1
00:00:02,320 --> 00:00:06,479
Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, here is an episode from our ten episode

2
00:00:06,519 --> 00:00:10,119
Speaker 1: playlist that we're calling Offbeat History. Yeah, we're adding this

3
00:00:10,240 --> 00:00:13,680
Speaker 1: to our our regular publishing schedule as one kind of

4
00:00:13,720 --> 00:00:17,279
Speaker 1: big drop all at the same time on March nineteen,

5
00:00:17,480 --> 00:00:19,599
Speaker 1: And that is so that you have maybe have a

6
00:00:19,600 --> 00:00:23,200
Speaker 1: little bit of extra entertainment options available to you, particularly

7
00:00:23,239 --> 00:00:29,840
Speaker 1: if you are self quarantined or sheltering in place. Welcome

8
00:00:29,920 --> 00:00:32,600
Speaker 1: to Stuff you missed in History Class A production of

9
00:00:32,680 --> 00:00:42,440
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm

10
00:00:42,479 --> 00:00:45,960
Speaker 1: Tray c V Wilson. I'm Holly Frying. So how do

11
00:00:46,080 --> 00:00:50,159
Speaker 1: you know how sometimes when something terrible is happening that

12
00:00:50,240 --> 00:00:53,519
Speaker 1: we just can't look away from, we say it's like

13
00:00:53,560 --> 00:00:59,120
Speaker 1: watching a train wreck. Yes, yes, Although people do describe

14
00:00:59,440 --> 00:01:03,080
Speaker 1: actual catastrophes as train wrecks, a lot of the times

15
00:01:03,360 --> 00:01:06,679
Speaker 1: it's something a lot less tangible, with way less risk

16
00:01:06,720 --> 00:01:13,400
Speaker 1: of injury or death, like uh, bad speeches or product

17
00:01:13,480 --> 00:01:18,280
Speaker 1: launches that go really terribly or like really crane cringe

18
00:01:18,280 --> 00:01:22,200
Speaker 1: worthy TV shows, things that are not really ready, you know,

19
00:01:22,360 --> 00:01:24,120
Speaker 1: things that are not really going to cause somebody to

20
00:01:24,160 --> 00:01:27,000
Speaker 1: actually die. We describe as like watching a train wreck.

21
00:01:27,360 --> 00:01:29,760
Speaker 1: But I always thought that was kind of weird that

22
00:01:29,880 --> 00:01:35,479
Speaker 1: we would describe something, uh, like, you know, somebody's bad

23
00:01:35,560 --> 00:01:38,480
Speaker 1: talent show entry that's just awful that you just can't

24
00:01:38,520 --> 00:01:40,520
Speaker 1: stop staring at. Like why we would describe that as

25
00:01:40,600 --> 00:01:44,520
Speaker 1: like watching a train wreck. It turns out that for

26
00:01:44,600 --> 00:01:47,560
Speaker 1: a brief window from the late eighteen hundreds into the

27
00:01:47,560 --> 00:01:50,920
Speaker 1: early nineteen hundreds, people in the United States we're watching

28
00:01:50,960 --> 00:01:54,440
Speaker 1: train wrecks for fun. It's hard to come up with

29
00:01:54,480 --> 00:01:57,320
Speaker 1: the exact tally of how many of them there were,

30
00:01:57,400 --> 00:02:01,040
Speaker 1: because there were several different people who were arranging these

31
00:02:01,080 --> 00:02:04,040
Speaker 1: things in different venues. Over the span of about forty years,

32
00:02:04,360 --> 00:02:10,120
Speaker 1: there were definitely at least planned train wrecks to watch

33
00:02:10,160 --> 00:02:13,680
Speaker 1: for fun, mostly playing out in the southwestern and midwestern

34
00:02:13,760 --> 00:02:19,440
Speaker 1: United States, often at events like state fairs. So that's weird.

35
00:02:22,400 --> 00:02:25,600
Speaker 1: Here's what it reminds me of. So when my husband

36
00:02:25,600 --> 00:02:29,080
Speaker 1: and I got married and we merged our households, we

37
00:02:29,200 --> 00:02:32,720
Speaker 1: found that we had multiples of things, and somehow in

38
00:02:32,760 --> 00:02:37,080
Speaker 1: that deal we had three microwaves, two which were pretty

39
00:02:37,120 --> 00:02:39,880
Speaker 1: good in one which was really junkie. So we gave

40
00:02:39,960 --> 00:02:42,280
Speaker 1: the really good one away to somebody who needed one,

41
00:02:42,680 --> 00:02:44,600
Speaker 1: and then the junkie one we took out on the

42
00:02:44,639 --> 00:02:46,720
Speaker 1: back patio and we blew stuff up in it. So

43
00:02:46,800 --> 00:02:51,160
Speaker 1: I kind of understand this train wreck thing. Well. When

44
00:02:51,160 --> 00:02:55,080
Speaker 1: I was a kid, my elementary school had a Halloween

45
00:02:55,080 --> 00:02:57,080
Speaker 1: carnival every year, and one of the things that they

46
00:02:57,080 --> 00:02:59,440
Speaker 1: would do for this Halloween carnal carnival is that they

47
00:02:59,440 --> 00:03:04,440
Speaker 1: would go buy a really junkie used car and you

48
00:03:04,480 --> 00:03:07,200
Speaker 1: could pay a dollar to get to take a swing

49
00:03:07,240 --> 00:03:13,000
Speaker 1: at it with a baseball bat. Um. So, yeah, this

50
00:03:13,080 --> 00:03:15,160
Speaker 1: is it still seems weird though, so it's what we're

51
00:03:15,160 --> 00:03:17,560
Speaker 1: gonna talk about today. I also it's felt like we

52
00:03:17,600 --> 00:03:19,840
Speaker 1: needed a little bit of a lighter topic. We've had

53
00:03:19,880 --> 00:03:23,399
Speaker 1: some heavier things lately. Some lighter stuff too. I in particular, though,

54
00:03:23,440 --> 00:03:26,400
Speaker 1: had researched some really heavy stuff and so I was like,

55
00:03:26,480 --> 00:03:29,120
Speaker 1: let's just do something goofy. I will say this is

56
00:03:29,200 --> 00:03:31,480
Speaker 1: mostly goofy. It does have a little bit of tragedy,

57
00:03:31,520 --> 00:03:36,840
Speaker 1: but is overall weird and fun. Yes, the concept of

58
00:03:36,920 --> 00:03:41,840
Speaker 1: someone going, hey, let's stage some recks so we can

59
00:03:41,840 --> 00:03:45,040
Speaker 1: all talk at them. There is an inherent level of

60
00:03:45,080 --> 00:03:48,200
Speaker 1: comedy there. Yes, So we are going to start though

61
00:03:48,240 --> 00:03:52,240
Speaker 1: with the one that did actually have a few fatalities.

