Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome
Speaker 1: to the podcast. I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson.
Speaker 1: And today we're talking about a woman who is not
Speaker 1: a household name, but in my opinion she probably should be.
Speaker 1: There are some other people who think she probably should
Speaker 1: be as well. Uh. She was a Welsh scientist who
Speaker 1: developed a system of thwarting radar that was invaluable to
Speaker 1: the Allied forces during World War Two, and what we
Speaker 1: know of her work is unfortunately entirely pieced together from
Speaker 1: accounts by her male colleagues, who fortunately recognized the importance
Speaker 1: of her contributions. So today we are talking about Joan
Speaker 1: Struthers current. Joan Struthers was born February nineteen sixteen and Swansea, Wales.
Speaker 1: Joan attended the Swansea Girls High School. She went a
Speaker 1: scholarship to Newnham College at the University of Cambridge and
Speaker 1: she enrolled there in nineteen thirty four. She studied physics.
Speaker 1: Of note here is the fact that Joan, despite doing
Speaker 1: all of the required coursework at Cambridge, did not get
Speaker 1: a physics degree That was because it was policy not
Speaker 1: to issue them two women. So when she finished her
Speaker 1: undergraduate coursework in ninety eight, but again not a degree,
Speaker 1: she started her doctor at work and that was actually
Speaker 1: funded by a government grant and that work was carried
Speaker 1: out at Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory and it was there that
Speaker 1: she met a man named Samuel Curran who she was
Speaker 1: assigned as a lab partner. Yeah, this whole deal where
Speaker 1: you could do the whole of the coursework and not
Speaker 1: be awarded a degree because you're a woman like that
Speaker 1: was not unique to Cambridge. We've talked about that happening
Speaker 1: in other schools too. Yeah. Absolutely, that was pretty much
Speaker 1: der rigor across academia and the nineteen thirties. Yea. So
Speaker 1: in nineteen forty, Struther and Karen were moved from their
Speaker 1: physics work at the Cavendish Lab to Exeter and there
Speaker 1: they were both assigned to research that was to help
Speaker 1: the war effort. They turned their problem solving skill to
Speaker 1: the development of proximity fuses. These are explosive device sugars
Speaker 1: that since when their targets are within a specified range,
Speaker 1: so close enough to cause damage and then detonate the
Speaker 1: proximity fuses that Joan Struthers and Samuel Kerran developed targeted
Speaker 1: rockets and aircraft, and they developed a very closely should
Speaker 1: JIP over the course of the years being lab partners,
Speaker 1: and in November nineteen forty Joan and Samuel married and
Speaker 1: not long after the currents had said their vows, they
Speaker 1: were reassigned. This time they were sent to the Telecommunications
Speaker 1: Research Establishment. This was again part of the war effort,
Speaker 1: and sam worked on centimeter radar and Joan worked in countermeasures.
Speaker 1: The goal for Jon's work was to figure out a
Speaker 1: way to fool enemy radar, and the team on this
Speaker 1: project was led by Robert Cockburn under the leadership of
Speaker 1: Reginald Victor Jones, who was a British physicist who had
Speaker 1: become an expert in military intelligence. Just as a quick
Speaker 1: refresher on radar, that stands for radio detection and ranging. Basically,
Speaker 1: radar works by sending out a radio signal and wonder action.
Speaker 1: It looks for a bounce or an echo of that signal,
Speaker 1: which would indicate that their objects in the path of
Speaker 1: the signal. Then, using the information gathered that way, including
Speaker 1: the time it takes for the echo to return, to
Speaker 1: the point of transmission. Radar can indicate the size, shape,
Speaker 1: and distance of objects, so the team commissioned by Jones
Speaker 1: had to somehow thwart that process, and so one of
Speaker 1: the experiments that Joan Curran began was using thin metal
Speaker 1: reflectors to disrupt the echo of radar. Large groups of
Speaker 1: small metal strips could even mimic a large object like
Speaker 1: an aircraft, when in reality there was nothing substantial there.
