Speaker 1: Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Elizabeth Dutton.
Speaker 3: Nothing, you know it's ridiculous.
Speaker 4: Yes, I've been waiting, waiting, waiting to tell you this. Yes, Sweden,
Speaker 4: you know the country.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's not ridiculous.
Speaker 4: No, I know, just give you a second. I'm warming
Speaker 4: up for this one because it's my brain. I'm still
Speaker 4: trying to rack my like how I had looked this
Speaker 4: up to see I thought it was a joke, a scam,
Speaker 4: a hoague something. I mean, this can't be real. But
Speaker 4: apparently from what I found, there is a website it
Speaker 4: seems to be legit. Sweden became the first country to
Speaker 4: decide that sex is a sport, so there's now the
Speaker 4: Sweetest Sex Federation and they're organizing the first European Sex Championship.
Speaker 4: So apparently this will last for several weeks. Just like
Speaker 4: the Olympics, participants are allowed to compete six hours a day.
Speaker 4: They have forty five minutes to an hour for each match.
Speaker 4: There's all sorts of things they'll be judged on, like
Speaker 4: a penetration, endurance, post performance or sorry, pose performance. I
Speaker 4: thought it was post anyway, so I looked up the
Speaker 4: website right and it's this place, the Sweetest Sex Federation dot.
Speaker 3: Com and this is real.
Speaker 2: You checked.
Speaker 4: As much as I can tell, they have a very like,
Speaker 4: seemingly legit website.
Speaker 2: I had.
Speaker 4: Most of the press has been because it's it just
Speaker 4: got announced, so I've not seen The New York Times
Speaker 4: is not writing about it, nor is even the Daily News,
Speaker 4: which makes me a little worried.
Speaker 2: I'm like, wow, one of them should be writing the.
Speaker 4: Daily Mail and the Daily So they apparently they say
Speaker 4: sex is a sport, and they are really big on
Speaker 4: making sure that it's Ah, this is not about men
Speaker 4: dominating women's this is this is like teamwork sex. So yeah,
Speaker 4: they want to actively change the view of sex. This
Speaker 4: is a very sex positive thing. I don't know how
Speaker 4: Sex Olympics are going to change the view of sex
Speaker 4: because yeah, they let's see, like, for instance, whereas there's
Speaker 4: one point I wanted to show you here there was
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, they said quote and I thought you'd like
Speaker 4: this with tears in their eyes. S SF can stay
Speaker 4: that none of the one hundred and ninety five countries
Speaker 4: in the world have any educational center that would use
Speaker 4: tax money to educate people in love and sex, which
Speaker 4: is the most peaceful thing in human history. So they've
Speaker 4: taken it upon themselves educated people about human sex through
Speaker 4: sex games championships.
Speaker 3: Sir, Sir, sex is.
Speaker 2: Getting known more and more every day, Elizabeth.
Speaker 3: It's totally legal, cool. Oh, ridiculous, totally cool, totfully ridiculous,
Speaker 3: totally uncool. Uh. Do you know what else is ridiculous?
Speaker 3: Airport though, losing it, going absolutely berzonkers berserker over a
Speaker 3: hot air balloon.
Speaker 2: Oh? I like it.
Speaker 3: This is Ridiculous Crime a podcast about absurd and outrageous capers, heists,
Speaker 3: and cons. It's always ninety nine percent murder free and
Speaker 3: one ridiculous. I've spoken of riots here before.
Speaker 2: Yeah, have you seem to like them?
Speaker 3: Do straw hat riot? The clown on firefighter.
Speaker 2: Right at the Yeah, the circuit riot.
Speaker 3: That was really good. Have you ever been in a riot?
Speaker 2: Oh? Girl, you know me. I've been some riots.
Speaker 3: Yes, have you liked that.
Speaker 4: I've been in riots, but mostly they were political things
Speaker 4: that turned into what would be termed riots. And then
Speaker 4: I've been in things that started out intentionally, as I guess,
Speaker 4: riotous behavior, and the best way to describe it would be, oh,
Speaker 4: they're rioting, and if you're rioting. I think you call
Speaker 4: that a riot. So I've been in both, you know,
Speaker 4: amateur riots and politically professional riots, I guess so, like yeah.
Speaker 3: Like damaged destructions, yeah.
Speaker 4: Breaking windows stuff. Like I was very young, I didn't
Speaker 4: really know the value of things. Like when you're nineteen
Speaker 4: and you're going out to make a statement, you think
Speaker 4: that this is direct action and you kick the like,
Speaker 4: you know, the rear the side mirror off a car. Right,
Speaker 4: you're not thinking that, like, that's not really direct action.
Speaker 4: That's just you breaking stuff under the proviso of I'm
Speaker 4: doing politics.
Speaker 3: Right, I've been in a riot.
Speaker 4: You've been Wait a minute, now, that's surprising. What was
Speaker 4: the riot? Was this like you and pets? It was
Speaker 4: a bunch of dogs running the streets.
Speaker 3: It was right o Colosseum, Metallica.
Speaker 4: Oh yes, guns and Roses, this is good day on
Speaker 4: the green, Oh my goodness.
Speaker 3: And body count opens and then Metallica play, and then
Speaker 3: Guns N' Roses. It was two hours before they came
Speaker 3: on and everyone lost it and started ripping up the
Speaker 3: field and throwing the whole colisseum.
Speaker 4: Right, you guys, they had to repair the whole field,
Speaker 4: you guys. The fight was epic.
Speaker 2: From what I know, people went to this and it
Speaker 2: was like it was crazy.
Speaker 4: An actual like medieval battle of grass and metal heads.
Speaker 3: It's awesome. And there I was that I was.
Speaker 2: Who did you take scalps? Do you get anybody?
Speaker 3: I just I grabbed turf and I just shoved it
Speaker 3: right in people's mouths and put their teeth out.
Speaker 2: It was violent. Look what you made doing.
Speaker 3: And I did a dime for it. Yeah, in Susanville,
Speaker 3: I have riot for you today, Zarren. It's going to
Speaker 3: be a laugh riot.
Speaker 2: Oh get ready, We're going.
Speaker 3: To take a stroll through histories more ridiculous riots. So
Speaker 3: I have a couple for you. Let's start in London,
Speaker 3: all right, seventeen forty nine London time. Well, I know
Speaker 3: it was a great year. John Montague, the second Duke
Speaker 3: of Montague. He was a lot of things, so.
Speaker 2: It was a new dukedom at that time.
Speaker 3: He was he was the owner of a coal mine,
Speaker 3: He was a doctor. He was governor, making patients and
Speaker 3: saving patient exactly. He was governor of the islands of
Speaker 3: Saint Lucia and Saint Vincent. Oh, and he was a
Speaker 3: supporter of orphanages. He financed the education of two black Brits,
Speaker 3: Ignacious Sancho and Francis Williams or Sancho, I should probably say,
Speaker 3: and Francis williams Ignatius Sancho is a really fascinating fellow.
