and told them they were getting showered, and they were exterminated with poisonous gas.

There are a lot of people who don't believe in reincarnation and do not believe the Holocaust ever happened. 

But there are a lot more people who DO believe the Holocaust happened and it was a real event. Some also believe in reincarnation.

Are you among those who believe in reincarnation?

You can read much more about Barbro Karlen's fascinating story here. 

https://www.energytherapy.biz/2016/10/27/did-anne-frank-reincarnate-as-barbro-karlen-unbelievable-past-life-memories-prove-life-after-death-is-real/

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Interesting Facts About Annie Oakley

Annie Oakley was an Old West sharpshooter who gained fame appearing in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Tour, a traveling show.  But as much as she was considered a Western star, she was not born in the Old West.  Here are some interesting facts you might not have known about her.

Annie Oakley starred as a sharpshooter in
Buffalo Bill's Wild West traveling show

Annie Oakley was her stage name. Her birth name was Phoebe Ann Mosey, but her family called her Annie. Some historians show the family name as Moses or Mozee, but the census records show as Mosey.

A historical marker at the cemetery
where the Mosey family is buried

Annie's father died when she was four. She first started shooting at age six and by age eight was expertly hunting and killing small game.  She learned to shoot once to the head so the body and skins would be clean so she could sell them to local shopkeepers.  The money she earned helped to support the family until her mother remarried. 

A young Phoebe Ann Mosey (Annie Oakley),
around six years old

The farm where Annie was raised in Darke County Ohio

After contracting pneumonia at age ten, Annie and her sister were hospitalized in an infirmary that was also a home for indigents - the poorhouse. With so many children to take care of, Annie's mother told the infirmary that it was best if they stayed in the state-run home. When her sister recovered, she wanted to go home. But the childless owners of the infirmary took Annie into their home. The wife was hoping to tame her wild ways and teach her ladylike tasks like sewing and embroidery. One day, the owners got a visit from a farming couple who said that they needed a live-in caregiver for their baby son while they worked on their farm. They said they would pay a handsome salary of fifty cents a week ($9.77 in 2019 dollars) and they promised to provide a formal education to whoever was chosen for the job.

The owners immediately agreed to give up ten-year-old Annie.  Shortly after Annie went to live with the farming couple,  they began to physically and mentally abuse her. She tried to run away many times and was beaten when she was caught.  

Two years after she went to live with them, she escaped during the night. Her mother and her new husband took Annie back to live with them on the farm, and Annie went back to hunting and selling her kills.  

Annie around age 16

    

 

At age 15, Annie earned enough money from hunting and selling fresh game that she was able to pay off the mortgage on the family farm.  

Annie met Frank Butler, her future husband, after 
beating him in a shooting contest and winning $100 on a bet ($2300 in 2019).

A young Frank Butler, preparing to marry Annie Oakley

After a very short courtship, she began living with him. It turns out he couldn't marry her because he was still married to another woman.  Even though Frank claimed in public that he married Annie on August 23, 1876, Frank wasn't divorced from his first wife until 1881. He married Annie in 1882.

Proof of marriage in 1882 

Annie appeared with her husband in traveling shows for nine years and was billed as a teen sharpshooter.  After they were working for a while in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, they started to downplay her age.

Graham and Butler toured traveling shows
demonstrating their shooting prowess

For sixteen seasons, they traveled around the world, with Annie as billed as an expert female sharpshooter.  Annie wowed audiences with her one of a kind act that many tried to duplicate but few succeeded, especially the trick where she hit targets by aiming backward using a hand mirror to look over her shoulder.

Annie Oakley shooting over her shoulder
at a target while using a mirror

William Randolph Hearst, Newspaper Owner

Annie Oakley sued millionaire newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst for reporting a horrendous and false story in two of his newspapers that Annie Oakley was a cocaine addict who was arrested for stealing a black man’s pants.  When more than 50 other newspapers picked up the story,  Annie Oakley went into attack mode trying to clear her name.  

It turned out that a burlesque performer using the stage name of Ann Oakley was the one who was arrested.  Most of the newspapers printed retractions, but William Randolph Hearst refused to do so.  Instead, he went into his own attack mode and hired a private eye to get any dirt that could be found on Annie Oakley. He found only that her marriage date was in question, but nothing else.  

Annie sued 55 newspapers for libel and by 1910, she had won settlements from 54 of them.  She did win a $27,500 settlement from Hearst (which is 741,318 in 2019), but the total of her legal expenses outweighed all of the settlements she received so that she lost money trying to clear her name.

Annie Oakley endorsed some products early in her career

While Oakley was dealing with her libel suits against William Randolph Hearst's newspapers, Frank Butler became a spokesperson for the Union Metallic Cartridge Company. (an ammunitions company) and Annie continued to lend her name to products.  When Annie retired in 1913 from her last Wild West Show, the couple settled into retirement and helped to raise money for the Red Cross for World War I.   Annie did occasional demonstrations but her professional performing ceased.

Canada Dry was only one of many food products Annie Oakley endorsed.