Speaker 1: Even larger groups of strips could create large amorphous blobs
Speaker 1: that were big enough to hide an aircraft inside. Even
Speaker 1: if an enemy knew that a plane was somewhere inside
Speaker 1: such a blob, Figuring out where would be a complete
Speaker 1: guess if that blob was big enough. And Jones is
Speaker 1: credited with coming up with this idea and then passing
Speaker 1: it off to the research group to figure out the
Speaker 1: particular killers and do testing, and Joan Curran really did
Speaker 1: a lot of that research. Jones later described the concept
Speaker 1: in this way years later in his book, which is
Speaker 1: titled The Most Secret War Quote. The phenomenon on which
Speaker 1: they depended was that of resonance. If a reflector is
Speaker 1: made of a simple wire or strip of metal of
Speaker 1: length equal to half the wavelength used by the radar station.
Speaker 1: It resonates to the incoming radio waves and reradiates them
Speaker 1: to such effect that it is roughly equivalent to a
Speaker 1: whole sheet of metal whose dimensions are square and which
Speaker 1: has sides equal in length to half a wavelength. Thus,
Speaker 1: a few hundreds such strips or wires would reflect as
Speaker 1: much energy as a whole Lancaster bomber. If you recall
Speaker 1: our episode on the twenty third Headquarters Special Troops that
Speaker 1: are known as the Ghost Army, you know that creative
Speaker 1: deception was a valuable tool in the Allied Forces World
Speaker 1: War two plans. But at the point when Current and
Speaker 1: the team led by Jones were working on their radar
Speaker 1: disruptor technology, the US was and even involved in World
Speaker 1: War Two. Yet Current and her colleagues were leading the
Speaker 1: effort in trickery as a military strategy, figuring out ways
Speaker 1: that blobs of reflective material could hint at a faux
Speaker 1: massive attack force or simply obscure one or two aircraft.
Speaker 1: And so the practical idea of how this would work
Speaker 1: is that a lead aircraft would drop bundles of strips
Speaker 1: to create this radar confusion, and then dropping additional bundles
Speaker 1: at regular intervals would create complete mayhem for enemy forces
Speaker 1: that were trying to get a read on this situation.
Speaker 1: This technology was given the code name Window by British intelligence,
Speaker 1: although the U S would eventually just kind of use
Speaker 1: the more casual term of radar chaff. Even after the
Speaker 1: December seven one bombing of Pearl Harbor, which brought the
Speaker 1: United States into the war, Curran's work was still in
Speaker 1: the experimental stage. She was testing the best possible materials,
Speaker 1: the best possible shapes and sizes for these strips. Those
Speaker 1: decisions weren't made until two and the technology wasn't put
Speaker 1: into use until ninety three. She performed test first at
Speaker 1: Swantage on the aisle of Pierbeck and then later at Malvern, Worcestershire.
Speaker 1: Everything from pieces of metal as big as slips of paper,
Speaker 1: which were considered as a possible propaganda delivery system as
Speaker 1: well as being part of this radar disruption. Two very
Speaker 1: tiny wires were tested before the research led to the
Speaker 1: decision that aluminum cut into one point five by time
Speaker 1: strips was the best That is a little bit more
Speaker 1: than half an inch by a little less than ten inches.
Speaker 1: According to RV. Jones, the intention had actually been to
Speaker 1: first use the system Joan Current had tested as early
Speaker 1: as May of nineteen forty two. He wrote, with the
Speaker 1: chiefs of Staff's approval, the window packets where I believe
Speaker 1: actually loaded into bombers for a raid in May two
Speaker 1: and then we're offloaded again because there was a last
Speaker 1: minute prohibition of their use. And the reason for that
Speaker 1: last minute change, according to Jones, was that Fighter Commands
Speaker 1: Airborne radar Officer Derek Jackson had only heard about the
Speaker 1: existence of Window right before the mission, and Jackson was
Speaker 1: understandably concerned that those reflectors might also cause confusion to
Speaker 1: the radar texts in the British forces, and so he
Speaker 1: was not comfortable using a brand new technology that he
Speaker 1: had only just heard of during an active raid. So
Speaker 1: Window was pulled for additional testing. We'll talk more about
Speaker 1: how this technique for confusing Germany's radar was eventually put
Speaker 1: to use, but first we will pause or a sponsor
Speaker 1: break RV. Jones was against withholding the use of Window,
Speaker 1: although he also wanted to make sure that when they
Speaker 1: did deploy it, it was at a time when it
Speaker 1: would be the most effective and impactful In October ninety two,
Speaker 1: British intelligence received information that indicated that the Germans knew
Speaker 1: about this concept, having fired on a dust cloud of
Speaker 1: aluminum particles that was thrown out of an Allied craft
Speaker 1: in the Rhineland. Jones made the case to command that
Speaker 1: they should absolutely used window immediately before German forces might
Speaker 1: have a chance to figure out a way around it,
Speaker 1: perhaps even introduced their own version of it, but his
Speaker 1: efforts were met with dismissal. This discussion did, however, lead
Speaker 1: to a more detailed analysis of window and how it
Speaker 1: would impact both the Germans and the British. This led
Speaker 1: to more specifications around the exact amounts of window material
Speaker 1: that should be used for various results, and also the
Speaker 1: calculations of its value in terms of potential casualty reduction.