62
00:03:53,040 --> 00:03:55,560
Speaker 1: This is the most famous and most deadly of the

63
00:03:55,640 --> 00:03:59,280
Speaker 1: United States stage train rex and it was known as

64
00:03:59,280 --> 00:04:03,040
Speaker 1: the Crash Crush, which took place in September of eighteen

65
00:04:04,400 --> 00:04:07,960
Speaker 1: and this was the brainchild of William George Crush, passenger

66
00:04:08,000 --> 00:04:11,800
Speaker 1: agent at the Missouri Kansas Texas Railroad Company, also known

67
00:04:11,800 --> 00:04:14,640
Speaker 1: as the Katie, which was shortened down from its initials

68
00:04:14,800 --> 00:04:19,200
Speaker 1: m KT by five the year before this event took place.

69
00:04:19,560 --> 00:04:22,359
Speaker 1: The Katie had a hundred and thirty three locomotives and

70
00:04:22,440 --> 00:04:27,240
Speaker 1: a hundred and sixties three cars. William George Crush came

71
00:04:27,279 --> 00:04:29,320
Speaker 1: up with this idea to try to drum up some

72
00:04:29,400 --> 00:04:32,880
Speaker 1: publicity for the railroad and to sell tickets on the railroad.

73
00:04:33,680 --> 00:04:38,839
Speaker 1: The railroad wasn't really in financial danger in any way,

74
00:04:38,839 --> 00:04:41,280
Speaker 1: but the nation was just starting to come out of

75
00:04:41,360 --> 00:04:44,680
Speaker 1: the Panic of eight so the Katie was definitely interested

76
00:04:44,680 --> 00:04:48,360
Speaker 1: in protecting its bottom line. The railroad was also in

77
00:04:48,440 --> 00:04:51,880
Speaker 1: the process of replacing its thirty five ton locomotives with

78
00:04:52,040 --> 00:04:55,960
Speaker 1: sixty ton models, so Crushed proposed they take two of

79
00:04:56,000 --> 00:04:59,440
Speaker 1: those retired thirty five ton locomotives and smashed them together.

80
00:04:59,560 --> 00:05:05,440
Speaker 1: It really is just like my microwave. The venue that

81
00:05:05,520 --> 00:05:08,000
Speaker 1: he proposed for this stage train wreck would be a

82
00:05:08,040 --> 00:05:11,840
Speaker 1: pop up town named Crush, located about fifteen miles north

83
00:05:11,880 --> 00:05:14,520
Speaker 1: of Waco and about three miles south of the town

84
00:05:14,600 --> 00:05:18,520
Speaker 1: of West, conveniently close to the existing Waco Dallas track.

85
00:05:19,680 --> 00:05:22,479
Speaker 1: The designated spot was in a small valley with hills

86
00:05:22,520 --> 00:05:26,160
Speaker 1: on three sides, making a natural amphitheater with plenty of

87
00:05:26,279 --> 00:05:30,520
Speaker 1: viewing locations. They'd supplement this with things like a restaurant,

88
00:05:30,600 --> 00:05:34,760
Speaker 1: a grandstand in carnival attractions selling two dollar round trip

89
00:05:34,800 --> 00:05:39,120
Speaker 1: tickets on the Katie to get there and back. The

90
00:05:39,279 --> 00:05:43,479
Speaker 1: Katie had some concerns about the safety of this scheme,

91
00:05:44,520 --> 00:05:47,280
Speaker 1: namely that the boilers of one or both of the

92
00:05:47,320 --> 00:05:51,640
Speaker 1: locomotives might explode on impact, so they asked the opinions

93
00:05:52,000 --> 00:05:55,120
Speaker 1: of several of the railroad's engineers, all but one of

94
00:05:55,120 --> 00:05:57,840
Speaker 1: whom agreed that the risk of an explosion was low,

95
00:05:58,360 --> 00:06:02,880
Speaker 1: so William Crush was given the go ahead to proceed. First,

96
00:06:02,920 --> 00:06:06,840
Speaker 1: they laid track from the existing Waco Dallas line, terminating

97
00:06:06,920 --> 00:06:11,919
Speaker 1: at a two thousand one foot that's sixty depot platform,

98
00:06:11,920 --> 00:06:15,000
Speaker 1: complete with a sign telling passengers that they had arrived

99
00:06:15,040 --> 00:06:17,960
Speaker 1: at Crush. There was also a stretch of track for

100
00:06:18,000 --> 00:06:21,000
Speaker 1: the two trains to travel down and crash into each other,

101
00:06:21,320 --> 00:06:24,480
Speaker 1: which followed the natural slopes of the land, and this

102
00:06:24,560 --> 00:06:27,280
Speaker 1: gave the track a slight downward grade from each end

103
00:06:27,320 --> 00:06:30,120
Speaker 1: toward the middle, which would help the locomotives pick up

104
00:06:30,160 --> 00:06:35,159
Speaker 1: more speed. Locomotives and one thousand one were chosen for

105
00:06:35,200 --> 00:06:38,240
Speaker 1: the crash, with one painted green with red trim and

106
00:06:38,279 --> 00:06:42,000
Speaker 1: the other painted red with green trim. For their pop

107
00:06:42,080 --> 00:06:45,400
Speaker 1: up town, they drilled wells and installed spigots for fresh

108
00:06:45,440 --> 00:06:49,800
Speaker 1: water along the spectator area. William Crush, which was apparently

109
00:06:50,000 --> 00:06:54,679
Speaker 1: his fortuitous but actual real name, was friends with P. T. Barnum,

110
00:06:54,839 --> 00:06:58,480
Speaker 1: so he borrowed a circumstance from Barnum to house a restaurant.

