Stuff You Missed in History Class

We're revisiting this 2013 topic in honor of Juneteenth. Most people are familiar with Tubman's involvement with the Underground Railroad, but she was also a spy for the Union during the Civil War, among many other things. Untangling the truth from the myth is the trickiest part of her story.

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Tracy and Holly talk about Lola Montez's relationship with the truth and references to her in the show "Dickinson." They also discuss how du Maurier's novel "Rebecca" has often been mischaracterized as a romance.

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Daphne du Maurier became famous thanks to her books and the adaptations they inspired, and her life story is just as intriguing as any of her writing. 

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Aside from her relationship with King Ludwig I, Lola Montez is one of those figures whose life is hard to pin down. That’s not because of a lack of documentation, but because that documentation repeats the completely fictional backstory she made up for herself.

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This 2013 episode covers Marie Taglioni, considered THE ballerina of the Romantic era. She's often credited with revolutionizing, restyling and redefining dance, though her father was a significant part of those achievements.

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Holly and Tracy compare the Apicius cookbook to cooking today, as well as some confusion over ingredients in the cookbook. They then talk about the life of Struensee, how scholars of medical history interpret the work of the doctor, and Mads Mikkelsen. 

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King Christian VII ruled in the 18th century, and during his reign, his physician finagled a surprising amount of power, and basically ruled the country. 

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“De re Coquinaria,” also referred to as “Apicius,” is a cookbook featuring recipes that may have been collected as early as the first century. Who wrote it is a mystery, but it offers unique insight into the food culture of ancient Greece and Rome.

Check out the Pinterest Page that was used to create this episode: https://www.pinterest.com/missedinhistory/on-the-subject-of-cooking-de-re-coquinaria/

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This 2018 episode covers defenestrations - which just means "to throw out of a window." And there's been a surprising amount of defenestration in Czech history. And almost all of it has been connected religious wars.

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Holly and Tracy talk about Child's life, the ways in which she was ahead of her time socially, and the questions surrounding her marriage. The Haymarket riot's place in labor history is also covered, with an eye toward how many of the issues that were prominent then remain in play today.

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The Haymarket Riot, aka the Haymarket Affair or the Haymarket Massacre, is one of the many interconnected events and people and movements that are all integral to defining the basic idea of what a full-time job is in the U.S. 

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Lydia Maria Child was a writer of children’s literature, historical novels, abolitionist tracts, and poetry. She also wrote literature for children and penned a holiday poem that remains popular today.

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This 2014 episode covers the devastation of "Black Wall Street," which was a nickname for Greenwood, a vibrant suburb of Tulsa, Oklahoma. It was destroyed in a racist attack in 1921. 

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Tracy and Holly discuss Tracy's research on Operation Paperclip and how recently information about it has been uncovered. After talking about taking some time off, Tracy also shares how she selected the Paperclippers to focus on for Wednesday's episode.

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Under Operation Paperclip, about 1,600 specialists – most with some involvement with the Nazi party – entered the U.S., and many became citizens. Today, we’re looking at four of these specialists, who were nicknamed Paperclippers.

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Operation Paperclip, also known as Project Paperclip, which was the U.S. effort to bring German scientists to the U.S. after World War II. 

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This 2011 episode is from prior hosts Sarah and Deblina. During the 17th century, the Dutch went nuts for tulips, paying exorbitant amounts for a single bulb. But what exactly triggered this commodity bubble? And what do revisionist historians have to say? 

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Holly and Tracy talk about Paré's work in context on the timeline, and then a very cool modern gardening project using the book we mentioned this week, "The Feate of Gardening."

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Gardening is a living history that connects us all to people and places through time. This episode covers precolonial North America, Europeans bringing their own gardening ideas to the colonies, and how gardening has developed and shifted since then.

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Sixteenth-century barber surgeon Paré has been called everything from “the gentle surgeon” to “the father of modern surgery.” He advanced the field of medicine significantly during his 50+ years in practice.

