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Speaker 1: M Hey everyone, this is Chuck and welcome to Stuff

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Speaker 1: You Should Know Saturday selects. UM picking this one this

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Speaker 1: week from July twelve. Did a cow start the Great

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Speaker 1: Chicago Fire? Uh? You all know I love my history episodes,

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Speaker 1: especially those where we can set something straight that history

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Speaker 1: you might have gotten wrong um in class, at least

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Speaker 1: as a kid. And uh we talk a great length

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Speaker 1: today about the Great Chicago Fire, one of the great

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Speaker 1: tragedies in American history. UM, give it a listen, and

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Speaker 1: I hope you enjoy it. I hope you have a

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Speaker 1: great weekend. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House

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Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.

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Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck O'Brien. Uh. I

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Speaker 1: guess that makes me the cow. That's the stuff you

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Speaker 1: should know. Daisy the cow? Is that the boarding count? No,

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Speaker 1: that's Lizzie. No, they wouldn't have named the boring cow Lizzie.

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Speaker 1: That'd be bad ad marketing move. Elsie. Yeah, apparently this

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Speaker 1: cow was either Daisy, Madaline or Gwendoline. There's been different accounts. Well,

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Speaker 1: one of the counts there wasn't even hers. Who's who

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Speaker 1: are we talking about? Maybe we should clear everybody in

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Speaker 1: um Chuck, have you ever seen fire? Yes, well there

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Speaker 1: happened to be one akin to what you saw, except

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Speaker 1: there was massive as a matter of fact, Chuck, let's

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Speaker 1: go back in the way back machine. Oh yes, it's

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Speaker 1: been a while. All right, here, blow blow the dust

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Speaker 1: off flex capacitor of flexing man Jerry hated that. I

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Speaker 1: think it's still working. Let me press a couple of buttons.

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Speaker 1: Here's all right, all right, here we go in Chicago.

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Speaker 1: End of the year, Oh yeah, eighteens. Anymore, let's go

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Speaker 1: the end of the date, October eight. It's a Sunday.

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Speaker 1: Maybe we should go back on a Saturday and stop it.

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Speaker 1: I'm not supposed to do that, that's right. Contract, it's

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Speaker 1: based on continuing yet. Okay, so here we are, Chuck,

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Speaker 1: what a dump? Yeah, it smells like the death of

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Speaker 1: cows and the manure. Can't they excrete? Because Chicago is

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Speaker 1: a huge stock carreed town. If you can't tell the

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Speaker 1: World's Fair is twenty two years off, Ghostbusters is a

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Speaker 1: hundred and thirteen years away. Did you just do that

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Speaker 1: in your head that this is just like basically the

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Speaker 1: middle of nowhere? Temporally speaking, it's yeah, okay, eighteen seventy

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Speaker 1: one four mins. Eighteen seventy one is a thirteen? Okay?

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Speaker 1: Am I wrong? No? I think it's right. Okay, man,

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Speaker 1: we just had a math argument and I can't do

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Speaker 1: then cargo in the nineteenth century. You think we're throwing

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Speaker 1: darts or something. So anyway, there's there's some there's some

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Speaker 1: things I want to point out to you, Chuck. Do

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Speaker 1: you see the streets are paved with wood? Yeah, and

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Speaker 1: the sidewalk we're on is wooden. Yeah, and like the

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Speaker 1: structures around here all would everything's would. I want you

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Speaker 1: to make note of that. Also make note of the temperature.

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Speaker 1: It's October, and yet it's like in the eighties, right,

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Speaker 1: it's pretty hot and it's been really it was really

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Speaker 1: dry this summer. Dry. Do you see all this dust?

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Speaker 1: A lot of it again is dry cow manure just

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Speaker 1: kind of floating around? Um. But it's also it's because

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Speaker 1: there there hasn't been any rain at all. Okay, yeah,

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Speaker 1: are you ready again? Yeah, let's get out of here.

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Speaker 1: Is that a steak first? The milk steak? All right?

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Speaker 1: Are we back? And we're back? Okay? Okay, So Chuck, um,

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Speaker 1: that's pretty good steak. Huh yeah, nothing like a good

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Speaker 1: milk steak. So what was about to happen? And I

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Speaker 1: really do feel for these people for not being able

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Speaker 1: to stop it, especially the three hundred who are about

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Speaker 1: to die. Three hundred people will die because we were

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Speaker 1: too busy filling our faces with steak rather than warning anybody.

