Unsolved Mystery Of The ‘Human Cork’ – The Man Who Couldn’t Drown

MessageToEagle.com – During the 1930s, the world was witness to one of the most bizarre beings who ever lived.

At a time when economic hard times clouded the hopes and dreams of people everywhere, there merged from bleak obscurity an Italian-born American whose incredible feats with his body were the talk of small towns and cities throughout the land.

Angelo Faticoni had been aware of his special “gifts” since early childhood.

It wasn’t until he was  an adult, however, that he began capitalizing on what Mother Nature had bestowed him – the phenomenal ability to remain buoyant for long periods of time, even with enormous loads of iron and steel anchored to his body.
Faticoni – or the “Human Cork” (as the press and adoring fans called him) could sleep in water, roll up in a ball, lie on his side or assume virtually any position asked of him.
Once according to an article that appeared in the New York Herald Tribune, the wiry, bearded contortionist was sewn into a bag and then thrown head-down into frigid waters with a 20-pound cannonball lashed to his legs.

“His head reappeared on the surface soon afterwards,” the article noted, “and he remained motionless in that position for eight hours.”

“On another occasion the Human Cork swam across the Hudson River tied to a chair weighted with lead.

There seemed to be no end to the number of unnatural positions he could assume in water or to the amount of time he could remain afloat, treading on water motionlessly with heights strapped around his waist, back and ankles.
One witness remarked that he assumed “dead man’s position” as his frail body, eyes closed and hands clenched across his chest bobbed and drifted upon the surface.

For years doctors sought an explanation to the Human Cork’s uncanny physical skills but they were unsuccesful.

Human Cork
Scientists could not comprehend why Faticconi just couldn’t drown.

Once during a visit to Harvard University, he allowed medical authorities to examine him thoroughly before plunging into a pool weighted down with pounds of lead. While he floated of bone-chilling hours, the doctors observing him failed to find support for earlier theories suggesting he was able to float at such great length due to abnormal internal organs.

Unlike Harry Houdini and other artist of the day, Faticoni’s acts were real, uncontrived with no hidden wires or strings supporting his body while it floated, feather-like, upon the surface of rivers, lakes, pools, and even oceans before the startled gaze of thousands of onlookers.

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How did he do it?

That’s what the world wanted to know. Newspaper reporters hounded him wherever he went, begging for his secret.

Investigators, convinced he was a fraud, pokes, probed, measured and timed his performances. Preahcres railed that he was in cahoots with the devil.

Psychics asserted that Faticoni somehwo drew his strength and extraordinary talents from the spirit world.

Before his detah in 1931, Faticoni promised to reveal the secret of how he became the “Human Cork.”

Newspapers responding to reader interest, ran stories almost on a daily basis about the Human Cork and his mystical abilities.

All wanted to know:”When will he reveal his secret?”

In the summer of 1931 Faticoni died while visiting relatives in Jacksonville. On August 31, the headline on his orbituary in a New York paper read “Human Cork is Dead. His Sercte Unrevealed.”

So was Angelo Faticoni, a man of mystery?  Whatever secret powers he might have possessed enabling him to turn himself into the “Human Cork” at will went to his grave with him.

MessageToEagle.com based on Herald Journal