Speaker 3: By the way. He was born on a slave ship
Speaker 3: in the Atlantic, sold to slavery and New Granada, sent
Speaker 3: to Britain, ran away from where he was sold to
Speaker 3: the Montague House and they took him in. They taught
Speaker 3: him to read and write. He had his portrait painted
Speaker 3: there by Thomas Gainsborough, Oh wow, and was just like
Speaker 3: taken under their wing. Eventually he wound up owning his
Speaker 3: own business, a grocery shop. He wrote essays and plays
Speaker 3: and books and music, and worked as a staunch abolitionist.
Speaker 3: He was friends with the famous Shakespearean actor David Garrick,
Speaker 3: and who was like the first like theater idol, like
Speaker 3: the first time. David Garrick was like at the time
Speaker 3: you didn't go. If you go to see a play,
Speaker 3: it was because it was that play. But then they
Speaker 3: started putting his name above the title of the play.
Speaker 3: He had top.
Speaker 2: He was like the first star, the first star.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he was like before Sarah Burnandra Bullock Boetheart he
Speaker 4: was London sweetheart.
Speaker 3: Yes. And then Ignatius he could vote because he was
Speaker 3: a male property owner, and so he was the first
Speaker 3: British African to do so. So this guy that I'm
Speaker 3: talking about, John Montague, he supported this guy so interesting,
Speaker 3: really really fascinating guy. So he was all these things,
Speaker 3: but he was also a practical joker. Okay, and this
Speaker 3: is what his mother in law said about him. Quote,
Speaker 3: all his talents lie in things only natural in boys
Speaker 3: of fifteen years old, and he is about two and fifty.
Speaker 3: To get people into his garden and wet them with squirts,
Speaker 3: and to invite people to his country houses and put
Speaker 3: things in bed to make them itch, and twenty such
Speaker 3: pretty fancies as these I erort.
Speaker 2: Live.
Speaker 3: He's spraying people with garden hoses and putting itching powder
Speaker 3: in their sets. Oh yeah, yeah, so this is like
Speaker 3: it is like everyday suburban dad stuff, but like in
Speaker 3: his position, it was unheard of.
Speaker 2: Yeah, everybody's to be arrest.
Speaker 3: One time he dunked the political philosopher Montesque in a
Speaker 3: tub of cold water as a joke. Zing, Okay, I'll
Speaker 3: show you one day.
Speaker 2: John.
Speaker 3: He's hanging out with some other wealthy nobles, including the
Speaker 3: Duke of Portland and the Earl of Chesterfield. And he
Speaker 3: had an idea. He wanted to make a wager. He
Speaker 3: bet that if he put an ad in the paper
Speaker 3: that publicized a stage show where a guy climbed into
Speaker 3: a court bottle, the place would sell out like a
Speaker 3: grown man, like basically like a wine bobble.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I get it.
Speaker 4: He thought he could get a room full of people
Speaker 4: to come in and pay to see a guy climb
Speaker 4: into a bottle.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay.
Speaker 3: And they all laughed and then like, oh he's look,
Speaker 3: he's in the bottle. And then these pleaves will surely
Speaker 3: go nuts for this.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: So they agreed, let's do it. And so they took
Speaker 3: out an ad. All right, Actually they took out a
Speaker 3: bunch of ads.
Speaker 5: Let me read you one of itne No, here's the
Speaker 5: ad at the new Theater in the Haymarket on Monday
Speaker 5: next the sixteenth instant to be seen a person who
Speaker 5: performs the several most surprising things following viz.
Speaker 3: First, he takes a common walking cane from any of
Speaker 3: the spectators, and thereon plays the music of every instrument
Speaker 3: now in use, and likewise sings to surprising perfection. Secondly,
Speaker 3: he presents you with a common wine bottle, which any
Speaker 3: of the spectators may first examine. This bottle is placed
Speaker 3: on a table in the middle of the stage, and he,
Speaker 3: without any equivocation, goes into it in sight of all
Speaker 3: the spectators and sings in it. During his stay in
Speaker 3: the bottle, any person may handle it and see plainly
Speaker 3: that it does not exceed a common tavern bottle. Those
Speaker 3: on stage or in the boxes may come in masked
Speaker 3: habits if agreeable to them, and the performer, if desired,
Speaker 3: will inform them who they are.
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, I have so recap.
Speaker 3: To recap, Doodle, make a cane into any instrument on
Speaker 3: the planet. He'll then climb into a bottle in front
Speaker 3: of everyone.
Speaker 2: Okay at first first one that's on a present.
Speaker 4: You can see somebody do that in Harlem, Right, I'm like, Okay,
Speaker 4: the guy took a staking turned in instrument.
Speaker 2: I've seen that.
Speaker 4: But like climent, keep they keep stressing that it's a
Speaker 4: normal bottle, Like I get hold this with my hand.
Speaker 4: How is a person like you couldn't fit a cat?
Speaker 3: Not only once he's in the bottle, he's gonna sing
Speaker 3: all the inspections continue whatever, and then people can come
Speaker 3: on stage in masks and bottle Man's gonna be like,
Speaker 3: I know who you are.
Speaker 4: I'm not getting past the man in the bottle. You
Speaker 4: can't get a man in.
Speaker 2: The bottle. So they're not bold or ridiculous.
Speaker 3: Would you buy a ticket to go see it? No?
Speaker 2: I would think that person's a liar.
Speaker 5: I think I would would you for what you're promising me?
Speaker 3: This show? Me?
Speaker 2: Okay? So wait, wait a minute.
Speaker 3: More people were like me than you do you go.
Speaker 2: To a lot of circus side shows?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 2: Have you ever pay to go to a side show? See?
Speaker 4: I pay to go to a side show. So out
Speaker 4: of the two of us, I'm the real soccer. I'm
Speaker 4: a socker I can speak with. This is not good,
Speaker 4: sucker bet.
Speaker 3: I just I'm so curious. What are they trying to anyway?
Speaker 2: Go on?
Speaker 3: Yes, a lot of people bought tickets.
Speaker 2: I want lizard.
Speaker 3: It sold out. Magic shows were really popular back then.
Speaker 3: Oh so that was like so they're thinking maybe it's
Speaker 3: this illusion, but like complete talk of the town, everybody's
Speaker 3: all about this. So the show was a bottle guy
Speaker 3: singing bottle guy. The show was that what was what
Speaker 3: is now the Theater Royal Haymarket, although the building was
Speaker 3: relocated down the street in eighteen twenty one, but it
Speaker 3: was built in seventeen twenty It's currently the third oldest
Speaker 3: London theater still in use. It originally showcased French plays.
Speaker 3: The theater tradition between England and France's there's a lot
Speaker 3: of back and forth to accommodate the various restrictions set
Speaker 3: up by the English government over the years. When the
Speaker 3: Brits would crack down on theater, the English actors would
Speaker 3: head over to France to perform. Then when things eased up,
Speaker 3: they'd come back. But they brought with them these incredible
Speaker 3: advances in stagecraft, and around this time when they were
Speaker 3: coming back, they brought back i'll talk about it, like
Speaker 3: melodrama and stuff. So seventeen thirty seven, a little like
Speaker 3: more than a decade before bottle Man, the Licensing Act
Speaker 3: was introduced and it restricted the content of plays and
Speaker 3: so you had to have any script had to be
Speaker 3: approved by the Lord Chamberlain before it could be presented.
Speaker 3: And so it was done to crack down on political satire.