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Speaker 1: But that's the that's the way of history. That's right.

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Speaker 1: You can't change it. Um. What's about to happen is

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Speaker 1: what's known as the Great Chicago Fire of October eight um.

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Speaker 1: Three people will die, three point five square miles of

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Speaker 1: the city will be utterly destroyed, eighteen thousand structures. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I've got some stats here if I may please. Because

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Speaker 1: you hear about the Great Chicago Fire in the eight hundreds,

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Speaker 1: is easy now to say you're like, oh, yeah, that

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Speaker 1: was the heck of fire. But dude, it was insane

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Speaker 1: how big this fire was. I know the West Division

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Speaker 1: they were divided into two divisions back in the day.

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Speaker 1: Hundred acres burned. Uh, five buildings, two thousand, two hundred

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Speaker 1: and fifty people homeless. South Division four hundred and sixty

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Speaker 1: acres burned. Uh. This is like where all the expensive

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Speaker 1: stuff was. This is where March County seat, the courthouse,

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Speaker 1: the newspapers, the lofts, is the banks, all the good stuff.

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Speaker 1: Thirty six hundred fifty buildings, hotels, twenty one thousand people homeless.

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Speaker 1: When you say buildings, you're saying utterly destroyed, burned to

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Speaker 1: the ground, burned to the ground. UM North Division most devastating.

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Speaker 1: Four hundred and seventy acres burned out of the two thousand,

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Speaker 1: five hundred acres in that division, so almost the whole

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Speaker 1: division burned. Uh, thirteen thousand buildings burned. I'm sorry, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: thirteen thousand buildings burned, seventy four thousand homeless in total.

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Speaker 1: Because Molly, she did a good job, but she really

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Speaker 1: didn't hammer home how severe this was. In total, two

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Speaker 1: thousand one four acres burned, UM, seventeen thousand, four hundred

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Speaker 1: fifty buildings burned to the ground, and almost a hundred

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Speaker 1: thousand people, which is a third of this city. We're homeless.

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Speaker 1: And if you go and type in Google Earth Great

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Speaker 1: Chicago Fire and hit images, it has a picture of

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Speaker 1: modern day Chicago and it hasn't read what was the fire,

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Speaker 1: and it's like it looks like in the city. Wow,

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Speaker 1: that's really neat. Yeah, it's really really scary and neat

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Speaker 1: and neat. So the whole thing came to damage is

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Speaker 1: surprisingly for that much of Chicago. Um, I guess there

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Speaker 1: wasn't a lot of valuable stuff there, just a hundred

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Speaker 1: and ninety two million dollars worth of damage, which three

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Speaker 1: and a half billion. Now, oh so that's in that

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Speaker 1: that eras Yeah, okay, yeah, that's okay, that makes a

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Speaker 1: lot more sense. Um. So it was a huge fire.

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Speaker 1: It was an enormous fire. And again like three people

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Speaker 1: lost their lives. Yeah, it was. I think it's number

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Speaker 1: three all time in the US, behind World Trade Center

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Speaker 1: and um or San Francisco, San Francisco. And uh. The

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Speaker 1: crazy thing about this fire is just about every buddy

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Speaker 1: points to the same location as the source today. Back

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Speaker 1: then it was um in a barn at one three

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Speaker 1: seven to Covid Street. And that barn did happen to

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Speaker 1: belong to a woman named Mrs O'Leary, Katherine Kate O'Leary

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Speaker 1: and Mr H. Leary. Yeah. Mr and Mrs O'Leary and

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Speaker 1: their children, um lived at one seven to Covid Street.

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Speaker 1: They had a house. They rented another house to another

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Speaker 1: family that was right in front of them, and then

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Speaker 1: behind them was the barn. And in the barn they

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Speaker 1: had three cows. Three cows, yeah, no, five cows total

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Speaker 1: I think, okay, five cows I believe a calfine horse.

