Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm editor Candice Gibson, joined today by Josh Clark. Hey,
Speaker 1: Candice here, So I no longer feel like I'm in
Speaker 1: control of my life. Candice, I'm the highly suggestible type.
Speaker 1: I've fallen in with a few cults here there in
Speaker 1: my lifetime. Um, I made it out. But you know,
Speaker 1: I've never experienced anything as mind bending as the Chick
Speaker 1: fil A cows. The mojo that they're working on me
Speaker 1: is intense. Um. I've been waking up in the morning
Speaker 1: with my bed littered with delicious Chick fil A brand
Speaker 1: chicken sandwich wrappers. And I'm not on ambient and that's
Speaker 1: astounding to me because to my allergy, Chick fil A
Speaker 1: closes at ten pm. I don't know where these are
Speaker 1: coming from. Apparently I have a key. Apparently I'm not
Speaker 1: actually breaking and entering, just entering the cow. Yes. So also,
Speaker 1: I sobbed quietly anytime I eat steak. It's bad. And
Speaker 1: and the chick flake haws have been urging me to
Speaker 1: do some research into their plight and kind cow kind. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they are a very tight knit community. They dairy cows,
Speaker 1: beef cows, pet cows. They all are are are kind
Speaker 1: of like this, the society of cow that we're just
Speaker 1: looking right past. They have great ideas and value. What
Speaker 1: about cows veal? Um, Yeah, we don't like to talk
Speaker 1: about that. That's that's they're really mad about veal. Believe me,
Speaker 1: there's a there's a they have a cow hero even
Speaker 1: uh they up in the hills, they sing folk tales
Speaker 1: of Mrs O'Leary's cow, who exacted revenge on humankind for
Speaker 1: all cow kind. Back in eighteen seventy one. You know,
Speaker 1: Chicago was a huge and still is a huge um,
Speaker 1: a huge slaughterhouse city. It was the end of the
Speaker 1: cattle drive. But Mrs O'Leary's cow, this bovine you speak
Speaker 1: of with a milk cow, he was a new danger
Speaker 1: of being. I'm telling you. They're all very tighten it.
Speaker 1: All cows are really mad about the like the slaughtering
Speaker 1: that can oh tell me more about Apa Kappakawa. Well, okay,
Speaker 1: i'll tell you. Let me tell you a little more
Speaker 1: about Mrs O'Leary's cow, this hero. So it's like uh,
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy one, Um, and Chicago at the time was
Speaker 1: basically made of wood, which I think the cows were
Speaker 1: waiting for. This is pretty wild, not only where most
Speaker 1: of the houses made of wood, but the sidewalks are
Speaker 1: made of wood two streets to it is my understanding,
Speaker 1: which I'm having trouble wrapping my head around. Made it
Speaker 1: really easy to knock on wood exactly now. The the
Speaker 1: the basically the univers aligned. There's a cow prophecy that
Speaker 1: that the the that on October eighteen seventy one, the
Speaker 1: stars would align and this cow would sacrifice it's life
Speaker 1: the life of four other cows, and I believe a
Speaker 1: horse and maybe a couple of chickens by kicking over
Speaker 1: a lantern and Mrs O'Leary's barn and Mrs O'Leary's and
Speaker 1: had two tons of coal in it, two tons of Hey,
Speaker 1: don't think Mrs O'Leary didn't have anything to do with
Speaker 1: this conspiracy, right? And um, basically Chicago burned like it
Speaker 1: never has before. You and I talked about Rome burning
Speaker 1: whether or not Nero played the fiddle on another podcast. Well,
Speaker 1: when Chicago burn it was pretty serious. To here about
Speaker 1: three and a half square miles of the city were
Speaker 1: just completely demolished. D Twenty people died, thousands more were homeless.
Speaker 1: It exactly about two hundred million dollars in days. I
Speaker 1: looked it up. That's actually three point two billion dollars
Speaker 1: into today's money. So that was a lot from that
Speaker 1: one kick. You know, the hey went up, the coal
Speaker 1: went up, the livestock went up in Chicago went up. Um,
Speaker 1: and the Chicago Tribune was the first two to catch on,
Speaker 1: get hip to the cow conspiracy and report that it
Speaker 1: was Mrs O'Leary's cow who started this horrible fire. Um,
Speaker 1: is that fact or fiction? I really really hate to
Speaker 1: burst your bubble. I know that you've been having a
Speaker 1: great time weaving this fairy tale for all of our listeners,
Speaker 1: and I hope you've all been enjoying it. I know
Speaker 1: I have, and I haven't been rolling my eyes at all.
Speaker 1: But it is fiction and the story of the Great
Speaker 1: Chicago Fire is legendary really because there's no definitive answer
Speaker 1: to whom you started the fire and the cow. You know, again,
Speaker 1: maybe this will plaque at you, Uh, the cow is
Speaker 1: a likely contender, or at least it lives on in legend,
Speaker 1: But in this case, there's been at least one confession,
Speaker 1: one story that was recanted, one busted testimony, and a
Speaker 1: handful morph theories about the fire. And when there was
Speaker 1: an official inquiry into the cause of the fire, none
Speaker 1: could be determined. Now, who's being naive, Candice? I'm sorry
Speaker 1: taking a big by a burger. Um Uh to move
Speaker 1: on with the story. Let me tell you about some
Speaker 1: of the other crazy theories that are out there. Boys
Speaker 1: playing with matches start at the fire. A comet hit
Speaker 1: the earth and smoldering bits of are it's actually started
Speaker 1: the fires? Explanation? Uh, Communist Parisians started the fire. It
Speaker 1: was the wrath of God and a tramp smoking a pipe.
