Stuff You Missed in History Class

In our annual recap, we walk through what's been literally and figuratively unearthed in 2017, including anticlimactic headlines, shipwrecks, medical finds, and a collection we've nicknamed "We told you so."

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Today's classic episode revisits Sophie Blanchard, a timid girl who grew into a trailblazer, and became famous in the early 1800s as the first woman to become a career balloonist.

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Today, the U.S.S. Indianapolis is most known for its crew’s horrifying wait for rescue after being torpedoed following a secret mission at the end of World War II. But the ship’s history goes back much farther than that.

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The story that circulates about how NORAD started tracking Santa is pretty heart-warming, but doesn’t completely hold up. So there’s some myth-busting here, and maybe the tiniest bit of bah-humbug.

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For Christmas, we're revisiting an episode from previous hosts Sarah and Deblina. During the first Christmas of World War I, British and German soldiers laid down their weapons and celebrated the holiday together.

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The exploits of the Special Operations Executive are the stuff of legend. This episode continues to look at a few of the group's missions, and what became of the SOE after WWII.

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After the Germans invaded France in 1940, an idea sprouted in the highest levels of Great Britain's leadership. From that idea, the Special Operations Executive was born. And in many ways, it changed the way wars were fought forever.

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A revisit to an episode on fairly recent history: In 1988, the appointment of a hearing president at Gallaudet University sparked a protest that changed the course of both the school and deaf culture in America.

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Tasty treats associated with winter holidays - candy canes, wassail and gingerbread - have some slightly hazy origins, because the evidence of their histories was eaten. What do we actually know about these foods and their place in the holiday menu?

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This episode features three unique women, all of whom are notable in their own way. The two things they have in common: They each have a surprising aspect to their stories, and they each have the name Belle.

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We're revisiting an episode about settlers bringing animals and plants to Australia, including rabbits. The rabbit population exploded, and rabbit-controlling fences were started by the 1880s. Work on the State Barrier Fence began in 1901, and it's still maintained today.

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This small island off the west coast of Ireland recently became a film star, but Skellig Michael has a rich history all its own. An ancient monastery, lighthouses and the island's status as a bird sanctuary all make up its story.

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This installation of Six Impossible Episodes is a bit of a hodge podge, with several oft-requested topics. Included are Olive Yang, the Silent Parade of 1917, Glencoe Massacre, Marion Downs, Lena Himmelstein and the Great Windham Frog Fight of 1754.

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Today, we're revisiting an episode from previous hosts Sarah and Deblina. The Halifax Explosion was one of history's worst man-made, non-nuclear explosions. The disaster killed about 2,000 people, and part of the city was completely leveled.

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Despite the huge impact the Lumières made with their multi-function motion picture camera, they didn't stay in the movie business. Louis went back to photography, and Auguste took a very different path.

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The Lumières are often associated with early film technology, but that wasn't the only area where they innovated. This first of two parts covers their early life, and how they went from a successful photography business into building a film camera.

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Today we're revisiting a bit of Japanese history. Thanks to the pillow book of lady-in-waiting Sei Shonagon, we have a first-person account of court life in Heian Japan. It's a diary and essay collection that's thoroughly fascinating.

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In 1966, a mining disaster in Aberfan, Wales, killed 144 people. It was a completely preventable tragedy, but none of the victims were in the mine itself, and 116 of them were children.

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Great Britain’s efforts to control southern Africa eventually led to war with the Zulu Kingdom. A brutal series of engagements claimed the lives of many British and Zulu soldiers, but Britain’s portrayal of events minimized poor leadership decisions.

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We're revisiting a classic episode, all about early strides in treating smallpox, which has been around longer than recorded history. Edward Jenner made great strides in eradicating it.

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In 1904, the Fort Shaw Indian School women’s basketball team spent four months at the St. Louis World’s Fair. The team performed mandolin recitals, literary recitations, demonstrations of gymnastics and calisthenics, and became World Champions.

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The Fort Shaw Indian School was part of a boarding school system designed to make Native American students conform to white culture. In a surprising twist, it also boasted a champion women’s basketball team.

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Today's show revisits the story of a Chicago heiress who helped develop forensic investigation standards still in use today. Her most notable contribution to the field came in the form of tiny homicide dioramas.

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In November 1917, guards at the Occoquan Workhouse assaulted and terrorized 33 women from the National Woman’s Party. They were serving sentences for charges like “obstructing sidewalk traffic” after peacefully protesting in front of the White House.

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Even in its youth, Hollywood's rapidly growing film industry had a reputation for debauchery. When a high-profile director was murdered, it added to that image, and revealed that Taylor, like so many in Hollywood, had lots of secrets.

