History's Trainwrecks

Join history nerd and classicist extraordinaire, Lexie Henning, as she chats with thought leaders in academia and the entertainment industry about how they got into their field, their current research/projects, and how the ancient world inspires them. Together they strive to connect modern societies to ancient worlds, examine the practicality of going into ancient studies, and talk about why it’s...

The ghost of William McKinley appeared to him in a dream, and told him to kill Theodore Roosevelt. John Schrank was thirty-six years old, unemployed, and unhinged. During the presidential campaign of 1912, “he read in two New York newspapers that the Colonel was determined to overthrow the Constitution.” It had been eleven years since the ghost of the slain President had pointed his finger at Roos...

Herbert Hoover’s name was mud. By 1930, the Great Depression was in full swing. Fortunes had been lost, savings had been wiped out, and four million Americans were unemployed (a rate of nearly nine percent). President Hoover was widely perceived as being tone-deaf to both the gravity of the economic catastrophe and the suffering of average Americans. A lot of things got named for Herbert Hoover. “...

The 1912 convention was not the Republican Party’s finest hour. Tensions were high as one of the party’s most beloved and successful leaders was pitted against a certain loser come the fall. Roosevelt’s fired-up supporters tried to drown out the proceedings with cheers of “Roosevelt! Roosevelt!” The speaker at the lectern said wearily, “You need not hesitate to cheer Roosevelt in my presence. I ch...

The Roman Republic was a mess.   Wealth and power did what wealth and power usually does: it corrupted the political system. Rome’s money troubles, prevalent in the time of Cato the Elder (234-149 BCE) were over. The final defeat of Carthage in 146 BCE paved the way for further conquest in the Mediterranean, and the cash came rolling in.   Upper class Romans got land and slaves and money...

President Grover Cleveland was a terrible role model. He had won the presidency in 1884 and 1892 (he also won the popular vote in 1888, but the Electoral College went to Benjamin Harrison), making him both the 22nd and 24th President of the United States. He proved that it was possible to serve a term in the White House, take some time off, and then win again. The Democrats even tried to...

Ernest Hemingway didn’t hate his mother, but he said some mean things about her.   He claimed that the money she spent on a summer cottage for herself could have been used to send him to college instead. He once told a friend that if his mother was a bird and flew in a straight line, he wouldn’t hesitate to shoot at her. After his father’s suicide, Hemingway wrote, “My mother is an all time a...

Major General Ambrose Burnside was going to blow some stuff up. Burnside led troops at the battles of the Wilderness and Spotsylvania Court House in a manner described as “reluctant.” He ended up at the Siege of Petersburg, which was the aftermath of Grant’s failed attempt to defeat Lee in a pitched, decisive battle. Both sides dug trenches and waited. Grant knew his opponent had lost men he could...

Former President Theodore Roosevelt was in exile. It was self-imposed, it was him doing the kinds of things he loved—hunting animals in the wild and being out in nature—and it was as far away from the United States as he could get. He needed to get away from his successor, to whom he couldn’t help offering advice. About the way the public perceived Taft’s penchant for golf, his midday naps, and th...

The richest man in the world was on the run. President Theodore Roosevelt’s Justice Department was planning to file an antitrust suit against Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company in 1906, and the states wanted to get into the action before the Attorney General did. Multiple lawsuits were filed against the directors of the company that controlled over ninety percent of oil production in the United St...

William Howard Taft was a nice guy who didn’t really want to be President. Turns out it was his wife, Nellie Taft, who kept getting him to turn down appointments to the Supreme Court, which was his lifelong ambition. She wanted her husband to be President more than her husband wanted to be Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and she wore the pants in the Taft house. By 1905, it was clear to everyo...

Theodore Roosevelt was riding high as the election of 1904 approached. He had secured the Panama Canal (by helping create the nation of Panama). His only rival for the presidential nomination in 1904 was a sickly Senator. The American people loved his antics, even while establishment politicians feared he was too dangerous a lunatic to be running the country. American children, even though they co...

The Presidential Act of Succession of 1886 put the Secretary of State third in line for the presidency. In 1901 the Secretary of State was John Hay, who had been one of Abraham Lincoln’s two young private secretaries during the Civil War. He had known President Lincoln better than nearly anyone, and had watched one of the greatest American presidencies unfold from his front-row seat. He was respon...

When Teddy Roosevelt shot himself in the foot, he did it the same way he did everything else: boldly, energetically, and with little regard for long-term consequences. This was the approach had catapulted him to national prominence and popularity, making him among the first of that rare breed of celebrity American politicians and kicking off the twentieth-century presidency with a bang. But in thi...

George Washington was just some guy the British never heard of. General Thomas Gage, commander of British troops in America in the early days of the Revolution, made a point of not addressing George Washington by his rank, and made sure that no one else did either. Although he was following official British military policy of not giving validity to anyone in rebellion against the Crown, General Ga...

Meet Cato the Elder, a stick in the mud of the ancient Roman Republic, who felt it was his duty to keep everyone in line.  Hopefully, his descendants would be more fun. In a future episode, we'll meet his great-grandson--Cato the Younger, and find out that the apple doesn't really fall far from the tree.  The Catos.  Their family will be on the front lines of the slide from Republic...

One privilege of rank is getting to keep your pants on. In the early days of World War II, American Major General Mark Clark was on a top-secret mission in German-occupied Algiers to persuade the French commander not to resist the planned Allied invasion of North Africa, codenamed Operation Torch. On his way back to the submarine, the general worried that his wet pants (and the two thousand dollar...

Can a temper tantrum change history? Mary Todd Lincoln and her husband were off to Ulysses S. Grant's headquarters a few weeks before the end of the Civil War. It was clear the war would soon be over. This trip would be a welcome escape from Washington, and an opportunity for the First Couple to spend some quality time together. What could go wrong? Thanks for listening, and for your support. Clic...

The first episode of the History's Trainwrecks Podcast defines a historical trainwreck and their roles in history. Don't be mad because I call them trainwrecks. These people were at the top of their game, and failed within sight of their goals. Were it not for some quality they had, they might have gotten everything they wanted. Instead they ended up in relative obscurity. I give a few examples of...