Stuff You Missed in History Class

Sissieretta Jones was a Black operatic and popular music singer in the early 20th century. And she was famous in her day, but then kind of vanished from the papers when she retired. Her last years were lived in relative obscurity. 

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The Ptolemies were a Greek dynasty that ruled Egypt during the Hellenistic period. And in a lot of ways Arsinoë II really set the standard for the generations of Ptolemaic queens that followed her.

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This 2015 episode covers a landmark legal moment. The ruling in this infamous U.S. Supreme Court case stated that segregation was legal as long as the separate facilities were equal.

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Holly and Tracy talk about the appeal of Duke Kahanamoku, his story being illustrative of the problematic nature of cultures being subverted in an effort to get along with others, and his love of naps.

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Part 2 of our coverage of Duke Kahanamoku's life delves into about what happened to Duke after that sudden onslaught of Olympic fame, and how it wasn’t really what Duke expected. 

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Kahanamoku became world-famous as an Olympic swimmer, and his love for sports of all kinds started from his childhood on Oahu. Part one covers his early life, up through his first Olympics and the start of becoming a global surfing icon.

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Today, we revisit a December 2017 episode about Skellig Michael. This small island off the west coast of Ireland recently became a film star, but Skellig Michael has a rich history all its own.

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Tracy and Holly discuss where they're at a year into the pandemic. Tracy also talks about how frustrated she was researching this week's episodes, and how exhausting it is to see the same things repeating.

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The comparison of the modern pandemic to the 1918 pandemic continues in part two. This time, the show covers ventilation, supply shortages, and vaccines. 

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Now that we’ve lived through a year of a global pandemic, our approach to looking at the 1918 flu pandemic had shifted. We’re revisiting the events of 1918 with new perspective, comparing then to now. 

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This is a revisit of our 2013 episode on the often avante-garde French designer Paul Poiret. He got rid of corsets, introduced the concept of lifestyle branding, and used draping rather that tailoring to create his dramatic designs.

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Holly and Tracy talk about what a jerk Cornelius Vanderbilt was, trivia about the Grand Central story, and Tracy’s first visit to Grand Central Terminal. Then they discuss the myriad levels of confusion possible regarding names in the story of Zoe and Theodora. 

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Over almost 30 years in 11th-century Constantinople, sometimes Zoë ruled alongside one of her husbands, sometimes she and Theodora ruled together, and in the end, Theodora ruled alone. All against a backdrop of distrust and intrigue and possibly murder.

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Grand Central's story starts with one of the wealthiest names in U.S. history, but it also is in many ways the story of the city itself since the 1800s, because Grand Central was such a pivotal element in the growth of Manhattan. 

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This 2014 episode covers the incident in 1959, in which nine students ventured into the Ural mountains for a ski hiking trip, and never returned. While much speculation has swirled for more than half a century, no one knows for certain what caused them to abandon their camp to die in the cold.

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Holly and Tracy talk about Holly's childhood perceptions of Isadora Duncan and how the famous dancer broke convention. They also talk about the peccadillos of Duncan's autobiography, and her relationship with sexuality.

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The comforts afforded by fame were forever clouded for Duncan by an ongoing series of tragedies, leading right up to the famous – and horrifying – way her life ended.

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Duncan, often called the mother of modern dance, had an unconventional upbringing, and a VERY unconventional life. Her early life was full of struggle but seemed overall quite happy.

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This 2012 episode covers the 1936 Berlin Olympics and African-American sprinter Jesse Owens, as well as the games as Nazi propaganda. More nations than ever participated, and the Olympic torch was used for the first time.

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Tracy and Holly talk about how young everyone had been during the Mississippi Freedom Summer, voter suppression, and Holly's trick to stop crying when recording. There's also talk of how topics get added to phone lists. and Cobb's violin playing.

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W. Montague Cobb was the first Black person in the U.S. to earn a PhD in physical anthropology, worked to debunk racist theories in the field, was an activist for desegregation and Medicare, and was an anatomy professor at Howard University. 

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The Mississippi Summer project of 1964, now known as Freedom Summer, was a in part a voter registration project that was met with an extremely violent and deadly backlash.

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This 2018 episode covers Gertrude Stein, an icon in the world of modernist literature. Alice B. Toklas is often described as her partner and assistant, but she was also a published writer, and "assistant"really doesn't cover how important she was to Stein's life and work.

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Tracy and Holly talk about Spain's effort to spread the smallpox vaccine, and how Balmis handled things. They also discuss fear about vaccines, bodily autonomy, and what does and doesn't gross them out.

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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.

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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. 

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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.

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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.

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Du Châtelet challenged the philosophic and scientific world of her time, but she's often eclipsed by her far more famous lover.

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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. 

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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.

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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.

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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. 

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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. 

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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.  

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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.

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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.

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In this second part of the year-end Unearthed! for 2020, topics include art, music, edibles and potables, and exhumations and repatriations, and potpourri.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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. 

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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.

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