But Have You Heard About?

On this day in 1660...The English Restoration starts with the arrival of Charles II, the exiled king of England. He lands at Dover, England, to assume the throne and end 11 years of military rule. This time is also referred to as the Stuart Restoration.

On this day in 1883...The Brooklyn Bridge opens after 14 years of construction. With the opening of the bridge, New York and Brooklyn are officially connected for the first time in history. Designed by the late John A. Roebling, the Brooklyn Bridge was the largest suspension bridge ever built to that date.

On this day in 1943...notorious criminals Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow are shot to death by Texas and Louisiana state police near Sailes, Louisiana.

The infamous couple teamed with various accomplices to rob a string of banks and stores across five states—Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, New Mexico and Louisiana. To law enforcement agents, the Barrow Gang—including Barrow’s childhood friend, Raymond Hamilton, W.D. Jones, Henry Methvin, Barrow’s brother Buck and his wife Blanche, among others—were cold-blooded criminals who didn’t hesitate to kill anyone who got in their way, especially police or sheriff’s deputies. Among the public, however, Parker and Barrow’s reputation as dangerous outlaws was mixed with a romantic view of the couple as “Robin Hood”-like folk heroes. Their fame was increased by the fact that Bonnie was a woman—an unlikely criminal—and by the fact that the couple posed for playful photographs together, which were later found by police and released to the media.

On this day in 1843...The first caravans left on the Oregon Trail. A thousand emigrants at that! Although U.S. sovereignty over the Oregon Territory was not clearly established until 1846, American fur trappers and missionary groups had been living in the region for decades, to say nothing of the Native Americans who had settled the land centuries earlier. Dozens of books and lectures proclaimed Oregon’s agricultural potential, piquing the interest of white American farmers. The first overland immigrants to Oregon, intending primarily to farm, came in 1841 when a small band of 70 pioneers left Independence, Missouri. How many times did you die of dysentery while playing the game?

On this day in 1992...Amy Fisher, the so-called “Long Island Lolita,” is arrested for shooting Mary Jo Buttafuoco on the front porch of her Massapequa, New York, home. Fisher, only 17 at the time of the shooting, was having an affair with 38-year-old Joey Buttafuoco, Mary Jo’s husband.
Mary Jo Buttafuoco survived the attack but was left with a bullet lodged in her head and a partially paralyzed face. Fisher, who pled guilty to the shooting, was convicted of assault and received a sentence of 5 to 15 years the following year. Mary Jo called her a “prostitute,” yet seemed to think her husband was blameless in the affair. The courts, however, were less forgiving; Joey was convicted of statutory r**e and received a six-month jail sentence in 1993. The 90s were a trifling time.

On this day in 1506...Colonizer extreme, Christopher Columbus died. And we all rejoiced. In his last year of life, and with the death of his patron Queen Isabella of Spain dead, he was unable to secure an audience with King Ferdinand, whom he felt owed him further redress.

On this day in 1536...King Henry VIII's second wife, Anne Boleyn, was executed. The charges she was found guilty of 4 days earlier? Adultery, in**st and conspiracy against the king. How did we get to a second wife and why was she executed? King Henry had become enamored of Anne Boleyn in the mid-1520s, when she returned from serving in the French court and became a lady-in-waiting to his first wife, Catherine of Aragon. In 1532, the savvy and ruthless Thomas Cromwell won control of the king’s council and engineered a daring revolution—a break with the Catholic Church, and Henry’s installation as supreme head of the Church of England. Many unhappy Britons blamed Anne, whose sympathies lay with England’s Protestant reformers even before the Church’s steadfast opposition turned her against it. At Queen Anne’s coronation in June 1533, she was nearly six months pregnant, and in September she gave birth to a girl, Elizabeth, rather than the much-longed-for male heir. She later had two stillborn children, and suffered a miscarriage in January 1536; the fetus appeared to be male.

By that time, Anne’s relationship with Henry had soured, and he had his eye on her lady-in-waiting, the demure Jane Seymour.

Henry had apparently convinced himself that Anne had seduced him by witchcraft, and also told Cromwell (Anne’s former ally, now her rival for power in Henry’s court) that he wanted to take steps towards repairing relations with Emperor Charles. The Brits are wild, y'all...

