Shaking America: Recent Episodes
Zach Knight
Honda and Toyota survived trade wars, import quotas and xenophobia in the 1960s through the 1980s to become an economic juggernaut that reshaped the American auto industry.
Sources
The Keiretsu Advantage by Jasper Boers from the Yale Economic History Journal
The New, Improved Keiretsu by Katsuki Aoki and Thomas Taro Lennerfors
Lessons from the US-Japan Trade War of the 1980s from NPR's All Things Considered
The Import Quota that Rebuild the Auto Industry by Wells King and Dan Vaughn Jr
Outnumbered and surrounded by Nazi forces, Lieutenant John R Fox made a last stand in the hills of northern Italy. In a desperate final act of bravery, Fox ordered an artillery strike on his own location just as the Nazis overran his position, killing hundreds of the enemy and sacrificing himself.
In the 1870s locust swarms of biblical proportions descended onto the Great Plains, devouring everything in their path. Billions of locust blocked out the sun and devastated America’s agriculture, creating a national emergency unlike any other.
Sources include:
The book Locust: The Devastating Rise and Mysterious Disappearance of the Insect that Shaped the American Frontier by Jeffrey Lockwood
The Biogeosciences article “A probe into the different fates of locust
swarms in the plains of North America and East Asia” by G. Yu, D. Johnson, X Ki and Y. Li
The Kansas Historical Society article “Grasshopper Plague of 1874”
The BBC web article “Why Do Locusts Swarm?”
The poor Irish farmers of Northern Ireland rose in armed rebellion in 1770 after their British landlords evicted thousands of them from their homes.
Sources:
A History of Ireland by Jonathan Barden
Lord Donegall and the Hearts of Steel by W.A. Maguire from Cambridge's Irish Historical Studies
The Battle of Gilford byD E McElroy from the Craigavon Historical Society
In 1862, during the American Civil War, Confederate rebels Gabriel Rains and his brother George Washington Rains changed warfare forever. They ordered their men to place specially made explosive torpedoes into the ground as they retreated from the Battle of Yorktown, creating the world’s first land mines. Their invention would go on to become one of the most destructive and pervasive weapons ever created.
In rural Minnesota a farmer named Olaf Ohman found a mysterious runestone. Engraved into the stone was an epic tale of adventure and bloodshed, apparently written by Norse explorers. The discovery of the Kensington Runestone sparked a worldwide discussion about what we know about pre-Columbus European exploration.
Sources:
The Kensington Stone: Anatomy of a Hoax by Harold Edwards from the Minnesota Archaeological Society
The Non-Enigmatic Origins of the Kensington Stone by Helmer Gustavson from the Scandinavian Archaeological Society
Whats the truth behind Minnesota’s Kensington Runestone? by Henry Erlandson from the Star Tribune
The White Hand Gang was a coalition of Irish street gangs in Brooklyn known for terrorizing Italian immigrants. Even among New York criminals they were notorious for liberal use of violence, lynching dozens of Italians along the waterfront. The White Hand Gang’s reign of terror ended in 1924 after a violent confrontation with a young Al Capone at a waterfront bar.
Sources:
Capone: The Man and the Era by Laurence Bergreen
Five Families: The Rise, Decline and Resurgence of America's Most Powerful Mafia Empires by Selwyn Raab
American Mafia: The History of its Rise to Power by Thomas Repetto
In 1969 it was not uncommon for American rivers to burst into flames. Filled with sewage, oil, and agricultural waste, several major rivers were so polluted that they caught fire multiple times.
Here's the story of how the US almost destroyed its rivers, and how it eventually brought them back from the brink.
During the Vietnam War the United States military attempted a strange form of psychological warfare. Hoping to demoralize and terrify the Viet Cong, American forces used helicopter-mounted speakers to project ghostly screams, distorted Buddhist chants and fabricated sounds of dead Vietnamese soldiers begging for a proper burial.
For hundreds of years an ancient Aztec temple laid buried beneath the busy streets of Mexico City, hidden and forgotten.
Sources:
The book Broken Spears: the Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico
The Book The Conquest of Mexico by Hugh Thomas
The article Mexico City’s Secret Underground World from the BBC
The article Under Mexico City from the US Archaeology Journal
How tough was George Washington in a fist fight? Evidence suggests he was tougher than you.
Sources:
Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow
https://nwhof.org/hall_of_fame/bio/131
Max Baer is known in boxing circles as one of the hardest hitting men in combat sports history. Widely feared in the early 1920s and into the 1930s, Baer is credited with killing two different fighters with the destructive power in his right hand. As thoughtful and empathetic outside the ring as he was a savage within it, Baer became an icon of the sport through his wild life and reckless fighting style. He gained worldwide recognition when he defeated Hitler’s favorite boxer, Max Schmeling, with the Star of David sewn into his trunks in recognition of his Jewish heritage.
