Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Tracy Wilson and I'm Holly Frying. Not long ago,
Speaker 1: I went to the Maritime Museum in San Diego, California,
Speaker 1: which if you like boats and ships in maritime history,
Speaker 1: it was worth a stop. It's also right down the
Speaker 1: road from the USS Midway Museum, so if you would
Speaker 1: like some military history and some maritime history altogether, like
Speaker 1: you can just spend a whole day out there. Um,
Speaker 1: don't do what I did and lose your camera. Though.
Speaker 1: If anyone saw my camera in San Diego, let me know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I have the last known photo from that
Speaker 1: camera because you texted it to me from the museum. Oh,
Speaker 1: I took that from my iPhone. Fortunately I didn't lose
Speaker 1: my phone. I only lost my point issue camera anyway.
Speaker 1: The actual point is Among the many faring vessels at
Speaker 1: the Maritime Museum is the Soviet Foxtrot class submarine, which
Speaker 1: is home to an exhibit about a really harrowing incident
Speaker 1: I had never heard about before. It was one of
Speaker 1: the surprisingly many moments in history when the world came
Speaker 1: perilously close to a full scale nuclear war. Uh And
Speaker 1: I did not actually know there were that many, that
Speaker 1: surprisingly many incidents until I started looking into it for
Speaker 1: this episode today. So today we're just going to look
Speaker 1: at three of them, including the one I learned about
Speaker 1: in San Diego which inspired today's show. The incident aboard
Speaker 1: Soviet submarine B fifty nine is tangled up with the
Speaker 1: Cuban missile crisis and the nuclear arms race between the
Speaker 1: United States and the Soviet Union. With the help of
Speaker 1: its allies, the United States developed the first nuclear weapons
Speaker 1: through the Manhattan Project. Among the weapons the Manhattan Project
Speaker 1: produced were the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan.
Speaker 1: In Not long after World War Two, the Soviet Union
Speaker 1: successfully detonated its own nuclear bomb, and soon the United
Speaker 1: States and the Soviet Union were locked in a cold
Speaker 1: war and a nuclear arms race. Both nations were simultaneously
Speaker 1: building more nuclear weapons and developing more powerful weapons that
Speaker 1: were able to travel greater distances and deliver bigger payloads.
Speaker 1: The Cuban Missile crisis grew out of this cold war
Speaker 1: and arms race. In July of nineteen sixty two, the
Speaker 1: Soviet Union reached an agreement with Cuba to install several
Speaker 1: missiles there. The negotiation and the transportation of missiles to
Speaker 1: Cuba were conducted in secret, but the US learned about
Speaker 1: it through aerial surveillance photography on October fourteenth, nineteen sixty two.
Speaker 1: Those photographs were delivered to the White House the next day.
Speaker 1: At this point, the United States nuclear arsenal was far
Speaker 1: far bigger and more powerful than the Soviet Unions, and
Speaker 1: the United States also already had missiles stationed in Turkey
Speaker 1: in easy reach of Soviet territory. But with the placement
Speaker 1: of missiles in Cuba, for the first time, the Soviet
Speaker 1: Union also had missiles an easy reach of American territory.
Speaker 1: Even though the Soviets insisted that the missiles were only
Speaker 1: in Cuba as a defensive measure, this was a move
Speaker 1: that was both intended and interpreted as a threat. For
Speaker 1: a few days, news of the missile installation was also
Speaker 1: kept secret from the general public, but on October twenty two,
Speaker 1: President John F. Kennedy gave a televised address giving Americans
Speaker 1: a detailed description of the missile sites being built. He
Speaker 1: called Soviets placement of missiles in Cuba a quote clandestine,
Speaker 1: reckless and provocative threat, and he announced a naval quarantine
Speaker 1: around Cuba to prohibit the delivery of any further materials
Speaker 1: or weapons. This quarantine really goes in air quotes. It
Speaker 1: was a blockade, but calling it a blockade would have
Speaker 1: presumed a state of war, so they chose the word
Speaker 1: quarantine to be nice about it. Kennedy also wrote to
Speaker 1: Nikita Krushchev, the first Secretary of the Central Committee of
Speaker 1: the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, basically the leader
Speaker 1: of Soviet Union, to say that the United States would
Speaker 1: not tolerate the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba. He
Speaker 1: also spelled out that any nuclear attack on any nation
Speaker 1: launched from Cuba would be viewed as a Soviet attack
Speaker 1: on the United States, and the United States would retaliate
Speaker 1: in kind. Kristef, for his part, insisted that these missiles
Speaker 1: were just being placed there to defend Cuba from attack.
Speaker 1: For the whole of the thirteen days of the Cuban
Speaker 1: Missile crisis, the United States and the Soviet Union were
Speaker 1: in an incredibly tense stalemate, with the US demanding that
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union removed the missiles and the Soviet Union
Speaker 1: both refusing and continuing construction on the missile sites. And
Speaker 1: on October things were particularly bad. The US had been
Speaker 1: at def Con too, with the armed forces ready to
Speaker 1: launch an all out nuclear war for three days, and
Speaker 1: then that day an American YouTube spy plane was shot
Speaker 1: down by a Russian missile over Cuba and its pilot,
Speaker 1: Major Rudolph Anderson, was killed. So the prevailing description of
Speaker 1: the Cuban missile crisis is that for this entire time,
Speaker 1: the world was on the brink of a nuclear war.
Speaker 1: But there was also this other element of it going
Speaker 1: on that wasn't known about until much later. There were
Speaker 1: four Soviet submarines, each of them with a nuclear tipped
Speaker 1: torpedo among their armaments, and they were on route to
Speaker 1: Cuba as part of a submarine force that was going
Speaker 1: to be stationed there. These were all Fox Trot class submarines,
Speaker 1: and they were powered by a combination of diesel and
Speaker 1: battery power. While they were submerged, they ran on their batteries,
Speaker 1: and then they had to return to the surface periodically
Speaker 1: to get recharged. Soviet navigators were exceptionally skilled at using
Speaker 1: the varying temperatures of the ocean depths to avoid detection
Speaker 1: on radar, but without periodically recharging the batteries on the surface,
Speaker 1: where they were much more easy to spot, they could
Speaker 1: not stay underwater. Their last instruction from Moscow had been
Speaker 1: to hold position not far from Cuba, but they had
Speaker 1: since lost contact and the vessels, themselves built for use
Speaker 1: in colder waters, were not tolerating the warmer ocean near
Speaker 1: Cuba very well. The air conditioning failed and the temperatures
Speaker 1: in the subs started to rise well above a hundred degrees.
Speaker 1: To make matters worse, they were running out of food
Speaker 1: and water, and since they lost contact with Moscow, their
Speaker 1: only way of finding out what was happening and whether
Speaker 1: the United States and the Soviet Union had gone to
Speaker 1: war was to listen to a civilian radio broadcast from Miami.
Speaker 1: On the October, a spotter plane caught a glimpse of
Speaker 1: one of the submarines near the surface of the ocean,
Speaker 1: and late that afternoon American reconnaissance had detected the presence
Speaker 1: of at least three Soviet submarines near Cuba. Ships that
Speaker 1: were in the area as part of the quarantine started
Speaker 1: to try to get the submarines to the surface by
Speaker 1: dropping signaling charges into the ocean. There's a little bit
Speaker 1: of discrepancy in accounts among the people who were actually there.
Speaker 1: Some of them say that dropping four or five loud
Speaker 1: but non damaging charges was an official signal to surface,
Speaker 1: but others say that they were intentionally dropping these charges
Speaker 1: to harass the submerged submarines and the hope of basically
Speaker 1: forcing them up to the surface. Aboard the B fifty nine,
Speaker 1: though the Soviets had no idea what was going on.
Speaker 1: They had not gotten new orders from Moscow in more
Speaker 1: than a week, and they were overheated, dehydrated, and exhausted
Speaker 1: as battery power failed, life support systems did as well,
Speaker 1: and the air aboard had less and less oxygen. They
Speaker 1: didn't know if the explosions that they were hearing around
Speaker 1: them could damage or destroy their craft, and their only
Speaker 1: source of information was these American news report on the
Speaker 1: civilian radio which were reporting the extreme tensions and fears
Speaker 1: about the Cuban missile crisis. The commanders of these four
Speaker 1: submarines had been authorized to use their nuclear tips torpedoes
Speaker 1: if they were attacked, and aboard the B fifty nine,
Speaker 1: Captain Valentine Stevitsky concluded that they were, and he gave
Speaker 1: orders to prepare their nuclear torpedo, saying quote, we will die,
Speaker 1: but we will sink them all. We will not disgrace
Speaker 1: our navy. Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed. Savitsky had the agreement
Speaker 1: of his other officers in launching the torpedo, but since
Speaker 1: the B fifty nine was the flagship of the flotilla
Speaker 1: bound for Cuba, it also carried the flotilla commander Vesiley Archipov.
Speaker 1: Since Arkipov was aboard, they needed his approval as well,
Speaker 1: and Arkipov refused, and he instead convinced Sevitsky to surface.
Speaker 1: They got fresh air, they recharged their batteries, and at
Speaker 1: the first opportunity some urged and slipped away, again, evading
Speaker 1: American detection, before apparently returning to Soviet waters. Today, Arkibov
Speaker 1: is generally regarded as a hero, as somebody who's clear
Speaker 1: thinking prevented what surely would have been a full on
Speaker 1: nuclear war, But on his return to the Soviet Union,
Speaker 1: his decisions were heavily criticized. The general feeling was that
Speaker 1: he and the rest of them should have gone down
Speaker 1: with a ship. Arkipov later died of cancer, probably a
Speaker 1: result of a previous incident aboard a submarine, which was
Speaker 1: a near meltdown on the K nine team during its
Speaker 1: maiden voyage that killed seven people who were aboard almost
Speaker 1: immediately and then caused delayed effects for many of the
Speaker 1: others who were been there. Basically, they averted a total
Speaker 1: meltdown situation, but it was at a high cost. The
Speaker 1: US was completely unaware that they had been dropping signaling
Speaker 1: charges on a nuclear armed submarine until much later, and
Speaker 1: the whole incident was little known until documents related to
Speaker 1: it were declassified in n If you would like to
Speaker 1: know more, there is a PBS Secrets of the Dead
Speaker 1: episode about this whole incident that's called The Man Who
Speaker 1: Saved the World. And to wrap up the Cuban missile crisis,
Speaker 1: eventually the Soviet Union agreed to remove the missiles from
Speaker 1: Cuba in exchange for a pledge that the United States
Speaker 1: wouldn't invade the nation, something that the US had already
Speaker 1: tried and failed to do during the Bay of Pigs
Speaker 1: invasion in nineteen sixty one. And in another move that
Speaker 1: wasn't publicly known until decades later, the US also removed
Speaker 1: its nuclear missiles from Turkey. I kind of imagine this
Speaker 1: as as being like if you were if you were
Speaker 1: throwing rocks at a tree and not hitting it, and
Speaker 1: then you realized later that the tree had a big
Speaker 1: old hornets nest inside. Like, that's sort of what was
Speaker 1: going on with dropping signaling charges onto this nuclear armed
Speaker 1: submarine full of people who were over exhausted, dehydrated and
Speaker 1: not having enough oxygen. Yeah, but a hornet's nest that
Speaker 1: could kill a lot of people. Yeah, a hornet's nest
Speaker 1: that would destroy the entire world. So with that, Sterry thought,
Speaker 1: we're gonna take a quick break, take a word from
Speaker 1: a sponsor before we move on to our next story. Now,
Speaker 1: we are going to move beyond the Cold War into
Speaker 1: a story that's right on the cusp of our typical
Speaker 1: window of history on the show. It took place in
Speaker 1: three and as was the case with the Soviet submarine
Speaker 1: B fifty nine, this also happened during a period of
Speaker 1: heightened tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union.
Speaker 1: Throughout the Cold War, both the US and the Soviet
Speaker 1: Union were actively making plans for what they would do
Speaker 1: if the others struck first in a nuclear attack, and
Speaker 1: for a couple of years in the early nineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: Yuri Andropov, general Secretary of the Communist Party of the
Speaker 1: Soviet Union, was particularly convinced that the US was making
Speaker 1: definite plans for a nuclear attack that would devastate Soviet
Speaker 1: leadership under his command. The Soviet Union was preparing for
Speaker 1: a certainty not in eventuality. Both the US and the
Speaker 1: Soviet Union had also made it clear that a nuclear
Speaker 1: strike by one would prompt an immediate and devastating response
Speaker 1: from the other. In nine a series of incidents had
Speaker 1: ratcheted up the general sense of nuclear paranoia. On March eighth,
Speaker 1: President Ronald Reagan had delivered a speech arguing against a
Speaker 1: proposed nuclear freeze, in which he called the Soviet Union
Speaker 1: an evil empire. Later that month, he announced the missile
Speaker 1: defense system that came to be known as star Wars.
Speaker 1: Both nations undertook maneuvers and drills purportedly for the sake
Speaker 1: of preparedness, but often they were interpreted by the other
Speaker 1: as being anything from a threatening show of force to
Speaker 1: a real effort to secretly lay the groundwork for an
Speaker 1: upcoming World War three. And when our next incident took place,
Speaker 1: the latest and probably most alarming of these was the
Speaker 1: downing of Korean Air Flight zero zero seven. The commercial
Speaker 1: flight was en route from New York to Seoul, with
Speaker 1: a stop and anchorage to refuel. After leaving anchorage for
Speaker 1: reasons that aren't entirely clear, the flight diverged from its
Speaker 1: planned course and wound up in Soviet airspace. The Soviet Union,
Speaker 1: apparently believing it was a US spy plane, scrambled two
Speaker 1: fighter jets, which attacked the plane with air to air missiles.
Speaker 1: The flight crashed into the sea, killing all two hundred
Speaker 1: and sixty nine people of board, one of whom was
Speaker 1: US Representative Larry McDonald of Georgia. The incident sparked international
Speaker 1: outrage and a slew of conspiracy theories, some of which
Speaker 1: still persists today. The Soviet Union did not help the
Speaker 1: matter by being incredibly secretive about the incident at first,
Speaker 1: not even admitting that it had happened, and not feeling
Speaker 1: whether it had found the wreckage or flight BATA recorders.
Speaker 1: A lot of the details remained completely unknown to the
Speaker 1: rest of the world until after the collapse of the
Speaker 1: Soviet Union, and some of the details are still a mystery.
Speaker 1: Three weeks after the incident, with Flight zero zero seven.
Speaker 1: On September, Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov of the Soviet Air
Speaker 1: Defense Forces was stationed in a bunker known as Serpikov fifteen,
Speaker 1: which was part of the Soviet Union's newly enabled early
Speaker 1: warning satellite defense network. At Serpakov fifteen, satellite intelligence was
Speaker 1: received and analyzed, and in the case of an attack,
Speaker 1: there was a telephone with a direct line to commanding officers.
Speaker 1: Petrov's job there was so secret that not even his
Speaker 1: wife knew where he worked or what he did. At
Speaker 1: this point, both the United States and the Soviet Union
Speaker 1: each had satellite systems that were meant to help keep
Speaker 1: watch for the launch of intercontinental ballistic missiles. From the other,
Speaker 1: United State satellites basically looked down on the Earth from above,
Speaker 1: but on the Soviet side, the satellites looked at the
Speaker 1: planet on edge. They were looking for missiles after they
Speaker 1: had already been launched. It would sort of be silhouetted
Speaker 1: against the black the background of space. In theory, this
Speaker 1: minimized the number of natural phenomena and other non threatening
Speaker 1: human activities that could cause a false alarm. But on September,
Speaker 1: just after midnight local time, a false alarm did indeed happen,
Speaker 1: most likely thanks to some light reflecting off of high
Speaker 1: altitude clouds. The system detected the presence of at first
Speaker 1: one missile, but in moments that number grew to five,
Speaker 1: all launched from the United States. The warning of the
Speaker 1: detected incoming missile strike played out within the Serpico fifteen
Speaker 1: bunker like something out of a movie. They were blaring
Speaker 1: alarms and warnings in huge red letters on the screens.
Speaker 1: If you've ever seen a nuclear disas st movie in
Speaker 1: which the launch happens and it's met with like giant
Speaker 1: whaling Claxon's and the words launched in big red, flashing
Speaker 1: letters on the screen, and you've thought, man, that looks ridiculous.
Speaker 1: Apparently that's really what happened. It looked exactly like that.
Speaker 1: Protocol was for Petrov to immediately contact his superior officers
Speaker 1: to report that the launch had been detected, but he
Speaker 1: had some doubts that the report was accurate. This system
Speaker 1: was brand new, and in his opinion, it had been
Speaker 1: rushed into use when it was still in his words,
Speaker 1: raw five also seemed like an unusually low number of
Speaker 1: missiles for a preemptive nuclear strike. He would later say, quote,
Speaker 1: when people start a war, they don't start. They don't
Speaker 1: start it with only five missiles. You can do little
Speaker 1: damage with just five missiles. So instead of contacting his
Speaker 1: superior officers to say that a nuclear strike was incoming,
Speaker 1: he called to report a false alarm. Even as he did,
Speaker 1: though he wasn't completely sure that he was right. It
Speaker 1: wasn't until the missiles in question failed to reach the
Speaker 1: Soviet Union that he knew for sure that his hunch
Speaker 1: had been correct. Yeah, he was, like, I thought it
Speaker 1: was maybe fifty fifty. And he also later theorized that
Speaker 1: if someone else had been on duty, it would not
Speaker 1: have been the same call. By his own account, though,
Speaker 1: after this was all over, he went home, he drank
Speaker 1: a whole lot of vodka, and he slept for more
Speaker 1: than twenty four consecutive hours. As with the submarine B
Speaker 1: fifty nine, the details of this incident only became public
Speaker 1: much later. At the time, Petrov himself got no recognition
Speaker 1: within the Soviet Union for what he had done, and
Speaker 1: the crisis averted under his watch. However, after an investigation,
Speaker 1: he did get a reprimand for not keeping a detailed
Speaker 1: enough log about what had happened. His explanation was that
Speaker 1: he had a phone in one hand and the facilities
Speaker 1: intercom in the other, and he couldn't juggle both at
Speaker 1: once and also take notes. In the aftermath of all this,
Speaker 1: the computer program that was designed to filter out natural
Speaker 1: phenomena another noise from the early warning systems results was
Speaker 1: rewritten to account for this combination of sun and high
Speaker 1: altitude clouds. The world learned of Petrov's actions about fifteen
Speaker 1: years later when his commanding officer wrote about it in
Speaker 1: his memoir. His wife learned of it when a reporter
Speaker 1: came to their home. Following the publication of that memoir,
Speaker 1: a documentary about this whole incident came out in which
Speaker 1: was called The Man Who Saved the World. That is
Speaker 1: not an error. It is the same name as the
Speaker 1: one about the submarine. And we're gonna take another quick
Speaker 1: break before we talked through one more of these. The
Speaker 1: last of these incidents that we are going to talk
Speaker 1: about today is way more recent than we generally get
Speaker 1: into this on show. And we have kind of a
Speaker 1: rule of thumb window, you know, it's this is definitely
Speaker 1: newer than that. But as I was going through the
Speaker 1: surprisingly many events of this type. It stood out for
Speaker 1: reasons that are going to become clear. By this point,
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union had dissolved, so the nuclear superpowers at
Speaker 1: play where the United States and Russia. And we have
Speaker 1: a little less detail on this one than we did
Speaker 1: on the other two Empire because any United States documents
Speaker 1: pertaining to it are probably still classified. On January, Russian
Speaker 1: radar operators near the coast spotted a fast moving object
Speaker 1: that appeared to be a missile. It was over the
Speaker 1: Barents Sea, roughly between Russia's northern coast and the Arctic Ocean,
Speaker 1: and then as it moved, the objects separated into multiple pieces.
Speaker 1: It was behaving like a trident missile, and judging from
Speaker 1: where it originated, it could have been launched from a
Speaker 1: U S submarine. The radar technicians fear that this was
Speaker 1: an American nuclear warheads set to detonate high in the
Speaker 1: atmosphere and to put all of Russians of Russia's early
Speaker 1: warning satellite system, which was still being maintained in spite
Speaker 1: of the end of the Cold War, out of commission.
Speaker 1: That system, though had not detected any launches, but it
Speaker 1: was also primarily focused on missile sites in North America,
Speaker 1: there was apparently also some cloud cover. The satellite operators
Speaker 1: notified their commanding officers that a suspected lodge was in
Speaker 1: the works. In the United States, Russia and other nations
Speaker 1: that have nuclear weapons, especially outfitted satchel, known as the
Speaker 1: nuclear briefcase, accompanies the head of state. The briefcase is
Speaker 1: actual contents are secret, and the US version weighs about
Speaker 1: forty five pounds. Its purpose is to make sure the
Speaker 1: head of state has all the necessary documentation on hand,
Speaker 1: while also allowing them to receive information, make decisions, and
Speaker 1: if necessary, order a nuclear strike. The US has also
Speaker 1: noted that part of the briefcase's purpose is being able
Speaker 1: to identify that it really is the president making the call.
Speaker 1: Russia had a clear protocol in the event of a
Speaker 1: missile launch, first signal the president's nuclear briefcase at this point,
Speaker 1: accompanying President Boris Yeltson, then assess the situation, and within
Speaker 1: ten minutes make a decision on whether to retaliate. According
Speaker 1: to Russian defense protocols, incoming missiles didn't have to actually
Speaker 1: strike anything before the retaliatory strike was ordered. In spite
Speaker 1: of the discrepancy between what the radar operators in the
Speaker 1: early warning satellites were reporting. About five minutes into that
Speaker 1: ten minute window, word went out to submarine commanders in
Speaker 1: the area to maintain a state of readiness and prepare
Speaker 1: for further instruction. Eight minutes into the ten minute window,
Speaker 1: the mystery objects on the radar fell into the sea
Speaker 1: and everyone thankfully stood down. And the culprit in this
Speaker 1: case was the Black Brand twelve. A sounding rocket, which
Speaker 1: is a scientific rocket used to take measurements and conduct tests.
Speaker 1: A sounding rocket typically has a rocket and a payload
Speaker 1: designed to separate from it at a certain altitude. Often,
Speaker 1: once it's taken its measurements or conducted its experiment, the
Speaker 1: payload portion comes back to Earth with its descent slowed
Speaker 1: down by a parachute. That separation of the instruments and
Speaker 1: the payload from the rocket is what the radar detectors
Speaker 1: had interpreted as the separation of a trident missile. It
Speaker 1: was really a Norwegian rocket that was being used to
Speaker 1: study the northern lights. Uh. And where it gets Yeah,
Speaker 1: where it gets a little un nerving is that um.
Speaker 1: The Norwegian and American team that was responsible for this
Speaker 1: thing had notified multiple other countries, including Russia, of what
Speaker 1: was about to happen. But nobody had told these satellite
Speaker 1: operators who raised the alarm about it. And apparently nobody
Speaker 1: made the connection between this report of a launch from
Speaker 1: the coast and the launch of a scientific rocket that
Speaker 1: was already known to everyone, like nobody connected those two
Speaker 1: things together. However, the thing that made this so notable
Speaker 1: and made me want to include it in today's episode
Speaker 1: in spite of its recency, is it's the only known
Speaker 1: time in world history that Ahead of State has actually
Speaker 1: activated their nuclear briefcase. I can't help but think how
Speaker 1: frustrating it would be for the science team to be like,
Speaker 1: we did everything right and yet and yet literally told
Speaker 1: you inadvertently, we could have set off like a horrible
Speaker 1: global incident, despite having gone through the checklist and done
Speaker 1: everything we were supposed to uh To our knowledge, there
Speaker 1: is no movie or TV show about this particular incident yet,
Speaker 1: But since this incident was about ten minutes of a
Speaker 1: long and sometimes controversial political career for Boris Yelton, they
Speaker 1: will probably title it something besides the Man who Saved
Speaker 1: the World, although you never know. Maybe so maybe that's
Speaker 1: just the title of all nearly near all incidents of
Speaker 1: of of just barely averting nuclear's catastrophe, they will all
Speaker 1: be called the man who saved the world. That does
Speaker 1: seem to definitely be the pattern. Do you have a
Speaker 1: listener mail for us? Sure do. It's from Julie uh
Speaker 1: and Julie has written to us. This is from a
Speaker 1: little bit ago. I was out of the office for
Speaker 1: a while on the vacation that prompted this episode, so
Speaker 1: I have some things in the inbox that are from
Speaker 1: older episodes, and this one is from Julie and it
Speaker 1: is following our episode on Jamaica's Maroon Wars, which is
Speaker 1: a Dear Holly and Tracy, my name is Julie. Like
Speaker 1: so many other fans of your podcast, I was like
Speaker 1: forward to Mondays and Wednesdays to listen to your latest episodes.
