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Speaker 1: Hey, they're history fans. We're taking the day off, but

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Speaker 1: don't worry. We've got plenty of classic shows to tide

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Speaker 1: you over. Please enjoy these flashback episodes from the TDI

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Speaker 1: HC Vault. Hello, and welcome to This Day in History Class,

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Speaker 1: a show that resurrects the past one day at a time.

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Speaker 1: I'm Gabe Lucier, and today we're talking about how zombies

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Speaker 1: first shambled their way onto the big screen and how

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Speaker 1: they've since taken on new life as the embodiment of inhumanity.

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Speaker 1: The day was July twenty eighth, nineteen thirty two. The

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Speaker 1: pre code horror film White Zombie premiered at the Rivoli

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Speaker 1: Theater in New York City. It's now considered to be

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Speaker 1: the first feat tature length zombie movie ever made, though

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Speaker 1: its titular monster isn't a flesh eating fiend like the

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Speaker 1: zombies were used to today. Rather than being the result of

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Speaker 1: a toxic event or virus, the zombies in this film

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Speaker 1: are the product of Haitian voodoo, or at least Hollywood's

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Speaker 1: crude interpretation of it. Technically, they are reanimated corpses, just

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Speaker 1: like modern zombies, but they aren't rotting or gory, and

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Speaker 1: they aren't driven by an all consuming hunger for brains.

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Speaker 1: The Living Dead and White Zombie are victims, not villains,

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Speaker 1: and any acts of violence they commit are performed unwillingly

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Speaker 1: and always at the direction of their master, the man

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Speaker 1: who stripped them of their agency, and the true monster

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Speaker 1: of the film. The kind of zombie folklore depicted in

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Speaker 1: White Zombie can be traced back to the seventeenth century,

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Speaker 1: when hundreds of thousands of West African people were enslaved

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Speaker 1: and forced to work on sugarcane plantations in what is

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Speaker 1: now Haiti. The religion of Voodoo spelled v O do

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Speaker 1: o u was created by those enslaved Africans, and it

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Speaker 1: featured borrowed elements from a wide range of West African traditions.

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Speaker 1: In fact, the word zombie may derive from any number

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Speaker 1: of West African languages. For example, the Mitsogo word for

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Speaker 1: corpse is nazombie, and the Congo word for spirit or

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Speaker 1: ghost is nozombie. That said, the zombie of Voodoo was

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Speaker 1: a creation altogether different. It was most often depicted as

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Speaker 1: a soulless human shell, a corpse that had been revived

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Speaker 1: by a potion or some other form of enchantment and

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Speaker 1: then compelled forevermore to do the bidding of its master.

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Speaker 1: The idea of zombies was clearly rooted in the real

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Speaker 1: life horrors of enslavement. The cruel conditions of their existence

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Speaker 1: led voodoo practitioners to imagine a fate worse than death,

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Speaker 1: one in which their bondage would continue even beyond the grave.

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Speaker 1: The mythology of zombies went mainstream in the early twentieth

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Speaker 1: century thanks to the US invasion and occupation of Haiti.

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Speaker 1: American soldiers, travelers, and explorers brought back vivid accounts of

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Speaker 1: voodoo rituals, many of which were based on misconceptions and

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Speaker 1: racial stereotypes. These tall tales peaked the public's interest in

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Speaker 1: all aspects of voodoo, but particularly in zombies. The theme

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Speaker 1: appeared in several notable works of the era, including William

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Speaker 1: seabrooks nineteen twenty nine travelog The Magic Island, and in

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Speaker 1: Kenneth Webb's nineteen thirty two Broadway play Zombie. Those works

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Speaker 1: also served as the direct inspiration for the first film

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Speaker 1: to bring zombies to the silver screen, nineteen thirty two's

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Speaker 1: White Zombie. The low budget film was independently produced by

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Speaker 1: Edward Hies Alprin and directed by his brother Victor Alprin.

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Speaker 1: It starred horror icon Bella Lugosi, fresh off his star

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Speaker 1: turn in Dracula, which had been released by Universal Studios

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Speaker 1: the previous year. Some of the scenes in White Zombie

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Speaker 1: were even shot on the same sets as Dracula and Frankenstein,

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Speaker 1: and Legosi's character bears more than a passing resemblance to

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Speaker 1: the famous vampire, both in his appearance and in his powers.

