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Enough About Us: What About You? · Ridiculous History

0:10
Speaker 1: Ye, Welcome to the show, Friends, Neighbors, Ridiculous Historians. My
0:26
Speaker 1: name is Ben, My name is Nolan ben Can. I
0:29
Speaker 1: first start today by saying to you, thank you for
0:33
Speaker 1: being a friend, travel down the road and back. You
0:38
Speaker 1: know this? You know this is yeah, I can actually
0:41
Speaker 1: play it on ukulele. You're a friend and a convent. Yeah.
0:46
Speaker 1: When I sing that to you, Ben, I sing that
0:47
Speaker 1: to the entire ridiculous history community at large, whether or
0:51
Speaker 1: not you remember of the Ridiculous Historians Facebook community, right,
0:55
Speaker 1: Ridiculous Historians Facebook community, which we started along with super
1:00
Speaker 1: producer Casey Pegram, to whom we dedicate my personal favorite
1:07
Speaker 1: sitcom theme song from that's from The Golden Girls, and uh,
1:12
Speaker 1: you know, also shout out to the Perfect Stranger's theme song,
1:14
Speaker 1: which is great. Oh yeah yeah, so Wings of My
1:18
Speaker 1: Dreams and so no. I have a suspicion that some
1:24
Speaker 1: of the ridiculous Historians who said they appreciate your voice
1:28
Speaker 1: have inspired you to sing in every successive episode. Would
1:31
Speaker 1: you say that's gonna happen now? Now, now, now, that's
1:36
Speaker 1: not fair. I do. I do like to sing when moved,
1:38
Speaker 1: and I was moved to sings. I think that Golden
1:40
Speaker 1: Girls theme really sums up the theme of today's episode,
1:43
Speaker 1: which is appreciating our amazing ridiculous historians on the page
1:48
Speaker 1: who have some pretty cracker jack ideas that maybe don't
1:52
Speaker 1: warrn an entire episode into themselves, but are a lot
1:55
Speaker 1: of fun to talk about and kind of a clip show,
1:57
Speaker 1: a little cut up nugget format like we're gonna do too,
2:00
Speaker 1: right because as we've said on this show before us,
2:03
Speaker 1: some of our best ideas have come from you, specifically you,
2:07
Speaker 1: so enough about us, what are your ideas for some
2:12
Speaker 1: fantastic episodes or instances of ridiculous people, places, or things
2:18
Speaker 1: throughout history? With our cutoff being as you and I
2:21
Speaker 1: had discussed off air noal uh the nineties about ninety
2:26
Speaker 1: three because of Max the Grilla. So you and I
2:31
Speaker 1: went went through this amazing agglomeration of post and we
2:37
Speaker 1: found us some stories that really called out to us
2:41
Speaker 1: for one reason or another. And to you know, I
2:45
Speaker 1: would like to, if if you're okay with it, I
2:47
Speaker 1: want to put you on the spot, give you the
2:50
Speaker 1: the honor of the first story. Well man, that is
2:53
Speaker 1: very kind of you, and I'm going to start uh
2:55
Speaker 1: today's show with a topic suggestion from Lori B. Should
3:00
Speaker 1: how do we actually we do this? Ben? Should we
3:02
Speaker 1: get full names? Let's do let's do the initial Yeah
3:06
Speaker 1: that's good, Um Lori B. She says, Hi, guys, just
3:09
Speaker 1: listen to the podcast about Lincoln's dog Fido. Poor Fido man.
3:13
Speaker 1: He had a storied, storied life, ended up stabbed like
3:17
Speaker 1: a dog in the streets, and he was in fact
3:19
Speaker 1: a dog in the streets. Um, but I digress, she goes.
3:22
Speaker 1: I'm amazed you aren't space geeks enough to know the
3:26
Speaker 1: first dog in space was like a l A I
3:30
Speaker 1: K A l A I K. I can only imagine
3:32
Speaker 1: how terrified she would have been sitting alone on that
3:35
Speaker 1: rocket being blasted into the unknown. And then she sent
3:39
Speaker 1: this really beautiful song um by a group called Trent Mueller.
3:43
Speaker 1: It's like an electronic kind of I think they're Swedish.
3:46
Speaker 1: Actually saw them perform live once. But the video has
3:49
Speaker 1: like of the dog going through all the preparations of
3:52
Speaker 1: being shot up into space and like mouthing the words
3:55
Speaker 1: to the song. It's it's really quite a beautiful and
3:57
Speaker 1: heartbreaking video, and it's heartbreaking for a lot of reasons,
4:02
Speaker 1: first and foremost being it was understood by all concerned,
4:05
Speaker 1: at least that were close to this actual project, that
4:08
Speaker 1: like of the dog who would rocket into Earth's orbit
4:13
Speaker 1: two thousand miles into space was not It was a
4:18
Speaker 1: suicide mission. Like I was not going to come back.
4:20
Speaker 1: Everybody knew this was acknowledged, the various medics, and even
4:26
Speaker 1: the trainer of Likeca, who who taught her the techniques,
4:31
Speaker 1: I don't want to call them tricks, but taught her
4:33
Speaker 1: the behaviors that she would need for this trip. Even
4:36
Speaker 1: he knew that this goodbye was going to be goodbye forever.
