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popular name: Barney Hill

date_of_death: February 25, 1969

age: 46

cause_of_death: Brain hemorrhage

claim_to_fame: The Odd and the Interesting

best_know_for: Betty and Barney Hill lived in Portsmouth, New Hampshire where Betty was a social worker and Barney was a postal worker. The couple were catapulted into the international spotlight when in September 1961 they claimed to have been abducted by aliens in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. The two were returning home to Portsmouth from a trip to Montreal, Canada, when as they were driving in the middle of the night, they saw lights approaching from the sky. What followed is said to be the first well-documented, "feasibly legitimate" UFO abduction in history. The couple claimed that they saw bipedal humanoid creatures in the window of a large spacecraft that landed in a field. They claimed they were followed by a spaceship and eventually accosted, kidnapped, examined, and then released by its extraterrestrial crew. The event has since become the best documented and most famous case of alien abduction in the history of UFO-ology. The story of the Hills grew big enough to prompt a best-selling book by John Fuller entitled "The Interrupted Journey", inspire a television movie called "The UFO Incident" starring James Earl Jones and Estelle Parsons. Over time their story was subjected to a brutal debunking by multiple people including the famous intellectual Carl Sagan.

popular name: Robert Wadlow

date_of_death: July 15, 1940

age: 22

cause_of_death: Wound infection

claim_to_fame: The Odd and the Interesting

best_know_for: Robert Pershing Wadlow, also known as Alton's Gentle Giant and the Giant of Illinois, was an American man who was the tallest person in recorded history for whom there is irrefutable evidence. He was born and raised in Alton, Illinois, a small city near St. Louis, Missouri. His great size and his continued growth in adulthood were due to hypertrophy of his pituitary gland, which results in an abnormally high level of human growth hormone (HGH). By the time of his graduation from Alton High School in 1936, he was 8 feet 4 inches tall and measured almost 9 feet tall at the time of his death. Wadlow became a celebrity after his 1936 U.S. tour with the Ringling Brothers Circus, appearing at Madison Square Garden and the Boston Garden in the center ring (never in the sideshow). During his appearances, he dressed in his everyday clothes and refused the circus's request that he wear a top hat and tails. In 1938, he began a promotional tour with the International Shoe Company, which provided him shoes free of charge, again only in his everyday street clothes. Wadlow saw himself as working in advertising, not exhibiting as a freak. He possessed great physical strength until the last few days of his life. He was buried at Alton Cemetery (aka Oakwood Cemetery) in Alton, Illinois.

popular name: William Duggan

date_of_death: December 22, 1950

age: 51

cause_of_death: Heart attack

claim_to_fame: The Odd and the Interesting

best_know_for: Even as a young boy, all William "Billy" Duggan ever wanted to do is join the circus. At age 12 he ran away from home to join the Sparks Circus where among his other duties, he was tasked with feeding the elephants. He quickly feel in love with these magnificent beasts and spent nearly 40 years working for one circus after another. In 1934, Mr. Duggan created the Duggan Brothers Circus, which toured for about a year. In 1950, he purchased the Pan American Animal Exhibit and began planning to make it into a three-ring circus that he named the Hagen-Wallace Circus. But of all the animals in his new circus, a young elephant by the name of Nancy was by far his favorite. Unfortunately Billy took ill and never saw the first performance of his new circus when he died suddenly. In his honor, Duggan’s son arranged for this life-size replica of Nancy, Duggan’s beloved baby elephant, to be carved from Tate, Georgia white marble and placed on his father’s grave. The cost of the sculpture was said to be nearly $10,000 (that's $131,000 in today's money). He was laid to rest at Grave of Pleasant Grove Primitive Cemetery in Moultrie, Georgia.