Stuff You Missed in History Class

With the smallpox vaccine established, Spain’s wanted to deliver it to its colonies in the Americas and the Caribbean. Francisco Xavier de Balmis carried the vaccine from Spain to the Americas using a chain of young boys who acted as living vaccine hosts. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Once Edward Jenner developed the smallpox vaccine, it spread from England, where he lived, to other parts of the world. Meanwhile, events were unfolding that led the Spanish Empire to launch a huge expedition to take the vaccine to its colonies. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This 2013 episode covered the Nazca lines in the desert about 200 miles southeast of Lima, Peru, between the Andes Mountains and the Pacific Ocean. The glyphs have remained intact for centuries, and have been avidly studied since their discovery in the late 1920s. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Holly and Tracy talk about how many things don't make it into episodes, sometimes due to cutting for narrative structure, and sometimes due to translation of sources. They also discuss Emilie Du Châtelet and the various ways her story is told. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Du Châtelet challenged the philosophic and scientific world of her time, but she's often eclipsed by her far more famous lover. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Tello is often called some variation of the father of Peruvian archaeology or the first indigenous Peruvian archaeologist. And his work was playing out across a backdrop of constant unrest and conflict, both for his country and his profession. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A throwback to 2013! Sir Joseph Paxton was a 19th-century botanist who became instantly famous for the hall he designed for the Great Expo of 1851. After the expo, the Crystal Palace moved to a new location and became the centerpiece of the world's first theme park. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Holly and Tracy talk about the fascination of the Griffith story and how contemporary journalists covered Griffith's crime, as well as how his story ties to Disney history. Tracy also discusses how delightful it was to pull together the research on Andrew Crosse. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In the early 1800s, Andrew Crosse observed a strange thing happening on an electrified rock in his lab, and he was catapulted into the public spotlight. But before that and after, his life and home at Fyne Court were filled with eccentric delights. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

While the Griffith name today is associated with the Los Angeles park and the observatory, during his time, G.J. Griffith was associated with other things: real estate, social climbing, and a horrifying domestic abuse scandal. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Part two of this 2018 classic delves into the only known successful coup d'etat in U.S. history, when a white mob enacted a violent plan against their town’s black community, and overthrew the duly elected government of Wilmington, North Carolina. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Tracy and Holly chat about Olympe de Gouges and the less-than-robust information about her life's details. When talking about John Dalton and color vision, discussion of emotional attachment to color and accessibility issues related to color vision deficiency. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

