- [Dan narrating]
[intriguing dramatic music]
What if I told you there's a fearless man
who tugs heavy machinery with
a rather delicate appendage?
- This man is going to pull this eight-ton semi-truck,
but not with his body, not with his legs.
[intriguing dramatic music]
- What he's actually gonna do is a lot stranger.
[spectators clamoring] [intriguing dramatic music]
- Or that a drunken double dare
turned a city street into a landing strip?
- He has no lights on,
no radio contact with air traffic control.
- This landing would be impossible for a sober pilot,
but this guy has been pounding drinks.
- How about an elderly lion
who loves his way into the record books?
- He's arthritic, he's so toothless,
that his tongue just hangs out of his mouth.
- When Frasier limps his way over,
suddenly, the lionesses all perk up.
- Before you know it, there's lion cubs everywhere.
[intriguing dramatic music]
- These are the feats so astonishing,
they are truly
"Unbelievable."
[cinematic dramatic music]
Some war stories are hard to believe,
but this one's impossible to forget.
It's a tale of one man, one mission,
and one of the most impressive achievements
in military history.
[intriguing dramatic music]
- It's April of 1945,
a 24-year-old Canadian recon sniper
by the name of Leo Major,
along with his buddy, Corporal Welly Arsenault,
are crawling on their bellies
on the outskirts of Zwolle, Netherlands,
in an attempt to gain information
about Nazi troops in the area
with the hopes that a larger force
will then liberate the town from Nazi control.
[dramatic thud] - Major is a war-hardened vet.
Just after D-Day, he took a phosphorus grenade to the face,
and actually lost an eye.
An injury like that could have gotten a soldier
a ticket home,
but Major insists he only needs one eye to shoot
as many Germans as he can.
[intriguing dramatic music]
- This is supposed to be exclusively a recon mission.
Identify where the Germans are, how many there are of them,
and that is that.
It's not supposed to be an active combat situation.
- [Dan] But the Germans spot them,
and in an instant,
the recon mission explodes into a firefight.
- Major and Arsenault begin shooting.
[firearms banging] [pensive dramatic music]
Now pretty quickly, Arsenault gets shot twice.
Major takes out two more Germans before turning
his full attention to his buddy, Arsenault,
who is dead.
[dramatic thud]
- Major has lost people in combat before,
but now, he's lost his best friend.
This is personal.
Major decides to take revenge
and demolish the entire German garrison all by himself.
[intense dramatic music]
- Major has done some shockingly brave stuff before,
but to attempt to liberate a town entirely by yourself,
that has suicide mission written all over it.
- [Dan] Instead of going in guns blazing,
Major takes a different approach.
[dramatic thud]
- He spots a German officer's adjutant, the attendant,
outside of a tavern.
He sneaks up behind him with his pistol, disarms him,
and says, "Take me to your boss."
- When he comes face to face
with this senior German officer,
Major acts like he's doing the guy a favor.
He tells him that the Canadian forces
are ready to pummel this town,
and he says, if he wants to save German lives,
they need to leave now.
- Major doesn't really know
if he is dealing with somebody
that is gonna take his warning to heart,
or is he just going to stand firm
and follow the orders of the Fuhrer?
- This is a spectacularly crazy move,
but this officer doesn't understand
why anybody would just give up this information.
So he presumes this guy must have
some very serious backup nearby.
- As a final power move,
Major hands the sidearm back to the driver
and then disappears into the night.
[dramatic whooshing]
- [Dan] With the seeds of fear planted,
one man embarks on a daring deception
to make the Germans believe an entire army is closing in.
- Major spends the night creating chaos.
He tosses grenades here,
moves to a new position, fires his machine gun there.
[firearm sputtering]
To the Germans, it sounds like an onslaught
of a battalion, a regiment.
Who knows how many Canadians
have surrounded the town?
[explosion booming] [dramatic martial music]
- Any German forces that he does encounter in the streets,
[firearm banging]
he mows them down with his machine gun.
So now, you've got bodies in the streets.
- And the coup de grace,
when Major finds the Gestapo headquarters,
he sets it on fire.
[flames roaring] [dramatic music]
- The Germans are freaking out at this point,
and as these Nazis start fleeing,
he starts picking them off one at a time.