Speaker 1: As people were calculating these things, how much to use
Speaker 1: and what it was what its real value was in
Speaker 1: terms of war effort, they came up with some different numbers.
Speaker 1: Dereck Jackson, who was that man who had halted the
Speaker 1: initial use of window, worked on this analysis as well,
Speaker 1: and he came up with the weight of eighty four
Speaker 1: tons of window as the amount needed to make Germany's
Speaker 1: radar useless. Jackson also believed to reciprocate German forces could
Speaker 1: render Allied radar ineffective with just one ton of a
Speaker 1: similar material. R V. Jones made his own calculation, remember
Speaker 1: he had really um birthed this whole idea, and he
Speaker 1: landed at twelve tons as the amount needed to wipe
Speaker 1: out the effectiveness of Germany's radar, and then a whole
Speaker 1: other colleague came up with the number of forty eight tons.
Speaker 1: So they were all over the map and what they
Speaker 1: thought it was going to require to be effective. After
Speaker 1: a meeting on April second three, in which everyone argued
Speaker 1: the case for or against Window based on their own calculations,
Speaker 1: it was decided that it was worthwhile and that a
Speaker 1: request would be sent to the Prime Minister to use
Speaker 1: it as soon as possible. The case had to once
Speaker 1: again be made to Winston Churchill, with some members of
Speaker 1: the British military still in opposition to using Window, but
Speaker 1: eventually it was determined that the potential to save lives
Speaker 1: was worth the perceived risk of disruption to British and
Speaker 1: Allied radar ratings. At the conclusion of the meeting, according
Speaker 1: to Jones, Churchill said very well, let us open the window.
Speaker 1: R V. Jones, knowing that if the plan for Window failed,
Speaker 1: he would take all the heat, sent his men out
Speaker 1: to all of the bomber stations where this would be deployed,
Speaker 1: to give talks about Germany's night defense systems and clearly
Speaker 1: explain how the packets of aluminum strips were to be
Speaker 1: deployed and at what rate. As things were finally moving
Speaker 1: to actual use of the research that Joan Curran had done,
Speaker 1: there were also concerns that Germany was essentially in the
Speaker 1: exact same position with a similar radar disruptive technology that
Speaker 1: they were fearful about putting into use. After the war, RV.
Speaker 1: Jones discovered that Germans had definitely known about Window and
Speaker 1: were perplexed as to why it wasn't in use. They
Speaker 1: also tried a similar tech of their own, but the
Speaker 1: trials went so poorly that Erman Goring had all the
Speaker 1: reports related to these tests destroyed. Operation Gomorrah on July
Speaker 1: was the first time that Window, the culmination of Kurran's experimentation,
Speaker 1: was used in a bombing raid. The first night of
Speaker 1: attacks on Hamburg, Germany were considered a success. British forces
Speaker 1: sent seven hundred and ninety one aircraft out and they
Speaker 1: lost only twelve. That's a one point five percent loss rate.
Speaker 1: Similar rates that had happened without the use of window
Speaker 1: had a six point one percent loss rate. Jones estimated
Speaker 1: that seventy to eighty aircraft were saved thanks to their
Speaker 1: parcels of aluminum strips over the course of several raids.
Speaker 1: The next night, window was used again on our rate
Speaker 1: in Essen. This time the disruption was so significant that
Speaker 1: the Germans were not only unable to track enemy bombers,
Speaker 1: but they also weren't able to track their own planes.
Speaker 1: The loss rate for the British bombers was slightly higher
Speaker 1: than the previous night, at three point three percent, but
Speaker 1: this was still a substantial improvement over previous missions without window.
