February 20, 2025 • 44 mins
What do a camel, a bucket and an ear all have in common? Each was, at some point, responsible for starting a war. In today's Classic episode, join Ben and Noel as they dive into true stories of weird wars fought over cartoonishly dumb things.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, Noel, riddle me this. What do a camel, a bucket,
and an ear have in common?
Speaker 2 (00:06):
An ear like on our head or like an ear
of corn? You know what?
Speaker 3 (00:11):
Prescient? Prescient? This is a classic episode. Just making sure
I understand the assignment. Riddle you that each was at
some point responsible for starting a war. So why don't
we dive into this classic episode about weird wars that
were fought for stupid reasons.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
War.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
To paraphraze, the common figure of speech is heck, it's
not a it's not a pretty thing. It's been an
unfortunately common occurrence throughout the span of human history. Some
people will even argue that it is an economic necessity.
But today we are here to tell you that war
can also be ridiculous. Hi, I'm Ben.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
I am no Ben. You gamer? You a fair weather
gamer like me?
Speaker 1 (01:22):
A fair weather gamer.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
There.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
I've had some pretty intense gaming experiences, But I don't
play video games every day. I mean I don't play games.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
That's right. It kicks you out of kindergarten because I
don't play it don't play. But yeah, there's another good war.
It never changes that's the opening line for the Fallout games,
which I'm a big fan of. And you know, the
point being that the war depicted in those games is
a future slash past post apocalyptic nuclear war, but it
(01:54):
never changes because it's all about the human costs and
about the stuff that goes on on the ground and
the way humans interact with each other. And in our
story today, animals.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Yes, animals, of course we're we're referring to actual non
human animals. But we like to begin every show with
a shout out to our favorite party animal, super producer,
Casey Pegrim. So today we want to open the story with,
as you said, Noel, a story of an animal. This
(02:26):
is a little bit of a legend. But travel back
with us to four ninety four CE. There were two
Arab tribes that were tangentially related.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Right with the dag Lebe and the Bakar.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
Perfect hold one man, I'm bad, not bad, not bad
at all, not bad at all.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
Come at us, Internet, Please come.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
At us politely or or or with a sense of humor.
That's always good. That's great. That goes a long way
with us. So this this happens in the in Arabia
in the pre Islamic era, and supposedly the story starts
when a woman named al Basos went to visit her niece,
(03:09):
a woman named Jalila bent Mura Jalila. Although she was
a member of the Baker tribe, this game be a
little confusing. She was married to a guy named Kulib
who was the leader of a different tribe, the Toglub tribe.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
Right, that's right. He was apparently a real pill about
you know, ownership of stuff, which would have been a
pretty common trait back in those days. I mean, you
gotta you know, what's mine is mine. It's like a
very mad Max kind of world where you gotta protect
your stuff or else you're gonna get got.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
Do you get gotten or do you go get those
are the choices.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
Are you a go getter? Are you a get got her?
Speaker 1 (03:49):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (03:49):
Right?
Speaker 1 (03:50):
And this guy club, as you said, only says he's
a bit of a pill. He saw an unidentified camel
in his territory and he shot it with an arrow,
But he did not know that this camel was owned
by a refugee who was under the protection of Albasos,
(04:11):
the lady we mentioned earlier, Right, And the man's name
was Sad bin Shum's I believe.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
That sounds good. Okay, great, quick question right up front. Yeah,
you see an unidentified camel, you know you see never mind,
it feels like it. We don't know what that is.
Why do you shoot it? Why don't you just wrangle
it and take it? Why would you why would you
kill a perfectly good ship of the desert? I guess
because you make bad decisions? Because well that's yeah, that's
(04:40):
the theme here for sure. So Arrow is loosed into
said camel, and owner of said camel, Albe seuss Uh,
wasn't having it.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
Furious. She is livid. She is screaming, ranting, and raving
about this. She helps her nephew Jossis that she has
been personally humiliated. Jossis is also mad. He hears about it.
