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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how

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

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Speaker 1: I'm and I'm Tracy V. Wilson, and it is time

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Speaker 1: for another maritime disaster installment, which, uh, I feel slightly

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Speaker 1: odd saying that makes listeners happy, But many people really

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Speaker 1: love maritime disaster stories, so it's a big draw for

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Speaker 1: some reason. It is. It's fascinating. People are drawn to

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Speaker 1: the sea, into sea going vessels, and you know, there's

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Speaker 1: a certain romance to all of that. And these are

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Speaker 1: always fascinating because you know, usually the wreckage sinks and

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Speaker 1: there's an ongoing mystery that kind of draws people in.

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Speaker 1: I think this one not so much mystery but a

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Speaker 1: little bit. We'll get to that towards the end. And

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Speaker 1: this particular disaster that we're talking about today is unique

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Speaker 1: in a number of ways. One is that it took

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Speaker 1: place on a river rather than out at open sea.

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Speaker 1: Another is that it was likely caused by corruption more

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Speaker 1: than in anything else. Uh. The really sad part of

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Speaker 1: it was that it caused the death of many, many

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Speaker 1: soldiers even though it was not part of a battle. UH.

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Speaker 1: And it actually, even though it was horrific really got

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Speaker 1: lost in the shuffle of a very busy news cycle

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Speaker 1: and a certain degree of numbness that had taken place

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Speaker 1: because the public had at this point developed over exposure

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Speaker 1: two stories of death and high numbers of deceased, and

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Speaker 1: so this really wasn't talked about very much at all,

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Speaker 1: even though it ranks as the worst maritime disaster in

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Speaker 1: US history. And so to give you context for why

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Speaker 1: this this horrific event may have gotten lost in the

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Speaker 1: shuffle in terms of public knowledge, it took place in

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Speaker 1: April of eighteen sixty five, which was an incredibly important

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Speaker 1: month in US history. On the ninth of April, General

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Speaker 1: Robert Elie surrendered at Appomatox Court House, and on April fourteenth,

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Speaker 1: President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated as he watched a staging

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Speaker 1: of Our American Cousin at Ford's Theater. On April twenty six,

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Speaker 1: John Wilkes Booth, who had assassinated the President, was captured

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Speaker 1: and killed. So it in that context is maybe not

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Speaker 1: so surprising that a steamboat sinking on April, which is

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Speaker 1: the day after all of the John Wilkes Booth stuff happened,

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Speaker 1: uh didn't make headline news, but it was nonetheless a

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Speaker 1: huge tragedy. The Sultana was built at the John Lithaberry

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Speaker 1: Shipyard in Cincinnati, Ohio. It's a side wheel steamboat and

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Speaker 1: it was about two hundred and sixty ft long and

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Speaker 1: forty two ft wide. The ship was legally cleared to

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Speaker 1: carry up to three hundred and seventy six passengers with

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Speaker 1: a crew of eight five, and the Sultana was built

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Speaker 1: as a really impressive ship for the time. Her safety equipment,

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Speaker 1: in particular was cutting edge, including a full complement of

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Speaker 1: the latest and greatest technology available at the time. The

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Speaker 1: boilers had safety gauges, uh, there were multiple pumps to

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Speaker 1: fight fire, and there were more than three hundred feet

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Speaker 1: of fire hose on board, as well as dedicated buckets

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Speaker 1: and axes for fire fighting. On February third, the Sultana

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Speaker 1: was launched from Cincinnati, Ohio to begin her career along

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Speaker 1: the Lower Mississippi. She primarily ran from St. Louis to

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Speaker 1: New Orleans and back. And while the Sultana was intended

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Speaker 1: to be used in the cotton trade, for the years

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Speaker 1: from eighteen sixty three to eighteen sixty five, the U. S.