On this day in 1926...Popular evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson disappeared from Venice Beach in Los Angeles. Police dispatched planes and ships in an effort to find her, but she was nowhere to be found. Authorities later discovered that radio announcer Kenneth Ormiston, a "friend" of McPherson, had also vanished.

McPherson is considered the Billy Graham of her time. McPherson claimed to have faith-healing abilities and put on wonderfully entertaining shows for the public. Because of her religious nature, McPherson’s relationship with Ormiston created something of a scandal in 1925, and their disappearance in 1926 made headlines across the country.

A month later, McPherson turned up in Agua Prieta, New Mexico, exhausted on a lawn. She told a wild tale of being kidnapped, but reporters quickly uncovered information to prove that she had been with Ormiston the entire time. Such an interesting woman, who never found as much fame as she had prior to this incident.

On this day in 1974...The LA police surround a home in Compton where they believe the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) are hiding out. The SLA had kidnapped Patricia Hearst, of the wealthy Hearst family publishing empire, months earlier, earning headlines across the country. Police found the house in Compton when a local mother reported that her kids had seen a bunch of people playing with an arsenal of automatic weapons in the living room of the home.

The LAPD’s 500-man siege on the Compton home was only the latest event in a short, but exceedingly bizarre, episode. The SLA was a small group of violent radicals who quickly made their way to national prominence, far out of proportion to their actual influence. They began by killing Oakland’s superintendent of schools in late 1973 but really burst into society’s consciousness when they kidnapped Hearst the following February. What an interesting radical group we absolutely should go into on an episode!

But have you heard about the Lager Beer Riot that occurred on April 21, 1855 in Chicago? Maybe not, unless you're really into Chicago beer or politics. On this week's episode, we are talking about an interesting combo–politics and beer in Chicago.

With rising immigrants settling in developing Midwest cities like Chicago and bringing much of their home country culture and past times with them. Germans brought with them their love of brewing beer and journalism, with many setting up taverns that many locals and immigrants frequented. Many of these immigrants had participated in the 1848 revolutions across Europe and were accustomed to demonstrations for political reasons. At the same time, all over the country there was a wide spread of distrust when it came to Catholics and immigrants. Many newspapers and politicians depicted immigrants as drunks, and part of a ploy for the Pope to take over the US if they were Catholic. Because of the drunken portrayal, many nativists gravitated towards anti alcoholism, or the Temperance Movement. In the city election of 1855, the Know Nothing Party Candidate Levi Boone won and almost immediately went to work on ways to punish immigrants for just living in the city--increasing the price for liquor license and suspending the sale of alcohol on Sundays. Take a listen and see how messing with German's beer can lead to a revolution.

Check the link in our bio to catch this week's episode.

On this day in 1929...the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences hands out its first awards, at a dinner party for around 250 people held in the Blossom Room of the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood, California. The brainchild of Louis B. Mayer, head of the powerful MGM film studio, the Academy was organized in May 1927 as a non-profit organization dedicated to the advancement and improvement of the film industry. Its first president and the host of the May 1929 ceremony was the actor Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. Unlike today, the winners of the first Oscars—as the coveted gold-plated statuettes later became known—were announced before the awards ceremony itself.

At the time of the first Oscar ceremony, sound had just been introduced into film. The Warner Bros. movie The Jazz Singer—one of the first “talkies”—was not allowed to compete for Best Picture because the Academy decided it was unfair to let movies with sound compete with silent films.
The first official Best Picture winner was Wings, directed by William Wellman. The most expensive movie of its time, with a budget of $2 million, the movie told the story of two World War I pilots who fall for the same woman. Another film, F.W. Murnau’s epic Sunrise, was considered a dual winner for the best film of the year. German actor Emil Jannings won the Best Actor honor for his roles in The Last Command and The Way of All Flesh, while 22-year-old Janet Gaynor was the only female winner. After receiving three out of the five Best Actress nods, she won for all three roles, in Seventh Heaven, Street Angel and Sunrise.