Speaker 1: There were additional raids on Hamburg in the days that followed,
Speaker 1: both by British Bomber Command and by the US. The
Speaker 1: average loss rate for British forces was two point eight
Speaker 1: percent averaged out over this series of bombings. While we're
Speaker 1: talking about the success of these raids, we also have
Speaker 1: to acknowledge the heavy civilian casualties that took place in
Speaker 1: these attacks. The ground fires created by the bombing on
Speaker 1: Hamburg during the second raid, there created a firestorm. The
Speaker 1: intensity of the fires created their own wind as hot
Speaker 1: air rows and cold air was pulled down very rapidly
Speaker 1: that spread the flames, destroying huge swaths of the city
Speaker 1: and suffocating people. Additionally, a tornado like effect pulled people
Speaker 1: into the blaze even as they tried to flee. R
Speaker 1: V Jones's account indicates that Allied forces didn't realize how
Speaker 1: devastating these bombings were until after the fact, when casualty
Speaker 1: estimates were placed between forty and fifty thousand people. Uh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you will see sometimes even lower numbers and sometimes even
Speaker 1: higher numbers there. I will tell you this, this is
Speaker 1: the uh one time that research for this show has
Speaker 1: ever resulted in me having nightmares. So if you want
Speaker 1: to go study this firestorm, please know that the images
Speaker 1: you will see are very disturbing. The stories of survivors
Speaker 1: are very upsetting. Um. But it's also really important that
Speaker 1: we talked about it. So. Jones also acknowledged that this
Speaker 1: was something that seemed very counter to what they had
Speaker 1: been sort of preaching from the Allied side. He later wrote, quote,
Speaker 1: we had started the war morally opposed to the bombing
Speaker 1: of civilian populations, and now we were pursuing it on
Speaker 1: a horrifying scale. How had this come about? And then
Speaker 1: he goes on to discuss how that had been something
Speaker 1: of a gradual process as the realizations came that bomber
Speaker 1: Command could not always guarantee precision hits to targets, but
Speaker 1: also that bomber Command was really the only thing that
Speaker 1: was hurting Germany on the scale that was needed to
Speaker 1: end the war. Additionally, there was a strategy in play
Speaker 1: to demoralize the German population by striking a city filled
Speaker 1: with industrial workers. Jones summarized all of this by writing, quote,
Speaker 1: it was on the grounds of probable effectiveness and not
Speaker 1: of morality that the battle was fought. At one point,
Speaker 1: there was even a brief accusation that the Allies had
Speaker 1: used chemical warfare at Hamburg, although that was untrue. The
Speaker 1: source of this allegation had been some of the aluminum
Speaker 1: strips that the Germans had recovered after a cow had
Speaker 1: eaten them. It died the strips that have been coated
Speaker 1: in a black paint to make them invisible at night,
Speaker 1: and that paint did contain a small amount of arsenic,
Speaker 1: but not enough to substantiate a claim of chemical warfare.
Speaker 1: As another aside, because I suspect people will ask, couldn't
Speaker 1: a cow just die from eating those strips? Um, I'm
Speaker 1: being grown up the child of farmers. Um. Cows eat
Speaker 1: metal all the time because often they're fed stuff that's
Speaker 1: just kind of sloughy and filled with all kinds of craziness. Also,
Speaker 1: they will sometimes just find things in fields. Some farmers
Speaker 1: actually put magnets in their cows stomachs to kind of
Speaker 1: keep those things isolated and not passed through their digestive
Speaker 1: tract and couse mortality. Um. But yeah, it's not uncommon
Speaker 1: for cows to eat metal. Uh. Just the same. Despite
Speaker 1: those chemical warfare claims being abandoned, the attacks on Hamburg
Speaker 1: and Essen had significantly di and ish both morale and
Speaker 1: production of war material. Over the course of eight days,
Speaker 1: the British and US bombing raids destroyed half of Hamburg.
Speaker 1: While it initially was considered by some to be an
Speaker 1: active retribution of the Nazi bombings of London and Coventry,
Speaker 1: the difference in the level of destruction at Hamburg made
Speaker 1: the ethics of war something that people inside the military
Speaker 1: considered in a new way, even as newspapers were touting
Speaker 1: Operation Gomorra as a huge win, and even today, these
Speaker 1: raids and the balance of moral versus strategic decision making
Speaker 1: continue to be discussed. We also talked about that a
Speaker 1: lot in our episode on Sadako Sasaki and her Thousand
Speaker 1: Cranes and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and all that.