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Speaker 1: War Department often commissioned the steamer as a cargo and

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Speaker 1: troop transport for civil war needs. As the war came

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Speaker 1: to an end, many Union soldiers who had been prisoners

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Speaker 1: of war were released. Soldiers coming from prison camps at

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Speaker 1: Cahaba and Alabama and Andersonville and Georgia were sent to Vicksburg,

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Speaker 1: Mississippi to await transport to go north. And because the

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Speaker 1: government was flooded with all of these soldiers that were

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Speaker 1: trying to get back home as the war was wrapping up,

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Speaker 1: uh the government actually offered steamships five dollars ahead if

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Speaker 1: they would carry troops back home, and for most of

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Speaker 1: them they went up to Cairo, Illinois and then routed

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Speaker 1: to wherever their personal home was from there. And for

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Speaker 1: a comparison, that amount five dollars per head is estimated

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Speaker 1: in one estimate I saw at around sixty five per

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Speaker 1: person today. On April one, eight sixty five, the Sultana

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Speaker 1: departed from New Orleans. Captain James cass Mason was at

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Speaker 1: the helm and the ship carried more than a hundred

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Speaker 1: passengers and a cargo of livestock. So the Sultana made

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Speaker 1: a stop at Vicksburg, Mississippi to take on recently released

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Speaker 1: Union POWs and to perform repairs, and this stop was

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Speaker 1: basically riddled with bad decisions that would seal the fate

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Speaker 1: of the Sultana and its passengers. The ship's engineers had

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Speaker 1: identified a problem with one of its boilers, but to

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Speaker 1: replace the boiler was going to take several days, and

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Speaker 1: those were days during which all these Union soldiers, which

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Speaker 1: were so lucrative to have on board, would instead go

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Speaker 1: home on other vessels. So instead of losing potential cash,

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Speaker 1: the decision was made that they would patch the boiler quickly,

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Speaker 1: which would only take about a day, instead of installing

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Speaker 1: a whole new replacement boiler. Then there was the matter

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Speaker 1: of loading all the troops on board. At five dollars

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Speaker 1: a man, it was really lucrative to take as many

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Speaker 1: POWs as possible, and kickbacks of as much as the

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Speaker 1: dollar and fifteen cents of person were being paid to

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Speaker 1: military officers in charge of troop loading. This was so

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Speaker 1: they would sort of look the other way while the

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Speaker 1: boats were loaded way beyond capacity. And when it comes

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Speaker 1: to ignoring capacity limits, this particular uh voyage comes with

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Speaker 1: some downright shocking numbers like I am not keeping brace yourselves,

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Speaker 1: So we talked about earlier how the Sultana was legally

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Speaker 1: um certified to carry a little less than four people,

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Speaker 1: fewer than four hundred people. More than two thousand, yes,

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Speaker 1: two thousand soldiers were loaded on board, while the captain

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Speaker 1: and army officials lined their pockets with all of this money,

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Speaker 1: so in the end the ship was at more than

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Speaker 1: six times normal capacity. Many of the men could barely

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Speaker 1: find a place to stand, let alone sit or lie down.

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Speaker 1: The top deck, which was known as the hurricane deck,

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Speaker 1: as well as the second deck and the bottom main deck,

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Speaker 1: were all completely packed with men who crushed onto the ship.

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Speaker 1: They were all eager to get home after the time

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Speaker 1: they had spent in battle and some of them in

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Speaker 1: prison camps. Yeah, at this point many people will ask.

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Speaker 1: You'll see sometimes in the in the literature, and it

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Speaker 1: sometimes comes up of like, why would all of these

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Speaker 1: men agree to get on this ship if it's clearly

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Speaker 1: so dangerous and horrible. They were POWs. They just wanted

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Speaker 1: to get home and end the horrible things that they

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Speaker 1: had been through, And so there were so many of

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Speaker 1: them that the hurricane deck began to sag really badly

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Speaker 1: from the weight of all of the men. Uh, and

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Speaker 1: it actually had to be buttressed with stanchions to prevent

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Speaker 1: a cave in. After assuring one of the army officers

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Speaker 1: that the ship had carried similar loads before, Captain Mason

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Speaker 1: left Vicksburg at nine pm on April, but it had

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Speaker 1: one more stopped to make before it moved on towards Cairo, Illinois.

