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Speaker 1: This Day in History Class is a production of I

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Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey guys, I hope you enjoy these classic

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Speaker 1: episodes from the t D I h C Vault. I'm

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Speaker 1: currently researching a new crop of stories for next year,

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Speaker 1: so be sure to join me again on January second

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Speaker 1: when we return with all new episodes. Talk to you soon.

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Speaker 1: Welcome to This Day in History Class from how Stuff

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Speaker 1: Works dot com and from the desk of Stuff you

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Speaker 1: Missed in History Class. It's the show where we explore

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Speaker 1: the past one day at a time with a quick

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Speaker 1: look at what happened today in history. Hello, and welcome

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Speaker 1: to the podcast. It's December two. The Monroe Doctrine was

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Speaker 1: issued on this day in eighteen twenty three. That makes

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Speaker 1: it sound like somebody published a document that said the

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Speaker 1: Monroe Doctrine up at the top, and it was a

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Speaker 1: published piece of writing. Really, it was that President James

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Speaker 1: Monroe gave his annual address to Congress, and in that

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Speaker 1: address he described some foreign policy decisions, and that came

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Speaker 1: to be called the Monroe Doctrine. These policy decisions were

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Speaker 1: also heavily influenced by Secretary of State John Quincy Adams,

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Speaker 1: who advocated not only for what these policies said, but

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Speaker 1: also for them to exist at all. This whole thing

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Speaker 1: grew out of Europe's colonization of the America's, which is

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Speaker 1: where the United States came from. A lot of these

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Speaker 1: American colonies had then become independent from Europe, so the

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Speaker 1: United States was independent from Britain. A whole collection of

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Speaker 1: Latin American colonies had become independent from Spain. In the

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Speaker 1: years leading up to this, France had sold a lot

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Speaker 1: of its North American territory to the United States and

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Speaker 1: so on. At the time, the Russian Empire still controlled

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Speaker 1: what's now Alaska, and there were worries that Russia would

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Speaker 1: try to take over more territory outside what it already controlled.

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Speaker 1: So the United States was concerned concerned about Russia, concerned

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Speaker 1: about European nations recolonizing the America's. Britain actually had a

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Speaker 1: lot of the same worries as the United States did

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Speaker 1: about Russia, Spain, and France, and initially Britain had proposed

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Speaker 1: that Britain in the United States issue a joint statement,

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Speaker 1: and that's one of the ways that John Quincy Adams

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Speaker 1: played a part in all of this. He thought that

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Speaker 1: a joint statement would make the United States look like

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Speaker 1: a hanger on, with Great Britain being the one doing

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Speaker 1: all the work and making all the decisions and the

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Speaker 1: United States just going along with whatever it was. So

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Speaker 1: in this address before Congress, James Monroe articulated three main ideas.

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Speaker 1: The first was that the world had two spheres of influence.

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Speaker 1: The Americas were their own sphere outside of the European

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Speaker 1: sphere of influence. The Americas were also not up for

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Speaker 1: further colonization by European powers, and the United States would

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Speaker 1: not interfere in the internal matters of other nations, including

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Speaker 1: maintaining neutrality when it came to wars in Europe. The

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Speaker 1: Monroe doctrine did not, though, include anything to deter the

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Speaker 1: United States westward expansion through North America. When Monroe made

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Speaker 1: this speech, though, the United States didn't really have the

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Speaker 1: military might to enforce what the Monroe Doctrine was saying,

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Speaker 1: and while other nations didn't really try to test it,

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Speaker 1: the response from some of the world's other leaders was

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Speaker 1: somewhere between dismissive and annoyed because the United States was

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Speaker 1: basically saying you're not welcome here without actually having the

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Speaker 1: means to keep other people out. The points articulated in

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Speaker 1: this address became known as the Monroe Doctrine by the

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Speaker 1: eighteen fifties, and they continued to influence American foreign policy

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Speaker 1: for decades after that. President Theodore Roosevelt further built on

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Speaker 1: the Monroe Doctrine and his annual messages to Chris in

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Speaker 1: nineteen o four and nineteen o five, saying that it

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Speaker 1: wasn't just that the America's were not open to colonization

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Speaker 1: by Europe, but that also the United States had a

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Speaker 1: responsibility to defend those nations of the Western Hemisphere. Thanks

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Speaker 1: to Eve's Jeff Cote for her research work on today's show,

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Speaker 1: and the Casey Pigram and Chandler Maze for their audio work.

