IT’S HISTORY

Today we discover Chicago's forgotten streetcar tunnels, built centuries ago, they run under the Chicago river at 3 points and are sealed off from any access to the public. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to It's History in Conversation with actor, musician, and writer, Indy Neidell. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Have you ever wondered when the phenomenon of going viral started? Perhaps it can be dated back to Flagpole sitting. Pole sitting is the practice of sitting on top of a pole (such as a flagpole) for extended lengths of time, generally used as a test of endurance. A small platform is typically placed at the top of the pole for the sitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoic...

The FBI recalls, It was still dark in Manhattan on a Sunday morning, July 30, 1916, when the sky suddenly exploded with an unnatural brilliance. Two million tons of war materials packed into train cars had blown up in the Black Tom railroad yard on what is now a part of Liberty State Park. Thousands of windows shattered in lower Manhattan and Jersey City. Shrapnel pock-marked the Statue of Liberty...

The dancing plague (or dance epidemic) of 1518 was a case of dancing mania that occurred in Strasbourg, Alsace (now modern-day France), in the Holy Roman Empire in July 1518. Somewhere between 50 and 400 people took to dancing for days. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Chernobyl, most infamously known for the nuclear accident that almost wiped out Europe, occurred in Northern Ukraine and it's most associated with the nearby town of Pripyat, which was built for power plant workers and their families but evacuated and left as a ghost town due to the radioactive fallout. However, a country that is rarely mentioned when discussing the disaster is the Republic of Bel...

The message broadcast during the evacuation of Pripyat: Attention! Attention! In connection with the accident at the Chernobyl atomic power station, unfavorable radiation conditions are developing in the city of Prypiat. In order to ensure complete safety for residents, children first and foremost, it has become necessary to carry out a temporary evacuation of the city's residents to nearby settle...

The Chernobyl disaster was caused by a nuclear accident that occurred on Saturday 26 April 1986, at the No. 4 reactor in the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, near the city of Pripyat in the north of the Ukrainian SSR. It is considered the worst nuclear disaster in history and was caused by one of only two nuclear energy accidents rated at seven—the maximum severity—on the International Nuclear Event...

Mr Joseph Groves Boxhall was born in Hull, Yorkshire, on March 23,1884. He was the second child of Joseph and Miriam Boxhall, and had two sisters who survived into adulthood (a third sister died in infancy). The Boxhall family had a strong seafaring tradition; his grandfather had been a mariner, his uncle was a Trinity House buoymaster and Board of Trade official, and his father, Captain Joseph Bo...

Charles Herbert Lightoller, DSC & Bar, RD, RNR (30 March 1874 - 8 December 1952) was a British Royal Navy officer and the second officer on board the RMS Titanic. He was the most senior member of the crew to survive the Titanic disaster. As the officer in charge of loading passengers into lifeboats on the port side, Lightoller strictly enforced the women and children only protocol, not allowing an...

RMS Titanic was a British passenger liner operated by the White Star Line that sank in the North Atlantic Ocean on 15 April 1912, after striking an iceberg during her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York City. Of the estimated 2,224 passengers and crew aboard, more than 1,500 died, making the sinking at the time the deadliest of a single ship in the West[4] and the deadliest peacetime sinkin...

One of the most intriguing of the plague doctor images we've found is a painted coat of arms belonging to Theodore Zwinger III (1658-1724), a Swiss doctor and descendant of Theodore Zwinger I (1533-1588), the Swiss doctor and humanist whose Theatrum Humanae Vitae is considered, the historian Helmut Zedelmaier writes, "perhaps the most comprehensive collection of knowledge to be compiled by a singl...

In legal history, an animal trial was the criminal trial of a non-human animal. Such trials are recorded as having taken place in Europe from the thirteenth century until the eighteenth. In modern times, it is considered in most criminal justice systems that non-human persons lack moral agency and so cannot be held culpable for an act. Animals, including insects, faced the possibility of criminal...

Discovering American Heritage Through Tales of Urban Decay. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The story of New York's lost trolley network, a great American crime! Welcome to Tales of Urban Decay. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Long history shot = Centralia is a borough and near-ghost town in Columbia County, Pennsylvania, United States. Its population has dwindled from more than 1,000 residents in 1980 to 63 by 1990, to only five in 2017[9]—a result of the coal mine fire which has been burning beneath the borough since 1962. Centralia, which is part of the Bloomsburg-Berwick metropolitan area, is the least-populated mun...

Below the sewers and subways of Chicago, are over 60-miles of forgotten 19th and 20th century train tunnels. This mysterious labyrinth, once connecting the majority of the city's most prominent buildings. Has sat in abandonment and disarray for the better part of a century - today, we will uncover the forgotten story of the Chicago Tunnels. Around the turn of the century, the City of Chicago was o...

Today you will hear about how Hannibal with his army fell into an ambush and how in unusual way they got out. Will Fabius Maximus - a Roman dictator stop his plan? The Second Punic War is also full of fascinating episodes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Themistocles - an Athenian politician, a prominent strategist and ... a fugitive. In this episode we will tell you the story of this extraordinary hero from Salamina who was forced to leave Athens in the last years of his life. How much does his life differ from its depiction in the movie "300: Rise of the Empire"? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices