History's Greatest Dumpster Fires

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Our President, Donald Trump has joined a long list of presidents in the 20th and 21st centuries who have embroiled America in the Middle East in yet another conflict. We here at The Day's Dumpster Fire don't like to take sides in terms of political parties, the Middle East has proven itself to do the exact same thing. It doesn't matter which president is in office, democrat or republican, the Middle East and America have been involved with one another for decades for one reason or another with no end in sight. 

Kara and Ed would often get questions from their students as to why the Middle East is such a confusing conflict and all they could say is that "Well, it's complicated." And you know what, nothing has changed all that much year after year other than things continue to get more and more confusing, complicated, and worse yet for America, polarizing. The best way we can describe the situation over there is that the Middle East is a combination of multiple different jigsaw puzzles that need to be assembled but with no pictures on the boxes as a frame of reference...

... Oh, and all the pieces are in a dumpster that just so happens to be on fire...

In today's episode, Ed doesn't tackle any of the laundry list of issues in the Middle East dating back to the time after WWII. Instead, Ed has put together a few of the puzzle pieces that involve a part of the puzzle contributing to some of the issues today. 

Today's episode is about The Iran Contra Affair or Scandal. In Part 1 Ed is giving us some background on:

• A brief overview of what the Iran Contra Affair was about and what sort of questions the whole kerfuffle brought about in American politics.
• What role did communism and the Cold War served in shaping American foreign affairs.
• What in the world was going on in Nicaragua and who the Contras were and what they stood for.
• What was going on with Iran and Iraq going to war in the 1980s and how the Soviet Union was playing a part. 
• A quick overview of Hezbollah and the hostages they were taking with the backing of Iran.
• And lastly, what was President Ronald Reagan doing to handle Nicaragua (which his hands were tied to do anything because of congress not wanting another Vietnam War) and Iran (in which his hands were tied due to a campaign promise of never negotiating with terrorists

Be sure to tune into Part 2 when it comes out because it's going to conclude the whole ordeal and exactly how the Reagan administration got themselves in one of the wildest scandals in American history aside from Watergate. 

Enjoyed this presidential mess? Check out these other classic Dumpster Fires:

The Prologue: For the full background on why Congress banned the White House from intervening, listen to our Vietnam War deep dive in Episodes 41 and 42.

Support the show

Hey before you go! 

If have ideas for future episodes that you want Kara and Ed to look into, email them at [email protected]. They would love to hear from you!

You can also send them a text message by clicking on the link at the top. 

Be sure to head on over to www.thedaysdumpsterfire.com for the ever growing library of historical dumpster fires. 

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Ever suffer from a brutal case of FOMO? We’ve all been there: you get left off the guest list for the party of the year, or plans fall through at the last second, and you’re left sitting at home drowning in a sea of resentment, wondering why the universe is punishing you.

But what if missing out was actually the universe protecting you?

In this episode, Kara makes her valiant return from vacation to bring you a historical reminder that sometimes, it is a profound blessing to not be the most popular person in the room. Travel back to the 1300s, where the job of the century was throwing a memorable masquerade for the King of France—a man struggling so deeply with his mental health that history deemed him insane.

To make this the event of the season, the party planners decided to go big or go home. They literally sewed the guests (King included) into highly flammable outfits, slathered them in explosive tree resin, and covered them in shaggy flax fibers to look like "wild men."

Now remember: this is the 14th century. The only source of light is open-flame torches. What could possibly go wrong?

Tune in to discover the ultimate catastrophic party foul in French history. By the end of this episode, you’ll walk away with a fresh dose of gratitude for your quiet nights in, thanking your lucky stars that you weren't popular enough to be invited to the Bal des Ardents.

Sometimes, staying put and being "unreliable" is self-care.

If you like this episode, check out the below classic historical dumpster fires below!

King Henry VIII: How a British King Failed at Marriage Six Times in a Row - Episode 19

Chinese Gunpowder: How to Get an Emperor Into Heaven... In Pieces - Episode 26

Disasters of the Dead: How to Explode a Royal Corpse and Blow up an 80-Ton Whale - Episode 58

Support the show

Hey before you go! 

If have ideas for future episodes that you want Kara and Ed to look into, email them at [email protected]. They would love to hear from you!

You can also send them a text message by clicking on the link at the top. 