He gets steamed too, and he goes to the leader
of the Toglub tribe, this guy cool yob right, and
(05:15):
he kills him. He kills his brother in law.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
Yikes, oh man. And this essentially, no, it did. Yeah,
it's not hedge bets here triggered trigger warning war, trigger
a war that lasted, As the legend goes, forty years
between these two tribes and the idea of warring tribes
(05:38):
in this part of the country. It remains to this day,
does it not? Yeah, it does.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
And what we see next after this confrontation in this
murder is a series of increasingly terrible events. So one
of Baker's allies thinks that this is kind of dumb.
We can't be killing real people. Bull over just one
you see roaming around the desert. You are unidentified roaming camel.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
What do you think? I like it? Okay, I don't
like it. It's it's it sucks. But yeah, I like
I like your I like the cut of your jib.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
You like your camel's identified. That's one thing I've always
respected about you.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
I do. But there's more bloodshed before we've we've triggered
this this forty and this number forty comes into play
at least in the places we've read this. So there
is another leader of the Todd Lab who is the
brother of the of the leader who was killed the chieftain,
right is that is that? Can we use that term here?
His name is al moja Haal al Mohallal. I like that,
(06:38):
and he wants to to get to you. Snit this
in the bud. You know, let's do a truce. And
there was apparently I'm reading this really great article that
sums us up beautifully on revolvi dot com. There was
a tradition here that you would send one of your own,
putting your bloodline at risk, you know, as an emissary
to make peace. So he sent his son o Jair
(06:59):
to parley with the Bakar and they killed him right away.
This camel beef is intense. That's good. I like that.
Maybe it's because I'm hungry.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
But it was completely expected that when o jer traveled
to Soush for peace, he would be forgiven because they
were obeying the traditional rules and mores for this kind
of situation. But almohallhall as you said, completely broke murdered
o Jeer. And then this is where the number forty
(07:32):
comes back into play, right because the father who is
mourning this alahaithibin Abad recites a poem of forty verses.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
Yeah, he was the one that wasn't having it. That
was like, come on, guys, we can fix this. But
now they've crossed the line, they've killed his son. He's
just free forming this misery poem, and it all becomes
kind of part of the war. He gets his men
to shave their heads, to shave their horses manes and
tails off, and now that becomes a tradition to an
(08:05):
Arabic culture. It's a sign of you grieving until you
have gotten Here's the kicker here, revenge, Because we all
know revenge is a sticky wicket because even when you
get it, or the perception of revenge, you don't really
feel better. And it's something that you just kind of
can go on seeking everywhere you see, you see it,
(08:26):
do you see what I mean? I mean, yeah, well,
I think it's it's true.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
You know, revenge is as damaging to the person seeking
vengeance as it is to their target. Often this war,
which continued, as we said, for forty years again over
a RC absolutely led to a massacre of the Toaglub
tribe and almost into the tribe altogether. The last few
Taglab when they were still alive. The tribal leader, he mentioned,
(08:52):
the poet Alharith ibin Abad, said his famous quote, I
will not talk to Taglab until Earth talks to me.
In other words, never never, yeah, because Earth don't talk,
Earth don't talk.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
No. But yeah, the thing that's interesting about this and
as it's a good set piece kind of kick off
this episode is the term basis war kind of became
a stand in for a pointless and stupid war.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
A pointless beef. Yes, yeah, there is a happy ending
to Boss's war.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
The way the story goes, and again this is a
story is that when the Toglub tribe thought it was
going to be the end of days for them, in desperation,
they dug a trench along a road where this Alhariz
guy was passing by, and a man from the tribe
hid there in the trench. And while the guy was
riding by, this member of the Toglub tribe recited a
(09:51):
poem asking for forgiveness and technically fulfilling the condition of
the earth, speaking to what. Here's tricksy, here's the crazy thing.
It worked, and the war ended.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
It is very strange, Okay.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
Poetry seems to play a very powerful role here.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
Well here's the thing though, too, As is the case
for a lot of these larger than life historical accounts,
there's more than a little liberty taken right. You know.