4:42
Speaker 1: I think she she did reach orbit alive, right, she
4:46
Speaker 1: did reach orbit alive, and I believe she made it
4:48
Speaker 1: a couple of orbits before um issues with the heat
4:53
Speaker 1: shield caused the compartment that Likeca was was in to
4:58
Speaker 1: begin to reach temperatures upwards of nine degrees, which, as
5:01
Speaker 1: we know, dogs don't do well in those conditions. And
5:05
Speaker 1: because the Sputnik two spacecraft was kind of tossed together
5:11
Speaker 1: pretty quickly, because our buddy Nikita Khrushchev insisted on a
5:17
Speaker 1: space flight to commemorate the fort anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution.
5:23
Speaker 1: As you do, as you do, yeah, and when when
5:25
Speaker 1: Krushchev says, jump or make a spacecraft for a dog.
5:30
Speaker 1: You do those things. And we have some of the
5:33
Speaker 1: details from from this story. So like has launched in
5:37
Speaker 1: the space on November three, five in the morning in uh,
5:40
Speaker 1: what do we say, fifty seven next, just a couple
5:43
Speaker 1: of years before the infamous Disney snubbing, right right? Are
5:47
Speaker 1: they related? Uh? She circled the Earth for a little
5:51
Speaker 1: more in a hundred minutes and a hundred and three exactly.
5:55
Speaker 1: And what's strange about this is that, according to of
6:00
Speaker 1: the story, after the flight, the official records were falsified.
6:04
Speaker 1: There was a cover up. Absolutely, there was a cover up.
6:07
Speaker 1: And also like the public story was not the same
6:10
Speaker 1: as the story that the people involved in the project were.
6:13
Speaker 1: We're being told they knew people involved in the project
6:16
Speaker 1: from the from the doctors, the veterinarians that implanted um
6:20
Speaker 1: like go with equipment that they could use to monitor
6:24
Speaker 1: the dog's heart rate, because there was a functional reason
6:26
Speaker 1: for doing this. It wasn't just a you know, space
6:29
Speaker 1: dog and pony show. It was literally to see how
6:32
Speaker 1: can how will a living creature react in these conditions.
6:36
Speaker 1: So there were these like devices installed in the dog
6:39
Speaker 1: surgically as they could monitor the dog's heart rate and
6:42
Speaker 1: vitals and all this stuff. But everyone involved in every
6:45
Speaker 1: step of this knew that dog was a goner. But
6:48
Speaker 1: the public maybe not. Maybe there was this like kind
6:51
Speaker 1: of hope in the hearts of the public that maybe
6:54
Speaker 1: old Leika might return unscathed from the Great Beyond, a
6:58
Speaker 1: Pixar sort of story or romanticization and propaganda piece. Really,
7:04
Speaker 1: and to be fair, Mico was the first, But they
7:09
Speaker 1: had other dogs, right, they were training them through a
7:12
Speaker 1: process of elimination. That's right. We're getting a lot of
7:14
Speaker 1: this info from a fantastic Smithsonian article by Alice George
7:18
Speaker 1: called the Sad Sad Story of Likeca, the Space Dog
7:22
Speaker 1: and her one way trip into orbit. But Ben tell
7:24
Speaker 1: us more about this cavalcade of of canines that was
7:28
Speaker 1: assembled here. Yeaheah. They started with a herd of female
7:32
Speaker 1: stray dogs, the understanding being that the female dogs would
7:36
Speaker 1: tend to be smaller and allegedly more docile. And then
7:42
Speaker 1: as they were experimenting with these dogs, they were seeing
7:46
Speaker 1: which ones could best adapt to the conditions they could
7:50
Speaker 1: mimic on Earth that would be similar to the conditions
7:53
Speaker 1: the dog would encounter in space. Assuming of course, that
7:56
Speaker 1: the heat shield was not lost. Yeah, and I mean
7:59
Speaker 1: to me, I don't know if I'm reading too much
8:01
Speaker 1: into this, but it feels like the hasty nature of
8:04
Speaker 1: the assembling of this spacecraft may have led to some
8:08
Speaker 1: conditions that were not optimal in terms of function. Absolutely, right, yeah, absolutely,
8:13
Speaker 1: it's first off, it's still even in an insanely ambitious
8:18
Speaker 1: and complicated thing to put anything into space. I'm ready
8:22
Speaker 1: for Space Force. I don't know about you, you know,
8:24
Speaker 1: I initially thought Space Force was some cartoon from the
8:27
Speaker 1: nineties that ibviously is. But yeah, I would sign up.
8:30
Speaker 1: We've talked about this for I am one million percent
8:33
Speaker 1: in I did the math. It's one million percent for
8:36
Speaker 1: a one way trip to deep space. I think it's
8:38
Speaker 1: worth it. I don't know if I would make the
8:41
Speaker 1: like a decision. But also when we go to the
8:45
Speaker 1: issue of morality here, what they're doing is saving, in
8:50
Speaker 1: their opinion, a human pilot, you know, and it just
8:54
Speaker 1: it stinks for us to look back on it now
8:56
Speaker 1: because who doesn't love dogs, bad people, monster monsters. And
9:00
Speaker 1: then I do want to say, though, I will miss
9:02
Speaker 1: you when you when you take your one way trip
9:04
Speaker 1: to space, because I'll have a live stream. I will
9:06
Speaker 1: not be joining you. You know you're gonna do some
9:09
Speaker 1: vines from space. Ah, you know it's gonna It's gonna
9:12
Speaker 1: depend on how far I can get and where the
9:15
Speaker 1: technology is at. Maybe I'll land on a planet and
9:18
Speaker 1: start a thing, a commune of space colune. Yea space culture. Yeah,
9:23
Speaker 1: why not? Why not? You can come visit. Um, I
9:26
Speaker 1: just have one that one last thing. You're just to
9:28
Speaker 1: kind of point to the public perception of this whole thing.
