Stuff You Missed in History Class

Dr. Katherine Sharp Landdeck joins the show for a second time, to talk with Tracy about Kate’s new book – but mostly about Jacqueline Cochran – who was an incredible pilot, and one of the driving forces behind the Women Airforce Service Pilots. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Dracula is an iconic character, and the man who created him has become almost as much of a source of fascination for many as his famous vampire.. But even Bram Stoker's own life story - at least as he told it - may have some fictional elements. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this 2011 episode, prior hosts Sarah and Deblina cover Pope Stephen VI having his deceased predecessor Formosus exhumed and put on trial in 897. The corpse was found guilty, but this desecration disgusted Romans and made them rebel. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Tracy and Holly share stories of their own moments of poor judgement, and the Tracy discusses her interview with Alvin Hall and Janée Woods Weber, creators of the podcast Driving the Green Book. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Tracy talked to Alvin Hall and Janée Woods Weber, host and producer of the podcast Driving the Green Book. Alvin and Janée share their thoughts on the show, the Green Book, and the road trip they took to make the show. You can find the Driving the Green Book podcast here: https://us.macmillan.com/podcasts/podcast/driving-the-green-book/ Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Demon Core was a sphere of plutonium-gallium alloy that the U.S. made for use in an atomic bomb during World War II. After the war, researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory had two separate, fatal criticality accidents while working with it. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We're revisiting a 2010 episode from previous hosts. Most people are familiar with Jack the Ripper, but Victorian England was also plagued by an odd character named Spring-heeled Jack. Were reports of this bounding scoundrel a symptom of mass hysteria, or something factual? Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Holly and Tracy talk about Madame Blavatsky's shocking level of cigarette smoking and the surprising amount of Mother Shipton material Tracy was able to find. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Mother Shipton may or may not have been a real person. She's described as living in 16th-century England, and was everything from an oracle to a witch to the daughter of the devil, depending on which of the many sources you’re reading. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Blavatsky is an iconic figure. She was the founder of the theosophical movement, and lived a life of adventure that’s hard to believe. The impact of her work is undeniable whether you believe her to have been a genuine mystic or a total fraud. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This 2017 episode covers the story of how, in the 12th century, two children, green in color, appeared in Suffolk, England. The green children were written about in the 12th and 13th centuries as fact, but some people today classify as this tale as folklore. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On this casual Friday chat, Tracy and Holly talk about the genius of Tanaka Hisashige, and Tracy's frustrations at finding the more problematic aspects of Nina Otero-Warren's story. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Nina Otero-Warren was from a prominent New Mexico family, and worked in education, politics, and the suffrage movement, focusing largely on Spanish speakers. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Tanaka Hisashige was an inventor, a craftsman and an artisan, and he lived during a time that Japan went through enormous cultural, scientific and technological changes. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This episode is from 2017. Whitman is often touted as the best and most important poet in U.S. history, but he also worked as a teacher and a journalist. And his poetry career didn't start out particularly well. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Holly and Tracy talk about the business dealings of Hollywood in context with the moral scandals that were playing out in the press at the time, as well as the way films are distributed today versus in Adolph Zukor's time. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Once Adolph Zukor combined his production company, Famous Players-Lasky, with Paramount’s distribution company, he had consolidate two aspects of the industry under one business. His next step was obvious: gain control of exhibition of films as well. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The development of the Hollywood studio industry features a number of people who drove it forward. Today, we're talking about Adolph Zukor and William Hodkinson, and how their work led to the founding of Paramount. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this 2011 episode, prior hosts Sarah and Deblina talk about privateer Alexander Selkirk, who became a buccaneer in 1695. In 1704, after a fight with his captain, Selkirk was put ashore on an uninhabited island about 400 miles west of Valparaiso. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Holly and Tracy delve into the unverifiable parts of James Forten's life and the problematic idea of respectability. Tracy also talks about her geographical connection to the Lawson family murders which took place in 1929 and how that informed her knowledge about it as a teenager. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

