The Past and The Curious: A History Podcast for Kids and Families

Episode 81: The Washington Monument is just one of many Obelisks in the world. Somehow several originals from Egypt have wound up all over the globe. And they inspired a stinky imitation in Australia, known as Thornton's Scent Bottle.

The Washington Monument is the tallest, but it took DECADES for it to be completed - for a bunch of reasons.

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Thank you to our sponsor Kids’ Chemical Solutions and their chemistry comic book series filled with colorful characters and exciting storylines. Order now at www.kidschemicalsolutions.com

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Episode 80: Fabian Garcia, changed agriculture (and people's taste) with his ground breaking New Mexico No. 9 Chile, which is the genetic ancestor of nearly every chile grown in southwest America today. His dedication and intelligence with plants changed lives, livelihoods, and culture.

Elliot Michener, on the other hand, was a career criminal whose life was changed for the better when he was put in charge of a garden on Alcatraz Island.

Thank you to our sponsor Kids’ Chemical Solutions and their chemistry comic book series filled with

colorful characters and exciting storylines. Order now at www.kidschemicalsolutions.com

Maria Mitchell was the first American to discover a new comet, which brought her great fame, but her career in the 1800s as a professor at Vassar College left her greatest legacy. In the next century, Ann Hodges was not looking to get involved in objects from space, but one of them crashed into her house anyway. The Past and The Curious is an Airwave Media Podcast

Melly Victor of Stoopkid Stories joins us for the story of Ella Fitzgerald's first performance at the famous Apollo Theatre. Also, we talk about the history of tuning, how the Treaty of Versailles that ended World War I also tried to standardize musical tuning, and how singers hurt their voices to keep up with instrumentalists raising the relative pitch.

The Virginia became a major attraction when it got stuck in a cornfield, which is a place a boat does not belong. Also, The Meachums escaped slavery, and educated hundreds of children in a school known as the Floating Freedom School. Their school in a steamboat was untouched by an unjust Missouri law while in the middle of the river.

The Wright Brothers became the first to fly a controlled powered aircraft with a pilot onboard, but just a few days before, Smithsonian Secretary James Langley almost beat them. His failure didn't stop the Smithsonian from claiming the first flight. But Orville and Wilber weren't the only two who fought for their place in history. Their sister Katharine did too.

Here's two more underwear stories that aren't in the the book I See Lincoln's Underpants (which is now available!) First Benedict Arnold betrays the American Army but gets caught thanks to something hiding in someone's underwear. Also When NASA planned to get someone to the moon, they needed a special Space Suit, and the only designers and makers up to the challenge had only made underwear for Playtex before the marvelous work of technology.

In the 2000s an anonymous American man found an egg worth millions. It was a Faberge Imperial Egg and it's story is fascinating. This episode traces the origin of the Faberge Eggs, and also the story of how it wound up in a kitchen in America’s Midwest. Also, as the Gold Rush boomed in the 1800s there were not enough actually, edible eggs to feed all the new faces in California. As a result, an Egg War developed over unusual eggs laid by murres on an island chain off the the coast of San Francisco

Episode 73: Ralph Baer fled Nazi Germany and settled in America where he eventually created the first home video game console, known as the Magnavox Odyssey. Not long after Ralph's creation, Jerry Lawson, a Black computer engineer, built on that idea and lead the team that created the first video game cartridge. Both men have very interesting lives, and are a huge part of gaming history. Things they did changed your life!