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Speaker 1: And then also in this barn, wooden barn, two tons

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Speaker 1: of hay and two tons of coal and apparently like

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Speaker 1: hundreds of pounds of wood shavings which they kept to

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Speaker 1: use as kindling, and their pyromaniac nephew in a straight jacket.

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Speaker 1: It was just pretty much a big accident waiting and

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Speaker 1: a halfpen. Yeah, and you meant that they owned another house.

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Speaker 1: But they were poor. They weren't like some rich family

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Speaker 1: that owned these houses. Like they were poor family. Right.

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Speaker 1: Mr O'Leary, he was a laborer. I couldn't find what

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Speaker 1: kind he was. They were definitely working class. And Mrs

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Speaker 1: O'Leary um sold her milk in the neighborhood. But they

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Speaker 1: were on welfare as I understand it. Yeah, and ridiculously

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Speaker 1: the Chicago Chicago Tribune claimed early on that one of

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Speaker 1: her motives was that she was booted off of welfare

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Speaker 1: when they found out when the city found out that

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Speaker 1: she was selling her milk and she was like, I'll

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Speaker 1: get you. I'll burn the city down right, and um,

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Speaker 1: which is starting with all my stuff? This is the

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Speaker 1: Chicago Tribune still around today, Um, the Tribune. Immediately they

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Speaker 1: pointed to the O'Leary's as the source of the fire.

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Speaker 1: It was either Mrs O'Leary or another Tribune reporter made

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Speaker 1: up the idea that it was possibly her cow. A

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Speaker 1: guy named Michael ahearn Um later confessed to just making

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Speaker 1: up the cow story. And so Mrs O'Leary cow kicking

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Speaker 1: over a lantern and setting the barn on fire that

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Speaker 1: started the Great Chicago Fire gained a lot of traction

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Speaker 1: before Um ahearn ever admitted to making it up. I

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Speaker 1: think in many years later. Apparently he was quite the

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Speaker 1: drunkard of newspaper reporter in nineteenth century Chicago is a drunkard,

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Speaker 1: so you're right. Over the years, through song and legend

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Speaker 1: and story, Mrs o leary's cow was always blamed. And

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Speaker 1: if you ask people on the street Jay Leno style,

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Speaker 1: I bet eight out of ten people would say, if

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Speaker 1: they have heard of the Great Chicago Fire, that it

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Speaker 1: was started by a a cow of some sort. And

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Speaker 1: then jay Leno's NBC lawyers would serve you with cease

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Speaker 1: and desist papers, and Jay Len will go. Um. One

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Speaker 1: of the other reasons that this cow has persisted for

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Speaker 1: so long, this cow leg And it's not just because

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Speaker 1: it's like it makes a great story, like a cow

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Speaker 1: set Chicago on fire, um, but also because they never

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Speaker 1: really figured out who the source was. Mrs o'learys just

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Speaker 1: kind of went down um in history as this as

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Speaker 1: the villainous whether it was accidental or on purpose or

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Speaker 1: at the very least the causer of the Great Chicago Fire.

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Speaker 1: It was her barn. Yeah, no matter which way slice

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Speaker 1: it right exactly. UM. And this was despite like an

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Speaker 1: exhaustive inquiry. I mean you were saying, it's an enormous fire,

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Speaker 1: Chicago burned. They did a really big investigation into this.

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Speaker 1: There was eleven hundred pages of testimony taken, all taken

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Speaker 1: by shorthand of some court stenographer took it all by hand. Um.

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Speaker 1: And they still never figured it out. But history has

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Speaker 1: shown us possibly who the culprit was. But let's talk

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Speaker 1: about UM. Let's talk about Mrs O'Leary first and why

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Speaker 1: she may or may not have been culpable. Um. She

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Speaker 1: testified that her neighbors and was it in the house

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Speaker 1: that they were renting from her and the McLaughlin's in

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Speaker 1: the house in front of hers um. She said, they

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Speaker 1: threw a big party. They're all partying, and some of

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Speaker 1: them went into my barn to get milk for milksteak

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Speaker 1: for oysters. Oysters or a punch that required milk. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: a milk punch. I looked it up. Milk punches. The thing.

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Speaker 1: It's so sugar and vanilla and bourbon and milk, which

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Speaker 1: sounds well, there's a lot of different milk punches. That

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Speaker 1: sounds disgusting. It's got the bourbon in it. Yeah, just

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Speaker 1: drink the bourbon and milk with the oysters. Sounds really disgusted. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it was really curious what that's like. But I mean oysters,

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Speaker 1: rocket feller, it's cheesy. I mean, what's cheese if not

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Speaker 1: milk at its heart? Yeah, I don't like the rocket

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Speaker 1: feller though, I'll just go raw. I like it both ways. Really,

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, do you like him fried? Um? Yeah? Only

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Speaker 1: oysters pretty much anyway, as long as they're good. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: all right, So anyway, Mrs o Leary contends that the

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Speaker 1: party or's the revelers went into her barn seeking milk

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Speaker 1: for some odd meal time or drink time. We're sitting

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Speaker 1: there milking the cow. We're like, oh, I'm so wasted exactly,

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Speaker 1: And then kicked over a lantern, right, either kicked over

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Speaker 1: a lantern or you know, it was smoking out there.

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Speaker 1: Something happened, they don't know. Um. There was another suggestion

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Speaker 1: as recently it's two thousand four, that Bila's comment split

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Speaker 1: into pieces that night, and chunks of it set fires

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Speaker 1: in various points all over the Midwest on the same night,

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Speaker 1: which is not possible. Not possible. A scientists say that

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Speaker 1: when a comment enters our atmosphere, it's not going to

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Speaker 1: be what hot enough a meteorite to set a fire, right,

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Speaker 1: it's gonna cool down too much to to be able

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Speaker 1: to set a fire by the time it makes contact

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Speaker 1: with the ground. So how do this abtraction in oh Ford?

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Speaker 1: You know, I couldn't find that fringe a big foot expert. Yeah. Um,

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Speaker 1: so those are a couple of the other theories. Um,

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Speaker 1: what about Mrs O'Leary herself. Oh well, they said that

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Speaker 1: she was out there milking the cows at night, and

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Speaker 1: she said, no, I was asleep. She was asleep with

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Speaker 1: a sore foot. And the piece of evidence that probably

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Speaker 1: exonerates her more than any other is that none of

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Speaker 1: her stuff was insured. Well, yeah, exactly like I said earlier.

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Speaker 1: Why would she burn down, especially in retribution for being

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Speaker 1: put off welfare? Why would she burn her house down,

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Speaker 1: her livelihood or livelihood down, possibly killing her her her

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Speaker 1: family cows, which is like tantamount to killing the goose

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Speaker 1: that lay the golden egg. Um. Yeah, the fact that

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Speaker 1: I wasn't insured. It doesn't matter what kind of person

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Speaker 1: she is. Right out the window, nobody is going to

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Speaker 1: do that on purpose. So at the very least she

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Speaker 1: didn't do it on purpose, correct, But she also probably

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Speaker 1: didn't do it on accident either. She probably really was

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Speaker 1: in bed with the sore foot. No one saw her.

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Speaker 1: There were no reports of any of her being around

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Speaker 1: the barn. Right, And how did Mr Leary escape all this?

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Speaker 1: I don't know. I wonder if he was at work

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Speaker 1: or something. I guess she was really strongly associated with

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Speaker 1: the cow. I mean, yeah, you always only hear about her.

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Speaker 1: Mr o Leary is just like I guess he enjoyed

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Speaker 1: his anonymity. Well she did too, just like her as

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Speaker 1: you find later on right exactly. He just didn't even

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Speaker 1: say anything. She's like, say something, what I don't want

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Speaker 1: to be in the papers? So where are we then?

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Speaker 1: So Mrs O'Leary, we're gonna go ahead and just kind

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Speaker 1: of exonerate her at this point, which officially happened in right,

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Speaker 1: there was a guy named Lewis M. Cone who went

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Speaker 1: on to Great Wealth in Chicago. Uh and later on

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Speaker 1: he after he died, somebody came forward, I think in

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Speaker 1: the forties and said, remember Lewis Cone. He told me

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Speaker 1: that when he was eighteen, he was gambling in the

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Speaker 1: O'Leary's barn with one of the O'Leary boys, which kind

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Speaker 1: of holds water because James O'Leary went on to become

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Speaker 1: one of the biggest gambling bosses in Chicago, one of

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Speaker 1: the Sun's um and we kicked over a land and

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Speaker 1: accidentally and set the set the place on fire, and

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Speaker 1: we accidentally started the Chicago Fire. Oh. This guy was

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Speaker 1: apparently kind of a boastful type, so it's possible that

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Speaker 1: he made it up. Even said I was winning at

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Speaker 1: the time, like he bragged about it. Yeah, so you've

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Speaker 1: got all these people and none of them really though,

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Speaker 1: can hold the candle. Even Mrs A Leer herself to

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Speaker 1: one Daniel peg leg Sullivan leg for a very good reason.