111
00:06:59,000 --> 00:07:03,440
Speaker 1: They also construct lemonade stands to telegraph offices, a stand

112
00:07:03,480 --> 00:07:07,279
Speaker 1: for reporters, and a bandstand. They built a wooden jail,

113
00:07:07,800 --> 00:07:11,120
Speaker 1: which I found I found one source saying that that

114
00:07:11,200 --> 00:07:14,320
Speaker 1: was made out of a caboose. They hired two hundred

115
00:07:14,360 --> 00:07:17,920
Speaker 1: constables to patrol on the day, and they also made

116
00:07:17,920 --> 00:07:21,360
Speaker 1: plans for a huge carnival complete with games and medicine

117
00:07:21,400 --> 00:07:24,880
Speaker 1: shows and a variety of other diversions. Clearly they were

118
00:07:24,880 --> 00:07:30,040
Speaker 1: expecting this to be a party Yeah. William Crush and

119
00:07:30,080 --> 00:07:33,920
Speaker 1: The Katie advertised this spectacle heavily all through the summer

120
00:07:33,920 --> 00:07:38,480
Speaker 1: of eight, calling it the Monster Crash. The crash and

121
00:07:38,480 --> 00:07:41,680
Speaker 1: the preparations for it became regular news items all throughout

122
00:07:41,680 --> 00:07:46,120
Speaker 1: the Texas papers and outside the state as well. Organizers

123
00:07:46,200 --> 00:07:48,840
Speaker 1: fielded queries from all over the country, and in the

124
00:07:48,920 --> 00:07:52,320
Speaker 1: days leading up to the actual event, William Crush estimated

125
00:07:52,320 --> 00:07:55,720
Speaker 1: that there would be fifteen thousand to twenty thousand spectators.

126
00:07:56,960 --> 00:08:00,880
Speaker 1: William Crush had arranged for thirty three trains to provide

127
00:08:01,040 --> 00:08:05,360
Speaker 1: passenger service to Crush and the Katie started dropping passengers

128
00:08:05,440 --> 00:08:11,000
Speaker 1: off around dawn on September. By ten am, there there

129
00:08:11,040 --> 00:08:14,280
Speaker 1: were at least ten thousand people already on the scene.

130
00:08:14,280 --> 00:08:17,120
Speaker 1: They were picnicking and playing games and listening to political

131
00:08:17,160 --> 00:08:21,360
Speaker 1: speeches while they waited. More trains kept arriving all through

132
00:08:21,360 --> 00:08:24,160
Speaker 1: the morning and afternoon, some of them so crowded that

133
00:08:24,240 --> 00:08:27,440
Speaker 1: people were riding on the roofs of the cars. The

134
00:08:27,520 --> 00:08:31,000
Speaker 1: Monster Crash was supposed to start at four, but people

135
00:08:31,040 --> 00:08:34,160
Speaker 1: were still arriving as that hour drew near, so they

136
00:08:34,200 --> 00:08:36,840
Speaker 1: delayed the start until five pm, at which point there

137
00:08:36,880 --> 00:08:43,079
Speaker 1: were about forty people there double what William Crush had estimated. First,

138
00:08:43,360 --> 00:08:46,520
Speaker 1: the two locomotives came together very slowly on the track

139
00:08:46,559 --> 00:08:49,840
Speaker 1: and touched their cow catchers together. That's that little great

140
00:08:49,880 --> 00:08:53,840
Speaker 1: looking thing on the front of a locomotive. They touched

141
00:08:53,840 --> 00:08:56,600
Speaker 1: their cow catchers together, kind of like boxers touching their

142
00:08:56,600 --> 00:08:59,959
Speaker 1: gloves before a match. Then they were reversed a party

143
00:09:00,040 --> 00:09:04,160
Speaker 1: in and William Crush, on horseback, raised a white hat

144
00:09:04,200 --> 00:09:06,480
Speaker 1: into the air and whipped it down to give the

145
00:09:06,559 --> 00:09:10,640
Speaker 1: signal for the wreck to officially begin. The two locomotives,

146
00:09:10,679 --> 00:09:14,920
Speaker 1: pulling empty box cars that were festooned with advertisements and decorations,

147
00:09:15,480 --> 00:09:18,559
Speaker 1: then began moving toward each other and picking up speed.

148
00:09:19,240 --> 00:09:22,560
Speaker 1: Their engineers pulled their whistle cords and tied them down,

149
00:09:22,679 --> 00:09:26,079
Speaker 1: then jumped clear and ran away from the track. They

150
00:09:26,240 --> 00:09:29,160
Speaker 1: estimated that at the moment of impact, each locomotive was

151
00:09:29,200 --> 00:09:33,280
Speaker 1: traveling at about fifty miles per hour when they crashed

152
00:09:33,280 --> 00:09:37,160
Speaker 1: into each other. The collision was incredibly violent. The box

153
00:09:37,240 --> 00:09:42,480
Speaker 1: cars unsurprisingly shattered into splinters, but the locomotives didn't behave

154
00:09:42,679 --> 00:09:46,240
Speaker 1: as they expected. Organizers had thought that they would basically

155
00:09:46,280 --> 00:09:49,040
Speaker 1: push each other up into an inverted v and they

156
00:09:49,040 --> 00:09:52,400
Speaker 1: would expend most of that energy and the upward trajectory

157
00:09:52,440 --> 00:09:56,160
Speaker 1: of doing that. Instead, it was more like squeezing an

158
00:09:56,160 --> 00:09:59,959
Speaker 1: accordion or collapsing a telescope, and the two giant locomotive

159
00:10:00,080 --> 00:10:03,520
Speaker 1: was just folded into each other. And then, to the

160
00:10:03,559 --> 00:10:08,680
Speaker 1: surprise of everyone except perhaps that one dissenting engineer, both

161
00:10:08,720 --> 00:10:13,600
Speaker 1: their boilers exploded. Scalding water and flying debris from the locomotives,

162
00:10:13,600 --> 00:10:17,439
Speaker 1: including pieces of iron and steel of all shapes and sizes,

163
00:10:17,559 --> 00:10:20,360
Speaker 1: flew into the crowd, most of whom were along the

164
00:10:20,440 --> 00:10:24,840
Speaker 1: hills at least two hundred yards away. At least two

165
00:10:24,840 --> 00:10:27,920
Speaker 1: people were killed, although some accounts say there were three.