[firearm banging]
By four o'clock in the morning,
there is not a single Nazi left in Zwolle.
Leo Major has managed to liberate an entire town
by himself.
- Leo cements his status as a brilliant war hero.
He is awarded the Distinguished Service Medal.
He even goes on to serve in the Korean War
where he is awarded yet another Distinguished Service Medal.
[dramatic whooshing]
- To this day,
Dutch kids still learn all about Leo Major in school.
But not every incredible feat makes the history books.
Take, for example, the remarkable tale
of an ambitious seafaring monk.
[intriguing dramatic music]
- So kids get taught in school
that Columbus discovered America in 1492.
But there are other theories that've gotten legs
over the years,
like the Vikings discovering Newfoundland
in the 10th century,
or even the Chinese,
shortly before Columbus landing on the West Coast.
- [Dan] But long before any of them,
one Irish monk may have gotten there first.
[intriguing orchestral music]
- A sixth century Irish monk, Saint Brendan,
supposedly embarked on a westward journey
seeking the Garden of Eden,
the account of which appears in his book,
"The Voyage of Saint Brendan: The Abbott."
[tense dramatic music]
- Most scholars read this as an allegory,
the story of a religious passion,
but some read into it as an actual literal travelogue,
the story of a voyage from Ireland all the way to Canada.
- Allegedly, Brendan travels this 4,500 mile trek
not in a wood-timbered ship,
like the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria of Columbus,
but in a leather-hulled tiny little ship called a currach.
Now, if this were true, it would rewrite history.
[intriguing dramatic music]
- But how can you prove
that a small, ancient leather boat
could cross the North Atlantic?
In 1976, a historian named Tim Severin
sets out to do just that,
follow the voyage of Saint Brendan.
[intriguing dramatic music]
- [Dan] With a team of boat builders,
scholars, and drinking buddies,
Tim painstakingly makes an authentic currach
using only methods and materials available
at the time of the initial voyage.
[intriguing dramatic music]
- Instead of wood planking,
the hull is covered with ox hides
that are stretched and stitched together to cover the frame.
- Tim sets sail from Ireland in May of 1976.
- Blessed be this boat, and all who sail in it.
- He heads north
and takes Brendan's voyage in which he sails
in a stepping-stone route
from Ireland to Scotland to the Faro Islands
to Iceland to Greenland
and then to Newfoundland
in North America.
[thunder rumbling] [intriguing dramatic music]
- The North Atlantic is perpetually inhospitable.
The waves and swells are enormous.
[intriguing dramatic music]
- [Dan] But the waves
end up being the least of their problems.
- A large piece of ice
tears a hole in the hull below the waterline,
and they start to flood.
This is basically their worst nightmare.
[intense dramatic music]
- To make a repair in the hull
while you're sinking in frigid water,
seems next to impossible.
Miraculously, they are able to stitch a patch over the tear
while they bail the boat out.
They survive, but they still have thousands of miles to go.
[ominous dramatic music] [water murmuring]
- This is not a pleasure cruise.
They are near hypothermic, their clothes are sopping,
and their food supply is constantly wet,
which means they have to rely on catching seagulls to eat.
Not that it does any help,
because they're constantly seasick
and unable to keep anything down.
[intriguing dramatic music]
- [Dan] Incredibly, Tim and his crew
push through for another 13 brutal months.
And in June of 1977,
the shores of North America are in sight.
- To the world's amazement,
Severin and his ragtag crew actually arrive in Newfoundland.
They're wet, they're bearded, they're emaciated,
but they've made the point.
Saint Brendan could have made this voyage.
- Saint Brendan.
[eerie dramatic music]
- 13 grueling months dodging icebergs in a leather boat,
at least they knew which saint to pray to.
- When it comes to record-breaking feats,
there's no shortage of unusual accomplishments,
like our next overachiever who pulls his way to the top
with a surprising body part.
[intriguing dramatic music]
- In the city of Tbilisi, in Georgia,
an excited crowd gathers around.
[intriguing dramatic music]
In the center of this large crowd,
you have an eight-ton semi-truck.