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Speaker 1: He had one wooden leg and then went clop clop clop.

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Speaker 1: That's right. And he testified, he testified, and it sort

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Speaker 1: of became a case of that doth protest too much, sir,

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Speaker 1: because he made up the story. We'll remember in the

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Speaker 1: lying episode. It's like when you add stuff that I

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Speaker 1: need to be in there, it's usually a pretty good sign.

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Speaker 1: And I'll bet he didn't use any contractions when he

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Speaker 1: gave his testimony. He did not. And he's like, you

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Speaker 1: want to know. I can't believe you want to know

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Speaker 1: why I was sitting on the curb in front of

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Speaker 1: someone else's You want to know, then I will tell you,

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Speaker 1: But I can't believe you want to know. In the meantime,

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Speaker 1: he's cooking this little story up. He testified that he

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Speaker 1: had gone to visit the Olearies about eight o'clock that night,

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Speaker 1: said Ms O'Leary was in bed um. Again I mentioned

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Speaker 1: Mr O'Leary at all. After the visit, he apparently start

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Speaker 1: went to go home. See this is one I don't

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Speaker 1: get it says that he started for home, but then

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Speaker 1: later it says he passed his home and to smoke

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Speaker 1: a pipe in front of house. So I'm just gonna

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Speaker 1: go have a little pipe smoke for some reason, I'm

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Speaker 1: gonna walk by my house to do it in front

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Speaker 1: of Willie White's house. Do you know why. Here's why

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Speaker 1: he said that, because that places him near enough the

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Speaker 1: fire that he could reasonably say he saw it, but

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Speaker 1: not so close to the McLaughlin's house. Like his house

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Speaker 1: was closer to the McLaughlins. You could have been like,

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Speaker 1: I didn't see you there, and I was standing right

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Speaker 1: outside looking at in front of your house. Very clever, mr,

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Speaker 1: Mr peg leg um. He claims that he spotted the

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Speaker 1: fire and ran for help, screaming fire a hundred and

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Speaker 1: ninety three ft with his peg leg um and tried

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Speaker 1: to extinguish the fire and then escaped to the burning barn,

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Speaker 1: freeing animals too. He freed the animals and he actually

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Speaker 1: did do that. Yes, so this guy was there. He was,

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Speaker 1: he was around the fire. But the problem is is

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Speaker 1: placing him on the curb in front of William White's

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Speaker 1: house has some real problem. So no one disputes that

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Speaker 1: this guy was near the fire, but exactly where that

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Speaker 1: was changes everything. So he was a pig leg pig

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Speaker 1: legged man, so he couldn't um. He couldn't run fast

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Speaker 1: and certainly not closet. No one heard anybody shouting fire

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Speaker 1: alongside the house. It's definitely not him, so he definitely

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Speaker 1: didn't um. Another problem was that he his mother kept

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Speaker 1: a cow in the O'Leary barn, and he admitted to

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Speaker 1: frequently visiting the cow in the evenings. Really yeah, okay.

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Speaker 1: And then it's also possible that another man named um

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Speaker 1: Dan Dennis Reagan was present. It was something of an

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Speaker 1: accomplice or at least a sympathetic witness to peg Leg

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Speaker 1: because he had another part of the story that didn't

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Speaker 1: quite add up. He was about a block away in

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Speaker 1: his home, ah and he testified that he heard someone

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Speaker 1: yelling fire jumped out of bed to help. But Richard Balees,

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Speaker 1: this attorney modern day attorney for a title insurance coming

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Speaker 1: in Chicago's one that dug this all up, pieced it

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Speaker 1: together and said, how would this guy block away have

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Speaker 1: heard this? And none of the other people, the aleries

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Speaker 1: especially not have heard this. Not only that he got

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Speaker 1: his hands on the property diagrams of the area at

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Speaker 1: the time and mapped it out and placed peg leg

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Speaker 1: where he said he was and showed that he would

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Speaker 1: have had to have been able to look clear through

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Speaker 1: a two story house to see the barn. There's no

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Speaker 1: way he could have seen that it was on fire

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Speaker 1: from where he said he was sitting. So the fact

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Speaker 1: that this guy confabulated all of this story suggests that

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Speaker 1: he may have done it. And probably what he did

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Speaker 1: was he was visiting his mother's cow, decided to have

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Speaker 1: a smoke afterward, and um accidentally set the barn on fire.

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Speaker 1: The lawyer Richard Bales is very understanding. He said it

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Speaker 1: was probably an accident, but that once he saw that

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Speaker 1: he pretty much burned a third of the city of

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Speaker 1: Chicago down. Um, he just kind of kept his mouth

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Speaker 1: shut and let Mrs O'Leary take the full Yeah, once

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Speaker 1: that rumor circulated, I'm sure he was like, yeah, that's

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Speaker 1: how it went down, Alright. I was there, So I

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Speaker 1: think I feel bad for the guy. He's there, probably

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Speaker 1: starts his fire, probably gets out of hand and freaks out,

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Speaker 1: and the animals first kind soul and uh, in the end,

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Speaker 1: they couldn't put out the fire for some of the

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Speaker 1: reasons you talked about earlier. All the wood, Um, the dryness.

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Speaker 1: There was a strong wind. Did you notice the strong

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Speaker 1: wind when we visited Chicago. I don't know if they did,

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Speaker 1: but it was strong, josh Um, fifty six miles a

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Speaker 1: wooden street eats five d sixty miles of wooden sidewalks

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Speaker 1: and only about two firemen in the whole city. That

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Speaker 1: was about a sixteen acre fire. The night before that

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Speaker 1: they had put out, and well it had started the

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Speaker 1: they had fought it all through the night before and

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Speaker 1: into the Sunday afternoon. So most of these guys hadn't

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Speaker 1: like eaten or slept, and the fire the fire brigade

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Speaker 1: damaged their equipment in some cases. Um. Then some of

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Speaker 1: the fire engines went to the wrong address to begin with. Right,

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Speaker 1: there was a guy whose job it was to look

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Speaker 1: out for fires, like he sat in a basically a

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Speaker 1: crows nest in the courthouse fire watcher. You're right, and um,

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Speaker 1: he didn't see it for a while. He finally did,

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Speaker 1: but he picked the wrong department to activate. Yeah, like

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Speaker 1: the wrong like little segment that he was supposed to guess.

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Speaker 1: And so some people went to the wrong place first,

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Speaker 1: and it took a little while to correct it, so

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Speaker 1: there's some confusion. So that happened too. And then apparently

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Speaker 1: the fire destroyed the building that housed the water pumps

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Speaker 1: for the city, and then they tried to get water

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Speaker 1: from Lake Michigan and that didn't work out so well.

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Speaker 1: And uh, all these things added up to the third

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Speaker 1: biggest fire disaster in the nation's history. And like you said,

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Speaker 1: the longhead idea of connecting the the wooden buildings with

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Speaker 1: wooden streets and wooden sidewalks that I think fell out

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Speaker 1: of fashion pretty quick after the Chicago fire, I bet,

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Speaker 1: and people smoking on the streets, and well that probably

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Speaker 1: involved keeping two tons of hay and two tons of coal.

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Speaker 1: And apparently it burned what through the following evening and

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Speaker 1: then thankfully it finally rained and that helped put it out.

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Speaker 1: And that is a great Chicago fire. You want to

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Speaker 1: hear in irony of it all, I'd love to The

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Speaker 1: O'Leary house was spared, no way, it was not burned,

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Speaker 1: So it just took off in one direction and from

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Speaker 1: the from the barn and now um, the O'Leary's house,

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Speaker 1: the house they ran to the mclaucklin's William White's house.

