I Didn’t Know That!: Recent Episodes
Amit Schandillia
Untold stories, unseen twists, unheard angles—That fact is stranger than fiction, is no mere truism. It’s a, well, fact. History is often seen as a drab retelling of drab events from times we have nothing to do with today. Truth is, it’s a fascinating cross-hatch of butterfly effects and domino lines, in the warp and weft of which we continue to live centuries down the line. This series explores some such stories lost in that cross-hatch.
For some intriguing albeit seemingly unrelated background, we’ll start with America. The year is 1910, seven years since Orville Wright’s first flight into aviation history. By now, flying is to the Wrights what driving would be to us later.
Enter Max Morehouse, an aviation enthusiast and a reasonably influential businessman in Columbus, Ohio.
Read the rest at https://schandillia.substack.com/p/ohio-allahabad-airmail
In the summer of 1518 somewhere in Strasbourg, Alsace (in modern France), a certain Frau Troffea broke into a spontaneous impassioned dance that would last days and kick-start what came to be known as the Dancing Plague of 1518.
So far, nobody’s quite sure of what really caused it. At one point the plague was claiming fifteen lives a day. By the time it ended, sources say, up to four hundred lay dead.
Read the rest at https://schandillia.substack.com/p/st-vitus-dancemass-hysteria-or-an…
A couple of weeks ago, I was talking to an eight-year-old named Vanya and she recounted to me a story from her fifth-grade English textbook. This quick episode is that story. With additional historical context, of course.
Why this story?
I don’t know but here it is...
Read the rest at https://schandillia.substack.com/p/a-nuremberg-story…