Historically High

The Italian American Mafia was born out of the Castellamarese War. The Mafia was very much a thing in the United States prior to the war. The difference was the leadership. Old Sicilian Mafia men were called Mustache Petes. These were the guys in charge before the war. They were actually the guys that went to war. The generation of mobsters that grew up in America saw the world of organized crime...

World War 2 earned its World War moniker more so that its predecessor. It was truly a globe spanning series of events. The European Theater was condensed due to the geography of where it mostly occurred, The Pacific Theater was a whole different beast. Fought in a manner no war had ever been fought, over vast distances of ocean, countless islands, and through deadly jungles. The war in the Pacific...

If Howard Hughes is the Father of Modern Aviation. The Wright Brothers are the Granddaddies of Human Flight. Brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright developed an obsession with the defiance of gravity from a young age, when their father brought home a toy helicopter. As they grew up they decided to take a run at the newly exploded bicycle boom, giving them a source of funding for their real passion. Fl...

There was a time when religion was cool. Like when jacked dudes threw lightning and women wielded armor and spears in the heavens and under the waves. When the sun traveled across the sky being pulled by a golden chariot. When people believed in the Gods of Olympus. Greek Mythology has it all, Deities, Drama, Scandal, Affairs, like a lot of affairs, mostly by one guy, and he just so happens to be...

To put it plainly Pablo Escobar lived a crazy life. Not many people can say they survived a civil war to go on to create one of the most vicious yet successful drug cartels in history. He beat the odds of a bad upbringing and became one of the richest people in the world. From putting down a guerilla group who made their money by abducting the family members of narcos, to becoming a member of the...

It probably strange to think of a time when the security of the President of the United States wasn't a top priority. That time would be right around five days after the Civil War ended with the surrender of Robert E Lee and his confederate forces. It should have been a time of rebuilding and healing as a nation, but a man named John Wilkes Booth (you may have heard of him) took it upon himself (m...

As World War 1 rages on in Europe, new players have entered the game on both sides. Trench Warfare is still at a stalemate in Northern France but elsewhere the fighting is fierce and deadly as new weapons are unveiled on the battlefield. A new comer to the world stage in the form of the United States begins flexing its might and ends the war on the winning side. Empires begin to topple as countrie...

The Great War. The War to End All Wars. The scope of the First World War was so large it was almost unbelievable to think any conflict could surpass the destruction it wrought not just upon Europe, but many other countries as well. The Great War was the first time classic war strategy met advancements in technology designed to inflict maximum casualties. Basically fighting like you would when the...

What if I told you Rome wasn't always "Rome". After a guy named Constantine won a little civil war within the Roman Empire, he decided Rome was past its prime what with the insane corruption and all. So he set up shop in what would become one of the greatest cities in history, Constantinople. Located on the coast of the Bosphorus Straits with control of one of the richest trade routes in the known...

When you hear the term Royals, or Queen, our minds tend to take us to the British Monarchy or British national treasure musical group Queen . One of if not the longest standing monarchies still technically in power. The current Royal Family, The House of Windsor can trace its lineage back to 1066, the time of William the Conqueror, the first widely recognized Monarch of England. That almost 1000 y...

The Rock. No, not the 10x heavyweight champion Scorpion King star. Alcatraz Island is located 1.5 miles from San Francisco in the bay. It started it's life as a military installation on the west coast. After that it became a military jail. Then a federal prison. This 29 year stretch is where the legend of Alcatraz was born. From daring escapes to famous inmates, the island captured our minds throu...

Hannibal Barca or much like Cher and Bono, is known by just Hannibal, was a Carthaginian General who decided to dedicate his life to destroying Rome. Also much like Cher changed the music game, Hannibal did the same for warfare. The man was a tactical genius and came the closest to bringing down the Roman Empire since it began 520+ years earlier. He had the balls to march his army, a ragtag group...

The Bay Area in the late 1960's was a wild place to be. Free love that flooded the streets was replaced with fear. Murder has never been uncommon in a big city. Unsolved murders weren't rare either. The terror started when a man called into the local police department to report a murder and then take the credit. The Zodiac Killer as he would come to be known, took the lives of 5 people. Writing le...