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Revisiting our 2016 episode on black Canadian-American Mary Ann Shadd Cary, who became the first woman in North America to publish and edit a newspaper. She advocated against slavery, for better lives for free black people, and for women's rights.

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Holly and Tracy talk about how they decided to cover the life of Ralph McQuarrie, and discuss the breadth of his awe-inspiring work.

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In our second part of McQuarrie's life story, we cover how Star Wars became Ralph’s most well-known area of work, but also how it led to a lot of iconic visual moments in other films. 

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McQuarrie is responsible for some of the most recognizable imagery in cinema and culture. In part one, we’ll talk about his early life, his work before Star Wars, and how he started collaborating with George Lucas. 

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This 2016 episode covers a piece of Scottish and English history that's often simultaneously romanticized and oversimplified. It's a great deal more complicated than any one event, and is instead the result of many contributing factors.

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Tracy and Holly discuss their memories of nursery rhymes, and their experiences with women's health care.

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In the U.S., the idea that people should know about the risks involved with the drugs that they are taking is tied directly to the complicated and often troubling history of oral contraceptives. 

Tracy's Research:

• Gutierrez, Kirsten. “Health experts: Blood clots from J&J vaccine and birth control are very different.” WRAL. 4/13/2021. https://www.wral.com/coronavirus/health-experts-blood-clots-from-j-j-vaccine-and-birth-control-are-very-different/19625592/
• American Experience. “Senate Hearings on the Pill.” https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/pill-senate-holds-hearings-pill-1970/
• Thomas, Robert Mcg. Jr. “Hugh J. Davis, 69, Gynecologist Who Invented Dalkon Shield.” New York Times. 10/26/1996. https://www.nytimes.com/1996/10/26/us/hugh-j-davis-69-gynecologist-who-invented-dalkon-shield.html
• Time. “Medicine: The Pill on Trial.” 1/26/1970. http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,878746-1,00.html
• Gura, Trisha. “Opening Eyes.” Oberlin Alumni Magazine. Spring 2004. https://www2.oberlin.edu/alummag/spring2004/feat_eyes.html
• Jewish Women's Archive. "Barbara Seaman." (Viewed on April 14, 2021) <https://jwa.org/feminism/seaman-barbara>.
• Knowles, Jon. “The Birth Control Pill – A History.” Planned Parenthood. 2013. https://www.plannedparenthood.org/files/1213/9611/6329/pillhistory.pdf
• Watkins, Elizabeth Siegel. “On the Pill: A Social History of Oral Contraceptives, 1950-1970.” Johns Hopkins University Press. 1998.
• Fitzpatrick, Jane Brodsky. "Seaman, Barbara." The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives, edited by Arnold Markoe, et al., vol. 8: 2006-2008, Charles Scribner's Sons, 2010, pp. 440-441. Gale In Context: Biography, link.gale.com/apps/doc/CX1347100261/GPS?u=mlin_n_melpub&sid=GPS&xid=3f70d978. Accessed 14 Apr. 2021.
• Watkins, Elizabeth Siegel. “Expanding Consumer Information: The Origin of the Patient Package Insert.” Advancing the Consumer Interest Volume 10 Number 1 / Spring 1998. Via JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/23862430
• Junod, Suzanne White and Lara Marks. “Women’s Trials: The Approval of the First Oral Contraceptive Pill n the United States and Great Britain.” Journal of the History of Medicine. Vol. 57, April 2002. Oxford University Press.
• O’Donnell, Kelly. “Our Doctors, Ourselves: Barbara Seaman and Popular Health.” Bulletin of the History of Medicine. Vol. 93, No. 4, Winter 2019. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/744905
• Sigal, Regina. “politics of the pill.” Off Our Backs. 2/27/1970. https://www.jstor.org/stable/25770946
• Blair, Sandra. “Liability of Birth Control Pill Manufacturers.” Hastings Law Journal. Vol. 23, Issue 5. 1/1972. https://repository.uchastings.edu/hastings_law_journal 

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A number of English-language poems are generally lumped together as “Mother Goose" poems. But was there an actual Mother Goose? And do any of these poems have historical references in them?  

