Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class, A production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio, Hello and Happy Friday, Am Holly Frying and
Speaker 1: that Tracy F.
Speaker 2: Wilson.
Speaker 1: We talked about Charles Francis Hall. Yes, his accomplishments actually
Speaker 1: get overshadowed by all of the weirdness because he did,
Speaker 1: you know, make.
Speaker 2: A record in there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and he did some interesting things, but also he
Speaker 1: seems like maybe really paranoid to me, right, and I'd like,
Speaker 1: I do feel like a lot of his accomplishments were
Speaker 1: really the work of indigenous guides. Oh yeah, not really
Speaker 1: things he can take soul credit for. You and I
Speaker 1: had a conversation while you were working on this where
Speaker 1: you were like to have we talked about this before.
Speaker 1: I know, I was like halfway done with writing it,
Speaker 1: and I was like, did I really waste a lot
Speaker 1: of time here?
Speaker 2: Did I? I checked before?
Speaker 1: But I just like had that moment of deep self
Speaker 1: doubt where I was like, uh, oh, Spaghettio's did I
Speaker 1: just completely tank my week?
Speaker 2: What have I done?
Speaker 1: Well? And I went and searched through my folder and
Speaker 1: the like, the only reference I found him in all
Speaker 1: of my stuff is in a footnote of an article
Speaker 1: about John Cleves Simms, who was the person who thought
Speaker 1: that the earth was hollow, who he did an episode about.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, a couple of years ago.
Speaker 1: So I was like, it was a thing where like
Speaker 1: there was just a his name came up in the
Speaker 1: text somewhere, and his name was in the footnotes, you know,
Speaker 1: and a source about whatever that one sentence was.
Speaker 2: And it didn't get into a lot of detail.
Speaker 1: But I was like, was was he also into this
Speaker 1: idea that the earth was made of hollow concentric rings?
Speaker 1: Not to the best of my knowledge, but yeah, I
Speaker 1: ever knows.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: We talked about the Patrick Coleman incident where he shot
Speaker 1: a man because he became pair and what really kind
Speaker 1: of upholds that is that there were some of the
Speaker 1: whalers that were involved in that that moment who later
Speaker 1: many years later, like decades later, gave statements where they
Speaker 1: were like, all those guys were really young, and he
Speaker 1: could have easily like they were they totally needed somebody
Speaker 1: to lead them. He could have probably controlled them pretty easily.
Speaker 1: This doesn't make sense that he thinks that they were
Speaker 1: secretly conspiring against him, right, There is another theory about
Speaker 1: it that's kind of interesting, and it also evidences his
Speaker 1: own obsession with being like this hero and finding the
Speaker 1: Franklin expedition. Uh huh, because there's another story and I
Speaker 1: didn't include it here because it gets really off off
Speaker 1: the path and becomes its own thing. Where while he
Speaker 1: was away at one point like doing one of his
Speaker 1: sledge things. And remember this is his second expedition, not
Speaker 1: his his ultimate one where he passed where he was killed,
Speaker 1: that while he was away, some of the local indigenous
Speaker 1: people mentioned that there was a tomb nearby and kind
Speaker 1: of like the pieces were coming together, that this may
Speaker 1: have been actually a tomb made for Franklin when he died,
Speaker 1: that the survivors actually tried to encase him in something
Speaker 1: like stone and give him, like, you know, the send
Speaker 1: off that his level.
Speaker 2: In their group would have merited.