Sources:
Cinderella Man by James Schaap
Joe Louis: The Great Black Hope by Ernie Bak
https://boxrec.com/wiki/index.php/Max_Baer
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/max-baer
How the Soviet Union conned the United States out of $600 million worth of grain subsidies.
Sources
The book The Great American Grain Robbery and Other Stories by Martha Hamilton
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/how-satellite-maps-help-prevent-another-great-grain-robbery
https://www.usda.gov/sites/default/files/documents/podcast-wasde-transcript.pdf
The Yamato was the heaviest and most powerfully armed battleship ever constructed. She carried the most formidable array of naval firepower in history, including three turrets with 69.4 foot long gun barrels — the largest guns ever mounted at sea. The Yamato departed from the dockyards at Hiroshima in 1942 with the objective of defeating the United States in the Pacific.
For over two hundred and fifty years the isolated island nation of Japan was closed to all foreigners. American Commodore Matthew Perry changed all of that when he arrived in the bay outside of modern day Tokyo and demanded at gunpoint that the Japanese open their ports.
Less than fifteen years later the feudal system in Japan had completely collapsed -- and the empire that would emerge from the chaos became a world power.
North America has a long and consistent history of trains carrying hazardous chemicals derailing and destroying small towns.
Let's go over a few examples.
The Cherokee written language was created entirely by one man, a silversmith, trader and soldier named Sequoyah.
He remains the only person in history from an illiterate people to devise a system of writing.
After the Civil War around 10,000 Confederates left the country rather than rejoin the United States. They fled to Brazil, hoping to establish a new society of plantation slavery.
New York gangster Vincent Gigante feigned insanity for decades in an attempt to avoid prosecution, wandering the streets in a bathrobe and slippers.
His lawyer claimed he was not mentally fit for trial, but in reality Gigante was the most powerful Mafia boss in the country for years.
During the Cold War the Soviet Union tricked the American military into believing that the US had less long-range bomber jets than the Soviets. This resulted in a massive increase in defense spending to combat a threat that didn't exist -- the so-called "Bomber Gap".
The presidency of Ulysses S Grant was riddled with scandals, including one of the largest cases of tax evasion in American history -- the White House Whiskey Ring.
Lady Six Sky was a warrior-queen of the Maya during their Classical Age. She took a ruined city on the brink of destruction and turned it into a powerful kingdom filled with monumental art.
Within the ranks of the United States Military the term “Ace” is given to pilots who manage to shoot down five enemy planes. The level of skill and ability necessary to achieve this dangerous accomplishment was and is incredibly rare.
During World War II a farm boy from Wisconsin named Richard Bong became the top flying ace of the US, downing forty Japanese aircraft throughout the conflict. He would be named the “Ace of Aces”, the deadliest fighter pilot in American history.
At the height of the Cold War the US government developed a plan to launch a nuclear warhead into the moon as a show of military strength. Named Project A119, this absurd program was spearheaded by the Air Force in 1958 and has since been declassified.
Abraham Lincoln is one of the most lauded presidents in American history. But could he fight? We take an in-depth look into Honest Abe's fighting ability.
Led by a woman named Elizabeth Peratrovich, Alaskan Natives campaigned for civil rights in 1945 -- twenty years before Martin Luthor King Jr.
During World War II more than six thousand Alaska Natives volunteered to serve as the eyes and ears of the US military in the northern territory. They were instrumental in defending America against a new type of weapon: Japanese balloon bombs being floated across the Pacific.
Cheng Chui Ping, known in the New York criminal underworld as Sister Ping, was a human smuggler. She moved thousands of Chinese immigrants into America using her grocery shop as a front.
A vicious and powerful figure in organized crime, Ping controlled a multi million dollar snakehead smuggling ring, earning her the moniker “The Mother of All Snakeheads”.
Lincoln Ellsworth was a wealthy polar explorer who surveyed Antarctica by air in 1935. He and his men attempted to map the last uncharted continent by in a single engine plane even as massive storms and brutal conditions pushed them to their limits.
During the War of 1812 the British army captured Washington, D.C. and began burning the city to the ground. They were interrupted by an act of nature unlike anything seen before or since in the Capitol.
A massive hurricane and tornado combination hit the Washington, dousing the fires and crippling the British forces. Interpreted by the American civilians as an act of God, this powerful storm helped push the British out of the region and is remembered as one of the more unusual events in US history.