9:30
Speaker 1: There's an article from nineteen fifty seven November. The New
9:34
Speaker 1: York Times headline says recovery of dog called possible, right.
9:40
Speaker 1: Several US experts agree, but Willie Ley says it can't
9:45
Speaker 1: be brought down alive. Several experts in the United States
9:47
Speaker 1: said yesterday that recovery of the dog from the Soviet
9:50
Speaker 1: satellite was within the realm of possibility. I don't say alive,
9:54
Speaker 1: But so what's the deal? Band didn't that didn't didn't
9:57
Speaker 1: it orbited, continue to orbit for some time, right, and
10:00
Speaker 1: then crashed. Right. So the initial public story is that
10:06
Speaker 1: like it could be recovered, and that she died painlessly
10:10
Speaker 1: in orbit about a week after blast off. As we've
10:13
Speaker 1: established that was not true. The capsule that she was
10:18
Speaker 1: in stayed in orbit, encircled the Earth two thousand, five
10:22
Speaker 1: hundred and seventy times before it burned up in the
10:25
Speaker 1: Earth's atmosphere on the fourth of April in nineteen fifty eight.
10:29
Speaker 1: That comes from great BBC article by David white House
10:33
Speaker 1: called first dog in space died within hours. Yeah, that's
10:36
Speaker 1: the thing, um, And that's the part they falsified. I
10:39
Speaker 1: believe ben was how quickly the dog died under what conditions?
10:43
Speaker 1: Because in the Smithsonian article it said their hope was
10:46
Speaker 1: that he would die peacefully from oxygen deprivation pretty quickly. Um,
10:52
Speaker 1: but what actually ended up happening was probably a lot
10:55
Speaker 1: more unpleasant for it for like, Yes, but gave her
10:59
Speaker 1: a tram in this lead vital place in the story
11:03
Speaker 1: of space exploration. Absolutely, she has a legacy that's even
11:07
Speaker 1: larger than Lassie's. If I'm being paid by the illiterate
11:10
Speaker 1: of l Holy Cows. That was literally delightful. Um. Yeah,
11:16
Speaker 1: she got a postage stamp. There's a statue, a memorial
11:19
Speaker 1: statue of like um on top of a rocket at
11:22
Speaker 1: a research facility in Moscow. And yeah, and that was
11:25
Speaker 1: unveiled in tw in Moscow, according to the Smithsonian article,
11:30
Speaker 1: So let's all collectively thank like the space dog for
11:34
Speaker 1: helping us learn a little bit more about the universe
11:36
Speaker 1: that surrounds us. Let's also travel. I've got a got
11:41
Speaker 1: a different story here. That's that's wild. I think we
11:45
Speaker 1: could use a fun one. Are you in? Yeah? Okay?
11:49
Speaker 1: After that one was a bit of a yeah, there's
11:51
Speaker 1: some hope, there's it's better sweet. It's like a Nina
11:54
Speaker 1: Simon song. So we'd like to extend a big thanks
11:59
Speaker 1: to brand in him. Brandon m sent us something that
12:04
Speaker 1: he had found via Reddit, and it is this story
12:09
Speaker 1: of how the famous actor uh and the guy who
12:13
Speaker 1: plays the mayor on Family Guy, Adam West, was kicked
12:18
Speaker 1: out of an orgy while pretending to be Batman. First off,
12:22
Speaker 1: I have to I've got to semantically argue here he
12:25
Speaker 1: was Batman. He wasn't pretending he was a Batman. He
12:28
Speaker 1: is the original Batman. He's the original Batman for you,
12:33
Speaker 1: He's definitely the swingingist Batman. He is. He's always at
12:36
Speaker 1: a square. He's seen that clip where he's like sixties
12:39
Speaker 1: dancing and cutting a rug. And as we learned after
12:44
Speaker 1: that show ended. The behind the scenes adventures and misadventures
12:50
Speaker 1: were even more outrageous than the stuff they put to film.
12:55
Speaker 1: You know, there's there's some quotes from his biography that
13:00
Speaker 1: are honestly probably not fit for this show. And we're
13:03
Speaker 1: pretty fast and loose with this stuff. So according to
13:07
Speaker 1: an interview that Adam West had with Blaster In, he
13:14
Speaker 1: and his pal Frank Gorsten, the guy who played the Riddler,
13:18
Speaker 1: decided to go to a Hollywood party, but they didn't
13:21
Speaker 1: know anything about what was happening at the party, and
13:25
Speaker 1: when they walked in, they saw a ton of people
13:30
Speaker 1: getting incredibly and cooperatively intimate, very caligular. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
13:36
Speaker 1: And from his we have a quote from him where
13:39
Speaker 1: he says, so I immediately went into the Batman character
13:43
Speaker 1: and Frank went into the Riddler character because we were
13:46
Speaker 1: getting the big giggles with the big gigs. It was
13:48
Speaker 1: so funny to us what we walked into, and we
13:50
Speaker 1: were kicked out. We were expelled from the orgy. So
13:54
Speaker 1: let's point out here that the first thing Adam West
13:58
Speaker 1: and this Frank Gorsten guy do when they walk in
14:02
Speaker 1: on this cavalcade of fleshly pursuits, they say you know what,
14:07
Speaker 1: we gotta get in costume, and they try to get
14:10
Speaker 1: in on this, and they were not They were not
14:15
Speaker 1: treated with perhaps the respect that they felt they were do.