Speaker 1: And that these younger men got really excited about it
Speaker 1: because they had been taken up by Hall's excitement and
Speaker 1: they had tried to get those people to tell another
Speaker 1: group of locals what they knew so that that could
Speaker 1: be relayed to Hall when he got back, and that
Speaker 1: he may have gotten angry that they thought that they
Speaker 1: were going to be directing how this thing went, like
Speaker 1: his perception was that that stepped on his toes, uh huh,
Speaker 1: and that that may have gotten him angry because he
Speaker 1: was apparently kind of territorial about this whole thing. So like,
Speaker 1: I really wish I could time travel and talk to
Speaker 1: Inspector Smith and be like, are you legit and above
Speaker 1: board or are you one of those dudes who sees
Speaker 1: yourself in another dude and protects him. I have so
Speaker 1: many questions about all of these people. But it is
Speaker 1: interesting that he was like, exhumed the body, there's something up,
Speaker 1: and then when the body was exhumed there had clearly
Speaker 1: been something up, definitely arsenic. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's pretty
Speaker 1: interesting to me. You know, having worked on Criminalia for
Speaker 1: a while now, our whole first season was about poisoning,
Speaker 1: and arsenic was like we joked that it was the
Speaker 1: star of the show because it came up so often,
Speaker 1: and we had even talked to Debora Blum at the
Speaker 1: end of that season about arsenic and all of I
Speaker 1: did not include all the gory details of what happens
Speaker 1: to a person when they have arsenic poisoning it and
Speaker 1: cute and all of that was happening to Hall, so
Speaker 1: like anybody who kind of knew, right. But the problem
Speaker 1: with arsenic historically was that it went unnoticed for a
Speaker 1: lot of cases because it also mimicsed things like other
Speaker 1: like a lot of other diseases where it's perfectly like, yes,
Speaker 1: of course he had a stroke, look at what's happening,
Speaker 1: and it's like, yeah, no, because it was used medicinally
Speaker 1: for so many things. I can also imagine a scenario
Speaker 1: where somebody was trying to treat their own problem, yeah,
Speaker 1: and not knowing what they were doing. Yeah, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean this was also a time when patent medicines
Speaker 1: might have been in those medical kits as like, as
Speaker 1: though they were perfectly fine things to be administering, and
Speaker 1: those were not regulated and could have had any amount
Speaker 1: of anything in it, So it could have been completely
Speaker 1: accidental or it could have been not. The other thing
Speaker 1: that I find myself ruminating over in all of this
Speaker 1: is Mary Anne Hall mm hmmm, because we don't hear
Speaker 1: much about her. You know, her husband was gone all
Speaker 1: the time, right. I do know that she got a
Speaker 1: payout from the government at the conclusion of the Navy
Speaker 1: Board hearing, like basically his salary that he was supposed
Speaker 1: to collect for that mission she got. But that's kind
Speaker 1: of it. We don't know much else about her life.
Speaker 1: If it's notated somewhere, it may be, but I did
Speaker 1: not come across it in my research, And of course
Speaker 1: that may have just been because my research was focused
Speaker 1: on the expedition.
Speaker 2: But it's one of those.
Speaker 1: Things where I'm like, man, there's a whole other story
Speaker 1: here that I would love to hear. And that's like,
Speaker 1: Mary Anne, what are your thoughts on your husband going
Speaker 1: like I'm gonna be I'm gonna run an engraving business. Nope,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be a publisher. Nope, I'm gonna go to
Speaker 1: the Arctic like seeya. I just I'm like, is this
Speaker 1: borderline abandonment? Because he didn't stay home long ever. When
Speaker 1: he would come back, the longest was like that two
Speaker 1: year stretch and then it was like I'm out, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't. It's it's hard to know in some ways
Speaker 1: because like I mean, there are still people who like
Speaker 1: are in the military and are deployed. We know a
Speaker 1: couple of people that are in lengthy times apart because
Speaker 1: of jobs, you know, in today's world, and like the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century had more things like that in a lot
Speaker 1: of ways. Yeah, yeah, it's wild to consider. I also
Speaker 1: that you will laugh at me. Are you ready, yeah,
Speaker 1: geography laughing. Okay, well, I mean I had some embarrassed,
Speaker 1: embarrassing geography laughing that I told you earlier, say go ahead. Well,
Speaker 1: as I was trying to like look at maps and
Speaker 1: like really get my handle on, okay, where exactly was
Speaker 1: he on the northwest side of the Greenland Shore, et cetera,
Speaker 1: I literally was like, wow, is is right there? And
Speaker 1: I know this sounds silly, but in my head, Iceland
Speaker 1: is just always a little farther, far farther east than
Speaker 1: I think it is. Oh yeah, that's all, which is
Speaker 1: a nice way to say, Hey, we're going to Iceland.
