Born into a well-off family, he was left fatherless at a young age after his father died from the horrific long-term effects of being gassed in the trenches of WWI. He wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps and be a fighting man, and so did his brother and sister. Well, she wasn’t a fighting man. She was a badass combat ambulance driver. He spent his early career in Her Majesty's Army over in India doing some wild shit, hunting tigers and spearing wild pigs. Then Hitler went and ruined his fun. He trained as part of the ultra elite SAS and wanted to jump out of planes. He also stole a plane for a weekend boys trip, but that’s not important. He would take part in one of the largest airborne assaults in world history: Operation Market Garden. Him and his guys landed waaaay off course in their glider and humped it like 7 miles across town. The good news was that there were also tons of unfriendly Germans there, didn’t matter; Digby is the main character. They got to the objective point and got their asses kicked but, he did some really fun stuff with the umbrella he had… He got captured by the Nazis but that wasn’t the end of his story. Not. Even. Close.

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Our first toe dip into the world of the underworld. This is the kind of True Crime topic you can expect to see more of in the future of History Goon. Joe Barboza had a f**ked up childhood. His dad left because he was cheating on his mom; she sent little Joe to talk to him, and he kicked him out. After he bought him a pigeon. He bounced around youth and adult prisons (he spent time in a bunch of places that one of the most notorious possible serial killers in US history. He also could have been full of shit.) Joe would get recruited for his “skillset” by the biggest crime family in New England, where he terrorised the streets of Massachusetts. If you owed Joe money, he would find you. And when he found you, he was going to hurt you. Badly. The big reason I wanted to cover him is what he was responsible for, the creation of a Government program that is still in use today. Hang out for a bit and see how that worked out for him…

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The “War on Drugs” started back in 1971 under Richard Nixon with the intent of eliminating illegal drug use by making the fines and penalties so stiff that people would stop using them. It’s hard to say, but guys, I think drugs won. That being said, people have been doing drugs for a LONG TIME. People have also been going to war for a LONG TIME. Sometimes, the streams get crossed, and guys stuff handfuls of mushrooms into their mouths and attack the English. Or sometimes the 2 biggest super powers that fought in the European theater of WWII gave troops Meth. Maybe some guys get yakked out of their skulls on Meth and fight the Russians on skis. Maybe dudes got baked and fought off a billion Vietcong soldiers in the middle of the night. It’s hard to say.  I’m not going to condone drug use, but this is gonna be a wild episode.

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This one is wild. Very interesting childhood, moving all over the world with his father doing missionary work until he accidentally joined the Chinese Army. Then his dad go pissed and got him removed, then he went to fight in Spain for a bit before WWII (yes, that was a thing) and then finally joining up with the US Army and getting treated like garbage because he just so happened to be Black. Eventually he would get the chance to prove that Black soldiers where, in fact, just as good as White dudes at killing Nazis. And boy oh boy was he GREAT at killing Nazis. This was one of the cases in the history of the US that proved how messed up things were. He fought and nearly died for a country that he loved that didn’t love him back because of the color of his skin. This guy was a trailblazer not just for his race but for the future of everyone who would serve in the future. Did I mention that he was REALLY GOOD at killing Nazis?

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One man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist. This man was a freedom fighter. No questions asked. He grew up in a rural part of Afghanistan and got a good education before following in his father’s footsteps of joining the military. Then Communism entered the “Graveyard of Empires,” and they faced off with the Mujahideen and learned why Afghanistan earned that nickname. When your choice is to help clean up the Chernobyl disaster or go fight in the desert, growing a third testicle and glowing was probably a better choice. Massoud got the backing of Western powers in the form of weapons and high-end training to fight the creeping spread of Communism. After the Russians left, the power vacuum was plugged in and flipped on, and infighting started among Mujahideen factions. There’s one scum-sucking turd that got involved and basically forced Massoud out of any kind of power he was building, and he was doing good things, building schools and hospitals in poorer parts of the country and trying to give women more rights. He also started passing information off to the CIA that would fall on deaf ears and lead to tragedy and war.

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If there were a Mount Rushmore for the Marine Corp., Dan Daly is on that bad boy. As a young man, he dreamed about becoming a Marine so that he could go and fight side by side with his hero, Teddy Roosevelt. Unfortunately for Daly (but good for anyone dumb enough to want Marines to show up on the beaches), that fighting ended before Daly could join up with Teddy. He DID, however, get to fight in the Boxer Rebellion in China, where he chain-smoked cigarettes and built roadblocks out of dead Chinese rebels. Then he went to Mexico and then to Haiti. Nothing bad has EVER happened in Haiti… Here he experienced some serious fighting and had to do some subaquatic actions with a donkey. That may have been worded wrong, but then he got to fight in the tropical paradise that is France during WWI. While there he uttered maybe one of the most badass quotes of all time and led his men as damn near a senior citizen in the battle that earned the Marines their nickname, The Devil Dogs. He was so badass that Congress had to change the award system because of him…

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Born the half-brother of the King of Norway, Harald wanted more. By that, I mean he wanted to politely ask his brother to let him be King (he built an army and took the fight to him), and was exiled from his homeland. Which may have been the best thing for him in the long run. He traveled the world, killing people for money as a mercenary and eventually becoming the leader of the legendary Varangian Guard in the Byzantine Empire, where he may or may not (definitely did) plow the Emperor’s mom. After all that, he went home to Norway, where he heard about this neat place called England that he wanted to visit, but first, he had to take his throne. If ever there was a man who earned the title of The Last King of the Vikings, it was Harald Hardrada.

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One of the most interesting humans that the British Empire has ever produced. A star rugby player, a Queen’s University Belfast law graduate, a lawyer, an alcohol enthusiast, and an early member of the legendary Special Air Service (SAS) and part of the notorious Desert Rats. He and his boys cruised around North Africa, making it miserable to be German and in the sand. There’s no way I can even begin to explain how bad ass Paddy Mayne was with just a few words so, hang out for a bit and hear about the wild life this man lived.Get early, ad-free access to all episodes on Patreon: https://patreon.com/1159media