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Speaker 1: Hey there, history fans. We're taking a break for the

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Speaker 1: next two weeks so that I can move across country.

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Speaker 1: But don't worry, We've got plenty of classic shows to

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

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Speaker 1: TDI HC Vault.

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Speaker 2: Welcome to this Day in History Class, from HowStuffWorks dot

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Speaker 2: Com and from the desk of Stuff you missed in

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Speaker 2: History Class. It's the show where we explore the past,

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Speaker 2: one day at a time with a quick look at

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Speaker 2: what happened today in history. Welcome to the podcast. I'm

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Speaker 2: Tracy B. Wilson in its August twenty fifth. Today in

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Speaker 2: eighteen thirty five, a bizarre hoax started in a newspaper,

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Speaker 2: so an announcement ran in the New York Sun on

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Speaker 2: Friday August twenty first of eighteen thirty five, just a

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Speaker 2: few days before we're talking about this announcement read quote,

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Speaker 2: we have just learnt from an eminent publisher in this

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Speaker 2: city that Sir John Herschel, at the Cape of Good

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Speaker 2: Hope has made some astronomical discoveries of the most wonderful

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Speaker 2: description by means of an immense tellelescope of an entirely

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Speaker 2: new principle. This was very exciting. Sir John Herschel was

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Speaker 2: a famous name in the world of astronomy. He was

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Speaker 2: the nephew of Caroline Herschel and the son of William Herschel,

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Speaker 2: and this telescope promised to be extremely fancy, so people

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Speaker 2: got excited about what news was going to follow in

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Speaker 2: the newspaper. A front page article ran on August twenty fifth,

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Speaker 2: also in the New York Sun, which was the paper

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Speaker 2: that ran all of these. It was purportedly written by

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Speaker 2: John Herschel's assistant, doctor Andrew Grant, and doctor Grant talked

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Speaker 2: about this amazing and enormous telescope that could see all

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Speaker 2: kinds of detail all the way on the Moon. This

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Speaker 2: telescope was reportedly twenty four feet or about seven point

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Speaker 2: three meters in diameter, so it was huge, and it

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Speaker 2: suggested that there was a whole civilization on the Moon.

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Speaker 2: More articles followed. This was a six part series, and

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Speaker 2: the next part was basically a travelogue about going to

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Speaker 2: the Cape of Good Hope and setting up this incredible

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Speaker 2: telescope they were going to use to look at the Moon.

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Speaker 2: What followed was all kinds of detail about what was

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Speaker 2: on the moon. There were lunar forests and flowers and

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Speaker 2: bodies of water, and all kinds of bizarre creatures. These

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Speaker 2: included goat like monsters, waterbirds, some kind of lunar beavers

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Speaker 2: that made their own huts instead of building dams in

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Speaker 2: the water. There were palm trees, there were melon trees.

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Speaker 2: There were miniatures, zebras. It went on and on. It

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Speaker 2: was really like somebody just free associated a bunch of

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Speaker 2: really bizarre plant and animal descriptions, and then later on

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Speaker 2: also buildings. The fourth installment featured these humanoid creatures with

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Speaker 2: bat wings and faces that were quote a slight improvement

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Speaker 2: upon that of the large orangutan, except it was spelled

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Speaker 2: orangu tang. The sixth and last entry in the New

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Speaker 2: York Sun's Lunar series was printed on Monday, August thirty

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Speaker 2: first of eighteen thirty five. It included a very dramatic

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Speaker 2: story about this telescope catching five, and then once the

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Speaker 2: telescope was fixed, the moon had moved out of observable position,

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Speaker 2: so they couldn't see it anymore. Once the moon was

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Speaker 2: ready to be observed again, Herschel had moved on to

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Speaker 2: some other project, So that is why that was the

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Speaker 2: end of the story. Other newspapers picked up this whole story,

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Speaker 2: and there was a lot of talk about how exciting

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Speaker 2: all these discoveries were. There was some discussion at the

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Speaker 2: beginning about whether this was valid at all. I mean,

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Speaker 2: people had never seen the surface of the Moon with

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Speaker 2: that much detail. It maybe was believable that there was

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Speaker 2: all kinds of bizarre life up there. The fact that

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Speaker 2: Herschel really had gone on a research trip to South

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Speaker 2: Africa and really had built a telescope at the Cape

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Speaker 2: of Good Hope all helped with the believability of this

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Speaker 2: whole bizarre story. People were like, Oh, I know, he

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Speaker 2: really did that, so this must really be what he

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Speaker 2: saw through it. But by the fourth install a lot

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Speaker 2: of people were starting to think this seemed a little

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Speaker 2: bit far fetched. More and more people came to the

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Speaker 2: conclusion that this was some codswallop with a side of

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Speaker 2: bull roar. Was not believable to a lot of people

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Speaker 2: by the end of it. Sometime later, British journalist Richard

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Speaker 2: Adams Locke confessed to writing this whole thing, saying that

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Speaker 2: he didn't mean it to be a hoax. He meant

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Speaker 2: it as satire. Apparently, Herschel heard about this whole thing

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Speaker 2: late in eighteen thirty five. At first he thought it

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Speaker 2: was funny, although for many years after that people kept

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Speaker 2: asking him about it, and he gradually thought it was

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Speaker 2: less funny and got tired of those questions. You can

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Speaker 2: learn more about this whole bizarre episode in the March

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Speaker 2: thirtieth and April first, twenty fifteen installments of Stuff You

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Speaker 2: Missed in History Class. Thanks to Tari Harrison for her

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Speaker 2: audio work on this show. You can subscribe to This

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Speaker 2: Day in History Class on Apple podcasts, Google Podcasts, and

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Speaker 2: wherever else you get podcasts. Tomorrow, we'll have an eighteenth

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Speaker 2: century declaration that's probably not the one you thought of.