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Speaker 1: You can subscribe to The Day in History Class on

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Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, Google podcast, the I Heart Radio app, and

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Speaker 1: wherever else you get your podcasts. Tune in tomorrow for

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Speaker 1: a trial that some places describe as political but others

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Speaker 1: describe as criminal. Depends on who you ask. Hey, y'all,

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Speaker 1: I'm Eve's and you're listening to this Day in History Class,

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Speaker 1: a podcast for people interested in the big and small

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Speaker 1: moments in history. The day was December second, nineteen eighty four,

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Speaker 1: late at night, a gas leak accident at the Union

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Speaker 1: Carbide pesticide plant in bou Paul, India, caused what was

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Speaker 1: considered the worst industrial disaster in history. The Union Carbide

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Speaker 1: plant at bou Paul was built for the manufacture of

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Speaker 1: seven S E V I N, a commonly used pesticide.

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Speaker 1: In nineteen eighty four, the plant was manufacturing seven at

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Speaker 1: a reduced production capacity because the demand for pesticides was low.

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Speaker 1: The plant was slated to be shut down in nineteen

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Speaker 1: eighty four, but until then it continued to operate with

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Speaker 1: safety equipment and procedures that were below standard. Around eleven

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Speaker 1: pm on December two, a couple of employees at the

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Speaker 1: plant noticed the pressure increasing inside a storage tank, but

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Speaker 1: they didn't think much of it. The instruments often malfunctioned,

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Speaker 1: so they assumed the readings were inaccurate. But soon workers

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Speaker 1: found a leak of methyl isocyanate and began to feel

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Speaker 1: its effects. Methyl Isocyanate is a highly flammable liquid used

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Speaker 1: in the production of pesticides that evaporates quickly when exposed

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Speaker 1: to air. It's highly toxic to humans with short term exposure.

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Speaker 1: They reported the leak to a methyl isocyanate supervisor, but

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Speaker 1: he said that he would address the issue after t

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Speaker 1: Nobody looked into the leak until about twelve forty a m.

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Speaker 1: On December three. By that point, the pressure and temperature

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Speaker 1: in the tank had increased to dangerous levels and a

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Speaker 1: number of safety measures were out of commission. The vet

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Speaker 1: gas scrubber that was designed to neutralize toxic discharge from

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Speaker 1: the system was deactivated. A faulty valve allowed warder to

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Speaker 1: enter the tank and mixed with methyl isocyanate, and a

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Speaker 1: refrigeration unit that cooled storage tanks containing methyl isocyanate had

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Speaker 1: been disconnected. Among other safety issues, the Beau Paul plant

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Speaker 1: did not have a computer system to monitor operations and

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Speaker 1: alert staff to leaks like a or operations did. Management

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Speaker 1: relied on workers senses and physical reactions to determine that

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Speaker 1: there was a methyl isocyanate leak. Around one am, a

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Speaker 1: safety valve gave out instead a plume of methyl isocyanate

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Speaker 1: gas into the air. The gas spread through the air

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Speaker 1: across the city of Beau Paul. In nineteen eighty four,

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Speaker 1: around eight hundred thousand people lived in Beau Paul. The

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Speaker 1: plant was very close to the Boat Paul of railway

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Speaker 1: station and close to two large hospitals. It was surrounded

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Speaker 1: by densely populated towns. People woke up to symptoms of

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Speaker 1: exposure like coughing, stomach pain, vomiting, and eye irritation. Pulmonary

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Speaker 1: edema was the cause of death in many cases. People

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Speaker 1: also died from choking. There is no antidote for methyl isocyanate,

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Speaker 1: but sodium thiosulfate was given to people and the mistaken

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Speaker 1: belief that hydrogen cyanide was poisoning people. The exact number

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Speaker 1: of deaths in the immediate aftermath of the disaster is

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Speaker 1: hard to put down, but it was likely somewhere between

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Speaker 1: twenty hundred and eight thousand deaths and an estimate of

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Speaker 1: fifteen thousand people died over the years. Many people developed

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Speaker 1: permanent disabilities and chronic respiratory conditions. Short term and long

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Speaker 1: term effects of exposure included anorexia, impaired memory and reasoning,

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Speaker 1: increased chromosomal abnormalities, decreased lung function, and increased pregnancy loss

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Speaker 1: and infant mortality. Hundreds of thousands of people were injured

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Speaker 1: by exposure to methyl isocyanate. Investigations after the disaster also

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Speaker 1: found that staff at the plant had been cut, tank

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Speaker 1: alarms were not functioning, and operators had limited knowledge of

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Speaker 1: equipment and the plant and tank six ten, the one

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Speaker 1: that leaked, held forty two tons of methyl isocyanate, which

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Speaker 1: was above the recommended capacity. Union Carbide agreed to a

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Speaker 1: settlement of four hundred and seventy million dollars, but little

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Speaker 1: money was given to the victims of the disaster. Union

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Speaker 1: Carbide maintained that the disaster was the result of an

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Speaker 1: act of sabotage. The company shut down operations at the

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Speaker 1: plant after the disaster, but chemicals that were dumped at

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Speaker 1: the plant have leaked into and contaminated local water supplies.

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Speaker 1: The water is still affected by contamination. Today, I'm each Jeffcote,

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Speaker 1: and hopefully you know a little more about history today

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Speaker 1: than you did yesterday. If you have any insight on

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Speaker 1: an accident or a pronunciation spoken in the show today,

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Speaker 1: feel free to send us a kind note on social

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Speaker 1: media at T D I h C Podcast. Our email

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Speaker 1: address is this day at I heart media dot com.

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Speaker 1: Thanks for listening, and I hope you'll be back tomorrow.

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Speaker 1: Hello and Welcome to this Day in History Class, a

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Speaker 1: show that lives in the past, the present, and the future,

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Speaker 1: though mostly in the past. I'm Gabe Louzier, and today

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Speaker 1: we're talking about one of the first international book tours

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Speaker 1: in history, the time when Charles Dickens brought one of

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Speaker 1: his most popular stories to one of his least favorite countries.

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Speaker 1: The day was December two, eighteen sixty seven. British author

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Speaker 1: Charles Dickens began his first American reading tour at Tremont

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Speaker 1: Temple in Boston, Massachusetts. Several hundred people attended the sold

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Speaker 1: out show, and many more would have gladly paid the

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Speaker 1: two dollar admission had there been more seats to go around.

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Speaker 1: One especially disappointed fan was fellow author Henry James, who

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Speaker 1: noted glumly that it had been in quote impossible to

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Speaker 1: get tickets. Two other writers had better luck than James,

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Speaker 1: as both Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow managed

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Speaker 1: to score seats at the show. Most of dickens performances

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Speaker 1: lasted about two hours. He would open with a ninety

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Speaker 1: minute reading, pause for a brief intermission, and then wrap

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Speaker 1: up with a second, shorter reading for his first show

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Speaker 1: in Boston, Dickens closed with a selection from his novel

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Speaker 1: The Pickwick Papers, but the main event was a reading

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Speaker 1: of a Christmas Carol. The famous story had been published

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Speaker 1: in England twenty four years earlier and was an immediate

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Speaker 1: hit with Victorian readers. However, the book had failed to

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Speaker 1: find an audience in the United States, partly because Dickens

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Speaker 1: had criticized the country during his first visit in eighteen

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Speaker 1: forty two. He was appalled by slavery and found Americans

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Speaker 1: to be selfish and ill mannered. On his return to Europe,

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Speaker 1: he published a scathing travelogue and then followed it up

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Speaker 1: with a brutal satire of the country in his next novel.

