Stuff You Missed in History Class

Our focus today is on a woman who was actually covered in the podcast several years ago. But she's a figure so mythic and with so many variations to her story that we wanted to give her another look and a little more time.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

If you've only seen the Hessians referenced in movies or TV, you probably don't have a clear picture of who these very capable soldiers actually were. Hessian troops were skilled, disciplined armies for hire, and a huge economic boon for their homeland.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Smallpox has been around longer than recorded history. It killed royalty, shifted the tides of battles, and was so terrifying that many religions have gods, saints and martyrs associated with it. And Edward Jenner gets the credit for changing all that.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Despite all the publicity surrounding the shooting of John F. Kennedy, the identity of one witness has remained elusive for decades. Beverly Oliver has claimed to be the "babushka lady," but there's still no concrete evidence to prove her assertion.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

He was an art patron. He loved science. He spoke many languages. He was also known for a dark temper and instability, and his poor decisions as a ruler are credited with leading to the Thirty years War.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There are many amazing, heroic stories of people who risked everything to protect Jews and other people at risk before and during the holocaust. A few turned to particularly ingenious, unexpected or daring plans to save people.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In addition to being a poet, Audre was a teacher, speaker, wife and mother, and become an influential presence in the feminist movement. She also wrote candidly about her battle with cancer in her groundbreaking work, "The Cancer Journals."

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Audre Lorde called herself a "black feminist lesbian mother poet warrior," but for a lot of people, she's best known for the "poet" part. She was way ahead of her time on a lot of social fronts, including feminism, gay rights, and the sexual revolution.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

From timid girl to trailblazer, Sophie Blanchard became famous in the early 1800s as the first woman to become a career balloonist.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

From 1916 to about 1927, a strange epidemic spread around the world. It caused unusual symptoms, from drastic behavior changes to a deep, prolonged sleep that could last for months. Between 20 and 40 percent of people who caught the disease died.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

One of the most iconic Disney park attractions -- the Haunted Mansion -- had a development process that was anything but smooth. Budget and scheduling issues and creative differences dogged the project for almost two decades.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

After her unconventional upbringing, Elsa's career as a performer began to take off in the late 1920s, around the same time she met her husband. But the role that would define her image came in 1935.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You may not know her name, but her image is famous. As the love interest for Dr. Frankenstein's monster in "The Bride of Frankenstein," Elsa Lanchester became a film icon, but her life story is as interesting as any cinema fiction.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Alan L. Hart was a doctor, writer, and prominent figure in the fields of radiology and tuberculosis control. He was also one of the first people in the U.S. to have surgery in an effort to transition to a different gender than the one he had been assigned at birth.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Sweeney Todd is a well-known fictional character, a murderous barber who colludes with a cook to bake his victims into pies. There are many instances of the demon barber story being touted as a tale based in real-life events, but how true is that?

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Like any grand old hotel, the Grove Park Inn has quite a history, involving real medicine, patent medicine, famous writers and inventors, several wars, and even a ghost story. The luxury spa exists thanks largely to two diseases: malaria and tuberculosis.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Starting in the late 1700s and running for a century, small rural communities in New England were sometimes stricken with a panicked fear that the dead were somehow feeding off the living, and many graves were exhumed in the hopes of ending the attacks.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The second part of the Luis Alvarez episode covers his time as part of the Manhattan Project designing detonators for atomic bombs. Beyond his controversial work, Alvarez also contributed to particle physics, mystery solving and paleontology.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Luis Alvarez was a physicist whose broad interests connected him to some of the 20th century's most influential moments, including the bombing of Hiroshima and the assassination of JFK. His diverse work led to the nickname "the wild idea man of physics."

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Phylo T. Farnsworth is called the "Father of Television" -- his initial idea for electronic television came to him as a teen. He's also become something of an icon representing the little guy -- he battled big business in in a patent suit.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Mendez v. Westminster fought the segregation of Mexican-American students in the state of California in the 1940s -- and it went on pave the way for the much more famous Brown v. Topeka Board of Education.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In 1848, Phineas Gage experienced a catastrophic brain injury and survived -- though altered -- for more than 11 years. Over time, he morphed into one of the world's most famous case studies in how damage to the brain can affect behavior.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Marie Taglioni is 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.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Chester was the first African American war correspondent working for a major daily paper, covering the U.S. Civil War. He also had a troubled relationship with the colonization movement, and spent years striving for equal rights for African Americans