 

In 1912, the Butlers built a brick ranch-style house in Cambridge, Maryland. It is known as the Annie Oakley House and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1996. In 1917, they moved to North Carolina and returned to public life. Until she became too ill to do so, Annie continued to go hunting with her dog whenever possible.

Signed by Annie Oakley, she enjoyed hunting with her dog.

Working in a man's world, Annie Oakley played to very rowdy audiences.  However, she never lost sight of her femininity and made it a point to appear in embroidered skirts and blouses. What most patrons didn't know was that the stitching on her costumes was by her own hand during down times between cities. It was a skill she most likely learned in her youth from the infirmary owners.  

Annie personally did all the embroidery on her clothes

 Annie Oakley died on November 3, 1926, at the age of 66, after a three-year illness of pernicious anemia, which is caused by a lack of Vitamin B-12.   She was cremated according to her wishes and her ashes were placed in one of her shooting trophies, then given to her husband, Frank.  Some say that to go on without her was too much for Frank Butler to bear. He died 18 days later on November 21, 1926.  The trophy was placed next to his body in his coffin and was buried with him. He is buried near the Mosey family plots. 

Annie Oakley, around 62 years old

Annie Oakley with her husband Frank, and their dog.
This is one of the last public pictures of Annie Oakley

Knocker-Uppers

Beginning in the 18th century up to the early 20th century, people in Britain who needed to get up on time for work would pay knocker-uppers (yes, it was a real job!) to act as human alarm clocks to wake them up in various ways.  

The "knocker-upper" was a common sight in Britain, particularly in the northern mill towns, where people worked shift work, or near London's dock area where the shifts of dockworkers went according to the tide.

In 1931, Mary Smith (pictured below) charged each of her East London customers the sum of sixpence a week to wake them up. She did this by using a long bamboo stick and shooting a pea at the windows of the sleeping workers. 

Knocker-uppers also used batons and canes to rouse the residents who lived on upper floors.

Mary Smith woke people up by shooting peas at their windows

Knocker-uppers also used batons and canes to rouse the residents who lived on upper floors. Knocker-uppers were night owls who slept during the day and stayed up all night to be sure they woke up their customers on time for work. 

To have a knocker-upper wake you up, you could do one of two things: put a note on your door saying when you wanted to be woken up, or reach out to the knocker-upper in person and let them know when to bang on your window.  They rapped on your window once for a sequence of three or four bangs, then they went on their merry way.

They weren't like your mother or wife who would call you ten times to get up. Nope. You got one set of three or four raps for your sixpence and that was it.

Their time, after all, is money.

By the end of the 1930s, there were an estimated 1,000 jobs for Britain’s knocker-uppers and thousands of subscribers in need of their services.   

 But who woke up the knocker-uppers? Here's a tongue-twister from that time with the answer.

We had a knocker-up, and our knocker-up had a knocker-up

And our knocker-up's knocker-up didn't knock our knocker up

So if our knocker-up didn't knock us up

It's 'cos he's not up.


Source:  Unusual Jobs of the 19th and 20th century

Awesomely Abandoned

VW BUG IN CANCUN

A VW Bug sculpture on display under water in Cancun

This little VW Bug is part of an underwater museum in Cancun.  For those who don't have the courage or the ability to dive or snorkel, there is also the option of seeing it through glass bottom boats. 



Underwater, there are over 500 sculptures to view.  This VW sculpture is a life-sized replica of the Classic Volkswagen Beetle which houses marine life as well as being entertaining for divers.

RUSSIAN SHIPWRECK  IN THE RED SEA

Shipwreck in the Red Sea that may have been a spy ship

There were several shipwrecks in the Red Sea but this particular shipwreck looks like it may have been what is referred to as the "Russian Wreck."  It was discovered back in 1988 and treasure hunters think it is the fishing trawler named Khanka.  It is believed that the Russians used fishing trawlers for surveillance and communication.  There was a lot of communication equipment, electronic devices and batteries found on board, so it was most likely used as a spy ship.

The HMS Ontario sank in 1780

The HMS Ontario, a British warship that sank in 1780, is the oldest British warship to have been found in the Great Lakes.  It was discovered mostly intact between Niagara, New York and Rochester, New York in 2008.  The ship sank during a storm and about 130 men lost their lives.  


Jim Kennard started searching for the ship 35 years earlier but was not successful until he teamed up with Dan Scoville, another hunter who was searching for sunken vessels.  Together, it only took them three years to find this ship.

The SS America ran aground in the Canary Islands

Built in 1940, the SS America was mostly a passenger ship and had gone by several different names up until the wreck, which occurred in 1994.  



In 1941, during a period of time when the ship was used by the Navy, there were two Nazi spies aboard among the crew.  They were part of the Duquesne Spy Ring and were later convicted, along with 31 other agents when the FBI uncovered them.  It was the largest espionage conviction in United States History.  



In 1994, on what was supposed to be a 100-day journey, they ran into a storm and the ship went aground just off of the Canary Islands. It eventually broke in two.

The Dixon Cove Wreck is partially underwater in Honduras

The Dixon Cove Wreck occurred in the 1970s, and according to one of many rumors, it was partially caused by a storm that pushed it into the channel so it was stranded there.  


