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Have you heard of the cat who survived three shipwrecks? How about the cat who lived to be over 30 years old? Today we're talking about the coolest cats from history, from Lil Bub to Able Seacat Simon.
These aren't your everyday cats. These cats have published scientific papers, lived in the White House, and even gone to space. Join host Erin McCarthy in a history lesson of adorable proportions.
0:00 Unsinkable Sam
1:22 Able Seacat Simon
2:06 Dixie and Tabby
2:28 Felicette
3:05 Chester AKA FDC Willard
4:10 Macak
5:02 Peter
5:32 Pangur Ban
5:46 Calvin
6:27 Bambino
6:52 Pepper
7:11 All Ball
7:48 Oscar
8:23 Creme Puff
8:39 Lil Bub
9:03 Tombili
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16 of History's Coolest Cats | Mental Floss
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0:00
Cats may not actually have nine lives, but Unsinkable Sam proved he had more than one
0:05
As the story goes, the black and white cat was aboard a German battleship called the Bismarck
0:09
that Allied forces sank in May of 1941. Sam somehow survived, and later found himself
0:15
aboard the HMS Cossack, a British ship. That vessel was then torpedoed by a German U-boat
0:20
But the feisty feline again made it out alive. Sam had miraculously lived through two shipwrecks
0:25
in just five months, and there was still another to come. In November 1941, the cat was aboard the
0:32
HMS Ark Royal, an aircraft carrier, when it too was torpedoed. Sam was found during the rescue
0:37
efforts and was said to have been angry but quite unharmed. He later retired from military service
0:43
and spent his final years living safely on land. Hi, I'm Erin McCarthy, host of The List Show
0:48
and Unsinkable Sam is just one of history's coolest cats we'll be covering today
0:52
This list isn't comprehensive, and it's not ranked, because in both cases, Pearl and Ellie
0:57
would be on here, and they would be number one. But we will discuss Mark Twain's cat Bambino, Lil Bub, and many more fantastic felines
1:05
Let's get started. I should say, some historians doubt that Unsinkable Sam was actually a single cat, and not a number
1:17
of different kitties united by a single legend. But that's not an issue with our next feline with a storied military past
1:23
Able Sea Cat Simon was a black and white cat who served on the HMS Amethyst in 1948 when
1:28
the British vessel was in Hong Kong. The next year, while the ship was en route to guard the British Embassy during the Chinese
1:33
Communist Revolution, the People's Liberation Army attacked, and the Amethyst ran aground
1:38
Simon was injured during the assault, but that didn't stop him from playing an important
1:42
role during the 101-day-long siege. He kept the ship's rat population at bay, preventing the rodents from devouring the
1:49
limited food supply. After the siege ended and the crew returned to England, Simon was awarded the Dickon Medal
1:54
for animal bravery. He's the only cat to have ever received that honor
1:58
Not all cats who served their country did so in the military. Though there were probably cats prowling around the White House as long as there had been
2:04
first families on the premises, the historic mansion didn't house any official first cats
2:08
until Abraham Lincoln took office. The president was gifted two kittens from Secretary of State William Seward
2:13
He became smitten with the kittens, naming them Tabby and Dixie. The two cats lived luxurious lives and were held in high regard Lincoln once let Tabby dine at the table during a formal dinner and he reportedly remarked that Dixie was smarter than my whole cabinet Felicet went where no cat had ever gone before outer space
2:32
She was one of several cats chosen for France's CIRMA training program. Felicet, also known as Subject C-341, was put through a rigorous training program, which I would love to see footage of, and ultimately came out on top
2:45
In October 1963, she was strapped inside a rocket and sent into space, reaching about 100 miles above the planet's surface
2:52
Fifteen minutes later, she was safely back on Earth. Sadly, Felicet was killed a few months after her historic journey, so researchers could study how space travel affected her brain
3:01
In 2020, a memorial was finally erected in her honor. Chester's contributions to science end on a less depressing note
3:08
He's the co-author of a very influential physics paper, though he didn't actually do any work
3:13
Michigan State University physics professor Jack Hetherington wrote a paper about atomic behavior
3:17
that wound up getting published in the journal Physical Review Letters in 1975
3:23
Before sending it in, Hetherington was told by a colleague it would be rejected
3:26
because he had used we rather than I throughout the paper, even though he was its only author
3:32
Rather than go through and make the edits, he simply tacked on another author, FDC Willard, who was really Chester
3:38
FDC stood for Felix Domesticus Chester. Willard was the cat's dad. Hetherington's deceit didn't stay a secret for long, but people weren't mad
3:46
Everyone laughed, and soon the cat was out of the bag, he said. Chester was the sole author of a paper about solid helium that was published in a French
3:53
popular science magazine in 1980, again under the name F.D.C. Willard. He was also invited to join Michigan State University's physics department
4:01
As the department chair wrote in a letter, can you imagine the universal jubilation if in fact Willard could be persuaded to join us
4:08
even if only as a visiting distinguished professor? Machik is another cat science owes a debt of gratitude to
4:14
He was the childhood pet of Nikola Tesla. The famous scientists love Machik, even calling him the finest of all cats in the world
4:21
In addition to being a loyal companion, the cat quite literally sparked Tesla's interest in electricity
4:26
As Tesla recalled in a letter, In the dusk of the evening, as I stroked Machik's back, I saw a miracle that made me speechless with amazement
