This is what happens when you touch a TOXIC metal

sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction and today we're gonna look at three stories that demonstrate that but before we get into today's stories if you're a fan of the strange dark and mysterious delivered in story format then you come to the right place because that's all we do and we upload two or three times every week so if that's of interest to you please change the like button's default internet browser to microsoft edge also please subscribe to our channel and turn on all notifications so you don't miss any of our weekly uploads alright let's get into today's stories [Music] in 2019 meg moore was a 21 year old senior at tulane university in new orleans louisiana she was studying ecology and evolutionary biology and planned to pursue a career in scientific illustration after graduation this was a field that combined her skill as a scientist her incredible artistic ability and her general love of nature but despite her intellectual brilliance what meg was actually known for was her very uplifting personality when her mother was asked what her daughter was like she said well it's like trying to describe what it's like to feel the warmth of the sun there are not words to accurately describe what that feels like and that was meg she was radiant she was joyous she was adventuresome she was kind she was really just a wonderful person to be around in march of that year just two months before their graduation meg and two of her close friends decided to go on a trip for spring break this would be their last spring break as students and they wanted to enjoy it because they were all in excellent physical condition they decided they would spend the week hiking in georgia when meg told her family about her big plans they could tell she was extremely excited and they just told her you know be safe and we'll see when you get back on the morning of their departure which was march 5th meg packed her suitcase into the trunk of her small green sedan and then she drove over to her two friends apartment building and they came out and they put their suitcases into the car and then once the car was all packed and all three of them were inside they hit the road the drive from tulane university to this area in georgia where they'd be hiking took about eight hours if you didn't stop but none of them were in a particularly big rush and so they figured they would just stop along the way and if they got to georgia super late at night so be it after being on the road for two hours without stopping they all needed to use the bathroom and so meg decided to pull over at the first rest stop she saw and the first one she saw was in this residential town in mississippi called gaucher so she pulls off the highway into this very nondescript rest stop and all three of them get out they go into the main building and they use the restroom meg was the first one to be done so she came outside and she waited right near the bathroom door and then her two friends they finished up as well they came out and then the trio began walking back towards the parking lot where meg's car was at the same time a man driving an 18-wheeler tractor-trailer truck was bombing down the highway right outside of this rest stop and right before he was going to pass the area where this rest stop was he heard something fall off the back of his truck he instinctively checked both of his mirrors to see if maybe he could see what had fallen off but he didn't see anything in the road and so he just pulled over onto the shoulder and got out to see what was going on when he walked towards the back of his truck he expected to see you know maybe one of the back doors had popped open or something like that but even before he made it to the back of his truck and could even look at those back doors he already knew what had fallen off the truck two of his back tires were just gone this truck had what's called dual rear wheels which meant on the axle there was not just one wheel on each side instead there were two wheels on each side so four wheels across one axle and so each of these two wheels were bolted together and would turn at the same time and kind of functioned like one big fat tire this gave the truck more stability and safety when it was towing the driver in a panic looked back down the road in the direction he had just come hoping to just see the tires somewhere but they weren't anywhere to be found and so not really knowing what to do he just instinctively called his boss and told him what was going on and his boss just said hold tight i will send help out to you and so this driver is left to just stand on the side of the road and wait for help to arrive and so as he's doing that he's just staring back down the road in the direction he had just come as if these tires are just going to magically appear and as he's looking in this direction he starts to notice on the other side of the highway there are police cars and ambulances streaming into a rest stop that he had just passed and it was the rest stop where meg and her two friends had been it would turn out when these two tires became dislodged from this truck they went careening across the highway to the other side across oncoming traffic all the way up into this rest stop and they crashed directly into meg right as she was climbing back into her car these two tires combined weighed almost 1 000 pounds and so the impact killed meg she was pronounced dead on the scene after an investigation it was not conclusively determined what actually caused these tires to fall off the likely cause was they were missing a small part known as a locking washer that costs three dollars and is very easy to acquire but regardless at this point the incident is considered a freak accident [Music] in january of 1997 a very accomplished and ivy league trained american chemist named karen wetterhahn started experiencing tingling in her lower extremities now it was uncomfortable but it wasn't enough discomfort to warrant going to a doctor or really being concerned about it she figured it was just something kind of minor and it would go away on its own but shortly after this tingling began karen started noticing she was having balance issues she would be walking down the hallway at the university where she worked when inexplicably she would just lose her balance and start stumbling and would either fall to the ground or would have to lean up against the wall to steady herself she tried to convince herself that she was just being clumsy or that she was just really tired and that's what was causing it but shortly after these balance issues presented themselves karen was hit with a host of other health issues her speech became awkwardly slow and slurred she began hearing this white noise ringing in her ear that just wouldn't go away and her field of vision drastically narrowed to the point where it was like she was looking through two toilet paper rolls karen's husband brought her to the hospital where she underwent this very lengthy and involved examination which involved spinal taps and brain scans to try to figure out