I Can't Believe That Happened History Podcast for Kids

By Monica MichelleSociety & Culture History Kids & Family Stories for Kids

I Can't Believe That Happened History Podcast for Kids episodes

December 30, 2018 Barnum’s American Museum Step Right Up See a Mermaid, A Whale, and See the Marvels of the World

*Show Notes for Barnum’s American History Museum*

Barnum museum The Barnum Museum was arguably the wonder of the world in the 1800’s. If you watched /The Greatest Showman/ you can get the filmmaker’s idea of what the Barnum’s American Museum was like. Unfortunately, I feel like they really missed an opportunity, as wonderful as the Greatest Showman was it missed the live whale, the performing grizzly bears, and the Feejee Mermaid so step right up and be amazed we are going back to 1841 to the marvel of the world: Barnum's American Museum
*Barnum’s American Museum: The history of the museum itself*

PT. Barnum’s project before he made a name in the circus was in New York on the Corner of Broadway and Ann street.
In 1841 PT. Barnum bought Scudder's American Museum which began in 1781 and held general curiosities like: stuffed snakes, bison, and a forest scenes. If you listened to my episode on PT. Barnum you know he saw this as a jumping off point. He was also a bit sneak about how he went about getting the museum. Barnum arranged to become the manager of a competing museum called Peale’s Museum under the condition that Peale’s buys Scudder’s. He then went to Scudder’s on his own and negotiated if the deal with Peale’s museum fell through that Scudder’s would sell the museum to Barnum directly. Nice, no. But history does not exist to make us comfortable but to learn from.

The first thing he did to the 5 story building was to change The exterior into a lime lit advertisement (a 5 Story tall advertisement).
*Exhibits at Barnum’s American Museum*

The museum opened on January 1, 1842 as a combination zoo, museum, lecture hall, wax museum, theatre, and freak show. If you want to get a small idea of what this was think The World’s Fair in one five story building. Thanks to existing playbills and advertisements here is an incomplete list of the attractions of Barnum’s American Museum
• then were scientific instruments
• Exotic Fossils
• Relics of the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812
• Precious stones and coins
• Modern appliances
• Flea circus
• Loom powered by dogs
• Watch glass blowers
• Fortune Tellers
• Rifle range
*Pretty baby contests
• Ned the Learned Seal
• Feejee Mermaid video tried to be a little scary if you click the link but it is a really good history. (This was a plan. If Barnum put the implausible in his museum it lead people to question if any of his exhibits were real leading to more people coming to the museum to check it out and decide for themselves. P.T. Barnum uses this tactic MANY times in his various careers from museum to politician to the circus.)
*Cheng and Eng the Siamese Twins
• A live Beluga whale in an Aquarium
• Giants
• Native Americans who performer tradition songs and dances
• Grizzly Adams trained bears.
• The bearded Lady,Josephine Clofullia, whose bears grew in when she was 8 years old
• Adaptations of the bible and Uncle Tom’s Cabin
• General Tom Thumb
The Natural History part of the museum housed:
• taxidermy
• historical paintings
• taxidermy (stuffing dead exotic animals, keep in mind zoos were not in every city this might be the only way to see a lion or elephant)
• wax figures
• and in the theatre Shakespeare and lectures.

One of my favorite stories of the museum was that when Barnum realized people lingered too long at exhibits (making it hard to keep new people coming through) he put up signs saying “This Way To The Egress”. People thinking “egress” was a new and exciting exhibit quickly followed the signs only to find out “egress” was another word for exit.

At the height of its popularity Barnum's American Museum had 15,000 visitors a day paying 25 cents a ticket. That is 15,000 people a day when the population of the United States was under 32 million. Even the Prince of Wales took time from his schedule to visit.
*What Happened to Barnum’s American Museum*

If you have been looking at the dates you might just notice in the dates that all of this takes place during a very tumultuous time in the United States, The Civil War. In November 1844 The war came to Barnum, who was a public abolitionist, when the Confederate Army of Manhattan tried but failed to burn down the museum. As a fan of history and museums I wish I could say much was learned about fire safety in the year but unfortunately The museum burned down in July 13,1865. Barnum tried again opening Barnum's New Museum September 6, 1865 but that also burned March 3, 1868.
Never to be deterred Barnum used the last tragedy to step into politics and the circus industry.