Standing in front of the semi-truck
is this large, imposing man by the name of Lasha Pataraya.
At first glance, you might think
this guy's gonna attach a harness to him
and he's gonna pull this eight-ton semi-truck.
Not the case here.
- What he's actually gonna do is a lot stranger.
You see, Lasha uses his ears,
specifically his left ear,
to pull heavy equipment in front of adoring crowds.
He's already done it with a seven-ton aircraft,
but today, he's raising the stakes
and hopefully earning a new world record.
- [Dan] If eight-tons of raw industrial might
against one delicate ear doesn't sound like a fair fight,
that's because it isn't.
[intriguing orchestral music]
- The human ear is remarkably fragile.
It has three small ligaments, three small muscles,
and that's all that's keeping it attached.
It only takes between 20 and 50 pounds of pressure
to tear those ear ligaments,
and even pull the ear wide open.
- [Dan] So what on Earth drives Lasha
to attempt something so impossible,
or dare I say inadvisable?
[intriguing dramatic music]
- One day when Lasha is working out in the gym,
he sees another wrestler,
as a joke, lifting these five pound weights using his ear.
Now while everybody's having a good laugh,
Lasha looks at it and says,
"I could do that with even heavier weight."
He decides, in that moment,
I am going to have the strongest ears on the planet,
and so he starts training.
[intriguing dramatic music]
- Lifting heavier and heavier things,
hunks of metal, parts of cars,
whatever's necessary to build up the strength
in that left ear.
All this daily training gets Lasha to the point
where, as far as he's concerned, his ear is superhuman,
and he decides he has to demonstrate this power
that he has acquired from his practice.
[dramatic thud]
- [Dan] He kicks off these public displays
with a 5.5-ton tow truck, then a helicopter,
each success pushing the boundaries of human engineering
and medical science.
Now, Lasha's ready to take on his most daring challenge yet:
the eight-ton semi-truck.
- With a crowd gathered around him and the truck,
Lasha attaches this white strap to his ear,
and he starts to pull with all of his might.
[spectators clamoring]
And to the crowd's amazement, the truck moves,
and eventually starts to roll.
[spectators clamoring and cheering]
- Lasha is ecstatic,
but the real miracle here
is that his ear stays attached to his head.
[spectators cheering]
- If you think that's wild,
this next feat is a little harder to stomach.
[intriguing dramatic music]
- Every year, thousands of parents
rush their kids to emergency rooms,
panicking because they've swallowed something
they're not supposed to,
marbles, metal toys, coins, batteries, you name it.
- And they should be worried.
Small objects can lacerate their throat or their gut,
they can block the intestines.
Batteries can burn the lining of the digestive tract.
There are a whole host of problems that could arise.
- [Dan] Thankfully, most kids grow out of this,
but there's one who doesn't.
[intriguing orchestral music]
- In 1959, in Grenoble, France,
a 9-year-old boy, Michel Lotito,
develops an unusual eating habit.
- He has this insatiable appetite
for really strange things,
tires, TV knobs, glass, metal.
There is a word for this compulsion, it's called pica,
and it's a psychological condition
where the sufferer has this compulsion to eat things
that have no nutritional value.
- But incredibly, Michel is able to live through it,
and grows up as a healthy kid
who just likes eating crazy stuff.
[intriguing orchestral music]
- By the time he reaches 16 though,
Michel realizes this is not quite the curse
his doctors have been telling him,
this is actually a skill he can turn into an act.
So Michel begins demonstrating this amazing feat for crowds.
- He dazzles audiences by gobbling down chunks of rubber,
bits of glass and metal.
Nothing is too big, too sharp,
or too dangerous for Michel.
[bulb clacking]
We're talking 18 bicycles, 15 supermarket trolleys,
seven TV sets, six chandeliers,
two beds, a pair of skis, and a computer.
- [Dan] But his biggest conquest of all?
An entire Cessna light aircraft.
- You can't eat an entire plane in one big lump.
You have to break it up into little pieces,
which is what Michel does.
I mean, he's eating the propellers,
the rudders, the wheels, all of it.
Of course, the most amazing thing
is probably not that he ate the entire plane,
but that he actually suffers fairly few ill effects.
