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Speaker 1: Happy Saturday. In our recent episode on Scott Joblin, we

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Speaker 1: mentioned his Great Crush Collision March, written after the Crash

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Speaker 1: at Crush, So we're bringing out our episode on the

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Speaker 1: Crash at Crush as Today's Saturday Classic. This originally came

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Speaker 1: out September twenty fifth, twenty seventeen. We also played this

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Speaker 1: as part of a playlist of offbeat History episodes back

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Speaker 1: at the start of the COVID nineteen pandemic, so folks

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Speaker 1: may have heard this episode a little bit more recently,

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Speaker 1: but honestly it is one of my favorites, and since

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Speaker 1: I talked in it about wanting to do a Scott

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Speaker 1: Joplin episode, I really wanted to bring it back out today. Also,

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Speaker 1: there are various points in this episode where we talk

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Speaker 1: about how we're going to link to things in the

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Speaker 1: show notes. That's something we used to say a lot

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Speaker 1: on the show. Unfortunately we don't really have show notes

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Speaker 1: like that anymore, but the things that we mentioned should

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Speaker 1: be findable just of the quick Internet search.

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Speaker 2: So enjoy.

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class A production

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Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio. Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tray

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Speaker 1: CV Wilson and I'm Holly Frye. So Holly, you know

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Speaker 1: how sometimes when something terrible is happening that we just

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Speaker 1: can't look away from, at least say it's like watching

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Speaker 1: a train wreck. Yes, Yes, Although people do describe actual

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Speaker 1: catastrophes as train wrecks, a lot of the times it's

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Speaker 1: something a lot less tangible, with way less risk of

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Speaker 1: injury or death, like bad speeches or product launches that

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Speaker 1: go really terribly or like really cris cringe worthy TV shows,

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Speaker 1: things that are not really ready, you know, I mean, things

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Speaker 1: that are not really going to cause somebody to actually die,

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Speaker 1: we describe as like watching a train wreck. But I

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Speaker 1: always thought that was kind of weird that we would

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Speaker 1: describe something like, you know, somebody's bad talent show entry

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Speaker 1: that's just awful that you just can't stop staring at.

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Speaker 1: Like why we would describe that as like watching a

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Speaker 1: train wreck. It turns out that for a brief window

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Speaker 1: from the late eighteen hundreds into the early nineteen hundreds,

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Speaker 1: people in the United States we're watching train wrecks for fun.

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Speaker 1: It's hard to come up with the exact tally of

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Speaker 1: how many of them there were, because there were several

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Speaker 1: different people who were arranging these things in different venues.

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Speaker 1: Over the span of about forty years, there were definitely

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Speaker 1: at least seventy five planned train wrecks to watch for fun,

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Speaker 1: mostly playing out in the southwestern and midwestern United States,

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Speaker 1: often at events like state fairs.

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Speaker 2: So that's weird. Here's what it reminds me of.

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Speaker 1: So when my husband and I got married and we

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Speaker 1: merged our households, we found that we had multiples of things,

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Speaker 1: uh huh, And somehow in that deal we had three microwaves,

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Speaker 1: two which were pretty good.

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Speaker 2: In one which was really junkie.

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Speaker 1: So we gave the really good one away to somebody

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Speaker 1: who needed one, and then the junkie one we took

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Speaker 1: out on the back patio and we blew stuff up

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Speaker 1: in it.

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Speaker 2: So I kind of understand this train wrecking. Well.

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Speaker 1: When I was a kid, my elementary school had a

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Speaker 1: Halloween carnival every year, and one of the things that

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Speaker 1: they would do for this Halloween carnival is that they

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Speaker 1: would go buy a really junkie used car and you

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Speaker 1: could pay a dollar to get to take a swing.

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Speaker 2: At it with a baseball bat.

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Speaker 1: Yes, so yeah, this is It still seems weird though,

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Speaker 1: So it's what we're going to talk about today. I

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Speaker 1: also it's felt like we needed a little bit of

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Speaker 1: a lighter topic.

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Speaker 2: We've had some heavier things lately, some lighter stuff too.

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Speaker 1: I in particular, though, had researched some really heavy stuff,

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Speaker 1: and so I was like, let's.

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Speaker 2: Just do something goofy. I will say this is mostly goofy.

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Speaker 1: It does have a little bit of tragedy, but is

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Speaker 1: overall weird and fun. Yes, the concept of someone going, hey,

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Speaker 1: let's stage some res so we can all gock at them.

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Speaker 1: There is an inherent level of comedy there.

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Speaker 2: Yes.

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Speaker 1: So we are going to start though with the one

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Speaker 1: that did actually have a few fatalities. This is the

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Speaker 1: most famous and most deadly of the United States stage

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Speaker 1: train wrecks, and it was known as the crash at Crush,

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Speaker 1: which took place in September of eighteen ninety six, and

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Speaker 1: this was the brainchild of William George Crush, passenger agent

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Speaker 1: at the Missouri Kansas Texas Railroad Company also known as

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Speaker 1: the KDI, which was shortened down from its initials MKT

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Speaker 1: by eighteen ninety five. The year before this event took place,

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Speaker 1: the KD had one hundred and thirty three locomotives and

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Speaker 1: one hundred and sixty three cars. William George Crush came

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Speaker 1: up with this idea to try to drum up some

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Speaker 1: publicity for the railroad and to sell tickets on thelroad.

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Speaker 1: The railroad wasn't really in financial danger in any way,

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Speaker 1: but the nation was just starting to come out of

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Speaker 1: the Panic of eighteen ninety three, so the Katie was

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Speaker 1: definitely interested in protecting its bottom line. The railroad was

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Speaker 1: also in the process of replacing its thirty five ton

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Speaker 1: locomotives with sixty ton models, so Crush proposed they'd take

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Speaker 1: two of those retired thirty five ton locomotives and smash

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Speaker 1: them together. It really is just like my microwave. The

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Speaker 1: venue that he proposed for this stage train wreck would

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Speaker 1: be a pop up town named Crush, located about fifteen

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Speaker 1: miles north of Waco, in about three miles south of

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Speaker 1: the town of West, conveniently close to the existing Waco

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Speaker 1: Dallas track. The designated spot was in a small valley

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Speaker 1: with hills on three sides, making a natural amphitheater with

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Speaker 1: plenty of viewing locations. They'd supplement this with things like

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Speaker 1: a restaurant, a grandstand in carnival attractions selling two dollars

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Speaker 1: round trip tickets on the KDI to get there and back.

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Speaker 1: The KD had some concerns about the safety of this scheme,

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Speaker 1: namely that the boilers of one or both of the

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Speaker 1: locomotives might explode on impact, so they asked the opinions

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Speaker 1: of several of the railroad's engineers, all but one of

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Speaker 1: whom agreed that the risk of an explosion was low,

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Speaker 1: so William Crush was given the go ahead to proceed. First,

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Speaker 1: they laid track from the existing Waco Dallas line, terminating

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Speaker 1: at a twenty one hundred foot that's six hundred and

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Speaker 1: forty meters depot platform, complete with a sign telling passengers

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Speaker 1: that they had arrived at Crush. There was also a

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Speaker 1: stretch of track for the two trains to travel down

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Speaker 1: and crash into each other, which followed the natural slopes

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Speaker 1: of the land, and this gave the track a slight

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Speaker 1: downward grade from each end toward the middle, which would

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Speaker 1: help the locomotives pick up more speed. Locomotives nine ninety

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Speaker 1: nine and one thousand and one were chosen for the crash,

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Speaker 1: with one painted green with red trim and the other

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Speaker 1: painted red with green trim for their pop up town.

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Speaker 1: They drilled wells and installed spigots for fresh water along

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Speaker 1: the spectator area. William Crush, which was apparently his fortuitous

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Speaker 1: but actual real name, was friends with P. T. Barnum,

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Speaker 1: so he borrowed a circus tent from Barnum to house

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Speaker 1: a restaurant. They also constructed lemonade stands to telegraph offices,

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Speaker 1: a stand for reporters, and a bandstand. They built a

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Speaker 1: wooden jail, which I found one source saying that that

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Speaker 1: was made out of a caboose. They hired two hundred

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Speaker 1: constables to patrol on the day, and they also made

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Speaker 1: plans for a huge carnival, complete with games and medicine

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Speaker 1: shows and a variety of other diversions.

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Speaker 2: Clearly they were expecting this to be a party. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: William Crush and the Katie advertised this spectacle heavily all

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Speaker 1: through the summer of eighteen ninety six, calling it the

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Speaker 1: Monster Crash. The crash and the preparations for it became

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Speaker 1: regular news items all throughout the Texas papers and outside

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Speaker 1: the state as well. Organizers fielded queries from all over

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Speaker 1: the country, and in the days leading up to the

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Speaker 1: actual event, William Crush estimated that there would be fifteen

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Speaker 1: thousand to twenty thousand spectators. William Crush had arranged for

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Speaker 1: thirty three trains to provide passenger service to Crush and

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Speaker 1: the Cadie started dropping passengers off around dawn on September fifteenth,

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Speaker 1: eighteen ninety six. By ten am, there were at least

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Speaker 1: ten thousand people already on the scene. They were picnicking

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Speaker 1: and playing games and listening to political speeches while they waited.

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Speaker 1: More trains kept arriving all through the morning and afternoon,

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Speaker 1: some of them so crowded that people were riding on

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Speaker 1: the roofs of the cars. The Monster Crash was supposed

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Speaker 1: to start at four, but people were still arriving as

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Speaker 1: that drew near, so they delayed the start until five pm,

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Speaker 1: at which point there were about forty thousand people there,

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Speaker 1: double what William Crush had estimated. First, the two locomotives

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Speaker 1: came together very slowly on the track and touched their

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Speaker 1: cowcatchers together. That's that little great looking thing on the

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Speaker 1: front of a locomotive. They touched their cowcatchers together, kind

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Speaker 1: of like boxers touching their gloves before a match. Then

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Speaker 1: they were reversed apart again, and William Crush on horseback,

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Speaker 1: raised a white hat into the air and whipped it

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Speaker 1: down to give the signal for the wreck to officially begin.

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Speaker 1: The two locomotives, pulling empty box cars that were festooned

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Speaker 1: with advertisements and decorations, then began moving toward each other

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Speaker 1: and picking up speed. Their engineers pulled their whistle cords

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Speaker 1: and tied them down, then jumped clear and ran away

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Speaker 1: from the track. They estimated that at the moment of impact,

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Speaker 1: each locomotive was traveling at about fifty miles per hour

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Speaker 1: when they crashed into each other. The collision was incredibly violent.

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Speaker 1: The box cars unsurprisingly shattered into splinters, but the locomotives

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Speaker 1: didn't behave as they expected.

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Speaker 2: Organizers had thought that.

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Speaker 1: They would basically push each other up into an inverted

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Speaker 1: V and they would expend most of that energy in

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Speaker 1: the upward trajectory doing that.

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Speaker 2: Instead, it was.

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Speaker 1: More like squeezing an accordion or collapsing a telescope, and

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Speaker 1: the two giant locomotives just folded into each other and then,

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Speaker 1: to the surprise of everyone except perhaps that one dissenting engineer,

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Speaker 1: both their boilers exploded. Scalding water and flying debris from

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Speaker 1: the locomotives, including pieces of iron and steel of all

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Speaker 1: shapes and sizes, flew into the crowd, most of whom

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Speaker 1: were along the hills at least two hundred yards away.

