Stuff You Missed in History Class

In our second episode about Brooklyn's 150-year-old public park, we interview three guests, each with a unique knowledge of the park's history and its restoration in the last three decades.

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Brooklyn's massive public green space tells the historical story of its community. From an undeveloped tract of land, the space was developed to become an Olmsted and Vaux masterpiece.

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Writer H.P. Lovecraft created worlds and stories that continue to be influential more than 80 years after his death. His life story is at turns odd, sad, problematic and utterly fascinating.

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There's really not a lot concretely known about the life of Aphra Behn, who, in addition to being a spy, was a dramatist, poet, novelist, translator, and the first woman in English literature known to have made her living as a writer.

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Khutulun's story is a little bit cloudy, in part because it’s many hundreds of years old, and in part because accounts of her life involve a combination of propaganda and an outsider’s interpretation of it.

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Jules Cotard was the first psychiatrist to write about the cluster of symptoms that would come to be called “Walking Corpse Syndrome.” But his work was unfinished, and left a great deal of room for debate about it among his colleagues.

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This was one of the worst disasters in Texas history, the worst school disaster in U.S. history, and it was a horrific tragedy that stemmed from a huge number of small decisions and moments.

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The practice of the monarch laying on hands to cure sick people lasted from the medieval period all the way to the 18th century in Britain and France. One disease in particular was so often "cured" it came to be known as the King's Evil.

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Holly interviews Michael Bornstein and his daughter Debbie Bornstein Holinstat about their book "Survivors Club." The book chronicles the story of Michael's family during the Holocaust, and how Michael survived at Auschwitz.

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For a very short time between Edward VI and Mary I, Lady Jane was, at least nominally, Queen of England and Ireland, but whether she had any right to the title is still the subject of dispute.

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From his start as an apprentice to a nurseryman in London, John Kidwell would go on to catalyze the establishment of Hawaii’s pineapple industry. His story is tied to the white business-driven Reform Party and its coup over the Hawaiian monarchy.

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Dr. Gates joins Holly to talk about history's impact on our future, Black History Month, and his upcoming PBS series "Africa's Great Civilizations."

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Maroons are Africans and people of African ancestry who escaped enslavement and established communities in the Caribbean and parts of the Americas. In the 17th and 18th centuries, Jamaica's Maroon communities clashed with British colonial government.

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Rabbi Jacob Rothschild was 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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After Executive Order 9066 was signed by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, people were incarcerated in inadequate and dehumanizing camps. Even once the detention program ended, things were still incredibly difficult for people after their release.

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Roughly 122,000 Japanese immigrants and American citizens of Japanese ancestry were removed from their homes on the West Coast and incarcerated for much of the U.S. involvement in WWII. About two-thirds of them were U.S. citizens.

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In 1789, a group of protesters -- mostly women -- marched from Paris to Versailles to pressure King Louis XVI to address France's food shortage.

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He was one of the first Americans to achieve fame as a Shakespearean actor — and the first black man to do so, becoming a famous figure on the Victorian stage. But Aldridge has largely been excluded from biographies of Shakespearean actors.

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Lucille Ball was the grande dame of American comedy. The famed star worked in modeling, radio and film, but she really made her mark in television, and her work set the standard for the TV sitcom.

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Ed Roberts was a disability rights activist, known as the father of the Independent Living movement. That movement combines advocacy, resources and education toward the goal of living independently and fully integrated with abled society.

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When Prince Pedro of Portugal was married off in the 1300s, he only had eyes for his new wife's lady in waiting. The story of Inês and Pedro's love has everything: romance, deception, murder, and a corpse crowned as queen.

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Holly is joined in the studio by Carol Thompson, Fred and Rita Richman Curator of African Art at the High Museum of Art. Carol shares her incredible knowledge, stories from her personal life and the importance of studying Africa's rich art tradition.

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Great Zimbabwe was a massive stone city in southeastern Africa that was a thriving trade center from the 11th to 15th centuries. But when Europeans first learned of it in the 16th century, they were certain it wasn't African at all.

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While she's mostly associated with education, Maria Montessori worked in several fields. Her theories on early education still shape the way kids learn today around the globe.

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The American sculptor was a celebrated artist in her day, but she receded from the spotlight; her final years remained a mystery for quite some time. Her marble works are striking examples of the neoclassical style popular at the end of the 19th century.