[bulb clacking]
- Obviously, doctors are wondering
how he's not managed to kill himself,
and some are wondering is there some kind of trickery
or sleight of hand that's involved.
So to check, they take X-rays in real time
to see what's happening.
And they can actually see that metal and glass
are going down through the digestive tract as he's eating.
- Of course, these chunks of metal and slabs of rubber,
he's not actually able to digest those things,
those are just passing through.
- [Dan] Surprisingly,
the one thing he can't eat are bananas.
- As crazy as this sounds,
he claims that it reacts with all the metal
and gives him indigestion.
[intriguing dramatic music]
- Michel's feats of outrageous eating are beyond impressive,
but one thing's for certain,
if you have him over for dinner,
don't use the good silverware.
- We've all seen bar bets go a little too far.
Someone ends up with a dart in their shoulder,
or learns what a urinal cake tastes like,
but they usually don't end up making the morning papers.
[intriguing orchestral music]
- September 30th, 1956,
three o'clock in the morning,
we see one Thomas Fitzpatrick, former Air Force pilot,
drunkenly stumbling onto the tarmac
of the Teterboro Airport School of Aeronautics.
Thomas is there
because he's going to try to steal a plane.
- Thomas is a drinker,
and this whole thing started in his local Manhattan bar
[tape screeching]
where he is talking about how he was the fastest pilot
in his Air Force squadron,
and he's telling them all the details
of his many accomplishments.
But he's also pounding drinks.
[intriguing dramatic music]
Then one of Thomas's drunken friends makes him the bet
that he can't make it out to Teterboro and back
before the bar closes.
And Thomas is not gonna turn down this bet,
his honor is at stake.
[intriguing dramatic music]
- [Dan] With the clock ticking,
Thomas heads to Teterboro Airport,
eyes the lineup, and zeroes in on the perfect plane,
a single-engine Cessna.
- He then gets it started
and takes off completely undetected.
[pensive dramatic music]
He has no lights on,
no radio contact with air traffic control,
and he proceeds to fly to New York.
And the entire time,
no one has figured out that he has stolen an airplane.
[tense dramatic music]
- Thomas is attempting now to land the single-engine Cessna
on St. Nicholas Avenue and 191st Street
directly in front of the bar that he was drinking in
as per the bet.
[tense dramatic music]
- This is the kind of landing
that would be impossible for a stone cold sober pilot.
For one thing, there are wind gusts through Manhattan
that wreak havoc,
and these buildings are pretty close together,
there are cars in the street.
It's just not a safe place to put a plane down.
But somehow, Thomas Fitzpatrick sticks the landing.
[tires screeching]
Once people realize he has parked a plane outside,
the bar erupts in cheers,
except probably for the people that had bet against this
and have now lost all of their paycheck.
[tense triumphant music]
- Everybody is so impressed with this,
and the New York Times calls it a great feat of aeronautics
and a fine landing.
And while he's fined about a hundred dollars,
which is roughly $1,200 today,
the owner does not even want to press charges
for stealing the plane.
- Thomas continues to boast
about this achievement for years,
but people in the bar are not as enthused
to hear this story,
and the regulars have cycled out and new ones are there,
and they don't all believe this happened,
because they did not see it with their own eyes,
and so they kind of start to goad him and be like,
"Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's great,
bet you can't do it again."
- [Dan] Not one to back down,
Thomas sets out to do the unthinkable again.
- On October 4th, 1958, just a little bit before 1:00 AM,
Thomas, intoxicated, goes to the same airfield as before,
steals a single-engine Cessna, and does it again.
- This time, he puts the plane down on 187th Street,
right in front of a Yeshiva University building.
[tires screeching]
But the reception is not as good as the first time around.
- For his second stolen flight,
a New York judge sentences him to six months in prison,
with the judge stating that,
"Had you been properly jolted the first time,
this likely would never have happened again."
- In response, Thomas blames it
on, quote, "The lousy drink,"
aka, "Don't blame me, blame it on the alcohol."
[intriguing dramatic music]
- Our next go-getter doesn't need liquid courage,
he's smashing records sober,
and there are hundreds on his hit list.
[intriguing dramatic music]
- It's a lovely day in Brooklyn, New York.