John Dalton is far more famous for his work in atomic theory. But he wrote one of the first thorough descriptions of what he called “anomalous vision” – meaning that he realized he wasn’t perceiving color the same way as other people. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Olympe de Gouges is known primarily for her 1791 pamphlet “Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Citizen.” But her writing and political activity went far beyond that one pamphlet, and she was actually executed for a completely different reason. Tracy's Research: Douglas, Allen. "Gouges, Olympe de 1748–1793." Encyclopedia of Sex and Gender, edited by Fedwa Malti-Douglas, vol. 2, Macmillan Reference USA, 2007, pp. 657-658. Gale In Context: Global Issues, link.gale.com/apps/doc/CX2896200277/GPS?u=mlin_n_melpub&sid=GPS&xid=2979d54d. Accessed 5 Jan. 2021. "Marie-Olympe de Gouges." Encyclopedia of World Biography Online, vol. 23, Gale, 2003. Gale In Context: Biography, link.gale.com/apps/doc/K1631008043/GPS?u=mlin_n_melpub&sid=GPS&xid=01a0e821. Accessed 5 Jan. 2021. HESSE, CARLA. "Gouges, Olympe de." Europe 1789-1914: Encyclopedia of the Age of Industry and Empire, edited by John Merriman and Jay Winter, vol. 2, Charles Scribner's Sons, 2006, pp. 993-996. Gale In Context: World History, link.gale.com/apps/doc/CX3446900357/GPS?u=mlin_n_melpub&sid=GPS&xid=a40a2b9c. Accessed 5 Jan. 2021. "Marie-Olympe De Gouges." Historic World Leaders, edited by Anne Commire, Gale, 1994. Gale In Context: Biography, link.gale.com/apps/doc/K1616000246/GPS?u=mlin_n_melpub&sid=GPS&xid=110589b6. Accessed 5 Jan. 2021. Lyons, Matthew. “Execution of a Feminist.” History Today. Vol. 70, Issue 11, November 2020. https://www.historytoday.com/archive/months-past/execution-feminist Columbia College. “Olympe de Gouges.” https://www.college.columbia.edu/core/content/olympe-de-gouges Kuiper, Kathleen et al. “Olympe de Gouges: Additional Information.” Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Olympe-de-Gouges/additional-info#content-5 Woolfrey, Joan. “Olympe de Gouges (1748—1793).” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://iep.utm.edu/gouges/ “The Trial of Olympe de Gouges,” LIBERTY, EQUALITY, FRATERNITY: EXPLORING THE FRENCH REVOUTION, accessed January 7, 2021, https://revolution.chnm.org/d/488. Vanpée, Janie. “Performing Justice: The Trials of Olympe de Gouges.” Theatre Journal. Volume 51, Number 1, March 1999. Via Project Muse. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/34586 Diamond, Marie Josephine. “Olympe de Gouges and the French Revolution: Construction of Gender as Critique.” Dialectical Anthropology , 1990, Vol. 15, No. 2/3 (1990). Via JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/29790339 Nielsen, Wendy C. “Staging Rousseau's Republic: French Revolutionary Festivals and Olympe de Gouges.” The Eighteenth Century , FALL 2002, Vol. 43. Via JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/41467908 Scott, Joan Wallach. “French Feminists and the Rights of 'Man': Olympe de Gouges's Declarations.” History Workshop , Autumn, 1989, No. 28 (Autumn, 1989). Via JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/4288921 Brown, Gregory S. “The Self-Fashionings of Olympe de Gouges, 1784-1789.” Eighteenth-Century Studies, Volume 34, Number 3, Spring 2001. Via Project Muse. https://doi.org/10.1353/ecs.2001.0019 Mousset, Sophie. “Women's Rights and the French Revolution: A Biography of Olympe De Gouges.” Routledge; 1st edition, July 2017. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This much-requested 2018 episode covers how open racism and hotly contested elections led to a climate of unrest and white supremacist violence in late 19th-century Wilmington, North Carolina. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Tracy and Holly talk about the travel thoughts that the show's recent Unearthed! episode brings up. Talk also turns to the various biases that people have had when looking at history, and how that can obscure the ways we interpret information. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this second part of the year-end Unearthed! for 2020, topics include art, music, edibles and potables, and exhumations and repatriations, and potpourri. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Time for a wrap up of things unearthed in the last quarter of 2020! Part one includes updates, books and letters, Vikings, mummies, and some other stuff. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This 2016 classic delves into knitting. which has been around for a long time. Exactly how long isn't entirely clear, but we do know a good bit about how knitting has traveled with us humans through time. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Holly and Tracy talk about how small details that get changed in the retelling of history change the context of the larger story, as well as some of the ways that histories like this week's offer new ways to think about topics that hadn't been previously considered. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Denis made several missteps - some of them criminal - as he tried to prove his superior knowledge in the science of transfusion. Due to his hubris and enemies in the medical community, he found himself involved in a court case that took a very strange turn. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In the 17th century, Europe was obsessed with science – and very competitively so. When it came to blood transfusions, there was a great deal of conflict in France's scientific community. And Jean-Baptiste Denis was right in the middle of it. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This 2015 episode covers the story of Violet Jessop, who was a shipwreck survivor -- several times over. She traveled the world aboard some of the most famous ocean liners of all time. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Holly and Tracy talk about why Holly loved studying Wilfrid Voynich, when scurvy became a jokey disease, and the need for a good multivitamin and getting a little sunshine. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Scurvy is a deficiency in vitamin C, or ascorbic acid, and its story goes way back in history – all the way to our evolutionary ancestors living more than 60 million years ago. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We’ve talked about the Voynich manuscript many times over the years, but the man for whom the manuscript is named has his own fascinating story. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This 2017 episode revisits roses, which humans have painted, written about, and assigned symbolic meaning for centuries. But this much-beloved flower predates mankind, and it's a little difficult to track our early relationship with cultivating it. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On today's episode, Tracy and Holly discuss their levels of familiarity with O. Henry and have a food digression. Talk then turns to how Rudolph became so popular so quickly, and how far reaching the Rudolph story is in culture. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Most of us grew up with the story of the sweet little reindeer that was picked on by his peers, and becomes the hero who saves Christmas. But Rudolph is unique in that he became part of Christmas tradition almost the moment he was introduced in 1939. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