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

About 200 miles southeast of Lima, Peru, between the Andes Mountains and the Pacific Ocean, there are lines etched into the desert. The glyphs have remained intact for centuries, and have been avidly studied since their discovery in the late 1920s.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Jane Addams was a leader and advocate, especially for the working poor - but her work really boiled down to a better quality of life for everyone. Part two covers her life beyond Hull House, controversial war stance, Nobel Prize and legacy.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Jane Addams was one of the foremost women in America's Progressive Era. She co founded the social settlement Hull House, spoke and wrote on social issues, and had a hand in the founding of many social organizations, including the NAACP and ACLU.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In the years after the Industrial Revolution and the Civil War, the oyster supply became so scarce that people turned to oyster piracy. The bloodshed peaked in the late 1800s, but the strife went on for almost 100 years.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Hope Diamond is well traveled, but is it cursed? Does it have mystical powers? Why does it glow red after exposure to UV light? Analysis of the curse stories and chemical composition of the gem yield interesting results.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Hope Diamond has traveled across continents, been stolen in revolutions, and was even the signature accessory of a wealthy heiress for nearly four decades. The first part of the discussion covers the stone's history up to the modern era.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Flannan Islands have been rumored for centuries to be haunted or have some supernatural darkness. In 1900, three men vanished from the lighthouse on Eilean Mor, leaving behind an unfinished meal and a mystery that's never been conclusively solved.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hypatia was one of the earliest female mathematicians and astronomers -- though she wasn't the very first, she was among the greatest. At the time of her murder, she was the foremost mathematician and astronomer in the West - possibly in the world.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Charley Parkhurst was a stagecoach whip who spent almost 20 years handling teams of horses over treacherous terrain at high speeds. After his death in 1879, his friends who came to lay out his body discovered that Charley was anatomically female.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There is actually some disagreement about the actual origin point of ice cream, but almost everyone agrees it's delicious. The real origin story is a culmination of many cultures and ingredients coming together to fill the need for a frosty treat.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It was the only planet to have been discovered by an American, but it's no longer classified as a planet. Who found Pluto, and how did astronomers even know to look for the so-called Planet X on the edge of our solar system?

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

An accomplished bacteriologist, Selman Waksman and his students and colleagues isolated many new antibiotics in the 1940s, including streptomycin and neomycin, earning him the nickname Father of Antibiotics.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Boudica was a queen of the Iceni who staged either a successful rebellion against the Romans or a massacre, depending on who's talking.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A member of the South Australian Mounted Police, George "Poddy" Aiston was a friend to and advocate for Aboriginal peoples, a fairly accomplished photographer, and the owner of a fully-stocked store in the middle of nowhere.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Felicia the ferret, who helped Fermilab in the early '70s, has been popping up in online stories and social media lately. How did she come to work in a particle physics facility, and what other animals made their homes there?

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Luddite uprising was a series of protests in northern England, in which workers smashed machines in mills and factories. This wasn't the first organized violence against mechanization, but Luddites are the most infamous of all the machine-breakers.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

While his last name is famous for breakfast cereal, John Harvey Kellogg was a 19th-century doctor with some unique (and groundbreaking) beliefs about health and wellness.His Battle Creek Sanitarium was home to anything but treatment as usual.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Long before Czech playwright Karel Capek coined the term "robot" in his 1920 play "R.U.R.," mechanized creations -- automata -- were being created without electronics or computers. Many were simple, but they paved the way for the robots of today.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

She's often referred to as a cursed ghost ship. The history of the Mary Celeste features one unfortunate incident after another. While this vessel is most famous for an incident involving a disappearing crew, there's much more to the life of this brig.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In the mid-1800s, the poorest people in Ireland ate almost nothing but potatoes. Other crops were for selling. So when a blight cut a swath through the potato crop, the impact was severe, and politics played a significant role in the tragedy.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The history lesson kids often get on the Irish Potato 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.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

French designer Paul Poiret's work, which was often avante-garde, changed the fashion world in significant ways. He got rid of corsets, introduced the concept of lifestyle branding, and used draping rather that tailoring to create his dramatic designs.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Despite having almost no official schooling and being a man of color in Colonial America, Benjamin Banneker turned out to be such an accomplished scholar that schools and professorships are named after him today.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.