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Speaker 1: This ensured that most Americans liked Dickens about as much

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Speaker 1: as he liked them. The one exception to the author's

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Speaker 1: distaste for the US was Boston. After spending a month

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Speaker 1: in the city during his first visit, Dickens declared that quote,

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Speaker 1: Boston is what I'd like the whole United States to be.

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Speaker 1: It's no surprise then, that he chose the city as

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Speaker 1: the first stop of his US tour in eighteen sixty seven.

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Speaker 1: Luckily for him, the twenty five years since his last

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Speaker 1: visit had cooled the anger of American readers, and he

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Speaker 1: was met by an enthusiastic crowd at every public appearance.

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Speaker 1: Dickens began performing public readings in Great Britain in eighteen

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Speaker 1: fifty three. For the first five years the readings were

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Speaker 1: done strictly to raise money for charity, but they proved

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Speaker 1: so popular that the author started doing them for profit

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Speaker 1: in eighteen fifty eight. It's worth noting that reading tours

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Speaker 1: were unusual for the time, With Dickens being the first

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Speaker 1: major author to perform his own works in public, his

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Speaker 1: publishers were eager to repeat the success of the European

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Speaker 1: readings in the United States. It took a bit of convincing,

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Speaker 1: but in the end they persuaded Dickens to return to

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Speaker 1: America for a four month reading tour. It likely helped

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Speaker 1: that the author earned more from these performances than from

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Speaker 1: his actual writing. Another reason Dickens agreed to the tour

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Speaker 1: was that he just enjoyed performing, and make no mistake,

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Speaker 1: these were definitely dramatic performances. He didn't just stand on

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Speaker 1: stage and read aloud from a book. Instead, the readings

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Speaker 1: were like one man shows, where the author would do

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Speaker 1: different voices, gestures, and physical expressions to bring the various

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Speaker 1: characters to life. He even rewrote certain passages from his

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Speaker 1: books to make them better suited for live performance. He

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Speaker 1: wasn't on an empty stage either. Dickens used the same

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Speaker 1: props as he did in England, a big maroon backdrop,

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Speaker 1: a series of gas lamps, and a custom built waist

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Speaker 1: high desk that had a block for Dickens to rest

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Speaker 1: his elbow on and a rail near the bottom for

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Speaker 1: him to rest his foot. He also held whichever book

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Speaker 1: he was reading from, but that was really more of

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Speaker 1: a prop. Dickens had prepared so extensively for the tour

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Speaker 1: that he knew most of the material by heart. He

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Speaker 1: reportedly prepped for shows by practicing in front of a

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Speaker 1: mirror for several hours. Despite all this planning, the shows

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Speaker 1: weren't static. The more Dickens performed a certain piece, the

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Speaker 1: more he would ting here with it by adding, subtracting,

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Speaker 1: or reordering the material. A Christmas Carol is a great

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Speaker 1: example of this refining process, as it was one of

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Speaker 1: his most frequent and most popular readings. It takes about

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Speaker 1: three hours to read the whole story as written, but

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Speaker 1: by the time Dickens returned to Boston he had cut

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Speaker 1: that time in half. The copy he used for his

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Speaker 1: performances shows the extensive edits he made to bring the

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Speaker 1: piece down to ninety minutes. Telling Lee, the changes emphasized

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Speaker 1: dialogue and characters while drastically reducing the role of the narrator.

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Speaker 1: Among the deletions are all thirty seven times when the

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Speaker 1: narrator refers to himself as I, me or my, as

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Speaker 1: well as the eighteen instances when the narrator directly addresses

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Speaker 1: the reader as you. These deliberate changes suggest that Dickens

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Speaker 1: wanted to minimize his own voice so that the audience

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Speaker 1: instead could be caught up in the story itself. The

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Speaker 1: tactic seemed to work well too. After the first public

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Speaker 1: reading of a Christmas Carol at the Tremont Temple in Boston,

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Speaker 1: Dickens agent knew they had made the right call in

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Speaker 1: returning to America. He described the audience reaction writing quote,

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Speaker 1: When at last the reading of the carol was finished

