Historically High

Without a doubt the closest the planet has come to nuclear war occurred between October 16th-28th 1962. The Cold War was at its peak. Brought there by the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion about 18 months earlier by "Cuban Exiles", with pretty obvious support from the United States. With nuclear missiles stationed in Turkey and Italy the U.S. had a huge advantage over the Soviet Union if it ever came to the first strike in an a...

We're gonna go ahead and apologize in advance for any stumbles through this one. Sir Isaac Newton possessed a kind of brilliance that is very hard for the majority of people to really wrapped their heads around, and that includes us. Known as the Father of Modern Physics he didn't just help shape our understanding of the science of the natural world (not nature but the laws that govern nature, gravity, optics, movement, e...

The scariest part of the Dust Bowl is the very small amount we talk about it historically. The need for wheat during WW1 caused the wheat market to double. There was a lot of new agricultural land in the Southern Great Plains. Once the war was over, the government tried to prop up grain prices as best they could. In order to continue making the money they once did, farmers in the Southern Great Plains doubled down purchasing more l...

The Stanford Prison Experiment produced groundbreaking results. The main result was proving the need to create Institutional Review Boards for human experiments. Dr. Philip Zimbardo wanted to test the effect of power and powerlessness in a prison setting. He used a bunch of college age boys to play the part of guards and prisoners. Usually a Doctor oversees their experiment. Not only did Zimbardo oversee his experiment, he made him...

We're heading back to WW2 for the most pivotal battle of the European Theater. Some of you are already scoffing at that statement but let me lay it out like this. After Germany steamrolled mainland Europe, Great Britain was all that was left. Russia and Germany weren't at war yet. The United States was still over two years away from being at war. It was the British holding the line against total Nazi domination of Europe....

It's Part 2....so if you haven't already go back and listen to part 1 first. Think you can just raw dog it without having any of Ireland's backstory, think again. We pick back up at a major event in Irish history, The Blight, or as most of us know it The Great Irish Potato Famine. Ireland is hurting and the people in charge, currently the English, aren't doing a whole lot to help. This combined with a whole list...

Ireland. A country with a history almost as rich as the country is beautiful. A country that despite its proximity to mainland Europe seemed to avoid little things like invasion by the Roman Empire. Tracing its first people's back 10,000 years ago,  they began building stone monuments and elaborate burial tombs around 6500, and around 2500 years ago the Celts began to arrive. The Celtic tribes divided the island into different...

Apollo 13 was slated to be NASA's third manned spaceflight to land on the moon. Apollo 11 won us the space race and Apollo 12 proved it wasn't just a fluke that we put a man on the lunar surface. Apollo 13 was going to up the ante by putting men on a different part of the moon to explore. Now all of these missions took place within a period of 12 months so by Apollo 13 the public had lost interest. NASA had made it too ea...

Prof Chris here. I'm gonna shoot everyone straight, I got carried away with this one, I couldn't see it while it was happening, and I had the blinders on, sooo what you get now is 3 hours and 45 plus minutes of comprehensive and probably mostly entertaining discussion on the history of the Wizarding World introduced in the Harry Potter books/movie. I've got my nerd on full display here but Prof Adam enabled it so he&...

Henry Hudson. We don't know too much about his life prior to becoming a captain for the Muscovy Company of England. In his life he would tale 4 voyages looking to reach the east coast of Asia. 3 of those 4 voyages would start out going east only to run into ice. 2 of those voyages would discover some very cool things in the western world that would take his name (Hudson River, Hudson River Valley, Hudson Strait, Hudson Bay). I...

No there are no typos in the title, that's how "Labours" is spelled in this instance and the Greek pronunciation is HERA-CLES, cause the dude was named after Hera, who was actually not his mother, far from it. Daddy Zeus did was Zeus gon' do and sexed up a mortal woman disguised as her husband, she got pregnant, Hera got pissed and Heracles was born into the Greek World with a target already on his back. Now we ...

The history of the Yakuza is one clouded in a little mystery. You have the story the Yakuza promotes, that they were the collection of peoples who banded together to defend the helpless from the terrors of the Shogun and his Samurai. Then there's the more likely version, they were a group of merchants, hustlers, thieves, and racketeers who adopted a code of honor and started to branch out into more lucrative ventures, both leg...

I mean come on, it's Julius Caesar, you've waited long enough so I'm keeping this short. The man has a salad dressing, a hotel/casino, and an orange smoothie franchise named in his honor..... BUT in addition to that he was captured by pirates, was co-president of Rome for a year, added all of Gallic France and Spain to the Roman Empire, led the first Roman Army across the Rhine River in Germany, led the first Roman A...

After the console death of SEGA, there would be a new contender stepping into the console game. Microsoft decided Sony was getting a little too comfy in the whole home entertainment market. They already had the personal computer cornered for the most part and due to integrated computer components in video game consoles, a transition into that market seems like a sure thing. Also when you have a seemingly endless supply of money you...

Each theater of war during World War 2 offered something unique and dangerous, Europe it was the winters, the Pacific had tropical diseases, but North Africa, it was a whole different ballgame. A desert stretching more than 2,000 miles from Morocco to Egypt with a lotta wide open spaces between. When Hitler invaded France on May 10, 1940, Mussolini waited with bated breath for the right moment to announce he was taking his talents ...

For 48 years, from 1924 to 1972, J. Edgar Hoover served, as first the head of the Bureau of Investigation and then the head of its successor, the FBI. For almost 50 years one man was in control of the nations domestic intelligence gathering and surveillance apparatus. 50 years is a long time to get up to some real shady shit and get up to it J. Edgar did. The nation's "top cop" used his department to gather dirt on e...

This week Professor Adam is bringing out a true crime hall of fame story. The death of Brian Wells/the Pizza Bomber/the Collar Bomber, is one of the most puzzling crimes ever committed. It has everything a true crime story could ever want. A serial killer, a bank robbery, a scavenger hunt, a creepy love story, a conspiracy, and a healthy dose of mental illness. Brian Wells delivered a pizza to a TV tower building on Peach Street in...

The year was 1985, Freddy Mercury was bringing down the house at Wembley, Rocky Balboa won the Cold War by defeating Ivan Drago, and the Nintendo Entertainment System was release in the United States. It took the country by storm on the overall clad back of an Italian plumber named Mario. Nintendo ruled the home video game market until 1989 when a new player joined the game. The Sega Genesis' step onto the scene wasn't a ...

During the 4 1/2 months it was fought, the Battle of the Somme took the crown as the deadliest battle of World War 1. This battle had it all, trench warfare, so many artillery pieces it created mountains of spent casings, fighter aircraft, and the introduction of the tank to the world as a weapon. The battle was the meeting of old world tactics and new world technology, never a good thing. The first day of the battle was the stuff ...