Speaker 1: We are going to Iceland. Still very excited about this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're gonna go to Iceland. It's November. If you are interested,
Speaker 1: it's November second to the eighth. You can learn more
Speaker 1: at Defined Destinations dot com. If you want to go
Speaker 1: with us. It's going to be great. I love Iceland.
Speaker 1: We've said it many times. Tracy and I have each
Speaker 1: been on separate trips, and I think we're both very
Speaker 1: excited to go back there's a lot of fun stuff
Speaker 1: planned and then I'm hoping it's it's an interesting trip
Speaker 1: because we don't have as much downtime in the schedule
Speaker 1: as we have on some other trips.
Speaker 2: But you better believe.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm gonna go find my favorite hot dogs because
Speaker 1: Iceland has some great hot dogs, right and I have
Speaker 1: you know some. I'm gonna drink some Brenovan. In some
Speaker 1: places there's a Lebowski bar. Yes, that is amazing, and
Speaker 1: I'm going there again. I'm just gonna make it happen.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: You and I had a conversation when we first looked
Speaker 1: at the itinerary about how there was a bit less
Speaker 1: downtime than we've had on other trips. But it's partly
Speaker 1: because unlike other trips where we have always been in
Speaker 1: a city, part of this trip is farther away from
Speaker 1: and so they're like, it's it's not like when you're
Speaker 1: in Barcelona and you could just say, oh, there's this
Speaker 1: historic house right here that I'm going to go to
Speaker 1: for the whole morning. A lot more of the things
Speaker 1: where we will be outside of Reykievic like you would
Speaker 1: need conveyance to get there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, which will.
Speaker 1: Be our bus Reykievic is very walkable, but once we're
Speaker 1: outside of that that area, it gets a little bit trickier. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which I'm still very excited to go there for reasons. Yes,
Speaker 1: I have a lot of excitement for a lot of reason.
Speaker 1: Its very excited. And uh, you know, none of us
Speaker 1: are gonna hopefully have any horrible incidents we get poisoned
Speaker 1: by artsnake, yes, and you know, hopefully if there's any
Speaker 1: volcano happening, it will be a volcano that is not
Speaker 1: threatening anyone or disrupting things at that time.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I you.
Speaker 1: Know, have have acquaintances at this point in Iceland, and
Speaker 1: I have reached out to them whenever there's been news
Speaker 1: and it's all kind of like, no, no, everything's safe.
Speaker 1: All the animals got evacuated. We're good, We're good, We're
Speaker 1: used to this. We have plans in place now. I
Speaker 1: really felt like when we were in Iceland back in
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen, it did feel like people were very pragmatic
Speaker 1: about the idea of volcanic activity. Yes, one hundred percent,
Speaker 1: I would thinker anyway, that's Charles Francis Hall. One of
Speaker 1: our episodes this week was on goods vun relition Engen,
Speaker 1: which I have not pronounced exactly like German speakers say.
Speaker 1: It also called Goods of the Iron Hand. And here's
Speaker 1: the story of the journey of research into this. So
Speaker 1: a lot of the time when I am sort of
Speaker 1: doing a gut check of is there enough information on
Speaker 1: somebody to do a podcast on them, do a basic
Speaker 1: Google search. A lot of times when it's somebody lesser known,
Speaker 1: A lot of the results will be websites that I
Speaker 1: would not necessarily use as like a source for the episode,
Speaker 1: but I've at least heard of, So for someone like
Speaker 1: Goods vun relition gen, that might be something like the
Speaker 1: website Badass of the Week, Right, I at least know
Speaker 1: what this podcast is.
Speaker 2: And so I had bookmarked a bunch of articles.
Speaker 1: I was going back to them for sort of round
Speaker 1: two of actually reading them, and there was one that
Speaker 1: was one of the longer articles that I had bookmarked,
Speaker 1: and I was like, this, this article just at a glance,
Speaker 1: looks legit. What is this website? Though I've never heard
Speaker 1: of this website? And something about I forgot the name
Speaker 1: of the little icon that shows up in the browser bar.