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Speaker 1: The story of the film follows a young couple, Madeline

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Speaker 1: and Neil, as they arrive in US occupied Haiti, where

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Speaker 1: they're set to be married. The following day, they travel

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Speaker 1: to their lodgings at the estate of a lonely white landowner,

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Speaker 1: Charles Beaumont, who quickly becomes infatuated with Madeline. Later that night,

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Speaker 1: Beaumont seeks the advice of Monsieur le Gendre, a fellow

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Speaker 1: plantation owner known to the locals as Murder. It's quickly

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Speaker 1: revealed that le Gendere's sugar mill is operated day and

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Speaker 1: night by a zombie workforce, men whom he killed and

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Speaker 1: brought back to life through voodoo. Le Gendarre offers the

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Speaker 1: same dark service to Beaumont, pledging to raise Madeline from

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Speaker 1: the dead as his eternal love slave, provided that Beaumont

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Speaker 1: slips her the deadly potion himself. He refuses at first,

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Speaker 1: but ultimately takes the deal and poisons the woman he

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Speaker 1: supposedly loves. However, once her zombification is complete, Beaumont discovers

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Speaker 1: it's tough to have a fulfilling relationship with a soulss husk.

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Speaker 1: I thought beauty alone would satisfy, he laments, but the

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Speaker 1: soul is gone, and I can't bear those empty, staring eyes.

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Speaker 1: Beaumont begs le Gendare to restore Madeleine's humanity, but he

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Speaker 1: winds up being tricked into becoming a zombie himself instead.

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Speaker 1: At just over an hour, the film concludes rather abruptly,

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Speaker 1: with good triumphing over evil. The young couple are reunited

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Speaker 1: through Beaumont's sacric and le Gender meets a grizzly end

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Speaker 1: plunging off a cliff alongside his zombie horde. The movie's

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Speaker 1: chilling plot and moody atmosphere won over audiences and made

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Speaker 1: a good bit of money for its independent producers. Critics, however,

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Speaker 1: were less impressed. They thought the story was ridiculous, and

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Speaker 1: complained that the acting style and set design were better

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Speaker 1: suited to a silent film than a state of the

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Speaker 1: art talkie. Hollywood took note of the tepid response to

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Speaker 1: White Zombie, and as a result, zombies and voodoo only

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Speaker 1: appeared in a handful of films throughout the nineteen thirties,

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Speaker 1: including in Halperin's unsuccessful sequel Revolt of the Zombies. Other

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Speaker 1: zombie movies were made in the decades that followed, but

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Speaker 1: all of them more or less followed the basic rules

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Speaker 1: established by White Zombie. They were set in exotic tropical locales,

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Speaker 1: prominently featured black actors as zombies, and involved some kind

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Speaker 1: of supernatural voodoo. In all of those cases, the zombies

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Speaker 1: themselves were only a threat when ordered to kill by

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Speaker 1: their masters, and even in those cases, they never once

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Speaker 1: ate a brain. But then George Romero came along. His

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Speaker 1: nineteen sixty eight classic Knight of the Living Dead is

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Speaker 1: considered the birthplace of the modern zombie, even though the

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Speaker 1: film never once uses the Z word. In fact, the

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Speaker 1: director referred to the film's undead creatures as ghouls, not zombies,

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Speaker 1: and that makes sense when you think about it. Because

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Speaker 1: they really didn't fit the mold of zombies up to

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Speaker 1: that point. They weren't confined to the Caribbean, restored to

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Speaker 1: life by voodoo, or commanded to kill by a master.

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Speaker 1: Romero's ghouls were instead driven by their own relentless hunger,

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Speaker 1: which they sought to satisfy by eating the flesh of

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Speaker 1: the living That said, George Romero did eventually embrace the

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Speaker 1: term zombie, and in doing so, he redefined what it meant.

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Speaker 1: Although not completely released at the tail end the civil

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Speaker 1: rights movement, Knight of the Living Dead provided an unexpected

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Speaker 1: exploration of racial tensions in America. The lead character Ben

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Speaker 1: was portrayed by a black actor named Dwyane Jones. He

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Speaker 1: spends most of the movie hold up in a farmhouse

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Speaker 1: with a group of white strangers, and after skillfully warding

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Speaker 1: off wave after wave of undead attackers, he dies in

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Speaker 1: the film's final moments, But in a shocking twist, it's

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Speaker 1: not the bite of a zombie that does Ben in

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Speaker 1: it's the bullet of a white sheriff, one of the

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Speaker 1: very men meant to save him. Although likely unintentional, the

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Speaker 1: subversive ending hearkens back to a theme present in White

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Speaker 1: zombie more than thirty years earlier. In that film, the

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Speaker 1: black locals who have been zombified aren't the real threat

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Speaker 1: to the film's protagonists. Le Gender is the true monster,

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Speaker 1: the colonial invader who stole the lives of indigenous people

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Speaker 1: and consigned them to eternal labor. In that way, both

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Speaker 1: films suggest that supernatural evil may not be the most

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Speaker 1: insidious threat that mankind faces. Our own inhumanity toward one

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Speaker 1: another can be just as destructive, if not more so.