166
00:10:28,600 --> 00:10:30,880
Speaker 1: Ernest Darnell, who had been who had climbed up a

167
00:10:30,920 --> 00:10:33,520
Speaker 1: mesquite tree to watch, was hit with a ten pound

168
00:10:33,559 --> 00:10:36,520
Speaker 1: length of break chain and was killed instantly. A young

169
00:10:36,559 --> 00:10:38,920
Speaker 1: girl was hit with a chunk of iron that fractured

170
00:10:38,920 --> 00:10:41,880
Speaker 1: her skull, and although she was reported to be resting

171
00:10:42,000 --> 00:10:45,680
Speaker 1: comfortably afterwards, she died on the way home. There was

172
00:10:45,679 --> 00:10:49,840
Speaker 1: a third man, John Morrison, who survived the wreck itself,

173
00:10:49,880 --> 00:10:52,880
Speaker 1: but fell between train cars on the way home and

174
00:10:53,000 --> 00:10:55,440
Speaker 1: was run over by the train and died. I haven't

175
00:10:55,520 --> 00:10:58,320
Speaker 1: quite figured out if that is the third person, some

176
00:10:58,480 --> 00:11:01,400
Speaker 1: of the counts referred to as being and killed or

177
00:11:01,440 --> 00:11:05,040
Speaker 1: if that was a separate incident. There were also a

178
00:11:05,160 --> 00:11:08,040
Speaker 1: lot of injuries from the flying debris in boiling water,

179
00:11:08,280 --> 00:11:10,720
Speaker 1: and at least six of those were serious, and some

180
00:11:10,880 --> 00:11:13,480
Speaker 1: of them were sustained more than a mile away from

181
00:11:13,480 --> 00:11:18,240
Speaker 1: the actual crash. J. C. Dean, a photographer from Waco,

182
00:11:18,360 --> 00:11:20,520
Speaker 1: had been hired to take pictures of the event, and

183
00:11:20,559 --> 00:11:22,680
Speaker 1: he lost an eye when a bolt from the wreck

184
00:11:22,800 --> 00:11:25,840
Speaker 1: tore through it. His response was to get up and

185
00:11:25,920 --> 00:11:29,720
Speaker 1: keep working, telling his brothers, who were also photographers, how

186
00:11:29,760 --> 00:11:33,360
Speaker 1: to finish the shot that he had been framing. Even

187
00:11:33,600 --> 00:11:36,240
Speaker 1: in the midst of all this chaos and the tragedy

188
00:11:36,280 --> 00:11:39,920
Speaker 1: that was unfolding, souvenir seekers rushed in to try to

189
00:11:39,960 --> 00:11:43,560
Speaker 1: claim pieces of the wreck. Record trains hauled off the

190
00:11:43,600 --> 00:11:47,640
Speaker 1: biggest remaining pieces. After the event was over, people began

191
00:11:47,679 --> 00:11:50,280
Speaker 1: to leave the temporary town of Crush. As soon as

192
00:11:50,280 --> 00:11:53,640
Speaker 1: the event had finished, Workers struck the tent and the

193
00:11:53,679 --> 00:11:56,600
Speaker 1: other structures erected for the town, and the whole thing

194
00:11:56,640 --> 00:12:02,040
Speaker 1: was essentially gone by nightfall. Willie him Crush was fired immediately,

195
00:12:02,920 --> 00:12:05,679
Speaker 1: but then officials at the Katie realized they'd had an

196
00:12:05,720 --> 00:12:09,319
Speaker 1: incredibly profitable day in spite of the tragedy, so they

197
00:12:09,400 --> 00:12:12,160
Speaker 1: hired him back the next day, and he worked at

198
00:12:12,160 --> 00:12:15,839
Speaker 1: the railroad until his retirement. In his in nineteen forty,

199
00:12:15,960 --> 00:12:19,760
Speaker 1: The Katie began quickly and quietly settling lawsuits and paying

200
00:12:19,800 --> 00:12:22,840
Speaker 1: compensation to the people who had been injured and the

201
00:12:22,880 --> 00:12:26,520
Speaker 1: families of those who had been killed. Photographer J. C.

202
00:12:26,720 --> 00:12:30,240
Speaker 1: Dean was paid ten thousand dollars and given a lifetime

203
00:12:30,280 --> 00:12:34,160
Speaker 1: pass on the train. There wasn't nearly as much public

204
00:12:34,160 --> 00:12:37,120
Speaker 1: condemnation as he might expect from an event that killed

205
00:12:37,120 --> 00:12:40,280
Speaker 1: at least two spectators and injured many others, but the

206
00:12:40,320 --> 00:12:43,800
Speaker 1: news reporting at the time was actually relatively pragmatic about it.

207
00:12:44,360 --> 00:12:47,280
Speaker 1: A few weeks after the crash at Crush, composer and

208
00:12:47,360 --> 00:12:52,240
Speaker 1: pianist Scott Joplin published his Great Crush Collision March. Joplin

209
00:12:52,280 --> 00:12:54,480
Speaker 1: would go on to be known as the King of Ragtime,

210
00:12:54,600 --> 00:12:58,160
Speaker 1: whose other most famous pieces include Maple Leaf Rag and

211
00:12:58,240 --> 00:13:00,520
Speaker 1: The Entertainer, which would become the the music for the

212
00:13:00,600 --> 00:13:04,760
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies three films The Sting starring Paul Newman, Robert Redford,

213
00:13:04,800 --> 00:13:08,640
Speaker 1: and Robert Shaw. It's unclear whether Joplin was actually at

214
00:13:08,679 --> 00:13:12,000
Speaker 1: the crash, but the Great Crush Collision March was one

215
00:13:12,000 --> 00:13:15,119
Speaker 1: of his earliest published pieces of music and a relatively

216
00:13:15,160 --> 00:13:19,200
Speaker 1: early example of ragtime, which is a distinctly African American

217
00:13:19,240 --> 00:13:21,319
Speaker 1: form of music that was at the height of its

218
00:13:21,360 --> 00:13:24,800
Speaker 1: popularity from the mid eighteen nineties through the nineteen teens.

219
00:13:24,840 --> 00:13:26,600
Speaker 1: And we're going to link to that in the show

220
00:13:26,640 --> 00:13:30,199
Speaker 1: notes so people can listen to it. Scott Joplin is

221
00:13:30,240 --> 00:13:34,000
Speaker 1: the reason I took piano lessons as a child. Really, yes,

222
00:13:34,240 --> 00:13:36,280
Speaker 1: love uh. And the part of me that wants to

223
00:13:36,320 --> 00:13:38,800
Speaker 1: do an episode about him is at odds with the

224
00:13:38,800 --> 00:13:41,559
Speaker 1: part of me that that does not like the sad

225
00:13:41,600 --> 00:13:44,880
Speaker 1: aspect of story, which is his death at a very

226
00:13:44,880 --> 00:13:50,480
Speaker 1: early age from untreated syphilis. So the Katie went through

227
00:13:50,520 --> 00:13:54,319
Speaker 1: waves of financial success and difficulty after this point until

228
00:13:54,440 --> 00:13:56,680
Speaker 1: really starting to struggle along with the rest of the

229
00:13:56,679 --> 00:13:59,920
Speaker 1: industry in the nineteen fifties. It was ultimately bought by

230
00:14:00,040 --> 00:14:04,920
Speaker 1: the Missouri Pacific Railroad Company. In there's a historic plaque

231
00:14:04,920 --> 00:14:09,240
Speaker 1: commemorating the Crash at Crush in McLennan County, fifteen miles

232
00:14:09,280 --> 00:14:13,160
Speaker 1: north of Waco. Although the Crash at Crush is the

233
00:14:13,160 --> 00:14:16,120
Speaker 1: most famous of these stage drecks, that wasn't actually the

234
00:14:16,160 --> 00:14:18,320
Speaker 1: first one, and so we're going to talk about that

235
00:14:18,360 --> 00:14:26,400
Speaker 1: first one and some others after a quick sponsor break.