I say a million times history does not exist to make us comfortable. There is a lot about P.T.Barnum and his life that is not comfortable and does not sounds good when we look at it from our time in history. So why would I talk about him? I just had a conversation with my son about this. There are people in history who have imaginations so big they reshape our reality and what is possible. PT. Barnum is on of those people.

Who from history can you think of who’s ideas reshaped our world?
What GIANT idea do you have that you think could make a big change in the world as we know it?

Comment below and I will read my favorites in the next episode.

Thank you so much to listening to I Can’t Believe That Happened a history podcast for kids. Please hit subscribe and share the podcast with friends and teachers. If you would like to do something really nice for the podcast head over to ITunes and leave a review. I Can’t Believe That Happened is a VERY new podcast so be one of the first to write a review. Unless I get sidetracked and we all know that is a VERY big possibility next week I am starting up the history of magic! Let me know if there is anything about the history of magic and magicians you might want me to cover. Remember to head over to the website and look at the show notes. I have a ton of links so you can see the history. Thank you so much and have a great week!

Research (Warning I have CURATED the podcast to be child friendly these articles are not proceed with caution and read first)
Eric D. Lehman in Becoming Tom Thumb .
The Daily Beast https://www.thedailybeast.com/before-his-circus-pt-barnum-opened-the-worlds-craziest-museum-in-nyc?ref=scroll
The Bowery Boys New York City History http://www.boweryboyshistory.com/2008/05/new-yorks-first-natural-history-museum.html
Lost Museum Archive https://lostmuseum.cuny.edu/archive/exhibit/baby/
The Shelf Harvard http://blogs.harvard.edu/preserving/2018/06/01/ned-and-fanny-the-learned-seals/

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16 min
December 13, 2018 The History of Tom Thumb Part II The Fairy Wedding A History Podcast for Kids
The exciting conclusion to the story of Charles Stratton or as P.T. Barnum named him, Tom Thumb. In This episode you will learn about how he met his wife Lavinia Warren and all about their "Fairy Wedding".
Tune in next week for Lavinia Warren's Story from school teacher to star to entrepreneur.
Thank you so much for listening!
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11 min
December 05, 2018 Tom Thumb History of the Circus
I cheated a little bit since Tom Thumb was a member of the tour and P.T. Barnum's American Museum but was not apart of an actual circus. Please forgive I could not resist doing an episode on Charles Stratton (General Tom Thumb). If you happen to have seen The Greatest Showman (As I have a dozen times) you might remember him. While I LOVE the movie the true story of General Tom Thumb is even more fantastical. Please tune in and hear about Tom's audience with the Queen and his play battle with her spaniel.
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11 min
November 02, 2018 The History of the Circus: History of Acrobats: History Podcast for Kids
How did circuses begin? How did people decide to start flying through the air and swinging from the top of circus tents? Who started what we think of as a circus? Take a listen to our bite size history podcast fro kids and curious adults.
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7 min
October 17, 2018 Helen Keller
Helen Keller