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Speaker 1: At least two people were killed, although some accounts say

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Speaker 1: there were three. Ernest Darnell, who had climbed up a

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Speaker 1: mesquite tree to watch, was hit with a ten pound

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Speaker 1: length of breakechain and was killed instantly. A young girl

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Speaker 1: was hit with a chunk of iron that fractured her skull,

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Speaker 1: and although she was reported to be resting comfortably afterwards,

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Speaker 1: she died on the way home. There was a third man,

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Speaker 1: John Morrison, who survived the wreck itself, but fell between

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Speaker 1: train cars on the way home and was run over

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Speaker 1: by the train and died. Haven't quite figured out if

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Speaker 1: that is the third person some of the counts referred

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Speaker 1: to as being killed, or if that was a separate incident.

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Speaker 1: There were also a lot of injuries from the flying

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Speaker 1: debris in boiling water then. At least six of those

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Speaker 1: were serious, and some of them were sustained more than

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Speaker 1: a mile away from the actual crash. J. C. Dean,

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Speaker 1: a photographer, from Waco had been hired to take pictures

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Speaker 1: of the event, and he lost an eye when a

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Speaker 1: bolt from the wreck tore through it. His response was

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Speaker 1: to get up and keep working, telling his brothers, who

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Speaker 1: were also photographers, how to finish the shot that he

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Speaker 1: had been framing. Even in the midst of all this

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Speaker 1: chaos and the tragedy that was unfolding, souvenir seekers rushed

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Speaker 1: in to try to claim pieces of the wreck. Wrecker

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Speaker 1: trains hauled off the biggest remaining pieces. After the event

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Speaker 1: was over, people began to leave the temporary town of Crush.

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Speaker 1: As soon as the event had finished. Workers struck the

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Speaker 1: tent and the other structures erected for the town, and

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Speaker 1: the whole thing was essentially gone by nightfall. William Crush

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Speaker 1: was fired immediately, but then officials at the KD realized

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Speaker 1: they'd had an incredibly profitable day in spite of the tragedy,

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Speaker 1: so they hired him back the next day, and he

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Speaker 1: worked at the railroad until his retirement in nineteen forty.

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Speaker 1: The KD began quickly and quietly settling lawsuits and paying

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Speaker 1: compensation to the people who had been injured and the

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Speaker 1: families of those who had been killed. Photographer J. C.

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Speaker 1: Dean was paid ten thousand dollars and given a lifetime

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Speaker 1: pass on the train.

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Speaker 2: Was Here's a.

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Speaker 1: Nearly as much public condemnation as he might expect from

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Speaker 1: an event that killed at least two spectators and injured

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Speaker 1: many others, But the news reporting at the time was

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Speaker 1: actually relatively pragmatic about it. A few weeks after the crash,

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Speaker 1: at Crush, composer and pianist Scott Joplin published his Great

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Speaker 1: Crush Collision March. Joplin would go on to be known

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Speaker 1: as the King of Ragtime, whose other most famous pieces

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Speaker 1: include Maple Leaf Rag and The Entertainer, which would become

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Speaker 1: the theme music for the nineteen seventy three film The

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Speaker 1: Sting starring Paul Newman, Robert Redford, and Robert Shaw. It's

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Speaker 1: unclear whether Joplin was actually at the crash, but the

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Speaker 1: Great Crush Collision March was one of his earliest published

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Speaker 1: pieces of music and a relatively early example of ragtime,

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Speaker 1: which is a distinctly African American form of music that

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Speaker 1: was at the height of its popularity from the mid

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Speaker 1: eighteen nineties through the nineteen teens. And we're going to

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Speaker 1: link to that in the show notes so people can

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Speaker 1: listen to it. Scott Joplin is the reason I took

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Speaker 1: piano lessons as a child.

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Speaker 2: Really, yes, I love it, And the part of me.

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Speaker 1: That wants to do an episode about him is at

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Speaker 1: odds with the part of me that does not like

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Speaker 1: the sad aspect of the story, which is his death

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Speaker 1: at a very early age from untreated syphilis. So the

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Speaker 1: Katie went through waves of financial success and difficulty after

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Speaker 1: this point until really starting to struggle along with the

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Speaker 1: rest of the industry in the nineteen fifties. It was

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Speaker 1: ultimately bought by the Missouri Pacific Railroad Company in nineteen

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Speaker 1: eighty nine. There's a historic plaque commemorating the Crash at

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Speaker 1: Crush in McLennan County, fifteen miles north of Waco. Although

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Speaker 1: the Crash at Crush is the most famous of these

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Speaker 1: stage wrecks, it wasn't actually the first one, and so

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Speaker 1: we are going to talk about that first one and

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Speaker 1: some others after a quick sponsor break.

