A closer look
French showman Tarrare possessed a medically inexplicable appetite in the eighteenth century, routinely eating vast quantities of food, live animals, and garbage without ever gaining weight, and his stomach capacity was so terrifyingly vast that the French military actually tried to employ him as a covert courier by feeding him a wooden box containing secret documents, which he was supposed to discreetly pass behind enemy lines; the plan failed miserably because Tarrare couldn't speak German and immediately drew attention to himself by attempting to devour everything in sight, including stray cats and medical waste, and at one point during a hospital stay to cure his ravenous hunger, he was kicked out after staff strongly suspected he had eaten a missing toddler from the pediatric ward, proving that while history is usually full of noble heroes and brilliant inventors, occasionally it gives us a human garbage disposal who moonlights as the world's absolute worst military spy