Speaker 3: It all came from one play called The Golden Rump
Speaker 3: and so in it and it was like an anonymous play.
Speaker 3: There was no you know, playwright name.
Speaker 2: So this is post shakes. We're making fun of King James.
Speaker 3: Right, and so in the play The Golden Rump, the
Speaker 3: Queen gives the king an enema and then so they're like, okay,
Speaker 3: that's enough.
Speaker 2: One across the line. Across the burnet line.
Speaker 3: They are banning obscene and scandalous material. And so anything
Speaker 3: you know, criticizing or mocking the crown is going to
Speaker 3: be scandalous. They ban it. Theaters got around this licensing
Speaker 3: act by putting on dramatic scenes that would be like
Speaker 3: separated by musical interludes. So they're not putting on a
Speaker 3: full play. They just do it. And it turns it's
Speaker 3: basically becomes burlesque and melodrama.
Speaker 4: It's like a vaudeville for them in a sense. You're
Speaker 4: just getting bits of this, bits of that, maybe a
Speaker 4: scene from a very famous pot.
Speaker 3: And that was brought over from the continent. It was
Speaker 3: very like the influences of French and Italian theater on
Speaker 3: English theater at this time. You had, you know, because
Speaker 3: of like Comedia d Larte in illianol just making it very.
Speaker 2: Over the top stock characters. Yeah, exactly known things you're
Speaker 2: charging and playing with.
Speaker 3: And so the serious actors they all decamped for France
Speaker 3: once more. And it was during the time of the
Speaker 3: Licensing Act that the Bottle Show was staged. And the
Speaker 3: Licensing Act was dropped in eighteen forty three.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: And it wasn't until nineteen sixty eight that the Lord
Speaker 3: Chamberlain's censorship of plays was ended.
Speaker 4: Wait a minute, every play that I know before sixty
Speaker 4: eight had to be approved by some chamberlain.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: So melodrama and burlesque and then this bottle spectacle. They're
Speaker 3: generally like entertainment for the masses. But it wasn't just
Speaker 3: the hoy PELOI who tickets to see the court bottle trick.
Speaker 3: The king's second son, the Duke of Cumberland, was up
Speaker 3: in there. I mean it was just like everybody's there.
Speaker 3: Theaters sold out, every single seat, every box standing room
Speaker 3: was overextended.
Speaker 4: To see a man climb into a bottle man climb
Speaker 4: into a I'm just going to keep repeating and getting
Speaker 4: back to the essential idea that everyone thinks that a
Speaker 4: man's going to climb into a wine bottle and sing
Speaker 4: a song to them.
Speaker 3: We've talked about this before. There wasn't a whole lot
Speaker 3: to do.
Speaker 4: Apparently, not even like anything to do. They're like, look,
Speaker 4: you want to see this dust land.
Speaker 3: So at seven o'clock the house lights are brought up. Okay,
Speaker 3: so exciting. Everyone just couldn't wait to see the man
Speaker 3: shove himself inside a bottle hom telling you, And so
Speaker 3: everyone sat there, no music, no opening act, no insult
Speaker 3: comic to warm up the crowd. They grow restless. People
Speaker 3: murmured to each other, wondering what the hold up could be,
Speaker 3: and then they started like shouting, bring out the bottle guy. Yeah,
Speaker 3: we don't have to do who makes himself inexplicably tiny?
Speaker 3: When people shouted insults, others like stomp their feet and
Speaker 3: smash their canes into the ground, so it was like
Speaker 3: a we will rock you. Suddenly a man appeared from behind.
Speaker 2: The curtain, regular size man.
Speaker 3: A regular size man, and he no bottle in sight,
Speaker 3: and he was deeply apologetic.
Speaker 2: So it's terrible for conning all of you suckers.
Speaker 3: He told the crowd that if court bottle guy didn't
Speaker 3: show up in fifteen minutes, that the theater would refund
Speaker 3: everyone's money.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've heard this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so now like people are really jeering and
Speaker 3: cat calling after he says I'll give him refund.
Speaker 2: Like the box office post ten minutes ago.
Speaker 3: I got dulled up in my best option for this.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, all my frills and my ruffles.
Speaker 3: Someone in the pit yelled that if everyone paid double,
Speaker 3: he'd crawl into a pint bottle like levity. So fifteen
Speaker 3: minutes goes by, no bottle guy. Suddenly someone in one
Speaker 3: of the boxes grabbed a lit candle and threw it
Speaker 3: on the stage. Oh, they're just irritated.
Speaker 2: That's bad, and everything's made of wood.
Speaker 3: With that chaos, Yeah, the audience is now a mob.
Speaker 3: They ripped out the seats and the benches. They wrecked shop.
Speaker 3: People were shouting and screaming for like no reason. Ladies
Speaker 3: are shrieking as their partners dragged him towards the exit
Speaker 3: and the scramble. People lost their wigs. Yeahs snatched. They
Speaker 3: were snatched. They lost their hats, their jackets, their dresses.
Speaker 3: They were denoted Zarah. The building was basically gutted right rye.
Speaker 3: Everything that could be removed was removed and tossed into
Speaker 3: the street and then like seating scenery, costumes, flyers, disgruntled patrons,
Speaker 3: and I imagine like excitable bystanders, they created a giant
Speaker 3: bonfire out of the materials. So everything is dragged outside
Speaker 3: and set on fire. Someone ripped down the curtain and
Speaker 3: flew it like a giant flag. Doing their own indie
Speaker 3: theater production of Limz climbed up there. Almost immediately, everyone
Speaker 3: turned their anger towards Samuel Foot, the manager of the theater.
Speaker 3: They were sure that he did this. No, he cried,
Speaker 3: he didn't know anything about it. He knew nothing about
Speaker 3: nothing in fact. In fact, he said, he warned the
Speaker 3: theater's owner, John Potter, that the whole thing seemed fishy,
Speaker 3: you think, and it just didn't feel right. So everyone's
Speaker 3: looking at Potter. No, he cries, He said that a
Speaker 3: strange man had handled all the details.
Speaker 2: A man with a mustache.
Speaker 3: I'm sure that with enough money and no threats of
Speaker 3: censorship from the crowd, Potter would have approved anything.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 3: So the man in the bottle, or the bottle conjuror
Speaker 3: as he was called, was all people were talking about.
Speaker 3: The newspapers wrote breathlessly about the bottle Guy's absence and
Speaker 3: what that meant. Satirical prints were produced. Among them two
Speaker 3: caricatures published within the month. One was called the Bottle
Speaker 3: Conjuror from Head to Foot without Equivocation, and the other
Speaker 3: one was called English Credulity or You're all bottled. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I like the Head and Foot. One depicts the bonfire
Speaker 3: in the crowd and has amazing speech bubble captions for
Speaker 3: the people watching. No I have lost my head, yelled
Speaker 3: someone with no head. This is the best. Oh ah, bitch,
Speaker 3: what's all this? Screams? What screams? It looks like a
Speaker 3: little boy in fancy clothes. Soon it someone's tossing a
Speaker 3: cat on the fire. Oh wow, that's great. And then
Speaker 3: up in the balcony there's three members of the aristocracy
Speaker 3: sipping from a bottle and watching the whole thing with.
