Don't Look Now

Were you aware that the Nutcracker Ballet was not much of a hit when first performed in 1892 in St. Petersburg, Russia?  While the music was well received, the ballet itself was not an instant fan favorite.  It didn't grow to high popularity until the 1940s when it began to take off in the United States.  Over the years it has become a quintessential part of the Christmas season in America.  Come take a listen and see how and why it took off.

On June 18th, 1875 a warehouse full of thousands of casks of whiskey caught fire in the Liberties area of Dublin causing a river of flaming whiskey to pour down the streets, often up to six inches deep.  While the fire did a great deal of damage, it most regrettably caused the deaths of 13 people.  However, none died from the effects of the fire itself.  They instead died of acute alcohol poisoning from drinking too much from the flood of whiskey they found.

Today's podcast is about a divorce case in New York that took place 100 years ago. Kip Rhinelander, the heir to a prominent New York Family, secretly married Alice Jones, a working class girl.  While this would normally draw the ire of his family the situation became national news when rumors began to spread that the new bride was "colored" and not "white".  This kicked off a media firestorm that led to a trial with the Rhinelander family attempting to annul the marriage on the grounds of Alice having fraudulently misrepresented herself as "white" to Kip.  The trail came at the height of the eugenics movement and the creation of anti-miscegenation laws like Virginia's Racial Integrity Act that prevented interracial marriages, making the trial national news across the country. 

This week we discuss the holiday season's most famous bright spot: Christmas Lights.  Decorating trees, houses, shopping malls, and making up vast displays; Christmas lights are a staple of the holiday season.  When did electric lights on objects become a thing?  Take a listen and learn about the origin of the light and when they became a mainstay of the US holiday season.
 

This week's podcast in on Cesare Lombroso, an Italian anthropologist and criminologist that had the unfortunate assertation that criminality was inherited and could be directly identified through physical traits.  While we now know that some congenital abnormalities can affect brain function and lead to psychological issues, most of Lombroso's assertations have been proven wrong.  The most unfortunate aspect of Lombroso's ideas was the inherent racism at the root of many of the ideas of what made someone physically, and thus mentally primitive. This led to a lot of the ideas later being adopted by the fascists and their thoughts of racial supremacy.  While the ideas were incorrect and often hurtful, ironically a lot was learned over the years in proving them wrong.

While the Candyman movies involve a mysterious paranormal murderer that can be summoned thought the bathroom mirror stalking the projects of Chicago, they are based on a true story.  Today's podcast discusses the bizarre details surrounding the murder of Ruthie Mae McCoy who was killed in her apartment in the ABLA housing project of Chicago's Near-West Side. McCoy's killer/killers entered her apartment though her bathroom medicine cabinet, crawling through from the vacant apartment next door by taking advantage of a hole created to access piping between apartments. 

This week's episode tells the story of Elmer McCurdy, a not too successful bandit of the old west who was eventually killed in Oklahoma in 1911.  However, McCurdy's story didn't end then.  After being embalmed, no one wanted to pay for his burial, and he went on display at the funeral home.  Elmer's desiccated eventually toured the United States in various ways until it was forgotten that he was actually a real person and not a wax figure.  The truth of his identity wasn't discovered until the 1970's when he was discovered while filming a TV episode in an amusement park dark ride.  Take a listen and find out all about Elmer, who's like only got more interesting after he was dead.

We're back after a one week hiatus with stories of the bizarre area where the law and ghosts overlap.  We have two stories this week: the first where the testimony of a ghost is officially admitted as evidence in a trial, and the second where a house is declared legally haunted.  Take a listen and see just how ghosts and our legal system have intermingled.

Have you ever wondered where the tradition of the pumpkin patch came from?  Today, every Halloween season, we have active pumpkin patches on farms that have not just the obligatory pumpkins for sale, but giant slides, corn mazes, hay rack rides, and hundreds of other random activities to attract families to spend their time and money.  On today's podcast we look at the history of the pumpkin patch and how it changed from small patches grown by the native peoples of North America into the large industry it is today.

Today's episode is dedicated to the debate about who the childhood scare game "Blood Mary" takes its inspiration from.  Is it Queen Mary of England, a legendary witch, or a Balkan Countess.  Since we are talking about Bloody Marys it's only fitting we spend some time talking about the origin of the drink as well, which is also shrouded in mystery.