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Speaker 1: All this stuff is gone, and uh, in its places

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Speaker 1: the Chicago Fire Department's training academy and they have a

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Speaker 1: Maltese crossed on the floor. Um, they have a cross

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Speaker 1: on the floor. Uh, that marks the spot where the

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Speaker 1: barn stood. I thought you're gonna say, like a CBS. No, No,

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Speaker 1: it's very appropriately it's the fire department. Did they do

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Speaker 1: that there on purpose? I believe so. Okay, that would

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Speaker 1: have just been too much of a coincidence exactly. And

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Speaker 1: then Mrs O'Leary really did not like the well, she

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Speaker 1: didn't like the limelight. I get the impression anyway, but

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Speaker 1: she really didn't like being, you know, treated like this

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Speaker 1: horrible person. And she was not shy about taking a

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Speaker 1: broom to people like reporters who came to her doorstep.

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Speaker 1: And um, she also chased off a representative of P. T.

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Speaker 1: Barnum's at least sent somebody to go offer a job

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Speaker 1: traveling with this circus like the Scapegoat. I guess yeah,

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Speaker 1: they would bring out a cow and her and oh no,

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Speaker 1: we forgot to mention she had a pretty healthy beard.

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Speaker 1: Would It's like, man, he's in the wrong line of work. Um, yeah,

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Speaker 1: it would have gone right up with the fire. Her

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Speaker 1: house is spare bitter beard burned off. Yeah, that's good.

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Speaker 1: So yeah that's the Chicago fire. Um you said she

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Speaker 1: was exonerated, right, Yeah, she was exonerated. Richard Bale's worth

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Speaker 1: and Um I had something else. Oh, I think it's

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Speaker 1: just remarkable that did you have the number of three

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Speaker 1: hundred people died. I've seen varying accounts, but that's the

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Speaker 1: max that I've heard. And it's just amazing that that

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Speaker 1: much of the city burned in eighteen thousand. Eighteen thousand

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Speaker 1: buildings burned down. Like you hear about a fire today

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Speaker 1: that hits like three buildings on a block in a city,

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Speaker 1: it's a huge deal. Um, I'm surprised only three people died.

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Speaker 1: It's pretty remarkable and that's a lot. But I'm surprised

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Speaker 1: that it wasn't, you know, like five thousand people. They

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Speaker 1: always say God loves Chicago. Yeah, except when it comes

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Speaker 1: to the Cubs. Yeah, that's true. Uh. If you want

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Speaker 1: to learn more about Mrs O'Leary, her cow, the Great

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Speaker 1: Chicago Fire, fires in general, anything, you can type whatever

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Speaker 1: you want into the search bar. How stuff works dot com,

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Speaker 1: I said, search bar, and that is time for listener mail.

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Speaker 1: But first, mm okay, listener mail, Josh, I'm gonna call

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Speaker 1: this a fish called ganja. You're getting pretty good today

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Speaker 1: with them. I appreciate that. Hey, guys, I'm a tender

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Speaker 1: of bar in the Para city of New York and

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Speaker 1: one of my regulars turned me onto your podcast if

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Speaker 1: You short months ago. He even gave the guy's name.

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00:26:05,880 --> 00:26:07,720
Speaker 1: But in the interview, it's a funny when they put

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00:26:07,720 --> 00:26:10,199
Speaker 1: it like that, like, hey, man, turned me onto that podcast,

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00:26:10,760 --> 00:26:14,679
Speaker 1: like in a backga. Since then, I've been playing catchup

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00:26:14,680 --> 00:26:16,320
Speaker 1: and listening to as many episodes as I can on

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00:26:16,359 --> 00:26:18,840
Speaker 1: a daily basis to quench my thirst for knowledge. I

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00:26:18,840 --> 00:26:21,440
Speaker 1: currently lived near Philly with my wife a new daughter,

429
00:26:22,080 --> 00:26:24,359
Speaker 1: but I sling drinks in New York. Before I had

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00:26:24,400 --> 00:26:26,880
Speaker 1: been turned onto 'all, I dreaded my two hour commute.

