San Francisco’s Buried Ships & Bizarre Toilet World Records

What if the streets beneath San Francisco aren’t sitting on solid ground at all—but on the remains of abandoned ships? During the California Gold Rush, crews deserted vessels by the hundreds, leaving ships stranded along the waterfront. Some became warehouses, hotels, saloons, even a jail. Others were swallowed by landfill as San Francisco expanded outward into the bay. Today, dozens of nineteenth-century ships may still lie beneath downtown—including the Niantic, whose buried hull has repeatedly resurfaced during construction, complete with artifacts and bottles of wine and champagne sealed underground for more than a century. Then Kat takes us into a very different corner of human achievement: toilet-related world records. Meet the man who smashed 46 wooden toilet seats with his head in one minute, the record holder who passed his entire body through a toilet seat ten times in sixty seconds, and the Belgian man who spent nearly five days sitting on a toilet in the middle of a bar—all in pursuit of questionable glory. Plus: Kat goes to jury duty and, completely on brand, discovers she has brought more knives than expected. Buried Gold Rush ships, forgotten champagne, toilet-seat martial arts, bizarre Guinness records, and one woman who apparently cannot enter a government building without accidentally carrying a weapon. It’s another beautifully strange episode of The Box of Oddities. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices