Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to you Stuff you should
Speaker 1: Know from house Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome
Speaker 1: to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me is Charles W.
Speaker 1: Chuff Bryant and uh, you've got stuff you should know
Speaker 1: on guard. Yeah, it's too shame it means a touch
Speaker 1: and friends. I thought this was one of the funniest
Speaker 1: openings of an article ever. By the way, did you
Speaker 1: like it? I thought that very first part was hysterical
Speaker 1: when I read it. Well, you know what, it just
Speaker 1: so happens. I don't have an intro for this one,
Speaker 1: so I think you might want to read it. Should
Speaker 1: we just read it? Yeah? Ed Grabanowski never lets us down.
Speaker 1: He's good the Grabster h This is how duels work.
Speaker 1: Ladies and gentlemen. Pistols at dawn. The challenge is issued.
Speaker 1: To turn it down would leave you marked as a
Speaker 1: coward for life. You meet at the chosen spot, facing
Speaker 1: your opponent at a distance of twenty paces. You're dueling.
Speaker 1: Pistols are loaded. One or both of you could be
Speaker 1: severely wounded or killed. Today doctors are standing by them
Speaker 1: in the damage if possible, while your friends eye each
Speaker 1: other warily. Why is this all happening because you made
Speaker 1: fun of his hat? So good? That is about right too,
Speaker 1: if we find out and the rest of the article, Yeah,
Speaker 1: well done, Grabster. It's not much of an exaggeration. Apparently,
Speaker 1: throughout the history of people or ever since, we've had
Speaker 1: swords at least um men have challenged other men to
Speaker 1: duels and other people have died as the result. You know,
Speaker 1: I thought this is a great article. Um, I thought
Speaker 1: so too. This is definitely something I knew like virtually
Speaker 1: nothing about. Yeah, officially, me too. But I did find
Speaker 1: out that things like uh while West duels shootouts very
Speaker 1: very close to reality. Sure, they apparently happened to coincide
Speaker 1: at a time when dueling was very popular in America,
Speaker 1: and this kind of all it was. It was the
Speaker 1: Old West version of Pistols at Dawn and um. As
Speaker 1: an aside, probably the best dueling movie of all time,
Speaker 1: The Quicken the Dead, The Quicken the Dead. It's exactly right.
Speaker 1: If you have not seen that, pause, pause this podcast,
Speaker 1: get off your treadmill, put your ice cream down, whatever
Speaker 1: you're doing, go watch The Quicken the Dead. And then
Speaker 1: come back and resume this podcast. Yeah. You know, what
Speaker 1: I always appreciate about that movie was that there were
Speaker 1: how many how many quick draw shootouts? Like, let's say
Speaker 1: they were ten in the movie. Each one of them
Speaker 1: was different. He filmed him different and had a different
Speaker 1: feel Like. I just thought that was so creative, like
Speaker 1: each one had its own little flavor. That's our Sam Raymie.
Speaker 1: He's so good man. I love that movie. Um, he's
Speaker 1: got something new coming out, doesn't he? Mr Hollywood guy?
Speaker 1: Come on, he's got something coming He's not doing the
Speaker 1: New Spider Man. What's uh? I don't know. I think
Speaker 1: he might be working on another Evil Dead, like a
Speaker 1: modern remake the uptake, or he might just be producing that.
Speaker 1: If he does that, then'll be the second time he's
Speaker 1: remade The Evil Dead, and Well Dead two is a
Speaker 1: remake of the Evil Dad. Yeah pretty much? Okay, Um,
Speaker 1: so Chuck. A duel for anybody who doesn't know, is
Speaker 1: basically a one on one battle, as is evidenced by
Speaker 1: the etomology and apparently we said entomology before. I don't
Speaker 1: know that. I don't like some eleven year old kid
Speaker 1: called us out on that. I think he might have
Speaker 1: misertus because I definitely know the difference between etomology and entomology.
Speaker 1: Etomology etomology of the word duel is um. I think
Speaker 1: Latin right, duello, I'm sorry, dwell um, which is a
Speaker 1: contraction of a duo too and bellum war obviously antebellum
Speaker 1: pre war. Okay, I never realized that, huh, okay, But
Speaker 1: duo too. It's basically a war between two individuals is
Speaker 1: a duel um and it's been around for quite a
Speaker 1: long time. Um, I guess we should probably just get
Speaker 1: to the get to the meat of it first. Let's
Speaker 1: let's talk about duels and then we'll talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about the history. Let's just throw down the gauntlet.
Speaker 1: So somebody does throw down the gauntlet, and a gauntlet
Speaker 1: is a glove. And when you throw down a gauntlet
Speaker 1: at the feet of somebody that was at the height
Speaker 1: of dueling, um enough to issue a challenge you and
Speaker 1: I are going to try to kill one another for
Speaker 1: a little bit. Were not necessarily we'll get to that. Um.
Speaker 1: When you went to a duel, you had a second
Speaker 1: which basically was the guy who came along a friend,
Speaker 1: a trusted individual. Uh. It was it was like the
Speaker 1: best man at your death. He was there to like
Speaker 1: help you prepare your firearms or your sword. Um. He
Speaker 1: was there to basically make sure you weren't ambushed. Um.
Speaker 1: He was supposedly a neutral third party, a second um.
Speaker 1: Supposedly uh and uh. Supposedly we would try to talk
Speaker 1: talk it down and diffuse it. That was the first
Speaker 1: role of the second But I don't know how much
Speaker 1: I buy that. And Ed even points out, like more
Speaker 1: times than not, the second way to actually fight the
Speaker 1: other second and sometimes there was third and force that
Speaker 1: would fight the other third en force. And that's I
Speaker 1: looked at this as it's the same as like a
Speaker 1: bar fight today. There's always usually like a friend nearby
Speaker 1: that's you know, he's got your back, but it's really
Speaker 1: between you and that jerk. But if things get out
Speaker 1: of hand, he like gets a beer bottle all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, then you get involved and his friend gets involved.
Speaker 1: So it's sort of like that. I think, Yeah, if
Speaker 1: he tries to get in the middle of the two things,
Speaker 1: he ends up like River Phoenix at the end of
Speaker 1: stand by Me and takes a knife to the neck
Speaker 1: and dies in a bar that was so sad satis
Speaker 1: ending a River Phoenix character. Let's say, since he really died,
Speaker 1: then that's we should point that out. He had a
Speaker 1: sad ending in real life as well. Um, So Chuck.
Speaker 1: When you declared duel, you could use any weapon, but
Speaker 1: for a very long time, basically all you had available
Speaker 1: to you was a heavy sword. Yes, and you had
Speaker 1: used the same weapon, and depending on what code of
Speaker 1: dueling you were following, the challenger or challenge E would
Speaker 1: pick that weapon, right. Um, and you mentioned dueling codes.
Speaker 1: There were several dueling codes and the one that became
Speaker 1: the most widespread was the Dueling Code of seventeen seventy seven,
Speaker 1: the Irish code UM, which is cited extensively in this article.
Speaker 1: And I believe you're prepared to give everyone a treat
Speaker 1: and read some of the rules from the code. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the code Duello uh. It replaced um, the floss uh Duellatorium,
Speaker 1: which was in the fourteen hundreds, the ill Duello in
Speaker 1: fifteen fifty. Apparently the Germans had their own dueling code
Speaker 1: which um it was set by the fect Schulen dueling schools.
Speaker 1: Imagine there's was just because they were German. It was
Speaker 1: probably a little more hardcore, although everything was pretty hardcore
Speaker 1: back then. It was. But if you look at the
Speaker 1: dueling codes um, a lot of the rules appear to
Speaker 1: be set up so that you don't kill the other person.
Speaker 1: The whole point of a duel is not to kill
Speaker 1: the other person's to regain honor. Dueling is the result
Speaker 1: of an insult. When somebody insults you and you challenge
Speaker 1: them to a duel, you are seeking to say, I'm
Speaker 1: going to get my satisfaction from you. Basically, you punked
Speaker 1: me out in public, and that can't happen, that's another
Speaker 1: way to put it, because I would be looked at
Speaker 1: as a coward, and that would be a knock on
Speaker 1: my family's and my ancestors honor. Even Yeah, you had
Speaker 1: to protect the honor of your ancestors backwards and forwards
Speaker 1: in in space or time on either side of you.
Speaker 1: That's right, as I was saying, some of the uh,
Speaker 1: some of the rules are intended to prevent harm or injury,
Speaker 1: Like you see people like facing away from each other
Speaker 1: and turning and firing. That was a designed so that
Speaker 1: when you're using a clumsy seven teenth century firearm, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the chances of you hitting anybody, but a bystander way
Speaker 1: off in the distance is pretty low. Yeah. From what
Speaker 1: I gathered after reading a handful of these rules is
Speaker 1: that the Code Duello encouraged injury but not death. Yeah.
Speaker 1: What they didn't encourage was purposefully uh firing in the air,
Speaker 1: as sometimes happened when neither one of them really wanted
Speaker 1: to get hurt. They didn't really like that because that
Speaker 1: sort of takes all the the jotspah out of the
Speaker 1: duel to begin with. You're very excited to read these rules,
Speaker 1: aren't you jumping ahead a little bit? No? No No, no,
Speaker 1: we're not there yet. Um. But one of the rules,
Speaker 1: uh was that the winner could pretty much do whatever
Speaker 1: they wanted it once you've won the duel. If let's
Speaker 1: say there's an injury, you could kill him if you wanted.
Speaker 1: You could just humiliate him if you wanted. You could
Speaker 1: be a good guy and say, you know what, my
Speaker 1: honor has been squashed. It's great, so, uh, let me
Speaker 1: give you a hand up, a little buddy, and you're
Speaker 1: a good person for doing that. I would say, so
Speaker 1: I could see you totally doing that, Chuck. That wouldn't
Speaker 1: I would have been that. There's no way I would
Speaker 1: have been dueling to begin with. You you could also
Speaker 1: cut the other person's head off after finishing them off,
Speaker 1: or maybe finish them off by cutting his head off
Speaker 1: and then posting it in a public place, right um.
Speaker 1: I said also that the Irish code is very widespread,
Speaker 1: so much so that this to me is one of
Speaker 1: the facts of the podcast. It was reprinted in full
Speaker 1: as part of the Midshipman's Handbook of the U. S.
Speaker 1: Navy up until eighteen sixty two, when the Navy outlawed
Speaker 1: or band dueling among officers. But up until that time,
Speaker 1: it was like, hey, you're probably gonna get a duel
Speaker 1: at some point in time, and here's what the Navy
Speaker 1: says about that. And what the Navy says is what
Speaker 1: the Irish saying. Women typically did not duel and when
Speaker 1: they did, uh, it says in the article here it
Speaker 1: was viewed on as an oddity and a strange, amusing spectacle,
Speaker 1: which like Foxy boxing is today, well or the it's
Speaker 1: kind of like the first catfights. Yeah, is that sexist totally?
Speaker 1: But I mean that's what they that's apparently what they
Speaker 1: they viewed duels among women as it was an amusement
Speaker 1: for men because women are just so stupid. But that
Speaker 1: that right, except except if you were dumb enough to
Speaker 1: make uh that kind of judgment about Llamo pen Yeah,
Speaker 1: you probably would have had your head cut clean off
Speaker 1: your body. She was a genuine dueler swordswoman, and depending
Speaker 1: on who you talked to, it's either her father who
Speaker 1: trained her, or a lover who was a great fencer.
Speaker 1: And uh, however, I think she liked the ladies as well,
Speaker 1: because later in her life, after performing in bars and
Speaker 1: a dressed as a man, but not to like say
Speaker 1: hey I am a man. I think it was just like, hey,
Speaker 1: I'm more comfortable in these clothes. It's easier to move
Speaker 1: in these clothes exactly. Um, she uh dug up the
Speaker 1: corpse of a dead nun right put in the dorm room,
Speaker 1: set that room on fire to take her own death
Speaker 1: so she could escape the convent with her female lover.
Speaker 1: She was a pretty uh progressive rock and chick back then. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she was pretty cool. Um, and that was after she
Speaker 1: retired from the opera Early Sea. Yeah, so she she
Speaker 1: was pretty cool. No foxy boxing there, No, I don't
Speaker 1: even know what that is. I haven't seen that. It's
Speaker 1: exactly what it sounds like, yeah, it was kind of
Speaker 1: big in the I think the eighties, maybe the seventies
Speaker 1: of like just women like boxing one another, but not
Speaker 1: really and then like it's it's incredibly sexist. There were
Speaker 1: a lot of fights at my school, my high school.
Speaker 1: I mean not like a lot, like it was a
Speaker 1: rough of school, but it always struck me even as
Speaker 1: a youngster that like, when guys would get in a fight,
Speaker 1: it was always horrific, and then when girls would get
Speaker 1: in a fight, the dudes would be sitting around laughing
Speaker 1: at it. I saw a girl fight in high school
Speaker 1: once that was really disturbing. It was more disturbing then
Speaker 1: any guy fight I've ever seen because girls fight dirty. Yeah,
Speaker 1: both of these girls were fighting very dirty. It was
Speaker 1: really horrible. M One of the I think like the
Speaker 1: assistant principal jumped in and got like smacked around and
Speaker 1: ended up backing off. Yeah, that was a bad fight.
Speaker 1: So there was nothing funny about that one. No, not
Speaker 1: at all. And I mean, really, is there anything funny
Speaker 1: about anybody fighting? No? I don't think so, unless it's like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, clowns, Yeah, clowns fighting, Yeah, that'd be funny.
Speaker 1: Clown fight. That's hilarious unless one of them dies, that's right,
Speaker 1: Uh chuck. So we mentioned that seconds are in charge
Speaker 1: of issuing apologies, and you can't just go over and say, um,
Speaker 1: hey man, guys, sorry, he'll never do it again. Can
Speaker 1: he have his gauntlet back? That just doesn't work. There's standards,
Speaker 1: there's rules to issuing an apology, and as I understand,
Speaker 1: you're prepared to explain the rule from the Code Duello
Speaker 1: for issuing apology. I think even it's rule number one,
Speaker 1: very first rule, as it should be. Let's hear, the
Speaker 1: first offense requires the first apology, though the retort may
Speaker 1: have been more offensive than the insult. Example, A tells
Speaker 1: B he is impertinent, ETCETERA B retorts that he lies.
Speaker 1: Yet A must make the first apology because he gave
Speaker 1: the first offense, and then, after one fire, B may
Speaker 1: explain away the retort by a subsequent apology. Very nice,
Speaker 1: thank you, thank you very much. Um. So, basically, no
Speaker 1: matter how bad the retort is from the first insult, Yes,
Speaker 1: whoever insults the other person first has to apologize first,
Speaker 1: then they shooting one another, and then the second person
Speaker 1: can apologize. Um. You also have rules to whether or
Speaker 1: not or how a um an apology can be accepted,
Speaker 1: or if an apology a verbal one is even worth
Speaker 1: anything at all? What situation that is it? Won't you?
Speaker 1: I point you to rule number five Josh as a
Speaker 1: blow is strictly prohibited under any circumstances among gentlemen. So
Speaker 1: no hitting, evidently, yeah no, Or if you do, that's it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's no going back, No vertebal apology can be received
Speaker 1: for such an insult. The alternatives therefore, the offender handing
Speaker 1: a cane to the injured party to be used on
Speaker 1: his own back at the shame time, begging pardon and
Speaker 1: fightering on until one or both are disabled, or exchanging
Speaker 1: three shots and then asking pardon without profit of the cane.
Speaker 1: So if you wanted apology after smacking someone in the face, um,
Speaker 1: but you didn't want the cane, you guys have just
Speaker 1: shooted each other three times, or I imagine maybe deal
Speaker 1: three blows with a sword. Right. But by this time
Speaker 1: seventy seven firearms were all the rage for dueling, which
Speaker 1: we'll get to. Um, so you've got to duel. All
Speaker 1: the apologies have been either not offered or rejected, and
Speaker 1: it's time for the due it's uh, there's certain etiquette, right.
Speaker 1: You mentioned um that there's rules against not really doing
Speaker 1: this wholeheartedly, Like if you're going to get into a duel,
Speaker 1: you have to do it wholeheartedly as as far as
Speaker 1: the code duelloh um is concerned. But this is also
Speaker 1: one of the more frequently broken rules because most people
Speaker 1: who were in duels didn't really want to die, and
Speaker 1: they probably didn't want to kill the other person either,
Speaker 1: because I imagine when you're in a duel with somebody
Speaker 1: and that's your reality at that moment, and it's not
Speaker 1: just some guys and powdered wigs out, you know, in
Speaker 1: an apple tree, and it's avoid engraving or wood carving,
Speaker 1: but it's really what's going on in your world. Right then,
Speaker 1: I'm sure you are acutely interested in not killing and
Speaker 1: not dying at that moment. Yeah. I would applied them
Speaker 1: with alcohol. I would have been the guy being like,
Speaker 1: come on, man, you would have made a great second,
Speaker 1: like can we just have this ale here and talk
Speaker 1: it over and laugh about it? Right, it's an right,
Speaker 1: but they took it way more seriously than So. There's
Speaker 1: this rule that says, man, if you're going to get
Speaker 1: in a duel, you have to do it all the way.
Speaker 1: It's called Rule thirteen. No dumb shooting or fighting in
Speaker 1: the air is admissiable. In any case, the challenger ought
Speaker 1: not to have challenge without receiving offense, and the challenged ought,
Speaker 1: if he gave a finch, to have made an apology
Speaker 1: before he came on the ground. Therefore, children's play must
Speaker 1: be dishonorable on one side of the other end is
Speaker 1: accordingly prohibited. Very nice. Um, so you've got all these
Speaker 1: we need strickling Huh No, No, I think that's great. Okay. Um,
Speaker 1: so so you you've got this rule that says you
Speaker 1: you do this all the way. But that's not necessarily
Speaker 1: how a lot of duels worked. Um, guys would agree
Speaker 1: ahead of time, like, hey, we're actually gonna do the duel,
Speaker 1: but we'll both shoot into the air. Um, you don't
Speaker 1: want an idea, which, which, by the way, is what happened,
Speaker 1: is how Alexander Hamilton died at the hands of the
Speaker 1: treacherous Aaron Burr. Let's go ahead and talk about it. Well,
Speaker 1: they were political rivals, they were both um, they were
Speaker 1: in a law firm together, and that's where they first
Speaker 1: learned to hate one another, and then they were in
Speaker 1: a very small country at the time. They were very
Speaker 1: big fish in the same small pond um and things
Speaker 1: got out of hand. And I can't remember who challenged
Speaker 1: you to a duel, do you? Uh? Yes, it was
Speaker 1: a series of insults. And this was at a time
Speaker 1: where the losing presidential candidate would become vice president, which
Speaker 1: could you imagine that these days? Yeah, they'd be pretty
Speaker 1: awesome kind of. I think it'd be nice. It would.
Speaker 1: It would temper things, it would. I guess it was
Speaker 1: for balance of power. It was a consolation price, that's true. Uh,
Speaker 1: So they disliked each other. There were a bunch of insults,
Speaker 1: and Burr challenged Hamilton's in Weehawken, New Jersey, and uh
Speaker 1: they're varying accounts um on what happened. But what we
Speaker 1: do know that happened Hamilton's got shot, Bird didn't Whether
Speaker 1: or not Hamilton's fired in the air is a good guy,
Speaker 1: that's what I heard, or got hit and was like
Speaker 1: and fired up in the air. Never, it's debatable. Alexander
Speaker 1: Hamilton was a crack shot. You great timing. He had
Speaker 1: catlike reflexes. Aaron Burr shot Hamilton's Hamilton's fired into the air.
Speaker 1: Aaron Burr was actually, uh, I think arrested for murder,
Speaker 1: wasn't he? He was charged with murder and basically acquitted
Speaker 1: in the end. But um, this is a time when
Speaker 1: it was like kind of on the OLPs they were
Speaker 1: beginning to outlaw dueling anyway, and it ruined his career,
Speaker 1: basically ruined his political career. From that point, people are like,
Speaker 1: who's on the twenty and by twenty, of course, I
Speaker 1: mean who's on the tin? Yeah, Jackson's on the twenty,
Speaker 1: but Alexander Hamilton's un stopped emailing. You've got nothing but
Speaker 1: twenties though in your role, so that I can't even
Speaker 1: tell him he's on the time. And did they even
Speaker 1: make dollar bills? Um? So, chuck, let's get two seconds,
Speaker 1: which again I wanted to say that, um oh before
Speaker 1: I got ahead of ourselves. I'm sorry. Um. Also, you
Speaker 1: should never duel at night. The only time when you
Speaker 1: can legitimately hold a duel at night, meaning that the
Speaker 1: same night of the offense. Um, it was when the
Speaker 1: person was going to be leaving town before daybreak. No
Speaker 1: need to even read that one that speaks for itself,
Speaker 1: and that makes good sense. Basically they're cooler. Heads prevailed
Speaker 1: generally the next day, h which is a great rule
Speaker 1: in marriage in life. I'm always a big fan of
Speaker 1: sleep on it. Why don't we sleep on it? Yep,
Speaker 1: you're absolutely right. But and but sometimes the wife will
Speaker 1: still wake up just as angry the next day. It happens,
Speaker 1: But most times the worst is waking up in the
Speaker 1: middle of the night angry. Yeah. That's pretty bad when
Speaker 1: the rage is seething. Um, So, Chuck, do you want
Speaker 1: to talk about seconds? Yes? Uh? Seconds Uh. They had
Speaker 1: very specific rules for the role of the second Um.
Speaker 1: They had to take care of the guns in the
Speaker 1: same a and load in the presence of one another.
Speaker 1: I can't shake the feeling that we're both in trouble. Um.
Speaker 1: They would have to, like I said, load the guns
Speaker 1: together and in front of each other, and the gun
Speaker 1: was already agreed upon. Um. They have a smooth a
Speaker 1: smooth boar. Yeah, and I think the rifle boar would
Speaker 1: would be a more accurate, longer distance shot. So they said,
Speaker 1: we can't use up. Yeah. It's like shot putting a
Speaker 1: football or throwing it in a tight spiral, which one
Speaker 1: is going to get further with more accuracy. Exactly. That
Speaker 1: makes sense. But yeah, so you want to load in
Speaker 1: the presence of one another, yeah, saying look, see the
Speaker 1: boar smooth, and we're doing it right here so everyone
Speaker 1: can see it. There are sports, everyone pay attention. And
Speaker 1: we also mentioned how they are bound to offer or
Speaker 1: to try to get an apology generated to avoid a duel.
Speaker 1: They're supposed to according to the code UH and then
Speaker 1: rule twenty five if if they can't come to any
Speaker 1: kind of resolution and the seconds clearly or eyeball on
Speaker 1: one another, like oh dude, you're going down to it's
Speaker 1: on between us. They had rules for that as well,
Speaker 1: like rule where seconds disagree and resolved to exchange shots themselves.
Speaker 1: It must be at the shame time and at right angles.
Speaker 1: With their principles, I don't get the right angles thing.
Speaker 1: How is that physically possible? I don't know. I took
Speaker 1: that to mean they shoot from the same angle that
Speaker 1: would be parallel, not right angle. Well, I don't think
Speaker 1: it meant right angle in the geometric sense. I think
Speaker 1: it meant the correct angle, as in the same angle.
Speaker 1: Maybe I'm wrong. Do you think it meant like geometry
Speaker 1: I think the authors had put in a full day
Speaker 1: by the time they got to this rule, or maybe
Speaker 1: at right angles. That meant, if these two are shooting here,
Speaker 1: then they have to shoot there. So they don't there's
Speaker 1: no crossfire coming at them. Okay, so they make a square.
Speaker 1: I don't know, we'll have to look into that um.
Speaker 1: And then how do you know when a duels over,
Speaker 1: especially when it doesn't necessarily result in the decapitation of one.
Speaker 1: When you cut somebody's head off and posted on a
Speaker 1: pike in the town square, the duels over. But there's
Speaker 1: also more nuanced endings possible. Right rule number five if
Speaker 1: Schauds are used, Mr Turbec, the parties engage until one
Speaker 1: is well bloodied, disabled or disarmed, or until after receiving
Speaker 1: a wound and blood being drawn, unless the unless the
Speaker 1: person who's disabled insists that it's only a flesh point. Right,
Speaker 1: he does have a Did you notice his his money
Speaker 1: Python reference in here? No, that's definitely not the only
Speaker 1: article with the money Python reference from him. What is it? Well,
Speaker 1: later on he's talking about how nobles weren't allowed to
Speaker 1: work and they made money off of rent from their
Speaker 1: huge tracts of land. That's for money. By then, I
Speaker 1: don't remember that part. Do you remember that she's got
Speaker 1: huge tracts of land? I don't remember. That's a good part.
Speaker 1: Good for you for noticing that he's always sneaking them
Speaker 1: in um. And also, any wounds sufficient to agitate the
Speaker 1: nerves or make the handshake must end the business of
Speaker 1: the day. I mean that would be that's kind of
Speaker 1: a loose if you ask me. Yeah, but that does
Speaker 1: mean that the duel is over. So that's uh. If
Speaker 1: you if you want to know more, if you want
Speaker 1: to know all the rules, you can get your hands
Speaker 1: on a pre eighteen sixty two US Navy Midshipman's Handbook.
Speaker 1: Apparently PBS has all of them as well on frontline site.
Speaker 1: We don't. I'm sorry, um, but chuck. Dueling was for
Speaker 1: a very long time the pursuit of nobles right. As
Speaker 1: a matter of fact, it was used to differentiate nobles
Speaker 1: from common people. Like in a lot of medieval Europe
Speaker 1: European countries, Um, commoners weren't allowed to duel. It was out,
Speaker 1: it was illegal. Yeah, and before gun that a lot
Speaker 1: of commoners couldn't even afford swords because swords are expensive
Speaker 1: to make and even more expensive than firearms once they
Speaker 1: came around, so a lot of them couldn't duel in
Speaker 1: the traditional sense, although the Grabster points out that there
Speaker 1: were plenty of dual like circumstances among commoners too. It
Speaker 1: was probably just the bar fight. You just can't let
Speaker 1: the local fuzz find out what you're doing. Yes, and
Speaker 1: noblemen were expected to duel, right, and the whole point
Speaker 1: of dueling was the protection of honor. And honor as
Speaker 1: a concept, as the Grabster points out, is is not
Speaker 1: what we think of it today. Um. Honor is basically
Speaker 1: like if you were rich, if you have a title,
Speaker 1: if you are a member of an important family, you
Speaker 1: have honor automatically it's attached to you. Yeah, it doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that you were a good upstanding guy. It just
Speaker 1: means like, this is your station in life. You were
Speaker 1: you're blessed basically by being born rich and white. Exactly.
Speaker 1: It's like the one percent um and you have honor.
Speaker 1: And it's fragile, extremely at all times. Uh, it's prone
Speaker 1: to be insulted at the drop of the drop of
Speaker 1: a glove, especially, but even the drop of the hat. Um.
Speaker 1: And not only is your honor at stake, but the
Speaker 1: honor of your family for generations forward, generations backward, and
Speaker 1: any schmow of noble rank um. I imagine if a
Speaker 1: commoner came up and insulted your family, you just cut
Speaker 1: their head off right there, and there's no duel. It's
Speaker 1: just death for the commoner, right. But if another person
Speaker 1: of nobility comes up and insult your family honor, then
Speaker 1: you say it's on. I challenge you to a duel.
Speaker 1: At this point, and you've mentioned cowardice already, but at
Speaker 1: this point, the other person has a choice. Very socially speaking,
Speaker 1: they don't really have a choice that they do have
Speaker 1: a choice. They can either accept the duel or they
Speaker 1: can be a coward. And in the same vein, the
Speaker 1: person whose honor is insulted has a choice. They can
Speaker 1: either issue a challenge to a duel or they can
Speaker 1: let it slide. Either if you let it slide, or
Speaker 1: you sure could duel, you're a coward. And that was
Speaker 1: a big deal back then. Yeah, it wasn't just like,
Speaker 1: you know, Jimmy's a sissy because he wouldn't fight me
Speaker 1: at school. It was which haunts you for the rest
Speaker 1: of your life. That's true, But your family was was insulted,
Speaker 1: you could lose your honor, like they would take it
Speaker 1: away legally sometimes, Um, they could publish an account of
Speaker 1: it to the church who and you know in the
Speaker 1: church they're gonna tell everybody you're a coward. Uh. It
Speaker 1: was not an abstract thing. Kings who would not uphold
Speaker 1: their honor could lose their noble ranking. They would just
Speaker 1: take it away. And you could actually be punished and
Speaker 1: excommunicated and your voting rights revoked for cowardice, serious stuff.
Speaker 1: Back then. You could also be imprisoned and killed and
Speaker 1: just it just generally bad things fed to dragons. Probably.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you could be killed. I just
Speaker 1: I just said that, well, if a dragon's evening you,
Speaker 1: you wish someone would kill you. A good point. Um,
Speaker 1: So I think probably the whole this whole code, this
Speaker 1: whole dueling code is and how refined it became was
Speaker 1: out of the frequency of dueling. Right. Yeah. Apparently, like
Speaker 1: you said, these people um sat around with their huge
Speaker 1: tracts of land. Well they couldn't work. No, they like
Speaker 1: you couldn't work if you wanted to work, you couldn't
Speaker 1: if you were of noble noble blood. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: you literally could not hold a job even if if
Speaker 1: you're like if you found you were really good at something.
Speaker 1: But I really like Blacksmith in making these these shoes,
Speaker 1: these sports shoes. You're a nobleman, you have to make
Speaker 1: your money off of rent. So the end result of
Speaker 1: that is after a lot of sitting around and uh
Speaker 1: fox hunting and mead drinking, you get a little bored,
Speaker 1: and so dueling kind of became a sport for board nobleman. Yeah,
Speaker 1: these young guys are like, well, I got nothing better
Speaker 1: to do, so let me go down to the pub
Speaker 1: and uh throw down the gauntlet on someone, or just
Speaker 1: be really easy, really irritable to where anything that happens
Speaker 1: to me. You bought me in the bar and like
Speaker 1: all right, it's on, or you looked at my lady.
Speaker 1: That was a big one. Yeah. Um, the other aspect
Speaker 1: of it wasn't just boredom. It was also that you
Speaker 1: were the better person in a field where you know,
Speaker 1: there is a definite set hierarchy. Earls are equal to earls,
Speaker 1: and dukes equal to dukes, and viscounts equal to viscants,
Speaker 1: um viceroys equal device rays. That whole kind of thing
Speaker 1: I could continue, I don't. I can't continue. You called
Speaker 1: my bluff, um. But this is a way to differentiate
Speaker 1: yourself among your rank by saying I challenge you to duel,
Speaker 1: and I won. And the reason that differentiates me is
Speaker 1: not only am I the winner, but it means that
Speaker 1: God favors me. And apparently that that was used that
Speaker 1: was the predecessor to the legal systems we had today. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: let's let's get to this. This is the commoners, uh
Speaker 1: would duel early on in the eleventh in twelve centuries um,
Speaker 1: you would have trial by combat. Sometimes it was like
Speaker 1: dunking a witch. Like if the witch floated, she was
Speaker 1: a witch, and then she got burned out of the steak.
Speaker 1: If she drowned, then she wasn't really a witch and
Speaker 1: she was pure of heart. So if you win the duel,
Speaker 1: then you're at in fact innocent of your crime. Yes,
Speaker 1: because God favored the winner of the duel, and more importantly,
Speaker 1: the guy who accused you was now dead, so you
Speaker 1: must be innocent. Although you may also fight a court
Speaker 1: appointed really professional duelists. That's awesome and I can't imagine
Speaker 1: beating that guy. Yeah, who would that? What was the
Speaker 1: most Sky in the Max Mad Max three. Master Blaster. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Master Blaster, you fight Master Blaster. Yeah you kill them. Boy,
Speaker 1: what a reveal that was when they took off his mask. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Powerful stuff. A lot of times, if you were good
Speaker 1: at dueling, you would just use it to get out
Speaker 1: of stuff like, Hey, I don't want to pay this bill,
Speaker 1: so let's duel about it, and that settle it. And
Speaker 1: I know I'm really good with the swords, so you
Speaker 1: don't stand a chance. Yeah, it's all over. Not just
Speaker 1: um debts, but also like if you had a political rival,
Speaker 1: um that later became really big in Missouri. Yes, Um,
Speaker 1: if you wanted somebody's land, anything, anybody who who had
Speaker 1: something you wanted or who you owed something to, you
Speaker 1: could just challenge them to a duel, kill them in
Speaker 1: their problem solved. This is one of the reasons why
Speaker 1: I think that noble classes were eventually removed from the
Speaker 1: face of the earth. Well, you mentioned Missouri. Between eighteen
Speaker 1: sixteen and eighteen twenty four, the the elect territorial elections
Speaker 1: became so fraught with dueling to get rid of your
Speaker 1: rival that, um. The first governor of California, Peter Burnett, said,
Speaker 1: Peter Burgh. Now Peter Burnett said it became desirable to
Speaker 1: kill off certain aspirants to get them out of the way.
Speaker 1: So in Missouri even just you know, killed the dude
Speaker 1: before election day and you're all set. Yeah. Can you
Speaker 1: imagine like new Ingrich and Mitt Romney dueling one another? No,
Speaker 1: because no. Um, So you've got dueling evolving from early
Speaker 1: legal uh an early legal system, to the board noble
Speaker 1: classes to the elimination of political rivals. Um. And it
Speaker 1: comes from even further back than that though, like the duel,
Speaker 1: the idea of one person battling another person in some
Speaker 1: sort of combat and a formal rule driven way grabs
Speaker 1: her goes back to jostin competitions in the Middle Ages,
Speaker 1: I think, go back to glatutorial combat further back than that.
Speaker 1: But um, in Europe, in western Europe, northwestern Europe, it
Speaker 1: came from jousting, right, Yeah, And it makes sense to me, uh,
Speaker 1: Like you said, the joust is pretty much a duel
Speaker 1: on horseback. Then you had the chivalric code, which sort
Speaker 1: of lines up with the code of the duel. And
Speaker 1: also you skipped right past what to me is one
Speaker 1: of the facts of the podcast. Oh no, I didn't
Speaker 1: know was coming. Go ahead, you go ahead. Well when nights, uh,
Speaker 1: only uh, noble noblemen were allowed to be knights and
Speaker 1: to joust against one another. So they would raise their
Speaker 1: visor at the beginning to say, hey, look at me,
Speaker 1: I'm not just sending along my assistant, who's a lot
Speaker 1: better at this than I am, as Heath Ledger did,
Speaker 1: As Heath Ledger did. What what was that first night? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a good movie, that's all right. Uh. So they
Speaker 1: would reveal their identities, and that josh, as you know,
Speaker 1: was evolved into the military salute. Years later, the lift
Speaker 1: of the visor evolved into that the hand. I guess
Speaker 1: pretty cool, very cool. Um. Eventually, though, firearms came around
Speaker 1: and they found that yeah, these incredibly heavy suits of
Speaker 1: armor that can protect you even from a joust. Generally, um,
Speaker 1: are no match for this. Must get the smooth board,
Speaker 1: must get with terrible aim and accuracy, which if it'll
Speaker 1: kill you. Yeah. In our night's podcast, that was kind
Speaker 1: of the end of the night exactly. It was also
Speaker 1: what the end of Samurai. Yeah, guns ruined everything. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well they changed everything for the worst. Um, and then
Speaker 1: you have uh as a result, the no no More
Speaker 1: need for a heavy sword because there's no need for armor.
Speaker 1: Armor doesn't work, no heavy swords, which they do. An
Speaker 1: evolution and sword making, and you have, at least in Europe.
Speaker 1: I think Japan already had far lighter, more better swords.
Speaker 1: But um in the West. The evolution of swords led
Speaker 1: to the sport of fencing as a direct result of
Speaker 1: dueling and the loss of armor, and it became more contest,
Speaker 1: especially after the Italian said, I don't want to die.
Speaker 1: Let's put a little put a little rubber tip on
Speaker 1: the internet. My sister was in defencing. Call interesting, old sister.
Speaker 1: I've always uh, I've always wanted to try that. Well,
Speaker 1: I think you should go to town. You could take classes, right, totally.
Speaker 1: I think it's a kind of expensive startup. Sure, like
Speaker 1: the whole get up in in a decent sword and
Speaker 1: all that, but a foil if in the vernacular. But
Speaker 1: I'm I'm sure once you got all that stuff, you're fine. Yeah.
Speaker 1: That would end up being like my venture into ice hockey,
Speaker 1: though I could just end up having a closet full
Speaker 1: of gear really ever gets used. I didn't know you're
Speaker 1: in the hockey. I was at one point, uh, mid twenties. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I learned how to ice skate pretty well, and then
Speaker 1: me and all my friends got hockey gear and we're like, hey,
Speaker 1: let's play, and uh, that was pretty much where it ended. Yeah, pistols,
Speaker 1: so Josh, and when did you get into pistols? Well no, no, no,
Speaker 1: I didn't get into pistols ever. But um, when pistols
Speaker 1: came along, basically leveled the playing field because pistols are
Speaker 1: actually cheaper than swords and cheaper than getting trained and fencing.
Speaker 1: You can just practice shooting, you know, coke cans in
Speaker 1: the backyard. So all of a sudden, it democratize it.
Speaker 1: It was no longer the sport of noblemen because anyone
Speaker 1: could do it right. And this is a time when um,
Speaker 1: the word cocktail was invented to describe the strong drink
Speaker 1: you had in the morning, like an old fashioned um.
Speaker 1: So America was super drunk. So dueling seemed like a
Speaker 1: really good idea, and it took off as a sport, well,
Speaker 1: not as a sport, but basically as a as a
Speaker 1: socially accepted pastime because America doesn't have kings or dukes
Speaker 1: or anything, and there are a lot of guns at
Speaker 1: the time, and everybody started shooting one another in duels well,
Speaker 1: which is one of the big reasons dueling began to die. Uh,
Speaker 1: I thought, and it pointed out that I was wrong.
Speaker 1: I thought it maybe because people called forward the end
Speaker 1: of it and said, you know, this is wrong, we
Speaker 1: shouldn't be doing this. But since dueling began, the church
Speaker 1: and other legal bodies said said, we don't like this
Speaker 1: because it takes the Uh it kind of cripples I
Speaker 1: leegal stim because you're taking into your own hands. And
Speaker 1: the church didn't like it. They were like, we want
Speaker 1: to judge these people on their crimes. And it also
Speaker 1: kind of violates one of the big bigger commandments. Absolutely
Speaker 1: forget about the crusades for that one. But sure. Uh.