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Speaker 2: Really frequently.

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Speaker 1: The Crash at Crush is described as the first staged

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Speaker 1: train wreck in the United States. It was something that

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Speaker 1: drew a big crowd, but which no other actual railroad

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Speaker 1: company tried again afterward for obvious reasons, but that September fifteenth,

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Speaker 1: eighteen ninety six event was actually predated by one staged

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Speaker 1: by a man named Al Streeter. He was a railway

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Speaker 1: equipment salesman from Illinois. Streeter first tried to stage a

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Speaker 1: train wreck in Illinois, but wasn't able to generate enough attention,

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Speaker 1: so he turned his attention to Ohio, where he got

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Speaker 1: the ok to conduct a crash on July twentieth, eighteen

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Speaker 1: ninety five, a couple of miles outside Canton. Here's how

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Speaker 1: he described it in one of the ads that he

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Speaker 1: ran to promote this event. Quote, two monster locomotives with

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Speaker 1: full head of steam, starting a mile apart, will rush

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Speaker 1: toward each other at the rate of sixty or seventy

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Speaker 1: miles an hour, and allowed to come together with a

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Speaker 1: crash that will result in the most horrible head on

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Speaker 1: collision ever seen or heard of. Streeter made arrangements to

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Speaker 1: buy a couple of retired locomotives and decorated them. One

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Speaker 1: was emblazoned with free trade and the other with protection,

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Speaker 1: symbolically pitting the two economic theories against one another. The

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Speaker 1: two engines would pull flat cars loaded down with rocks

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Speaker 1: like the crash. At Crush, part of Streeter's plan involved

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Speaker 1: selling train tickets. A fifteen cent fare on the Cleveland,

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Speaker 1: Canton and Southern Railroad would get people to the actual

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Speaker 1: location for the crash, but once people got to that location,

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Speaker 1: admission to the crash itself was not free. He hoped

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Speaker 1: to sell twenty thousand tickets at seventy five cents apiece

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Speaker 1: so that people could then watch the crash from a

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Speaker 1: designated viewing area. However, the overwhelming majority of spectators had

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Speaker 1: a different idea that was to climb trees and together

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Speaker 1: outside the official viewing area and watch it for free,

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Speaker 1: so he only sold about two hundred tickets.

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Speaker 2: In the end.

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Speaker 1: Though these two locomotives never the whole event was canceled

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Speaker 1: at the last possible minute. Streeter claimed it was because

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Speaker 1: spectators got too close and refused to move, ruining it

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Speaker 1: for everyone else and forcing him to cancel for safety reasons,

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Speaker 1: But the railroad claimed that Streeter owed them two four

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Speaker 1: hundred dollars for the retired locomotives, which he had never paid,

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Speaker 1: so the railroad exercised their right to take them back. Spectators,

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Speaker 1: of course, were outraged, and the ones who had paid

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Speaker 1: demanded a refund. People were also upset that they had

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Speaker 1: spent that fifteen dollars train fare for something that didn't

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Speaker 1: actually happen. Streeter was widely criticized in the press for

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Speaker 1: wasting people's time and money, even as he claimed to

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Speaker 1: have lost about eight hundred dollars of his personal funds

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Speaker 1: in the venture. Streeter didn't give up though. On Memorial

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Speaker 1: Day eighteen ninety six, he tried again, this time in

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Speaker 1: Buckeye Park in Marietta, Ohio, about twenty five miles southeast

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Speaker 1: of Columbus. The locomotives this time were the AL Streeter

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Speaker 1: and the W. H.

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Speaker 2: Fisher.

