S.2 Ep. 6: Nathan Bedford Forrest

From humble beginnings comes who would become one of possibly THE WORST people I’ve covered on this show. Nathan Bedford Forrest grew up pretty poor but as a young man got into a very lucrative business, slave trading. He made a ton of money selling human beings like used cars, including, allegedly the daughter of a very well known person. Unfortunately, he made enough money to be able to field his own units during the Civil War for, shockingly, the Confederacy. He was an incredible general for the losing side, he fought hard, led his men and rarely ordered them to do anything he wasn’t willing to do. He did however partake in some of the biggest battles in the south, along with a potential war crime. Just when you think this guy can’t get worse, he does exactly that… 

S.2 Ep.5 - Bay of Pigs and Operation Northwoods

Ah, the 1960’s. Peace. Love. Threats of nuclear war. What a time to be alive, and of course the ever creeping threat of Communism. This week we are talking a little about the Cuban Revolution where Castro took over, then we’re going to talk about how this was almost IMMEDIATELY a problem for Washington. And when Washington DC has a problem like this the most common solution is to… Remove the cause… After months of planning and practice they sent men into the Bay of Pigs to have it go wrong from the get go. Then there’s the whole Cuban Missile thing, and a President getting shot after he decided against something called Operation Northwoods. That was a series of plans that the US GOVERNMENT put ON PAPER about how to commit FALSE FLAG ATTACKS to get into a war with Cuba. But hey, none of that is true. None of that would ever happen. Right? Keep that Reynolds Wrap handy, we're going down a rabbithole...  

Christmas Bonus : The Christmas Truce of 1914

War is hell. Trench warfare is a special kind of hell. What’s special is finding out that the men across the stretch that nobody crosses have more in common with you than the leaders sending you to your death is something special. Every once in a while, in the most inhuman times, soldiers find common ground. 

Today we're all brothers

Tonight we're all friends

A moment of peace in a war that never ends

Today we're all brothers

We drink and unite

Now Christmas has arrived and the snow turns the ground white

Hear carols from the trenches

We sing O Holy Night

Our guns laid to rest among snowflakes

A Christmas in the trenches

A Christmas on the front far from home.

S.2 Ep. 4 - Samuel Whittemore

This time we jump back into the American Revolution to visit a soldier turned Statesmen. He started off as the son of a farmer and became a British soldier and then officer during the Austrian War of Succession and then the French and Indian War. After his warfighting was done, Samuel Whittemore became a low level politician in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts at a pivotal time in the Colonies. He would pen many letters to other towns in the area and help launch the War of Independence. We never learned about this guy but, holy crap is his story wild. Especially the end of it!

S.2 Ep. 3 - Operation Wraith of God

Following the events of the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, the Israelis took the fight to anyone they considered an enemy of the state. Members of Black September, the PLO and other assorted terrorist groups would meet some pretty gruesome fates at the hands of Mossad, the Israeli government's most dangerous tool. 

S. 2 Ep.2 : The Munich Olympics

The 1972 Summer Olympics are being held in Germany for the first time since 1936. There a guy in charge at the time that gave Germany a not so great reputation so, the German government wanted to do everything they could to make this experience feel less… militant than it was in 1936. Unfortunately that meant incredibly lax security measures which was bad news for the Israeli athletes that took part in the games. Months of planning on the part of a group called Black September, an offshoot of the PLO would culminate in a tragic hostage situation. Then check out the next episode where I go into the Israeli response to the hostage situation…

We are starting Season 2 with a bang. Have you ever gone outside at night and looked up at the vast starfield above you and thought, “Man, I bet so many people have died in space…” Well… Not a ton but more than a handful have met their maker after slipping the bonds of our atmosphere, attempting to go where no man has gone before. The Final Frontier. Anyways, here's a bunch of stories about space commies that died due to unreliable equipment and some American astronauts that either barely or didn’t at all make it off the ground. 

Join me from the comfort of my couch (and yours) for a little teaser of things to come in Season 2.

History Goon Ep. 30 - Dallas Stoudenmire

We are closing out Season 1 with some Cowboy stuff! And with a name like Dallas Stoudenmire you bet your boots he is gonna do some cowboy lawman stuff. Drunk fist fights. Drunk gunfights. Chasing bad guys… Drunk of course. He was one of the better lawmen that the city of El Paso had seen at the time and he didn’t take s**t from anyone. That is until the Manning Brothers (not those ones) show up and start causing trouble that he would fight for the rest of his life.  

This week we are talking about one of the most notorious and violent broad-daylight robberies in the history of the United States, The North Hollywood Shootout. 2 scumbags with a taste for automatic rifles and trying to cosplay Heat (which I got to watch for research purposes) started off robbing armored cars full of cash but would eventually step up to banks. What happens when 2 guys in homemade body armor and AKs walk into a bank at the EXACT SAME TIME that a police patrol drives by? Well, you get the most violent 44 minutes that North Hollywood, California has ever seen.