Happy Black History Month! We're kicking off the month with a story that was suggested by Janice on Instagram. Nowadays, when you call for emergency services, you expect the speedy arrival of an ambulance staffed by personnel who have the skills to save your life en route if necessary. But, believe it or not, that's actually a new concept. Before the 1960s, your call would have been answered (quite slowly) by a police paddy wagon or even a hearse and there would be virtually no pre-hospital care other than basic first aid. It took until 1967 for folks in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to realize that there had to be better way and the Freedom House Ambulance Service was born. If you've never heard of it, there's a reason for that. The Freedom House Ambulance Service was staffed by all Black paramedics, taken off the streets of Pittsburgh's impoverished Hill District. They were trained up and put to work and they absolutely killed it, revolutionizing emergency medical services country-wide. But history has a way of erasing these types of stories. So, let's fix that! 

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Sources: 

• EMS1 "How Pittsburgh's 'Freedom House' Shaped Modern EMS Systems"
• University of Pittsburgh "Freedom House Ambulance Service of Pittsburgh - Making Medical History"
• University of California San Francisco "America's First Paramedics Were Black. Their Achievements Were Overlooked for Decades
• Wikipedia "Freedom House Ambulance Service"

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Here it is! My first ever live History Fix episode! This live show was recorded at College of the Albemarle in Manteo, North Carolina on January 28th. Thank you from the bottom of my heart to each person who braved freezing temperatures to see this show live. For all the rest, here is the recording. I do recommend watching the video version of this one as there are lots of great visuals to go along with it. That can be found on either YouTube or Patreon. Without further ado, I present to you the history of writing (which is really the history of history when you think about it!) 

Click here to support Dare County Libraries! 

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Sources: 

• The Written World by Martin Puchner
• The Alphabet Versus the Goddess by Leonard Shlain
• Scottish Book Trust "International Women's Day: the Fight to Read and Write"
• International Encyclopedia of Social and Behavioral Sciences "The Evolution of Writing" by James Wright
• British Museum "Who was Ashurbanipal?"
• Harvard Magazine "Murasaki Shikibu"

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This week I'm uncovering a lost city that was left out of my lost cities two parter (episodes 131 and 132). Nineveh, the capital of the ancient Assyrian Empire, is mentioned in the Bible no less than 19 times. But, for millennia we weren't sure if it was a fictional setting or a real place. All of that changed in the 1840s when British explorer Austen Henry Layard discovered the ruins of a vast metropolis on the banks of the Tigris River that could only be Nineveh. Within those ruins he found a palace and within that palace a library, the Library of Ashurbanipal. The information held within Ashurbanipal's library told us everything we never knew about the Assyrian Empire, once the largest empire in the world. So, what did those clay tablets say? Join me to find out! 

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Sources: 

• British Museum "Sparking the imagination: the rediscovery of Assyria's great lost city"
• British Museum "Historical city travel guide: Nineveh, 7th century BC"
• British Museum "A library fit for a king"
• British Museum "Who was Ashurbanipal?"
• Got Questions "What is the significance of the city of Nineveh in the Bible?"

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In honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day this Monday, January 19th, I'm delving into the story behind this remarkable man. How does a Black man born in Atlanta, Georgia in 1929, a man whose grandparents were sharecroppers in a post slavery American South, a man subjected to Jim Crow laws that intentionally sought to hold him down, rise to such great heights as to become the only single American with his own dedicated national holiday? Let's fix that. 

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• Join the Patreon (patreon.com/historyfixpodcast)
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• Buy Me a Coffee
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Sources: 

• NPR "I Have a Dream Speech"
• History.com "Martin Luther King Jr. "
• NAACP "Martin Luther King Jr."
• History.com "Jim Crow Laws"
• The King Center "About Dr. Martin Luther King Jr."
• Forbes "How Martin Luther King Jr. Improvised 'I Have a Dream'"
• Wikipedia "Martin Luther King Jr."

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In this episode I finally explore a topic I've wondered about for a long time: circumcision. How did an ancient punishment for prisoners turned religious ritual become a medical procedure carried out by over 80% of Americans? What triggered doctors to start recommending circumcision for all newborn boys starting in the late 1800s and why doesn't the rest of the world do it too? What about the ethical implications of performing a body altering procedure on someone without their consent? Is there really a good reason to do it? Or does a 5.4 billion dollar a year industry come into play? Let's fix that. 

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• Join the Patreon (patreon.com/historyfixpodcast)
• Buy some merch
• Buy Me a Coffee
• Venmo @Shea-LaFountaine

Sources:

• UNAIDS "Male Circumcision: context, criteria, and culture"
• Journal of Pediatric Surgery "The evolutionary saga of circumcision from a religious perspective"
• Advanced Urological Care "Circumcision Revisited: An Historical Perspective"
• National Library of Medicine "Male genital representation in paleolithic art: erection and circumcision before history"
• Research Gate "High Cost of Circumcision"
• Wikipedia "Circumcision"
• Wikipedia "Prevalence of Circumcision"
• Johns Hopkins Medicine "Johns Hopkins Study: Newborn Male Circumcision Rates In US Dropped Between 2012 and 2022"

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Consider this the third and final installment of my war with Japan triptych. In this episode, we'll discuss the top secret "Manhattan Project" led by physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer that led to the development of the first atomic bomb. We'll uncover the motives behind creating such a dangerous weapon and for using it on two cities in Japan, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, leading to civilian casualties of up to 300,000 people. We'll also consider the question, what now? What does this mean for us today and for future generations going forward? 

Support the show! 

• Join the Patreon (patreon.com/historyfixpodcast)
• Buy some merch
• Buy Me a Coffee
• Venmo @Shea-LaFountaine

Sources: 

• “Duck and Cover” video
• National WWII Museum “‘Destroyer of Worlds:’ The Making of an Atomic Bomb”
• National Archives “The Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki”
• History.com “Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki”
• History Extra “Before the atomic bombs…”

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I had planned to take this week and next off but I can't leave y'all hanging without your fix on Christmas! This week I'm bringing you a special mini fix episode about the Christmas Truce of 1914. This remarkable ceasefire that happened spontaneously all along the Western Front during the first winter of World War I has shocked and inspired the masses ever since. But despite tons of eyewitness accounts and tangible evidence like letters, autographs, and photos, there are many who refuse to believe that the Christmas Truce ever happened. So, what do you think? Is this actual history or merely a myth? 

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• Join the Patreon (patreon.com/historyfixpodcast)
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Sources: 

• Imperial War Museums video "How Did the Christmas Truce Happen?"
• Imperial War Museums "The Real Story of the Christmas Truce" 
• History.com "The Christmas Truce"
• Institute for Economics and Peace "The Christmas Truce"
• "Western Front Companion" by Mark Adkin
• Forces War Records by Ancestry "The True Story of the 'Christmas Truce'"

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After talking about the Pearl Harbor attack last week and how it prompted US involvement in World War II, I realized I glorified the aftermath pretty hard. Yes, Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor did directly lead to the US declaring war on both Japan and Germany. Yes, US involvement in World War II undeniably helped bring that war to a close. However, the US reacted in other ways at home that weren't quite as glorious. This week I'm talking about the ugly side of the Pearl Harbor aftermath, when the US government forced some 120,000 Japanese Americans, two thirds of them US citizens, into "relocation centers" or "internment camps" that could just as easily be called concentration camps. Mistakes were made, lessons were learned... lessons we can't afford to forget, especially now. 

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• Join the Patreon (patreon.com/historyfixpodcast)
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Sources: 

• densho.org
• National Archives "Japanese-American Incarceration During World War II"
• Densho Encyclopedia "Picture Brides"
• Densho Encyclopedia "Executive Order 9066"
• National World War II Museum "Japanese American Incarceration"
• Wikipedia "Internment of Japanese Americans"

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I feel pretty well versed when it comes to World War II. I understand fairly well what was happening in Europe at least with Germany and whatnot. I know that the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 (84 years ago today) was the event that drew the United States into the war. But Pearl Harbor wasn't bombed by Germany. It was bombed by Japan. Wait, what? Japan? What does Japan have to do with Nazi Germany and World War II? This week I sit down with Quin Cho, an expert on the Pacific Theater during World War II, to talk about what was happening in Asia leading up to that fateful attack on Pearl Harbor. He'll fill us in on the rising action, like the Mukden Incident and the Second Sino-Japanese War, that led to the collision of two different war theaters into one big, bad world war. 

Quin's books: 

• "Rise of the Kwantung Army: Japan's Empire in Manchuria to 1932"
• "Competing Empires in Burma: A Chronicle of the China-Burma-India Theater of Operations in World War 2"

Support the show! 

• Join the Patreon (patreon.com/historyfixpodcast)
• Buy some merch
• Buy Me a Coffee
• Venmo @Shea-LaFountaine

Sources:

• The National WWII Museum "Pearl Harbor Attack, December 7, 1941"
• Office of the Historian "The Mukden Incident of 1931 and the Stimson Doctrine"
• Office of the Historian "The Chinese Revolution of 1911"
• History.com "Pearl Harbor"
• Wikipedia "Zhang Zoulin"
• Wikipedia "Mukden Incident"

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