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Speaker 1: Fisher worked for the Columbus Hawking and Toledo Railroad, and

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Speaker 1: to add some more drama, Streeter put Mannikins aboard so

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Speaker 1: it would actually look like there were people in there.

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Speaker 1: This time, the wreck did indeed go as planned. Clarence

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Speaker 1: Metters wrote about the event in National Magazine, saying, quote,

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Speaker 1: twenty five thousand pairs of eyes were riveted upon one

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Speaker 1: engine or another as they rushed together, And so critical

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Speaker 1: was the moment that scarcely a word was spoken on

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Speaker 1: and on sped the two iron monsters at the rate

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Speaker 1: of over forty miles an hour, and when the crash

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Speaker 1: came it was terrific, both trains being practically destroyed. Streeter

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Speaker 1: continued to organize more of these spectacles around the country

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Speaker 1: until the early twentieth century. But another man organized so

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Speaker 1: many of them that it became part of his personal brand,

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Speaker 1: and he was Joe Connolly, who was known by the

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Speaker 1: nickname head On Connolly, who staged at least seven twenty

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Speaker 1: three wrecks between eighteen ninety six and nineteen thirty two

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Speaker 1: and became the most famous organizer of planned train wrecks.

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Speaker 1: I found one account that said that he tried to

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Speaker 1: sue someone for staging a train wreck and using the

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Speaker 1: term head on when that was clearly his, but I

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Speaker 1: couldn't find any evidence that he had actually tried to

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Speaker 1: register that trademark, so not sure what the actual status

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Speaker 1: of that was. Regardless though, head On Joe had worked

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Speaker 1: in theater in Des Moines for decades before putting his

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Speaker 1: hand to staging train wrecks, and he was scrupulous about safety.

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Speaker 1: He had a very specific set of safety rules that

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Speaker 1: had to be followed at any wreck he staged. He

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Speaker 1: also told reporters that he had a quote lifelong desire

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Speaker 1: to see such a disaster without danger to himself, and

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Speaker 1: thought many other people harbored the same secret desire. He

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Speaker 1: was also a showman, and as his res went on,

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Speaker 1: he did things to make them more and more dramatic.

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Speaker 1: He started laying small charges on the tray that would

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Speaker 1: explode when the trains rolled over them, creating tiny explosions that,

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Speaker 1: in normal circumstances were used to warn other trains of

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Speaker 1: incoming traffic. He'd also douse the cars in fuel and

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Speaker 1: filled them with flammable materials so that they would burn

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Speaker 1: after impact. Connelly made a lot of money staging these

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Speaker 1: crashes over the years, and his last one took place

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Speaker 1: as the fad was really starting to wane. This one

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Speaker 1: was at the Iowa State Fair in nineteen thirty two.

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Speaker 1: He'd staged Rex at the Iowa State Fair previously to

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Speaker 1: a lot of fanfare, but in nineteen thirty two the

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Speaker 1: United States was facing the Great Depression. Even naming one

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Speaker 1: of the locomotives that Roosevelt and the other the Hoover,

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Speaker 1: wasn't enough to make the event sit right with the crowd.

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Speaker 1: The explosion itself was reported to be a good one,

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Speaker 1: but the response from the audience was really lackluster. That

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Speaker 1: seemed like seeing two huge trains wrecked against each other

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Speaker 1: for sport was needlessly wasteful in a time when so

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Speaker 1: many people were hurting for money. This was doubly true

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Speaker 1: when words started to spread that Connolly had charged the

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Speaker 1: fair forty thousand dollars to stage the wreck, and that

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Speaker 1: the fair had lost sixty five thousand dollars that year.

