In Part 2 we continue to explore the relentlessly interesting life of Joe Carstairs, known as the fastest woman on water. We cover her impressive series of wins, the records she broke, and her years long pursuit of the famed Harmsworth Trophy against Gar Wood, the cup’s all time most successful competitor. In this episode we meet both Ruth Baldwin, the love of Joe’s life, and Lord Tod Wadley, a doll that would become increasingly important to Joe, adding another layer to her reputation as an eccentric. We cover her life after she retires from racing and her purchase of Whale Cay, an island in the British West Indies, now the Bahamas, where she would spend the next four decades. Join me as we journey back in time and continue to uncover the fascinating life of Joe Carstairs.
Joe Carstairs is remembered for being the fastest woman on water in the 1920s. She raced power boats, won trophies, and loved adventure and speed. But her life was so much more than races and fast machines. Born in 1900, Joe was a British eccentric, an heiress, openly a lesbian, and shed many gender conformities of her day. She served with the American Red Cross in France during WW1, established the X Garage, a chauffeuring business employing a staff of all female drivers and mechanics who had learned their skills while serving during the war, and after receiving some notoriety from racing, Joe bought Whale Cay, an Island in the Bahamas, which she ran almost as if it were her own country. Her life was so full and colorful it became clear early on that this would have to be a two-part series. This is part one of a deep dive into the relentlessly fascinating life of Joe Carstairs, the fastest woman on water.
On September 30th, 1955 the life of film icon James Dean was tragically cut short while he was driving his brand new Porsche 550 Spyder, which he named “Little Bastard,” to its first race in Salinas when he was involved in a near head on collision. After the wreck, Little Bastard was declared a total loss and sent to a salvage yard. Some of its parts were used in other race cars and the body was toured around the US until 1960 when it disappeared. Over the years rumors of a “curse” began to circulate due to the tragedies and strange events, including one verified death, that seemed to follow the wreckage of Little Bastard, though most claims continue to be unverified. Come explore what Alec Guinness (Obi-Wan Kenobi from the Star Wars original trilogy), the death of racing enthusiast Troy Lee McHenry, the 1966 Batmobile designer George Barris, NASCAR statistics, and an innocuous fire in Fresno have to do with the history surrounding the death of James Dean and the alleged “curse” of Little Bastard.
Laughter is a universal language and today we celebrate humor through the ages by exploring three historic pranks. The first involves Anthemius of Tralles, one of the main architects involved in building the Hagia Sophia and a genius who really knew how to hold a grudge. Then we skip ahead several handfuls of centuries to uncover the Great Moon Hoax of 1835 when a newspaper editor for The Sun ignited a hoax that had everyone looking to the moon for bipedal beavers, bat-like humanoids, and even a unicorn. After that we head to the 1950s near Atlanta, Georgia where three guys, a $10 bet, a fake UFO sighting, and one unfortunate "Monkey from Mars" show us just how quickly a prank can go too far.
Bob Ross, American painter and iconic TV host of the 80s and 90s, famously told us that there are no mistakes, only “happy little accidents.” There are numerous examples of history happening by accident--archaeologists accidentally stumbling upon a find, scientists accidentally discovering a breakthrough--and today we explore four such stories. First, we travel to 1856 when a teenager accidentally discovered mauve and synthetic dye while he was on vacation, which led to the pioneering of immunology and a Nobel prize. Then we head to 1940s France, when a group of teenagers chasing after a dog accidentally stumbled upon Lascaux cave, one of the greatest prehistoric finds of all time. Then we travel to 1767 to visit the Ayutthaya kingdom just before it was invaded by Burma. Almost 200 years later, a seemingly unremarkable statue pulled from its ruins finally tells its secrets: the Golden Buddha or, Phra Phuttha Maha Suwana Patimakon, is now one of the world’s most famous statues, and if it hadn’t been for an accident in the 1950s, we would all still believe it was made of nothing more than plaster and colored glass. After that, we head all the way into the 2000s for a look at some accidental breakthrough MS research. Come join me as we uncover some of history’s most incredible happy little accidents.
