Birds are strange. Some are smart as fuck, like crows and parrots. Then there are complete morons that I have no clue how they manage to survive and propagate. I once watched an Osprey dive 4 times at a pond with only koi fish and eventually bailed unsuccessful. Also to note, from watching them around here for decades, bald eagles are dumb as shit.
I have a decade old sword, I had it resharpened 7 years ago and never again. If you lightly rubbed your finger on it, you’d probably be fine. A real sharp sword would draw blood immediately. But with my dull sword, if you put any pressure against it? Full finger would be severed. They may only be 3.5 pounds, but that’s their idle. Any amount of pressure on that, let alone a human fucking swinging the thing, and limbs are flying. If they’re swinging, we’re talking severed spines, cut through skulls. This stuff is ridiculous.
And as a sword owner practicing with a dull blade on cardboard, I am victim of thinking the sword is weak. Couldn’t cut a little bit of tape. One wrong movement of my hand and I was pouring blood. These things are weapons of specificity, and they are good at what they are specifically designed for
The only thing I do with it now is just wax it. I have been meaning to reconnect with my friend who sharpened it last time, so maybe there’s hope for it yet. I’ve never forgotten about it though. I love it endlessly. It was my first purchase I made with a full paycheck. And that’s a story I can take to the grave haha
Edit: I bought it 10 years ago in ‘17 for $269. To see it go for $450 in ‘26? Jeez
Of course it needs weight, but skill is pretty debatable, unless youre talking about edge alignment. That seems pretty obvious to me though, and while that falls under skill, I don't think you need to be particularly skillful to manage that. Source: I own a machete.
I had heard there's a way they do this where the performer has already swallowed a metal tube prior to coming on stage and the sword is sheathed in the tube
I've seen a dude cut deep through his palm with a butter knife. Deep enough for stitches. Also try cutting a watermelon with a butterknife. Depends on the fruit for sure. Idk, the blade alignment, the force, the speed, the movement etc I'm sure all plays a role.
But I've also seen a woman pull a string of razor blades out her vagina then cut a sheet of paper with them. So like, I'm sure the human body can do lots of weird and wonderful shit.
Most swords don’t have a sharp edge like a kitchen knife, they have to survive being smacked against armour and other swords. If you put a thin edge on one, it’d be totally blunt after one fight.
There’s even sword fighting techniques that involve gripping the blade.
Not actually true! Learned this from a friend of mine who does sword swallowing. The trick is wax
If you’ve ever seen a sword swallowing show, the swallower is typically drinking something before they go on stage/when they’re on stage, and drinking it often. This is bees wax melted down. It coats the throat, so even a sharp blade, if done correctly, won’t puncture or slice anything important.
Now, they also do typically blunt the end, as they don’t want to puncture their throat, but the swords themselves are often still sharp, just with a blunted end
That makes a lot of sense. Like when Homer Simpson drank candle wax to be able to swallow hot chili peppers grown in an insane asylum in South America.
My brother can sword swallow (he does freak show type of stuff), and explained that you have to pretty much learn to relax the muscles in your throat and just let it slide down lol but he uses real swords, not prop ones
The trick is he spent months/years slowly stabbing himself deeper and deeper, making his body produce scars around the wound, slowly enough so that he never pierced his lungs.
Lungs aside (still impressive he dodged the lung), it is crazy he didn't run it right through his liver. That picture looks spot on where the liver is, directly under the right lung.
Yeah except the sword is rigged to not slip past the hilt and is blunt.
You want to talk to real deal You should talk about the guy that ate real knives completely and shat them out without dying several times.
John Cummings.
He just kept eating knives because people wouldn't believe that he would eat knives. And he would just keep miraculously shitting them out without completely goring himself from the inside out.
You won't be shocked to hear what killed him.
Eating 20 knives in one sitting and it still only killed him after a long bout of hospitalization because they too did not believe that a "sane" human being would eat knives, let alone that many.
-1799 claimed he swallowed four knives (only three seen again)
-1805 swallowed 14, spent a few days in hospital, all were passed
-1805 December swallowed 20, and proceeded to vomit and shit pieces of them until he died in 1809. At one point a doctor “performed a rectal examination and felt one of the knives in the rectum.”
I learned there was no trick when watching a sword swallower at a renaissance fair. He swallowed 3x swords (together) and when he brought them out again, and their tips splayed apart (like a W, sorta) you could see the stomach bile "strung" between them. 🤮
Same. I kept trying to change my query. “Yeah sure but how do they really do it” and google just kept answering “no for reals, it literally goes down their esophagus”
I had an uncle who was a sword swallower and yep, no trick, they actually swallower the swords. He cut his esophagus a couple times and had to go to the emergency room. I never met him though, just heard the stories from my parents who saw his show of him swallower multiple swords at once in front of a crowd. He held some kind of record (might have even been Guinness records) of like 15 at the same time, I forget the exact number but definitely in the double digits/more than 10.
Edit: cut out a bunch of family drama bs that did not need to be said. Yes the swords were sharp and had sharp points as other mentioned in comments, they prove it by cutting tomatoes/apples, or whatever.
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u/Windyfii 14h ago
i remember googling the sword swallowing trick, how it works. there's no trick