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Speaker 1: People who were already angry at the idea that the

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Speaker 1: crash had been wasteful, were furious that it had cost

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Speaker 1: so much money. In addition to the wreckage of the

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Speaker 1: locomotives themselves, al Streeter and head On Connolly weren't the

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Speaker 1: only people organizing these staged wrecks. As another example, in

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Speaker 1: September nineteen oh six, approximately six thousand people paid to

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Speaker 1: see two engines that had been retired from the Salt

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Speaker 1: Lake Railroad crashed together at an agricultural park near downtown

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Speaker 1: Los Angeles. Organizers for this one were James Morley and

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Speaker 1: former promoter football coach Walter Hemple. This particular wreck didn't

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Speaker 1: go all that well. The engineers tried to extort extra

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Speaker 1: pay from the organizers in the middle of the event.

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Speaker 1: They were doing a prolonged run up to the actual crash,

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Speaker 1: in which they'd run the trains at one another and

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Speaker 1: then stop them before a collision. The engineers thought it

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Speaker 1: would probably be impossible to find replacements in the literal

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Speaker 1: middle of the event, so they asked for an extra

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Speaker 1: three hundred and fifty dollars. Organizers managed to find replacements

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Speaker 1: with no problem, though in general engineers were pretty eager

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Speaker 1: to volunteer, so the original engineers were fired and then

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Speaker 1: the event proceeded as planned. Yeah, the idea that you

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Speaker 1: would get to just on purpose run a locomotive that

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Speaker 1: was normally where you had to spend your working life

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Speaker 1: into another locomotive and just smash it to pieces like

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Speaker 1: that apparently was attractive to a number of engineers, and

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Speaker 1: I really didn't find any indication that any of them

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Speaker 1: were seriously injured while doing this, although I did find

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Speaker 1: one that was an engineer who fell while trying to

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Speaker 1: jump free of the locomotive and sprained his ankle. So

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Speaker 1: in this event at the Agricultural Park near near downtown

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Speaker 1: lie Los Angeles, the locomotives did run into each other

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Speaker 1: whistles blaring, but the end result was pretty anti climactic

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Speaker 1: because they just sort of whammed into each other with

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Speaker 1: a thud and then stopped and nothing derailed and nothing

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Speaker 1: caught on fire and nothing exploded, and so people were

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Speaker 1: not particularly impressed. And these are just some examples. There

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Speaker 1: were lots and lots of others, and there's actually footage

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Speaker 1: of several of them on YouTube.

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Speaker 2: We're going to link to that footage in the show notes.

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Speaker 1: Next, we're going to talk about some ideas about why

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Speaker 1: maybe this's caught on so well. So for roughly thirty

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Speaker 1: or forty years, staged train wrecks were a really big

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Speaker 1: deal in the midwestern and southwestern parts of the United States.

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Speaker 1: The biggest crowd reported at one of these events was

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Speaker 1: one hundred and sixty thousand people, and attendance was routinely

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Speaker 1: in the tens of thousands. The town of Crush had

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Speaker 1: about the same population as Dallas or San Antonio for

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Speaker 1: the few hours that it existed. In nineteen twenty, a

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Speaker 1: staged wreck on opening day of the Minnesota State Fair

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Speaker 1: doubled the fair's first day attendance from the year before.

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Speaker 1: All of this happened at a time when getting somewhere

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Speaker 1: was a lot less comfortable and convenient than it can

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Speaker 1: be today. This has led some people to speculate as

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Speaker 1: to why this all caught on so well. One aspect

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Speaker 1: was certainly the marketing organizers promoted their events heavily, getting

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Speaker 1: lots of fanciful coverage and newspapers, and there was often

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Speaker 1: a political theme to the decorations on the trains themselves.

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Speaker 1: In addition to the ones that we talked about already

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Speaker 1: earlier in this show, a staged wreck pitted locomotives dubbed

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Speaker 1: evolution and fundamentalism after the Scopes trial in nineteen twenty five.