Speaker 1: I was like, something about this icon is wrong to me.
Speaker 1: So I go up to like, you know, I just
Speaker 1: delete the part of the URL that is the article
Speaker 1: to get like to the main site, and I was like,
Speaker 1: this looks suspicious.
Speaker 2: It was just the entry page.
Speaker 1: I clicked into the entry page, and I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is Holocaust denial, not like not not Holocaust denial,
Speaker 1: as in the Holocaust didn't happen, which it absolutely did.
Speaker 1: The Holocaust happened. It was more like the real victims
Speaker 1: were the Germans who were ethnically cleansed. And I was
Speaker 1: just like, oh, this is not No, I'm not using
Speaker 1: this as a source. And the vibe that I got
Speaker 1: from this is that this was somebody's personal project that
Speaker 1: that person had then sold to someone else. The person
Speaker 1: who bought it is described in various news reporting as
Speaker 1: a far right extremist who was convicted of child sexual
Speaker 1: exploitation in twenty twenty two. And I was like, every no,
Speaker 1: absolutely not. Not only that, I'm going through my browser
Speaker 1: history and deleting all of that because I do not
Speaker 1: want programmatic ads targeting me based on all of this.
Speaker 1: So I went back to doing research, and fairly late
Speaker 1: in the process, I was like, it is weird to
Speaker 1: me that I can't find an English language version of this.
Speaker 1: It seems like something somebody would have translated into English.
Speaker 1: I found a number of different like German language editions.
Speaker 1: I don't read German though, and I went to WorldCat
Speaker 1: put in you know, goods Von Relationship autobiography and set
Speaker 1: the language to English. And this book came up that
Speaker 1: was just published within the last few years, that wasn't
Speaker 1: in almost any libraries. And I was like, something is
Speaker 1: weird to me. Something's weird here, right, So I googled
Speaker 1: the name of the publisher and it is a publisher
Speaker 1: that publishes just straight up white nationalism, works by Hitler,
Speaker 1: works by other Nazis. And that's when I said, Holly,
Speaker 1: I have a weird thing to talk through in this episode,
Speaker 1: because I there have been people we've talked about before
Speaker 1: who are people that were kind of appropriated by white nationalists.
Speaker 1: So people like Emily Hobhouse, her work in South Africa
Speaker 1: got kind of co opted by white nationalists, white South
Speaker 1: African nationalists to sort of like build a story of
Speaker 1: like white people being the real victims in South Africa.
Speaker 1: If we were going to never talk about things that
Speaker 1: were appropriated by white nationalists. We could just never talk
Speaker 1: about the entire Viking era or medieval Britain because that's
Speaker 1: also been like co opted by white nationalists to kind
Speaker 1: of tell a completely false story about like a totally
Speaker 1: white society, neither of which those were. So you and
Speaker 1: I talked about it a little bit, and I was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I think what I'm gonna do is we're going to
Speaker 1: do the episode and we're going to talk about all this.
Speaker 1: But if I find anything in the research that raises
Speaker 1: any other suspicions for me, I'm out on this because
Speaker 1: it my sense of this, having tried to look into it,
Speaker 1: is that he is somebody that was sort of co
Speaker 1: opted by white nationalists because of this sort of like
Speaker 1: German freedom fighter fictionalized version of him and the fact
Speaker 1: that there was an s s Panzer Grenadier unit named
Speaker 1: after him in World War Two, also like the idea
Speaker 1: of the iron hand that sure does lend itself to
Speaker 1: some Nazi imagery, but reasons that I wanted to continue
Speaker 1: to talk about him one where like we haven't talked
Speaker 1: that much about the transition from medieval to Renaissance Europe.
Speaker 1: He had a lot of interesting things that happened in
Speaker 1: his life. That were things we had never really talked
Speaker 1: about on Like we never talked about the Swabian League.