431
00:26:27,080 --> 00:26:29,119
Speaker 1: Now I look forward to it and have managed to

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00:26:29,160 --> 00:26:34,520
Speaker 1: listen to a hundred and ninety two episodes some dedication

433
00:26:34,560 --> 00:26:37,600
Speaker 1: that's hardcore. Uh. Several years ago, my uncle decided to

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00:26:37,600 --> 00:26:40,679
Speaker 1: purchase a new saltwater aquarium and ended up purchasing an

435
00:26:40,800 --> 00:26:43,520
Speaker 1: enormous one hundred and fifty gallon unit. He bought the

436
00:26:43,520 --> 00:26:46,560
Speaker 1: tank online from a reputable website, but to save money,

437
00:26:46,560 --> 00:26:49,960
Speaker 1: he purchased most of the accoucher malts, including lighting, fish,

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00:26:50,000 --> 00:26:52,600
Speaker 1: coral and plant light, from a local pet store. This

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00:26:52,640 --> 00:26:54,640
Speaker 1: is where it gets good, because the lighting he purchased

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00:26:54,680 --> 00:26:57,480
Speaker 1: was a special type of lamp, also very commonly used

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00:26:57,480 --> 00:27:00,320
Speaker 1: in grow houses. You must have been flat by the

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00:27:00,400 --> 00:27:03,119
Speaker 1: d A at the moment of sale, because about a

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00:27:03,119 --> 00:27:05,639
Speaker 1: month later after the tank was finished, on a Tuesday evening,

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00:27:06,200 --> 00:27:09,000
Speaker 1: my uncle, my aunt, and three cousins, all under the

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00:27:09,000 --> 00:27:12,200
Speaker 1: age of seven, we're sitting down to dinner. In an instant,

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00:27:12,280 --> 00:27:15,040
Speaker 1: six fully armed d e A agents burst into the house,

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00:27:15,680 --> 00:27:19,320
Speaker 1: including the front door, back door, and from the garage,

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00:27:19,480 --> 00:27:22,560
Speaker 1: and proceeded to scream things along the lines of on

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00:27:22,640 --> 00:27:25,919
Speaker 1: the floor, hands behind your head. They even held my

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00:27:26,160 --> 00:27:28,560
Speaker 1: aunt and uncle at gunpoint while they looked around the house.

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00:27:29,080 --> 00:27:31,919
Speaker 1: After searching from top to bottom, realizing they made a

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00:27:32,000 --> 00:27:35,639
Speaker 1: huge mistake, they calmly apologized and left. I'm not a

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00:27:35,680 --> 00:27:38,199
Speaker 1: hundred per cent sure if the lawyers were involved, but

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00:27:38,280 --> 00:27:41,240
Speaker 1: I believe my family received a handsome compensation for the mistake,

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00:27:42,040 --> 00:27:44,880
Speaker 1: and that it's from Ben the bartender and he has

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00:27:44,920 --> 00:27:47,159
Speaker 1: a hook up for us in New York if we

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00:27:47,200 --> 00:27:49,840
Speaker 1: want to have an event at a bar hanging on

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00:27:49,840 --> 00:27:51,840
Speaker 1: to Betty. No man to do that again, sintimes. I

459
00:27:51,880 --> 00:27:53,560
Speaker 1: know we miss you New York. All of our work

460
00:27:53,600 --> 00:28:00,760
Speaker 1: travel has been on the West Coast, Um and certain others. Yeah,

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00:28:01,680 --> 00:28:05,639
Speaker 1: uh so, let's see what else? What I can't top

462
00:28:05,720 --> 00:28:10,600
Speaker 1: that I can't send? Send your other misinformed d A stories.

463
00:28:10,800 --> 00:28:14,600
Speaker 1: How about any anyone that has any Chicago fire like

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00:28:14,640 --> 00:28:18,720
Speaker 1: I always wondered about the olearies if their family line continue. Yeah, so,

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00:28:19,359 --> 00:28:22,720
Speaker 1: if you have any family members that had anything to

466
00:28:22,720 --> 00:28:24,520
Speaker 1: do with the Chicago fire, we'd have to know about it.

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00:28:24,560 --> 00:28:26,919
Speaker 1: I don't even know why I'm here anymore. Did you

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00:28:27,040 --> 00:28:35,360
Speaker 1: just take a chuck for more on this and thousands

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00:28:35,359 --> 00:28:45,160
Speaker 1: of other topics? Does it how stuff works dot com