I feel like I should only need to post the purpose of the Special Operations Executive to sell you on this episode so here you go "Espionage, Sabotage, and Reconnaissance in German occupied Europe during WW2. But I'll also leave you  with what Churchill told the guy in charge of this "Ministry" when it was formed "Now go and set Europe ablaze."  Plus there's a great looking new movie coming out ab...

If you've ever seen The Wild Bunch, 3:10 to Yuma, or played Red Dead Redemption series of games you're probably familiar with The Pinkertons. Created by a Scottish immigrant in the 1850's, In the beginning The Pinkerton Detective Agency did everything from spy on the confederacy during the civil war to protecting Abe Lincoln on the train ride to his inauguration. Later they made their name stoppin...

A childhood dream is realized as Professor Adam goes through the history of the WWE. From humble beginnings and multiple McMahons, the WWE grew to a multi-billion dollar empire. The brightest moments were matched by some very dark times. The WWE is celebrating it's 40th Wrestlemania this year. A Steriods trial, tons of scandals, and the Monday Night Wars couldn't kill the company. With the acquisi...

The title says it all folks. It's been a long time coming, we're talking Old Kingdom Egypt, specifically the 4th Dynasty, which was known as the Age of Pyramids. We cover it from the humble beginnings of the wondrous structures to a time when the stone giants we think of today were constructed. How were these things built? We discuss it all and come to a few of our own conclusions.  Support the sh...

If you're like us, you've probably found yourself watching a history documentary on World War 2 and thought for a moment....who built all Hitler's shit. I mean someone had to build the Autobahn, The Siegfried Line, The Atlantic Wall, Hitler's Wolfs Lair, Concentration Camps. Well one name can tie all of those together, Fritz Todd. Fritz was a high ranking Nazi and Hitler's go to guy when it came t...

When we last left Teddy he found himself with the keys to the kingdom. William McKinley's untimely assassination thrust Teddy into the Presidency and he didn't waste time using those powers to start fighting for the common man, taking on corporations to ensure a fair shake for employees, designating areas of the country as protected land for future generations to enjoy. His time in office ended du...

Teddy Roosevelt is a figure whose exploits sometimes blur the line between fiction and reality. The man who we've affectionately dubbed "Rich Forrest Gump" for the shear amount of larger than life experiences he was able to fit into his 60 years, actually began as almost the antithesis of the man he would be seen as later in life. As a child he was described as sickly, with asthma so severe he ove...

With the Super Bowl fast approaching we decided it was probably time we figured out how American Football and the NFL came about. As two life-long football fans we were pretty surprised to find out how this nationwide and global reaching phenomenon got its very humble start. The first recognized college football game took place just 4 years after the end of the Civil War. The game then would be al...

Europe in 1914 was basically a powder keg waiting for a match to set the whole thing on fire. Tensions were high in Austria Hungary as the new liberated Serbia was giving the area to be known as Bosnia ideas of independence. The problem with that is Austria wasn't really in the business of letting its occupied lands have things like freedom. Well this didn't sit well with some of the locals as you...

The Land Down Under as it exists today is very new in the grand scheme of things. During the early days of exploration it really existed only as a myth, the great southern land of legend. Once it was finally "discovered" and I say that because the first Aboriginal peoples had been there oh say roughly 60,000 years at that point, it didn't take long for the British to turn it into another colony, a...

January 17th, 1920 was the day the United States was suppose to get sober. Prohibition and the Volstead Act were officially official, and things were going to change. Prior to Prohibition things weren't great. Drunken crimes were hitting too close to home, and some thought drying out the country was the answer. What they didn't count on was the crime that came with the pursuit of supplying bootleg...

We start the final episode on Joseph Stalin as he gains full control of the Soviet Union. Prior to WW2 in Europe, Stalin consolidated power by wiping out a hefty portion of his military command structure along with anyone he perceived as a threat to his new rule. Well once Hitler decides to go back on the Nazi-Soviet non aggression pact, this decision comes back to bite Stalin almost immediately....