14:19
Speaker 1: The story would have disappeared if it wasn't for Gilbert Godfried,
14:22
Speaker 1: who mentioned it when he was talking about his own podcast.
14:26
Speaker 1: Do you know that he has a podcast? Was just
14:28
Speaker 1: you know, I was the first I've heard of it,
14:29
Speaker 1: But I could I take a whole podcast in that voice?
14:33
Speaker 1: I don't know. The Godfrey shoon a colossal podcast show,
14:40
Speaker 1: so hard to put on your shoes the Aristocrats, Yeah,
14:45
Speaker 1: that's it. Yeah, he had one of the filthiest versions
14:47
Speaker 1: of that joke in the movie, didn't he that? I
14:49
Speaker 1: am I making that up? He had one of the
14:50
Speaker 1: filthiest versions. Who you know who had the filthiest though?
14:54
Speaker 1: Who was? It was a matter of opinion, Well I think,
14:57
Speaker 1: I know, I think it's pretty objectively the case and
15:00
Speaker 1: the filthiest version of the joke, which the long would
15:04
Speaker 1: you call it a shaggy dog story and that kind
15:06
Speaker 1: of what that is where it's like a big old
15:07
Speaker 1: set up, a big old set up, and then a
15:09
Speaker 1: sort of very let down punchline and we're talking about.
15:13
Speaker 1: We're talking about a film called The Heuristic Costs, which
15:15
Speaker 1: traces the evolution. This is a comics joke for other
15:19
Speaker 1: comics exactly. But the guy, the guy that played the
15:22
Speaker 1: dad on um full House, he was notoriously lechery and
15:29
Speaker 1: weird and pervy in his comedy. I saw a standup
15:32
Speaker 1: set of his that blew my mind. His first like
15:36
Speaker 1: four minutes or something. We're about cocaine, and I had
15:40
Speaker 1: only known him as the kind of square but affable
15:44
Speaker 1: dad House. So I looked into some more behind the
15:50
Speaker 1: scenes stuff. Oh first off, first off, thank you Brandon,
15:55
Speaker 1: and thanks for sending this article from The Decider by Kaylaka.
16:00
Speaker 1: Adam West was once kicked out in Origin while pretending
16:02
Speaker 1: to be Batman. True story. But I when I was
16:05
Speaker 1: looking behind the scenes, he wasn't the only weird guy.
16:08
Speaker 1: Now Batman or Adam West rather has sort of this
16:13
Speaker 1: this Austin Powers vibe almost you know, of that time.
16:18
Speaker 1: So it's like, yeah, it's weird, it's a little sleezy,
16:20
Speaker 1: but he's fun. He's being campy. Burt Ward, the guy
16:24
Speaker 1: who played Robin Batman, was absolutely uh at least just
16:32
Speaker 1: as strange because he wrote an autobiography called Boy Wonder,
16:38
Speaker 1: My Life in Tights, and he spent a lot of
16:41
Speaker 1: time talking about his uh sexual adventures because he was Robin,
16:47
Speaker 1: and he described himself as a sexual vampire who had
16:51
Speaker 1: superhero sex with young fans. So it's likely he kept
16:55
Speaker 1: the costume on too. I think so. And it's weird
16:58
Speaker 1: because this iteration of Batman, despite being so iconic, only
17:02
Speaker 1: ran for three seasons. I'm just saying, look, if you
17:05
Speaker 1: see someone dressed as Robin from Batman or heck, Batman.
17:10
Speaker 1: If you see someone dressed that way and they're coming
17:12
Speaker 1: towards you and it's not Halloween or Dragon Con or
17:15
Speaker 1: a convention of some sort, word to the wise, watch out.
17:20
Speaker 1: Did I ever tell you? By the time, I was
17:22
Speaker 1: in a New York subway station and I heard this ruckus,
17:24
Speaker 1: this fracas in the distance, and it was clearly a
17:27
Speaker 1: man and a woman, young man woman having a big
17:29
Speaker 1: argument because the woman had just broken up with the man,
17:33
Speaker 1: and it's just this whole just chaotic, you know, shouting
17:36
Speaker 1: each other. He's walking after her, and I'm kind of
17:37
Speaker 1: trying to mind my own business, and then I look
17:39
Speaker 1: and notice that he is wearing a full spider Man
17:43
Speaker 1: costume and just like reading her the Riot Act and
17:47
Speaker 1: like to the point where people in the subway station
17:48
Speaker 1: are like, are you okay? But the whole Spider Man
17:52
Speaker 1: cost but just sort of added a layer of absurdity
17:54
Speaker 1: to the whole thing. I love it a picture and
17:55
Speaker 1: the guy going you never believed in my art, Karen Never.
18:00
Speaker 1: I have a feeling based on where we were, he
18:02
Speaker 1: may have been one of those Times Square we could do.