In the 1880s a beast was rampaging through the deserts of Arizona. Known as the Red Ghost, this creature quickly became thrust into legend and folklore, but it was an echo of a real piece of history. The Red Ghost, which may have existed—not as a monster but as a camel—was a remnant of a piece of history largely forgotten. In 1855 the US allocated funds for the importation of camels. They were part of an experiment to determine whether camels would be useful for transportation and military operations as the US pushed it’s territory towards the Pacific. Known as the Camel Corps, the experiment would ultimately fail despite initial success. The US Civil War would put an end to the Camel Corps and the transcontinental railroad would largely reduce the need for transport animals out west. But the camels that were part of the experiment still remained, and some of them would roam free for decades throughout the Wild West. It’s time to tell their story.
Shackleton’s Endurance has been found! In this special bonus episode, we explore everything we know so far about the find. The Endurance was the ship that carried Shackleton and his crew towards what they thought would be an Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, which began in 1914. However, ice floes would prevent the explorers from ever setting foot on the mainland of Antarctica. Instead, they would embark on a two-year journey of epic survival. Against all odds, all of them would survive, and now, 106 years later, we can once again set eyes on their ship. Come hear everything we know so far about this remarkable, once in a lifetime find.
In 1846 Antoine-Joseph "Adolphe" Sax received his patent for the saxophone, but not before he cheated death at least seven times. He was so accident prone that his own mother didn’t believe he would survive childhood. His close calls with death earned him the nickname “Little Sax the Ghost.” Sax’s life was a roller coaster of ups and downs. Mired the backstabbing world of invention, he fought years of legal battles, narrowly escaped death multiple times, battled cancer in the 1850s, and still helped shape music history. Both hated and loved in his own time, Sax would revolutionize the French military band, register over 40 different patents, and invent 14 different types of saxophones as well as an entire family of saxhorns. Come explore the surprisingly tumultuous history of the saxophone.
In 1876 a bumbling group of Chicago counterfeiters broke into Abraham Lincoln’s tomb in Oak Ridge Cemetery, Illinois, after formulating a plot to steal the president’s body and use it as leverage to get counterfeiter Benjamin Boyd released from prison. Boyd worked for small-time crime boss Big Jim Kinealy, and Big Jim’s attempted heist would, with the help of a secret service informant, go down in history as an utterly bad idea. Then we jump ahead a century to explore the snarkiest tomb in history. Roy Bertelli, known as Mr. Accordion, regularly stood atop his own grave, which is a stone’s throw from Lincoln’s, to loudly play his accordion for the sole purpose of being as annoying as possible. After a row with the cemetery management over their attempt to seize his grave plot, Roy spent the rest of his life letting them know they wouldn’t be getting it back, even over his dead body. Come hear why his delightfully cantankerous story earns Mr. Accordion the gold in posthumous snark.
350 miles off the cost of Costa Rica lies the legendary Cocos Island. Over the centuries it’s been a refuge for pirates, mutinous mariners, and the obsession of hundreds of treasure hunters. Some believe it was the original inspiration for Robert Louis Stevenson's novel Treasure Island. Though little evidence exists for the purported billion dollars worth of treasure said to be hidden within its shores, it has seen centuries worth of strange and interesting history. Pirates like Captain Morgan, Benito Bonito, Captain Edward Davis, Captain Bennett Grahame, and the mutinous Captain Thompson used the island as a haven and, some believe, left treasures such as the Devonshire hoard, the fabled treasure of Lima, and pirate booty on the island. Subsequent centuries saw hundreds of treasure hunting expeditions. Some brought dynamite, one dug an irrational series of tunnels for two decades, at least eight exploded, many were evicted or arrested, and all left empty handed. In this all new episode we explore the historical figures and incredible events surrounding this island and the treasure hunting expeditions carried out by those who became obsessed with the legends surrounding this real Treasure Island.