Speaker 2: Great amusing, one of them shaving a dog.
Speaker 3: So there was a bit in one newspaper that said
Speaker 3: that the bottle Conjuror had meant to show up, but
Speaker 3: was paid for a private show before the public one.
Speaker 3: And then he did the trick there and the patron
Speaker 3: corked the bottle and ran away with dud in it.
Speaker 3: And this story eventually goes to Europe, they find out
Speaker 3: about it, and it was a great way for the
Speaker 3: people on the continent to laugh at how dim and
Speaker 3: gullible the English were. Oh, thanks so much for the
Speaker 3: Age of Enlightenment. So the critic Barbara Benedict, she wrote
Speaker 3: a book in two thousand and one called Currie, a
Speaker 3: Cultural History of Early Modern Inquiry. Yeah, and she stated
Speaker 3: that the Bottle Conjurer quote promised to bring literature to life,
Speaker 3: to reverse power relations, to incarnate onanism, to make monstrosity,
Speaker 3: the transgression of physical boundaries humorous. Instead, he made the
Speaker 3: audience fools of their own desire when balked furthermore, this
Speaker 3: unleashed desire to turn violent.
Speaker 2: Now I have one question.
Speaker 4: M Now, all these people gather and this was I imagine
Speaker 4: the debut performance for the Bottle Conjure. Yeah, so like
Speaker 4: no one has seen the show, so everyone's just hyped
Speaker 4: on their imagination. Yes, and everyone's all excited and all
Speaker 4: gonna talk about the Bottle Conjure.
Speaker 3: Well, it's like when you see an amazing trailer for
Speaker 3: a movie and you get all jazz and nego and
Speaker 3: it's terrible.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's that.
Speaker 3: It's like you go to the theater and there's no where,
Speaker 3: And then later on.
Speaker 4: Somebody tells me that that movie has been put into
Speaker 4: a wine bottle cap and someone ran away with it.
Speaker 2: Yes, okay, got it.
Speaker 3: When we come back, I have more tales of spontaneous
Speaker 3: collective behavior. Hello, welcome, Hi, welcome. I think I like
Speaker 3: old timey riots because they're not only especially ridiculous to
Speaker 3: our sensibilities, but it's easier to find one with no fatalities.
Speaker 4: Yes, but they also would do things like at Abraham
Speaker 4: Lincoln when they were showing his body, they turned band
Speaker 4: that's on the crowd. They're like, look back up, and
Speaker 4: they're like, I will gut you.
Speaker 3: Yeah. But like these days, when I find a riot,
Speaker 3: it's usually pretty bloody.
Speaker 2: Which is weird because they had the band's back. Then
Speaker 2: we got the rubber bullets.
Speaker 3: Down, we're still getting blood a sports.
Speaker 4: Yeah, No, I totally agree with you. I'm just saying
Speaker 4: it's weird that the aggressors were. We had better weapons before.
Speaker 3: Well, I've got a ridiculous riot in eighteen sixty four
Speaker 3: for you.
Speaker 2: Oh, good timing right.
Speaker 3: This one's also from England, which is pure coincidence. It's
Speaker 3: not analysis of the elements that serve as inherent precursors
Speaker 3: to modern soccer.
Speaker 2: You're not saying that it's not a thing.
Speaker 3: Perhaps, No, not at all. There once was a man
Speaker 3: named Henry Tracy.
Speaker 2: Coxwell, and boy did his.
Speaker 3: He said to the world, look at me, Look at me.
Speaker 3: I'm an aeronaut, like a balloonist. He was big into ballooning. Yeah,
Speaker 3: not making balloon animals. He rode them loons. What was
Speaker 3: he famous for him? So glad you asked, I enjoy
Speaker 3: your inquisitive mind. He led two military balloon companies in
Speaker 3: Germany during the Franco Prussian War. Oh, it was a
Speaker 3: slow attack. Wait, he was very scenic. You said he
Speaker 3: was a romantic story.
Speaker 2: Name was Coxwell? He was English.
Speaker 4: So he was just basically a mercenary, A mercenary balloonist. Yes, okay,
Speaker 4: go on.
Speaker 3: It's like the original draft for the A team. So
Speaker 3: he led the first aerial photography trip in England. He
Speaker 3: founded a magazine called The Balloon. He wrote a book
Speaker 3: called My Life and Balloon Experiences. That's very straightforward. He
Speaker 3: is straightforward. He doesn't like was banned as obscene pornography.
Speaker 2: What was he taking over?
Speaker 3: No, it wasn't and.
Speaker 2: Matthew Brady up there getting close.
Speaker 3: Brady he was also a dentist, and that's great fan
Speaker 3: of so he achieved record altitude and attitude in eighteen
Speaker 3: sixty two. He got to like between twenty nine thousand
Speaker 3: and thirty seven thousand feet. He was his ballpark.
Speaker 4: He's basically competing against Pato Barnes's grandfather. Yes, he's like,
Speaker 4: I'm the balloon the planet man.
Speaker 3: It's actually it's a pretty harrowing tale. He and a
Speaker 3: meteorologist named James Glacier but not spelled like Glacier g
Speaker 3: l A I s ah. He invented the glacier. He
Speaker 3: made the minus factory. They took off in a coal
Speaker 3: gas powered balloon and they got up to thirty seven thousand,
Speaker 3: thirty seven thousand feet.
Speaker 2: That's like jets flo.
Speaker 3: That's like jet. Yeah, that's way. That's ridiculous.
Speaker 2: Like, yes, that is straight. You need cold power to
Speaker 2: get that.
Speaker 3: The air up there, very cold and very thin, yes,
Speaker 3: very thin.
Speaker 2: They're not breathing much.
Speaker 3: It's negative four degrees fahrenheit, negative twenty celsius.
Speaker 2: The cold, I don't know that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the cold isn't the problem for me. You can
Speaker 4: wrap enough stuff around you, you can get a heat on
Speaker 4: oxy it's just no oxygen. Yeah, that's the part I
Speaker 4: mean we have we need oxygen. Yes, we do need oxygen,
Speaker 4: but how are you managing that? You don't want your
Speaker 4: pilot passing out.
Speaker 3: They're thrilled and they're also dying, So up they go, down, down,
Speaker 3: down go the oxygen levels. Cox Well his hands got
Speaker 3: frozen stiff, and so he used his teeth to release
Speaker 3: a gas valve and lower the pair to the earth.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's like that's cold, that's stone cold.
Speaker 2: I'm going to show you how dumb I am is.
Speaker 2: The pair of the basket.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the two of them, the guy the pair okay,
Speaker 3: p A I R.
Speaker 2: Well he's French, of that. Maybe they looks like a pair.
Speaker 2: He was in the gold, the two of them.
Speaker 3: They lowered, the two of them to the earth, the
Speaker 3: two guys. They made it down safely. But Coxwell's balloon
Speaker 3: had to be retired. It was just too worn out.
Speaker 3: Don't worries eron, I'm not. Don't cry. He had a plan.
Speaker 3: He's a man with a plane. He built a new balloon,
Speaker 3: or more precisely, a balloon envelope. So like the actual
Speaker 3: balloon part of it, not the basket. The basket I
Speaker 3: suppose was the same. This one that he built could
Speaker 3: hold ten percent more gas like me. He called it
Speaker 3: the Britannia.