On this day in 1942... Legislation was passed creating the Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps (WAACs) and granting women official military status. In May 1941, Representative Edith Nourse Rogers of Massachusetts, the first congresswoman from New England, introduced the legislation that would enable women to serve in the Army in noncombat positions. WAACs would gain official status and salary—but still not all the benefits bestowed to men. Thousands of women enlisted in light of this new legislation, and in July 1943, the “auxiliary” was dropped from the name, and the Women’s Army Corps, or WACs, received full Army benefits in keeping with their male counterparts. The WACs performed a wide variety of jobs, “releasing a man for combat,” as the Army, sensitive to public misgivings about women in the military, touted. But those jobs ranged from clerk to radio operator, electrician to air-traffic controller. Women served in virtually every theater of engagement, from North Africa to Asia.

On this day in 1804...Lewis and Clark departed to explore the newly acquired territory in the Northwest. One year after the United States doubled its territory with the Louisiana Purchase, the Lewis and Clark expedition leaves St. Louis, Missouri, on a mission to explore the Northwest from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean. President Thomas Jefferson commissioned his private secretary Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, an army captain, to lead an expedition into what is now the U.S. Northwest. On May 14, the “Corps of Discovery”—featuring approximately 45 men left St. Louis for the American interior. The expedition traveled up the Missouri River in a 55-foot long keelboat and two smaller boats. On September 23, 1806, after almost two and a half years, the expedition returned to the city, bringing back a wealth of information about the region (much of it already inhabited by Native Americans), as well as valuable U.S. claims to the Oregon Territory.

On this day in 1981... Pope John Paul II was shot and seriously wounded while in Rome’s St. Peter’s Square while passing through the square in an open car. After this, a bulletproof popemobile was made.
The assailant, 23-year-old escaped Turkish murderer Mehmet Ali Agca, fired four shots, one of which hit the pontiff in the abdomen, narrowly missing vital organs, and another that hit the pope’s left hand.

On this day in 1932...Charles Augustus Lindbergh Jr. was found dead after having been missing for 2 month after a kidnapping. Lindbergh's father Charles Sr., an internationally famous aviator, and his wife Anne discovered a ransom note in their 20-month-old child’s empty room on March 1. The kidnapper had used a ladder to climb up to the open second-floor window and had left muddy footprints in the room. In barely legible English, the ransom note demanded $50,000.

The crime captured the attention of the entire nation. The Lindbergh family was inundated by offers of assistance and false clues. For three days, investigators had found nothing and there was no further word from the kidnappers. Then, a new letter showed up, this time demanding $70,000.

It wasn’t until April 2 that the kidnappers gave instructions for dropping off the money. When the money was finally delivered, the kidnappers indicated that little baby Charles was on a boat called Nelly off the coast of Massachusetts. However, after an exhaustive search of every port, there was no sign of either the boat or the child. On May 12, a renewed search of the area near the Lindbergh mansion turned up the baby’s body. He had been killed the night of the kidnapping and was found less than a mile from the home. Because of this, many foil hats believe that the Lindbergh's had a hand in the affair. One day, we'll do a podcast about this because YEW it is good.

On this day in 1981...Reggae star Bob Marley dies at the age of 36. Eight months prior a cancerous growth on an old soccer injury on his big toe had metastasized and spread to Marley’s brain, liver and lungs. He passed away in Florida on this day in 1981.

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I know it's been a bit longer on this break--but birthday and life got in the way. I hope you enjoy one of my favorite conspiracies!

Picture it: a 30 year old Michael Jordan has just won his third championship in as many years with the Chicago Bulls. He doesn't look to be stopping--and yet, he retires on October 6th, 1993 to the shock of so many. Why would the greatest athlete at that time retire? His father was murdered that summer, he had taken a physical beating in those playoff games, and emotionally he wasn't in it. All of that adds up. But...what if it had to do with the gambling stories that came out during the NBA Finals in 1993? Or maybe it was all a ruse for him to try out baseball so it could all be included in the critically acclaimed and life changing movie Space Jam.