18:08
Speaker 1: I would love to do something and just that culture
18:12
Speaker 1: of people were mascots in Times Square. But that's a
18:14
Speaker 1: story for another day. Can I say one thing about
18:17
Speaker 1: Adam West thing, just that there's a couple of comments
18:19
Speaker 1: here that I think are appropriate. One is from Jerry
18:23
Speaker 1: M says, this is hilarious. I love that his reaction
18:25
Speaker 1: to an awkward situation was to one up the awkwardness
18:28
Speaker 1: to the point that he was actually made to leave.
18:30
Speaker 1: And that's what I think is the funny part of
18:32
Speaker 1: the story too. It's like they happened upon this scenario.
18:36
Speaker 1: I don't know that they were expecting it or that
18:38
Speaker 1: they were there for that right, Like as I had said,
18:41
Speaker 1: they just knew there was a party, no idea what
18:43
Speaker 1: was going on? Yeah, and then Chad M says good
18:46
Speaker 1: luck making a family friendly show about this one. To that,
18:50
Speaker 1: we say, there you go, Chad, yea, here there it is.
19:00
Speaker 1: We have more on the way, Noel, I mean a
19:03
Speaker 1: ping palling this back to you. What really moved you?
19:05
Speaker 1: Next from ridiculous Historians? Yeah, this one comes from Rick W.
19:11
Speaker 1: A new member UM, and he says this. He says,
19:14
Speaker 1: back in grad school in Kansas, we encountered many very
19:17
Speaker 1: bizarre stories about how cities became county seats. This often
19:21
Speaker 1: involved a raid to a neighboring town to steal the
19:23
Speaker 1: records and or burn the town or the courthouse. UM
19:28
Speaker 1: of particular interest is Finney County, which combined with Gray
19:32
Speaker 1: County to raid, subsume and eliminate Garfield County completely. And
19:38
Speaker 1: yes I did graduate edit. If you look at the
19:40
Speaker 1: Kansas County is on a map, Finny originally called Buffalo County,
19:44
Speaker 1: has an L shape where it's pretty obvious something happened. Um.
19:48
Speaker 1: And then there's a really great conversation thread, one of
19:52
Speaker 1: which had an article posted by Steve M called the
19:56
Speaker 1: Legend of Joe Rolette the most interesting and in Minnesota history.
20:01
Speaker 1: And this involves a similar dispute about moving the capital
20:06
Speaker 1: of the state from St. Paul to a little about
20:10
Speaker 1: seventy five miles southwest along the Minnesota River, a town
20:14
Speaker 1: called St. Peter. Yes, And a big reason for this
20:20
Speaker 1: was that one of the judges I believe that was
20:22
Speaker 1: involved in like ratifying this or really pushing this forward,
20:26
Speaker 1: owned a lot of land in St. Peter. And the
20:29
Speaker 1: idea was that people that lived in St. Peter, farmers
20:32
Speaker 1: and such wanted to be more centrally located to the
20:35
Speaker 1: county seat or the right, right right. There's a lot
20:39
Speaker 1: of land speculation. So this guy Willis Gorman is the governor,
20:44
Speaker 1: not a judge, excuse me, he's he's he's into the
20:48
Speaker 1: idea of moving the capital to St. Peter because he
20:54
Speaker 1: just happened to own a fair chunk of land there,
20:57
Speaker 1: apostle apostle of land. Accurate Minnesota excess. I know, I've
21:04
Speaker 1: been there. That's how they all talk um. But yeah,
21:07
Speaker 1: he had skin in the game, literally land in the game,
21:10
Speaker 1: and he was part of the faction that was supportive
21:14
Speaker 1: of moving this county seat to St. Peter. There was
21:16
Speaker 1: also it equally, what's the word I'm looking for, Ben
21:20
Speaker 1: riled up faction that that was totally against it. Wanted
21:23
Speaker 1: to keep things right as they were. So a bill
21:26
Speaker 1: was drafted and it was handed to an organization or
21:30
Speaker 1: an official body called the Enrolled Bill's Committee, of which
21:35
Speaker 1: there was a chairman, a chairman named Joe Roulette. This
21:38
Speaker 1: was an eighteen fifty seven. Now he wasn't technically from
21:43
Speaker 1: Minnesota as we know it today, right, He was about
21:45
Speaker 1: a sixteen day dog sled ride from St. Paul, which
21:49
Speaker 1: was basically Canada pretty much. They called it pem Pembina
21:53
Speaker 1: Pembina at the time. Um No, it's not not quite Canada.
21:57
Speaker 1: It's it's the last orderline Canada. It's almost Canada. Can
22:01
Speaker 1: you describe this fellow forest Ben? He has something to behold? Oh? Sure,
22:05
Speaker 1: sure he Um let's let's let's double team this one,
22:08
Speaker 1: because this guy is a fantastic portrait that we see
22:11
Speaker 1: in this article by Steve Newman. He is dressed partially
22:15
Speaker 1: in the fashion of Native Americans, yeah, but also partially
22:19
Speaker 1: in the fashion of like the Founding Fathers. It looks
22:21
Speaker 1: like he's got like a velvet kind of velveteen coat
22:24
Speaker 1: with fur rimmed sleeves. And then the Native American asked
22:28
Speaker 1: and he also has a cravat kind of thing around
22:30
Speaker 1: his neck, right, and he appears to be wearing moccasin's
22:34
Speaker 1: uh to be wearing paches deer skin breaches with some
22:41
Speaker 1: decorative stuff on his belt. He grew up pretty wealthy. Actually,
22:46
Speaker 1: his dad was a higher up in the American fur company,
22:52
Speaker 1: so he was educated out in private schools back east.