236
00:14:30,640 --> 00:14:33,800
Speaker 1: Really frequently. The crash at Crush is described as the

237
00:14:33,840 --> 00:14:37,200
Speaker 1: first staged train wreck in the United States, was something

238
00:14:37,240 --> 00:14:40,720
Speaker 1: that drew a big crowd, but which no other actual

239
00:14:40,960 --> 00:14:45,440
Speaker 1: railroad company tried again afterwards for obvious reasons. But that

240
00:14:45,520 --> 00:14:51,080
Speaker 1: September event was actually pre dated by one staged by

241
00:14:51,120 --> 00:14:53,600
Speaker 1: a man named A. L. Streeter Or. He was a

242
00:14:53,760 --> 00:14:58,040
Speaker 1: railway equipment salesman from Illinois. Street Or first tried to

243
00:14:58,080 --> 00:15:00,600
Speaker 1: stage a train wreck in Illinois, but wasn't able to

244
00:15:00,640 --> 00:15:04,760
Speaker 1: generate enough attention, so he turned his attention to Ohio,

245
00:15:05,200 --> 00:15:07,760
Speaker 1: where he got the okay to conduct a crash on July,

246
00:15:09,840 --> 00:15:13,880
Speaker 1: a couple of miles outside Canton. Here's how he described

247
00:15:13,920 --> 00:15:15,520
Speaker 1: it in one of the ads that he ran to

248
00:15:15,600 --> 00:15:19,200
Speaker 1: promote this event. Quote to monster, locomotives with full head

249
00:15:19,200 --> 00:15:22,200
Speaker 1: of steam starting a mile apart, will rush toward each

250
00:15:22,200 --> 00:15:24,720
Speaker 1: other at the rate of sixty or seventy miles an hour,

251
00:15:24,840 --> 00:15:27,520
Speaker 1: and allowed to come together with a crash that will

252
00:15:27,600 --> 00:15:31,440
Speaker 1: result in the most horrible head on collision ever seen

253
00:15:31,600 --> 00:15:35,280
Speaker 1: or heard of. Street Or made arrangements to buy a

254
00:15:35,280 --> 00:15:39,600
Speaker 1: couple of retired locomotives and decorated them. One was emblazoned

255
00:15:39,600 --> 00:15:43,680
Speaker 1: with free trade and the other with protection, symbolically pitting

256
00:15:43,680 --> 00:15:47,400
Speaker 1: the two economic theories against one another. The two engines

257
00:15:47,440 --> 00:15:51,800
Speaker 1: would pull flat cars loaded down with rocks, like the

258
00:15:51,840 --> 00:15:55,760
Speaker 1: crash a crash. Part of Streeter's plan involved selling train tickets.

259
00:15:55,960 --> 00:15:58,680
Speaker 1: A fifteen cent fair on the Cleveland, Canton and Southern

260
00:15:58,760 --> 00:16:02,720
Speaker 1: Railroad would get people to the actual location for the crash,

261
00:16:03,040 --> 00:16:06,160
Speaker 1: but once people got to that location, admission to the

262
00:16:06,200 --> 00:16:09,560
Speaker 1: crash itself was not free. He hoped to sell twenty

263
00:16:09,600 --> 00:16:12,800
Speaker 1: thousand tickets at seventy five cents apiece so that people

264
00:16:12,840 --> 00:16:16,560
Speaker 1: could then watch the crash from a designated viewing area. However,

265
00:16:16,680 --> 00:16:20,440
Speaker 1: the overwhelming majority of spectators had a different idea that

266
00:16:20,600 --> 00:16:23,720
Speaker 1: was to climb trees and together outside the official viewing

267
00:16:23,760 --> 00:16:26,520
Speaker 1: area and watch it for free, so he only sold

268
00:16:26,560 --> 00:16:31,720
Speaker 1: about two hundred tickets. In the end. Though these two

269
00:16:31,720 --> 00:16:35,240
Speaker 1: locomotives never wrecked, the whole event was canceled at the

270
00:16:35,320 --> 00:16:39,480
Speaker 1: last possible minute. Streeter claimed it was because spectators got

271
00:16:39,560 --> 00:16:42,600
Speaker 1: too close and refused to move, ruining it for everyone

272
00:16:42,640 --> 00:16:46,080
Speaker 1: else and forcing him to cancel for safety reasons, But

273
00:16:46,200 --> 00:16:49,320
Speaker 1: the railroad claimed that street Or owed them two thousand,

274
00:16:49,360 --> 00:16:52,640
Speaker 1: four hundred dollars for the retired locomotives, which he had

275
00:16:52,680 --> 00:16:56,200
Speaker 1: never paid, so the railroad exercise their right to take

276
00:16:56,240 --> 00:17:00,880
Speaker 1: them back. Spectators. Of course, we're out aged, and the

277
00:17:00,920 --> 00:17:03,880
Speaker 1: ones who had paid demanded a refund. People were also

278
00:17:03,960 --> 00:17:06,600
Speaker 1: upset that they had spent that fifteen dollar train fair

279
00:17:06,840 --> 00:17:10,360
Speaker 1: for something that didn't actually happen. Street Or was widely

280
00:17:10,400 --> 00:17:13,600
Speaker 1: criticized in the press for wasting people's time and money,

281
00:17:13,840 --> 00:17:16,480
Speaker 1: even as he claimed to have lost about eight hundred

282
00:17:16,520 --> 00:17:20,040
Speaker 1: dollars of his personal funds in the venture. Street Or

283
00:17:20,119 --> 00:17:24,359
Speaker 1: didn't give up, though. On Memorial Day he tried again,

284
00:17:24,960 --> 00:17:28,679
Speaker 1: this time in Buckeye Park in Marietta, Ohio, about twenty

285
00:17:28,680 --> 00:17:32,679
Speaker 1: five miles southeast of Columbus. The locomotives this time were

286
00:17:32,760 --> 00:17:35,600
Speaker 1: named the A. L. Streeter and the W. H. Fisher.

287
00:17:36,280 --> 00:17:40,120
Speaker 1: Fisher worked for the Columbus Hawking and Toledo Railroad, and

288
00:17:40,200 --> 00:17:43,280
Speaker 1: to add some more drama, street Or put mannequins aboard

289
00:17:43,359 --> 00:17:45,480
Speaker 1: so it would actually look like there were people in there.

290
00:17:46,800 --> 00:17:50,800
Speaker 1: This time, the wreck did indeed go as planned. Clarence

291
00:17:50,840 --> 00:17:54,119
Speaker 1: Metters wrote about the event in National Magazine, saying, quote,

292
00:17:54,160 --> 00:17:57,359
Speaker 1: twenty five thousand pairs of eyes were riveted upon one

293
00:17:57,480 --> 00:18:01,080
Speaker 1: engine or another as they rushed together, and so critical

294
00:18:01,200 --> 00:18:04,520
Speaker 1: was the moment that scarcely a word was spoken. On

295
00:18:04,640 --> 00:18:08,040
Speaker 1: and on sped the two iron monsters at the rate

296
00:18:08,080 --> 00:18:11,159
Speaker 1: of over forty miles an hour, and when the crash

297
00:18:11,240 --> 00:18:16,399
Speaker 1: came it was terrific, both trains being practically destroyed. Street

298
00:18:16,440 --> 00:18:19,439
Speaker 1: Or continued to organize more of these spectacles around the

299
00:18:19,480 --> 00:18:23,560
Speaker 1: country until the early twentieth century. But another man organized

300
00:18:23,600 --> 00:18:25,480
Speaker 1: so many of them that it became part of his

301
00:18:25,560 --> 00:18:29,120
Speaker 1: personal brand, and he was Joe Connolly, who was known

302
00:18:29,160 --> 00:18:32,560
Speaker 1: by the nickname head On Connolly, who staged at least

303
00:18:32,560 --> 00:18:35,880
Speaker 1: seventy three rex between eighteen ninety six and nineteen thirty

304
00:18:35,960 --> 00:18:40,040
Speaker 1: two and became the most famous organizer of planned train wrecks.

305
00:18:41,040 --> 00:18:43,399
Speaker 1: I found one account that said that he tried to

306
00:18:43,400 --> 00:18:47,000
Speaker 1: sue someone for staging a train wreck and using the

307
00:18:47,119 --> 00:18:50,760
Speaker 1: term head On when that was clearly his, But I

308
00:18:50,760 --> 00:18:53,040
Speaker 1: couldn't find any evidence that he had actually tried to

309
00:18:53,080 --> 00:18:56,280
Speaker 1: register that trademark, so not sure what the actual status

310
00:18:56,320 --> 00:18:59,960
Speaker 1: of that was regardless though. Head On Joe had worked

311
00:19:00,040 --> 00:19:03,320
Speaker 1: in theater in Des Moines for decades before putting his

312
00:19:03,400 --> 00:19:07,440
Speaker 1: hand to staging train wrecks, and he was scrupulous about safety.

313
00:19:07,520 --> 00:19:10,480
Speaker 1: He had a very specific set of safety rules that

314
00:19:10,520 --> 00:19:13,359
Speaker 1: had to be followed at any wreck he staged. He

315
00:19:13,480 --> 00:19:16,880
Speaker 1: also told reporters that he had a quote lifelong desire

316
00:19:17,000 --> 00:19:20,359
Speaker 1: to see such a disaster without danger to himself and

317
00:19:20,400 --> 00:19:24,920
Speaker 1: thought many other people harbored the same secret desire. He

318
00:19:25,040 --> 00:19:27,600
Speaker 1: was also a showman, and as his REX went on,

319
00:19:28,040 --> 00:19:30,400
Speaker 1: he did things to make them more and more dramatic.

320
00:19:30,800 --> 00:19:33,440
Speaker 1: He started laying small charges on the tracks that would

321
00:19:33,440 --> 00:19:37,399
Speaker 1: explode when the trains rolled over them, creating tiny explosions that,

322
00:19:37,520 --> 00:19:40,760
Speaker 1: in normal circumstances were used to warn other trains of

323
00:19:40,800 --> 00:19:44,719
Speaker 1: incoming traffic. He'd also doused the cars in fuel and

324
00:19:44,760 --> 00:19:47,440
Speaker 1: filled them with flammable materials so that they would burn

325
00:19:47,520 --> 00:19:52,160
Speaker 1: after impact. Commonly made a lot of money staging these

326
00:19:52,160 --> 00:19:55,040
Speaker 1: crashes over the years, and his last one took place

327
00:19:55,080 --> 00:19:58,280
Speaker 1: as the fad was really starting to wane. This one

328
00:19:58,400 --> 00:20:01,600
Speaker 1: was at the Iowa State Fair and thirty two. He

329
00:20:01,640 --> 00:20:04,320
Speaker 1: had staged Rex at the Iowa State Fair previously to

330
00:20:04,400 --> 00:20:07,240
Speaker 1: a lot of fanfare, but in nineteen thirty two, the

331
00:20:07,320 --> 00:20:10,920
Speaker 1: United States was facing the Great Depression. Even naming one

332
00:20:10,960 --> 00:20:13,679
Speaker 1: of the locomotives the Roosevelt and the other the Hoover

333
00:20:14,359 --> 00:20:17,200
Speaker 1: wasn't enough to make the events sit right with the crowd.

334
00:20:17,600 --> 00:20:19,960
Speaker 1: The explosion itself was reported to be a good one,

335
00:20:20,359 --> 00:20:24,119
Speaker 1: but the response from the audience was really lackluster. That

336
00:20:24,200 --> 00:20:27,800
Speaker 1: seemed like seeing two huge trains wrecked against each other

337
00:20:27,880 --> 00:20:30,919
Speaker 1: for sport was needlessly wasteful in a time when so

338
00:20:30,960 --> 00:20:34,520
Speaker 1: many people were hurting from money. This was doubly true

339
00:20:34,600 --> 00:20:37,320
Speaker 1: when words started to spread that Connolly had charged the

340
00:20:37,359 --> 00:20:40,840
Speaker 1: fair forty dollars to stage the wreck, and that the

341
00:20:40,880 --> 00:20:44,840
Speaker 1: fair had lost sixty five thousand dollars that year. People

342
00:20:44,840 --> 00:20:47,399
Speaker 1: who were already angry at the idea that the crash

343
00:20:47,400 --> 00:20:50,080
Speaker 1: had been wasteful or furious that it had cost so

344
00:20:50,160 --> 00:20:54,040
Speaker 1: much money, in addition to the wreckage of the locomotives themselves,

345
00:20:55,240 --> 00:20:57,720
Speaker 1: a le Streeter and head On Connolly weren't the only

346
00:20:57,760 --> 00:21:02,200
Speaker 1: people organizing these staged wrecks. As another example, in September,

347
00:21:03,240 --> 00:21:07,040
Speaker 1: approximately six thousand people paid to see two engines that

348
00:21:07,080 --> 00:21:10,199
Speaker 1: had been retired from the Salt Lake railroad crashed together

349
00:21:10,240 --> 00:21:14,679
Speaker 1: at an agricultural park near downtown Los Angeles. Organizers for

350
00:21:14,720 --> 00:21:18,240
Speaker 1: this one where James Morley and former promoted a football coach,

351
00:21:18,280 --> 00:21:22,359
Speaker 1: Walter Hempele. This particular wreck didn't go all that well.