Speaker 1: Military leaders didn't like it because it was killing off
Speaker 1: able young bodied men. Yeah, and then later on war itself,
Speaker 1: like the Civil War and the First World War really
Speaker 1: were like, hey, there's more serious things going on. People
Speaker 1: really die in battle, like it sort of became a
Speaker 1: bit of fools undertaking. Well what I understand. I think
Speaker 1: it also hit home to the horrors of combat, made
Speaker 1: people not want to kill one another as much like
Speaker 1: real deal combat. Yeah, and the Civil War and the
Speaker 1: First World War. Like you said, we're linked to declines
Speaker 1: in the US and Europe respectively of dueling. Um and
Speaker 1: there's I guess also one of the other reasons dueling
Speaker 1: declined was because when it was exposed to the male classes,
Speaker 1: it wasn't just super rich people killing each other anymore,
Speaker 1: which was the original purpose, which is why the lower
Speaker 1: classes were like, who cares? Dueling is fine, Go, that's fine,
Speaker 1: We're doing our own thing. And then once it's, like
Speaker 1: you said, democratized and spread to the middle and lower classes,
Speaker 1: it became a problem. And then eventually it was we
Speaker 1: were left with dueling banjo's and that was about as
Speaker 1: serious as it got. I think that that is an
Speaker 1: excellent way to end this podcast. Dude, you got you can't.
Speaker 1: I'm not even gonna ask if you have an anything more.
Speaker 1: If you want to learn more about dueling and you
Speaker 1: want to see some of these cool rules, you can
Speaker 1: type duel into the search bar at how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com. Yeah, and I said search bar, which means
Speaker 1: it's time for a listener mail. WHOA. I'm gonna say
Speaker 1: whoa from now on, apparently, Chuck, Before we do listener mail,
Speaker 1: we should announce our big south By Southwest extrap agans
Speaker 1: two days two days in March, we'll call it Okay
Speaker 1: March eleven, we will be live podcasting and this is
Speaker 1: for south By Southwest attendees and badge holders only. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: uh Driscoll Hotel, Maximilian Room, three pm, Live podcast done.
Speaker 1: What's happened in the next day. The next day from
Speaker 1: five to nine at Fidough Irish Pub at to fourteen
Speaker 1: West fourth Street in Austin, we are going to be
Speaker 1: having a stuff you Should Know variety show. It's open
Speaker 1: to the public. You don't have to be a badge holder,
Speaker 1: free note cover and as a matter of fact, if
Speaker 1: you were on the first hundred people through the door,
Speaker 1: you get a free ticket for a free drink. That's right, yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: And this is going to feature the likes of Hodgement,
Speaker 1: Eugene Merman's gonna do some stand up for us, the
Speaker 1: musical stylings of Lucy Waywright Roach who plays Jerry in
Speaker 1: our TV pilot which you're gonna premiere. Um and let's
Speaker 1: see Crooks local Austin Man. And then the Henry Clay
Speaker 1: people are going to play some music as well. And
Speaker 1: again we're gonna be showing clips from our TV pilot
Speaker 1: that's going to air a science channel, and this is
Speaker 1: the public debut. That's right. So if you are in
Speaker 1: the just let's just say the west from Texas to California,
Speaker 1: or actually you could go from the east. Just make
Speaker 1: a point to be there. That's all I'm saying. You
Speaker 1: can crash on my floor. Actually you can't, but you
Speaker 1: can crash in your van. All right, back to it, Okay, yeah, Josh,
Speaker 1: this is a shout out. Remember Joanne uh stand alonis
Speaker 1: who nominated us to get nominated for a Grammy Award.
Speaker 1: Grammy nominated, nominated, Right, we didn't make it because we're
Speaker 1: not a celebrity reading our autopography, which is the only
Speaker 1: people who get nominated for spoken word. I'm we're not um.
Speaker 1: But Joanne is the founder and CEO of the Amazon Institute,
Speaker 1: which we've talked about before, and she's doing a lot
Speaker 1: of great work to help preserve the Amazon uh it
Speaker 1: is Amazon Institute dot com. And they're having a little
Speaker 1: contest where you can win two round trip tickets to Bogata, Columbia,
Speaker 1: And this is how you do it. You go to
Speaker 1: Amazon Institute dot com. Any listener who wants to can
Speaker 1: participate by clicking our projects in the navigation bar. And
Speaker 1: basically what you do is create a page on razoo
Speaker 1: dot com to fundraise for them, and between now and
Speaker 1: the end of June, June at midnight Eastern, the page
Speaker 1: with the most funds gets to choose between two round
Speaker 1: trip flights to Bogata or one ticket to travel with
Speaker 1: her as your guide. Um, and it just covers air fare,
Speaker 1: but she says, they'll hook you up with all the
Speaker 1: information and cheap places to stay and um, flights depart
Speaker 1: you've got to be over eighteen flights depart from New
Speaker 1: York A see Port Lauderdale, Miami. I guess only okay
Speaker 1: because they are limitations and you can always get a
Speaker 1: connection to one of those cities. And travel dates are
Speaker 1: August through December of this year. Tickets provided by Avianca
Speaker 1: Airlines and uh they use Razoo because it's very transparent.
Speaker 1: You can see where all the money is going. Very cool.
Speaker 1: So Joanne, thank you for your participation with our show. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we appreciate and with the Amazon Institute and uh go
Speaker 1: out and win tickets to Columbia. People give them the
Speaker 1: give them the website again it is Amazon Institute dot
Speaker 1: com and you create a page to help them raise
Speaker 1: money on Razu. What's the tab that you click our
Speaker 1: projects and you could win a trip well. As always Chuck,
Speaker 1: remember we put out the word for um NGOs and
Speaker 1: nonprofits who need a good plug. We're always looking for those.
Speaker 1: Um Yeah, we want to hear about them. Send them
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