Speaker 2: Oh rule Britannia.
Speaker 3: So the riot. How in the world is this man
Speaker 3: at the center of a riot?
Speaker 2: That's what I'm wondering. But I'm just left over here curious.
Speaker 3: It all went down on July eleventh, eighteen sixty four,
Speaker 3: Victoria Park in Leicester, a city in the East Midlands
Speaker 3: of England. Coxwell had to test drive the new balloon.
Speaker 3: He had to work out the kinks and small trips,
Speaker 3: so he took Old Britannia to Victoria Park. The event
Speaker 3: was sponsored by the Foresters Friendly Society, not super Owners. Basically,
Speaker 3: it's a fraternal order of foresters like woods lovers. Yes,
Speaker 3: they sold thirteen tickets to passengers to catch a ride
Speaker 3: in Britannia.
Speaker 2: Oh they're taking up people.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, people. Fifty thousand people showed up in the park,
Speaker 3: I am telling you, And according to Coxwell, there were
Speaker 3: only eight cops there. Like those are Oakland ratios right there.
Speaker 4: Dude, And the bathrooms where are these people? They didn't
Speaker 4: have porta potties.
Speaker 3: Back then they got trees zarenes. Close your eyes, Oh yeah,
Speaker 3: I want you to picture it. You're an eight year
Speaker 3: old boy. Your parents have taken you down to Victoria
Speaker 3: Park for the summer fete put on by the forest Guys.
Speaker 3: It's mid afternoon. As you make your way to the
Speaker 3: fifteen acre park, your mother has brought a plate of
Speaker 3: her award winning scones to put out at the ladies
Speaker 3: auxiliary table. You helped her make the strawberry jam she's
Speaker 3: so proud of. As you approached the green, you hear
Speaker 3: the sounds of that new fangled invention, the comelife. You
Speaker 3: see it on a great wagon pulled by huge white horse.
Speaker 3: You've never heard or seen anything like it before. You
Speaker 3: stand at the cake table, staring in awe at the
Speaker 3: wonderful things on the offer, including a giant hot air
Speaker 3: balloon piloted by none other than Henry Tracy Coxwell, you
Speaker 3: sneak a slice of red currant cake and shove your
Speaker 3: way through the crowd. Everyone's gathered around the balloon, murmuring
Speaker 3: about what an incredible feat of science and engineering it is.
Speaker 3: You inch towards the flimsy wooden barricade surrounding that balloon.
Speaker 3: There it stands, in all its majesty. The balloon itself
Speaker 3: was framed in wooden scaffolding. You saw the carpenters off
Speaker 3: to the side, sipping on bottles of lagger. You settle
Speaker 3: in at the barricade, eager to see the historic show,
Speaker 3: the inaugural flight of Coxwell's new hot air balloon. The
Speaker 3: crowd chatters along until a man loudly clears his throat.
Speaker 3: Hush falls over all of those gathered. I am an aeronaut.
Speaker 3: The man yells, I have something shocking, say a woman gas.
Speaker 3: Her friend tells her, wait, not yet, like I said,
Speaker 3: this is you see, this is not a new balloon.
Speaker 3: This is not Coxwell's newer and bigger and dubber. No,
Speaker 3: this is an old balloon, use balloon, nothing great, big whop,
Speaker 3: a real snore. The crowd grows angry. What not a
Speaker 3: new balloon, just some bold, boring balloon? What kind of
Speaker 3: truth is Coxwell trying to play on us? This does
Speaker 3: not rule Britannia. Ha hah. The crowd is restless and irritated,
Speaker 3: and they knock down the barricade. You slip out of
Speaker 3: the way, just in time, angry adults start demanding that
Speaker 3: even though it's two o'clock and the balloon is scheduled
Speaker 3: to depart at five, Coxwell needs to get off as
Speaker 3: stuff and take it to the sky's right now. You
Speaker 3: know this is going to be a big mess, and
Speaker 3: you are here for it. The thirteen lucky souls who
Speaker 3: had tickets for this ride shove their way into the
Speaker 3: basket of the balloon. They demanded that Coxwell take off
Speaker 3: and give them the pleasure of floating silently over the city.
Speaker 3: We demand silent pleasure. They hadn't boarded the basket properly, though,
Speaker 3: and this scaffolding was still up. Coxwell tried to signal
Speaker 3: the carpenters, but they were all three sheets under the
Speaker 3: yew tree. One of the passengers turned to address the crowd.
Speaker 3: He won't take things up, y'all. He's a chicken, Coxwell,
Speaker 3: I'm just making up all these clokes. Cockswell no bit,
Speaker 3: and made a very rude gesture and said things unfit
Speaker 3: for virtuous ears, that I'm not making up. The crowd
Speaker 3: they did not like this. They got irrationally angry. People
Speaker 3: were jostling, Insults were heard, Threats were made five of
Speaker 3: the eight cops there made their way to the front
Speaker 3: of the crowd. I guess they got all hepped up too.
Speaker 3: They started pushing back at the people in the scrum.
Speaker 3: One of the cops hit a woman on the head.
Speaker 3: She felt on the ground bleeding. It was on like
Speaker 3: you think you're gonna be in a nice lester lady,
Speaker 3: at a perfectly lovely summer fete, and get away with it.
Speaker 3: I might have you think the townsmok are going to
Speaker 3: take this lying down. Think again, Copper. A solitary bottle
Speaker 3: flew through the air above everyone's heads, and it was
Speaker 3: a direct hit on the balloon envelope, ripping right through it. Ooh,
Speaker 3: just projectile. The crowd irerupted and scrambled to the scoffing
Speaker 3: where they rip the mesh down. Coxwell yelled to the crowd,
Speaker 3: that's enough, stop it. You stop this instant. If y'all
Speaker 3: don't check yourselves and take a step back, I will
Speaker 3: pass some gas. The crowd looked at him, puzzled. When
Speaker 3: I will let the gas out of this balloon and
Speaker 3: no one will go anywhere like, oh, if you don't.
Speaker 4: Check yourself, I will wreck myself.
Speaker 3: The crowd goes back to fighting, though, and breaking things
Speaker 3: and shouting insults at the famous balloonists. He's frustrated, he's disgusted. Coxwell,
Speaker 3: lets all the gas out.
Speaker 2: Oh no.
Speaker 3: When the balloon deflated to the ground, the crowd rushed
Speaker 3: it and just tore it to pieces, like cookie Monster
Speaker 3: doing a number on some chips. Ahoid More cops showed
Speaker 3: up and tried to calm the seam. As you can imagine,
Speaker 3: they were not successful.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 3: Once people have been given the promise of a balloon
Speaker 3: navigating the majesty of a summer English sky, and that
Speaker 3: promise has been broken.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I forget about it. Ah, that's the covenant.
Speaker 3: We all live here. Yeah. So basically all the cops
Speaker 3: could do is prevent Coxwell from being torn limb from limb,
Speaker 3: and the crowd went after him, and they were shouting
Speaker 3: and these are quotes.
Speaker 2: Rip them up, you gotta rip them up. Knock him
Speaker 2: on the head, you gotta.
Speaker 3: Knock oh my favorite, finish him and I got.
Speaker 2: Bad lights between like metal lyrics and video video games,
Speaker 2: back and forth.
Speaker 3: They ripped up his clothes and.
Speaker 2: Also he's the I am a famous.
Speaker 3: As they ripped up his clothes, they exposed his fleshy
Speaker 3: white buttocks. Oh no, he made a run for it.
Speaker 3: A man ran beside him guiding him. It was a
Speaker 3: man named Stone, the town.
Speaker 2: There's a person running next to him. Yeah, run next, I.
Speaker 3: Am Stone, the town clerk. Come with me if you
Speaker 3: want to live. And so they hid out at Stone's
Speaker 3: house while the riot just like raged outside. The Britannia
Speaker 3: was no more. Everything that wasn't shredded was burned. So
Speaker 3: of course, like you have the wreckage, don't on fire
Speaker 3: everything The interior metal skeleton of the balloon was carried
Speaker 3: down the streets of Leicester by the crowd like spoils of.
Speaker 2: War, totally trophy for the crowd.
Speaker 3: So cox Well said it was all the cops fault,
Speaker 3: that they didn't have enough officers on duty, and he
Speaker 3: also said the foresters were to blame for The London
Speaker 3: Review of Politics, Society, Literature, Art and Science said the
Speaker 3: crowd was quote a horde of savages, as fierce and
Speaker 3: untamed as south Sea Islanders, and differing very little from
Speaker 3: them except for in their habitat, which was at Lester.
Speaker 2: Why you got to drag the islands there, You gotta
Speaker 2: do savage on your own.
Speaker 3: He had tossed some racism in there out of note.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean I think y'all are savage on your own.
Speaker 4: You're going to be laying savage out.
Speaker 3: Here, exactly. It's just unnecessary. That was unnecessary l R
Speaker 3: P S l A s. The people of Lester. They
Speaker 3: blamed aggressors from Nottingham, why not locals. Locals were referred
Speaker 3: to as balloonatics for a while amazing and then, obviously,
Speaker 3: with the Britannia out of commission, Coxwell's floating dreams had
Speaker 3: to be put on hold. Eventually, he did build an
Speaker 3: even bigger balloon than Britannia, but it cost him a
Speaker 3: pretty penny. He applied for a grant from wait for it,
Speaker 3: the Foresters Society, but they said they couldn't pay it
Speaker 3: out for some time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you remember that whole thing last time.
Speaker 3: So the city of Leicester held a fundraiser and came
Speaker 3: up with five hundred pounds for Coxwell. However, a lot
Speaker 3: of Coxwell's peers like thought he kind of shook the
Speaker 3: city down for it, and either way he did live
Speaker 3: to sail through the air again. Let's take a break
Speaker 3: and we come back. I have one more riot for you.
Speaker 2: Darren, Elizabeth, Elizabeth.
Speaker 3: I've talked about English, right, Elizabeth, but now it's time
Speaker 3: say it again, Elizabeth for some down home Yankee act
Speaker 3: of crowds. Yeah, do you like eggnog?
Speaker 4: I mean whatever, I'm not going to drink it into
Speaker 4: a lie, but you'll drink it. I mean, if it's
Speaker 4: Christmas time or the holiday season and it's been made
Speaker 4: by somebody, it's not like out of the eggnog.
Speaker 3: Has come from the sky.
Speaker 2: Well I'm not like, oh, I'm an eggnog purist.
Speaker 4: But if someone's like, oh, I got homemade eggnog, I
Speaker 4: will take a cut.
Speaker 3: Right drinking out of it.
Speaker 4: But everyone's like, oh, hey, you want this car to eggnog.
Speaker 4: I'm like, I don't drink dairy creamer, thank you.
Speaker 3: I do. I won't drink it. I'm not into it
Speaker 3: at all. Yeah, because I don't get with thick drinks
Speaker 3: other than like milkshakes. I like, I cut my juice
Speaker 3: in half with water. I water everything down.
Speaker 2: I thicken everything.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I put in corns, corn stars, whatever I got flower eggnog.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna tell you about eggnog, go on, please, But
Speaker 3: first I want to talk about United States military Academy
Speaker 3: aka West Point.
Speaker 2: Oh, I know this place. So.
Speaker 3: West Point founded in eighteen oh two. It was an
Speaker 3: unruly place from the get go. It was basically just
Speaker 3: like a few dilapidated buildings with only ten cadets and
Speaker 3: three teachers. When it first started, it.
Speaker 2: Always just had a small cluster of the nineteenth century.
Speaker 3: Yeah. There were no real admission standards and the students
Speaker 3: could show up anytime they want throughout the year, so
Speaker 3: there wasn't like a semester structure or anything. And then
Speaker 3: in eighteen seventeen, Colonel Sylvanus Thayer, also known as the
Speaker 3: father of West Point, was brought in as superintendent.
Speaker 2: His name is Forrest Thayer.
Speaker 3: I like it, yeahs Sylvanus. In eighteen sixty two, West
Speaker 3: Point had thirty six faculty members and staff. There were
Speaker 3: also four established departments engineering, Mathematics, Military Tactics, and natural Philosophy,
Speaker 3: which included like physics, chemistry, life sciences. After the War
Speaker 3: of eighteen twelve, Congress just dumped money into the place.
Speaker 3: You know, we hadn't done so hot. They wanted to military.
Speaker 4: We have our own officer training corps, if you will.
Speaker 4: They had to hire mercenaries and Prussians.
Speaker 3: Also like, let's set up like a home camp. And
Speaker 3: that's when Thayer got, you know, put in. He was strict.
Speaker 3: He didn't let the cadets leave campus. They couldn't participate
Speaker 3: in duels and Virginia. Yeah, no cooking in the dorm rooms.
Speaker 3: A lot of these cats came from Virginia too. No
Speaker 3: smoking or dipping, no playing cards, no reading novels. A yeah,
Speaker 3: they're just like take all the fun out of life.
Speaker 3: Cadets were also banned from buying, storing, or drinking alcohol
Speaker 3: on campus. Okay, and so drinking off grounds was allowed,
Speaker 3: but cadets weren't allowed to leave the academy while enrolled,
Speaker 3: So you couldn't. Yeah, so Sayer he was serious about
Speaker 3: his liquor band, and so serious that he bought North Tavern,
Speaker 3: which was the tavern closest to West Point, and converted
Speaker 3: it into a hospital. Who he's just like, I'm going
Speaker 3: to take that one out of the equation. They refused
Speaker 3: to bend the rules even for the annual tradition of
Speaker 3: drinking alcoholic eggnog during the Christmas holiday.
Speaker 4: Yes, which is how I started drinking as a kid
Speaker 4: at West Point.
Speaker 3: And that's why I'm talking about eggnog. So when the
Speaker 3: cadets learned of this, the group got together and smuggled
Speaker 3: liquor from nearby taverns. One of those cadets Jefferson Davis,
Speaker 3: the future and only President of the Confederacy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because this would be about the time league, you.
Speaker 3: Know, yeah Davis Well, and Jefferson Davis was already known
Speaker 3: as a heavy drinker. Yeah, yeah, he was deep.