In this week's conspiracy theory episode, Matt and I tackle how Black Jesus, per Reggie Miller, retired and did it really have something to do with a NBA suspension for gambling? He had a brush with federal authorities in 1992 that made his gambling known, and then the May 24th Atlantic City visit during the Knicks game series, and then Esquinas' book. So...I mean...maybe?

For more information on Michael Jordan's father's death: https://au.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/inside-the-untold-murder-of-michael-jordans-dad-41007/

On this day in 1773...The British Parliament passed the Tea Act, a bill designed to save the faltering East India Company from bankruptcy by greatly lowering the tea tax it paid to the British government and, thus, granting it a de facto monopoly on the American tea trade. Because all legal tea entered the colonies through England, allowing the East India Company to pay lower taxes in Britain also allowed it to sell tea more cheaply in the colonies.

The British Parliamentary thought it impossible that the colonists would protest cheap tea; they were wrong. Many colonists viewed the act as yet another example of taxation tyranny, precisely because it left an earlier duty on tea entering the colonies in place, while removing the duty on tea entering England. Basically, this whole debacle paved the way for the Boston Tea Party...but not a huge party.

On this day in 1960...the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approves the world’s first commercially produced birth-control pill: Enovid-10.

Development of “the pill,” as it became popularly known, was initially commissioned by birth-control pioneer Margaret Sanger and funded by heiress Katherine McCormick. Sanger, who opened the first birth-control clinic in the United States in 1916, hoped to encourage the development of a more practical and effective alternative to contraceptives that were in use at the time. Thanks to many of the women that went through tests...many unknowingly.

On this day in 1945...V-E Day is celebrated in America and Britain. With Germany surrendering across Europe to the allies on May 8th, the fighting in Europe and Russia will stop by May 9th. Victory in Europe Day was marked across the world with celebrations.

On this day in 1896...Serial killer of Chicago H.H. Holmes is hanged-hung?- in Philadelphia. As Matt and I discussed on a previous podcast, Holmes was finally caught after attempting to use another co**se in an insurance scam. He confessed, saying, “I was born with the devil in me. I could not help the fact that I was a murderer, no more than a poet can help the inspiration to sing.”

On this day in 1937...The airship Hindenburg, the largest dirigible ever built and the pride of N**i Germany, bursts into flames upon touching its mooring mast in Lakehurst, New Jersey, killing thirteen passengers, 21 crewmen, and 1 civilian member of the ground crew--most of the survivors suffered substantial injuries. While attempting to moor at Lakehurst, the airship suddenly burst into flames, probably after a spark ignited its hydrogen core. Rapidly falling 200 feet to the ground, the hull of the airship incinerated within seconds.

Radio announcer Herb Morrison, who came to Lakehurst to record a routine voice-over for an NBC newsreel, immortalized the Hindenburg disaster in a famous on-the-scene description in which he emotionally declared, “Oh, the humanity!” The recording of Morrison’s commentary was immediately flown to New York, where it was aired as part of America’s first coast-to-coast radio news broadcast. Lighter-than-air passenger travel rapidly fell out of favor after the Hindenburg disaster, and no rigid airships survived World War II.

On this day in 1904...37-year-old Cy Young pitches the first perfect game in modern Major League Baseball history as the Boston Americans defeat the Philadelphia Athletics, 3-0.

Young, who was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1937, finished his 22-year career with an 511 career wins, 94 ahead Walter Johnson, who is second. In 1956, MLB created the Cy Young Award to honor the game's best pitcher. Starting in 1967, the award was given to the best pitchers in the National and American leagues.

On this day in history in 1979...Margaret Thatcher becomes Britain’s first female prime minister. The Oxford-educated chemist and lawyer took office the day after the Conservatives won a 44-seat majority in general parliamentary elections.

In other UK parliamentary news...on this day in 1994, A lawmaker introduces the pun “May the Fourth be with you” on the floor of U.K. Parliament. This was said by Harry Cohen, then a Member of Parliament from Leyton, an area of East London. Whether it was the origination of the now widely used pun or not is up for debate...but it's first use was met with more groans than it might be now.

On this day in history in 1954...The Supreme Court issued a momentous ruling in Hernandez v. Texas (because of course Texas.)

