Most of us know the face of the jovial, mustachioed Chef Boyardee on a can of Beefaroni, smiling at you from the shelf on the grocery aisle. But Boyardee isn't a made-up mascot for a brand of Italian-American food. His real name was Ettore Boiardi, and in this episode, Mrs. Allgood and Mr. Rixon explore his life story, which is an intersection of immigration, industrialization, and business success in the United States. 

For much of the 20th century, infantile paralysis, or polio, was a public health crisis in the United States. In 1916 alone, polio took the lives of six thousand Americans, and left thousands more paralyzed. But in 1954, after several years of tireless research, Jonas Salk developed a vaccine that would make polio an afterthought. In this episode, Mrs. Allgood and Mr. Rixon will explore the life of Jonas Salk, the science of polio and its impact on public life, how a president raised awareness around the disease, and how Salk became a national hero.

On May 29, 1851 a former slave gave a speech at the annual Women’s Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio which would go down as one of the most powerful speeches in American history. That slave had changed her name to Sojourner Truth, and she's the topic our latest episode. Mrs. Allgood will explore Truth's difficult upbringing as a slave in upstate New York, how she ultimately gained her freedom, and the loneliness that often accompanied her struggles as a black woman abolitionist fighting not only against slavery, but inequality experienced by women.

Welcome to the very first episode of Who Knew? A History Podcast! In this episode, Mrs. Allgood and Mr. Rixon discuss Thomas Jefferson: teenage millionaire, paleontologist, and noted coffee drinker. Wait, what?! Those aren't usually facts you hear about with Thomas Jefferson, but we decided to change things up and explore some of of Jefferson's many interests, along with his more famous exploits.