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This week, we're revisiting an episode from previous hosts! During World War II, the Nazi party did not tolerate dissent, but some Germans did attempt to resist Hitler's government including the White Rose, a secret resistance group.

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Katharina von Bora, Marguerite d’Angoulême and Jeanne d’Albret all left their mark on the Reformation, but all in different ways. Each of them has a unique part in the battle over religious affiliation in 16th-century Europe.

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Carl Tanzler loved a woman, and his love for her continued long after her death. But whether she loved him back is a matter of dispute. Just the same, he removed her from her tomb so she could 'live' with him.

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Today, in honor of Halloween weekend, we're revisiting an episode about vampirism. Starting in the late 1700s and, small rural communities in New England were sometimes stricken with a panicked fear that the dead were feeding off the living.

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Based just on his art, you might imagine Edward Gorey as a dour Englishman, with the peak of his career sometime in the 1920s or '30s, whose childhood was marked with a series of tragic deaths. But Gorey was none of these things.

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After a traumatic event, strange things began happening around Esther Cox. In the 1870s, Amherst, Nova Scotia was abuzz with theories as to whether the phenomena were the work of a poltergeist, strange electrical charges, or a hoax.

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We're revisiting an episode from previous hosts! After Aaron Burr slew Alexander Hamilton in the duel of 1804, his legislative career was over. In March of 1805, Burr left the political sphere and moved west, but his story doesn't end there.

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Aaron Burr's daughter was incredibly smart and very well educated. She also vanished without a trace as an adult, and her ultimate fate is still a matter of debate.

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Before there were superheroes, a Swiss teacher drew entertaining doodles for friends. As he developed his sketches into stories told with multiple captioned images, he inadvertently invented the first sequential art comics in the Western world.

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We're revisiting the second installment in the story of the Haunted Mansion. This one goes from concept to fully-realized theme park attraction and covers the reboot the team went through after the World's Fair and the loss of their leader.

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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.

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Not only was he a star as an actor, he was famed for his use of makeup. He was passionate about completely transforming himself for each role, and was determined to keep his life off screen as private as possible.

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This classic episode dives into one of the most iconic Disney park attractions -- the Haunted Mansion. Its development process that was anything but smooth. Budget and scheduling issues and creative differences dogged the project for two decades.

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The loss of the U.S.S. Akron was the biggest single tragedy in aviation history at the time that it happened. But unless you’re an aviation or U.S. Navy history buff, you may not know much about this airborne aircraft carrier.

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In February 1855, mysterious prints that looked like hoof marks appeared all over the English seaside county of Devon. But figuring out who or what made those prints is a puzzle that continues to befuddle people.

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The image of Johnny Appleseed walking around in rags, barefooted with a bindle, planting apple trees and moving on is actually pretty accurate. Join Holly and Tracy to learn how John Chapman struck out for the frontier and became an American legend.

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Hernandez v. Texas addressed civil rights for Mexican Americans, was the first case to be argued before the Supreme Court by Mexican American attorneys, and set a new precedent in how the 14th Amendment was interpreted in terms of race and ethnicity.

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For a brief window from the late 1800s to the early 1900s, people in the United States were watching train wrecks for fun. These staged spectacles would draw thousands and thousands of paying onlookers, but why exactly were they so popular?

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We're revisiting the story of Dr. Livingstone as told by previous hosts! In this episode, Deblina and Sarah recount the adventures of Livingstone and Henry Stanley, the journalist who found Livingstone in Africa.

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When we left off in part one, Emin Pasha had become governor of Equatoria in what's now South Sudan. But things took a dramatic turn in the 1880s, leading to Henry Morton Stanley mounting a relief expedition to go get him.

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Emin Pasha's story connects to so many other historical things, particularly in the context of both the Ottoman Empire and African history. First, we'll talk about his time in Albania and how he made his way to Africa and took a new name.

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New theories have emerged that make it the right time to once again go back to an old favorite, the Voynich Manuscript. Since our Voynich Manuscript episode first published, the inscrutable book has been in the news a lot. What are the latest theories?

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While many have admired heiress Casati over the years for her life led entirely based on her aesthetics, when you examine her biography, you find a woman who was incredibly selfish and was even described by close friends as megalomaniacal.

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When people say the Wright Brothers were first to fly, they're talking about a very particular set of circumstances. There are other contenders to the title of "first in flight," and each has their own compelling story and list of achievements.

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We're revisiting the murder of Mary Ann Bickford on Oct. 27, 1845. Her paramour Albert J. Tirrell was eventually charged with murder. Tirrell hired Rufus Choate to defend him, and Choate claimed his client had episodes of somnambulism.

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