22:56
Speaker 1: He married a woman who was partially Native American, started
23:00
Speaker 1: a family, and then started building commerce from the far
23:04
Speaker 1: northwestern part of what become the state into St. Paul it'sself.
23:09
Speaker 1: And he very much loved dressing like the stereotypical image
23:15
Speaker 1: of a fur trader, buckskin pants, frock coat. He would
23:18
Speaker 1: go over super well at Coachella, you know with these uh,
23:21
Speaker 1: these these Native American pants. Boy don't so so what
23:26
Speaker 1: about what we know we have? His back story has backstory,
23:30
Speaker 1: um basically, so he's the chair, he gets the bill physically,
23:34
Speaker 1: the document in hand, and then he he ghosts ghosts.
23:40
Speaker 1: Then this is like an early example of ghosting. He
23:44
Speaker 1: they referred to it as his one hundred and twenty
23:47
Speaker 1: three hours um on the lamb uh. And it's kind
23:53
Speaker 1: of become part of Minnesota history, right because he just
23:57
Speaker 1: totally disappeared. Everyone's searching for him. He has document and
24:00
Speaker 1: in my mind, I'm like, why do they need him?
24:02
Speaker 1: Why can't they just push it through without him? Um,
24:05
Speaker 1: But apparently it held up the electoral process so much
24:08
Speaker 1: that it kind of died. Wait, what was your interpretation
24:11
Speaker 1: of this then? So he was gone for about a
24:13
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty three hours. Nol. He was, he was
24:16
Speaker 1: on the lamb, he was on the buckskin, and he
24:20
Speaker 1: I think, as we may have established earlier, he was
24:23
Speaker 1: part of the team that absolutely wanted the capital to
24:26
Speaker 1: stay in St. Paul. And legend has it that this
24:32
Speaker 1: vanishing act actually did prevent the capital being moved because
24:37
Speaker 1: the bill never got there. But the problem is there's
24:40
Speaker 1: no there's no definitive account of what he actually did,
24:45
Speaker 1: and the processes that occur legislatively to keep the capital
24:51
Speaker 1: in St. Paul are much drier. It's romanticizing it for
24:55
Speaker 1: us to say all the guy had to do was
24:58
Speaker 1: steal the bill, and Tennessee was almost coming out steal
25:02
Speaker 1: the bill and uh run away to grind the actions
25:07
Speaker 1: of governance to a halt. It's much more interesting to
25:11
Speaker 1: try to figure out what he did during those twenty
25:16
Speaker 1: three hours. We don't, we don't really know. We have
25:18
Speaker 1: some guests and what do you you want to break
25:21
Speaker 1: it down for us week a tag team and um, yeah,
25:25
Speaker 1: so there's alleged things that he may have used to
25:28
Speaker 1: occupy his time during this twenty three hours. Um was
25:32
Speaker 1: that he was hiding out in a brothel. Um or
25:36
Speaker 1: that he went on kind of like a John Lennon
25:39
Speaker 1: Lost Weekend kind of bender. Right, Yeah, And people were
25:44
Speaker 1: will tell you that the bill itself was sitting in
25:46
Speaker 1: a bank while he was on this crazy carousing adventure. Also,
25:50
Speaker 1: the people of St. Paul, especially people who should have
25:54
Speaker 1: been looking for him, did a great job not finding him.
25:57
Speaker 1: So it's quite possible that maybe the authorities saw him
26:02
Speaker 1: unofficially and then just decided it never happens, but we
26:06
Speaker 1: don't know, it's lost to history. Well, there's even a
26:08
Speaker 1: story here that they're that a sergeant at arms who
26:11
Speaker 1: was tasked with like tracking down this runaway lawmaker actually
26:16
Speaker 1: knew exactly where he was and went and hung out
26:18
Speaker 1: with him and played cards. So yeah, there's this sense
26:22
Speaker 1: that like, obviously this the St. Paul lights did not
26:26
Speaker 1: want this to go down, But why would you exactly
26:30
Speaker 1: move it. Yeah, no, it well, because exactly it's kind
26:32
Speaker 1: of a crooked situation here about this governor. But it
26:34
Speaker 1: turns out to that, while it's a really good story,
26:39
Speaker 1: this guy's move didn't necessarily all in and of itself,
26:43
Speaker 1: keep this from happening. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, it's it's kind
26:47
Speaker 1: of a publicity stunt. It feels like it. It definitely
26:51
Speaker 1: hampered the process, but that alone could not, as it
26:54
Speaker 1: said earlier, could not have prevented the actual legislative action.
26:59
Speaker 1: Someone could just write down another bill. Yeah. And in
27:01
Speaker 1: this article in The Growler, which is a great name
27:04
Speaker 1: for a magazine, Um, they say that, like the way
27:07
Speaker 1: history goes is that the sexier story is a lot
27:10
Speaker 1: more fun and the real story of what legislative machinations
27:15
Speaker 1: kept this county seat from being moved are a lot
27:19
Speaker 1: less interesting. So we go with the quirkier story. Yes,
27:23
Speaker 1: always we will. We will be honest. We do here
27:27
Speaker 1: on ridiculous. We will be honest when it is an
27:29
Speaker 1: alleged story or or a legend itself. But we want
27:33
Speaker 1: to get to the fun stuff. Speaking of disappearances, I
27:37
Speaker 1: found one that was it was fascinating. Lori J. You
27:42
Speaker 1: sent us a post that opens with this great line.