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This 2016 episode covers the London Match Girls Strike of 1888. This was an important labor rights event, when factory workers protested hazardous and unfair working conditions.

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Tracy and Holly speculate about the kitsch of historical cultures, and how we interpret historical objects.

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Part two of our spring 2021 Unearthed! coverage includes exhumations, books and letters, and some other favorites!

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Part one of our early 2021 edition of Unearthed! covers updates, cute animals and their pictures, edibles and potables, and shipwrecks.

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Today we revisit a 2013 episode. In 1900, a shipwreck was discovered near the island of Antikythera, including an assortment of luxury goods: statues, silver coins, vases ... and what turned out to be an amazing 2,000-year-old mechanism.

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Tracy and Holly discuss the difficulty in researching the life of Chae Chan Ping, and exclusionary immigration legislation in U.S. history. Talk also covers the lore around the Tacoma Narrows bridge wreckage and the anxiety of driving over bridges.

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The drama of the first Tacoma Narrows bridge is hardly relegated to its turbulent end. There’s more to the story – from its inception to financing issues to some surprising legal happenings, and how it spawned entirely new approaches to bridge design.

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The Chinese Exclusion Act was the United States’ first major immigration law, and as its name suggests it specifically targeted people from China. It led to Supreme Court cases that set the stage for later restrictions.

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This 2018 episode covers Annie Edson Taylor, the first person to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel. Taylor's whole barrel trip was part of a much bigger story of daredevils at this natural wonder, which is tied to its industrialization and commercialization

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Tracy and Holly talk about the care needed when exploring the biographies of people in history who offer representation, but won't reflect the experience of everyone like them. They also talk about Sonora Webster Carver's autobiography and what an enjoyable read it is.

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Atlantic City performer Sonora Carver was the most famous horse diver of her time, and probably ever. It was an entertainment that was incredibly dangerous, particularly for the riders. 

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Teresa de Cartagena was a woman who was deaf, chronically ill, and from a Converso family. In spite of the things working against her, she wrote two treatises that have survived until today, which represent several firsts in Spanish history.

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This 2017 episode covers Rabbi Jacob Rothschild, a vocal activist who spoke out for civil rights despite the danger in doing so. White supremacists bombed The Temple in Atlanta in a direct reaction to Rothschild's work for equality.

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Tracy and Holly discuss how the Rum Rebellion is less harrowing than other similar incidents that have been covered on the show. They then discuss the Images of America book series and how Jeremy Katz's book about Atlanta's Jewish history connects the past to the present.

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Holly sits down with Jeremy Katz, the director of archives at The Breman Museum to talk about his new book "The Jewish Community of Atlanta," his career in history, and the expansive archives at The Breman.

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The Rum Rebellion overthrew William Bligh, governor of New South Wales, in 1808. It was Australia’s only military coup and was only given that nickname much later.  

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In this 2010 episode, previous hosts Sarah and Katie take a closer look at the legendary mutiny on the HMS Bounty -- and figure out whether William Bligh deserves his terrible reputation.

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Tracy and Holly discuss their relationships with language learning, and then discuss the ways that historical sites and museums have offered information for the public that would normally only be seen on-site.

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This castle is unique in its design and the extent to which the ground surrounding it are part of that design. It’s also closely tied to the turbulent period in England’s history that runs from the Hundred Years War, through the Wars of the Roses.

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Esperanto was developed by a Jewish man living in the Russian Empire in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It’s a story linked to both persecution and profound hope. Zamenhof hoped to bring the world together through a shared second language.

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This 2016 episode examines a Christian mystic of medieval Europe who was way, way ahead of her time. If she had lived a few hundred years later, and been male, people probably would have called her a renaissance man.

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Tracy and Holly talk about the trickier aspects of researching a story like Arsinoë's, as well as women trying to find agency in Arsinoë's time. Discussion of Sissieretta focuses on how the press covered her appearances, and how many of the issues and racist treatment she faced still persist for Black performers today.

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