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Speaker 1: So in April, the Sultana docked at Memphis to pick

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Speaker 1: up coal for the rest of its journey, and some

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Speaker 1: accounts uh kind of hint that there may have been

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Speaker 1: additional repairs to the damage boiler, like they may have

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Speaker 1: put another metal plate over problematic areas, but just the

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Speaker 1: same they loaded with coal. They may or may not

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Speaker 1: have done those repairs, and sometime between midnight and one

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Speaker 1: am on the Sultana left port at Memphis and continued north.

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Speaker 1: It did not get very far. In addition to the

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Speaker 1: heavy load that the Sultana carried, the journey was slowed

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Speaker 1: by rushing downstream waters of the Mississippi because melting snow

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Speaker 1: had actually led to the river flooding in certain areas.

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Speaker 1: Around two am, the boiler that had been repaired, instead

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Speaker 1: of being replaced, gave out and exploded and Shortly afterward,

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Speaker 1: two of the remaining three boilers also blew, so a

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Speaker 1: really aggressive fire broke out. Within minutes of the explosions.

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Speaker 1: The two smoke stacks were completely compromised and they fell

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Speaker 1: onto the hurricane deck. Many men were killed immediately in

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Speaker 1: the collapse, and those that survived jumped from the ship

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Speaker 1: in panic. There have been some interesting writeups that I've

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Speaker 1: seen in my research that kind of suggests that people

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Speaker 1: should have tried to fight the fire rather than jumping.

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Speaker 1: But one, it's hard to know if that would have

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Speaker 1: done any good, because this is pretty catastrophic at that point,

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Speaker 1: and to uh, you have to take into consideration the

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Speaker 1: fact that the people that were not crushed by the

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Speaker 1: smokestacks or catapulted from the vessel in the explosion, we're

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Speaker 1: often suffering from severe burns and scalding from the steam

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Speaker 1: and fire. Well. On on top of the whole question

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Speaker 1: of whether they should have fought the fire, there's the

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Speaker 1: fact where if people are crushed onto the deck so

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Speaker 1: hard that they can't even move, how could they reasonably

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Speaker 1: try to fight a fire? Right Well, most of the

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Speaker 1: people are alluding to the people that were not crushed

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Speaker 1: that jumped Oh, I see, I can't say that I

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Speaker 1: would behave any differently in a situation like that. I mean,

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Speaker 1: I think your survival instinct just kicks in and you're like,

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Speaker 1: I gotta get out of here. This is not a

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Speaker 1: safe place, right. So the fire spread really rapidly towards

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Speaker 1: the stern, which forced more people to jump overboard, and

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Speaker 1: the river was quickly filled with bodies and with jumpers

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Speaker 1: who were barely clinging to life. A lot of these

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Speaker 1: men had just been released from prison camp, and so

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Speaker 1: they were incredibly weak to begin with. Some of them

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Speaker 1: were sick. They were swimming in the current and trying

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Speaker 1: to tread water and trying to hang on too debris

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Speaker 1: just to float, and all of these things quickly depleted

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Speaker 1: their energy. This is also a time when people didn't

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Speaker 1: generally just learn how to swim when they were children,

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Speaker 1: So a lot of people in the water were, you know,

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Speaker 1: imperil just for not knowing how to keep themselves afloat. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's not like today when you grow up and you

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Speaker 1: go to the pool in the summer and you take

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Speaker 1: swimming lessons, Like it was not uncommon for people to

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Speaker 1: have no idea how to swim at this point. Uh

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Speaker 1: And in addition to these people that were in the

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Speaker 1: water being physically taxed by the exertion, the water was

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Speaker 1: extreme cold. We mentioned earlier that you know, a lot

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Speaker 1: of the heavy water was due to the fact that

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Speaker 1: snow was melting, snow one ice was melting, and water

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Speaker 1: was coming down stream, and that water was super cold.

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Speaker 1: So hypothermia claimed many lives as well. Some survivors clung

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Speaker 1: to some of the livestock animals that have been killed

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Speaker 1: in the blast. There's one survival story that involves a

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Speaker 1: man who allegedly floated for ten miles down the Mississippi

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Speaker 1: on a deceased mule. Official reports list one thousand, five

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Speaker 1: hundred forty seven deaths, although most historians estimate now that

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Speaker 1: it's closer to eight hundred men who were killed. We

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Speaker 1: don't know the exact number of lives claimed by the

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Speaker 1: tragedy because so many men were herded onto the ship

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Speaker 1: at Vicksburg. In the end, the explosion of the Sultana's

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Speaker 1: boilers and the ensuing panic killed close to the same

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Speaker 1: number of Union troops as were lost at the Battle

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Speaker 1: of Shiloh. The remnants of the Sultana drifted down river

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Speaker 1: before sinking to the bottom of the Mississippi River near Memphis.

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Speaker 1: Bodies washed up four days and some even as late

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Speaker 1: as a month later along the banks of the Mississippi.

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Speaker 1: News of the tragedy first broke when a young man

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Speaker 1: drifted onto the banks of the river in Memphis and

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Speaker 1: told centuries what had happened. This information was quickly relayed

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Speaker 1: and officials scrambled to try to mount a rescue effort.

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Speaker 1: The s S Bostonia two was the first rescue vessel

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Speaker 1: on the scene, and it arrived really quite quickly, So

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Speaker 1: remember this happening at two am. The Bostonia arrived there

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Speaker 1: at three am. The S S Arkansas, the S S.

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Speaker 1: Jerry Lynde, the SS Essex, and the Navy gunboat USS

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Speaker 1: Tyler also joined in the rescue effort. The USS Tyler

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Speaker 1: was manned almost exclusively by volunteer crew that had to

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Speaker 1: be mobilized really rapidly from Memphis because the regular crew

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Speaker 1: that would normally man the ship had already been discharged. Again,

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Speaker 1: we're coming to the end of the war and everybody's

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Speaker 1: kind of shuffling home. More than a week after the tragedy,

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Speaker 1: on May four, the Tiffan Ohio paper reported the incident

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Speaker 1: as follows. The scene following the explosion was terrible and

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Speaker 1: heartrending in the extreme. Hundreds of people were blown into

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Speaker 1: the air and descending into the water, some dead, some

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Speaker 1: with broken limbs, some scalded, were borne under by the

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Speaker 1: restless current of the Great River, never to rise again.

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Speaker 1: The survivors represent the screams as agonizing beyond precedent. Some

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Speaker 1: clung to frail pieces of the wreck as drowning men

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Speaker 1: cling to straws, and sustained themselves for a few moments,

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Speaker 1: but finally became exhausted and sunk. Only the best of swimmers,

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Speaker 1: aided by fragments of the wreck, were enabled to reach

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Speaker 1: the woods and take refuge until rescued by boats sent

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Speaker 1: from the landing to their assistance. There were about fifteen

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Speaker 1: women and children aboard, and as near as can be ascertained,

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Speaker 1: not more than two or three had been found at

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Speaker 1: the hour when this account was written. So, Tracy, before

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Speaker 1: we talk a little bit about the investigation and that

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Speaker 1: followed this tragedy, do you want to just take a

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Speaker 1: quick word from our sponsor. So General C. Washburn, who

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Speaker 1: was commanding officer at Memphis, opened an investigation in the

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Speaker 1: Sultana's explosion and sinking. Almost immediately after being informed of

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Speaker 1: what had taken place, Special Order one O nine, which

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Speaker 1: was issued by Washburn, established a military commission to investigate

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Speaker 1: the incident, and they moved really quickly. They did not

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Speaker 1: drag their feet. They began taking testimony at eleven thirty

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Speaker 1: am on April so, just nine and a half hours

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Speaker 1: after this had all happened. Several days later, Secretary of

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Speaker 1: War Edwin M. Stanton issued Special Order one to start

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Speaker 1: a separate investigation, and there was a rumor that a

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Speaker 1: Confederate bomb had been aboard the ship, but in the

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Speaker 1: end these military investigations determined that the mismanagement of the

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Speaker 1: boilers and the overcrowding of the ship were the real causes.

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Speaker 1: Even so, the alternate possibility that sabotage was involved continues

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Speaker 1: to be examined and debated. Due to a quote, secret

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Speaker 1: revealed how this information came to light as a little nebulous,

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Speaker 1: as it's reported in two different ways. In one, Confederate

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Speaker 1: messenger Robert Lowden claimed on his deathbed that he had

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Speaker 1: in fact sunk the Sultana with a cult torpedo. Other

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Speaker 1: accounts say that an acquaintance of his revealed the information

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Speaker 1: shortly after he died. Yeah, and Louden is also often

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Speaker 1: referenced as a basically a spy for the Confederates. Uh,

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Speaker 1: and I would say that more accounts seemed to document

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Speaker 1: that his friend William Streeter was actually the one that

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Speaker 1: revealed this information. But just so you understand how this

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Speaker 1: could have worked, a cold torpedo was basically a metal

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Speaker 1: casing that would be filled with gunpowder and then it

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Speaker 1: would be rolled in wax and cold dust, so it

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Speaker 1: could basically masquerade as a lump of coal and be

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Speaker 1: tossed into a regular coal bin and nobody would notice it. Uh.

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Speaker 1: The incendiary would then be shoveled into a boiler with

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Speaker 1: the rest of the coal in the course of regular

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Speaker 1: travel for a steamship, and this would cause the boiler

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Speaker 1: to explode once it was heated. Of course, naturally, there's

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Speaker 1: no definitive evidence on this alternate version, so it's really

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Speaker 1: unlikely we'll ever know for certain whether sabotage was involved.

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Speaker 1: And as for the follow up to the official investigation,

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Speaker 1: the ship's captain was killed in the incident, and the

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Speaker 1: only charges that were filed were against a Federal Army officer,

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Speaker 1: Captain Frederick Speed, and he had basically been one of

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Speaker 1: the people that took the dollar fifteen in kickbacks to

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Speaker 1: allow the overloading of troops onto the Sultana at Vicksburg.

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Speaker 1: On January ninth, eighteen sixty six, his court martial began

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Speaker 1: in Vicksburg, and in the January thirty, first night, eighteen

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Speaker 1: sixty six edition of the Daily Empire, which was a

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Speaker 1: newspaper out of Dayton, Ohio, an article ran entitled heavy

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Speaker 1: Charge one thousand murders. In this article detailed Captain's Speeds

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Speaker 1: court martial trial. Uh The article states, quote, it is

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Speaker 1: alleged that in April last he chartered the steamer Sultana

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Speaker 1: for private speculative purposes, placing one thousand, eight hundred eighty

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Speaker 1: six pear old prisoners on board, and thus did overload

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Speaker 1: the said steamer Sultana, whose legal carrying capacity was three

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Speaker 1: hundred seventy six passengers. The article goes on to describe

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Speaker 1: the accident quote, about seven miles above Memphis, Tennessee, was

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Speaker 1: destroyed by an explosion of her boiler or boilers and

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Speaker 1: by fire, and thereupon a large number to with one thousand,

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Speaker 1: one hundred ten or thereabouts of the paroled prisoners on board,

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Speaker 1: whose names are unknown, lost their lives by drowning, scalding,

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Speaker 1: and burning, and that the one thousand, one ten pear

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Speaker 1: old prisoners would not have so lost their lives but

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Speaker 1: for the misconduct of the said Captain Speed and the

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Speaker 1: overloading said steamer Sultana. And on June nine, eighteen sixty six,

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Speaker 1: so this was more than a year after the tragedy

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Speaker 1: took place, Captain Speed was indeed found guilty of neglect

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Speaker 1: and he was dismissed from the army. However, aside from

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Speaker 1: being disgraced and being booted from the service, there wasn't

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Speaker 1: a whole lot in the way of punishment. When Brigadier

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Speaker 1: General Joseph Holt, who was Judge Advocate General of the U. S. Army,

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Speaker 1: when he received the case file and the court martial findings,

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Speaker 1: he actually dismissed the charges against Speed and the case

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Speaker 1: was closed on September one, eighteen sixty six. And there's

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Speaker 1: some speculation that really it was a case where he

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Speaker 1: came to understand that this was not an uncommon thing,

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Speaker 1: that many other officers did similar things, and let ships

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Speaker 1: be overloaded, and he didn't want this one man to

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Speaker 1: become sort of the the example to be made of

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Speaker 1: of the situation, even though clearly there was a lot

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Speaker 1: of horrible aftermath of his poor decision making. While the

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Speaker 1: incident was reported in the Ohio newspapers because of large

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Speaker 1: number of Ohio residents on board and in the St.