Speaker 1: So it came up a lot all through the war.
Speaker 1: The system that Jones had conceived and that Joan Curran
Speaker 1: had tested had worked incredibly well, like keeping German forces
Speaker 1: confused as their radar failed to give them information that
Speaker 1: they needed to defend against these bombing raids, and as
Speaker 1: the Allied forces prepared for D Day, Curran's radar chaft
Speaker 1: system was used to obscure the details of the planned
Speaker 1: landings at Normandy. It was important to not only hide
Speaker 1: the fact that Normandy was their target, but also to
Speaker 1: misdirect the attentions of the German forces to another location
Speaker 1: if possible. The hope was that the Allies could convince
Speaker 1: the Germans that the planned landing was east of the
Speaker 1: Sin River, so that they would keep most of their
Speaker 1: troops and artillery there. And then the Allied forces would
Speaker 1: destroy the bridges that would have enabled them to move
Speaker 1: out of that area. So they kind of wanted to
Speaker 1: get them in one place and trap them there. And
Speaker 1: then to do all this, the Allies needed illusion. They
Speaker 1: wanted to convince the Germans that a force was coming
Speaker 1: in from the sea, and they came up with a
Speaker 1: plan to use Window to do so. Robert Cockburn, who
Speaker 1: had overseen the testing that Joan Curran had done to
Speaker 1: develop Window, was the person who developed this plan. And
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about how that plan was executed
Speaker 1: with some very dire results. But we are going to
Speaker 1: take a quick sponsor break before we get into that.
Speaker 1: On June, the day before D Day, the Lancaster bombers
Speaker 1: of the six seventeen Air Squadron flew in orbits eight
Speaker 1: miles long and two miles wide, slowly moving southeast at
Speaker 1: eight nots to mimic an ocean convoy. According to an
Speaker 1: account given to the Royal Air Force in Mayen by
Speaker 1: Wing Commander John Bell MBE, who was part of this mission, quote,
Speaker 1: while they were flying, there were two air crew in
Speaker 1: the rear of each Lancaster, and I was one of them.
Speaker 1: We were handed bundles of aluminum strip which we dropped
Speaker 1: at approximately three second intervals through the flair shoote. The
Speaker 1: strips varied in size and went from small to large
Speaker 1: as we approached the French coast, and large too small
Speaker 1: when we turned back to the English coast. A green
Speaker 1: light indicated when it was time to throw it. The
Speaker 1: efforts of the siv Air squadron were part of what
Speaker 1: was called Operation Taxable, which played out along the French
Speaker 1: coast near Coptante Fair. A second operation which made use
Speaker 1: of window own as Operation Glimmer, made it look as
Speaker 1: though there was an Allied force crossing a narrow point
Speaker 1: of the English Channel. For Glimmer, the two squadron was
Speaker 1: tasked with dropping the chaff, and the deception also included
Speaker 1: a feint that made it appear that a massive ground
Speaker 1: force was moving towards pat Calais. To provide additional support
Speaker 1: for this ruse, dummy parachutists were dropped southwest of deep
Speaker 1: and Kin in a segment of the plan called Operation Titanic.
Speaker 1: All of these efforts combined worked as the Allies hoped.
Speaker 1: The Germans could not get a correct analysis of enemy
Speaker 1: troop movements and even into the following month, there was
Speaker 1: still confusion about whether there was a large ground force
Speaker 1: near the city of Calais. Also in June of nineteen
Speaker 1: forty four, Sam and Joan Curran were invited to the
Speaker 1: University of California at Berkeley to work on the Manhattan Project,
Speaker 1: which they accepted. It was during this time that the
Speaker 1: pair worked on the development of a scintillation counter to
Speaker 1: measure the ionization of radiation. While Samuel Kerran has given
Speaker 1: credit for the invention, which is still used today, he
Speaker 1: consistently noted his wife's work on the project, and during
Speaker 1: their time in California, the Currents had their first child,
Speaker 1: and their daughter was born with an intellectual or cognitive disability.