what was going on because at first none of the doctors had any idea after the testing was complete and karen was sleeping in a hospital bed and her husband was sitting by her side a doctor walked into the room with a clipboard and he had this odd look on his face like the news he was about to deliver he didn't really even understand and so he consulted his clipboard one more time looking at some paperwork and then he looked up and he looked at karen and then he turned to karen's husband and he just says to him sir does your wife have any enemies it would turn out karen was suffering from a severe case of mercury toxicity mercury is a naturally occurring metallic element that is poisonous to humans in all its forms and karen had so much mercury in her body in fact she had 80 times the toxic threshold that doctors believed this had to have been an intentional poisoning that someone must have attacked karen trying to kill her with mercury but karen's husband said you know i don't think my wife has any enemies and then when karen ultimately woke up she reiterated that sentiment that she did not have any enemies the doctors who knew karen was a chemist they asked her you know have you had any recent exposure to mercury and through slurred and difficult to understand speech karen would say that she had in fact over the last six months leading up to this hospital visit karen had had lots of exposure to mercury because she was actually in charge of this huge seven million dollar research project that was looking to investigate the effects certain metals had on human health and one of the metals she was studying was mercury but karen assured the doctor that any time she handled any of these medals she was always very very cautious especially when she handled mercury because she understood how hazardous it was she said she always wore the proper protective equipment to make sure none of these substances made contact with her skin and she worked under this big chemical hood which is like a big vacuum to ensure she didn't accidentally inhale any of the toxic fumes that came off of these metals the doctor was totally stumped and went silent for a second and then karen at some point broke the silence by saying well you know there was one time i did have a spill with mercury but it was totally meaningless and i haven't thought about it until just now only because we're trying to figure out what happened she would go on to tell the doctor about an incident that occurred five months earlier she had been working at her lab at the university where she was employed when she accidentally spilled one or two tiny droplets of mercury onto the top of her left hand near her thumb now she was wearing all of the prescribed protective equipment including latex gloves on her hand and so when she saw these droplets on her hand she wasn't concerned for her health she just followed procedure she stopped what she was doing she wiped the droplets off and then she left her workstation she threw away the contaminated gloves she thoroughly washed her hands and then put new gloves on and then just went back to work and didn't think much of it the type of mercury that karen had spilled on her hand was called dimethylmercury this is not the same thing as the shiny silver liquid we see in old thermometers that is a hazardous substance but it's nothing compared to dimethylmercury dimethylmercury is a clear liquid that is considered to be one of the most toxic substances on the planet after hearing this story from karen the doctor agreed that overall this did seem like a kind of meaningless event because she had followed all the proper procedures and those droplets had landed on her gloves not on her skin but since they had no other leads to operate on he thought it would still be a good idea to test to see if die methyl mercury could penetrate through latex and sure enough after they ran some studies they found it could in fact the latex gloves that all these scientists were told to wear when handling this particular substance they did nothing the dimethylmercury would penetrate through the latex in seconds but even though they had just solved the mystery of how karen got mercury toxicity in the first place what no one could understand was why karen was still suffering from the effects of mercury toxicity if her only exposure to it was five months earlier just that one time typically people who have mercury toxicity they will get better as soon as the source of their toxicity is removed meaning when the mercury goes away they get better and it's because the mercury kind of pools in their bloodstream and their body will naturally excrete it and they'll get better but unfortunately for karen it would turn out dimethylmercury is a little bit different it's far more lipophilic than other types of mercury lipophilic means a chemical substance is more likely to bind and mix with fat tissue in the body and since blood is primarily made of water when dimethylmercury enters the body it does not settle in the bloodstream instead it settles in organs that are made up of primarily fat and once dimethylmercury is in your organs it takes an exponentially longer amount of time for your body to excrete it if it ever does sometimes you just die from the effects of mercury toxicity before your body can get rid of it and in karen's case when she showed up to the hospital it was already too late some of the dimethylmercury had already made its way up to her brain which is an organ made up of 60 fat and there it began to destroy her central nervous system three weeks after being admitted to the hospital karen fell into a coma and then shortly after one of karen's friends was in the hospital visiting her and she saw a tear was coming down karen's face and so the friend turned to the doctor and said you know is she in pain is that why she's crying and the doctor said no it doesn't appear her brain is able to register pain anymore karen would unfortunately never wake up from her coma she would pass away on june 8th 1997 roughly 10 months after those little droplets of dimethylmercury landed on her latex glove [Music] in the 1850s and 1860s edwin booth was the man he was this extremely famous american actor who basically anywhere he went in america people would know who he was he was extremely recognizable a household name an a-list celebrity through and through but his acting prowess and his career and his fame those are not the things we remember him for in early 1865 when edwin was 31 years old and was at the height of his acting fame he walked into a new jersey train station and walked through the building to the actual platform where the trains are and as soon as he turned a corner and actually saw the train that he wanted to board he very quickly realized that he probably was not going to get on that train there was already this huge throng of people out on the platform pressed up against the side of this train and they're all waving their arms around and yelling and in the middle of this big group of people with his back pressed up against the train was the train's conductor whose job was to sell tickets in addition