Sun is shining,
birds are chirping.
And because this is New York,
a wild-eyed crazy man starts running through the streets
with a bottle of milk balanced on his head.
The guy's name is Ashrita Furman,
and he's training to beat a world record
to run a mile the fastest
while balancing a bottle of milk on your head.
- And the really funny part
is that this is not the only wacky record
that he's training for.
In fact, Ashrita holds the most meta record of all time.
He has the Guinness World Record
for Most Guinness World Records held by one person.
- [Dan] These records include
Poem Recited in the Most Languages,
World's Largest Incense Stick,
Fastest 5K in Swimming Fins,
World's Largest Crayon,
Heaviest Shoes Ever Walked In,
and Most Pumpkins Smashed in a Minute.
- The previous record was 15 pumpkins smashed in one minute,
and we did 31 just now.
- [Dan] Just where does this insatiable quest
to be the best of the weirdest come from?
Long before he's Ashrita,
Keith Furman is a kid determined to find his way.
- Back in the 1960s,
a young Keith Furman becomes obsessed
with the Guinness Book of World Records,
but he's really not blessed with incredible athletic skill,
or ability to actually become
a traditional record holder himself.
But when he hits his 20s,
he immerses himself in Eastern spirituality,
in particular, the teachings of a guru
by the name of Sri Chinmoy.
- And what Chinmoy convinces him of
is that it's all mind over matter.
It doesn't matter
that he's not the strongest man in the world,
or particularly athletic,
all he has to do is set his mind to it.
and what Chinmoy does is enter him
in a 24-hour bike marathon.
And shockingly, using his meditation techniques
that he's learned from Chinmoy,
Furman places third.
- Shocked by his own accomplishment
and inspired by Chinmoy,
Furman changes his name from Keith to Ashrita,
which means "Protected by God,"
and he takes aim at his beloved Guinness World Record book.
- He starts with a pretty straightforward goal,
he wants to hold the Guinness World record
for the most jumping jacks.
In 1979, he actually achieves that world record
by doing 27,000 of them.
[intriguing orchestral music]
- [Dan] Then comes a game-changing epiphany.
the weirder the record,
the better Ashrita's chances are of claiming it.
- Why would you participate in these normal activities
when you could instead pioneer underwater pogo sticking?
Why would you bother with a marathon
when instead you could push an orange with your nose
farther than anybody else ever has?
His greatest hits include underwater juggling,
mountain climbing on stilts,
pogo stick basketball dribbling,
most candles lit in one minute.
The list of things he's done just goes on and on and on.
- He shows no signs of slowing down.
Maybe the best part of it all, as weird as it is,
is that he seems to be having an absolute blast doing it.
- Sure, everybody's good at something,
but it turns out only one man is the best at 700 of them.
- History has its share of silver-haired seducers,
Casanova, Ben Franklin, Hugh Hefner,
but one lion gives them all a run for their money,
and proves age really is just a number.
[dramatic whooshing] [intriguing dramatic music]
- In the early 1970s,
a revolutionary idea takes hold in zoos.
Rather than cages,
why not a place where the animals can roam free?
Thus, in California, we have Lion Country Safari.
- The general public is invited
to drive past big predators, like lions and tigers,
within the supposed safety of the family car.
[intriguing dramatic music] [lion growling]
If you tip the attendants well enough,
they will throw meat onto the car itself,
so that the lions climb up for a meal.
- In addition to being an attraction,
these wildlife parks also have another mission,
which is to breed captive lions
for selling to other parks and zoos.
The problem is, in this California park,
the lions aren't breeding.
[intriguing dramatic music]
- What they fail to realize
is that these lions and lionesses,
they grew up together,
they were in the same packs and groups,
so they behave as if they were siblings,
there's almost a genetic taboo from them mating.
In essence, the lionesses friend zone the male lions.
[intriguing dramatic music]
- Around the same time,
there's a circus in Tijuana that's going bankrupt,
and they have this very old lion named Frasier.
Lion Country Safari agrees to take him in,
so he can retire there.
This lion is 19,
and that's like 80 in human years.