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Speaker 1: I'm Gabe Lucier and hopefully you now know a little

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Speaker 1: more about movie history today than you did yesterday. You

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Speaker 1: can learn even more about history by following us on Twitter, Facebook,

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Speaker 1: and Instagram at TDI HC Show, and if you have

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Speaker 1: any comments or suggestions, feel free to pass them along

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Speaker 1: by writing to this Day at iHeartMedia dot com. Thanks

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Speaker 1: to Chandler Mays for producing the show, and thanks to

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Speaker 1: you for listening. I'll see you back here again soon

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Speaker 1: for another Day in History Class. Hello and welcomed this

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Speaker 1: Day in History Class, a show that tallies the winds

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Speaker 1: and losses of everyday history. I'm Gabelusier, and today we're

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Speaker 1: looking at a key victory in the Anglo Spanish War,

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Speaker 1: one that helped establish England as a world power and

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Speaker 1: that forever changed the shape of naval warfare. The day

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Speaker 1: was July twenty ninth, fifteen eighty eight. The Spanish armada

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Speaker 1: was defeated by an English naval force off the coast

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Speaker 1: of Graveley in France. Two months earlier, King Philip the

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Speaker 1: Second of Spain had dispatched his sizeable fleet as part

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Speaker 1: of a plan to invade and conquer England. Things went

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Speaker 1: awry when bad weather forced the armada back to Spain,

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Speaker 1: giving England plenty of time to prepare for the impending attack.

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Speaker 1: When the Spanish fleet was finally sighted off the coast

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Speaker 1: of Cornwall on July nineteenth, they were greeted by a

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Speaker 1: heavily armed English navy led by Lord Charles Howard and

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Speaker 1: Sir Francis Drake. Two days later, they began bombarding the

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Speaker 1: Spanish ships from a distance, eventually chasing them up the

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Speaker 1: English Channel to the coast of Calais, France. It was

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Speaker 1: there that the English pressed their advantage by launching a

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Speaker 1: surprise attack in the early hours of July twenty ninth.

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Speaker 1: The battle lasted eight hours, but when the smoke cleared,

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Speaker 1: England stood victorious, and the Spanish armada, once thought invincible,

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Speaker 1: was forced to retreat in shame. Spain had been on

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Speaker 1: much friendlier terms with England during the reign of Queen

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Speaker 1: Mary the First. For starters, she was married to Spain's

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Speaker 1: King Philip the Second. But more importantly to Spain, at least,

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Speaker 1: Mary had restored Catholicism to her otherwise Protestant country. She

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Speaker 1: spilled a lot of blood in pursuit of that goal,

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Speaker 1: though prompting many of her own subjects to dub her

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Speaker 1: Bloody Mary. Her brutal reign ended with her death in

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Speaker 1: fifteen fifty eight, and she was succeeded by her younger

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Speaker 1: half sister, Elizabeth the First. Although King Philip was technically

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Speaker 1: her brother in law, he still extended a marriage offer

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Speaker 1: to the new Queen, though understandably she refused, and just

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Speaker 1: in case that rejection didn't sting badly enough, Elizabeth also

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Speaker 1: reimposed Protestantism in England. Philip considered this heresy, and relations

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Speaker 1: between Spain and England soured quickly from there. Three decades later,

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Speaker 1: war still hadn't been formally declared, but Philip was ready

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Speaker 1: to attack all the same By that time, English raids

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Speaker 1: had become a serious hindrance to his country's trade, and

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Speaker 1: if that were bad enough, England was also jeopardizing Spain's foothold.

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Speaker 1: In the Netherlands. Protestant Dutch rebels had begun to fight

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Speaker 1: back against Spanish occupation, and Queen Elizabeth offered support to

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Speaker 1: that rebellion. Fed up with England's interference, King Philip began

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Speaker 1: building a vast fleet of ships and making preparations to

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Speaker 1: launch a full scale invasion. He was supported in this

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Speaker 1: effort by Pope Sixtus the Fifth, who hoped to restore

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Speaker 1: Catholicism and the power of Rome to England. The Spanish

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Speaker 1: Armada was completed by the fall of fifteen eighty seven,

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Speaker 1: but its departure had to be delayed until the following

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Speaker 1: year after Sir Francis Drake led a crippling raid on

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Speaker 1: the fleet's supplies. It was an infuriating setback, one that

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Speaker 1: only stoked Spain's resolve for the invasion at last. On

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Speaker 1: May nineteenth, fifteen eighty eight, the one hundred and thirty

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Speaker 1: ship Spanish fleet set sail from Lisbon, Portugal. It was

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Speaker 1: armed with twenty five hundred guns and carried roughly twenty

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Speaker 1: eight thousand soldiers and crew. The plan was to seize

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Speaker 1: control of Flanders on the border of the English Channel,

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Speaker 1: and then ferry troops across to the Kent coast to