352
00:21:22,880 --> 00:21:26,280
Speaker 1: The engineers tried to extort extra pay from the organizers.

353
00:21:26,640 --> 00:21:29,000
Speaker 1: In the middle of the event, they were doing a

354
00:21:29,080 --> 00:21:32,000
Speaker 1: prolonged run up to the actual crash, in which they'd

355
00:21:32,040 --> 00:21:34,880
Speaker 1: run the trains at one another and then stop them

356
00:21:34,880 --> 00:21:38,560
Speaker 1: before a collision. The engineers thought it would probably be

357
00:21:38,640 --> 00:21:42,000
Speaker 1: impossible to find replacements in the literal middle of the event,

358
00:21:42,320 --> 00:21:45,120
Speaker 1: so they asked for an extra three hundred and fifty dollars.

359
00:21:45,840 --> 00:21:49,800
Speaker 1: Organizers managed to find replacements with no problem, though in general,

360
00:21:50,080 --> 00:21:53,840
Speaker 1: engineers were pretty eager to volunteer, so the original engineers

361
00:21:53,880 --> 00:21:58,200
Speaker 1: were fired and then the event proceeded as planned. He

362
00:21:58,240 --> 00:22:00,119
Speaker 1: had the idea that you would get to just on

363
00:22:00,280 --> 00:22:04,199
Speaker 1: purpose run a locomotive that was normally where you had

364
00:22:04,240 --> 00:22:07,119
Speaker 1: to spend your working life into another locomotive and just

365
00:22:07,160 --> 00:22:10,560
Speaker 1: smash it to pieces. Like that apparently was attractive to

366
00:22:10,680 --> 00:22:15,359
Speaker 1: a number of engineers. Um and I really didn't find

367
00:22:15,480 --> 00:22:18,720
Speaker 1: any indication that any of them were seriously injured while

368
00:22:18,760 --> 00:22:21,720
Speaker 1: doing this, although I did find one that was an

369
00:22:21,720 --> 00:22:25,040
Speaker 1: engineer who fell while trying to jump free of the

370
00:22:25,080 --> 00:22:30,520
Speaker 1: locomotive and sprained his ankle. So uh. In this event

371
00:22:30,760 --> 00:22:34,240
Speaker 1: at the Agricultural Park near downtown Los Angeles, the locomotives

372
00:22:34,240 --> 00:22:37,320
Speaker 1: did run into each other whistles blaring, but the end

373
00:22:37,359 --> 00:22:41,280
Speaker 1: result was pretty anticlimactic because they just sort of shammed

374
00:22:41,320 --> 00:22:43,600
Speaker 1: into each other with a thud and then stopped and

375
00:22:43,680 --> 00:22:46,760
Speaker 1: nothing derailed and nothing caught on fire and nothing exploded,

376
00:22:47,119 --> 00:22:50,360
Speaker 1: and so people were not particularly impressed. And these are

377
00:22:50,400 --> 00:22:53,439
Speaker 1: just some examples. There were lots and lots of others,

378
00:22:53,520 --> 00:22:56,160
Speaker 1: and there's actually footage of several of them on YouTube.

379
00:22:56,359 --> 00:22:58,440
Speaker 1: We're gonna link to that footage in the show notes.

380
00:22:59,400 --> 00:23:01,480
Speaker 1: Next start going to talk about some ideas about why

381
00:23:01,960 --> 00:23:15,840
Speaker 1: maybe this caught on so well. So for roughly thirty

382
00:23:16,040 --> 00:23:20,639
Speaker 1: or forty years, staged train wrecks were a really big

383
00:23:20,680 --> 00:23:24,080
Speaker 1: deal in the midwestern and southwestern parts of the United States.

384
00:23:24,640 --> 00:23:27,440
Speaker 1: The biggest crowd reported at one of these events was

385
00:23:27,480 --> 00:23:31,600
Speaker 1: a hundred and sixty thousand people, and attendance was routinely

386
00:23:31,720 --> 00:23:35,160
Speaker 1: in the tens of thousands. The town of Crush had

387
00:23:35,200 --> 00:23:38,200
Speaker 1: about the same population of as Dallas or San Antonio

388
00:23:38,320 --> 00:23:41,800
Speaker 1: for the few hours that it existed. In nine twenty,

389
00:23:41,880 --> 00:23:44,840
Speaker 1: a staged wreck on opening day of the Minnesota State

390
00:23:44,880 --> 00:23:48,720
Speaker 1: Fair doubled the fairs first day attendants from the year before.

391
00:23:49,400 --> 00:23:52,639
Speaker 1: All of this happened at a time when getting somewhere

392
00:23:53,119 --> 00:23:56,520
Speaker 1: was a lot less comfortable and convenient than it can

393
00:23:56,560 --> 00:24:00,200
Speaker 1: be today. This has led some people to speculate as

394
00:24:00,200 --> 00:24:03,480
Speaker 1: to why this all caught on so well. One aspect

395
00:24:03,560 --> 00:24:07,679
Speaker 1: was certainly the marketing organizers promoted their events heavily, getting

396
00:24:07,720 --> 00:24:11,200
Speaker 1: lots of fanciful coverage and newspapers, and there was often

397
00:24:11,240 --> 00:24:14,320
Speaker 1: a political theme to the decorations on the trains themselves.

