Citation Needed

The  Battle of the Golden Spurs  ( Flemish :  Guldensporenslag ;  French :  Bataille des éperons d'or ) was a military confrontation between the royal army of  France  and rebellious forces of the  County of Flanders  on 11 July 1302 during the  Franco-Flemish War  (1297–1305). It took place near the town of  Kortrijk  (Courtrai) in modern-day  Belgium  and resulted in an unexpected victory for th...

Alien abduction , sometimes also called  abduction phenomenon ,  alien abduction syndrome  or  UFO abduction , is a personally held belief in which the alleged "abductee" describes "subjectively real experiences" of being secretly kidnapped by non-human entities ( aliens ) and subjected to physical and psychological experimentation. [1]  Most scientists and mental health professionals explain thes...

This episode picks up on Wikipedia's list of unusual deaths, starting with the Medieval period. --- Our theme song was written and performed by Anna Bosnick. If you'd like to support the show on a per episode basis, you can find our Patreon page here .  Be sure to check our website for more details.

The  Etruscan civilization  ( / ɪ ˈ t r ʌ s k ən / ) of  ancient Italy  covered a  territory , at its greatest extent, of roughly what is now  Tuscany , western  Umbria , and northern  Lazio , [2] [3]  as well as parts of what are now the  Po Valley ,  Emilia-Romagna , south-eastern  Lombardy , southern  Veneto , and  Campania . [4]

Lapland New Forest  was a  Christmas -themed park near  Ringwood ,  Hampshire ,  UK . [1]  The park had been advertised as being a "winter wonderland" with a variety of exciting family events such as a Christmas market and a "magical tunnel of light", but the majority of the promised attractions either malfunctioned or were of a very low quality. The park closed after a week after complaints from...

The  Boston Massacre  was a confrontation on March 5, 1770, in which British soldiers shot and killed several people while being harassed by a mob in  Boston . The event was heavily publicized by leading  Patriots  such as  Paul Revere  and  Samuel Adams . [2] [3] [4]  British troops had been stationed in the  Province of Massachusetts Bay  since 1768 in order to support crown-appointed officials...

James Randi  (born  Randall James Hamilton Zwinge ; August 7, 1928 – October 20, 2020) was a Canadian-American  stage magician [3] [4] [5]  and  scientific skeptic [6] [7] [8]  who extensively challenged  paranormal  and  pseudoscientific  claims. [9]  He was the co-founder of the  Committee for Skeptical Inquiry  (CSI), and founder of the  James Randi Educational Foundation  (JREF). Randi began h...

Maximilian I  ( Ferdinand Maximilian Joseph Maria ,  Spanish :  Fernando Maximiliano José María de Habsburgo-Lorena ; 6 July 1832 – 19 June 1867) was an  Austrian   archduke  who reigned as the only  Emperor  of the  Second Mexican Empire  from 10 April 1864 until his execution on 19 June 1867. A younger brother of Emperor  Franz Joseph I of Austria , Maximilian had a distinguished career as comma...

The  Jamestown [a]  settlement in the  Colony of Virginia  was the first permanent  English settlement  in the Americas. It was located on the northeast bank of the  James (Powhatan) River  about 2.5 mi (4 km) southwest of the center of modern  Williamsburg . [1]  It was established by the  Virginia Company of London  as "James Fort" on May 4, 1607  O.S.  (May 14, 1607  N.S. ), [2]  and was consid...

The  Atari video game burial  was a mass burial of unsold  video game cartridges , consoles, and computers in a  New Mexico   landfill  site, undertaken by American  video game  and  home computer  company  Atari, Inc.  in 1983. Up until 2014, the goods buried were rumored to be unsold copies of  E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial , one of the  biggest commercial failures in video gaming  and often cited...

General   Gregor MacGregor  (24 December 1786 – 4 December 1845) was a Scottish soldier, adventurer, and  confidence trickster  who attempted from 1821 to 1837 to draw British and French investors and settlers to "Poyais", a fictional Central American territory that he claimed to rule as "Cazique". Hundreds invested their savings in supposed Poyaisian  government bonds  and land certificates, whil...

Lucia Cole was an imaginary persona that tricked a number of online publications into releasing stories about her upcoming album and celebrity collaborations.

Theodore Edward Coneys  (November 10, 1882 – May 16, 1967), known by the nickname  "Denver Spiderman" , an  American  drifter who committed a  murder  in 1941 and subsequently  occupied the attic of the victim's home  for nine months. --- Our theme song was written and performed by Anna Bosnick. If you'd like to support the show on a per episode basis, you can find our Patreon page here .  Be sure...