27:46
Speaker 1: I feel like Florida could probably have fifty episodes of
27:50
Speaker 1: Ridiculous History devoted to it and there would still be
27:52
Speaker 1: content left over for the show. I think Gibson Town
27:57
Speaker 1: might make a good episode Gibson tow. You see, we're
28:00
Speaker 1: speaking disappearances. Gibsontown has a very special place in a
28:06
Speaker 1: specific community or culture here in the United States. So
28:11
Speaker 1: carnies circus workers spend most of their career traveling extensively
28:18
Speaker 1: around the US, and one part of a lot of
28:22
Speaker 1: circuses for a long time had been people who performed,
28:27
Speaker 1: you know, strange acts like biting the heads off chickens.
28:30
Speaker 1: Were people who had some sort of perceivable physical difference,
28:34
Speaker 1: right It wasn't that a geek, didn't the geek? Yeah, yeah,
28:37
Speaker 1: that's they would be called the geeks, sometimes billed as
28:40
Speaker 1: like a wild man of so and so, and then
28:43
Speaker 1: you would have the world's strongest man, people who maybe
28:46
Speaker 1: were very short or very skinny, uh, someone who was
28:50
Speaker 1: a woman but had a beard, those sorts of things.
28:53
Speaker 1: And these people probably don't want to have you know,
28:58
Speaker 1: if you if your job is to be stared at,
29:01
Speaker 1: and in some cases reviled by publics and small towns
29:04
Speaker 1: across the states. Where do you go when you need
29:07
Speaker 1: to break other than you know? Of course cheers. So
29:13
Speaker 1: they would go to Gibsontown, Florida, just south of Tampa,
29:17
Speaker 1: and that is where they would spend the winter. They
29:20
Speaker 1: would be in a place where they could live a
29:23
Speaker 1: normal life. They could go to the post office, they
29:25
Speaker 1: could check out the theater. There was a special counter
29:30
Speaker 1: at the post office just for people who have were
29:35
Speaker 1: height challenged, you know what I mean, And for people
29:38
Speaker 1: who didn't quite fit in elsewhere. This place, sometimes called
29:42
Speaker 1: GiB Town for short, was utopia. There's a great article
29:45
Speaker 1: on The Guardian by Kim Wall and Katerina Clarissi that
29:50
Speaker 1: examines how life was here. There was a campsite, a
29:54
Speaker 1: bake shop, a fire department, the beer hall had custom
29:58
Speaker 1: built chairs for the fat lady, ease in the world,
30:01
Speaker 1: the various versions of the world's tallest Man, which there
30:04
Speaker 1: were several. Uh. They were allowed to keep their exotic animals,
30:08
Speaker 1: their lions and tigers and bears in the neighborhood with them,
30:13
Speaker 1: and the town had at its peak almost fifteen thousand residents,
30:20
Speaker 1: and it became known as the industry capital of the
30:24
Speaker 1: circus world. They called it Carneytown. It was a place
30:28
Speaker 1: for everyone to escape being stared at. You know, so
30:33
Speaker 1: this place existed as almost a a a society on
30:39
Speaker 1: its own, you know, like Carnival. The show Carnival, Oh yeah,
30:43
Speaker 1: multiple times. I know the spoilers for the season they
30:47
Speaker 1: never made what I'll send them to you off air?
30:49
Speaker 1: How could you know this? I go down Rabbiles. Interesting,
30:54
Speaker 1: but yeah, Carnival is an excellent example because of course
30:57
Speaker 1: you become kind of insular when you're in such an
31:01
Speaker 1: US versus them environment. Right, and now the population has
31:08
Speaker 1: entered a resurgence. It's around fourteen thousand, two hundred and
31:12
Speaker 1: thirty four people after a previously dropped below nine thousand.
31:16
Speaker 1: It was hit weirdly by the you know, the decline
31:20
Speaker 1: of the American circus because think about it, right before
31:23
Speaker 1: we had internet and endless entertainment at our fingertips, these
31:28
Speaker 1: traveling shows were the biggest events in town. One thing
31:32
Speaker 1: I love about the Carnival is um the the lingo
31:36
Speaker 1: like you got the Rubes, you got the rows tis
31:38
Speaker 1: the Roustas are the carnie dudes that like build the
31:42
Speaker 1: rides and all that the Roustabouts or whatever learned a
31:44
Speaker 1: lot of that cool vernacular stuff from from watching that show. So, man,
31:49
Speaker 1: this is such a good one, Ben, I almost it's
31:51
Speaker 1: almost a shame. We gotta we gotta kind of hit
31:52
Speaker 1: it quick. Maybe we come back and do more of
31:54
Speaker 1: a deep dive history of of the Carnie scene another episode.