O. Henry’s writing is taught in many schools because of his stories like “Gift of the Magi,” but it’s rarely mentioned that during his life, he fled to Honduras to avoid prosecution for embezzlement. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This classic is from 2014. In 1826, liquor was forbidden at the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York. Cadets smuggled alcohol into the barracks anyway, and a defiant Christmas party turned into a riot when two officers attempted to break up the festivities. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Tracy and Holly discuss the difficulty people may have with Civil War history and how surprisingly exciting Constitutional scholarship can be. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Holly is joined by Kerry Sautner, Chief Learning Officer of the National Constitution Center, to discuss the museum's mission, unlikely career paths to history, and how talking about the Constitution brings people together.You can visit the National Constitution Center at: https://constitutioncenter.org/ Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The myth of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy was a distortion of the history of the U.S. Civil War that’s still affecting the world today. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Were revisiting a 2016 episode about the uprising of the Maccabees against the Seleucid Empire during the Hellenistic period, which is an integral part of the Hanukkah story. After the restoration of Jewish religious freedom, the Maccabees started another revolt to obtain total independence. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Tracy and Holly talk about the animated version of Ibn Al-Haytham's story, Omar Sharif, waffle cones, and what to do with holiday leftovers. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Waffles are popular and commonplace on tables and as street food around the world, but they’ve evolved a lot over time to become the syrup vehicle most of us think of them as. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Ibn al-Haytham made massive contributions to the world’s understanding of light and vision through experiments that he did during a prolonged house arrest in the early 11th century. He also wrote about medicine, philosophy, astronomy, math and ethics. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is a holiday throwback to a 2017 episodes. Tasty treats associated with winter holidays have some slightly hazy origins, because the evidence of their histories was eaten. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Tracy and Holly discuss the issue of final resting places illustrated by Jim Thorpe's story, the pronunciation of poinsettia, and plant toxicity. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Poinsett was a statesman who was connected to some very important moments in our nation’s history, with mixed results. He’s also credited with introducing the holiday plant named after him – the poinsettia – into the U.S. from Mexico. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The conclusion of our three-parter on the life of Jim Thorpe covers his time as a professional athlete, and his life after the end of his athletic career – including two pieces of his story that have tragically continued long after his death. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This episode is our 2016 live show from the Dallas Museum of Art about the Olympics. Pierre de Coubertin is described as the father of the modern Olympic Games, which took a few years to really take off. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Tracy and Holly talk about football, Jim Thorpe, and the morality of trick plays in sports in previous decades. They also discuss the complexities of amateur status in sports and other areas. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

After the 1908-09 football season at Carlisle Indian Industrial School, Thorpe seemed to be headed for a career in baseball. But the offer to return to school and possibly qualify the Olympics altered that path. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Jim Thorpe was an incredible all-around athlete, famous around the world. In part one, we’ll talk about his life before and during his time at Carlisle, including some context about Carlisle and similar boarding schools. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This 2018 classics covers Dr. Susan La Flesche Picotte, who was the first Native American woman to earn a medical degree. She lived at a time when a lot of change was happening in the United States as a whole, and among Native Americans and the Omaha tribe she was part of specifically Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Tracy and Holly talk about the three people who are linked together in the story of the surgical treatment for cyanotic babies, including stories that didn't make it into this week's episodes. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In 1944, Thomas developed a surgical treatment for babies with cyanotic heart conditions. Thomas was a Black man working at an institution whose only other black employees did janitorial work, and he had not attended medical school – or even college. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Helen’s story is tied to Vivien Thomas and Alfred Blalock in the surgical treatment of blue baby syndrome. She was the one who suggested that Alfred Blalock try to find a surgical approach to congenital heart conditions like tetralogy of Fallot. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.