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Speaker 1: Louis papers because that was the Sultana's home port, much

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Speaker 1: of the rest of the country was so engaged with

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Speaker 1: the news surrounding President Lincoln's assassination and the end of

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Speaker 1: the war that the event was barely noted, and a

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Speaker 1: lot of papers it was several pages in before the

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Speaker 1: incident was even mentioned. And the Mississippi River has actually

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Speaker 1: shifted course throughout the years, as most people know. If

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Speaker 1: you don't know, it is actually about two miles east

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Speaker 1: now of where it ran by Memphis in eighteen sixty five,

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Speaker 1: so it's really shifted quite a bit. And in NT

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Speaker 1: two an archaeological expedition located what is believed to be

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Speaker 1: deck planks and timbers from the Sultana uh And these

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Speaker 1: artifacts were actually found under a soybean field on the

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Speaker 1: Arkansas side of the river, so where it would have sunk,

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Speaker 1: but then the river has since shifted over quite a bit.

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Speaker 1: While the Titanic disaster was also incredibly tragic, unlike the Sultana,

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Speaker 1: it has a cemented place in history and its story

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Speaker 1: is really widely known. But for comparison, the Sultana was

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Speaker 1: less than half the size of the Titanic and it

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Speaker 1: lost between seventeen hundred and eighteen hundred passengers compared to

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Speaker 1: the Titanics one thousand, five hundred seventeen deceased. Both of

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Speaker 1: these are, of course terrible, but it's sad that the

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Speaker 1: Sultana tragedy was eclipsed by other news at the time

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Speaker 1: and largely forgotten. Yeah, it really did kind of not

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Speaker 1: get a fair shake in terms of being reported. There

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Speaker 1: are many theories about why that go beyond the sort

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Speaker 1: of heavy news cycle that was going on. Some people

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Speaker 1: have kind of hinted that perhaps because the Titanic had

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Speaker 1: a lot of rich and famous people on it, that

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Speaker 1: was a more sensational story to report and that kind

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Speaker 1: of seated it as a historical marker, whereas with this

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Speaker 1: it was unfortunate and it was a lot of Union troops,

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Speaker 1: but we didn't even know many of their names. Uh,

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Speaker 1: it's really sad, and I am very sad that it

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Speaker 1: kind of gets left out of the story a lot

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Speaker 1: of the time. Uh yeah, so that on Peppy Year News,

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Speaker 1: I have some listener mail. I have what is probably

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Speaker 1: my favorite listener mail of all time. And I mean

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Speaker 1: no disrespect to any of our other listener mails, because

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Speaker 1: we get so many seriously awesome ones, but this one

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Speaker 1: just hits all my sweet spots. Uh. Is from our

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Speaker 1: listener Hannah, and she says, Hey, ladies, I'm a longtime

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Speaker 1: listener and I love, love love the podcast. I've never

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Speaker 1: written in before, but after recently listening to the episode

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Speaker 1: on Rose Bertin, I felt inspired to Okay, just get

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Speaker 1: ready as my personal asside for your jealousy meter to

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Speaker 1: fly off the charts. So, Hannah says. I live in

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Speaker 1: Paris and I moved here to study art history. I

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Speaker 1: wrote my thesis on Elizabeth vig Lebron's portraits of Marie

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Speaker 1: Antoinette and how these portraits, along with rose Bertin's glorious

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Speaker 1: over the top gown she created for the queen often

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Speaker 1: depicted in these portraits, eventually led to berne An twine.

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Speaker 1: It's downfall during the Revolution by portraying herself as essentially

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Speaker 1: the queen of fashion rather than the Queen of France.

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Speaker 1: Marie Antoinette created many enemies and this marred the French

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Speaker 1: people's impression of their queen. Just after handing in my thesis,

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Speaker 1: my friends and I discovered that the Palace of Versailles

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Speaker 1: had started holding an annual masquerade ball. Oh my gosh,

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Speaker 1: I'm so jealous. I can't even deal with it. This

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Speaker 1: event started at sunset, and like the court of Louis

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Speaker 1: the fourteenth, it lasted until sunrise the next day. Period

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Speaker 1: costumes from the seventeenth and eighteenth century and masks were required.