Be sure to head on over to www.thedaysdumpsterfire.com for the ever growing library of historical dumpster fires. 

Check us out on the ol Instagrams!
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Ever feel like your life is completely off the rails? Like you’re stuck on a runaway train, heading full steam into a dead end, and there is absolutely nothing you can do to stop it?

Take a deep breath. Today, Ed is flying solo while Kara takes a well-deserved vacation, and he is here to offer you the ultimate perspective shift to make you feel instantly better about your current situation.

Welcome to July 9, 1918. Imagine waking up early for a routine morning commute between Memphis and Nashville, only to find yourself on a blind turn known as "Dutchman's Curve." What followed was the deadliest head-on train collision in United States history—a catastrophic wreck that claimed over 101 lives, predominantly affecting African American workers on their way to a wartime munitions factory.

In this episode, Ed nerds out on the raw mechanics of steam engines, unpacks the downright terrifying safety standards that railroad workers faced daily, and breaks down the exact geography of the crash. But more importantly, he digs into a brand-new theory about the real culprit behind the disaster.

Spoiler alert: it’s not what the history books tell you.

So grab a notebook, prepare to learn a little bit of unexpected math, and wrap yourself in a blanket of gratitude. Things might be chaotic for you right now, but at least you aren't engineering a 1910s steam locomotive around a blind bend with zero radio communication.

Enjoyed this turn-of-the-century mess? Check out these classic Dumpster Fires on our website:

The Transatlantic Telegraph: Breaking, Frying, and Failing Across the Ocean - Episode 37

The Hindenburg Disaster: How to Burn up a Blimp Without a Match! - Episode 57

Support the show

Hey before you go! 

If have ideas for future episodes that you want Kara and Ed to look into, email them at [email protected]. They would love to hear from you!

You can also send them a text message by clicking on the link at the top. 

Be sure to head on over to www.thedaysdumpsterfire.com for the ever growing library of historical dumpster fires. 

Check us out on the ol Instagrams!
https://www.instagram.com/thedaysdumpsterfire/

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Ever feel like your biggest, most ambitious ideas are just a little too wild for the world to handle? Like you’re pouring your heart and soul into a project, only to wonder if you’ve completely lost your mind?

Take a deep breath and give yourself a break. In today's episode, Ed and Kara are back to wrap up the mind-boggling conclusion of history's most bizarre military experiment. If you've been stressing over a chaotic week, just wrap yourself in a blanket of gratitude that your job doesn't involve flash-freezing live mammals and stuffing them into glorified toilet paper tubes.

Welcome back to the world of Project X-Ray. If the Manhattan Project was an elite gathering of the greatest scientific minds of the 20th century, the team behind the "Bat Bomb" was the exact opposite. We’re talking about a roster that reads like a logic puzzle: two scientists, a hotel manager, a bodybuilder, a lobster fisherman, a Hollywood star turned pilot, and a couple of high school kids with nothing better to do in the 1940s.

Ed and Kara break down the absolute comedy of errors that ensued when this ragtag crew tried to drop bats out of a B-25 bomber over Los Angeles. But more importantly, you'll see what happened when they actually tried to scale up this "bat-brained" idea into a weapon with real destructive capabilities.

World War II was an intense time where any idea could get a blank check. Some changed the trajectory of human history, and others... well, literally went up in smoke. Tune in to find out exactly where Dr. Adams' flying circus lands in the history books.

Remember: sometimes, having your plans fall a little flat is a massive win. At least your ideas don't require handling military-grade napalm!

Support the show

Hey before you go! 

If have ideas for future episodes that you want Kara and Ed to look into, email them at [email protected]. They would love to hear from you!

You can also send them a text message by clicking on the link at the top. 

Be sure to head on over to www.thedaysdumpsterfire.com for the ever growing library of historical dumpster fires. 

Check us out on the ol Instagrams!
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In today's episode, Ed decided to go down a different kind of dumpster fire. Instead of a large volume of people being killed or injured or thousands of people losing their retirements due to sketchy accounting practices. The Bat Bomb of WWII is a testament to the creativity of the human mind in times of extreme need and how not all ideas are going to be good. 

While vacationing in Carlsbad, New Mexico to watch bats, dentist / eccentric inventor, Dr. Lytle S. Adams, heard about the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 that sent America into World War II. The first half of 1942 didn't go well for America when fighting the Japanese Empire for a multitude of reasons, but Dr. Adams thought of using bats to wreak havoc on the Japanese Empire's homeland of...  well... Japan... 