Isadore Blumenfeld, also known as Kid Cann was an organized crime boss who operated out of Minnesota. After the passing of Prohibition in 1920 Blumenfeld used the newly created black market to make himself a fortune in illegal liquor sales, becoming the region’s most successful bootlegger. He was known for his flashy personality and way of dressing and for his reputation for violence.
His forty year career was one of the most successful reigns of a crime lord in America.
During World War II a select group of Japanese American soldiers were chosen for a bizarre secret military experiment. Convinced that Japanese people had a distinctive scent, the US Army attempted to train dogs to recognize and hunt down those with Japanese blood. To accomplish this they used new recruits as dog bait -- forcing the dogs to seek out and attack the soldiers.
The title of first European to discover the Americas is credited to Icelandic sailor Leif Erickson, but the first actual attempt by Europeans to settle the New World was led by a woman named Gudrid.
Gudrid and her husband would found a village and explore the continent, eventually causing a series of violent encounters with the native peoples.
She would go on to earn the title of "The Far Travelled" and would become one of the preeminent explorers of her era.
In 1968, ten days before the Summer Olympics in Mexico City, around ten thousand mostly student demonstrators gathered in Tlatelolco Square to protest their country’s authoritarian regime. In response, the Mexican Army massacred the protestors, opening fire on the crowd and killing hundreds.
In the year 1780, deep in the Pine Barren forests of New Jersey a gang of marauders, criminals and British sympathizers called the Pine Robbers terrorized local American colonists. These bandits would emerge from the Barrens to steal from travelers, break into homesteads and raid local towns before escaping back into the woods.
They called the dense forest home for years, killing anyone who attempted to bring them to justice.
Joseph Medicine Crow was a scholar, a cultural leader, and a writer. He also was an incredible soldier who thoroughly and repeatedly humiliated the Nazis in World War II. By taking an enemy hostage, taking an enemy's weapon, stealing an enemy's horse and leading a successful war party Joseph accomplished all of the prerequisites for becoming a War Chief of the Crow, a remarkable achievement considering he was fighting in a modern war with machine guns and Panzer tanks.
Joe was the Last War Chief of the Plains tribes, and his amazing story would prove inspirational for generations of Crow people.
Before Party Pizzas and Pizza Rolls, there was Rose Totino. A first-generation Italian American, Rose's hard work and ingenuity created a multi-million dollar frozen pizza empire while popularizing pizza across the Midwest and beyond.
Banning books is a practice that has existed since the first book came off the printing press. Even in the US, a country that prides itself on its free speech, books have been banned for various (and almost always illegitimate) reasons.
Here is a short history of banned books in the US and how the practice harms American society.
Jean Lafitte was an infamous pirate and smuggler who ran the black market port of Barataria in the swamps of Louisiana. Flamboyant and charismatic, Lafitte was a public enemy of the US government until he helped Andrew Jackson defend New Orleans from a British attack in the War of 1812.
Around 1100 CE the massive city of Cahokia dominated the Mississippi floodplain. It contained a variety of colossal earthen mounds and had a population of 30,000 people, making it the largest city in North America at the time.
Two hundred years later the city was completely deserted.
What happened to Cahokia and its people?
The Landsat Program is a NASA-led operation that shows us earth from space. It helps us understand our environment and has saved millions of lives by allowing scientists to predict crop yields worldwide.
At the heart of the program's early years was a woman named Valerie Thomas, a brilliant young African American physicist who would become one of the most respected inventors of her generation.
Joe Louis and Max Schmeling fought each other in two iconic, culturally significant boxing matches. The two men remained defiant in the face of racism and became good friends after their careers ended.
The covert installation of Weather Station Kurt was the only armed German incursion into North America. This top-secret automatic weather station was built by Nazi scientists in an effort to win the war in the Atlantic.
In the 1960s the CIA covertly recruited tens of thousands of Hmong guerilla fighters to combat communism in southeast Asia. After the US backed out of the conflict in Vietnam these fighters and their families were abandoned by the American government and faced horrific persecution.
After the events of the Lynching at Sweetwater, a group of small ranchers banded together to fight back against the corporate cattle barons that control Wyoming.
Jim Averell and Ellen Watson were lynched after attempting to keep their land from a local oligarch, sparking a violent conflict between small-time ranchers and wealthy cattle barons.
Ken Eto, better known as Tokyo Joe within the Chicago criminal underworld, ran an extensive multi-million dollar gambling ring. He later survived three gunshots to the head and then went on to help take down the Chicago Mob.
Days before the Fall of Saigon to the Viet Cong the US military would attempt the largest helicopter evacuation in world history.