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Speaker 1: and the final words had been delivered, a dead silence

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Speaker 1: seemed to prevail, a sort of public sigh, as it

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Speaker 1: were only to be broken by cheers and calls the

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Speaker 1: most enthusiastic and uproarious. But dickens thoughtful performance wasn't the

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Speaker 1: only reason the crowd was so receptive. The message of

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Speaker 1: the story seemed to strike a chord as well. In fact,

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Speaker 1: many scholars believe Charles Dickens had a lasting influence on

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Speaker 1: Christmas traditions in New England. By the eighteen sixties, most

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Speaker 1: of the country had gotten on the same page about

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Speaker 1: how to celebrate Christmas, but in Massachusetts there were still

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Speaker 1: some holdouts. The Puritan population distrusted the holiday, viewing it

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Speaker 1: as just an excuse for their less pious neighbors to

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Speaker 1: get drunk and party. That view had begun to change

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Speaker 1: in New England by the eighteen sixties, thanks largely to

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Speaker 1: an influx of Irish Catholic immigrants who had no such

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Speaker 1: qualms with the holiday. That said, when Dickens arrived in

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Speaker 1: eighteen sixty seven, children in Boston still had to go

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Speaker 1: to school on Christmas Day, and neither Massachusetts nor New

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Speaker 1: Hampshire recognized Christmas as a public holiday. It's believed that

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Speaker 1: dickens readings of a Christmas Carol provided the last push

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Speaker 1: Boston needed to fully get into the Christmas spirit. Residents

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Speaker 1: warmed to the holiday thanks to the books cozy descriptions

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Speaker 1: of roaring fires and caroling children, But the real game

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Speaker 1: changer was the idea that Christmas wasn't just a day

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Speaker 1: of revelry, but an opportunity for charity and goodwill. This

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Speaker 1: shift in thinking led some New Englanders to reassess their

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Speaker 1: position on the holiday, lest they be viewed as scrooge

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Speaker 1: like themselves. Case in point, a Boston businessman was so

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Speaker 1: moved by dickens reading of a Christmas carol that he

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Speaker 1: closed his factory on Christmas Day and sent a turkey

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Speaker 1: to every one of his workers. As for the author,

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Speaker 1: he enjoyed America a lot more of the second time around,

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Speaker 1: especially since the tour brought in a hundred and forty

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Speaker 1: thousand dollars in profits or nearly two million dollars today. Unfortunately,

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Speaker 1: Dickens was in poor health throughout the tour, suffering from

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Speaker 1: flu like symptoms, insomnia, and inflammation of the foot. On

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Speaker 1: a eighth, eighteen sixty eight, he circled back to Boston

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Speaker 1: and gave the final performance of the tour. He closed

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Speaker 1: by telling the audience quote in this brief life of ours.

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Speaker 1: It is sad to do almost anything for the last time,

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Speaker 1: ladies and gentlemen, I beg most earnestly, most gratefully, and

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Speaker 1: most affectionately to bid you each and all farewell. Two

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Speaker 1: years later, Charles Dickens died at the age of fifty eight.

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Speaker 1: Many of his works are now considered classics of English literature.

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Speaker 1: His most enduring stories have been adapted countless times for

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Speaker 1: all sorts of mediums, but none more so than a

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Speaker 1: Christmas Carol, the story that Dickens himself adapted for a

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Speaker 1: listening audience all those years ago. I'm Gay Blusier and

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Speaker 1: hopefully you now know a little more about history today

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Speaker 1: than you did yesterday. If you'd like to keep up

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Speaker 1: with the show, you can follow us on Twitter, Facebook,

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Speaker 1: and Instagram at t d I HC Show. You can

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Speaker 1: also leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, and you

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Speaker 1: can write to us at this Day at I heeart

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Speaker 1: media dot com. Thanks to Chandler Mays for producing the show,

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Speaker 1: and thank you for listening. I'll see you back here

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Speaker 1: again tomorrow for another day in History class. For more

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Speaker 1: podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app

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Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts or where ever you listen to your favorite shows,