He's arthritic, he's so toothless
that his tongue just hangs out of his mouth,
and he's got this patchy mane
that looks like some kind of sad lion comb-over.
[intriguing dramatic music]
- [Dan] He may not have the looks,
but what this lion does have is plenty of mojo.
- When Frasier limps his way over
to where the pride is sunning themselves,
suddenly, the lionesses all perk up,
like he is the lion that they've been dreaming of.
Soon, Frasier has a whole harem of lionesses.
They go with him everywhere, they bring him food,
they pillow his head when he lies down,
they walk beside him holding him up,
because he's so unsteady.
They also breed with him a lot.
[Frasier growling] [lioness growling]
[birds chirping] [ethereal music]
- Before you know it, there's lion cubs everywhere,
and not like four or five,
Frasier fathers 35 lion cubs.
This is with 11 lionesses in just 18 months.
No zookeeper has ever seen anything like this.
- And, of course, this isn't happening behind closed doors,
this is all on display for the public.
And in the freewheeling '70s,
Frasier becomes a sensation.
[intriguing dramatic music]
The zookeepers know that they've struck gold,
and so, they make him their mascot,
naming him Frasier the Sensuous Lion.
- He becomes mainstream famous.
A low-budget movie is made about him.
Sarah Vaughan records a song about him.
People start producing
Frasier for President bumper stickers.
- According to some accounts,
Frasier receives upwards of 1,500 fan letters a month,
many of which are from fellow older men
asking what exactly is the zoo feeding him?
- Sadly, in July of 1972,
Frasier the Sensuous Lion,
who brought unrelenting joy to countless fans,
and at least 11 female lions,
passes away.
- [Journalist] What was the cause of death?
- Well, basically, he died of old age.
He was, after all, near the human equivalent
of 100 years old.
[dramatic thud]
- Frasier ruled the pride,
but the next animals you'll meet
are mastering something totally different:
the highway.
[grandiose dramatic music]
- Anyone who has ever had a dog in their life
knows that nothing gets them more excited
than saying "Who wants to go for a ride?!"
[grandiose dramatic music]
We've all seen dogs sticking their heads out of car windows
and enjoying the wind in their face,
but what we don't usually see
is a dog actually driving the car.
[intriguing dramatic music]
- 2012, in New Zealand,
some dog trainers decide they wanna up the game
for the rescue dogs
that aren't being adopted quickly enough,
and they're going to train them to do an amazing stunt,
and that's to drive a car.
[intriguing upbeat music]
Of course, you can't just throw your dog into the car
and expect it to take the wheel,
so they build a simulator that they can tow,
and the dogs can get used to how they have to control
this moving vehicle.
[intriguing upbeat music]
- Meanwhile, the tech crew is also modifying a Mini Cooper
with all of the same stuff,
so that the dogs could actually drive a real-life car
instead of just a simulator.
And after just eight weeks,
Monty, a dog with a scruffy gray coat,
is ready to give it a whirl.
[rhythmic dog barking] [intriguing upbeat music]
- It's not just one dog,
they teach a terrier mix named Porter to drive too.
[intriguing upbeat music]
This is the real deal, there's no CGI here.
And so, of course, these videos go viral.
The shelters are besieged by adoption requests.
[mellow upbeat music]
And so, in addition to getting to teach dogs
how to drive cars,
they fulfill the real goal,
which is to find these dogs loving homes.
[dog huffing] [mellow upbeat music]
- Would I adopt such an unbelievable pup?
Yes.
Would I also hide my keys?
Yes.
- There's nothing heroic about being a criminal,
unless you're so incredibly great at it
that the whole world has to applaud your genius.
[pensive dramatic music]
- It's a quiet Friday morning
in the upscale Banco Rio branch in Buenos Aires,
when a group of men in costume come running in
and announce, "This is a holdup."
[pensive dramatic music]
- This is a very organized crew,
they immediately round up bankers
and security and customers
and secure them as hostages.
However, despite their meticulous planning,
an alarm has gone off.
[sirens wailing] [pensive dramatic music]
And within minutes, the entire bank is surrounded by police.
[intriguing dramatic music]
- One of the robbers is wearing
a finely-tailored gray suit and a yarmulke.
