22 October
'Chickens do not avoid Mike who, however, has shown no tendency to mate.'
This was how Life magazine captioned a photo of a headless chicken called Mike in a story it ran on 22 October 1945. A farmer in Fruita, Colorado, had missed his aim when he went to chop off Mike’s head, leaving the bottom part of his brain stem and now open oesophagus intact.
When the headless Mike didn’t die, the farmer spotted an opportunity to make more money out of him than he’d ever have got from selling him as meat. Feeding him with an eyedropper direct into his oesophagus, he put him on show in Salt Lake City, where he charged people 25 cents apiece to have a look.
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