Hometown History

Benjamin Franklin hated America's national bird. While Congress put the bald eagle on the Great Seal in 1782, Franklin saw it as a symbol of everything wrong with imperial power, a lazy bully that steals from smaller birds rather than working for its own food. His alternative? The humble, hardworking wild turkey.

Franklin's criticism wasn't just about birds. It was about what kind of country America would become: a small republic built on honest labor, or a militaristic empire modeled after Rome. His letter to his daughter comparing the "bird of bad moral character" to the "respectable" turkey reveals a tension that's existed since America's founding, are we the turkey or the eagle?

From our tiny standing armies before World War I to today's global military presence, this episode explores how America has struggled with Franklin's question for over 200 years. And in an age of financial predators and Wall Street hedge funds that behave exactly like the bald eagles Franklin described, maybe the old inventor was onto something.

Discover more forgotten American stories every week with Hometown History. Subscribe now.

Hometown History explores forgotten stories from small-town America. The overlooked events, hidden triumphs, and buried tragedies that shaped the country we live in. New episodes every Tuesday. Find every episode at mythsandmalice.com/hometown-history

Washington, DC. There's an old saying that everyone learns by experience. It's just a lot easier when it's someone else's. In one sense, that's all that history is, being proactive about learning from other people's mistakes, rather than waiting to make those mistakes yourself. Those of you who have listened to my podcasts over the past few years will know how I feel about the discipline of history.

WHY THIS MATTERS

Episode 15 | Hometown History | Hosted by Shane Waters

Hometown History explores forgotten stories from small-town America. The overlooked events, hidden triumphs, and buried tragedies that shaped the country we live in. New episodes every Tuesday. Find every episode at mythsandmalice.com/hometown-history

Wilmington, Delaware. This new year, why not let Audible expand your life by listening? Explore over 1 million audiobooks, podcasts, and exclusive Audible originals that'll inspire and motivate you. Tap into your well-being with advice and insight from leading professionals and experts on better health, relationships, career, finance, investing, and more. Maybe you want to kick a bad habit or start a good one.

WHY THIS MATTERS

Episode 14 | Hometown History | Hosted by Shane Waters

If you liked this: Episode 197 (Dover, Delaware)

Hometown History explores forgotten stories from small-town America. The overlooked events, hidden triumphs, and buried tragedies that shaped the country we live in. New episodes every Tuesday. Find every episode at mythsandmalice.com/hometown-history

New York City, New York. Long before there was ever a Wolf of Wall Street, there was a Witch of Wall Street, though that title was hardly earned. Her name was Hedy Green, and she did her business on Wall Street in the second half of the 19th century, in the very first part of the 20th, until she died in 1916. As far as finance goes, she was a heavyweight among heavyweights, to the point where she personally bailed out the entire city of New York multiple times when it ran out of money.

WHY THIS MATTERS

Episode 13 | Hometown History | Hosted by Shane Waters

Hometown History explores forgotten stories from small-town America. The overlooked events, hidden triumphs, and buried tragedies that shaped the country we live in. New episodes every Tuesday. Find every episode at mythsandmalice.com/hometown-history

Athens, Greece. George Dibborn, who we profiled in our last episode, was a really nice guy, and he was easy to like, but I think you're going to love Diogenes. Okay, maybe you won't love him, love him, or even like him very much, but you're going to like him, at least a little, because he's like a funnier, smarter version of your most antisocial impulses run wild.

WHY THIS MATTERS

Episode 12 | Hometown History | Hosted by Shane Waters

Hometown History explores forgotten stories from small-town America. The overlooked events, hidden triumphs, and buried tragedies that shaped the country we live in. New episodes every Tuesday. Find every episode at mythsandmalice.com/hometown-history

Hamburg, Germany. Have you ever gotten so fed up with society that you wanted to put all of your stuff in a sailboat and leave the world behind? Have you ever become so frustrated with the policies of your government that you wanted to declare yourself a sovereign nation of one? You could name your country anything you'd like, you could make up your own flag and your own passport, and you could travel as a diplomat on behalf of yourself with no one else to represent you.

WHY THIS MATTERS

Episode 11 | Hometown History | Hosted by Shane Waters

Hometown History explores forgotten stories from small-town America. The overlooked events, hidden triumphs, and buried tragedies that shaped the country we live in. New episodes every Tuesday. Find every episode at mythsandmalice.com/hometown-history

Strasbourg, France. Honestly, I'm not even sure what to do with this one. We're talking about Tarare, the 18th century French showman and show-eater, and one of the least lovely and most helpless people in all of human history. He was born in 1772 and died in 1798. Tarare died young because his addictions consumed him, and just about everything else he could get his hands on.