Times Beach  is a  ghost town  in  St. Louis County ,  Missouri , United States, 17 miles (27 km) southwest of  St. Louis  and 2 miles (3 km) east of  Eureka . Once home to more than two thousand people, the town was completely evacuated early in 1983 due to  TCDD —also known as  dioxin —contamination. It was the largest civilian exposure to this compound in the history of the US.   Our theme song...

The  Battle of Hastings [a]  was fought on 14 October 1066 between the Norman-French army of  William, the Duke of Normandy , and an English army under the  Anglo-Saxon  King  Harold Godwinson , beginning the  Norman conquest of England . It took place approximately 7 miles (11 kilometres) northwest of  Hastings , close to the present-day town of  Battle, East Sussex , and was a decisive  Norman  ...

The  Battle of Stamford Bridge  ( Old English :  Gefeoht æt Stanfordbrycge ) took place at the village of  Stamford Bridge, East Riding of Yorkshire , in England on 25 September 1066, between an English army under  King Harold Godwinson  and an invading Norwegian force led by  King Harald Hardrada  and the English king's brother  Tostig Godwinson . After a bloody battle, both Hardrada and Tostig a...

The  Hawaiian  cowboy, the  paniolo , is also a direct descendant of the  vaquero  of California and Mexico. Experts in Hawaiian etymology believe "Paniolo" is a Hawaiianized pronunciation of  español.  (The  Hawaiian language  has no /s/ sound, and all  syllables  and words must end in a vowel.) Paniolo, like cowboys on the mainland of North America, learned their skills from Mexican  vaqueros ....

The year  1816  is known as the  Year Without a Summer  (also the  Poverty Year  and  Eighteen Hundred and Froze To Death ) [1]  because of severe climate abnormalities that caused average global temperatures to decrease by 0.4–0.7 °C (0.72–1.3 °F). [2]  Summer temperatures in Europe were the coldest on record between the years of 1766–2000. [3]  This resulted in major food shortages across the  N...

Uri Geller  ( / ˈ ʊ r i   ˈ ɡ ɛ l ər / ; [1]   Hebrew :  אורי גלר ‎; born 20 December 1946) is an Israeli-British [2]  illusionist, magician, television personality, and self-proclaimed  psychic . He is known for his trademark television performances of  spoon bending  and other illusions. Geller uses  conjuring tricks  to simulate the effects of  psychokinesis  and  telepathy . [3] [4]  Geller's...

Margaret Howe Lovatt  (born Margaret C. Howe, in 1942) is a volunteer  naturalist  from  Saint Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands . In the 1960s, she took part in a  NASA -funded research project in which she attempted to teach a dolphin named Peter to understand and mimic human speech. As a child, she was inspired by a book called  Miss Kelly , a story about a cat that communicated with humans. This ins...

This episode contains is a list of cryptids, which are  animals  presumed by followers of the  cryptozoology   pseudoscientific   subculture  to exist on the basis of  anecdotal  or other evidence considered insufficient by  mainstream science . While  biologists  regularly identify new species following established  scientific methodology , cryptozoologists focus on entities mentioned in the  fol...

The Amityville Horror  is a book by American author  Jay Anson , published in September 1977. It is also the basis of a  series of films  released from 1979 onward. The book is claimed to be based on the  paranormal experiences of the Lutz family, but has led to controversy and lawsuits over its truthfulness. --- Our theme song was written and performed by Anna Bosnick. If you'd like to support th...

Prison breaks are a thing where you're in prison and you don't want to be there anymore so you leave. But not when you're allowed to. Sorry... there was no Wikipedia article to copy and paste from and I panicked. --- Our theme song was written and performed by Anna Bosnick. If you'd like to support the show on a per episode basis, you can find our Patreon page here .  Be sure to check our website...

The  Burr–Hamilton duel  was a  duel  fought at  Weehawken, New Jersey , between Vice President  Aaron Burr  and  Alexander Hamilton , the former Secretary of the Treasury. It occurred early in the morning of July 11, 1804 [1]  and was the culmination of a long and bitter rivalry between the two men. Burr shot Hamilton, while Hamilton's shot broke a tree branch above and behind Burr's head. Hamilt...

McCarthyism  is the practice of making accusations of  subversion  or  treason  without proper regard for evidence. [1]  The term refers to U.S. senator  Joseph McCarthy  (R-Wisconsin) and has its origins in the period in the United States known as the Second Red Scare, lasting from the late 1940s through the 1950s. [2]  It was characterized by heightened  political repression  and a  campaign spr...