Stuff You Missed in History Class

In 1857 Nikola Tesla began work on direct current motor issues. In 1884, he approached Thomas Edison with ideas about alternating current, but Edison championed [Read more]

Most people know the story of President Lincoln’s assassination, but what happened afterward? In this podcast, we cover John Wilkes Booth’s escape, his co-conspirators’ attacks [Read more]

In 1971, a man calling himself Dan Cooper hijacked Northwest Orient Airlines flight 305. He received a ransom of $200,000 — and then jumped out [Read more]

Dogs have been used in war for a long time and are still used today. In this episode, Sarah and Deblina look at five war [Read more]

Ned Kelly’s cropped up in the news again, but who was he? The bushranger Ned Kelly became an outlaw in 1878, and his gang successfully [Read more]

Historical hoaxes are surprisingly common. For example, a N.Y. cigar maker once commissioned a gypsum skeleton to pass off as a 10-foot-tall petrified man called [Read more]

By the 1840s, London faced a sanitation crisis. One summer the stench of the Thames drove Parliament to soak their curtains in lime, an experience [Read more]

In Part 2 of this podcast, we examine the tactics rival paleontologists Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh used in their battle to achieve [Read more]

James Armistead was a slave in Virginia, but got his master’s approval to enlist when the Revolutionary War came. Armistead worked as a spy, and [Read more]

In the second part of this annual episode, we cover historical discoveries made in 2012, from evidence of vampire burials in Bulgaria to discoveries of [Read more]