Speaker 4: Bennett a bunch of the That's what I learned from
Speaker 4: this time. That's how I knew that West Point was
Speaker 4: so wild. It is from that era of generals. When
Speaker 4: you read their stories. This was a small class, like
Speaker 4: forty thirty students, and they'd be like, oh, you're number
Speaker 4: thirty one in a class.
Speaker 2: I was like, oh, you're number thirty one in a
Speaker 2: class of forty.
Speaker 3: Oh exactly, exactly. So Jefferson Davis was the first student
Speaker 3: ever to be arrested for being a patron at a
Speaker 3: nearby tavern. He was caught drinking there by Captain Ethan
Speaker 3: Allen Hitchcock. Wow, and Davis was court martialed, but seeing
Speaker 3: as how his record was clean otherwise, he was not expelled.
Speaker 3: Edgar Allan Poe reportedly spent the majority of his time
Speaker 3: is a West Point cadet. At a local tavern, he
Speaker 3: said Davis was the sole congenial soul in the entire
Speaker 3: god forsaken place.
Speaker 2: Didn't you get kicked out of west I think he did?
Speaker 3: I think he did. In August eighteen twenty six, Davis
Speaker 3: was yucking it up at a tavern when he told
Speaker 3: he was told that a superior officer was on his
Speaker 3: way there looking for him, Looking for Jefferson Davis. He
Speaker 3: sprinted back to campus, but he fell down a sixty
Speaker 3: foot ravine on the way, put him in the hospital.
Speaker 2: For a while. Ronk falling down a revine.
Speaker 3: Fronk falling down a ravine.
Speaker 2: The Jefferson Davis story.
Speaker 3: Christmas eighteen twenty six was approaching and the cadets wanted
Speaker 3: to celebrate, and celebrating meant booze. William R. Burnley of Alabama,
Speaker 3: Alexander J. Center of New York, and Samuel Alexander Roberts
Speaker 3: of Alabama went to Martin's tavern to pick up some liquor.
Speaker 3: Once the three cadets were back at West Point, they
Speaker 3: hid four barrels of whiskey among their personal possessions.
Speaker 2: Barrels barrels.
Speaker 3: So the meanwhile, Cadet TM Lewis of Kentucky managed to
Speaker 3: obtain a gallon of rum from Benny's, another tavern, and
Speaker 3: still even more cadets were rounding up gallons of brandy, rum,
Speaker 3: whiskey and wine.
Speaker 2: Those are like the local barrels, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's not like a barrel where they're.
Speaker 2: Just say they're not rolling it in. Oh that's a
Speaker 2: table exactly.
Speaker 3: Cadets had been caught before attempting to smuggle alcohol into
Speaker 3: West Point, so Thayer held a meeting with fellow officers
Speaker 3: to be on alert during the evening Christmas Eve. He
Speaker 3: assigned the same officers who always did this job, Captain
Speaker 3: Ethan Allen Hitchcock old ch obviously mentioned and Lieutenant William A. Thornton,
Speaker 3: and positioned them at the North Barracks Around midnight. Hitchcock
Speaker 3: and Thornton decided all was well and went to bed
Speaker 3: Chumps midnight four am, Christmas Day, eighteen twenty six, Hitchcock
Speaker 3: woke up to loud noises coming from a few floors
Speaker 3: above him. When he went to quote ascertain if there
Speaker 3: was any disorder in the barrack, he found thirteen drunken
Speaker 3: cadets still drinking in room number five. Just as he
Speaker 3: showed up, so did a drunk Jefferson Davis. Davis like
Speaker 3: ran in like the kool aid man, shouting, put away
Speaker 3: the growd, Captain Hitchcock is coming, But like Captain Kitchock,
Speaker 3: Hitchcock arrested Davis and ordered him to return to his room.
Speaker 3: Davis complied, which saved himself a court martial later. He
Speaker 3: then reminded the remaining twelve cadets that any group of
Speaker 3: twelve or more was an illegal assembly. So they're just
Speaker 3: like getting remarks against.
Speaker 2: You got twelve people that disciple.
Speaker 3: The disciple doesn't. While this was going on, Hitchcock noticed
Speaker 3: like that he heard even more noises coming from somewhere else.
Speaker 3: He cruised over to a neighboring room and discovered three
Speaker 3: more drunk cadets, two of whom attempted to hide in
Speaker 3: their beds under blankets like sorry sleeping, what did you sat?
Speaker 2: So they were both Jefferson Davis.
Speaker 3: The third one covered his face with his hat as
Speaker 3: a makeshift mass. But you'll never know who I am.
Speaker 2: I'm a coat wreck.
Speaker 3: Kitchcock was like, take off the mask, and then he
Speaker 3: headed out to find more drunks. However, the cadets he
Speaker 3: had already caught and reprimanded, decided to take his intrusion
Speaker 3: as an offense. Like this was like, this was brazen.
Speaker 3: How dare he? So they said to each other, get
Speaker 3: your your dirks and bayonets and pistols if you have them,
Speaker 3: because the night is over and Hitchcock will be dead.
Speaker 2: We're getting harmed up.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, they kill this man and I'm like, so
Speaker 3: they they go to his room and they like into
Speaker 3: where he's living. They start throwing sticks and rocks at
Speaker 3: his door and window, like get out here. Meanwhile, Hitchcock's
Speaker 3: buddy Thornton, he was hit on the head with a
Speaker 3: wooden post and threatened by another cadet with a sword. Wow,
Speaker 3: this is what we call toxic masculine. One cadet actually
Speaker 3: did fire his pistol at Hitchcock as he tried to
Speaker 3: break down a door, but he missed because another cadet
Speaker 3: saw what was about to happen and jostled the would
Speaker 3: be shooter, so he missed his show. Someone knocks, someone
Speaker 3: knocked his hand, like he's kicking down a door. He's
Speaker 3: like proto dea. At this point, Hitchcock needed backup right,
Speaker 3: so he asked a cadet to bring the calm here,
Speaker 3: meaning the commandant, the commandant of cadets. The drunk could
Speaker 3: dets misheard that and thought that he was calling for
Speaker 3: artillery men, and the cadets, for whatever reason, hated the
Speaker 3: artillery men also called the bomb of deers, So they
Speaker 3: took this, Yeah, they took this summoning as an insult.
Speaker 3: The cadets gathered to take up arms to defend themselves
Speaker 3: and the North Barracks from the imagined impending attack from
Speaker 3: the artillery men. Instead, it's just bring the commandant. The
Speaker 3: destruction escalated because like, cadets started destroying everything they could
Speaker 3: get their hands on.
Speaker 2: They're making a fort.
Speaker 3: They would just know. They just started smashing dishes. They're like,
Speaker 3: I know.
Speaker 2: They did that.
Speaker 3: They broke chairs, they smashed cabinets, they ripped the banisters
Speaker 3: from the stairs, Like why. Then Commandant William Worth showed
Speaker 3: up and the cadets started to sober up and calm down.
Speaker 3: Realizing no artillery men were coming, The Eggnog Riot was over.
Speaker 3: It was known as the Eggnog Riot. Point revely Is
Speaker 3: sounded cadets from South Barracks, they rise promptly and assemble
Speaker 3: a neat discipline. Rose early Christmas morning, so this is
Speaker 3: like two hours after the end of the riot. The
Speaker 3: North Barracks cadets, however, came barefoot, cursing, disheveled, still completely drunk.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it's just loose. I've been drunk.