He seems to be the ringleader,
and he points his weapon at the security guard,
confiscates the guard's gun and removes the bullets.
- He takes the guard's cell phone
and then goes to the window
and shows the phone to the police outside,
letting them know
that if they call them on the guard's phone,
they'll be able to negotiate.
- [Dan] What follows is a tense game of cat and mouse,
all playing out in front of news cameras
as the country watches.
[pensive dramatic music]
- The robbers release two hostages,
and demand pizza to feed everybody,
and they say that after everyone is fed,
they will then safely let the hostages go.
[dramatic grandiose music]
- Police, assuming that this might be a peaceful resolution,
readily agree.
They can even hear them singing happy birthday
to one of the hostages.
And then, things go eerily quiet.
[pensive dramatic music]
- Hours pass,
and finally, the police make the decision to storm the bank.
[dramatic whooshing]
They're expecting a firefight.
But when they get in there,
all they can find are hostages finishing off the pizza.
No bank robbers anywhere in sight.
What they do find?
Discarded costumes, discarded toy guns.
Now they're worried the bank robbers
may be posing as hostages,
and they sift through everybody,
but they all seem to be legit.
- It turns out that by the time the police storm the bank,
the robbers are already back home counting their loot
and watching with the rest of the nation on television.
[dramatic whooshing]
- The police start scouring the bank.
They make their way to the vault
where all the safety deposit boxes are,
and they notice this giant hole in the wall
that runs into the sewer system.
- [Dan] What the police find is shocking,
but that's just the beginning.
On the other side of that hole
is one of the most elaborate getaway plans ever conceived.
- To escape via the sewers, they use inflatable motorboats,
and to ensure there is enough water,
they create a series of dams in the sewers
to raise the water level.
As crimes go, this is a masterpiece.
[pensive dramatic music]
- Another critical part of this plan
is to target the safe deposit boxes in the vault.
- Because Argentina had been rocked by a banking crisis,
many wealthy patrons keep cash, bonds,
American dollars, jewelry in safety deposit boxes.
[intriguing dramatic music]
- The best part?
Much of the cash stored in these boxes
is unreported and therefore untraceable.
The crew has taken anywhere
between eight and $80 million in cash and loot.
[pensive dramatic music]
- Before they left,
they doused the entire scene in chlorine,
and then they spread hair shavings
that they've gotten from local barbers
to confuse police if they're looking for DNA traces,
designed to take them down a thousand rabbit holes.
[dramatic thud]
- [Dan] But in the end,
even the most perfect crimes have their weak spots.
- One of the masterminds, Beto de la Torre,
is supposedly caught by his wife with another woman.
She tries to extort money, not just from her husband,
but from every person that was involved in the heist.
Because she doesn't get what she feels she deserves,
she ends up going to the police and turning him in.
[pensive dramatic music]
And that leads to the police
capturing other members of the gang.
[intriguing dramatic music]
- The Banco Rio gang does do jail time,
but because they used toy guns,
they don't get very harsh sentences.
And in the end,
they'll all be known for accomplishing
maybe the greatest bank heist in history,
something that no court can take away.
[intriguing dramatic music]
- Perhaps the most unusual thing
about this criminal feat is its inspiration.
Supposedly the mastermind, Fernando Araujo, got the idea
while watching "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,"
which explains using both the sewer and the pizza
during the robbery.
- Watching someone reach a lifelong goal
is usually inspiring,
but every now and then a feat is so strange,
you're not sure whether to cheer or call for help.
[intriguing dramatic music] [bees buzzing]
- Here is a fellow named Gao Bingguo,
calmly sitting in his underpants,
voluntarily being covered
in thousands and thousands of bees.
[intriguing dramatic music]
- This is an activity called bee wearing
in which you just sit there as people cover you with bees,
and you see how many bees you can handle
before you tap out.
[intriguing dramatic music]
- Gao Bingguo's mission is to get the world record
for the heaviest mantle of living bees
worn by a human being.
- [Dan] Gao might seem like the only one crazy enough
to try this,
but the tradition goes way back.
- Bee wearing is a bizarre pastime,
but it does have quite a history to it,
it goes back 200 years.