Speaker 1: I'm an Acadian French Canadian group mainly from the maritime
Speaker 1: provinces of can Nada, from New Brunswick, Canada and currently
Speaker 1: live in Ottawa, at the nation's capital. While I greatly
Speaker 1: appreciated learning a bit of Jamaican history during your Jamaica's
Speaker 1: Maroon Wars episode, I didn't expect to drop parallels with
Speaker 1: my own personal history. About forty years prior to the
Speaker 1: maroons deportation to Halifax, Nova Scotia, the Acadians who were
Speaker 1: living in the area of what are now the provinces
Speaker 1: of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island faced
Speaker 1: their own deportation under the British rule starting in seventeen
Speaker 1: fifty five. Villages and crops are destroyed. His families were
Speaker 1: separated and forced onto boats. Their destinations varied between New England,
Speaker 1: Ports England, France and even the Caribbean. You can imagine
Speaker 1: my shock at the irony of these circumstances being repeated.
Speaker 1: And I was listening to the turn of events for
Speaker 1: the Maroons. And like the Maroons, the Acadian people's history
Speaker 1: is one of resistance and resilience. As some Acadians my
Speaker 1: ancestors included, uh, we're able to hide from the deportation
Speaker 1: with the help of the mcmac allies the low cool
Speaker 1: indigenous population. In addition, several years following the deportation of
Speaker 1: many Acadians made the long trek back to Akadia to resettle.
Speaker 1: Some groups decided to start a new life in the
Speaker 1: colony of Louisiana. Where they came, where they became known
Speaker 1: as the Cajuns. Kadians today are very proud our legacy
Speaker 1: culture and French language, and more than happy to share
Speaker 1: more information if you'd like to explore a Kadian history
Speaker 1: as a potential episode topic. Keep up the excellent work
Speaker 1: because we have so much to learn from our different histories,
Speaker 1: as well as the connections where we least expect them.
Speaker 1: Love from your Canadian neighbor, Julie, Thank you so much, Julie.
Speaker 1: I wanted to read this for a couple of reasons.
Speaker 1: One is that it was not quite within my brain
Speaker 1: um that the deportation of Maroons to Halifax was in
Speaker 1: such relatively close proximity to the expulsion of the Acadians.
Speaker 1: But we have had a number of folks ask for
Speaker 1: an episode about the expulsion of the Acadians, and it
Speaker 1: is on the list. I just want to note that
Speaker 1: it's on the list, been on the list pretty much
Speaker 1: from day one of us coming on for sure, four
Speaker 1: years on the list. It's a it's one of the
Speaker 1: similarly to the Executive Order six episode that we did
Speaker 1: pretty recently, it is such a big topic. It's size
Speaker 1: and scope have meant that has been on the list
Speaker 1: for a long time, and I'm not sure when it's
Speaker 1: gonna make up to the top of the list because
Speaker 1: it is a a big one to get into you,
Speaker 1: but it is on the list for the folks who
Speaker 1: have asked, um if you would like to write to
Speaker 1: us about this certain either podcast or history podcast that
Speaker 1: how stuff Works dot com. And we're also under the
Speaker 1: name missed in History all over social media, so that's Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, Pinterest, Instagram,
Speaker 1: all that stuff. For missed in History, you can come
Speaker 1: to our parent company's website, which is how stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com. Uh. You can learn so much about how
Speaker 1: clear weapons work at how stuff Works, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of it. You can go into our our website which
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