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 Tracy ve Egilson, and today we're going to pick
Speaker 1: up where we left off in the story of Luis Alvarez.
Speaker 1: As we talked about in the previous episode, this was
Speaker 1: a scientist who made huge contributions in a very wide
Speaker 1: variety of fields, from nuclear physics to paleontology. He was
Speaker 1: granted twenty two patents, which feels like a lot to me,
Speaker 1: especially when you consider how vastly different these were in
Speaker 1: terms of what they covered. One was for a golf
Speaker 1: training machine that he developed for President Eisenhower. One was
Speaker 1: for a color TV system. He also developed a stabilization
Speaker 1: system for lenses and binoculars and cameras, and that innovation
Speaker 1: went on to be used in zoom lenses and shoulder
Speaker 1: held video cameras when those came along. He also presented
Speaker 1: a variable power lens to Polaroid, which came to market
Speaker 1: in six although he had shown it to them about
Speaker 1: twenty years before. So he invented a lot of different stuff.
Speaker 1: In addition to all of his scientific accomplishments, he was
Speaker 1: also a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the
Speaker 1: American Philosophical Society, the American Physical Society, the American Academy
Speaker 1: of Arts and Sciences, and the National Academy of Engineering.
Speaker 1: And his accomplishments were so many and so far reaching
Speaker 1: that even with two episodes, there are highlights and elements
Speaker 1: and side trips that we could talk about around him
Speaker 1: and his work that we kind of have to leave out,
Speaker 1: otherwise it would become an entire podcast series called How
Speaker 1: Louis Alvarez Works, would be like nine episodes long. Where
Speaker 1: we left off in the previous episode, he had been
Speaker 1: creating new radar systems that were used during World War Two,
Speaker 1: which helps save the lives of Allied pilots and other
Speaker 1: crew and allowed Allied planes to detect and destroy German
Speaker 1: U boats. In this episode, we're going to look at
Speaker 1: his other major portion of his work during World War Two,
Speaker 1: as well as some of his more diverse contributions to science,
Speaker 1: which somehow wound up falling into the realm of sort
Speaker 1: of scientific mystery solving. Yeah. Uh, Luise actually left m
Speaker 1: I T in ninetee and he became part of the
Speaker 1: Manhattan Project. First, he spent a little while in Chicago,
Speaker 1: where scientists were working on creating the chain reactions that
Speaker 1: are necessary uh in a nuclear bomb. And from there
Speaker 1: he went to Los Alamos, New Mexico, and he became
Speaker 1: part of the steering committee for the laboratory there. The
Speaker 1: team at Los Alamos was working on bombs that used
Speaker 1: both uranium and plutonium as their fuel. While Luise participated
Speaker 1: in missions involving both of these types of weapons, most
Speaker 1: of his scientific work in New Mexico was on the
Speaker 1: plutonium bombs. The main part of his work had to
Speaker 1: do with gating their detonators, so he was the one
Speaker 1: who developed the detonators that were used in plutonium bombs.
Speaker 1: He flew aboard the B twenty nine bomber that dropped
Speaker 1: the bomb in the world's first atomic bomb test. The
Speaker 1: only visual documentation we have of the explosion from the
Speaker 1: air is a pair of sketches that he made, since
Speaker 1: nobody had thought to send a camera up aboard the plane.
Speaker 1: There are plenty of pictures at ground level, but none
Speaker 1: from the air. He kind of relied on that mechanical
Speaker 1: sketching knowledge that he had gotten in his high school
Speaker 1: time to to do some sketchwork based on what he
Speaker 1: saw aboard the plane. In preparation for the bombs to
Speaker 1: actually be used. During World War Two, he along with
Speaker 1: other scientists, moved to the island of Tennyan, where they
Speaker 1: lived in tents and prepared the bombs and the bombers
Speaker 1: for their eventual missions. He was aboard the Enola Gay
Speaker 1: when it dropped the bomb known as Little Boy on Hiroshima.
Speaker 1: On the flight itself, he didn't wear a parachute. He
Speaker 1: decided that if the plane were to be shut down,
Speaker 1: he didn't want to be captured. While he was returning
Speaker 1: home from having witnessed this bombing, he wrote this letter
Speaker 1: to his son Walt, who was four years old at
Speaker 1: the time. What regrets I have about being a party
Speaker 1: to killing and maiming thousands of Japanese civilians this morning
Speaker 1: are tempered with the hope that this terrible weapon we
Speaker 1: have created may bring the countries of the world together
Speaker 1: and prevent further wars. Alfred Noble thought that his invention
Speaker 1: of high explosives would have that effect by making wars
Speaker 1: too terrible, but unfortunately it had just the opposite reaction.
Speaker 1: Our new destructive force is so many times worse that
Speaker 1: it may realize Nobel's dream. That's quite a letter to write, Yeah,
Speaker 1: especially to your tiny child, your four year old, having
Speaker 1: just witnessed the destruction of a city one weapon. Uh
Speaker 1: Luis flew on the Nagasaki mission as well, this time
Speaker 1: aboard another B twenty nine aircraft, the Great Artiste rather
Speaker 1: than the one that was deploying the bomb. Just before
Speaker 1: the second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, the Great Artists
Speaker 1: dropped canisters containing telemetry devices like the ones like the
Speaker 1: one Luis had created for the bomb, along with a
Speaker 1: letter written by him and to other physicists. The letter
Speaker 1: was addressed to Japanese physicists Ryokichi Sagani, who had worked
Speaker 1: with Louise at Berkeley before the war. Luis had remembered
Speaker 1: their connection and he hoped that by writing to him
Speaker 1: he could get information about Americans nuclear capabilities to the
Speaker 1: Japanese in a way that could put an end to
Speaker 1: the war. Here's that letter. We are sending this as
Speaker 1: a personal message to urge that you use your influence
Speaker 1: as a reputable nuclear physicist to convince the Japanese General
Speaker 1: Staff of the terrible consequences which will be suffered by
Speaker 1: your people if you continue in this war. You have
Speaker 1: known for several years that an atomic bomb could be
Speaker 1: built if a nation were willing to pay the enormous
Speaker 1: cost of preparing the necessary material. Now that you have
Speaker 1: seen that we have constructed the production plants, there can
Speaker 1: be no doubt in your mind that all the output
Speaker 1: of these factories, working twenty four hours a day will
Speaker 1: be exploded on your homeland within the space of three weeks.
Speaker 1: We have proof fired one bomb in the American desert,
Speaker 1: exploded one on Hiroshima, and fired the third this morning.
Speaker 1: We implore you to confirm these facts to your leaders
Speaker 1: and to do your utmost to stop the destruction and
Speaker 1: waste of life which can only result in the total
Speaker 1: annihilation of all your cities if continued. As scientists, we
Speaker 1: deplore the use to which a beautiful discovery has been put,
Speaker 1: but we can assure you that unless Japan surrenders at once,
Speaker 1: this reign of atomic bombs will increase manyfold. In fury
Speaker 1: to my friend Sagane, with best regards from Louis w Albarez.
Speaker 1: Luise and Sagani actually met four years after the war
Speaker 1: was over, at which point Louise added his signature to
Speaker 1: a copy of the letter that Sagany had. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: this letter did actually get to the Japanese government. It
Speaker 1: didn't get to Saganay until after the war was over. Um,
Speaker 1: but it it did, It did get to its intended recipients.
Speaker 1: Just digesting that whole thing, Yeah, Well, and the like
Speaker 1: many of the scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project,
Speaker 1: Luis was really horrified at the level of destruction and
Speaker 1: death that the atomic bombs had the power to cause.
Speaker 1: But since World War Two ended so quickly after the
Speaker 1: second one was dropped, he really had no doubt that
Speaker 1: the United States had done the right thing. Um. He
Speaker 1: really felt like the bombing of Nagasaki, which that's a
Speaker 1: question that comes up, like we had already bombed Hiroshima,
Speaker 1: that we also need to bomb as other city. He
Speaker 1: really felt like that was necessary to bring an end
Speaker 1: to the war. Everybody knew that it took a whole
Speaker 1: lot of uranium to make one bomb, and it took
Speaker 1: a whole lot of time to make that uranium. And
Speaker 1: if we could his point of view was that if
Speaker 1: we had only brought bombed Hiroshima, people would have been like, well,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be a while. They would have thought it
Speaker 1: was a one off there, it's gonna be a while
Speaker 1: before they can make another one. So he really felt
Speaker 1: like that that second event was necessary to end the war.
Speaker 1: And he also felt sure that if something had gone
Speaker 1: wrong and they had not perfected the bombs, or if
Speaker 1: the bombs had not been dropped, Hiroshima and Nagasaki would
Speaker 1: have been destroyed anyway through more conventional warfare techniques and
Speaker 1: incendiary bombs, and a departure from pretty much the overwhelming
Speaker 1: majority of other Manhattan Project scientists, he also thought that
Speaker 1: the United States should continue its nuclear weapons program and
Speaker 1: develop a hydrogen bomb. On a note about his personal life,
Speaker 1: Louise and Geraldine divorced not long after World War Two.
Speaker 1: He remarried in nineteen fifty eight to Janet Landis, who
Speaker 1: had worked with him in the lab at Berkeley, and
Speaker 1: they had two children together, named Donald and Helen. Louise
Speaker 1: returned to Berkeley after the war was over, and at
Speaker 1: that point he turned his focus to high energy atomic research.
Speaker 1: Like some of the stuff that we talked about in
Speaker 1: the previous episode, this kind of esoteric work, but it
Speaker 1: involves bubbles, so so a little lighter in toe into
Speaker 1: what we've been talking about. Yeah, we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about in a little bit more detailed because it's also
Speaker 1: what he won his Nobel Prize for um. So there
Speaker 1: had already been electron accelerators in use for some years
Speaker 1: before he went back to Berkeley, but he wanted to
Speaker 1: create a proton accelerator, and he did so. He completed
Speaker 1: a forty ft proton accelerator in ninety seven. In nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty three, Louise met University of Michigan physicist Donald Glasser,
Speaker 1: who had just invented the bubble chamber that we alluded
Speaker 1: to a minute ago. So, unlike particle accelerators, which produced
Speaker 1: the particles that scientists want to study, the bubble chamber
Speaker 1: detected the particles that had been produced. So in a
Speaker 1: bubble chamber, particles passed through a fluid and they leave
Speaker 1: this trail of bubbles behind in their wake. Luise realized
Speaker 1: that this invention could be used to detect particles from
Speaker 1: uh Sinco cyclotron, which is a circular particle accelerator that
Speaker 1: had just been built at Berkeley. Luise made some improvements
Speaker 1: to the bubble chamber, including using liquid hydrogen as the
Speaker 1: fluid and developing more sensitive recording and transmission. He then
Speaker 1: worked on making the chamber even bigger so it could
Speaker 1: record the trails of more particles. The first chamber was
Speaker 1: a one inch glass tube, and about five years later
Speaker 1: he was actually using one that measured seventy two inches.
Speaker 1: So thinking big so when a particle passed through the
Speaker 1: high drogen, which was about degrees below zero celsius, it
Speaker 1: would heat the hydrogen to the boiling point and leave
Speaker 1: this little trail of bubbles in its wake. Photographs would
Speaker 1: record what this trail looked like, and then Luis and
Speaker 1: his students developed lots of tools for scanning and measuring
Speaker 1: all of these photos um The bubble chamber could produce
Speaker 1: more than a million photographs in one year, and they
Speaker 1: needed to look at and analyze and record all of
Speaker 1: these photographs to see the trails that it was picking
Speaker 1: up a little tiny bubble trails. Using the bubble chamber,
Speaker 1: he discovered a tremendous number of elementary particles. He also
Speaker 1: discovered extremely short lived particles known as residents states. Luise
Speaker 1: won the Nobel Prize for this work in ninety eight,
Speaker 1: and in the ceremony his methods were created were credited
Speaker 1: with making practically all of the other discoveries about particle
Speaker 1: physics possible. Side note, there a whole lot of Nobel
Speaker 1: Prizes come out of University of California at Berkeley. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that lab is clearly um enabling a lot of scientific exploration. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there are there are other labs that uh, that have more,
Speaker 1: but there's still a whole lot they're coming from Berkeley. Uh.
Speaker 1: And after this Louise Louise's career started to put his
Speaker 1: physics knowledge into practical use to solve mystery. You know.
Speaker 1: For the first mystery it was are there any hidden
Speaker 1: chambers in the pyramid of King Kaffrine in Giza? Great mystery?
Speaker 1: To try it solve, he went to Egypt five as
Speaker 1: part of an Egyptian American expedition, and they used cosmic
Speaker 1: rays to try to look for areas of lower density
Speaker 1: within the pyramid, which they theorized could be hidden chambers. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: the solution to this mystery was not very satisfying because
Speaker 1: the answer was no. Yeah, you always hope it's like
Speaker 1: her Aldo's vault, right. His next mystery was whether the
Speaker 1: official account of the Kennedy assassination was right. It started
Speaker 1: after Life magazine published enlargements of frames frames from the
Speaker 1: famous Azruter film, which is the infamous footage that actually
Speaker 1: caught the assassination as it happened. Luise was captivated by
Speaker 1: these images and he spent Thanksgiving weekend going over them
Speaker 1: in detail, using the same skills he had used to
Speaker 1: look at bubble trails from the bubble chamber. So he
Speaker 1: was so accustomed to really like looking at fine level,
Speaker 1: tiny details that he just transferred that scientific approach to
Speaker 1: looking at grainy photographs. Yeah, and what he caught. The
Speaker 1: anomaly that he caught in these pictures were streaks in
Speaker 1: sunlight or streaks of sunlight that were on the body
Speaker 1: of the limousine. And these streaks were longer in some
Speaker 1: places than in others. He eventually concluded that this was
Speaker 1: because Abraham's Apruter had involuntarily moved his hand like he
Speaker 1: had a very steady hand that tracked the limousine really well. Um.
Speaker 1: His theory was that he he moved involuntarily when he
Speaker 1: heard gunshots, right as many people will do. You jump
Speaker 1: a little bit when they're startling noise. CBS, which asked
Speaker 1: for Luise's findings, did a recreation to try to confirm
Speaker 1: what Louise had found, and their consensus was that it
Speaker 1: was possible to connect when these streaks occurred to when
Speaker 1: the shots were actually fired. So Louise's point of view
Speaker 1: is that these streaks on the film were a more
Speaker 1: accurate indication of how many shots were fired and when
Speaker 1: they were fired than the more obvious movements that people
Speaker 1: had been associating with the shots. So there was like
Speaker 1: a moment when the president grabbed at his throat and
Speaker 1: they were like, that was one shot, and then there's
Speaker 1: the moment when his head snaps back there saying that's
Speaker 1: the second shot. Um. But the conclusion based on this
Speaker 1: looking at the images was that no, there were actually
Speaker 1: two shots and one of them missed. Uh. That are
Speaker 1: tracked when the streaks in the sunlight are a different length. Interesting,
Speaker 1: it's actually uh. Has led to it to a lot
Speaker 1: of debunking of conspiracy theorists, which was the motivation of
Speaker 1: some of this work. Yeah, there were some MythBuster esque
Speaker 1: sorts of experiments to try to figure out exactly why
Speaker 1: the presidents had recoiled the way it did if he
Speaker 1: was really only hit from one direction, and Louise imagined
Speaker 1: the scenario as involving a melon being shot, since it
Speaker 1: was painful for him to try to imagine this happening
Speaker 1: to a man, and in fact the president, who was
Speaker 1: quite popular on someone that he personally admired. He and
Speaker 1: a friend named Sharon nicknamed Buck Buckingham then replicated the
Speaker 1: experiment with actual melons reinforced with glass fiber tape that
Speaker 1: they shot at a firing range, And what they found
Speaker 1: in that test was basically that their melon, when shot,
Speaker 1: move the way John F. Kennedy's head did when shot
Speaker 1: once in one from one direction. So even though his
Speaker 1: head sort of recoils right, which had led some people
Speaker 1: to think that there were but there was a shot
Speaker 1: from behind. Uh that their conclusion was no, that that
Speaker 1: was that was just physics. That's actually a normal movement. Yes.
Speaker 1: He went on to do all kinds of physical analysis
Speaker 1: on the film to try to pinpoint exactly how fast
Speaker 1: the car was traveling and where it was exactly at
Speaker 1: any given point in time, which is one of those
Speaker 1: things where today sounds just like an easy task because
Speaker 1: today we have much more sophisticated recording and measuring techniques
Speaker 1: than we did at that point. Um. But that that
Speaker 1: was also a lot of like looking at how people
Speaker 1: were clapping and how fast the car was going, and
Speaker 1: where they seemed to be in relation to other things,
Speaker 1: to really give a moment by moment account of exactly
Speaker 1: where the car was and where other people were, and
Speaker 1: where the shooter was. All of that I could see
Speaker 1: where someone with a physics mind who likes to analyze
Speaker 1: things and kind of parted out into mathematical equations would
Speaker 1: really get into doing that. Yeah, it's kind of even
Speaker 1: though it's a very different field, it's sort of the
Speaker 1: same methodology to breaking it down. And later on Louis
Speaker 1: served on the committee of the Committee on Ballistic Acoustics,
Speaker 1: which did an eighteen month study into the sound of
Speaker 1: gun shots during the assassination and whether there was more
Speaker 1: than one gunman or a shot fired from the Grassy
Speaker 1: Knoll uh. Their conclusion, from a report released in nineteen
Speaker 1: eight two was no. There was no shot from the
Speaker 1: Grassy Knoll, and the acoustic data that had been used
Speaker 1: to support the idea of a second gunman came in
Speaker 1: an entire minute after the president had been shot. The
Speaker 1: final mystery that Louis put his scientific minds to work
Speaker 1: trying to solve was what happened to the dinosaurs. And
Speaker 1: this is work that he did with his son Walter
Speaker 1: also known as Walt, who was a geologist at the
Speaker 1: University of California at Berkeley. So here's your theory. Sixty
Speaker 1: five million years ago, a giant asteroid slammed into the Earth,
Speaker 1: causing enormous earthquakes and tsunamis and clogging the atmosphere with dust,
Speaker 1: catastrophically affecting life on the planet and wiping out the
Speaker 1: dinosaurs in the aftermath, along with s of all species
Speaker 1: that were alive at the time. Yep. So here's how
Speaker 1: they arrived at this At the time cuckoo hypothesis. Uh
Speaker 1: that it was not well received when they started making
Speaker 1: it known that that was what they thought happened. In
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy seven, Walter had been studying soil layers in
Speaker 1: Italy because he was a geologist. He found this layer
Speaker 1: of clay between two layers of limestone, and that layer
Speaker 1: of clay marked the end of the Cretaceous Period and
Speaker 1: a worldwide mass extinction. That's what was there in the
Speaker 1: geologic record. Under the layer of clay were lots of
Speaker 1: fossils of lots of different species of microscopic marine animals,
Speaker 1: and on top of that layer, there was only one
Speaker 1: species of fossils, and there were no microscopic marine animal
Speaker 1: fossils in this layer of clay itself. Walter brought these
Speaker 1: samples back to his father, who sent them to a
Speaker 1: couple of nuclear chemists at Berkeley to have a look,
Speaker 1: and they found that the clay was about six hundred
Speaker 1: times richer in iridium than the limestone around it, and
Speaker 1: this raised some eyebrows. Iridium is very rare on Earth,
Speaker 1: but it's really common and extraterrestrial objects. Uh So, further
Speaker 1: research found that this iridium layer existed on other sites
Speaker 1: all around the world, all in the same layer of
Speaker 1: the geologic record um and all of the clay samples
Speaker 1: also contained lots and lots of soot, So it became
Speaker 1: quickly apparent that the soil layer full of iridium seems
Speaker 1: to exist all over the world. Louise started pouring over
Speaker 1: astronomy research to figure out exactly what had brought this
Speaker 1: iridium to Earth. He came up with all kinds of
Speaker 1: cookie ideas involving supernovas, a piece of Jupiter. Uh you know,
Speaker 1: he was basically brainstorming what could have done it, But
Speaker 1: then he concluded that an asteroid or a comment was
Speaker 1: the most logical, so something huge that would have also
Speaker 1: vaporized on impact. Then he started comparing how much volcanic
Speaker 1: rock was released from the Krakatoa volcanic explosion in He
Speaker 1: compared that to the irridium layer to try to figure
Speaker 1: out how big the asteroid would have had to be
Speaker 1: to make that much stuff, and eventually he concluded that
Speaker 1: it would have had to have been at least ten
Speaker 1: kilometers across. The father's son Alvarez team, along with nuclear
Speaker 1: chemists Franka Sorrow and Helen Michelle, published a paper in
Speaker 1: Science in night theorizing that a massive asteroid impact had
Speaker 1: created this iridium layer and led to the extinction of
Speaker 1: the Cretaceous period. At the time, this idea was extremely controversial.
Speaker 1: The prevailing belief at that point was that volcanoes had
Speaker 1: wiped out the dinosaurs, and nobody really liked this idea
Speaker 1: that that it had really been an asteroid. Then in
Speaker 1: the Chicks a lob crater was discovered off the Yucatam Peninsula,
Speaker 1: which is a giant impact site that was both the
Speaker 1: right age and the right size to have caused the
Speaker 1: irridium layer on impact. At that point it became a
Speaker 1: lot more respected as a theory, and then in a
Speaker 1: panel of forty one experts published a paper concluding that, yes,
Speaker 1: following an exhaustive review of all that data, the asteroid
Speaker 1: that struck the earth off the Yucataman Peninsula was indeed
Speaker 1: what wiped out the dinosaurs, not just a bunch of
Speaker 1: volcanic explosions, although there probably would have been some volcanic
Speaker 1: explosions following this impact. Yeah, and we would be remiss
Speaker 1: if we left out the point that the prevailing theory
Speaker 1: today is that birds are in fact descended from dinosaurs.
Speaker 1: So wiped out the dinosaurs and air quotes kind of
Speaker 1: an oversimplification, Yeah, the dinosaurs as we think of them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was really Louis alvarez last big scientific announcement slash
Speaker 1: achievement um was this theory of what happened at the
Speaker 1: end of the Cretaceous period. He died of cancer on
Speaker 1: September one, when he was seventy seven years old. It's
Speaker 1: quite a life's a huge Yeah. So he wrote a
Speaker 1: memoir called Alvarez Surprisingly Um, which just it's written in
Speaker 1: this just very candid off the cuff voice, like he's
Speaker 1: just chatting with Yeah, he's just chatting. He's talking about
Speaker 1: all these things that he did and just all these
Speaker 1: scientific problems that he decided to put his mind to
Speaker 1: try solve. Um. I think he had not talked a
Speaker 1: whole lot publicly about his work during World War Two
Speaker 1: with the Manhattan Project until the book came out. He
Speaker 1: talked about that really candidly also, UM, which I think,
Speaker 1: considering how how much of classroom study is devoted to UH,
Speaker 1: the impact of the bombs being dropped in the end
Speaker 1: of the war and whether that was the right decision
Speaker 1: to make, it is interesting to get a viewpoint from
Speaker 1: one of the scientists who worked on the project. He
Speaker 1: was ultimately in favor of the decisions that were made,
Speaker 1: because a lot of the opinions that you hear about
Speaker 1: are the opposite when it comes to the Manhattan Project scientists. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that they really had. He's really an outlier in the
Speaker 1: UH and the sort of aftermath of that in terms
Speaker 1: of most of the scientists who worked on the man
Speaker 1: and project such a life. Yeah, I love that his
Speaker 1: work is all over the map. I love it too,
Speaker 1: even though it meant that some of some of it
Speaker 1: is difficult to think about. But yeah, I'm gonna stick
Speaker 1: with the dinosaur part. That's my favorite. I like the
Speaker 1: dinosaur part. I like the I like the bubble chamber part, though,
Speaker 1: even though the discoveries that came from the bubble chamber
Speaker 1: are you know, of the sort that are interesting in
Speaker 1: the realm of physics and hard to apply to everyday
Speaker 1: life in a way that's relatable to people. I love
Speaker 1: the idea that they're little particles and they're making little bubbles,
Speaker 1: and then we're taking pictures of them. I like how
Speaker 1: in your head physics became really cute. It's so good.
Speaker 1: I could just tell what you're talking about it. It's
Speaker 1: my little bubble physics is magic. There you go. Hey,
Speaker 1: that's a listener mail on the docket I do. This
Speaker 1: is from Kevin. Kevin says, I was really intrigued by
Speaker 1: the segment where you introduced Benjamin Bannaker, as it reminded
Speaker 1: me of my own family's history. Are family would have
Speaker 1: been counted in that small group of free blacks in
Speaker 1: Maryland that you mentioned in the podcast. I'm sorry that
Speaker 1: I'm sending this so late, but I get a little
Speaker 1: behind on listening to the podcast sometimes, Kevin, that is fine.
Speaker 1: Everyone who is behind on listening to the podcast, that
Speaker 1: is fine. I am also behind on listening to all
Speaker 1: of my podcasts. Kevin goes on to say, my ancestor,
Speaker 1: Robert Pearl, was born either in sixteen eighty five or
Speaker 1: sixteen eighty six in Maryland. He was the son of
Speaker 1: a female slave, and as a slave he was called
Speaker 1: Lato Robin. His father is unknown, but it's theorized that
Speaker 1: his father was his owner, Richard Marsham. Interestingly, Robert had
Speaker 1: been married to Catherine Brent, daughter of Princess Mary Kamakland
Speaker 1: of the Piscataways. That Catherine died prior to the alleged fathering.
Speaker 1: He later married an Calbert, daughter of Maryland's first governor
Speaker 1: and granddaughter and niece of the first and second Lord's Baltimore, respectively,
Speaker 1: and mother in law to Marsham's daughter from his first Mary.
Speaker 1: On Richard Marson's death in seventeen thirteen, He's stipulated in
Speaker 1: his will that Robin slash Robert be emancipated along with
Speaker 1: Robert's wife and son, but not until he reached age
Speaker 1: thirty five. Seven years later, Robert was unique as a
Speaker 1: slave in several regards. He was a skilled carpenter, not
Speaker 1: an unskilled laborer. He probably could read and write, as
Speaker 1: evidenced by inventories which show among his belongings writing paper
Speaker 1: and ink. After his emancipation, Robert was quite successful, and
Speaker 1: he went on to acquire numerous farms, livestock, and slates.
Speaker 1: Court records show that he frequently was able to successfully
Speaker 1: sue to recover debts, including from whites, despite his race.
Speaker 1: In seventeen forty four, he moved out west to what
Speaker 1: soon would become Frederick County, Maryland. There he leased a
Speaker 1: two hundred acre dwelling plantation in Carrollton. During most of
Speaker 1: his tenure there it was managed by Charles Carroll of Annapolis,
Speaker 1: but during the last few years it had passed down
Speaker 1: to his son, Charles Carroll of Carrollton, of whom I
Speaker 1: assume you are familiar. The is an interesting letter written
Speaker 1: by Charles Carroll of Carrollton complaining about Robert's son, Robert
Speaker 1: Son's assuming Robert's lease after his passing, a pretty cool
Speaker 1: familial mentioned by a signer. By the time of his death,
Speaker 1: he had sold off all his land that he had
Speaker 1: previously purchased only keeping the least land where he lived,
Speaker 1: but he had acquired significant wealth. One account estimates that
Speaker 1: the value of his state his estate would have placed
Speaker 1: him in the top five to ten percent for the
Speaker 1: colony in that time period. He owned at the time
Speaker 1: of his death working slaves, which were passed along to
Speaker 1: his children. None were manumated. To my modern mind, it
Speaker 1: has always been difficult to understand how a former slave
Speaker 1: could own slaves, but I do not presume to understand
Speaker 1: the environment of the time. And then he goes on
Speaker 1: to say that he loved our mention of Jonathan Colton's
Speaker 1: On Your Mooon in the in the Pluto podcast because
Speaker 1: that was the song that he and his wife chose
Speaker 1: to use for their way. Thank you so much, Kevin. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's a cooler letter, Such a cool letter. I love.
Speaker 1: Number one. I love when people's personal stories intersect with
Speaker 1: stuff that we talked about in the podcast in one
Speaker 1: way or another. I love when people have this end
Speaker 1: up knowledge of their family history. Also, you know, not
Speaker 1: everyone has the opportunity to have such an end depth
Speaker 1: knowledge of their family history, but when people are able
Speaker 1: to share stuff about their personal ties to what goes
Speaker 1: way way way back. It's really cool. Um. And in addition,
Speaker 1: h I appreciate that that Kevin shared this story with
Speaker 1: us in spite of his conflicted feelings about that part
Speaker 1: of the family history. So thank you so much, Kevin.
Speaker 1: It is it's uh, you know, it is great to
Speaker 1: contextualize what we've talked about with you know, a very
Speaker 1: real world connection to it that's modern and that we
Speaker 1: understand and can identify with. Fabulous Kevin, you rock. Thank
Speaker 1: you very much. If you would like to write to
Speaker 1: us about this or some other subject, we're at History
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