In this episode, you're going to be regaled with founding, setup, testing, and conclusions from one of the most "bat brained" ideas of WWII. Dr. Adams selected an elite crew of scientists and contributors to put together a bomb that when dropped, would dispense over 1,000 bats all carrying a little incendiary capsule of napalm. The idea was that the bats would disperse over Japan, find dark attics and other nooks and crannies so that the napalm charge would go off and set fire to the building. 

The plan was so well thought out and so perfect, that if implemented correctly, it could rival that of another type of weapon being researched in Los Alamos at the same exact time as the Bat Bomb just out side Los Angeles... the nuclear bomb!

This is all assuming that Adams and his team could make this Bat Bomb idea actually work and not burn the entire program to the ground in the process. 

Oh wait! This is going to be two parter episode, but you won't have to wait two weeks for Ed to get the episode out containing the thrilling conclusion. If all goes according to plan, part 2 will be out a few days after this episode airs... What could possibly go wrong?

Some other episodes that you might find interesting based on the time period and / or mentioned in the Bat Bomb episode:

The "Demon Core": How One Little Ball of Metal Reeked Havoc on Scientists - Episode 17

The Dust Bowl: Was the 10 Year Drought an Act of God? Or American Made - Episode 48

Prohibition Series (Episodes 59-62)

The Great Depression Series (Episodes 65-68)

Be sure to check out the Day's Dumpster Fire website for detailed show notes, images, Kara's drawings, as well as an ever growing library of humanity's most fantastic failures!

Support the show

Hey before you go! 

If have ideas for future episodes that you want Kara and Ed to look into, email them at [email protected]. They would love to hear from you!

You can also send them a text message by clicking on the link at the top. 

Be sure to head on over to www.thedaysdumpsterfire.com for the ever growing library of historical dumpster fires. 

Check us out on the ol Instagrams!
https://www.instagram.com/thedaysdumpsterfire/

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In today's episode, Ed takes us down memory lane to one of the biggest business fraud cases of the 20th century. 

Enron was a company that was the product of two major gas businesses that merged together with a vision to change how the world viewed work culture and how to make money with wild result. 

For much of much of the 90s, Enron was the future of corporate mentality and high morale among employees with tons of opportunity and even more prospects of striking it rich in the world of negotiating deals between natural gas sellers and buyers. As the years went by, Enron continuously dropped earnings reports that showed nothing but success, year over year growth, and a cash flow that would never end. As a result, Enron got rich, its executives got rich, investors got even richer, banks were happy to lend Enron money, and its employees were excited in what they sold. 

There was one catch though... 

...No one knew exactly how Enron was making any money! And that was done by design. 

As you'll see in this episode, Enron's CEO Ken Lay, and his two conspirators Jeff Skilling and Andrew Fastow, quickly turned an honest company of limited (but honest and stable) growth to a company on a meteoric trajectory unlike anything else in American history. However, it was done by bending the rules, flagrant fraud, hiding figures, and implicating CPA firms in piles of shredded documents. 

All of us have made some financial blunders in our time, but few in humanity have successfully railroaded a billion dollar publicly traded company into the ground quick like Lay, Skilling, and Fastow did. In a few short months in 2001, These three men went from millionaires to Federally convicted felons. We may be stressing over a missed credit car payment, but at least we didn't cost the life savings, retirements, and careers of over 100,000 men and women who were oblivious to all the craziness that was taking place on the 50th floor of Enron's corporate headquarters in Houston, Texas. 

For pictures and show notes, check out The Day's Dumpster Fire website

Some other episodes Kara and Ed have put together that follows a similar "corporate greed and fraud" theme where business leaders prioritized money over literally EVERYTHING ELSE:

Therac-25 

Boston Molasses Flood

I Love the Smell of Lead

Thalidomide

Outro Music Credit:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdNYSTbPuL0&list=PLfP6i5T0-DkKlAN_qDvZ3nJwsdKRmrxI_&index=

Support the show

Hey before you go! 

If have ideas for future episodes that you want Kara and Ed to look into, email them at [email protected]. They would love to hear from you!

You can also send them a text message by clicking on the link at the top. 

Be sure to head on over to www.thedaysdumpsterfire.com for the ever growing library of historical dumpster fires. 

Check us out on the ol Instagrams!
https://www.instagram.com/thedaysdumpsterfire/

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Ed is back for another "recent" historical dumpster fire in which a chemical that manufactures a chemical necessary for nylon production explodes in the largest non-WWII explosion in British history. They Nypro Flixborough chemical facility was built in the late 60's to be a sleek, state of the art facility that turned an extremely flammable substance called cyclohexane and turn it into caprolactam. Caprolactam is one of the key ingredients to making nylon which is a ubiquitous substance found everywhere in the modern era. Without nylon, everything from clothing to car parts to kitchen utensils and even surgical implants would be impossible. 

On paper and in the minds of the workers and their families, the Flixborough facility was the wave of the future and offered a means of a modern livelihood... until one of the massive reaction tanks that turns 20 tons of cyclohexane into caprolactam develops a crack and could potentially result in an explosion that could destroy the entire complex. 

In this case, the dumpster fire isn't the crack, or what managers refused to do that often results in dumpster fires, but it's what the managers DID do that caused so many problems... or one big one!

Take a listen and hop on over to the Day's Dumpster Fire website for show notes, sources, and pictures of what happened to this facility and how it affected an entire community in the English countryside. 

Some other episodes that were mentioned in this episode that you might find interesting are:

Nuclear Power Plants

Victorian Bread Making

The Boston Molasses Flood

Byford Dolphin Incident

The Deepwater Horizon Incident

All of the above episodes have something common with the Flixborough Chemical Fire. Send Ed and Kara an email at [email protected] when you notice the connection or what they all have in common? In other words, what often gets in the way of safety, sound practices, engineered solutions, and quotas in manufacturing that turns into a dumpster fire or contents for this podcast?

Support the show

Hey before you go! 

If have ideas for future episodes that you want Kara and Ed to look into, email them at [email protected]. They would love to hear from you!

You can also send them a text message by clicking on the link at the top. 

Be sure to head on over to www.thedaysdumpsterfire.com for the ever growing library of historical dumpster fires. 

Check us out on the ol Instagrams!
https://www.instagram.com/thedaysdumpsterfire/

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In today’s episode, Ed is back with a dumpster that can be traced back to the last decade instead of the last century. Kara’s monumental time travel into the Great Depression that changed America forever left off with the nation as the wealthiest and most powerful country in the world. While that’s pretty comforting to thin, about as an American, for those outside America, that wealth is a bull’s eye for those with the skills to “hack” into it. 

Therefore, Ed is going to talk about the greatest bank heist in world history: the Bangladesh Bank Heist of 2016. This is where some very creative and skillful hackers put together a plan to rob the Bangladesh Bank and subsequent United States Federal Reserve of nearly $1billion! The heist itself only took a night to implement, but the plan dated back to the end of October 2014 and for over a year, these hackers hatched a plan so creative, detailed, and ambitious, any notion of failure was out the window. Even if failure did rear its ugly head, which happens often in this show, the hackers would still walk away with tens of millions of dollars. 

In this episode, Ed will explain:

Part 1. What electronic banking is, how it’s different from banking in the 1800s, the pros and cons of electronic banking and how it changed the landscape of bank robbing. 

Part 2. What happened on that fateful February 6th, 2016, day when office workers of the Bangladesh Bank arrived to work, only find that computers and one special printer weren’t working. 

Part 3. The origins, identification, and the plan to steal nearly $1 billion in a single night. The elaborateness of this plan will blow you away!

Part 4. The execution of the plan on February 5, 2016, and how things went right from the beginning and how a misspelled word nearly brought the entire operation down. 

Part 5. The outcome, who the hackers were, the nation state actors in play, and how does this affect your life. 

Be sure to check The Day’s Dumpster Fire website of the complete catalog, detailed show notes, and Kara’s artwork. 

Some other episodes you will like:

Episodes 41 & 42 – America’s Involvement in the Vietnam War

Episode 9 - Therac-25 Fire: a great episode that is computer themed much like this episode, but with the twist of what can happen when the computer can't keep up with the human user and people are getting zapped. 

Support the show

Hey before you go! 

If have ideas for future episodes that you want Kara and Ed to look into, email them at [email protected]. They would love to hear from you!

You can also send them a text message by clicking on the link at the top. 

Be sure to head on over to www.thedaysdumpsterfire.com for the ever growing library of historical dumpster fires. 