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Speaker 1: The evening started in the gardens, where there was baroque

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Speaker 1: music playing. There were bubble machines viewing enormous bubbles as

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Speaker 1: far as you could see this probably didn't happen in

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Speaker 1: Louis time, and an elaborate firework show that lasted nearly

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Speaker 1: an hour. After this, we were escored it into Louis

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Speaker 1: the fourteenth's private gardens that are normally closed to the public.

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Speaker 1: At this point it was only people in period costumes

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Speaker 1: and there were five thousand participants total. It was absolutely incredible.

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Speaker 1: I won't go into all the details because it's simply

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Speaker 1: too much to write down. But in one area of

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Speaker 1: the party there was a full string orchestra playing only

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Speaker 1: my Chael Jackson music. There were topless women in fountains

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Speaker 1: reading poetry out loud and being fanned by very muscular

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Speaker 1: men wearing very little clothing. There was a cage full

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Speaker 1: of tigers. There was a wall made of rain, circus

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Speaker 1: sole performers danced every thirty minutes on stages set up

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Speaker 1: all around the garden, and at three am, they released

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Speaker 1: bald eagles into the crowd. It was absolutely outrageous and

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Speaker 1: one of the best nights of my life. The whole

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Speaker 1: shindig ended at sunrise, with breakfast served for five thousand

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Speaker 1: in the Orange groves just outside the gardens. The costumes

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Speaker 1: were incredible, and I felt so great wearing a dress

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Speaker 1: similar to those I had just spent months and months researching.

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Speaker 1: I even saw a woman with a bird cage built

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Speaker 1: into her wig, with a live bird in it, and

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Speaker 1: she she sent us pictures of this party, and they

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Speaker 1: are just they are beyond belief. They're so spectacular. I

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Speaker 1: am so envious. I feel bad for the animals involved,

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Speaker 1: because I have to say that anytime we talked about animals.

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Speaker 1: But oh my goodness, what a party like Who wouldn't

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Speaker 1: want to go to that uh spectacular Hannah? Like I said,

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Speaker 1: that is one of my absolute favorite emails of all

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Speaker 1: time because it just hits all of my my yummy

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00:23:05,880 --> 00:23:09,040
Speaker 1: fangirl raby spots. If you would like to email us,

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00:23:09,440 --> 00:23:12,040
Speaker 1: you can do so at history podcast at how stuff

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00:23:12,040 --> 00:23:14,720
Speaker 1: works dot com in case you don't listen closely every

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Speaker 1: week that is a little bit of a change. We're

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00:23:17,040 --> 00:23:20,080
Speaker 1: also at facebook dot com slash history class stuff. You

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00:23:20,080 --> 00:23:22,320
Speaker 1: can connect with this on Twitter at miss in history

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00:23:22,520 --> 00:23:24,960
Speaker 1: at missed in history dot tumbler dot com, and on

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00:23:25,040 --> 00:23:27,960
Speaker 1: pictures dot com slash missed in history. You can also

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00:23:28,080 --> 00:23:31,400
Speaker 1: visit us, check out archived episodes and check out the

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00:23:31,440 --> 00:23:33,280
Speaker 1: newest stuff we have going on, as well as our

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00:23:33,280 --> 00:23:36,359
Speaker 1: blog post at missed in history dot com. And if

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Speaker 1: you would like to research a little bit more of uh,

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Speaker 1: the story we talked about today, you can go to

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Speaker 1: our parent website, how stuffworks dot com and type in

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Speaker 1: the words Sultana in the search box and one of

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00:23:47,840 --> 00:23:49,760
Speaker 1: the articles you will get is Taken by the Sea

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Speaker 1: eleven Real life shipwrecks and the sultana is mentioned in

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Speaker 1: the article. If you would like to learn about that,

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00:23:54,680 --> 00:23:57,080
Speaker 1: or almost anything else you can think of, you can

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Speaker 1: do that at our parent website. And as I said,

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