What Tales From History Would You Like To See?

[Cosmic Muffin]

I'm catching a bunch of re-runs, and I heard Eric Falconer narrating the Nellie Bly episode before I saw who it was, and he sounded like Alaska, the drag queen that I know form RuPaul's Drag Race. I would love to see some drag queens on this show as both re-enactors, and as narrators. Why not?

 

Have they re-enacted the Stonewall Riots?

Edited August 28, 2015 by Cosmic Muffin

[LiberryLady]

The Pulitzer divorce.  There was infidelity with men, women, and I kid you not, a trumpet. 

[possibilities]

Wow:

To top off the charges, it was said Roxanne had even slept with a three-foot-long trumpet, though it is doubtful that she can read music.

[LADreamr]

I bet it made her sing, though. :)

[ChaseMCP]

It may be more on the modern side of history, but I was thinking how if there's a Massachusetts episode they could do a bit about Jaws. From the behind the scenes disasters, to it becoming the first blockbuster/the movie that began Steven Spielburg's career, to its impact on shark hunting/shark studies, there's a lot that someone could work with. 

[CloverTracey]

The PIG WAR in Washington State's San Juan Islands. Salk's discovery of the polio vaccine. The Alamo.

[Totale]

They did the Alamo, in the first season I think.  Go look it up, it was great.

[possibilities]

This isn't American history, but I'd like to see them tell the story of Marie Curie. Maybe they could do an episode on "Science" the way they've done "Sports" and "Music" so they could squeeze in some folks from elsewhere. They could also talk about Watson and Crick. And Louis Pasteur.

 

I would love to see them talk about the fight to get doctors to wash their hands before delivering babies, and how hard it was to convince them to do it. Midwives did it and had fewer complications (deaths). But doctors didn't want to. Once they finally made the change, doctors started having better outcomes, too. Soap! It's your friend!

[cynicat]

They could also talk about Watson and Crick

 

I'd love it if they covered that, but from Rosalind Franklin's viewpoint.

[Mindymoo]

After last week's episode with the founder of the Boy Scouts and the wolves, I realized that I would really like to see them do Wojtek, the soldier bear. After being released from the gulags to help the Russians fight the Nazis, these Polish soldiers said "fuck you" and started making their way back home. In Iran, they bought a Syrian black bear cub and named him Wojtek. He became their mascot, and then a full member of the Polish military. He got double the rations as "payment", drank beer and ate cigarettes, and loved to wrestle with his human buddies. He even took out an Italian spy! He carried artillery shells back and forth, never dropping a single shell. After the war, he retired to a zoo in Scotland, and would perk up whenever he heard people speaking Polish. His veteran buddies would come visit him and jump in his enclosure for a wrestle and cuddle. He died in the 1960s.

[Guest]

How about dueling cities because once a city has an episode, all the others are locked out

 

Salem

Massachusetts - Witch trials

New Jersey - that time they sued tomatoes

Oregon - that time a State representative who owned silver mines and threw a 40 day drunken party for all the other representatives to keep the State Gov't from electing a US Senator who planned to support changing currency standard from silver to gold

[sacrebleu]

McCarthyism would be good.

 

I'd also like to see something on Orson Welles' War of the Worlds broadcast and panic.

[Mindymoo]

So I'm taking an Entertainment in American Life class, and there have been a lot of stories in there that I think would make really fascinating Drunk History segments.

*P.T. Barnum, the educated goat, the woman who called the goat a fraud and ate its feces, and how he reemerged with Joice Heth, the supposed 161-year-old woman who allegedly was a nursemaid to baby George Washington.

*The Astor Place Riot. Two rival actors, one British and one American, kind of ended up setting off a huge riot that was one part entertainment, three parts class warfare, that ended up with over two dozen people dead.

*Sam Patch, the first real celebrity, who jumped waterfalls. He ended up getting killed doing this, unsurprisingly.

*The creation of the Penny Press.

Edited January 31, 2016 by Mindy McIndy

[ganesh]

P.T. Barnum, the educated goat, the woman who called the goat a fraud and ate its feces, and how he reemerged with Joice Heth, the supposed 161-year-old woman who allegedly was a nursemaid to baby George Washington.

 

This is the most ridiculous collection of words I have ever seen, and this scene needs to be produced immediately.

[Joimiaroxeu]

William Henry Ellis, a former slave who was the first African-American on Wall Street--at least in its form we know today.

[ganesh]

Maybe too obscure, but the first time nuclear power was used to produce electricity. This was on the tail of WWII and the start of the cold war. They lit up like half a block in a town in the middle of the night for an hour, and then stood up at the UN and said the USA was the first to power an "entire city with nuclear power." The nuclear scientists were some characters though. 

[cynicat]

I would love to seem them do an episode about Agent "Garbo" (Juan Garcia) from WWII.  I only just learned about his escapades because he's the grandfather of someone I recently met.  This is the guy from Spain who faked out Hitler.  Such an amazing and unbelievable story!!

[possibilities]

I net they could do an entire season of episodes about Supreme Court Justices-- there have been some real characters in that job.

Have they done one on Eli Whitney and the cotton gin?

[jonesingjay]

The story of the Beatles. It's been done to death. But, I'd love to hear it told by drunk people. 

[possibilities]

The story of this year's presidential election requires a person to be drunk to tell it.