HUB History - Our Favorite Stories from Boston History

The early 20th century was a time of aviation firsts, and one of those firsts dropped into Boston for three long, exciting days in 1924. Five months after they started their journey in California, the Army Air Service pilots who made the first flight around the world were expected to touch down on US soil for the first time 96 years ago this week.

Please check out the transcript and full show notes at: http://HUBhistory.com/201/

And support the show on Patreon.

• “Magellans of the Sky,” Rob Crotty’s overview of the World Flight
• A 1960s onboarding film for Douglas Aircraft mentions the World Fliers
• Boston Globe coverage
  • Sept 5: World Fliers expected today
  • Sept 6: World Fliers arrive in Boston
  • Sept 7: Details of the World Fliers’ reception in Boston
  • Sept 8: World Fliers leave for NYC
• Washington DC Evening Star coverage
  • Jan 13: Planning the World Flight
  • March 17: The World Flight begins
  • Sept 6: World Fliers arrive in Boston
  • Sept 7: Reception of the World Fliers in Boston
• Other coverage
  • Sept 8, Associated Press: Departure of the World Flight from Boston
  • Mar 8, Colorado Statesman: planning the World Flight
• Past episodes related to aviation
  • Early balloon ascents in Boston
  • Amelia Earhart in Boston
  • The 1910 Harvard Boston Aero Meet
• Pictures available from the Smithsonian and Digital Commonwealth

Since the main story this week is about the first people to circumnavigate the globe by air, it seems only appropriate to feature the first solo circumnavigation by sea. On September 2, Stuff You Missed in History released an episode about Captain Joshua Slocum, who was the first person to sail around the world alone. Slocum first went to sea 35 years before his attempted circumnavigation, leaving Nova Scotia at the age of 16. Over the years, he met and married an American woman living in Australia, and the pair sailed together for 13 years, raising seven children at sea, four of whom lived to adulthood. After his first wife died in 1884, Slocum remarried and began calling Boston home, while continuing to sail between the US east coast and Brazil regularly.

I had never read about the time in Joshua Slocum’s life before his solo voyage before, and hosts Tracy and Holly do a great job describing this period. You’ll be left wishing that you had met his first wife Ginny, who seemed able to do it all, holding off mutineers at gunpoint with one hand, playing piano with the other, teaching Sunday school with a third hand, and giving birth alone at sea with… well I guess that wasn’t a hand.

All that is to say that Joshua Slocum was a master mariner and experienced navigator, so when he announced in 1895 that he planned to sail a small vessel around the world alone, it didn’t sound as crazy as it would if you or I said it. He bought a small sloop near New Bedford that had been used for oyster fishing and spent more than a year overhauling it and fitting it out for long distance sailing.

In the end, the journey took three years, and after his return, Slocum published a memoir titled Sailing Alone Around the World.

Katherine Switzer has been the subject of two past episodes, and on September 15, she’ll be taking part in the BPL’s Contested Perspectives series. Here’s how the library describes it:

In 1967, Katherine Switzer became the first woman to officially run the Boston Marathon as a numbered entrant. During her run, race official Jock Semple attempted to stop Switzer and grab her official bib; however, he was shoved to the ground by Switzer’s boyfriend, Thomas Miller, who was running with her, and she completed the race. It was not until 1972 that women were allowed to run the Boston Marathon officially. Fifty years later, Kathrine Switzer successfully ran the Boston Marathon again at age 70.

She’ll join the library’s virtual talk “to discuss these barrier-breaking moments on the racecourse and in life.”

On September 16, past podcast guests Joseph Nevins, Suren Moodliar, and Eleni Macrakis will be giving a virtual author talk via the library. A People’s Guide to Greater Boston is a radical’s travel guide to Boston. If you missed our interview with Joseph and Suren, or if you’re still mad that Eleni got left out, this will be your introduction to the guide.

Also on September 16, Revolutionary Spaces will host an online installment in their “Reflecting Attucks” series, the organization’s year of programming remembering the most famous Boston Massacre victim. This event will start at 4pm, and it’s a panel discussion that features Kerri Greenidge, biographer of William Monroe Trotter past podcast guest. Here’s how Revolutionary Spaces describes this edition of Reflecting Attucks.

Attucks: A Man of Many Worlds unpacks what we know about Attucks’s time and place. He lived in a world where many people were descended from both Native and African peoples that had much in common, including enslavement at the hands of white colonists. With this background, Attucks would have had a deep understanding of British oppression, and how his community fought back. And as a mariner going through the port of Boston, he would have encountered people both Black and white making the case for liberty and freedom in louder and more certain terms.

Join us for a lively discussion about Attucks’s Afro-Indian community and reflect on the experiences he might have had that informed his thinking about resistance and protest and ultimately brought him to King Street on the night of the Boston Massacre

• Past episodes relate to the upcoming events
  • Katherine Switzer completes the Boston Marathon with a number.
  • Bill Rodgers was a big fan of women in the Marathon.
  • Our interview with Kerri Greenidge.
  • Meet the authors of A People’s Guide to Greater Boston.
  • Revolutionary Spaces and Crispus Attucks