Speaker 3: The officer of the day took one look at the
Speaker 3: group of hungover, still drunk cadets and then just dismissed everybody.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's like, I don't even want to look at you.
Speaker 3: So nearly a third of the two hundred and sixty
Speaker 3: cadets at West Point participated in the Eggnog Riot.
Speaker 4: And three decades later half almost said whatever, half to
Speaker 4: a third of the country said, you know what, we
Speaker 4: should take the guy who led the Eggnog riot and
Speaker 4: try to start a new country. He seems like a winner,
Speaker 4: that boy.
Speaker 3: So you've got a third of two sixty right. West
Speaker 3: Point was still in its infancy, and if they had
Speaker 3: kicked everyone out, they're gonna really cripple the place. And
Speaker 3: it also would have heard the image it was trying
Speaker 3: to build is that's a place of order, not anarchy.
Speaker 3: So instead they decided to place the worst offenders twenty
Speaker 3: two in total on house arrest.
Speaker 2: So now you can't go anywhere.
Speaker 3: Which was kind of the rule.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was before it was like, what, you can't
Speaker 2: leave the room.
Speaker 3: So January twenty sixth, you know, eighteen twenty seven, now
Speaker 3: court martial proceedings began. Nineteen cadets and one soldier, Jefferson Davis,
Speaker 3: avoided being court martialed due to his being immediately compliant
Speaker 3: upon being caught, where he went back to his room
Speaker 3: and said he was put on house arrest for six weeks.
Speaker 3: For over a month, a tribunal of professors and soldiers
Speaker 3: heard the testimony of one hundred and sixty seven witnesses,
Speaker 3: which included Robert E. Lee.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he would be there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he spoke on the behalf of some of the cadets.
Speaker 3: The court martials also mentioned in this I not mentioned.
Speaker 3: The court martials lasted until mid March, and the nineteen
Speaker 3: cadets were found guilty and sentenced to be dismissed from
Speaker 3: West Point. However, eight of those were granted clemency and
Speaker 3: then five more ended up graduating.
Speaker 4: Anyway, I wonder what Grant was doing, because he's in
Speaker 4: the same class with Lee, and it's like, you got
Speaker 4: it was a young drunk, you know, he's like but anyways,
Speaker 4: the fact that they were all together, it's like something.
Speaker 3: Fifty three cadets received less severe punishment. So there was
Speaker 3: just huge numbers nuts. But you know, like as you
Speaker 3: were saying, there were a there's a pretty good bunch
Speaker 3: of future traders.
Speaker 2: Totally crazy number.
Speaker 3: Jefferson Davis graduated from West Point in eighteen twenty eight,
Speaker 3: and then when the Southern States tried to secede, he
Speaker 3: became the president of the Confederate Stats.
Speaker 2: Imagine Stonewall Jackson might have been in this class too.
Speaker 3: Could be. Benjamin Humphries was expelled from West Point and
Speaker 3: he later became the governor of Mississippi and a Confederate
Speaker 3: Army general. And then Hugh Mercer was expelled, but the
Speaker 3: sentence was later remitted. He would graduate from West Point
Speaker 3: become a general for the Confederate Army.
Speaker 2: So this is just hey, you also.
Speaker 4: Got that General Granger in the class. He's the one
Speaker 4: who does the emancipation proclamation for the election, not the
Speaker 4: mancipator population, but certifying the mancipation proclamation for the juneteenth
Speaker 4: When he goes down a Order three in Galveston. He's
Speaker 4: there's this area the eighteen late eighteen twenties in West
Speaker 4: Point is like a lot of American history is coming
Speaker 4: through those boys.
Speaker 3: Well, I think a lot of them boys fell down
Speaker 3: ravines and hit their head.
Speaker 4: They all work together and knew each other. It doesn't
Speaker 4: really come out in the stories about them. Well here's
Speaker 4: the thing to make a crazy movie about west Point
Speaker 4: AH twenty five.
Speaker 3: Well, here's what happened. It's bizarre, it's wild, but it's
Speaker 3: also one that's not well known today. Among West Point cadets.
Speaker 3: A lot of them don't know about that.
Speaker 2: They don't know they Riot. No, how do they know?
Speaker 3: This is Sherman Fleek, the West Point Command historian. He said,
Speaker 3: quote hardly anyone knows about it. If pooled among forty
Speaker 3: four hundred cadets, three thousand federal employees, fifteen hundred military
Speaker 3: staff and faculty, I doubt thirty people would know a
Speaker 3: thing about it. What I'm just doing the Lord's work.
Speaker 3: Here's the Aaron trying to tell everyone.
Speaker 2: I'm telling you.
Speaker 3: So none of the buildings of the Eggnog Riot days
Speaker 3: remain today.
Speaker 2: Yeah, imagine they're all Stone or sorry, would not Stone.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the riot did result in a change with the
Speaker 3: academy's architecture. When new barracks were constructed in the eighteen forties,
Speaker 3: they included short halways that required cadets to completely exit
Speaker 3: the building before being able to access any other level.
Speaker 3: Only one of those buildings still remains. And then this
Speaker 3: is what Fleek said quote when they built those, they
Speaker 3: put in a measure of crowd control. It would make
Speaker 3: it difficult for cadets to get out of hand and
Speaker 3: gather in large number.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Interesting, so so much for all of like the discipline.
Speaker 3: Another important and lasting change. West Point no longer has
Speaker 3: big holiday celebrations, but a party does take the lase. Yeah,
Speaker 3: they really limit alcohol access. But those are my three
Speaker 3: shorty ridiculous riots for you.
Speaker 2: That last one was crazy.
Speaker 3: What's your ridiculous takeaway?
Speaker 4: It's not that ridiculous, but I think it qualifies at
Speaker 4: a certain level. Jefferson Davis been a punk, always going
Speaker 4: to be a punk. But you know, once upon ben
Speaker 4: a punk going to be a punk.
Speaker 3: That's why ridiculous take care or degree that. I agree,
Speaker 3: And that's it for today. You can find us online
Speaker 3: at Ridiculous crime dot com. We have t shirts if
Speaker 3: you're into that sort of thing. Mug and apparently coffee
Speaker 3: tastes better out of that mug. I've been told. We're
Speaker 3: also at Ridiculous Crime on both Twitter and Instagram. Email
Speaker 3: us at Ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com, Leave it
Speaker 3: talk back on the iHeart app just reach Out. Ridiculous
Speaker 3: Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and Zaren Burnett, produced
Speaker 3: and edited by deranged balloonists Dave Cousten. Research is by
Speaker 3: Marissa I Can Fit in the Teacup Brown and Andrea
Speaker 3: I Can Fit the Thimble song Sharp and Tear. The
Speaker 3: theme song is by Drunken Cadets Thomas Lee and Travis Dutton.
Speaker 3: Executive producers are co chairs of the Aeronauts Sailing Society,
Speaker 3: Ben Bollen and Noel Brown.
Speaker 2: Crime Say It One More Times Crime.
Speaker 1: Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio. Four more podcasts
Speaker 1: my Heart Radio visit the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.