You might have heard her name before. I am relatively certain you have but I am guessing that you heard about her in the same way I was taught about Helen Keller, almost as an accessory to her teacher’s story. I am so excited to get to introduce all of you to a woman that until I began researching I only knew as a brave disabled woman who inspired by her willingness to learn. There is so much more!Helen was born in 1880 in Alabama a very healthy little girl who even started speaking at six months old. When she was just under two years old an illness left her blind and deaf. The illness has not been identified except to call it brain fever.Helen, against the popular idea that she lived in complete isolation, had a friend and brothers and sisters. She and the daughter of the family cook, Martha Washington, were playmates who developed a type of sign language when she was seven years old. The invented a language with around sixty signs.It was not ideal though and Helen had become very difficult to be around. She would throw epic temper tantrums kicking, yelling, and raging. Many of the family’s friends and acquaintances believed that Helen should be placed in an institution for her and the family’s own good. Helen’s mother came across an article written by none other than Charles Dickens (we will have an episode on him I promise and near the Holidays please look up Neil Gaiman reading a Christmas Carol). The article mentioned a teacher by the name of who had had success teaching another deaf and blind child, Laura Bridgman. This here becomes a who is who of the time. Helen was referred to Alexander Graham Bell who was working with deaf children at the the time (yes, the inventor of the telephone). I promise you there will be much name dropping in this episode. Helen became great friends with many people you might recognize.At the Perkins Institute for the Blind the director felt that one of the most recent graduates would be best for Helen, Anne Sullivan began her 49-year relationship as mentor and teacher to Hellen. The first word that Anne taught Helen to fingerspell was ‘doll’ so that Helen could understand the gift Anne brought her (Please check out the show notes for the attached fingerspelling chart and try to spell words out with your friends).This was not an easy process, remember Helen was known for her wild tantrums. Anne insisted that she and Helen go somewhere isolated from others so that there could be complete focus and Anne could teach Helen finger spelling by making the shapes of the letters on Helen’s palm. This worked. Helen learned 30 words that day.

So most of this you probably knew or at least had an idea of but here is what you might not be aware of. Her temper showed her to be willful but willful means tenacious. She did not give up easily even when the struggle was long and hard. It took Helen twenty-five years to teach herself to speak so that others could understand her.

Helen had earned a reputation and had become somewhat famous. When she decided to attend college she became friends with a writer named Mark Twain (he wrote Huck Finn). A very wealthy oil executive was so moved by Helen that he agreed to pay for her entire education at Radcliff College where Helen attended with Anne by her side to interpret the lessons. Helen even wrote her autobiography called The Story of My Life with the help of John Macy )who would later marry Anne.

Helen, after college, became a very involved social activist. She gave lectures all over the East coast and worked tirelessly for those who were also disabled. Helen worked hard for women’s rights, women's suffrage, labor rights, socialism and pacifism (which means a nonviolent solution to every problem). Helen even testified before Congress for the welfare of blind people in the United States. In 1915 she worked with city planner George Kessler to create Helen Keller International. 1920 Helen helped found the ACLU.

During Helen’s formative years the press had been supportive and kind to her until her political beliefs wavered from the center line. Helen became attracted to socialism as a way for every American to have a level and fair ability to access food, education, housing, and healthcare. She became a member of A member of the Socialist Party of America and the Industrial Workers of the World

This was a time of the railroad and cotton barons who enjoyed tremendous wealth and her views on this system where states in the press to be from “mistakes sprung out of the manifest limitations of her development.”The Brooklyn Eagle. In other words, she was mistaken because she was blind though no one had made this claim before. Her response to the paper was, “At that time the compliments he paid me were so generous that I blush to remember them. But now that I have come out for socialism he reminds me and the public that I am blind and deaf and especially liable to error. I must have shrunk in intelligence during the years since I met him. ... Oh, ridiculous Brooklyn Eagle! Socially blind and deaf, it defends an intolerable system, a system that is the cause of much of the physical blindness and deafness which we are trying to prevent.” Even though her views were thought to be so radical the Rockefeller owned press refused to print her articles she decided to fight for what she felt was right and publicly protested until the newspaper backed down and printed her articles.

Even into her old age, Helen continued to advocate for others. In 1946 she worked for American Foundation of Overseas Blind. For them, she traveled to 35 countries from 1946-1957. At 75 she did a 40,000 mile trip in Asia. During her life, she met every U.S. President from Grover Cleveland to Lyndon B. Johnson

I hope you see why Helen Keller is so important. She was more than an inspiring story and more than a student. She was handed a path in her life that many would have been just happy to have survived but with help and with her determination she lived a full life of travel, friends, and accomplishments that shaped the lives of everyone around her.