The ship was supposedly carrying wood. In an effort to save the ship, they tried unloading it. It was later retrieved by pillagers.  


Another rumor claims that they were carrying marble.  Still another rumor claims that both the Dixon Cove and another ship (that is also wrecked there)  caught on fire and were abandoned.  It has been said that both ships were part of the Nicaraguan Revolution.

1911 photo of abandoned mining town

In 1845, a large amount of silver was discovered in this little town of Silver Islet but efforts to mine the silver were near impossible due to weather conditions and the tumultuous waters of Lake Superior.  


They fought against storms, tidal waves, and ice surges all to no avail until decades later, the miners were finally able to retrieve the silver (worth about $3 million) by building a breakwater of rock and concrete that was able to hold back the raging water.  


In 1883, all operations ceased due to water-filled shafts and the lack of funds for fuel to keep the furnaces going.

Lucy The Elephant has been a tourist stop since the 1880's 

This enormous elephant-shaped building is named Lucy and originally had six stories when it was built back in 1881. It was called Elephant Bazaar and had winding stairs that led up to the howdah, the seat where you would ride an elephant.  


Lucy endured many disasters including a fire during a period of time when the building was used as a tavern.  During one of these disasters, Lucy's howdah got blown off.  By 1960, it had been so neglected that the city condemned it.  


When a new developer bought Lucy and wanted to have her removed, a committee formed to save and restore her.  After being abandoned for many years, today she is back in operation and fully restored. 

Once a luxury hotel, Halcyon Hall became part of Bennett College in New York
but was demolished in 2014

Built in 1890, Halcyon Hall started out as a luxury hotel for wealthy clientele with five stories and two hundred rooms.  Unfortunately, the hotel didn't do as well as planned and was closed down in 1901.  


In 1907, a school teacher from New York bought it and used it as a school for girls. More buildings were added, which eventually led to it becoming Bennett Junior College.  


By the 1970s, it began sinking into debt as more co-ed colleges were popping up.  In 1977, it went bankrupt and was abandoned shortly after.  


Despite being placed on the National Register for Historic Places, it was demolished in 2014.  

Sunken boats create a safe harbor for smaller boats

These ships look like they are sitting on the surface of the water of this beautiful island, but the truth is they were sunken there on purpose on Moreton Island in order to create a safe harbor for smaller boats on the island. That explains why they are lined up the way they are.  


These old boats dating back to 1963 were steam dredges and barges that were no longer in use.  At the request of a group of boat owners, these old wrecks were placed in the water.

Dome houses that were abandoned because of weather

Retired oil producer Bob Lee built these circular homes in 1980 in Cape Romano, located near Naples, Florida.  They were actually very beautiful when they were first built before hurricanes wreaked havoc on them.  


They used to have windows all around which gave a beautiful circular view of the beach.   The houses were fully solar-powered and self-sustaining.  


In 2005, they were sold to John Tosto right before Hurricane Wilma arrived which caused considerable damage not only to the dome houses but also washed away much of the coastline.  Now the sea has completely taken the houses over and the only way they can be reached is by boat.

An abandoned home in Oregon

An abandoned home in Boyd, Oregon is just one of the homes left empty after Boyd was un-incorporated in 1955.  Boyd is now a ghost town.  



The Great Depression had much to do with the demise of the town; especially since the town was already struggling from low wheat prices.  Businesses couldn't succeed without visitors coming into the area.  


The ghost town has many old dilapidated outhouses.  

Once the site of St Anne's Asylum, Atkins Hall Apartments are now mostly abandoned

Back in the mid-1800s, Atkins Hall Apartments was once St. Anne's mental asylum. It was originally three stories high and three blocks long, with men living on one side and women living on the other side.  



There were also other buildings such as a gate lodge and the Church of Ireland.  About half of this extremely long complex was renovated into apartments but the rest is still mostly abandoned.  Some people might find it creepy living in an apartment where mentally ill patients once resided.

Mir Diamond Mine in Eastern Siberia, Russia

The Mir Diamond Mine is an incredible treasure located in the city of Mirny, Eastern Siberia, Russia where diamonds were literally spilling out of the pit from 1957 to 2001.  The mine was finally closed down in 2011. 


Mir Diamond Mine is one of the World’s largest man-made holes and is referred to as the “Navel of the Earth.” 

What is amazing is how a place that looks so deserted could produce diamonds that made many miners rich beyond their wildest dreams. 

Abandoned theater inside Norwich State Hospital in Norwich Connecticut 

Norwich State Hospital treated both the criminally insane and patients who were mentally unstable.  It was new and innovative for its day when the hospital first opened in 1904 with only 95 patients. 

As new buildings were added on for dedicated recreation space, it grew to over 1,000 patients by 1915.  By 1955, there were 3,186 patients.  

The hospital was unlike any other. Recreation areas, like this theater, were added on, housed in separate buildings that were connected by underground tunnels.   

All good things come to an end. Investigations of the staff for reports of mistreating patients by starvation, prolonged confinements, beatings, and packing patients in ice led to the hospital finally being shut down in 1996. Many believe the buildings to be haunted.

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