January 28th, 2020

A proper story has three acts, but the story of The Foolkiller submarine is missing two of them. Today, we're looking at act 2: the brief window of time during which we know where this giant steel craft was. We're also examining the three initial theories that people at the time held about where the thing came from, and who built it. To do that, we're going from The North Pole to The Center of The Earth and even all the way to the deep jungle depths of Ottawa Illinois. 

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Music by:
Blue Dot Sessions
Lee Rosevere
Kevin MacLeod

These images represent basically the only existent photos of the sub, all of which were taken from its initial raising in January of 1916:

And here it is being advertised at that Skeeball joint:

Then at Riverview, along with those funny monkey motorists:

William "Frenchy" Deneau, ladies and gents. First dawning his diving suit, then floating in The Fox River with his life vest.

Is this Peter Nissen, or is this Mr. Bowser? 

Peter Nissen (AKA Mr. Bowser), in The Foolkiller 2, going over The Niagara Rapids, as shot by The Edison Company:

Foolkiller 2 made it the first time. Not the second, though. Here it is, dashed against the rocks with Nissen looking on.

Nissen, his antics and contraptions featured heavily in media of the early 1900s, particularly in Popular Science, who featured stories about him over and over again, though not always complimentary ones...

The saga of The Foolkiller 3, distilled into four photographs.
1. Being inflated on shore:

Then brought out to The Lake...

Rolling over Lake Michigan and over the horizon...

And finally, the wreckage, found on the other side near Peter Nissen's infinitely distressed corpse: