Speaker 1: Welcome to the show. Fellow ridiculous historians. My name is Ben.
Speaker 1: You usually do something, and you usually do a bit
Speaker 1: at the beginning of the show. Threw me for a
Speaker 1: loop there, Ben, Do you want a bit? We can
Speaker 1: go back? I think I needed to go back. Okay, guys,
Speaker 1: journey with us back to the beginning. Wait, should we
Speaker 1: keep this all on min Yeah, of course do that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I need to fill time alright. So, um, there's our
Speaker 1: super producer, Casey Pegram. Everybody give him a hand. You guys,
Speaker 1: we are flying blind today. We are we are. Here's
Speaker 1: instead of a bit, let's do a bit of background.
Speaker 1: How about that, Ben, That's smart. That was a smart
Speaker 1: you of the word bit. So everyone knows where we're
Speaker 1: coming from right now. Well that that's very important. Setting
Speaker 1: up the scene is very important. So today's scene um
Speaker 1: starts in uh, well, in France and Europe in general.
Speaker 1: I guess in the late seventeen hundreds, because you see
Speaker 1: in seventeen ninety nine Napoleon Bonaparte, remember the guy that
Speaker 1: got swarmed by cute little bunnies. Uh, he overthrew the
Speaker 1: French revolutionary government, right, yes, and this triggered what is
Speaker 1: known as the Napoleonic Wars because he had designs on
Speaker 1: conquering like everything. Yeah, he had. He was like a
Speaker 1: more successful William Walker, who you will recall from previous episodes.
Speaker 1: The Napoleonic Wars occurred between eighteen o three and eighteen fifteen,
Speaker 1: and this was the French Empire led by Napoleon against
Speaker 1: just a mix tape of various European powers VOLTRONI together
Speaker 1: usually lead by the United Kingdom that was the ring leader,
Speaker 1: and just just for a little bit of a quick bookkeeping,
Speaker 1: it was in eighteen o two that there was a
Speaker 1: thing called the Piece of Our Means that ended a
Speaker 1: decade of war between Great Britain and France. Right, right,
Speaker 1: So things were not particularly stable to begin with when
Speaker 1: the wars begin in eighteen o three, and before we
Speaker 1: go on this is this is gonna be a punchy episode, folks.
Speaker 1: I think that's the word you use, no, because when
Speaker 1: I said a bit of background, I was also talking
Speaker 1: on a meta level about our situation today. We are
Speaker 1: Noel Casey and I are in the studio for this episode,
Speaker 1: and then we're going to be here into the night
Speaker 1: making an appearance on a favorite show of ours behind
Speaker 1: the bastards. She go ahead and plug that and assume
Speaker 1: that we survived this recording session. Yeah, we'll see, as
Speaker 1: we're gonna be some punchy characters by the time that's
Speaker 1: all said and done. But yeah, O, our buddy Robert
Speaker 1: Evans asked to be on the show, and we thought
Speaker 1: he was joking when he said, yeah, you know, just
Speaker 1: be about three or four hours. We're like, okay, we're
Speaker 1: you know, we're game. But I'll tell you who else
Speaker 1: was game? Was Napoleon for some conquerings? Yes, no, why
Speaker 1: don't you walk us through a few of these conflicts
Speaker 1: because this context is very important to today's story. Well,
Speaker 1: the the U s is actually involved a little bit
Speaker 1: as well. Um. Napoleon got back Louisiana from Spain in
Speaker 1: eighteen hundred and then he made a brash attempt to
Speaker 1: overthrow a revolution in Haiti Um but it did not succeed,
Speaker 1: and so having Louisiana was not a valuable thing without
Speaker 1: the strategic stronghold of Haiti, so he decided to give
Speaker 1: it back to the US in the Louisiana Purchase of
Speaker 1: eighteen o three, before Great Britain could invade it. Yes,
Speaker 1: and In addition to this, the British forces were increasingly
Speaker 1: creeped out, irritated, angered, upset, and eventually frightened by Napoleon's
Speaker 1: actions in Europe, right with Switzerland, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands.
Speaker 1: And they were also concerned, as you said, that Napoleon
Speaker 1: might not stop at Haiti, he might become a threat
Speaker 1: to Britain's overseas colonies. That's right, because the British had
Speaker 1: the Royal Navy and they were doing quite a good
Speaker 1: job of defending their shores um and French invasion attempts
Speaker 1: had not gone so well, but the tide kind of
Speaker 1: turned when there were some big successes by the French
Speaker 1: military and the power of the British Navy started to
Speaker 1: wane a little bit and they really needed to kind
Speaker 1: of bolster that up. So there was a lot of
Speaker 1: paranoia there would be a direct invasion by sea of
Speaker 1: British territories. And that is where our story truly begins
Speaker 1: with this paranoia and this concept of are the French
Speaker 1: are coming? Yes, the French are coming. There was a
Speaker 1: nationwide um fear that some historians described as interrational anxiety
Speaker 1: about Napoleon's motives and intentions. They were especially spooked when
Speaker 1: Napoleon asserted control over Switzerland. They thought the French the British.
Speaker 1: They just thought the French could be coming at any
Speaker 1: given moment. And one day, according to the story, or
Speaker 1: a legend, or at the very least alleged story, a
Speaker 1: French ship actually did land in England, but it wrecked.
Speaker 1: It wrecked by an old fishing village named Hartley Pool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was like right there on the beach. And um,
Speaker 1: supposedly the heart Pudlian's Lapolians came running. Um and there
Speaker 1: were supposedly no survivors to this wreck, no humans, man,
Speaker 1: come on, come now, no human survivors to this wreck.
Speaker 1: Uh it there was a little hairy guy. Um, who
Speaker 1: who was you know, in fact or in fiction a monkey? Yes,
Speaker 1: the only survivor of the wreck there on the northeastern
Speaker 1: coast of England was a very panicked and traumatized little
Speaker 1: monkey who washed ashore miraculously survived. Keep in mind, everybody
Speaker 1: else on the ship drowned and the Hartlepudlians had never
Speaker 1: seen a primate like this before. That is what they say.
Speaker 1: And um. According to a source from Historic UK dot com,
Speaker 1: the monkey was possibly dressed in a tiny military uniform. See,
Speaker 1: that's that's interesting. I appreciate they say possibly, because again,
Speaker 1: there are things about this story. I think you can
Speaker 1: tell by the way we're carefully hedging some of these statements.
Speaker 1: There are things about this story that can't really be proven,
Speaker 1: but we do know internally the logic jibs because the
Speaker 1: monkey is supposed to be a mascot of the ship, right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but that's the thing they have been I mean, do
Speaker 1: you do all ships have mascots. That's not something I'd
Speaker 1: ever heard of, surely not you carry around like a
Speaker 1: signature animal, like a familiar. No, some military groups have
Speaker 1: done that. Yeah, but I guess so like I can
Speaker 1: actually live in create well, I guess like a football team,
Speaker 1: like having like the u G a bulldog or whatever.
Speaker 1: You know. I guess when I think of a mascot,
Speaker 1: I think of somebody wearing a you know, a big basically, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: Um so, yeah, So this supposed primate, uh, supposedly dressed
Speaker 1: in a tiny military uniform, was panicked as one could imagine,
Speaker 1: and gibbering mindlessly as monkeys do. Uh. And according to
Speaker 1: the tail um, the Hartlepudlian's interpreted this gibbering as as
Speaker 1: a foreign language, possibly French. Let's pause there for a second, casey,
Speaker 1: could you do as a massive favor and play the
Speaker 1: sound of a monkey chattering because we all know a
Speaker 1: little bit about French enough to know what it sounds
Speaker 1: like roughly what so clearly not French. If you don't
Speaker 1: know French, who's who's to say? Who's to say? And
Speaker 1: that is the crux of the story, knull because the
Speaker 1: people of this town, the Hartlet Woodlands, had an awareness
Speaker 1: of the nation of France and the threat that it
Speaker 1: posed geopolitically, but not a person in the village had
Speaker 1: ever seen a French person. And to make matters worse, apparently,
Speaker 1: a lot of political satire cartoons of the day depicted
Speaker 1: frenchmen as hairy, monkey like creatures with tales and sub
Speaker 1: humans exactly because they were the enemy. I mean, it
Speaker 1: was sort of like the you know, the Red Scare
Speaker 1: type stuff. I mean, this guy is like gunning for
Speaker 1: their their lands, right, So yeah, so what do the
Speaker 1: what do they do? They do like any god fearing,
Speaker 1: French fearing person would do. They panic, They panic, They
Speaker 1: absolute freak out, they bug out, and according to this story,
Speaker 1: they seize again this poor traumatized monkey who was skirted
Speaker 1: death once already. So they panic. It's exactly what they do, uh,
Speaker 1: and they say, we have to do something about this frenchman. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But thankfully, you know, they had their bet, their wits
Speaker 1: were about them. They didn't let justice go unserved, ben
Speaker 1: They they decided to put this monkey on trial. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: due to the language barrier, the monkey was not able
Speaker 1: to defend itself or provide um satisfactory answers to the
Speaker 1: townspeople's question. That's right, because the thing has been they
Speaker 1: didn't just think the monkey was it was a Frenchman.
Speaker 1: They thought the monkey was a French spy. And I've
Speaker 1: yet to find a detail that that justifies why exactly
Speaker 1: that was. But those are the questions they were asking him,
Speaker 1: a lot of Are you a spy? Right? I said,
Speaker 1: are you a spy? He just keeps speaking frendship me.
Speaker 1: I know, I know. So yeah, so they they sentenced
Speaker 1: the monkey to death, according to the tail. Yeah. You
Speaker 1: can read different accounts of this, but sources that cleave
Speaker 1: to the story or the anecdote say that the town's
Speaker 1: folk literally dragged this monkey into the town square and
Speaker 1: then they hanged him and he died. But this is
Speaker 1: where we get a couple of different I don't know
Speaker 1: interpretations and questions about credibility because there's a darker side
Speaker 1: to the tail that we found in Historic UK dot
Speaker 1: com The Hanging of the Heartletpool Monkey by Ben Johnson.
Speaker 1: The dark turn is this, maybe the villagers didn't actually
Speaker 1: hang a monkey, but instead a small boy, pretty a
Speaker 1: child who was employed on the warship, because at this
Speaker 1: time there were boys who were hired on and work
Speaker 1: on these ships to prime the cannons with gunpowder, with
Speaker 1: a very convenient name of powder monkeys. Right, So is
Speaker 1: this a game of telephone throughout history with the misinterpretation
Speaker 1: occurring as people tell the story over and over again. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's true. These are these are all very
Speaker 1: important questions that we probably won't have an actual satisfactory
Speaker 1: answer to spoiler. But it's because no one was there
Speaker 1: and it was you know a lot of ships went
Speaker 1: down around that time because uh, like I said, the
Speaker 1: the naval exploits of Napoleon weren't all always that successful, right,
Speaker 1: And according to Historic England's records of thirty eight thousand
Speaker 1: shipwrecks around the coast of Britain. Fourteen ships sank in
Speaker 1: the Hartlepool Bay area around that time, so there it
Speaker 1: was not incredibly uncommon for shipwrecks to occur. So that's
Speaker 1: I think we can agree. That's more or less the
Speaker 1: gist of the legend correct, correct, But that's not the
Speaker 1: gist of the episode. I mean, we wouldn't just stop
Speaker 1: short there. There's there's gotta be more. Band, There's gotta
Speaker 1: be more. Please give us more. There has to be more.
Speaker 1: You're right, because you see, this is where the credibility
Speaker 1: of the tail comes into questions. So you could say,
Speaker 1: maybe something like this happened and it got embellished over time, right.
Speaker 1: But the problem is this tale is attributed to more
Speaker 1: than one place. There's a remarkably similar tale from seventeen
Speaker 1: seventy two that centers on Bodom near peter Head in Aberdeenshire.
Speaker 1: I love British town name. There's an even better one then.
Speaker 1: I believe that's a Welsh town, all right, and I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: a Cornish town, right, yes, yeah, I'll give this one
Speaker 1: a go. My never see, Okay, come on, Cornish folks
Speaker 1: tell us, hmm, I would have done the same. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm with you on them. So in both of these cases,
Speaker 1: villagers supposedly find a monkey. Yeah, and in one of them,
Speaker 1: I believe they it was the last survivor of the
Speaker 1: shipwreck and so they killed it so that they could
Speaker 1: have claim on the cargo. Isn't that the deal with
Speaker 1: some kind of technicality salvage law? Yeah, that's aberdeen Shire
Speaker 1: and so brutal. The monkey was human enough. I guess
Speaker 1: what would it have done? Would it have become the
Speaker 1: new captain? Would it have made a claim? And then
Speaker 1: the other one, I believe the monkey was an organ
Speaker 1: grinder monkey. It wasn't the same. It wasn't a slightly
Speaker 1: different did a kid uh huh? Yeah? That monkey had
Speaker 1: a coming That still happens when animals attack people. Have
Speaker 1: you ever seen that show when animals attack people? I've
Speaker 1: I've seen when animals attack, yes, but my favorite one
Speaker 1: is the one where it's specifically they attack people. You
Speaker 1: know what. I'm fond of animals attacking cars. That's a thing.
Speaker 1: Have you ever seen those videos of like, first off,
Speaker 1: if you have never been around a monkey, some of
Speaker 1: those monkeys are brutal, they're not playing, and it will
Speaker 1: break into don't they eat their young too? Did I
Speaker 1: make that up? I don't know. Never mind, let us
Speaker 1: know if that's just the primate stereotype that we've we've
Speaker 1: seen spread, or we could just check it now. Right.
Speaker 1: So those are two points against the veracity of the
Speaker 1: story that one thing very similar is attributed to a
Speaker 1: completely different town, And there are other points that stick
Speaker 1: with it. A lot of people who say that it
Speaker 1: definitely happened they're in Heartletpool are supportive of it as
Speaker 1: being a part of local culture. No, it's totally like
Speaker 1: part of their heritage because it's weird. It's like, on
Speaker 1: the one hand, it seems like a term of abuse,
Speaker 1: but in the other hand, some people look at it
Speaker 1: as a term of pride. Heart Lipudlians are often described
Speaker 1: at monkey hangers. Yeah, and for centuries after the legend spread,
Speaker 1: references to monkey hanging were used to mock the residents
Speaker 1: the Hartlet Pudlians, And apparently at football matches today between
Speaker 1: local rivals they have this chant who hung the monkey?
Speaker 1: Which I would have loved to hear out of context.
Speaker 1: There's also a quote um in this BBC article called
Speaker 1: was a Monkey Really Hanged in Hartleypool from a historian
Speaker 1: by the name of Keith Gregson, who mentions the fact
Speaker 1: that there was sort of a divide between the town
Speaker 1: because of a newly industrialized area. I believe, um, so
Speaker 1: there was a sense that the folks that lived in
Speaker 1: this new industrialized part of the town um called West
Speaker 1: Hartley Pool, were more intelligent than those who lived in
Speaker 1: the old um, more antiquated, you know, old clinging onto
Speaker 1: the old ways part of the town. Um who may
Speaker 1: have been the ones who hanged the monkey. So it
Speaker 1: was kind of a there is a divide there and
Speaker 1: that's the older part of the town is also where
Speaker 1: the fishing industry continued, right, so they would have been
Speaker 1: most likely to be hanging out by the waters. And
Speaker 1: as the years passed, the people of Hartlepool begin to
Speaker 1: embrace this story. As you have mentioned knowledge you alluded
Speaker 1: to earlier. It becomes a point of cultural pride or
Speaker 1: something that differentiates their town from other nearby towns, and
Speaker 1: people begin to fall in love with it. It becomes
Speaker 1: the subject of books. There's even a graphic novel. I think,
Speaker 1: there's a play, and there's even a song with a
Speaker 1: little bit of story behind it. Yea, let's hear that
Speaker 1: well a lot bear batley Ball is walking along the shop,
Speaker 1: but he's seen this littlarry man he's never seen before
Speaker 1: sitting in the sun. Was this very little man Banana
Speaker 1: and aso also not prove it. No, no, this this
Speaker 1: song spoiler. This song essentially does the entire story. It
Speaker 1: really does, and it it takes a good four and
Speaker 1: a half minutes to do it. So we'll go ahead
Speaker 1: and give it a nice little fade out right now.
Speaker 1: But the song is actually a big part of how
Speaker 1: this legend kind of came to be what it is today, right, Ben, Right,
Speaker 1: that's how it got popularized, or at least the evolution
Speaker 1: of a song. I'm not quite sure if it's this song.
Speaker 1: So they can't actually find any attribution for what this
Speaker 1: song is. And there's a set of lyrics that's a
Speaker 1: little different. That is a reference to a song that
Speaker 1: was first performed in eighteen fifty five by a performer
Speaker 1: from the area by the name of Mr. E. Corvin
Speaker 1: or Edward ned Corvin, who was a Victorian performer who
Speaker 1: toured around the area known as the Time Side. Have
Speaker 1: you ever heard of this Ben. Yeah, he was a
Speaker 1: He was a time side concert hall player, wrote songs
Speaker 1: and stuff. Tyneside is the banks of the River Tyne
Speaker 1: in northeast England, so it's region that includes a couple
Speaker 1: of places. A couple of different places have great names
Speaker 1: Newcastle upon Tyne, Gateshead, Tynemouth, Walls and south Shields and
Speaker 1: jar Oh probably mispronounced a couple of those. But if
Speaker 1: you're listening and you're from that part of the world, Hey,
Speaker 1: shout out to you. Shout out to you. I thought
Speaker 1: you were gonna tell him to shut up no more.
Speaker 1: I want more time side. You know what's interesting about Ned,
Speaker 1: we can call him Ned because we're fans of his,
Speaker 1: was that he was known for writing um like a
Speaker 1: satirical song, a little bit of a lighthearted roast for
Speaker 1: every town that he visited. So he would go visit
Speaker 1: a town and he would write a song about them
Speaker 1: while he was there, and he would perform it in
Speaker 1: the town. So when Ned goes to heart Lip Pool,
Speaker 1: he writes a song about write some sign with them,
Speaker 1: the monkey hanging hmm. And this song becomes popular in
Speaker 1: the region. People it eventually from what I understand Hart
Speaker 1: lipid Lions themselves begin to be fans of the song. Well,
Speaker 1: here's the thing Um. In this BBC article they talked
Speaker 1: about how he was making references to a previous song
Speaker 1: that existed called The Baboon, which is written in eighteen
Speaker 1: twenty five, which was first heard around Um and it
Speaker 1: was a different story entirely about a baboon that visited
Speaker 1: the region with some Cossacks soldiers. So I don't quite
Speaker 1: see the connection there, but just they both happened in kindeside. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but how did he know about the He just made
Speaker 1: up the Napoleonic? Is that what's being implied here Ben,
Speaker 1: that he just made this thing up wholesale. What it
Speaker 1: seems they're implied is that this was a remix or
Speaker 1: a reworked version of the song, and that he took
Speaker 1: elements from the Baboon and used them in his song
Speaker 1: about the heart Lapudlian monkey Hangers. But at that point
Speaker 1: was this already a legend? That's my question is like
Speaker 1: is the legend coming from the song? Like where where
Speaker 1: is the where's the need of truth here? Because there
Speaker 1: are people that still we're gonna talk about a second
Speaker 1: that still hang on to the fact that the idea
Speaker 1: this could well have happened, ause it's such a bizarre story.
Speaker 1: But that logic always eludes me when you say it's
Speaker 1: so crazy it must be true. Well, also those folks,
Speaker 1: as we'll find, have skin in the game, right, The
Speaker 1: main people who believe it are themselves hardlet Bodlian's. It
Speaker 1: feels like Corvin heard the story, the French monkey story right,
Speaker 1: and then mixed with it aspects of the story about
Speaker 1: the Baboon, also from time side, and then added a
Speaker 1: dash of his own stuff. Here we go, and then
Speaker 1: set the whole thing in Hartlepool. Okay, that that makes sense,
Speaker 1: and here we go. We also have some other something
Speaker 1: from this BBC article that says the original song had
Speaker 1: some phrases in it that he reused like Harry French
Speaker 1: Spy and Napoleon's uncle um. And I wish I could
Speaker 1: find the lyrics to the Baboon um. But there's another
Speaker 1: set of lyrics called the Monkey song that's not the
Speaker 1: same as when we play aid. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: these songs floating around, but it goes in former times
Speaker 1: when Warren strife, the French invasion threatened life and always
Speaker 1: armed to the knife. The fisherman hung the monkey. Oh,
Speaker 1: the fisherman with courage high seized on the monkey for
Speaker 1: a French spy, Hang him, says one he's to die.
Speaker 1: They did, and they hung the monkey. Oh. But it's
Speaker 1: like it's got that same sing songy folky quality that
Speaker 1: the song we played has in the original song. That's
Speaker 1: when we played because they think he's a spy, so
Speaker 1: we'll hang him in the square. And this one's just
Speaker 1: a little bit different that the fishermen were courage high,
Speaker 1: seized on the monkey for a French spy, hang him,
Speaker 1: says one, he's to die. They did, and they hung
Speaker 1: the monkey. Oh. So I don't know, man, Like, is
Speaker 1: it song that's like making this legend a thing? Or
Speaker 1: is it oral history? It's oral history first, and then
Speaker 1: the song which is borrowing from others songs. Okay, so
Speaker 1: it's still because it's a song, it's still oral history.
Speaker 1: That's true. That's a good point. Then here's where we
Speaker 1: find disagree. As as we mentioned earlier, a lot of
Speaker 1: the people who wholeheartedly believe in this story or claim
Speaker 1: to are themselves hart Lapudlians. The successful mayoral candidate in
Speaker 1: the two thousand two local elections. It's a guy named
Speaker 1: Stewart Drummond. He campaigned dressed in the costume of He
Speaker 1: wasn't just dressed in it, man, he was the official
Speaker 1: mascot of the Heart Lapudlian Football Club, right, and he
Speaker 1: campaigned for mayor dressed in that character. But that was
Speaker 1: it was like a sort of a goof. It was
Speaker 1: sort of a goof. But he maintains that it really
Speaker 1: did happen. But of course you would maintain that really
Speaker 1: did happen. He's running for mayor, wants the town to
Speaker 1: be unique. It's great pr and as as we said,
Speaker 1: he was the mascot for a time, but he also won.
Speaker 1: He did win and stayed mayor for for like, I
Speaker 1: think eleven years he was mayor. Three election victories, he succeeded.
Speaker 1: And yeah, and it just goes to and he you know,
Speaker 1: he maintains that nobody can say whether not this happened
Speaker 1: or not because nobody was there. And that's okay, that's
Speaker 1: one way of looking at it. I saw I saw
Speaker 1: a quote where he said that it definitely something happened.
Speaker 1: The problem is most of people who disagree with them
Speaker 1: are professional historians. And even if they don't go so
Speaker 1: far as to say this never happened, they end up
Speaker 1: saying we looked everywhere for proof of this, and we
Speaker 1: could find absolutely no proof. There was some excitement in
Speaker 1: two thousand and five when an animal bone was found
Speaker 1: buried on the beach. Despite the fact that in the
Speaker 1: story the monkeys hanged in the town square. People thought, well,
Speaker 1: this might be physical proof of a small primate Washington Ashore. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: it was not a primate bone. It was the bone
Speaker 1: of a prehistoric deer, that's right, a deer from somewhere
Speaker 1: in the neighborhood of six thousand years ago, when herds
Speaker 1: of deer would have migrated across that part of the country. Um,
Speaker 1: and they were followed by tribes of urs who wanted
Speaker 1: them for sustenance and for you know, the byproducts like
Speaker 1: their skin in there and their antlers and stuff. And
Speaker 1: this is from a great article. Well this is my headline,
Speaker 1: very very pithy headline, very good. Ancient bone not from
Speaker 1: monkey spy. H Hopes of unraveling the mystery of the
Speaker 1: legendary heartletpol Monkeys said to have been hanged as a
Speaker 1: Napoleonic spy have been scuppered by science. Scuppered. Scuppered is
Speaker 1: a great word. We need to bring that back. Like
Speaker 1: a scupper dog. What's a scupper dogg It's like a
Speaker 1: type of grape, I think, Oh yeah, sort of like
Speaker 1: a muscat. Okay, muscott, I know, but say it again.
Speaker 1: Scupper dog. Scupper dog. That sounds so Tolkien is, yeah,
Speaker 1: you can make wine out of it, And in fact,
Speaker 1: it is compared to a muscadine. It is a large
Speaker 1: variety of muscadine. Oh you go, a species of grape
Speaker 1: native to the southern United States. So right here in
Speaker 1: our backyard. And at this point it becomes somewhat of
Speaker 1: a matter of opinion, what do you feel better about believing?
Speaker 1: The main argument for proponents of the story is that
Speaker 1: it's not hurting anyone and there's no proof that it
Speaker 1: didn't happen, which is not a particularly strong position to take,
Speaker 1: especially because on the other side of the coin, there's
Speaker 1: no proof that it did happen. That's right, So what
Speaker 1: what do you believe? What do you choose to believe? Folks?
Speaker 1: We're putting it to the people, well and to you
Speaker 1: as well. Okay, well, I don't know, man, I don't
Speaker 1: want to poopy on anybody's monkey parade or anything. But
Speaker 1: it feels to me like with the nature of the
Speaker 1: multiple monkey stories, uh, some of the kind of you know,
Speaker 1: um mutating facts in the story and the different accounts
Speaker 1: in song, I feel like this is rife for having
Speaker 1: been a kind of a good gag, poking fun at
Speaker 1: the intellect of the people of of Hartletpool. Yeah, personally,
Speaker 1: I choose to believe it didn't happen because I don't
Speaker 1: like the idea of a town of people hanging a monkey.
Speaker 1: No man, come on, that's brutal. For me to be
Speaker 1: able to laugh at it and derive enjoyment from it,
Speaker 1: I have to think of it as a tall tale.
Speaker 1: So this is this is the story of man. I
Speaker 1: can't wait for the flood of email from people who
Speaker 1: have strong opinions. We're gonna get a lot of time
Speaker 1: side people have strong opinions and they send emails. It's
Speaker 1: a new thing. You can be part of. It will
Speaker 1: give you the information at the end. But speaking of emails,
Speaker 1: enough about us, what what about you? Did you see
Speaker 1: any good listener mails today? Nol A matter of fact,
Speaker 1: I do, Ben I did, and I do still on
Speaker 1: this one. Yeah. This one comes from Mr Venomous, and
Speaker 1: it says Ben and Nol. Agents of Discord is what
Speaker 1: he's referring to, which I like in all of history.
Speaker 1: My favorite historical figure as Emperor Norton. His story makes
Speaker 1: him a perfect candidate for ridiculous history. He was bequeathed
Speaker 1: forty dollars from his father's estate. He tried making it
Speaker 1: as a businessman in San Francisco, but made a bad
Speaker 1: investment in buying a hundred tons of pure Peruvian rice.
Speaker 1: A prolonged core battle over the loss of his investment
Speaker 1: led him to go bankrupt eighteen fifty penniless and discontent
Speaker 1: with the legal system and politics, he declared himself Emperor
Speaker 1: of the United States and Protector of Mexico in eighteen
Speaker 1: fifty nine. Let's just leave it there, Ben, because I
Speaker 1: like this one and it almost sounds like it's something
Speaker 1: stuff you miss in history class. Our peer podcast may
Speaker 1: have done, but if not, we're gonna snatch it up.
Speaker 1: And Agents of Discord is a reference I believe to
Speaker 1: one of our other shows. Mr Venomous has written into
Speaker 1: us before um on stuff theyn't want you to know
Speaker 1: what it does. Ring about. Yeah, well, it's great to
Speaker 1: hear from you again, man, I agree with my trustee
Speaker 1: co host here. That is a fantastic idea for an
Speaker 1: episode if we're the first ones to get to the
Speaker 1: plate on it. We have one more email that's that's
Speaker 1: a little bit long from Adam s He titled it
Speaker 1: lots of topics. Sorry of just going to read some
Speaker 1: of the greatest hits or the excerpts here. So Adam,
Speaker 1: you say, hey, guys, recently picked up the podcast, so
Speaker 1: catching up and I'm nearly there. I love the show
Speaker 1: so far, but I do listen to the new episodes
Speaker 1: then go back to make my way through that golden backlog. Huh.
Speaker 1: And then I've never heard us our backlog described as golden.
Speaker 1: He has some suggestions for food fails. Adam says, you
Speaker 1: talked about food fails. Can I point a drink one
Speaker 1: your way? Here? In the UK, Coca Cola released a
Speaker 1: water which I think you may still get in the
Speaker 1: U s Desani. They used the marketing as something like
Speaker 1: can't live without spunk Here in the UK, that's a
Speaker 1: slang word for something you really wouldn't want in your drink.
Speaker 1: How we said that over here plenty. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: that's that what made it across the pond. Uh and
Speaker 1: Adam says it got better when it was found out
Speaker 1: that it was treated tap water from a suburban London
Speaker 1: and was no better than said tap water. When the
Speaker 1: press got ahold of it, it was a PR nightmare
Speaker 1: and pulled. I think it may be one of the
Speaker 1: funniest and worst PR disasters here for a while now.
Speaker 1: This got me thinking, at least we could do an
Speaker 1: episode on some of the biggest historic food fails. There
Speaker 1: used to be a museum in the States a long
Speaker 1: time ago. There was a hall of Shame for foods
Speaker 1: that appeared and disappeared from supermarkets, things like peas that
Speaker 1: were pressed into a shape of French fries to try
Speaker 1: to treat kids into eating their vegetables. Yeah, as a
Speaker 1: as a father of a nine year old, I can
Speaker 1: tell you that's not gonna fly. It did not fly.
Speaker 1: But I tried making my kid eat cauliflower because you
Speaker 1: can like make cauliflower into like a rice type. She
Speaker 1: doesn't buy it. She knows it's not rice. I'll make
Speaker 1: a cauliflower pizza, but she did it. Well, that's different.
Speaker 1: I feel like that's that's that's a good example, Ben,
Speaker 1: because that's like you're baking it and it has that crunch.
Speaker 1: But with rice, it's just they're not they're not rice
Speaker 1: sized graines. You're not going to mistake them for rut.
Speaker 1: That's why it's rice cauliflower, not cauliflower rice. Right, So
Speaker 1: thank you Mr Venomous, Thank you Adam for writing in.
Speaker 1: We want to hear some more food fails, so send
Speaker 1: us your favorite ones from your neck of the global woods. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can write to us a ridiculous and how stuff
Speaker 1: dot com. You can hit us up on social media Facebook, Instagram,
Speaker 1: Twitter and all that. You can join our Facebook group
Speaker 1: Ridiculous Historians. Or we still kick around some fun ideas
Speaker 1: and have a really nice community that's sprung up there.
Speaker 1: So come come hang out with us there on Ridiculous Historians.
Speaker 1: Of course, we want to thank you for listening. We
Speaker 1: want to thank our super producer, Casey Pegroom, thanks to
Speaker 1: Christopher Hasiotis and Eve's Jeff Code, our research associates, and
Speaker 1: thanks to Alex Williams who composed our track We'll see
Speaker 1: you next time, folks. Can we go out on the
Speaker 1: monkey song? Let's catch you? Oh, man, let's do it.
Speaker 1: It was open deal old that we pool about the
Speaker 1: time of France. The Emperor Napoleon was laying went a
Speaker 1: bull on the bulls game. A British man of all
Speaker 1: the captains, all pen monkey, go wash the bottle of shop,
Speaker 1: singing old folks, everyone in each come and see the
Speaker 1: French cheat is landed on the beach. He's got We
Speaker 1: think Betty's the spy is so like in the square