Fantastic Footnotes Podcast

I am the absolute queen of rabbit holes, and this story is no exception. I grew up in Kansas City and vividly remember a bank called Boatmen’s Bank. The bank had a big steamboat as its logo, and I was recently reminded of it when I saw the logo on some memorial bricks outside the City Market in Kansas City. Being a tour guide at the Arabia Steamboat Museum, I naturally wondered if the bank had any...

This month on The Note Stack we talk about some new research on Homo naledi burials, a Japanese Hell Ship, a mystery cave painting, and the reconstruction of the Lighthouse of Alexandria. Instead of Listener Comments Chris tells us the tale of the WWII Devil Duck (yes, she was a real duck) and then we share our Substack picks and what we are reading and watching. News Roundup Homo Naledi Burial Sc...

Soccer is truly a worldwide sport, which sometimes comes with worldwide issues. Today we’re going to talk a little bit about how politics affects international soccer. From outright bans and boycotts to contentious, and potentially contentious, games, let’s see how the World Cup has been shaped by politics. Let’s start with teams that have been outright banned. 1950 – Germany and Japan Germany and...

At 3:04 p.m. on Feb. 6, 1958, a disaster occurred that still ranks among the greatest disasters in sports. As the Manchester United team was returning from a game in Yugoslavia, their plane crashed, killing 23 people. Manchester United is an English football team (soccer for you Yanks). They were making their mark in 1958 and were famous as the Busby Babes. Their manager, Matt Busby, was making he...

During WWI, as men left for the front, women stepped up to do all the things that needed to be done on the home front. They took care of the family, worked the farm, built the bombs, and some of them played soccer. As men left to go fight the war, many women started working in factories. During breaks, they were encouraged to socialize and even play sports. One popular pastime was soccer. Many mun...

Housekeeping Thank you all so much! We are up to 1.28K downloads on the podcast so thanks to each and every one of you! Also, if you want to give us a little boost, we would love a review, rating, FB Share, restack, etc. Anything to help us get to the top of that algorithm! Also, June is WORLD CUP MONTH! My son Ethan is going to be helping me host the next three episodes in June and we are going t...

In today’s episode we talk about the explosion on board the Steamboat Pennsylvania and its connection to Mark Twain. If you are a frequent listener you know I generally go into more detail here, but time got away from us here this week, so I will post a longer article about the Pennsylvania in the next few days. Check out that article because it will have the show notes and sources. This is a publ...

The sleepy little suburb of Merriam, Kansas actually has quite a history. This little suburb of Kansas City has hosted two historic amusement parks (one was George Kessler’s first project), an early Quaker mission, was the site of a plane crash in WWII and a spur of the Santa Fe Trail in the 1800’s, and was on the leading edge in the fight for school desegregation. In the early 1860s, David Gee Ca...

While perusing my Facebook feed I came across a Bored Panda Article that asked an interesting question. “What are real life instances of still working booby traps that have been set off at historical sites that may have killed or seriously injured archeologists or their workers?” Well, of course, I’m invested now… what a great question! I have a limited background in archeology so I didn’t think m...

By some estimates, over 3,000 steamboats sank on America’s waterways between 1820 and 1860. Even more were lost into the early 1900s after the heyday of steamboats had already started to fade. Most of those sinkings were due to the usual reasons such as snags, collisions, fire, and explosions. But there’s one cause you don’t hear about as often: the great and powerful tornado. The most famous case...

This week, we’re introducing two new series on Fantastic Footnotes .This is the first episode of one of them— The Note Stack . The Note Stack is our space to talk about new research and news stories in history and archaeology, make corrections or add-ons to past episodes, and just share what Chris and I have been into lately. We’re also rolling out another series called From the Margins . In that...

The Shroud of Turin is one of the most studied—and most debated—objects in history. Believed by some to be the burial cloth of Jesus, the linen measures roughly 14 feet long and bears the faint image of a man who appears to have been crucified. But is it authentic… or a medieval creation? In this episode, we take a step back from the claims and ask a simpler question: what kind of evidence would w...

On June 9, 1865, Charles Dickens’ life changed forever. He was involved in a train crash that killed 10 people, injured 49, and stuck with him the rest of his life. In this episode we tell the story of the Staplehurst Train Crash, explain what happened to Dickens after the tragedy, and share about the ghost story (featuring a rail tragedy) that he published just a year later. This time of year you...

This week was the 50th Anniversary of the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald and this tragic story has been highlighted on news stories and podcasts across the country. If you haven’t heard the story, on November 9, 1975, the “Big Fitz” headed out from Superior, Wisconsin on its way to Detroit, Michigan with a full cargo of taconite ore pellets. On November 10, she was sailing in a storm and was los...

On September 8, 1934, the Morro Castle caught fire on its return trip from Havana to New York. The disaster was a potpourri of startling circumstances, from the captain dying to the ship being caught between two storms. Ultimately at least 137 people were killed and the ship was left as a burning hulk on a New Jersey beach. But that is just the beginning of the story. In this episode we talk about...

On September 8, 1934, the Morro Castle caught fire on its return trip from Havana to New York. The disaster was a potpourri of startling circumstances, from the captain dying to the ship being caught between two storms. Ultimately at least 137 people were killed and the ship was left as a burning hulk on a New Jersey beach. But that is just the beginning of the story. In this episode we talk about...

Bardstown: Hospitality, History, and Bourbon by Dixie Hibbs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bardstown,_Kentucky https://talbotttavern.com/ https://www.invent.org/inductees/john-fitch https://www.hauntingsaroundamerica.com/post/my-old-kentucky-home-kentucky https://www.gothichorrorstories.com/death/a-return-to-bardstown-kentucky-spending-the-night-in-a-cell-at-the-jailers-inn-a-haunted-jail-in-a-town...

Here we are, back with Part 2. When last we left our intrepid explorers, David Livingstone was “lost” in Africa and Henry Morton Stanley had convinced a newspaper to finance a search for the good doctor. If you haven’t yet listened to Part 1, I would go back and do that before you listen to this. You will be missing quite an entertaining story. In the second, and final, part of our story we will t...

Here we are for the second episode of Fantastic Footnotes! This week we tackle a saying that many of us have heard, but few of us know the origins of. This story will follow two men, both with different, but very interesting lives. It will take us to the heart of Africa, the the American Civil War, England, Wales, Scotland, Turkey…. it is a real whirlwind of a story. Sit back and enjoy the first p...

Well, after months of researching, recording, and making ready, I finally present our very first episode of Fantastic Footnotes! In this episode we talk about the story of the Pied Piper, some of the different variations of that story, and finally, what we think it means. This “fairy tale” is different than many others in that there is evidence it has its origins in a real event. Something horribl...