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Speaker 3: Greetings everyone, welcome to This Day in History Class, where

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Speaker 3: we bring you a new tidbit from history every day.

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Speaker 3: The day was August twenty fifth, nineteen twenty five. The

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Speaker 3: Brotherhood of Sleeping car Porters, a labor union organized by

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Speaker 3: the black employees of the Pullman Company, had its first meeting.

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Speaker 3: George Mortimer Pullman founded the Pullman Company in eighteen sixty

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Speaker 3: seven during the reconstruction era, after the emancipation of enslaved

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Speaker 3: black people in the South. The Pullman company manufactured railroad cars.

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Speaker 3: Pullman's big claim to fame was the sleeping car, or

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Speaker 3: passenger railcars that have beds for travelers. To make overnight

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Speaker 3: trips more comfortable. Railroad lines leased Pullman cars, which were

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Speaker 3: really popular in the US from the mid eighteen hundreds

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Speaker 3: to the mid nineteen hundreds. The Pullman Company employed black

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Speaker 3: maids and porters, many of whom were formerly enslaved. In

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Speaker 3: the beginning of the company's history, Pullman knew that many

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Speaker 3: black people needed work badly and would take low wages.

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Speaker 3: The work that the porters did on Pullman cars is

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Speaker 3: what really made the experience top quality. Porters prepared beds

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Speaker 3: for passengers at night and made them up in the morning.

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Speaker 3: They served food and drinks to passengers, They cared for

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Speaker 3: passengers when they were sick, and they made sure passengers

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Speaker 3: were safe on their trips. Porters were respected in their communities,

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Speaker 3: they got to travel around the country, and after tips,

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Speaker 3: they were paid better than a lot of black people

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Speaker 3: and other professions. But their hours were long and the

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Speaker 3: work was often thankless. They had to work four hundred

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Speaker 3: hours or travel eleven thousand miles in a month to

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Speaker 3: earn full pay, and they were still paid a lot

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Speaker 3: less than white people and other professions. At the Pullman Company,

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Speaker 3: porters did not have any job security, and they had

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Speaker 3: to pay for their own food, lodging, and uniforms. If

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Speaker 3: passengers took items from their cars, then their pay was stopped.

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Speaker 3: They did not get much sleep at night since they

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Speaker 3: worked such long days, and even when they did, they

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Speaker 3: had to sleep on couches in the smoking car, and

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Speaker 3: the conditions of their work maintained the master servant relationship

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Speaker 3: between black and white people that was perpetuated under slavery.

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Speaker 3: Porters were often called George, regardless of their real names,

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Speaker 3: presumably because of the old practice of slaves being named

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Speaker 3: after their masters, and the Pullman founder's name was George.

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Speaker 3: Unhappy with these conditions in how they faced punishment if

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Speaker 3: they brought these issues up to the company, the porters

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Speaker 3: tried to organize. After a few attempts to unionize from

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Speaker 3: nineteen oh nine to nineteen thirteen, the Pullman Company itself

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Speaker 3: decided to create the Pullman Porters Benefit Association in nineteen fifteen.

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Speaker 3: Five years later, the company also established the Employee Representation Plan,

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Speaker 3: which was funded through employee salaries, but those initiatives did

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Speaker 3: not completely address the porter's issues, so a small group

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Speaker 3: of Pullman porters approached labor movement leader A. Philip Randolph

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Speaker 3: for help in starting a union. Randolph was reluctant to

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Speaker 3: help them initially, but he warmed up to the idea

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Speaker 3: and the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters had its first

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Speaker 3: meeting on August twenty fifth, nineteen twenty five. The union

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Speaker 3: published its first demands in The Messenger, a magazine that

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Speaker 3: Randolph founded. It called for abolishing tipping, pay raises, pension increases,

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Speaker 3: in better rest breaks. The Pullman Company used various tactics

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Speaker 3: to disrupt the union's efforts, like using spies, firing porters

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Speaker 3: involved in the union, intimidating people interested in joining, and

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Speaker 3: putting propaganda in media. So the union remained secretive, and

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Speaker 3: the porter's wives were instrumental in keeping the union alive

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Speaker 3: by fundraising and attending meetings when porters could not be present.

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Speaker 3: It took a while for the union to gain traction,

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Speaker 3: but in nineteen thirty seven, two years after the National

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Speaker 3: Relations Labor Act was enacted, the Pullman Company signed a

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Speaker 3: labor agreement with the Brotherhood. The porter's minimum salary was

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Speaker 3: increased and working conditions improved. In nineteen forty seven, the

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Speaker 3: Pullman Company let go of the sleeping car business. As

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Speaker 3: the railroad industry declined in the nineteen fifties. In nineteen sixties,

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Speaker 3: so did the numbers of porters and membership in the Brotherhood.

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Speaker 3: Many porters were involved in the Civil Rights movement as well.

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Speaker 3: In nineteen seventy eight, the Brotherhood merged with another union,

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Speaker 3: the Brotherhood of Railway Airline Steamship Clerks, freight Handlers, express

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Speaker 3: and station Employees. I'm Eve Jeffcote and hopefully you know

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Speaker 3: a little more about history today than you did yesterday.

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Speaker 3: If you would like to learn more about this topic,

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Speaker 3: you can listen to the episode of Stuff you Missed

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Speaker 3: in History class called The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters.

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Speaker 3: The link to that episode is in the description. You

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Speaker 3: can follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook at TDIHC podcast.

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Speaker 3: Thanks again for listening and we will see you tomorrow.

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Speaker 2: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

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Speaker 2: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.