These are episodes that we’d love to do as a full-length episode, and we’ve gotten listener quests for most of them. But there’s a book that’s so central to the subject that the book is really the place to go. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

As a child and young man, James was part of the British colonies that rebelled against rule from the throne. As an adult, he made his fortune in sail making, and turned his influence to the causes of abolition and civil rights. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this 2015 episode, prior hosts Sarah and Deblina covered a poet's romance. Robert Browning's early work wasn't as well-received as Elizabeth Barrett's poetry. Yet Barrett mentioned his work in one of her poems, and they started a correspondence that blossomed into love. However, Elizabeth's father remained an obstacle. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Holly and Tracy discuss the story of Croesus and how disabilities are represented in the writing of Herodotus. The topic then turns to the Igbo women's practice called sitting on a man, and how the Western world often misunderstands other cultures. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Women’s War was a response to British colonialism in Nigeria. British authorities described the group as a “hostile mob” because they didn’t recognize that the so-called mob was largely a long-established method for Igbo women to hold men accountable. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The story of the ridiculously wealthy Croesus, which was fictionalized in a number of ways, becomes a cautionary tale about pride and hubris, and what really has value in life. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This 2018 episode is running in honor of Labor Day in the U.S. Memphis sanitation workers stayed off the job starting January 12, 1968 in a strike that lasted for nine weeks. This was the strike that brought Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to Memphis, Tennessee, where he was assassinated on April 4 of that year. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Tracy and Holly discuss trying to stay organized, the relevance of the Delano grape strike today, and how Joshua Slocum's story makes us think about our travel yearnings, and the tricky part of his story. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Joshua Slocum was the first person known to sail around the world alone. Unlike lighthouse keeper Ida Lewis, he didn’t always enjoy that solitude – and unlike cyclist Annie Londonderry, he actually made the journey he became famous for. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Delano Grape Strike, which led to an international boycott of table grapes as grape workers in California tried to get better pay, working conditions, and union contracts covering their work. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This 2018 episode covers Elbridge Gerry, who signed both the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation. Gerrymandering is the drawing of political districts to give a particular party or group an advantage or disadvantage, and it's named after him. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Holly and Tracy talk about how this week's topic shifted from its original plan. They also discuss how slavery in the U.S. capital has been handled in media. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the second part of the discussion of White House history, Holly and Tracy first cover the gardens and landscaping, and then dig into discussion of how slavery is a part of the very foundation of the building. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today’s White House has 132 rooms and 35 bathrooms. But that hasn’t always been the case. It also was not always called the White House, of course, and it has a LOT of history. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This 2016 episode covers a time in the the 20th century when the U.S. and Mexico had agreements in place allowing, and even encouraging, Mexican nationals to enter the U.S. to perform agricultural work and other labor in the American Southwest. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Tracy and Holly talk about their personal thoughts on Symmes's hollow Earth theory, and then talk about their experiences with canning and winning prizes at state fairs. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Canning dramatically changed how people around the world have dealt with food. Early canning efforts were kind of stabs in the dark, though – we hadn’t figured out the microbiology component yet. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In 1818, something about the rings of Saturn - we don't know what, exactly - led John Cleves Symmes to conclude that the Earth was hollow. And he spent the rest of his life promoting this strange idea. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This 2013 episode covers Johann Beringer, the University of Wurzburg's chair of natural history and chief physician to the prince bishop in 1725. He was also unpopular, and some of his colleagues sought to discredit him. There are two versions of the story -- but which is true? Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Tracy and Holly talk about the use and misuse of tear gas, and then a theory that links L. Frank Baum's work "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" to Coxey's Army. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Jacob Sechler Coxey led the first protest march on Washington, D.C. in the 1890s, with a plan to create jobs for the nation's unemployed population with projects that would build the country's infrastructure. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Tear gasses, or lachrymator agents, are named for the lachrymal glands, which secrete tears. But tears are just one part of it. It was developed for WWI, but of course continues to be used today. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This 2011 episode from previous hosts Sarah and Deblina examines Fritz Haber's mixed legacy. The Nobel-Prize-winning Father of Chemical Warfare was responsible for fertilizers that fed billions, as well as poisonous gasses used during World War I. Tune in to learn more about Fritz's complicated life and work. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Holly and Tracy discuss the complexities of Isabella Bird's story, as well as the similarities between the pneumonic plague in Wu Lien-Teh's story and what we're living through in 2020. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Wu Lien-Teh was a doctor who’s most well known for his public health work and the pneumonic plague epidemic in the early 20th century. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Bird is celebrated as a world traveler, though she didn’t really come into her own as a traveler until she was in her 40s. Her books about her journeys were wildly popular. There are also some pretty big questions about the persona she presented publicly. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The second episode in our revisit of the Irish Famine covers the mid-1800s, when the poorest people in Ireland ate almost nothing but potatoes, saving other crops for selling. So a blight, plus politics, led to tragedy. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Holly and Tracy discuss the week's topics, including their own experiences with Central Park, and a segment of the summer edition of Unearthed! that Tracy cut. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This edition of Unearthed! covers episode updates, science and history discoveries, books and letters, and potpourri. And yes, there's (brief) talk about the Verona, Italy floor mosaics. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Seneca Village was a predominantly black community that built itself from the ground up. But its story is fragmented. Even though it existed at a time when it could have been fairly well-documented, there was a vested interest in erasing it.Holly's Research: “Seneca Village, New York City.” National Park Service. https://www.nps.gov/articles/seneca-village-new-york-city.htm Alexander, Leslie M. “African or American?” University of Illinois Press. 2008. Wall, Diana diZerega, et al. “Seneca Village and Little Africa: Two African American Communities in Antebellum New York City.” Historical Archaeology, vol. 42, no. 1, 2008, pp. 97–107. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/25617485. “Discover Seneca Village: Selected Research Topics and Resources.” Central Park Conservancy. October 2019. https://d17wymyl890hh0.cloudfront.net/new_images/feature_facilities/SenecaVillage_SelectedResearchTopicsandResources_2020_v4.pdf?mtime=20200219091534 Capron, Maddie and Christina Zdanowicz. “A black community was displaced to build Central Park. Now a monument will honor them.” CNN Oct. 22, 2019. https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/seneca-village-central-park-monument-trnd/index.html “The Sale of Manhattan.” The Atlantic World: America and the Netherlands. Library of Congress and the National Library of the Netherlands. http://frontiers.loc.gov/intldl/awkbhtml/kb-1/kb-1-2-1.html The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. “Manhattan.” Encyclopædia Britannica. November 23, 2018. https://www.britannica.com/place/Manhattan-New-York-City Connoly, Colleen. “The True Native New Yorkers Can Never Truly Reclaim Their Homeland.” Smithsonian. Oct. 5, 2018. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/true-native-new-yorkers-can-never-truly-reclaim-their-homeland-180970472/ Cleland, Charles and Bruce R. Greene. “Faith in Paper.” University of Michigan Press. 2011. Rosenzweig, Roy and Elizabeth Blackmar. “The Park and the People: A History of Central Park.” Cornell University Press. 1992. Blakinger, Keri. “A look at Seneca Village, the black town razed for Central Park.” New York Daily News. May 17, 2016. https://web.archive.org/web/20160518101320/https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/manhattan/seneca-village-black-town-razed-central-park-article-1.2639611 Martin, Douglas. “A Village Dies, A Park Is Born.” New York Times. Jan. 31, 1997. https://web.archive.org/web/20160320031313/http://www.nytimes.com/1997/01/31/arts/a-village-dies-a-park-is-born.html?pagewanted=all Arenson, Karen W. “A Technological Dig; Scientists Seek Signs of Central Park Past.” New York Times. July 27, 2000. https://www.nytimes.com/2000/07/27/nyregion/a-technological-dig-scientists-seek-signs-of-central-park-past.html Staples, Brent. “The Death of Black Utopia.” New York Times. Nov. 28, 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/28/opinion/seneca-central-park-nyc.html Kang, Tricia. “160 Years of Central Park: A Brief History.” Central Park Conservancy. June 1, 2017. https://www.centralparknyc.org/blog/central-park-history Wall, Diane diZerega and Nan A. Rothschild. “The Seneca Village Archaeological Excavations, Summer 2011.” The African Diaspora Archaeology Network. September 2011 Newsletter. http://www.diaspora.illinois.edu/news0911/news0911-4.pdf Central Park Conservancy. “Discover Seneca Village: Selected Research Topics ad Resources.” October 2019. https://d17wymyl890hh0.cloudfront.net/new_images/feature_facilities/SenecaVillage_SelectedResearchTopicsandResources_2020_v4.pdf?mtime=20200219091534 Wall, Diane diZerega, et al. “SENECA VILLAGE, A FORGOTTEN COMMUNITY: REPORT ON THE 2011 EXCAVATIONS.” 2018. http://s-media.nyc.gov/agencies/lpc/arch_reports/1828.pdf Seneca Village Project. http://projects.mcah.columbia.edu/seneca_village/index.html Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.