31:58
Speaker 1: We absolutely could. There so many more things we could
32:02
Speaker 1: say about it. What is inspiring about this? And one
32:06
Speaker 1: of the reasons I really appreciate you sending this, Lorie
32:08
Speaker 1: is that it makes me think of how many other
32:11
Speaker 1: towns exist within the US but almost culturally separate, you
32:16
Speaker 1: know what I mean, Like they're they're always gonna be
32:19
Speaker 1: some religious towns, sure, but there may be things that
32:23
Speaker 1: are just for specific trade. What if what if somewhere
32:26
Speaker 1: out there there is a town that is entirely populated
32:31
Speaker 1: by bank robbers who got away. Wouldn't that be cool?
32:35
Speaker 1: I'm gonna write it. I'll just write that's why you
32:37
Speaker 1: hope you made this up? Wouldn't that be cool? Yeah? Well,
32:40
Speaker 1: or sort of like you know, like a prison colony
32:41
Speaker 1: and and then like Australia or something, right, Oh yeah,
32:44
Speaker 1: that could happen. Hopefully in my head. These bank robbers
32:48
Speaker 1: got away successfully. But yes, we have agreed, and we
32:52
Speaker 1: hope you agreed to we have a visit to Gibson
32:56
Speaker 1: Town in our future. Well, no, old friend, it looks
33:07
Speaker 1: like we have a bit of sad news. You know that.
33:10
Speaker 1: What that sound cute? Casey casey presumably just through in
33:14
Speaker 1: here means right? What it was the sad trombone? That
33:17
Speaker 1: means we are we are running up on time. And
33:21
Speaker 1: isn't time kind of an ephemeral thing in the podcast space?
33:24
Speaker 1: Does anybody really know what time it is? Yeah, well
33:26
Speaker 1: it's it's anybody seven am. That's what my my laptop seven.
33:31
Speaker 1: Don't let big clock run your life, man, It's the
33:34
Speaker 1: what do they call it, the the atomic clock. Everything
33:37
Speaker 1: sync up to this mystical atomic clock, which itself is
33:40
Speaker 1: a fantastic idea for a story. The creation of that thing. Okay, yeah, No,
33:44
Speaker 1: here's the thing about shows like this, Ben, we we
33:46
Speaker 1: have we come in with the best intentions of like
33:48
Speaker 1: hitting all these like we're gonna give you this this,
33:50
Speaker 1: this like amazing clip show after the other. First, do
33:54
Speaker 1: you really even want that? I don't know if you
33:55
Speaker 1: want that? Do you want us to just mention headlines
33:58
Speaker 1: and then and then move on, so we didn't get
34:02
Speaker 1: to all the stories that we had individually picked out
34:05
Speaker 1: off air, which I think is a great problem to have.
34:08
Speaker 1: We'd like to do an episode like this later on
34:11
Speaker 1: in the future, and we need your help to do so.
34:14
Speaker 1: We really do. UM. If you are digging the whole
34:17
Speaker 1: idea of being a part of this online community, which
34:19
Speaker 1: we are huge fans of, you can join the Ridiculous
34:22
Speaker 1: Historians on Facebook UM or if you just want to
34:25
Speaker 1: send us something directly, we're totally into that too. We
34:28
Speaker 1: didn't do any emails on today's show, UM, but we
34:31
Speaker 1: certainly will in the future, and we have more updates
34:34
Speaker 1: to share. There's so many great stories we didn't get to.
34:38
Speaker 1: We actually, you know, we're we're pretty cool, hip happening guys,
34:43
Speaker 1: uh to looud and crazy guys. But we also spend
34:47
Speaker 1: time reading this stuff just for fun, so we really
34:51
Speaker 1: appreciate everybody who took the time to share an interesting
34:55
Speaker 1: story with us and with your fellow Ridiculous Historians. You
34:59
Speaker 1: can also find us on Instagram, you can find us
35:01
Speaker 1: on Twitter. You can email us directly. We are Ridiculous
35:06
Speaker 1: at how Stuff Works dot com. That's the one good
35:09
Speaker 1: good and uh for people who had written to us
35:12
Speaker 1: to ask about the quister, I don't know. We checked
35:15
Speaker 1: the studio earlier today, I haven't seen him. He might
35:18
Speaker 1: be under a table. Yeah. He also you know, I
35:20
Speaker 1: don't know if you know this about him then, but
35:21
Speaker 1: he has what I like to refer to as the
35:24
Speaker 1: quiz lair um, where he has a closet with about
35:28
Speaker 1: ten of the same outfit just laid out like with
35:32
Speaker 1: let let labeled you know, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.
35:34
Speaker 1: Because you know, every day he's quizzing. It's not just us.
35:38
Speaker 1: He's got other podcast hosts that he torments as well.
35:42
Speaker 1: I've seen him on the street just pulling people for
35:45
Speaker 1: a quiz fix. Holy count many quiz fix. I think
35:47
Speaker 1: he's good quiz think. I think I smell a spinoff.
35:51
Speaker 1: Let's let's hear from you, let us do what you think.
35:54
Speaker 1: Oh and thank you as well, of course, two super
35:57
Speaker 1: producer Casey Pegroom, friends and neighbors. Where would we be
36:00
Speaker 1: without him? Thanks to Alex Williams who composed our intro track,
36:03
Speaker 1: and most importantly, thanks to you. Thank you for being
36:06
Speaker 1: a friend, all of you traveling down that ridiculous road
36:10
Speaker 1: with us, you know, and back again um and being
36:13
Speaker 1: our friend and confidante. Uh. And we'll see you next
36:15
Speaker 1: time for another episode of ridiculous history. Goodbye,