If you can head over to the website to see images of Helen Keller, her teachers, some more of her very famous friends (Charlie Chaplin), and take a look at how to do fingerspelling. My cousins and I spent an entire summer driving our parents nuts talking only in fingerspelling.

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16 min
October 10, 2018 Nellie Bly: Mental Health Crusader and Investigative Journalist
There are some people who cannot abide cruelty or injustice in the world and will do literally anything to mange things right. At a time when women were struggling for basic rights Nellie Bly took her power which was her writing and journalism to take on institutions that housed those who were not mentally well.

“That such an institution could be mismanaged, and that cruelties could exist ‘neath its roof, I did not deem possible. I always had a desire to know asylum life more thoroughly–a desire to be convinced that the most helpless of God’s creatures, the insane, were cared for kindly and properly”

Excerpt From
The Collected Works of Nellie Bly (Annotated)
Nellie Bly

She was a writer at The New York World in 1887 and decided to have herself committed to Blackwell Island asylum so she, the 23 year old put on a disguise and called herself Nellie Moreno and pretended to be an immigrant. Nellie was one of the first to go undercover at the asylum so she could give a voice to those who did not have one. The article she wrote about her first hand experience printed as Behind Asylum Bars but more commonly known as called Ten Days in a Madhouse. It was tremendously popular and Nellie was released thanks to the newspaper attorney.

Based on her work the committee of appropriations provided 1 million dollars more to those with mental impairments in the 1880s.

After a month she returned to Blackwell with a Grand Jury panel. Much of what she saw that was awful had been corrected thanks to her shining a light on injustice. Food and sanitation had been made better and the meanest of the workers had been sent away.