Speaker 1: And by tramp we mean like a hobo. Not to
Speaker 1: confuse our younger audiences out there. And you know, it's
Speaker 1: funny because this whole you know, mishmash about Ms O
Speaker 1: Leary and her cow. The reporter who gave that stories
Speaker 1: that he was essentially looking for a different angle, and
Speaker 1: forty years later he said, you know what, y'all, I
Speaker 1: made up that story. It wasn't really true. But the
Speaker 1: reason it caused such a splash and the reason that
Speaker 1: the cows have spoken to Josh about it. It was
Speaker 1: that Mrs o Leary was ripe for the vengeance she
Speaker 1: had been unwelfare, she her husband and her five children.
Speaker 1: But then word got out that she'd been selling dairy
Speaker 1: products on the side from from a cow, from said cow,
Speaker 1: and when the city cut her off, she was really
Speaker 1: upset about it, and apparently she vowed to exact her revenge.
Speaker 1: And some people said that's exactly what this fire was,
Speaker 1: that she started at herself. Other theory being that her
Speaker 1: cow accidentally kicked every care sing lantern. Well, then the
Speaker 1: story sort of took a turn for the worst when
Speaker 1: she got on the stand and said, not only did
Speaker 1: she not start the fire, she was in bed and
Speaker 1: her neighbors were the ones having a wild party and
Speaker 1: they snuck into the barn to get milk and they
Speaker 1: started the fire. You're not seeing a pattern here. Then
Speaker 1: things took a turn for the even more complicated when uh,
Speaker 1: peg leg Sullivan, this is Daniel peg leg Sullivan, perhaps
Speaker 1: not the most flattering nickname. Um. Apparently he got up
Speaker 1: and gave his testimony and he said that he saw
Speaker 1: the fire and he reported it and he ran for
Speaker 1: help and this, you know, it was sort of accepted
Speaker 1: for what it was worth, until when a lawyer named
Speaker 1: Richard Bales set out to figure out if peg Leg
Speaker 1: was telling the truth. And one of the points he
Speaker 1: made was that you've got a peg leg, you can't
Speaker 1: really run that fast, and the distance that peg Leg
Speaker 1: claimed to have run was about the length of a
Speaker 1: football field. Furthermore, Baal said that his line of vision
Speaker 1: from where he was reportedly standing when he spawned at
Speaker 1: the fire, there would have been a house in his
Speaker 1: way and he wouldn't have been able to see the
Speaker 1: fire rising from the O'Leary's barn. So years after the
Speaker 1: fire raged and burned down the city, Mrs O'Leary was
Speaker 1: finally exonerated. So we're not sure if peg Leg was
Speaker 1: the one who was in the barn and kicked over
Speaker 1: the lantern or or the pipe that he was smoking
Speaker 1: set the fire. No one really knows, but it was
Speaker 1: it was just, you know, it was a rough night
Speaker 1: for everyone, the cow that lost its life, the o'learys
Speaker 1: who lived in an infamy and notoriety for years, and
Speaker 1: for Chicago really and if the universe was aligning, whether
Speaker 1: it was you know, cow forces or not, Chicago was
Speaker 1: right for the burning. Like we said, everything was made
Speaker 1: of wood. The night of the fire, there was a
Speaker 1: strong wind blowing. And to make matters even worse, the
Speaker 1: Chicago firemen, of whom there were only two hundred, were
Speaker 1: exhausted and their resources depleted because the previous night they've
Speaker 1: been finding a fire as well well. Plus also the
Speaker 1: building that housed all their water pumps burned to the
Speaker 1: ground as well. Yeah, and some of them even got
Speaker 1: the wrong address to the alliers that they didn't show
Speaker 1: up in time. And they were trying to pump water
Speaker 1: reserves from like Michigan to help with the effort, and
Speaker 1: that wasn't working in their favorite either. You know, the
Speaker 1: puny humans didn't even put the fire out. It was
Speaker 1: the rain that came the next evening that eventually did.
Speaker 1: And I suppose a great cow and the sky commissioned
Speaker 1: that weather, you know, canus. I appreciate you clearing this
Speaker 1: up for me, but I am afraid I'm going to
Speaker 1: have to report your lack of faith in my cow overlords,
Speaker 1: so I would strongly advise you not to send any
Speaker 1: personal information over the internet from now on. Well, I
Speaker 1: guess at least I'll be safe to go on our
Speaker 1: website and read the article did the Great Chicago Fire
Speaker 1: really start with? Mrs O'Leary's unhelped staff works dot com
Speaker 1: for moralness and thousands of other topics. Because at how
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