398
00:24:15,080 --> 00:24:17,240
Speaker 1: In addition to the ones that we talked about already

399
00:24:17,280 --> 00:24:21,479
Speaker 1: earlier in this show, a stage direck pitted locomotives dubbed

400
00:24:21,560 --> 00:24:27,159
Speaker 1: evolution and fundamentalism. After the Scopes trial in there was

401
00:24:27,280 --> 00:24:30,320
Speaker 1: also a showdown between the National Recovery Act, part of

402
00:24:30,359 --> 00:24:33,520
Speaker 1: the New Deal versus Old Man Depression at the Minnesota

403
00:24:33,560 --> 00:24:38,080
Speaker 1: State Fair in nineteen thirty three, and for some people

404
00:24:38,280 --> 00:24:41,439
Speaker 1: the attraction was related more to the general politics of

405
00:24:41,480 --> 00:24:44,919
Speaker 1: the day than any specific political issue. There was a

406
00:24:44,960 --> 00:24:48,719
Speaker 1: general idea that locomotives were symbols of big businesses and

407
00:24:48,840 --> 00:24:52,200
Speaker 1: industries that were taking advantage of people and ruining the landscape,

408
00:24:52,200 --> 00:24:53,920
Speaker 1: and so it was really fun to think about their

409
00:24:53,960 --> 00:24:57,359
Speaker 1: destroying one another. And then, of course there is this

410
00:24:57,560 --> 00:25:01,480
Speaker 1: fact that humanity has kind of a morbid fascination with destruction.

411
00:25:02,080 --> 00:25:05,879
Speaker 1: There's a complicated set of emotional and psychological responses that

412
00:25:06,000 --> 00:25:10,399
Speaker 1: feed into the general human trait of morbid curiosity. In

413
00:25:10,440 --> 00:25:13,920
Speaker 1: the decades after Stage train wrecks, there were demolition Derby's,

414
00:25:14,000 --> 00:25:17,960
Speaker 1: monster truck rallies, a whole slew of disaster films, true

415
00:25:18,000 --> 00:25:21,000
Speaker 1: crime shows, and on and on. These are all still

416
00:25:21,080 --> 00:25:25,879
Speaker 1: moneymakers in many cases. Yep. I mean, I think the

417
00:25:25,880 --> 00:25:28,600
Speaker 1: thing that strikes me as so weird about the train

418
00:25:28,720 --> 00:25:32,959
Speaker 1: part is that locomotives are just so big. They like,

419
00:25:33,119 --> 00:25:37,280
Speaker 1: that's a lot of metal smashing together and then doing

420
00:25:37,400 --> 00:25:41,080
Speaker 1: I don't know something to the scrap heap or whatever, uh,

421
00:25:41,200 --> 00:25:43,840
Speaker 1: which you know, may made it seem a little odder

422
00:25:43,920 --> 00:25:46,520
Speaker 1: to me than a demolition Derby or a monster truck

423
00:25:46,600 --> 00:25:49,520
Speaker 1: rally or whatever. But also, I mean, people do just do,

424
00:25:50,240 --> 00:25:52,720
Speaker 1: as we have shown in our some past episodes of

425
00:25:52,720 --> 00:25:56,679
Speaker 1: the show, people go on onto weird stuff. Sometimes. I

426
00:25:56,680 --> 00:26:01,560
Speaker 1: think that's also a factor. This is the kind of

427
00:26:01,600 --> 00:26:05,520
Speaker 1: episode that happens when you're looking for something a little

428
00:26:05,640 --> 00:26:10,680
Speaker 1: less heavy to write about and you google weird fads. Right,

429
00:26:11,560 --> 00:26:15,600
Speaker 1: I've done similar things. Uh, yeah, it is. It's a

430
00:26:17,080 --> 00:26:18,760
Speaker 1: I'm trying to think if there would ever be like

431
00:26:18,800 --> 00:26:24,119
Speaker 1: a modern day equivalent attempted, Like, would anybody ever go,

432
00:26:24,280 --> 00:26:28,040
Speaker 1: let's try to crash planes together. I don't know how

433
00:26:28,080 --> 00:26:31,119
Speaker 1: you would possibly orchestrate such a thing, but that sounds

434
00:26:32,680 --> 00:26:37,040
Speaker 1: very scary. Yes, well, and suddenly I just remembered when, um,

435
00:26:37,080 --> 00:26:39,400
Speaker 1: when I was also a kid. In addition to having

436
00:26:39,400 --> 00:26:42,560
Speaker 1: the elementary school Halloween carnivals where you could smash old

437
00:26:42,560 --> 00:26:47,160
Speaker 1: cars with a baseball bat, um, whenever the fire department

438
00:26:47,160 --> 00:26:51,639
Speaker 1: would be conducting training by burning down a derelict building

439
00:26:51,760 --> 00:26:55,520
Speaker 1: and extinguishing the fire, like, there would always be a

440
00:26:55,520 --> 00:26:58,520
Speaker 1: crowd to watch that. Oh, anytime there's a building demolished,

441
00:26:58,560 --> 00:27:00,720
Speaker 1: there's a crowd. We had one in Atlanta not long ago,

442
00:27:00,840 --> 00:27:03,399
Speaker 1: and everyone who lived in Atlanta had it all over

443
00:27:03,440 --> 00:27:05,520
Speaker 1: their social media because they got up at an ungodly

444
00:27:05,600 --> 00:27:10,479
Speaker 1: hour to go look at it. We're blowing stuff up.

445
00:27:10,520 --> 00:27:15,280
Speaker 1: I mean, I then feel very tame for like being

446
00:27:15,320 --> 00:27:17,480
Speaker 1: like what happens when you put a CD in a microwave.

447
00:27:19,280 --> 00:27:27,439
Speaker 1: By the way, it's very pretty. Thank you so much

448
00:27:27,480 --> 00:27:30,080
Speaker 1: for joining us today for this classic. If you have

449
00:27:30,240 --> 00:27:32,720
Speaker 1: heard any kind of email address or maybe a Facebook

450
00:27:32,720 --> 00:27:34,600
Speaker 1: you are l during the course of the episode, that

451
00:27:34,720 --> 00:27:37,439
Speaker 1: might be obsolete. It might be doubly obsolete because we

452
00:27:37,480 --> 00:27:40,680
Speaker 1: have changed our email address again. You can now reach

453
00:27:40,760 --> 00:27:44,120
Speaker 1: us at History podcast at i heart radio dot com,

454
00:27:44,160 --> 00:27:46,919
Speaker 1: and we're all over social media at missed in History,

455
00:27:47,119 --> 00:27:50,080
Speaker 1: and you can subscribe to our show on Apple podcasts,

456
00:27:50,119 --> 00:27:53,360
Speaker 1: Google podcast the I heart Radio app, and wherever else

457
00:27:53,400 --> 00:27:59,119
Speaker 1: you listen to podcasts. Stuffy miss In History Class is

458
00:27:59,160 --> 00:28:02,360
Speaker 1: a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from

459
00:28:02,359 --> 00:28:05,720
Speaker 1: I heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts,

460
00:28:05,840 --> 00:28:09,240
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H