WHY THIS MATTERS

Episode 10 | Hometown History | Hosted by Shane Waters

Hometown History explores forgotten stories from small-town America. The overlooked events, hidden triumphs, and buried tragedies that shaped the country we live in. New episodes every Tuesday. Find every episode at mythsandmalice.com/hometown-history

San Francisco, California. As well as U.S. history, you probably don't know that the U.S. Congress was officially abolished in 1859. After decades of corruption, its powers were stripped and its members were effectively banned from governing the people of the United States. All former members of Congress were told to evacuate the Capitol, effective immediately. All who did not comply with this request would be forcibly removed from the premises by the commanding general of the United States Army, Winfield Scott.

TIMELINE

WHY THIS MATTERS

Episode 9 | Hometown History | Hosted by Shane Waters

If you liked this: Episode 88 (Crescent City, California)

Hometown History explores forgotten stories from small-town America. The overlooked events, hidden triumphs, and buried tragedies that shaped the country we live in. New episodes every Tuesday. Find every episode at mythsandmalice.com/hometown-history

Detroit, Michigan. For some time now, Belle Isle has been the most surreal part of America's most surreal city. It's the little island getaway for the 20th century American apocalypse, also known as the city of Detroit. In the middle of the Detroit River, between the ugly concrete shores of Windsor, Ontario, and the mythical but still ugly shores of urban Detroit, sits a little piece of northern Michigan called, in French, the Beautiful Isle. And sure, it's fair to say it's beautiful.

WHY THIS MATTERS

Episode 8 | Hometown History | Hosted by Shane Waters

Hometown History explores forgotten stories from small-town America. The overlooked events, hidden triumphs, and buried tragedies that shaped the country we live in. New episodes every Tuesday. Find every episode at mythsandmalice.com/hometown-history

A Nazi cargo ship sits rusting in plain sight off South Manitou Island, Michigan, visible from shore, frozen in time since a 1960 snowstorm drove it into the shallows. This is the Francisco Morazan, a 235-foot former German naval vessel that survived Operation Sea Lion only to meet its end in Lake Michigan's treacherous Manitou Passage.

But the Morazan is just one ghost among many. These islands sit at the heart of one of the busiest, and deadliest, shipping lanes in 19th-century America, where an 1840 lighthouse tried desperately to save lives, and more than 50 shipwrecks still rest beneath the water. Behind it all lies a Native American legend of a mother bear who swam her cubs across 118 miles of open water, only to lose them in sight of shore.

This is the story of Michigan's Sleeping Bear Dunes and the islands she watches over, a landscape where mythology, maritime tragedy, and forgotten history converge at the edge of America's third coast. From ancient Ojibwa spirituality to Civil War-era lighthouse keepers to literal Nazi naval vessels, these waters hold more secrets than most people realize.

Subscribe to Hometown History for forgotten stories from America's small towns, strange places, and overlooked corners, where the past is never quite as simple as you thought.

• The Ojibwa legend behind Sleeping Bear Dunes' haunting name
• Why South Manitou Island became the busiest harbor between Chicago and Buffalo
• The Francisco Morazan: A Nazi warship's surprising final resting place in Michigan
• The 1840 lighthouse keeper who drowned trying to save his family
• More than 50 shipwrecks hidden in the Manitou Passage
• Frank Lloyd Wright's forgotten cottage on a Lake Michigan ghost island
• Why these islands became America's abandoned frontier

Key Figures:

• Mishimakwa - Mother bear of Ojibwa legend, namesake of Sleeping Bear Dunes
• Aaron Sheridan - Civil War veteran lighthouse keeper who drowned in 1878
• Frank Lloyd Wright - Designed 26-year-old's first cottage on South Manitou

Timeline:

• Ancient Era: Ojibwa people establish islands as sacred burial grounds
• 1840: South Manitou Lighthouse commissioned by Congress
• 1878: Lighthouse keeper Aaron Sheridan drowns near the tower with his family
• 1945: Francisco Morazan seized by Allies in Germany after WWII
• 1960: Francisco Morazan runs aground in snowstorm, remains visible today
• 1958: Lighthouse decommissioned after 118 years of service
• 2019: Lighthouse relit permanently as memorial

Hometown History explores forgotten stories from small-town America. The overlooked events, hidden triumphs, and buried tragedies that shaped the country we live in. New episodes every Tuesday. Find every episode at mythsandmalice.com/hometown-history