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After witnessing the brutality of a battle first-hand, Swiss-born Dunant dedicated his life to easing the suffering brought by war. But he did so at great cost to his personal life.

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Erik Lars Myers, founder, CEO and head brewer at Mystery Brewing Company, talks about the history of beer, including how it connects to charity, nutrition and humans' first development of agriculture.

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Part two of our annual roundup of unearthed news is a bit of a hodgepodge. It features identifications, very large finds, edible finds, art and letters, and some historical debunkings. And of course, we have everyone's favorite: exhumations.

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It's time to talk about all the things that were unearthed in 2016! This first of two episodes covers stuff it seems like happens every year, things that are actually older than we thought, and shipwrecks.

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The Piltdown Man is one of the world’s most infamous instances of scientific fraud, and it derailed the study of evolution for decades. How exactly did scientists in 1912 fall so completely for a hoax?

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The uprising of the Maccabees against the Seleucid Empire during the Hellenistic period is an integral part of the Hanukkah story. After the restoration of Jewish religious freedom, the Maccabees started another revolt to obtain total independence.

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Since last year's episodes on non-Santa holiday figures were so popular, there's another installment for 2016! This time around, Frau Perchta, Olentzero, Mari Lwyd and Ded Moroz get the spotlight.

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After she became a free woman, Belinda Sutton successfully petitioned for compensation for her years of enslaved labor. This was one of many legal efforts of enslaved and formerly enslaved people to advocate for themselves in Massachusetts courts.

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Jerry, a Sears scholar and history teacher, joins Holly in the studio to talk about the historical significance of the building where HowStuffWorks is headquartered, as well as the company that built it.

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After a bombing attack on his home, Attorney General Palmer launched a series of raids on perceived threats to national security. Thousands of people were rounded up, many without cause or warrant, and kept in horrifying conditions.

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After WWI, there was a great deal of social unrest in the United States. Additionally, there was a fear that Communist revolutionaries would try to take over the country. Adding fuel to the fear were two bomb plots in 1919.

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Wallace was one of the most prominent voices against the Civil Rights Movement and its objectives. He spent multiple campaigns for both governor and president on an explicitly pro-segregation platform.

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Author and illustrator Jason Porath joins Tracy and Holly in the studio to talk about women from history featured in his new book, including the Mancini sisters, Sayyida al-Hurra, Tomyris and Noor Inayat Khan.

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In 1862, murder led to war between the Dakota and the United States. What followed was a campaign of retribution against multiple indigenous peoples, many who had nothing to do with the prior conflict, ranging from Minnesota into Dakota Territory.

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People are often surprised to learn that the namesake for the James Webb Space Telescope wasn't a scientist or engineer, but a lawyer and a bureaucrat. He was NASA's second administrator, and led the agency through incredibly difficult times.

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The riot at Attica Correctional Facility in September 1971, demanding better living conditions and basic human rights, remains a significant moment in the history of the U.S. prison system. But many of the problems that catalyzed it persist.

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Attica Correctional Facility originally opened in rural, upstate New York in 1931. In 1971, conditions at the prison were at a point where they were humiliating, dehumanizing and counterproductive to rehabilitation.

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Establishing a submarine telegraph cable to connect North America and Europe took ingenuity, but more than anything else, it required tenacity. There were numerous stumbling blocks before there was finally a direct connection across the Atlantic.

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We often get requests for topics that are so similar to existing episodes that they would sound like repeats. Here are six that will probably sound very familiar to regular listeners.

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In the summer of 1791, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton and Maria Reynolds began an affair that would lead to blackmail, political rumors, a 98-page confessional document ... and eventually a song in a hit Broadway musical.

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In 1943, a skeleton was found in a tree near Birmingham, England. More than 70 years later, it's still unknown who the deceased was and how the body ended up in an elm tree.

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There have been numerous instances of ships found adrift with no one on board. Four of those nautical mysteries are featured here, with some truly chilling details.

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If you only know of Vincent Price from his films, you may be surprised by his rich life story. Victoria Price joins the show to talk about her famous father and his life beyond the silver screen.

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Baking expert Anne Byrn joins Holly to talk about the place of cake in U.S. history, from the early colonies right up to the modern era. The relationship between kitchen and culture is evidenced in Anne's research about sweet treats in America.

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From 1897 to 1962, a small theater in Paris gave became famous for its grisly, terrifying plays. The Theatre du Grand Gignol became a cultural fixture in Europe, and ultimately gave rise to horror as an entertainment genre.

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