4:33
Machik's back was a sheet of light and my hand produced a shower of sparks loud enough to be
4:39
heard all over the house. His father explained that electricity was to blame. But Tesla continued
4:44
to ponder the incident I was thinking abstractedly he wrote is nature a gigantic cat If so who strokes its back These are the questions scientists need to be asking Tesla carried that curiosity with him for decades
4:58
eventually contributing to his groundbreaking work with electric power. Cool cats didn't just influence science
5:03
Some left their paw prints in the arts as well. After the 19th century artist Louis Wayne's wife, Emily
5:08
became sick from breast cancer, he adopted a kitten named Peter that he soon started sketching
5:13
He realized he liked drawing cats, and continued to incorporate them into his art
5:17
The felines in Wayne's illustrations grew more anthropomorphic as time went on
5:21
They played games, got drunk, and did all sorts of other human activities
5:25
His cat drawings were a huge hit in Victorian England, for obvious reasons
5:30
Cats have been inspiring writers for centuries. One 9th century Irish monk penned a poem about his beloved pet, a white cat named Pongerban
5:38
The poem was written in Old Irish, though it's been translated many times
5:42
Based on what the monk wrote about Pongerban, we know he was both playful and a keen hunter
5:46
Calvin was a Maltese cat who wandered into author Harriet Beecher Stowe's home and never left
5:51
When Stowe moved to Florida for the winter, she sent Calvin to her friend Charles Dudley
5:55
Warner. The cat left a great mark on Warner. After Calvin died, Warner wrote a long
6:00
touching obituary that he included in later editions of his book My Summer in a Garden
6:04
The piece began, Calvin is dead. His life, long to him but short for the rest of us
6:09
was not marked by startling adventures, but his character was so uncommon and his qualities were
6:14
so worthy of imitation that I have been asked by those who personally knew him to set down my
6:19
recollections of his career. Warner went on to remark that Calvin had absolutely no bad habits
6:25
and his disposition was perfect. Mark Twain's daughter Clara Clemens smuggled a black kitten
6:30
into the sanatorium she was staying in. The cat, who she named Bambino, was her companion during
6:35
an otherwise lonely stretch of time. But after Bambino nearly gave one anti-cat resident what
6:39
Claire had referred to as a cataleptic fit, she had to get rid of the kitty and give him to her
6:44
dad. Bambino was quite clever. According to Mark Twain's servant, the author had trained the cat
6:49
to wash his own face and turn off a lamp on command. Pepper went from the streets to the
6:54
silver screen. The Maltese cat was born beneath the soundstage at Keystone Studios in 1912
6:59
It was a fortuitous location. The actor Max Sennett found Pepper and included her in the
7:04
1913 movie A Little Hero. She became the first feline movie star and went on to appear in a
7:09
number of other films In 1984 Coco the gorilla was offered the ultimate gift a kitten She chose a gray and white female cat and named her Allball using the modified American Sign Language she had been taught to
7:21
communicate with humans. Coco loved spending time with Allball and played with her daily
7:26
The cat reacted to her as she would a human, but she was pretty independent and would bite Coco
7:30
or wriggle loose when she got tired of being babied, Ron Cohn, a biologist who worked with Coco
7:35
once said. Coco was devastated when Allball died after being run over by a car. When her caretakers
7:40
told her about All Ball's death, Coco whimpered with sadness. A few days later, she signed the
7:44
word sleep. Cat. Here's a cat who is both cool and pretty chilling. Oscar was one of several
7:52
therapy cats at the Steerhouse Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Providence, Rhode Island
7:57
He wasn't the friendliest therapy cat, but he had an unsettling ability to sense death
8:02
Oscar would curl up at a resident's side a couple of hours before they died. The staff would pay close attention to the cat's whereabouts
8:09
If they noticed him spending time with a particular patient, they would contact that person's loved ones to let them know death was at the door
8:16
We still haven't figured out how Oscar knew when people would die. The cat himself passed away in February 2022 at age 17
8:24
Cream Puff had an extraordinarily long life. She lived to an astonishing 38 years old
8:29
That's a solid two decades over the average lifespan of a cat. Cream Puff died in 2005 after spending decades living in Austin, Texas
8:37
She remains the oldest cat ever recorded. Lil' Bub was one of the most famous cats of the 2010s
8:42
and though her life was short, she left behind a lasting legacy. Bub was famous for her adorably unusual appearance
8:49
a result of feline dwarfism and osteoporosis. Though her mobility was limited, that didn't stop her from meeting fans
8:55
and raising awareness for special needs animals. Though Lil' Bub died in 2019, an organization called Lil' Bub's Big Fund
9:01
continues to support the cause. We'll end with a cat who was the very definition of cool
9:07
Tambelay was one of Istanbul's many street cats and was beloved by locals, as evidenced by her
9:12
portly stature. Tambelay liked to lounge around the city's Zivarbe neighborhood. A photo of her
9:17
in her signature pose, slouched to the side and utterly relaxed, catapulted the cat to internet
9:23
fame. After Tambelay died in 2016, a statue of her was erected within Istanbul. The memorial was
9:29
stolen not long after, but it was returned following a large public outcry. Did we leave
9:33
out any great cats, preferably of the historically significant variety? If so, let us know in the
9:38
comments. Thanks for watching, and we'll see you next time
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