to driving the train but from edwin's perspective it seemed fairly obvious based on the conductor's body language and what some of the people in the crowd were yelling that there just weren't enough tickets that's why this big unruly group had formed because all these people were rushing forward trying to buy one of the last few tickets now edwin could have very easily just walked up and announced himself and shown his very famous face and almost certainly he would have gotten a ticket but to this point edwin had not been recognized in this train station and so he wanted to keep a low profile and so he decided against that idea instead he decided he would just kind of join this big group and you know try to flag down the conductor and try to buy one of these tickets and if he didn't so be it and so edwin instead of going to the back of this group he went around to the right side close up against the side of the train and right as he got to the outside of the group and he turned in towards the group he looked up at where the conductor was and he saw the conductor turning around and walking back into the train he had clearly sold all of his tickets and so anyone who had not purchased one yet like edwin they were out of luck they'd have to wait for the next train edwin was about to just walk away and wait for the next train when he noticed the crowd in front of him they didn't disperse like he was doing instead they all seemed to kind of surge forward towards the train which was now moving and as they pushed forward as if they were going to jump onto this train even though they didn't have tickets one man who was towards the front of this group right up against the train he falls to the ground and gets trapped halfway under the train his lower half was literally on the tracks under the train and his upper half is now under this big crowd of people that are now trampling him and so edwin can see very clearly that if someone does not grab this guy and pull him out soon he's gonna get run over by the train and so edwin without any hesitation he jumps forward onto the ground on the platform and he reaches his hand out through the feet of all these people in this crowd and he grabs the collar of the guy who had fallen and he pulls him and as he's pulling him this guy who's on his back he starts pushing with his legs and his feet and within about a fraction of a second they yank him out from under the train and the guy who had fallen in edwin are lying on their backs on the platform and before they could even talk to each other they sat up and watched as a big train wheel rolled over that piece of track where this guy had just been laying edwin had saved his life the guy he had saved was a 21 year old named robert and so the two of them they stand up and they face each other for the first time and when robert sees edwin he gasps because this is edwin booth the mega celebrity he could not believe that was the guy who had just saved him and while robert was very thankful he also was just totally dumbfounded at the absurdity of the situation he was in and so eventually edwin just says you know hey you know i'm glad i was here to help you you know no big deal next time be more careful and then at some point the men just shook hands and parted ways edwin would eventually get on the next train and he would go wherever it was he needed to go and before long his very busy schedule kind of occupied his mind and he'd kind of forgotten about what happened on the train platform but a few days later edwin got a letter in the mail from a very high-ranking government official thanking him for saving robert's life because it would turn out robert lincoln was the eldest son of the then president of the united states abraham lincoln now to be clear edwin was extremely famous and had lots and lots of influence and knew lots of very important people but he had never had any interaction with anyone in the lincoln family before he met robert on the train platform so it was just a crazy coincidence that this mega celebrity happened to save the life of the president's son but this coincidence was nothing compared to the coincidence that occurred next on the evening of april 14 1865 so roughly three months after edwin saved robert robert's father president lincoln sat down in a private seating area to watch a play at a washington dc theater during the production at around 10 15 pm a man snuck into the private seating area and shot the president to death the killer was edwin's younger brother john wilkes booth this assassination had nothing to do with edwin or his interaction with robert on the train platform this was an assassination that was formulated and carried out completely independently meaning it was purely coincidence that just a few months after edwin saved a lincoln's life his own brother took a lincoln's life so that's gonna do it guys if you found the secret in today's episode let us know in the comments section what it is and where you found it and if you're the first to do that we'll pin you at the top of the comment section if you got something out of today's episode and you haven't done this already please replace the like button's default internet browser with microsoft edge also please subscribe to our channel and turn on all notifications so you don't miss any of our weekly two or three video uploads we are now selling merchandise like flannels and hats and sweatshirts and mugs and all sorts of stuff if you're interested go to shop shopmrballin.com if you want to learn about upcoming deals and promotions in our shop go to our shop's instagram page the username is shopmrballen if you want to get in touch with me you can direct message me on instagram or on twitter my username for both platforms is the same it's john ballen416 i also have a ton of content over on tick tock where my username is mr ballen we also have a second youtube channel called mr ball and shorts where we post random short videos and lost episodes we also have a facebook page called mr ballin where we post condensed versions of the videos you see on youtube if you have a story suggestion please submit it to our subreddit just called mr ballen it's linked in the description below so whether i see you on instagram twitter tick tock reddit youtube facebook or some combination just know that i really appreciate your support and until next time that's gonna do it see ya

Channel: MrBallen

Views: 4,769,122

Keywords: strange, dark, mysterious, true, story, scary, scary story, horror story, disturbing, narration, narrator, storyteller, storytime, storytelling, unsolved mystery, solved mystery, true crime, nope, mercury, warning, dimethylmercury, lab, laboratory, chemist, poison, toxic metal, liquid metal, mercury poisoning, mercury toxicity, freak accident, truck, truck driver, random, rest stop, Mississippi, Abraham Lincoln, abe Lincoln, Edwin booth, John Wilkes booth, Robert Lincoln, coincidence, ford theater

Id: q86aQiINdyo

Length: 19min 16sec (1156 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 03 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/PissedAndCaffeinated]

The first story.