[intriguing orchestral music]
One of the earliest bee wearers
is a Ukrainian beekeeper named Petro Prokopovych.
Petro is basically your Michael Jordan of beekeeping,
he invents artificial hives.
he's the one who first really starts to commercialize
gathering and selling honey.
He is the man that creates this industry.
- In 1830, in an ingenious marketing campaign
for his bee products,
he starts putting on these demonstrations,
showing people how many bees he can wear on his face.
[intriguing upbeat music]
- [Dan] Not only does it drum up business,
it launches an entire sport of competitive bee wearing.
And Gao is trying to outdo them all.
[intriguing dramatic music] [bees buzzing]
- The key to wearing thousands of bees
is to start with a single bee, a queen.
Queen honeybees communicate to the workers in their hive
through pheromones,
chemical signals that can draw them towards her
in a swarming behavior.
When Gao Bingguo goes for the record,
he attaches dozens of queens in little cages
all over his body.
[pensive dramatic music]
An estimated 1.1 million bees swarm over him
in a full bee body suit.
- Gao is a professional beekeeper,
so he knows a few things
to try and make this a little bit safer.
For one thing,
he knows to shower before going through this process,
he's getting any sort of body odor off of him.
He's also smoking,
because the odor with his every breath
is going to drive the bees away,
so he doesn't end up getting some in his mouth.
[tense dramatic music]
- [Dan] He's got a strategy, sure,
but 240 pounds of bees don't exactly play by the rules.
[pensive dramatic music]
- After two and a half hours,
his external body temperature though,
his skin, is piping hot,
because he has over 2,000 bee stings.
So, they then take him to a big old bucket of ice water
and slowly submerge him in that
to bring down that temperature.
He survives, he's got his world record,
he calls it a win.
[pensive dramatic music]
- Think wearing bees for hours takes focus?
Try holding onto a vision for decades.
[ethereal dramatic music]
- It's mid 20th century in Colorado,
and Jim Bishop is the teenager
with a real love for ironworking.
Jim had a hard time focusing in school.
He's not what you would call conventional.
One day his English teacher loses it
and screams "Jim Bishop, you'll never amount to anything!"
And he really took it to heart,
and he dropped out at 15.
- Jim is directionless, mowing lawns, doing odd jobs.
One day, he's biking with his buddies,
and in the midst of the Colorado wilderness,
he finds this pristine plot of land,
but it's got a price tag,
his life savings, $450.
[intriguing upbeat music]
- At first, he thinks he's going to build a cottage,
but as he gets to work,
his vision starts to get a little grander,
and he sees himself building not a home,
but a castle.
- [Dan] He's supposedly struck with a purpose.
The only thing holding him back now?
He has no more money or a formal architectural training.
- He gets a day job at working iron,
but by night, he's hauling three tons of rock
to his personal job site.
[intriguing orchestral music]
- And Jim's philosophy is that if it's not nailed down,
it's fair game.
So there's bits of highway rubble,
scrap from the local junkyard,
even protected rocks from state parks.
He gets by with what he can.
No cranes, no heavy equipment,
every single rock, every single beam is hand placed by Jim.
- This incredible feat of engineering and stubbornness
goes on for 40 years.
- This is Bishop Castle.
[dramatic triumphant music]
- By the late '90s, it's got a soaring tower,
a grand ballroom,
stained-glass windows,
there's even a giant fire- breathing steel dragon
powered by an old hot air balloon.
[flames roaring]
- So at one point,
the government decides
that "This thing might not be up to code,"
but Jim decides to fight them in court
and just drive them crazy.
And eventually, the government just gives up.
- Jim's castle becomes the destination.
There are raves, there are parties,
some people even book it for a wedding.
Tourists still swamp this place day and night,
and it's all free.
Jim loves
that people are actually getting to enjoy this thing
that he made.
- Sadly, Jim passes away from Parkinson's
on November 21st, 2024.
His son keeps the dream alive.
But as of now, the castle still is not finished,
probably just the way that Jim wanted.
[intriguing orchestral music]
- From a man who wears his weight in bees,
to metal-eating Frenchmen,
from super heists, to super fertile lions,
these are the stories of feats so astonishing,
they are truly "Unbelievable."