I could do an entire season on Nellie and she will show up again for her jaunt around the world in 80 days but this story of a person who did not have the right to even vote or do much of anything without a guardians signature changed an entire institution with her bravery and her words.
Nellie lived from 1864 until 1922 and made her time her full of adventure and causes. Just reading her story has made my world feel a little brighter and more possible.
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14 min
September 20, 2018 Annie Oakley: The History of The Circus
Welcome to this weeks I Can't Believe that Happened your history podcast for kids or curious grownups so I thought that we would start today with the more unusual circus act and unusual is just because it wasn't traditionally what you would think of when you're thinking of a circus act there were no elephants but that that doesn't make this woman any less impressive her name was Annie Oakley and she was born in 1860 and things did not start out easy for her.
Annie was born in Ohio and her father died when she was really young and she sent off to a farm when she with ten. Annie was treated really badly by the people who are taking care of her and she ran away and found her mother so she supported her family by going out and hunting and shooting game in the woods and selling the meat to a shopkeeper and she was an amazing shot. She was fantastic with a gun and her skills actually paid off the mortgage on her mother's house and she would enter shooting matches and toured as a champion.
This is part of her story is problematic for me I have I have a teenager and I have children. Annie went into a match and shot against a champion name Butler and At 15 she beat him in the competition and he fell in love with her and they got married the next year. I was struggling on whether I should include that part of this or not but it is part of history and that is what happened I don't feel terribly comfortable with that part of her story but history very rarely makes me comfortable.
Around 1882 is when Annie took the name Oakley and she join the vaudeville circuit which was known to be kind of a very low brow sort of entertainment but she really distinguished herself because she insisted on wearing more conservative costumes and at what are the events in St. Paul Minnesota and 1884 she attracted the attention of Sitting Bull who gave her the name t I am so sorry I am horrible pronunciation but translates to little sure shot and she rose through the show business ranks and joined the Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Circus and 1885 where she stayed for 17 years.
We think of circus is as kind like a cool thing this show was so important and so exciting and it helped her become an absolute legend but she was also I will see you the whole United States and the world Annie Oakley with the Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West show with even taken to London in 1887 where she got to meet Queen Victoria who called her "a very clever a little girl." and she absolutely was the British invasion in reverse. Annie Oakley was all over the British papers.
Annie did leave the Wild West show for a few years because she had a real issue with a fellow sharpshooter at Lilian Smith and things got so bad that Oakley departed and left the show at the end of the London engagement and she returned to the stage and she also toured with a different wild West show. When Smith left the Buffalo Bill's show Annie rejoined them for another three-year tour of Europe that began in 1889 at the Paris Exposition.
You might remember at the beginning of this that Annie Oakley began life incredibly poor and had a very difficult childhood and she was known for being so against spending money that she would actually siphon off lemonade and carry it back to her own tent. She's known for saying things like" I've made a good deal of money and my time but I never believed in wasting a dollar of it." She was an incredible person for giving to charities they gave money to orphans and she was really fantastic she did earn more money than any performer in the show except for Cody.
Annie Oakley was actually known for doing things like shooting the cigarette out of her partner's mouth she is unparalleled in her marksmanship definitely worth a look over and amazing person.
Sometimes you might hear things about the newspapers and telling stories got it back in the early 1900s there was very little that stopped news reporters from saying whatever they really wanted to and I'm sure that's gonna be another episode to you because there's a lot of talk about that now. In 1910 a very famous newspaperman called William Randolph Hearst published a fake article claiming that she was in jail for stealing. This hurt Annie tremendously because her highest ambition was to be considered a lady and she did file a lawsuit against the newspaper for liable.
In 1913 she decides to retire and with her husband Butler that the man she had been married to for a very long time and they set up in Maryland and North Carolina. She would give hunting and shooting lessons to other women and performed at charity events. Entering into World War I Annie offered to raise up a group of amazing female sharpshooters but the government ignored her so instead she raise money for the Red Cross and by giving shooting demonstrations at army camps and all around the country. Annie died November 3, 1926, and I and her husband who she's been married to for 50 years passed away 18 days later.
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10 min
August 06, 2018 Clyde Beatty The Amazing Animal Trainer: History of The Circus A History Podcast For Kids and Curious Grown Ups
Podcast for kids Perfect for Homeschool learn all about the history of the circus and one of the most famous lion tamers in history, Clyde Beatty
Clyde Beatty was born in 1903 in Bainbridge Ohio. He was so inspired after seeing his first circus he decided to start his own when he was 9 using his own pets as acts and neighbors as an audience. When Clyde was 17 he decided to move on from his backyard to a real circus. He began his animal training career with four polar bears. In his 20 is he become the youngest animal trainer. Clyde is famous for wearing the Safari style outfit with a pith helmet and carrying a whip and a chair into the ring with wild cats. In some acts he would have lions, tigers, cougars, and hyenas in the same act. Clyde appeared on television and radio crossing over from big top fame to silver screen notoriety. Clyde married an aerialist named Harriet Evans who trained by Clyde became an animal trainer for the circus as well. He was also famous for saying that big cats can only- be trained never tamed!
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9 min
June 05, 2018 3 Lion Tamers You Have Never Heard Of: A For Kids History Podcast
3 Famous Lion Tamers in history from Clyde Beatty's iconic lion tamer look, to the brilliant and creative Irina Bugrimove, to the exceptional Mabel Stark. Learn some great fact to astound friends and teachers!
10 min
May 25, 2018 The History of Carousels A For Kids Podcast
Hello everyone and welcome to this week's I Can't Believe That Happened. Last week we wrapped up the history of dogs segment and if you haven't listened please go to Itunes and take a listen especially about the WWI pit bull hero Sgt. Stubby who saved his unit. I am sure I will do another segment on dogs. Please leave comments if you have a topic you would like me to cover. This month I have been really starting to feel like Summer is here and when I think about Summer I think carnivals and circuses. So until I start to get fussy we are going to be learning all about the histories of circuses and carnivals. Make sure you let your more wild friends know that the next episode will be.....lion tamers!
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8 min