What exactly did this ruling by the Court say? The Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment applied to all racial and ethnic groups facing discrimination, effectively broadening civil rights laws to include Hispanics and all other non-whites.

What happened? The defendant, Peter Hernandez, was a Mexican American agricultural laborer. Hernandez was convicted of killing a man in cold blood in Jackson County, Texas. After the ruling, his legal team the League of United Latin American Citizens appealed the decision. They pored through the records of jury selections in Jackson County, an area with a substantial Hispanic population, and found that not one of the roughly 6,000 jurors selected over the previous 25 years had a Hispanic last name. Citing the Fourteenth Amendment, which had been passed in 1868 and guaranteed equal protection under the law to all African Americans, Hernandez's lawyers claimed he had been deprived of equal protection because discrimination prevented him from being tried by a jury of his peers.

On this day in history in 1933...The newspaper Inverness Courier publishes the first ever account of a Loch Ness Monster sighting. A local couple who claim to have seen “an enormous animal rolling and plunging on the surface.” The story of the “monster” (a moniker chosen by the Courier editor) becomes a media phenomenon, with London newspapers sending correspondents to Scotland and a circus offering a 20,000 pound sterling reward for capture of the beast.

On this day in history in 1915...the International Congress of Women adopts its resolutions on peace and women’s suffrage in The Hague, Netherlands. The congress, also referred to as the Women’s Peace Conference, was the result of an invitation by a Dutch women’s suffrage organization to women’s rights activists around the world. It included more than 1,200 delegates from 12 countries—including Britain, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy, Poland, Belgium and the United States.

On this day in history in 1945... Hi**er and his longtime mistress/newly wed bride Eva Braun commit su***de as the Russians and Allied forces descend upon Berlin.

Or did he? That's a conspiracy for another day.

On this day in history in 1492...Joan of Arc entered Orleans (France, duh) with troops from Charles. Within 9 days, Orleans was uner French control and the British were gone. The siege of Orleans is considered the major watershed moment of the 100 years war between France and Britain. The city held strategic and symbolic significance to both sides of the conflict. The consensus among contemporaries was that the English regent, John of Lancaster, would have succeeded in realising his brother the English king Henry V's dream of conquering all of France if Orléans fell. For half a year the English and their French allies appeared to be winning, but the siege collapsed nine days after the arrival of Joan of Arc.

On this day in 1996... Martin Bryant begins a killing spree that ends in the deaths of 35 men, women and children in the quiet town of Port Arthur in Tasmania, Australia. After being tried and found guilty, Bryant was sentenced to 35 life sentences. The aftermath of this? Australian state and territory governments placed extensive restrictions on all fi****ms, including semi-automatic centre-fire rifles, repeating shotguns (holding more than five shots) and high-capacity rifle magazines. In addition to this, limitations were also put into place on low-capacity repeating shotguns and rim-fire semi-automatic rifles. Though this resulted in stirring controversy, opposition to the new laws was overcome by media reporting of the massacre and mounting public opinion in the wake of the shootings.

On this day in 1865...The steamboat Sultana explodes on the Mississippi River near Memphis, killing 1,700 passengers including many discharged Union soldiers.

On April 25, 1865, the Sultana left New Orleans with 100 passengers. It stopped at Vicksburg, Mississippi, for repair of a leaky boiler. R. G. Taylor, the boilermaker on the ship, advised Captain J. Cass Mason that two sheets on the boiler had to be replaced, but Mason ordered Taylor to simply patch the plates until the ship reached St. Louis.

When the Sultana left Vicksburg, it carried 2,100 troops and 200 civilians, more than six times its capacity. On the evening of April 26, the ship stopped at Memphis before cruising across the river to pick up coal in Arkansas. As it steamed up the river above Memphis, a thunderous explosion tore through the boat. Metal and steam from the boilers killed hundreds, and hundreds more were thrown from the boat into the chilly waters of the river. The Mississippi was already at flood stage, and the Sultana had only one lifeboat and a few life preservers. Only 600 people survived the explosion. A board of inquiry later determined the cause to be insufficient water in the boiler–overcrowding was not listed as a cause. The Sultana accident is still the largest maritime disaster in U.S. history.