Stay ConnectedIn each episode of History Fix, I discuss lesser known stories from history that you won’t be able to stop thinking about. Need your history fix? You’ve come to the right place.
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Check out zipOns from befree Adaptive Clothing here! This week we'll take a look at the 6 Hanoverian monarchs: George I, George II, George III, George IV, William IV, and Victoria. We'll examine how George I, a German, came to be king of Great Britain and Ireland despite being only 57th in line for the throne and how German monarchs continued to rule the country for the next 187 years and beyond. What mark did the Hanover dynasty leave on Britain? How does it still effect them today? I think you'll be surprised to learn just how German Britain actually is!
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Check out zipOns from befree Adaptive Clothing here! In the 1950s a mysterious man appeared at Tokyo’s Haneda airport. He looked normal enough, just a regular looking mid-thirties white guy in a suit there on a business trip. But when he presented his passport to airport officials, they were puzzled. The passport was unlike any they had ever seen before. It listed the man as being from a nation called Taured, a nation they had never heard of, a nation they were pretty sure didn’t exist. When asked to point out Taured on a map, the man became confused. He pointed to the Principality of Andorra on the border of France and Spain. “It’s supposed to be right here,” he said “it’s been here for over a thousand years.” He couldn’t understand why his country was no longer listed on a world map. Airport officials took the man to a hotel room for the night until they could interrogate him further the next day. They placed two guards outside the room to ensure he didn’t escape but in the morning, the mystery man from Taured was gone without a trace. In the years since, many have speculated that the man from Taured came from another dimension, an alternate reality in which Taured really did exist between France and Spain. But how much of this story is actually true and how much is just the product of the game of historical telephone? Let’s fix that.
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This week, we'll get lost in the mind boggling mystery that is the Dyatlov Pass case, when 9 experienced hikers died under suspicious and unexplainable circumstances while traversing Russia's Ural Mountains in 1959. When a group of ski/hikers led by 23 year old student Igor Dyatlov failed to return after a 3 week journey, search parties were sent. They quickly found the group's abandoned tent, cut open from the inside. Not long after that, the bodies were discovered. But the condition of the bodies raised more questions than it answered. No single theory adequately explains how the 9 hikers died. Was it an avalanche? Weapons testing by the Russian military gone wrong? A yeti??? When Russia reopened the investigation in 2019, Swiss avalanche researchers used an unconventional method to try to prove or disprove the avalanche theory. They reached out to the creators of Disney's animated film "Frozen" to get their snow animation code. What did their simulations tell us? Is it case closed for the Dyatlov Pass incident or does the mystery persist?
Check out photos from the hiker's cameras here
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I'm back this week with yet another inspiring underdog story... but make it Christmas! This week, I'll trace the origins of one of the most beloved Christmas characters, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, all the way back to his roots on the desk of a department story copywriter in 1939 Chicago. Robert L. May was down on his luck when his boss at Montgomery Ward asked him to write a children's book that the store could hand out to customers at Christmas time. He was in debt, his wife was dying of cancer, he was struggling to support his 4 year old daughter, and he was far from achieving his dream of becoming a great American writer. But, just like his underrated title character, Robert rose to the occasion and gave the world something it needed, something that mattered.
Read May's original Rudolph manuscript and listen to his daughter Barbara May Lewis read it here!
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Just in time for the 121st anniversary on Tuesday, I bring to you the story of two brothers from Ohio, Wilbur and Orville Wright, who changed the world forever with their groundbreaking first flight on December 17th, 1903. Though it lasted just 12 seconds, it marks the first powered, sustained, and controlled airplane flight, something humans had tried and failed to do for centuries. Join special guest Adonis A. Osekre and me as we delve into the story of the Wright brothers to uncover just how remarkable their achievement really was.
Purchase "Windswept Dreams: The Wright Brothers' Legacy from Kitty Hawk's Dunes and Beyond" by Adonis A. Osekre
Check out askadonis.com
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I'll pick up where I left off last week, with the storming of the Bastille and the fall of the "ancien regime." We'll explore how, over the next few years, this new France will become more of a hellscape than a paradise. As a radical group, the Jacobins, seizes control, distopia ensues with the September Massacres of 1792, the "Reign of Terror" spanning 1793 to 1794, and the executions of the monarchy. We'll explore how this chaos paves the way for France's next ruler, Napoleon Bonaparte, to seize power for better or for worse. And, we'll look at 4 takeaway lessons from the French Revolution that we can still learn something from today.
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This week I discuss the events leading up to the outbreak of the French Revolution during the summer of 1789. You'll learn how Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette came to find themselves on the French throne at a time when the system, that had worked for centuries, was beginning to fail. Shifting social classes, failing harvests, population booms, and economic busts will begin to fuel a runaway sensational media. As the newspapers and pamphlets hit the streets, stirring up fear and panic, pandemonium breaks out amongst the people who arm themselves with weapons and sheer determination to end the toxic "ancien régime."
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On November 11, 1620, forty-one men aboard the ship the Mayflower signed a document of great importance. With their signatures they vowed to create fair and just laws and to work together for the good of the Plymouth colony. This document, the Mayflower Compact, was the first to outline self-governance in the so called “New World” and it would go on to serve as a foundation for both the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution. Our government was practically built upon the Mayflower Compact signed by those men. But not all of them would uphold the vows they made that day. One in particular, John Billington, would go so far against them as to become the first convicted murderer in American history. In the words of Governor William Bradford “He is a knave, and so will live and die.” But it wasn’t just John Sr., his whole family wreaked havoc on the colony, prompting Bradford to call them “one of the profanest families amongst them.” Join me this week to learn more about John Billington, the murderer on the Mayflower.
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It’s the greatest adventure story ever told, Lewis and Clark’s daring pursuit to cross thousands of miles of rugged terrain, to explore the rest of the continent, to finally reach the Pacific Ocean, gaze out over its vast expanse, with their faithful guide by their side of course, Sacagawea. You know Sacagawea, she’s the most famous American woman of all time. I’m not kidding. She’s the only one with her face on a coin, with more statues than any other woman in American history. It’s safe to say her story absolutely captivated Americans. I mean, truly, what is not to love about a young mother fearlessly guiding white men through the wilderness with a baby strapped to her back? But did you know, she didn’t actually serve as a guide for most of the expedition? That’s not even why they brought her along. And did you know that, despite having her face on a coin and all of those statues, we know very little at all about the real Sacagawea? We’re not even sure how to properly say her name. Let’s fix that.
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Starting in the 1800s, the US government forcibly removed hundreds of thousands of indigenous children from their homes and sent them to boarding schools hundreds of miles away where they ruthlessly tried to destroy all traces of their culture, to assimilate them into white society. Upon arrival, their hair was cut off, their names were changed, and they were regularly beaten for speaking their native languages. At these schools, children faced hard labor, starvation, physical and sexual abuse, and even death. In recent years, hundreds of bodies have been discovered in unmarked graves at the sites of these old schools across the country but estimates of the dead reach into the thousands if not tens of thousands. The US government did this, and then it conveniently forgot about it until very recently, like a couple weeks ago recent. Let’s fix that.
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