Speaker 1: The exact nature of her disability is unclear from the
Speaker 1: readily available information, but after the war came to a close,
Speaker 1: the Currents moved back to the UK, where Sam had
Speaker 1: been offered a position at Glasgow University, and they had
Speaker 1: three more children after they returned to Europe, all of
Speaker 1: which were sons. Though her work with the war effort
Speaker 1: was done, Joan was hardly idle from this point. In
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty four, she and Sam met with four other
Speaker 1: couples with the goal of setting up an organization to
Speaker 1: assist parents of children with learning disabilities. After the first meeting,
Speaker 1: they printed a notice in the paper inviting people to
Speaker 1: an open meeting and more than three hundred people attended.
Speaker 1: This was the beginning of the Scottish Association of Parents
Speaker 1: of Handicapped Children, which is an organization that still exists,
Speaker 1: although its name has evolved to be Enabled Scotland, which
Speaker 1: is a support and advocacy group. Joan Curran continued to
Speaker 1: work in support of people with disabilities throughout her lifetime.
Speaker 1: Her close ties to academia led her to advocate on
Speaker 1: behalf of students with disabilities and work with the Council
Speaker 1: for Access for the Disabled. Both Sam and Joan were
Speaker 1: really outspoken proponents of the idea that education was something
Speaker 1: that should be available to everyone, and this work that
Speaker 1: she did was one way in which she carried out
Speaker 1: that mission. She also served on Greater Glasgow Health Board
Speaker 1: and was part of the Scottish Special Housing Association. At
Speaker 1: the end of the nineteen fifties, Sam became principal of
Speaker 1: the Royal College of Science and Technology, which gained its
Speaker 1: Royal charter and became the University of strath Clyde under
Speaker 1: his leadership. During this time, Joan founded and served as
Speaker 1: president of the strath Clyde Women's Group. She also established
Speaker 1: the Lady Current Endowment Fund for overseas students. In seven,
Speaker 1: at the age of seventy one, Joan was finally granted
Speaker 1: an honorary doctorate by the University of strath Clyde, so
Speaker 1: finally she got her physics degree. Samuel Curran died on February.
Speaker 1: A plaque was installed in his honor in Barony Hall
Speaker 1: of Victorian Gothic Church at strath Clyde. Joan unveiled the
Speaker 1: plaque in a ceremony, although she herself was terminally ill
Speaker 1: at the time. At the event, she was told that
Speaker 1: a walled garden at the Ross Priory, also part of
Speaker 1: strath Clyde, was to be named after her, with the
Speaker 1: Joan Curran Summer House to be built there. Joan Curran
Speaker 1: died less than a year after her husband on February
Speaker 1: and she never had any of her work published, but
Speaker 1: her contributions to the war effort, science, and her community
Speaker 1: were recounted over and over in her obituaries. Her obituary
Speaker 1: in the Scotland Herald open with the paragraph quote it
Speaker 1: is difficult to separate the lives of Joan and Sam Curran.
Speaker 1: Although they were a very different temperaments, they made a
Speaker 1: superb team and partnership and were devoted to each other. Nevertheless,
Speaker 1: it is very important and Sam always emphasized this to
Speaker 1: note that she was a considerable scientist in her own
Speaker 1: right and in the dark days of the Second World War, she,
Speaker 1: as did Sam, played an important part in the survival
Speaker 1: of this country. Politician Tim Dalyall wrote an account of
Speaker 1: his first meeting with Reginald Jones, that person that had
Speaker 1: spearheaded the window project, and in that conversation, Jones told
Speaker 1: him quote, in my opinion, Joan Curran made an even
Speaker 1: greater contribution to victory in than Sam's pretty incredible, it is,
Speaker 1: and it's one of those things. I'm glad there have
Speaker 1: been some efforts in both Wales and Scotland over the
Speaker 1: last probably five to eight years, of people who are
Speaker 1: pointing out like this is a person that we should
Speaker 1: be recognizing more than we do. And I love that
Speaker 1: they're doing. That makes me happy. Um, I have so
Speaker 1: much listener mail. Well, we have just come off of
Speaker 1: the holidays, and we are lucky enough to often get
Speaker 1: some really really lovely UM cards from our various listeners,
