HISTORY This Week

November 24, 1966. Millions of spectators flood Broadway in New York City to watch the Macy’s Day Parade on Thanksgiving morning. The iconic floats – Superman, Popeye, Smokey the Bear – are set against a grey sky that can only be described as noxious. A smog of pollutants is trapped over New York City, and it will ultimately kill nearly 200 people. How did the 1966 Thanksgiving Smog help usher in a new era of environmental protection? And how have we been thinking about environmental disasters all wrong?

Special thanks to our guest Professor Frank Uekotter, author of The Age of Smoke.

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November 16, 1532. Atahualpa, the king of the Inca Empire, marches towards the city of Cajamarca in modern-day Peru, surrounded by 80,000 soldiers. Once he arrives, Atahualpa expects the Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro to surrender in the town square. But Pizarro has a plan of his own. With just 168 men, he will unleash a trap that destroys the Inca Empire, and brings thousands of years of indigenous rule to a violent end. What was happening in the Andes before Pizarro arrived that allowed this to take place? And when history is written by the victors, how do we know what’s really true?

Special thanks to Professor R. Alan Covey, author of "Inca Apocalypse: The Spanish Conquest and the Transformation of the Andean World" (https://bit.ly/2UhbbXw)

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November 10, 1969. It’s a Monday. Across the US, parents and babysitters and grandparents and aunts and uncles are turning on the TV, because there's a new show out today for kids: Sesame Street. The show has now been on the air for more than 50 years. It’s been viewed by 80 million Americans, and it’s aired in 120 countries. Some people call it the most influential show in the history of TV. How was Sesame Street born? And how did it help change the way millions of children learn?

Thank you to our guest, Michael Davis, author of "Street Gang: The Complete History of Sesame Street."

Thank you also to Sesame Street, whose 51st season releases November 12th, 2020 on HBO Max. Sesame Street excerpts provided courtesy of Sesame Workshop, New York, New York.

© 2020 Sesame Workshop. Sesame Street® and associated characters, trademarks and design elements are owned and licensed by Sesame Workshop. All Rights Reserved.

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November 7, 1876. A little before midnight on election night, the Republican candidate Rutherford B. Hayes admits defeat and goes to bed. The Democrat Samuel J. Tilden has swept the electoral college, and by morning, he will almost certainly have the votes he needs to win the presidency. But overnight, the Republicans manage to change their fate and go on to steal the election. How did a one-legged Civil War veteran, a handful of telegrams and some of the filthiest politics in American history flip the election? And how did Hayes’ fateful compromise with the Democrats set back suffrage for over a century?

Special thanks to Dr. Richard White, Professor Emeritus of American History and author of The Republic for Which It Stands.

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October 27, 1962. 72,000 feet above Cuba, an American U2 spy plane flies over the island, capturing photo intelligence. It’s been 13 days since the CIA discovered Soviet nuclear missiles stationed in Cuba, pointed directly at the US. Soviet defense forces on the ground catch the spy plane on their radar. They name it Target Number 33. The lower-level Soviet officers are getting nervous that this spy is capturing critical intelligence. Unable to reach their general, they make the call: destroy Target Number 33. In that moment, the pilot becomes the first casualty of the Cuban Missile Crisis. How, at the peak of the Cold War, did a combination of political choices and bad luck push the world to the brink of nuclear war? And how did leadership, diplomacy and chance pull us back to safety?

Thank you to our guest, Michael Dobbs, author of "One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War"

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October 19, 1814. An eager audience files into the Holliday Street Theater in Baltimore, about to see a debut performance, described as a “much-admired new song.” The composer of this song, Francis Scott Key, had written the lyrics during a recent battle in Baltimore, trapped on a British ship as he watched the rockets red glare from afar. Key wasn’t a professional songwriter – a prominent lawyer in Washington D.C., he specialized in cases related to slavery, both defending enslaved people and slave catchers. But his real legacy became this song, entitled “The Star-Spangled Banner.” How did Key come to watch the Battle of Baltimore play out from the deck of an enemy ship? And how did his relationship with race and slavery shape the song we now call our national anthem?

Special thanks to authors Marc Leepson (https://www.marcleepson.com/) and Tim Grove (https://timgrove.net/) for sharing their voices and expertise for this episode.

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October 15, 2001. Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle receives an innocuous-looking letter. It has childlike handwriting and an elementary school return address. When an intern opens the envelope, white powder spills all over her clothes and wafts into the air. Soon after, the confirmation comes: Anthrax. This attack is one in a series of letters that arrive at media offices all over the country, just weeks after 9/11. The letters prove to be untraceable, and the investigation becomes one of the hardest and most complex in FBI history. How did investigators close this impossible case? And what remains unsolved to this day?

Special thank you to our guest, R. Scott Decker, retired FBI supervisory special agent and author of Recounting the Anthrax Attacks.

And thank you to our sources for this episode: David Willman, author of The Mirage Man. We also consulted an article in Wired Magazine by Noah Shachtman, and reporting by Propublica, PBS Frontline, and McClatchy.

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October 8, 1939. In the Tibetan city of Lhasa, thousands of people have flooded into the streets to welcome the next Dalai Lama, a young boy of 4 years old. He doesn't know it yet, but he'll become the spiritual and political leader of the Tibetan people at the age of 15, right in the middle of a war. How does someone so young prepare for something so big? And what can the Dalai Lama's very unusual life teach the rest of us about what it means to be a leader?

Thank you to our guest, Thomas Laird, author of "The Story of Tibet: Conversations with the Dalai Lama".

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September 30, 1765. Almost a decade before the American Revolution, delegates from four colonies gather in the first, unofficial meeting of the Stamp Act Congress. The congress has been called to respond to a new British tax on the colonies, the Stamp Act. It’s essentially a tax on paper, and Congress’ response will be the first official act of dissension by the colonies against the British. Unofficially though, the people are rioting in the streets. And it’s this popular protest, more than Congress’ tempered response, that will bring the Stamp Act down. How did the Stamp Act riots become a spark that would ignite the American Revolution? And what does it mean that we’ve been protesting for change since before America’s founding?

Special thanks to our guest, Dr. Christopher R. Pearl, Associate Professor of History at Lycoming College and author of Conceived in Crisis: The Revolutionary Creation of an American State.

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