Speaker 1: We don't have that much about the Holy Roman Empire,
Speaker 1: and we don't have a lot that's about disability that
Speaker 1: far back in history. Most of our disability history is
Speaker 1: a lot more recent, and a lot of that has
Speaker 1: to do with like what the expectations that his societies
Speaker 1: have put on to say people, and a lot of
Speaker 1: times disabled people just being written out of history. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they are historically not considered worthy of being part of
Speaker 1: the historical record, right, which right, And you know, a
Speaker 1: lot of times in the time they were living sort
Speaker 1: of forced into the background by societies that were like
Speaker 1: we don't even want to see disabled people. So being
Speaker 1: able to talk about somebody who had a disability and
Speaker 1: was living in the sixteenth century, I felt like was important.
Speaker 2: And so all of that landed on meeting.
Speaker 1: Like here, we're going to do this episode and also
Speaker 1: acknowledged all of that. One other thing I did want
Speaker 1: to say is a lot of the development of prosthetics,
Speaker 1: especially like limb prosthetics in the US and Europe, has
Speaker 1: followed war and battlefield injuries that soldiers have sustained right,
Speaker 1: so a lot of prosthetics development basically follows warfare. Vast
Speaker 1: majority of prosthetics users in the US and Europe are
Speaker 1: not military veterans. Like there's a whole sort of stereot
Speaker 1: not stereotype isn't exactly right. There are proportionately, you know,
Speaker 1: significant numbers of disabled veterans who have had some kind
Speaker 1: of an amputation. But in terms of like the whole
Speaker 1: of people who have had a limb amputated and may
Speaker 1: or may not now want a prosthesis like way out
Speaker 1: numbered by people who like this amputation did not happen
Speaker 1: in any kind of combat. So I just want to
Speaker 1: say that, yeah, I have I have a peppy thing
Speaker 1: that we can I'm so happy, which will be unsurprising
Speaker 1: when I say what I'm going to say because it's
Speaker 1: very hotlycentric. There are a lot of really really interesting
Speaker 1: things going on in the ven diagram overlap of people
Speaker 1: often themselves wear prosthetic pieces, and the art world, okay,
Speaker 1: and there are a lot of very cool things being made.
Speaker 1: And one of my favorites I totally want to give
Speaker 1: a shout out it is this guy Trace who he
Speaker 1: is on both TikTok and Instagram. His TikTok handle is
Speaker 1: eat Prey Nub and he designs in three D prints
Speaker 1: these incredibly cool pros theses, many of which are for cosplay,
Speaker 1: but a lot of which are just for fun. And
Speaker 1: they're very, very beautifully designed, and he's amazing, Like he
Speaker 1: did one that turned his arm into a candy cane.
Speaker 1: He does a lot of pieces that work for cosplay,
Speaker 1: things like Iron Man arms and stuff like that. But
Speaker 1: what I really love the most is that he printed
Speaker 1: himself a pros thesis that has a Lego hand on
Speaker 1: the end of it, and then printed lego accessories that
Speaker 1: he can put in it. Fun the smartest and most
Speaker 1: charming engineering going on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love it.
Speaker 1: And he's very funny. So if you want to see
Speaker 1: some really cool art that is also kind of tongue
Speaker 1: in cheek in many ways, Like there's a lightsaber one
Speaker 1: that's really cool, check out his stuff. He's really incredible. There's,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, the triton arm, like the the Aquaman style,
Speaker 1: you know, not quite a trident, but he has that
Speaker 1: hooky thing from like some of the Aquaman stuff is gorgeous,
Speaker 1: Like he just makes beautiful things, and I love, Yeah,
Speaker 1: people are making beautiful art and sharing it, so Trace,
Speaker 1: I kind of love love your work a lot, and
Speaker 1: he's very, like I said, very very funny. So I
Speaker 1: just love that there is this whole We talked specifically
Speaker 1: about a lot of people and engineers who mean very
Speaker 1: well creating prosthetic pieces that aren't the people that would
Speaker 1: be wearing them, and there's not input necessarily from those people.
