Stuff You Missed in History Class

Nina Otero-Warren was from a prominent New Mexico family, and worked in education, politics, and the suffrage movement, focusing largely on Spanish speakers.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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. 

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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.  

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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. 

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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. 

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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.

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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.

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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. 

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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. 

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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. 

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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We're revisiting a 2013 two-parter. The history lesson kids often get on the Irish Famine could be summed up as "a blight destroyed the potato crops, and a lot of people starved or moved away." Most kids ask, "Why didn't they eat something else?" Good question.

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Tracy and Holly talk about this week's two-parter on COINTELPRO, and how they both think about those initiatives.

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In part two of this topic, the show looks at some of the specifics of the COINTELPROs that targeted black liberation organizations and the New Left, as well as how these programs were finally exposed to the public. 

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FBI surveillance of people associated with the civil rights movement has come up on the show many times. Today, we’re going to talk about the history of the FBI, especially as it related to communism and “subversive threats,” and how that fed directly into COINTELPRO.

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This 2017 episode covered the Scopes Trial, aka the Monkey Trial, that played out in Dayton, Tennessee in the summer of 1925. It all stemmed from a state law prohibiting the teaching of evolution.

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Tracy shares how she landed at the topic of Ignatius Sancho, and she and Holly discuss his writing style. Free Frank's unique story, and how it involves some contradictory situations, is also discussed.

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Free Frank McWorter was the first black man in the U.S. to design a town and establish a multi-racial community. He did this despite having been born into slavery.

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Ignatius Sancho was the first black Briton known to vote in a parliamentary election – that happened in 1774. He became something of a celebrity in 18th-century London.

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This episode travels back to a 2018 episode. Perceptions and interpretations of Phillis Wheatley's life and work have shifted since the 18th century.

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Holly and Tracy talk about the soothing nature of bonsai as well as the places in popular culture it pops up. They also unpack the complex nature of talking about Flexner's legacy.

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The Flexner Report in the early 20th century is often credited with changing the medical field and shaping what medical education looks like today. But this document negatively impacted medicine in the Black community. 

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Bonsai’s origins go all the way back to ancient China, long before Japan became infatuated with the art form. Over time, the western world also became fascinated with bonsai, though there has been plenty of cultural confusion about it along the way. This episode is sponsored by Mazda.

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