Check us out on the ol Instagrams!
https://www.instagram.com/thedaysdumpsterfire/

Send us Fan Mail

The time has come! We thought we'd never get there, but Kara's PhD scholarly review of the Great Depression comes to its climactic end in this episode. This is quite possibly Kara's most ambitious episode yet and this doesn't even include all the extra stuff you can find on at thedaysdumpsterfire.com!

In Part 1. Kara dove into the causes of the Great Depression and dispelled some myths such as the "Crash of 29" was solely responsible for the entire economic collapse of the country. 

In Part 2. Kara looked into what Herbert Hoover tried to do to correct things in American and how it ultimately was too little, too late. This led to Franklin Delano Roosevelt winning the 1932 election by a landslide. 

In Part 3. Kara discusses Roosevelt's strategy in which the federal government would invest hundreds of millions of dollars into the economy to get people working again and banks up and running. In this episode, you'll be introduced to the "alphabet soup" in which a multitude of three-lettered government agencies sprung up across the country intending to right the ship and get America back on track economically. While the government funneling money into the economy may have been met with a sigh of relief to some. Many other workers were growing frustrated by low wages, long hours, and dangerous work, fueled by corporate greed and apathy. As a result, strikes formed coast to coast, and even though unemployment was rampant, so were the number of angry workers who were fed up being taken advantage of. 

Lastly, in Part 4. Kara analyzes Roosevelt's second New Deal program that focused heavily on recovering the arts such as movie making and writing. This new New Deal brought in a number of lawsuits from dissenters (such as Roosevelt's own Vice President!!!) and eventually the supreme court had to get involved. Roosevelt didn't just stop there, he used the unemployed to build hospitals, schools, bridges, dams, hundreds of miles of roads, and airfields. However, this came at a cost as the fledgling "communist scare" tried its best to undermine Roosevelt's plan of recovery. Lastly, Kara sheds light on how the Great Depressions wasn't just an America only ordeal. The rest of the world was struggling in various degrees and this laid the canvas for which World War II would be painted on. 

Some other episodes mentioned that you will find interesting:

Episode 13. Hindenburg 

Episodes 59-62. Prohibition

Support the show

Hey before you go! 

If have ideas for future episodes that you want Kara and Ed to look into, email them at [email protected]. They would love to hear from you!

You can also send them a text message by clicking on the link at the top. 

Be sure to head on over to www.thedaysdumpsterfire.com for the ever growing library of historical dumpster fires. 

Check us out on the ol Instagrams!
https://www.instagram.com/thedaysdumpsterfire/

Send us Fan Mail

Welcome back for Kara's part 3 of her exploration into one of America's most influential dumpster fires in history, the Great Depression. 

In Part 1. Kara dove into the causes of the Great Depression and dispelled some myths such as the "Crash of 29" was solely responsible for the entire economic collapse of the country. 

In Part 2. Kara looked into what Herbert Hoover tried to do to correct things in American and how it ultimately was too little, too late. This led to Franklin Delano Roosevelt winning the 1932 election by a landslide. 

In Part 3. Kara discusses Roosevelt's strategy in which the federal government would invest hundreds of millions of dollars into the economy to get people working again and banks up and running. In this episode, you'll be introduced to the "alphabet soup" in which a multitude of three-lettered government agencies sprung up across the country intending to right the ship and get America back on track economically. While the government funneling money into the economy may have been met with a sigh of relief to some. Many other workers were growing frustrated by low wages, long hours, and dangerous work, fueled by corporate greed and apathy. As a result, strikes formed coast to coast, and even though unemployment was rampant, so were the number of angry workers who were fed up being taken advantage of. 

Some other episodes of The Day's Dumpster Fire you might find interesting:

The Dust Bowl - Episode 48

Prohibition - Episodes 59-62

So sit back and take a listen into a time period on American history when a generation of men and women who would grow up to change the world were trying to figure out how to make ends meet!

Support the show

Hey before you go! 

If have ideas for future episodes that you want Kara and Ed to look into, email them at [email protected]. They would love to hear from you!

You can also send them a text message by clicking on the link at the top. 

Be sure to head on over to www.thedaysdumpsterfire.com for the ever growing library of historical dumpster fires. 

Check us out on the ol Instagrams!
https://www.instagram.com/thedaysdumpsterfire/