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Speaker 1: There was also a showdown between the National Recovery Act,

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Speaker 1: part of the New Deal versus Old Man Depression at

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Speaker 1: the Minnesota State Fair in nineteen thirty three, And for

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Speaker 1: some people the attraction was related more to the general

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Speaker 1: politics of the day than any specific political issue. There

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Speaker 1: was a general idea that locomotives were symbols of big

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Speaker 1: businesses and industries that were taking advantage of people and

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Speaker 1: ruining the landscape, and so it was really fun to

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Speaker 1: think about their destroying one another, and then of course,

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Speaker 1: there is this fact that humanity has kind of a

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Speaker 1: morbid fascination with destruction. There's a complicated set of emotional

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Speaker 1: and psychological responses that feed into the general human trait

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Speaker 1: of morbid curiosity. In the decades after stage train wrecks,

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Speaker 1: there were demolition derbies, monster truck rallies, a whole slew

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00:25:42,119 --> 00:25:45,440
Speaker 1: of disaster films, true crime shows, and on and on.

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00:25:46,040 --> 00:25:49,760
Speaker 1: These are all still money makers in many caseses yep,

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Speaker 1: I mean, I think the thing that strikes me is

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Speaker 1: so weird about the train part is that locomotives are

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Speaker 1: just so big. Yeah, they like that's a lot of

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Speaker 1: metal smashing together and then doing i don't know, sending

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Speaker 1: as the scrap heap or whatever, which you know, made

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Speaker 1: it seem a little odder to me than a demolition

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Speaker 1: derby or a monster truck rally or whatever. But also,

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Speaker 1: I mean, people did just do as we have shown

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Speaker 1: in our some past episodes of the show, people go

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Speaker 1: hom onto weird stuff sometimes, what I think was also

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Speaker 1: a factor. This is the kind of episode that happens

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Speaker 1: when you're looking for something a little less heavy to

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00:26:33,119 --> 00:26:35,400
Speaker 1: write about and you google weird fads.

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Speaker 2: Right, I've done similar things yeah, it is.

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Speaker 1: It's a I'm trying to think if there would ever

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Speaker 1: be like an modern day equivalent attempted, Like would anybody

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Speaker 1: ever go, let's try to crash planes together. I don't

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Speaker 1: know how you would possibly orchestrate such a thing, but

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Speaker 1: that sounds very scary. Yes, well, and suddenly I just

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Speaker 1: remembered when when I was also a kid, in addition

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Speaker 1: to having the elementary school Halloween carnivals where you could

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00:27:07,760 --> 00:27:12,480
Speaker 1: smash old cars with a baseball bat whenever the fire

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00:27:12,520 --> 00:27:17,040
Speaker 1: department would be conducting training by burning down a derelict

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Speaker 1: building and extinguishing the fire. Oh yeah, like there would

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Speaker 1: always be a crowd to watch that. Oh, anytime there's

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Speaker 1: a building demolished, there's a crowd. We had one in

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Speaker 1: Atlanta not long ago, and everyone who lived in Atlanta

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00:27:28,680 --> 00:27:30,520
Speaker 1: had it all over their social media because they got

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Speaker 1: up at an ungodly hour to go look at it.

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Speaker 2: Were like blowing stuff up.

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Speaker 1: I mean, I then feel very tame for like being

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Speaker 1: like what happens when you put a CD in a microwave.

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Speaker 1: By the way, it's very pretty Thanks so much for

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Speaker 1: joining us on this Saturday. Since this episode is out

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Speaker 1: of the archive, if you heard an email address or

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00:27:58,440 --> 00:28:01,000
Speaker 1: a Facebook RL or something so over the course of

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00:28:01,000 --> 00:28:04,680
Speaker 1: the show that could be obsolete now. Our current email

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00:28:04,680 --> 00:28:10,000
Speaker 1: address is History podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. Our old

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00:28:10,040 --> 00:28:13,640
Speaker 1: house stuffworks email address no longer works. You can find

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00:28:13,720 --> 00:28:17,080
Speaker 1: us all over social media at missed Inhistory, and you

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00:28:17,119 --> 00:28:20,800
Speaker 1: can subscribe to our show on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts,

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00:28:20,880 --> 00:28:24,280
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app, and wherever else you listen to podcasts.

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00:28:27,760 --> 00:28:30,880
Speaker 1: Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

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00:28:35,920 --> 00:28:37,959
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.