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Speaker 1: launch an overland assault on London. Unfortunately for the Spanish,

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Speaker 1: the weather didn't cooperate. Powerful storms routed the fleet back

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Speaker 1: to Spain and they weren't able to set out again

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Speaker 1: for several weeks. By the time they finally reached the

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Speaker 1: southern coast of England on July nineteenth, the English Navy

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Speaker 1: was ready for them. The English fleet was composed of

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Speaker 1: about two hundred ships and was commanded by Lord Charles

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Speaker 1: Howard aboard the Ark Royal and by Sir Francis Drake

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Speaker 1: aboard the Revenge. The commanders lit beacons to alert their

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Speaker 1: countrymen to the seven mile long line of ships headed

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Speaker 1: their way, and once the armada had sailed a little closer,

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Speaker 1: they began firing their long range heavy guns to halt

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Speaker 1: the advance. Over the next few two days, a handful

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Speaker 1: of Spanish ships were sunk by the cannon fire, but

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Speaker 1: the majority continued to push their way up the English Channel,

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Speaker 1: pursued all the while by Howard's fleet. After about a

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Speaker 1: week of minor skirmishes, the Armada anchored in the harbor

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Speaker 1: of Calais, France, to wait for reinforcements from the Spanish Netherlands.

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Speaker 1: The invasion was beginning to look like a lost cause, though.

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Speaker 1: Even if the extra troops were able to reach the

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Speaker 1: Spanish ships before the British caught up with them, they

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Speaker 1: hadn't secured the English Channel, which meant safely crossing to

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Speaker 1: England was virtually impossible. The Spanish fleet was slower and

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Speaker 1: less heavily armed than their opponents. That's largely because Spain

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Speaker 1: was still taking a traditional approach to naval warfare, preferring

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Speaker 1: to attack by sailing up alongside an enemy vessel, boarding it,

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Speaker 1: and then seizing control through close quarter combat. The Spanish

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Speaker 1: infantry was well trained in this offensive tactic, and if

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Speaker 1: the British hadn't kept them at bay with their long

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Speaker 1: regne fire, they likely would have gotten the upper hand.

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Speaker 1: It was in England's best interest, then, to not give

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Speaker 1: Spain the opening to launch that kind of boarding attack,

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Speaker 1: and so shortly after midnight on July twenty ninth, fifteen

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Speaker 1: eighty eight, the English decided to take advantage of their

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Speaker 1: enemy's exposed position, they took eight of their oldest ships,

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Speaker 1: loaded them with anything and everything that would burn, and

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Speaker 1: then directed the burning ships straight toward the harbor at Calais.

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Speaker 1: The sight of the flaming ships sparked a panic among

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Speaker 1: the Spanish. They immediately cut their anchors and sailed out

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Speaker 1: to sea, completely breaking their defensive formation in the process.

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Speaker 1: At dawn, the English caught up to the splintered Armada

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Speaker 1: off the coast of Gravelin and began bombarding them with

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Speaker 1: cannon fire all over again. Eight hours later, and the

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Speaker 1: Spanish were finally ready to call it quits. Their invasion

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Speaker 1: of England had been a total bust, and their trip

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Speaker 1: back to Spain wouldn't be any easier. The fastest route

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Speaker 1: to Spain was blocked by the British, so the Armada

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Speaker 1: had to retreat up toward the North Sea instead. From

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Speaker 1: there they hoped to take the long way home by

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Speaker 1: sailing around Scotland and Ireland. That arduous journey wound up

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Speaker 1: taking the better part of three months, and along the

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Speaker 1: way the Spanish fleet was decimated both by storms and

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Speaker 1: by a lack of vital supplies. In the end, Spain

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Speaker 1: lost half of its one hundred and thirty ship fleet

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Speaker 1: in its failed invasion, along with more than fifteen thousand men.

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Speaker 1: It was a decisive victory for Queen Elizabeth, for England

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Speaker 1: and for the Protestant faith. The Battle of Gravelin also

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Speaker 1: marked a turning point in naval warfare, putting an end

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Speaker 1: to the old method of boarding and taking over ships

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Speaker 1: in favor of just blasting them out of the water

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Speaker 1: from long range. That shift in tactics cast doubt on

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Speaker 1: Spain's ambitions for world conquests, hearing the path for the

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Speaker 1: British to give it a try themselves. I'm Gabelucier and

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Speaker 1: hopefully you now know a little more about history today

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Speaker 1: than you did yesterday. If you have a second and

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Speaker 1: feedback you'd like to share, feel free to send it

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Speaker 1: my way at this day at iHeartMedia dot com. Thanks

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Speaker 1: to Chandler Mays for producing the show, and thank you

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Speaker 1: for listening. I'll see you back here again soon for

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Speaker 1: another Day in History. Class