Speaker 1: and I want to to read a couple of them
Speaker 1: and then talk about one wonderful gift that arrived that I,
Speaker 1: of course i'm in love with. The first one is
Speaker 1: from our listener Rebecca, who just sent us a lovely
Speaker 1: card that is a Doctor SEUs card and says thank
Speaker 1: you for all your hard work on the podcast. I'm
Speaker 1: a big fan. I also love the behind the scenes
Speaker 1: Merry Christmas. UM. Thank you so much, Rebecca. We are
Speaker 1: long past Christmas at this point, but I hope yours
Speaker 1: was great as well. We also got a card from
Speaker 1: uh Test, Bill, Pippy and Buster. Test wrote Holly and Tracy,
Speaker 1: happy holidays in a very merry Christmas to you and
Speaker 1: your families. I'm a longtime listener to the show, along
Speaker 1: with my two cats, Peppy and Buster, who are so
Speaker 1: stinking cute. I kind of can't deal with it. That's mine, Uh,
Speaker 1: she's my boyfriend. Bill doesn't quite get the whole podcast thing,
Speaker 1: but that is his loss. I am going to Rome
Speaker 1: in January, so I won't be able to go with
Speaker 1: you two in May bummer, but I still get to
Speaker 1: go to Rome, so no complaints. Keep up the good work,
Speaker 1: um she can, she can pre screen it for us
Speaker 1: and tell us all the good places to eat. That's
Speaker 1: officially your job now. Our last one is from our listener, Shelly,
Speaker 1: and she writes, Dear Holly and Tracy, I am a
Speaker 1: total space flight nerd, and I loved every bit of
Speaker 1: the Apollo eleven fifty at the anniversary celebrations this summer,
Speaker 1: including your fascinating Thomas Harriet and John Wilkins episodes. I
Speaker 1: got to see the Columbia command module at Seattle's Museum
Speaker 1: of Flight, and I highly recommend it to anyone who
Speaker 1: has the chance to see it. I think it's back
Speaker 1: at the Smithsonian now as part of the Museum of
Speaker 1: Flights UH Destination Moon events. I attended a great talk
Speaker 1: by an astrobiologist titled Life on the Ancient Moon conclusion
Speaker 1: there could have been some and I picked up these
Speaker 1: moon photo postcards to send you. I'm glad I didn't
Speaker 1: get around to sending them right away, because I then
Speaker 1: saw the build an Orbiter postcard on a more recent
Speaker 1: visit to the museum, and I could not resist getting
Speaker 1: it as well. Thank you for all the wonderful work
Speaker 1: you do on the podcast. I'm always rooting for more
Speaker 1: episodes on the history of science, space exploration, and women
Speaker 1: in stem. Yeah. So it's this cool kind of snapped
Speaker 1: together orbiter model that you can make and it comes
Speaker 1: in a postcard and it's really cool and I love it.
Speaker 1: I also will echo her thing. If you ever get
Speaker 1: to go see any of these marvelous orbiters, please do it. Um.
Speaker 1: If you go to Kennedy and you see the Atlantis
Speaker 1: on display, that is one of the most beautiful and
Speaker 1: moving museum installations I think I have ever seen in
Speaker 1: my entire life. Um, it is so good. I stood
Speaker 1: there and cried for like forty five minutes. Um. But
Speaker 1: I also just recommend that you go and and recognize
Speaker 1: the amazing things. The thing I always love about space,
Speaker 1: and I try to explain this to people, like when
Speaker 1: I look at things like the James Webb's based telescope
Speaker 1: or any of the space shuttles, etcetera, is that to me,
Speaker 1: what makes them beautiful is that they are the best
Speaker 1: of us. Those are a lot of different people from
Speaker 1: different backgrounds who have all worked really, really hard and
Speaker 1: come together to make something that transcends our life on Earth.
Speaker 1: That is why I'm such a space store. Uh. If
Speaker 1: you would like to write to us, you could do
Speaker 1: so at History Podcast at i heart radio dot com. Again,
Speaker 1: that is a newish email address. You can also find
Speaker 1: us across social media as missed in History. UH. If
Speaker 1: you would like to subscribe to the show, we would
Speaker 1: like you to do that as well. It's a great
Speaker 1: way to start the new year. You can do that
Speaker 1: on the I Heart Radio app, at Apple podcast or
Speaker 1: wherever it is you listen. Stuff you Missed in History
Speaker 1: Class is a production of I Heart Radios How stuff Works.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit the I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.