Speaker 1: So I really like that this is like homegrown a
Speaker 1: person who actually understands how these implements work and need
Speaker 1: to fit and need to be comfortable for him just
Speaker 1: making his own on his three D printer. I think
Speaker 1: it's the coolest thing on earth. Somebody that I follow
Speaker 1: on TikTok who I haven't seen as much content from lately,
Speaker 1: and I don't know if it's because of the algorithm
Speaker 1: or just she hasn't been as active lately. Her name
Speaker 1: is Alexis and her account is called stump Kitchen. Yes,
Speaker 1: and she yeah, she was born with a limb difference,
Speaker 1: and so she's done some videos that are sort of
Speaker 1: how she does various things like various household or grooming
Speaker 1: things or whatever, using either one of a couple of
Speaker 1: different processes that she has or her stump, and she
Speaker 1: also does this stump cosplay where she makes up her stump.
Speaker 1: She looks like different. I haven't seen those. I've seen
Speaker 1: some of her kitchen stuff, but I have not seen those. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So like just looking at what's on her profile right now,
Speaker 1: she's got one that is the Grinch. There's one that
Speaker 1: is Arthur. I feel like I saw like maybe a
Speaker 1: Pikachu one one time. She will just she'll make up
Speaker 1: her whole, her whole limb. She calls it her stump.
Speaker 1: I don't know if that word is comfortable for everyone.
Speaker 1: She has a limb difference, but like that's what she
Speaker 1: calls it. And she tells stories about like when she
Speaker 1: was a child and her sister, who did not have
Speaker 1: a limb difference, like sort of made a personality for
Speaker 1: her arm.
Speaker 2: It's I don't I.
Speaker 1: Really I love her content, and you're what you just
Speaker 1: described reminded me of it a little bit. I also
Speaker 1: just realized that I left out one of the wilder
Speaker 1: moments in my research thing that was not about white
Speaker 1: nationalism at all, which is that I had found a
Speaker 1: reference to a book that was described in the catalog
Speaker 1: as in English. That was goods fun relish Jin's autobiography,
Speaker 1: and they had it in the university library where my
Speaker 1: spouse works, and so I said, can you please get
Speaker 1: this book for me? He said yes and was like something.
Speaker 1: He was like, something's weird about this catalog entry. I
Speaker 1: was like, I know, I don't know what to tell you.
Speaker 1: It's I just it's my only option forgetting this. So
Speaker 1: he goes to the shelf described in the catalog as
Speaker 1: being in English, but it turned out only the intro
Speaker 1: to the book was in English. This book is from
Speaker 1: back in the nineteen fifties. And it turned out the
Speaker 1: reason that the catalog entry seemed a little bit off
Speaker 1: is that there was no barcode to check it out.
Speaker 1: It wasn't in the system at all. So when he
Speaker 1: took it up to the circulation dusk check it out,
Speaker 1: they were like, oh, wow, this is a whole we
Speaker 1: have a process for this. Yeah, I need to get
Speaker 1: someone who knows what knows how to do it. And
Speaker 1: so now I have this book still, which he brought
Speaker 1: home in a plastic bag because it is so fragile,
Speaker 1: along with a piece of paper with the numbers for
Speaker 1: the barcode written out in longhand so that when it
Speaker 1: is returned to the library, the barcode can be affixed
Speaker 1: to it. Right. I bet they're also going to do
Speaker 1: an update on the record, so somebody will pop out
Speaker 1: their AACR two manual for my library.
Speaker 2: People.
Speaker 1: You just perked up, I know, and then have to
Speaker 1: do a new version of the mark record. I'm sure yeah,
Speaker 1: And there might be a little repair worked into it
Speaker 1: if that's feasible, because there are. It's a very delicate book. Anyway,
Speaker 1: That is the whole saga of the story for this
Speaker 1: week's podcast research from me Happy Happy Friday. I was like,
Speaker 1: what day? That was a whole journey, and then I
Speaker 1: forgot would day? It is Happy Friday. We'll be back
Speaker 1: with a Saturday Classic tomorrow. We will have a brand
Speaker 1: new episode on Monday. And whatever's coming up this next
Speaker 1: couple of days for you, I hope it's all great
Speaker 1: stuff you missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
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