There's a great article from IO nine called ten the
ten most Insignificant Wars in History of which this is
one in the list, and they're kind of asking how
(10:32):
much this is true. What they've discovered and we have
confirmed and what we've read as well is that, yeah,
there most likely was a war in four ninety four
CE when stuff like this happened in this flavor. But
this notion of a war lasting for or this war
lasting forty years is probably a little bit overstating the case.
(10:54):
Have you ever heard of any other wars that lasted
forty years?
Speaker 3 (10:56):
Been?
Speaker 2 (10:57):
Wasn't there a little thing called the yeah named in
a burst of creating a burst of creativity, we got
forty verses in this sadness poem, one verse a year,
one verse the year. And then there's another story in
this inine article that's very similar from around the same
time that talks about these two particularly warring tribes. Because
there were a lot of tribes. This was a tribal culture, right, right.
(11:20):
This was not just like a left and right situation.
There were tons of these factions, you know. And another
story talks about two tribes that went to war for
forty because they couldn't decide which had won a horse race.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
And this is just the beginning. If you were a
fan of our Weird People who Built Weird Stuff episode,
which we still are receiving emails about, and thank you
very much. Then you are going to enjoy this grab bag.
Today we are inspired to explore other wars that began
for ridiculous reasons, and also along the way we will
(12:00):
help determine how much truth there is or how little
truth there is to these stories.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
What do you Noel, Well, I just want to like
backtrack a little bit or backpedal rather. I sat up
at the beginning of the show that a lot of
these had to do with animals, which is very true,
but also inanimate objects and severed body parts. Yes, yeah,
that's true. How don't you go first give.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
Us seven body if you want to go body parts? Yeah, yeah,
all right, Okay, this is one that really stood out
to me. There was a war between Great Britain and
Spain that began in October seventeen thirty nine, and it
eventually merged into the War of the Austrian Secession. This
war today is known as the War of Jenkins.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
Ear it was this Jenkins, Oh.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
Yes, Jenkins, Jenkins Jenkins the Welsh master mariner Robert Jenkins,
who is now slightly less famous than his own ear.
So he was born around the seventeen thirties forties. He
was returning from a trading voyage in the West Indies
in charge of a brig named Rebecca in seventeen thirty
(13:09):
one when his ship was stopped and boarded by a
privateer a ship the law Isabella on suspicion of smuggling.
And here's where the story gets into allegedly territory. The
commander of Isabela was a guy named Juan de Leon Fandinho,
and he had Jenkins tied up to a mast. He
(13:31):
sliced one of Jenkinson's ears off with his sword and
then told him to tell the British King the same
will happen to him if he's caught doing the same.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
Yeah, this reminds me of reminds me of that scene
in Reservoir Dogs where mister Blonde played by Michael Madson
is torturing the poor tied up police officer undercover police officer,
and he slices his ear off and he's dancing around
at him with his severed ear, pours gasoline on him
and all that stuff. Yeah, I wonder if I wonder
(14:03):
if that was inspired by the War of jenkins Ear.
We can only hope I would love it if.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
In an interview later, Quentin Tarantino says, okay, the you know,
the parrots out of the pouch. This parrot's out of
the purse or whatever. This is entirely my exploration.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Of the War of jenkins Ear. Yeah, but it was
a real thing.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
So he survives, Jenkins survives, and which point out it
was his left ear according to the story. There's another
version of the story that was published in the Pennsylvania
Gazette in seventeen thirty one. Same year, it was October,
a few months after the event, and it says that
it was actually a Spanish lieutenant known as Dorsey who
(14:45):
cut off Jenkins's left ear, and then another Spanish crew
member took it and tore it off, but then gave
it back to him and said take that to the king.
I know, grizzly stuff.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
Did we talk about the groundwork for this e ear? Beef?
Speaker 3 (15:02):
Like?
Speaker 2 (15:02):
What were they what were they fighting for?
Speaker 1 (15:04):
There was a lot of context already here, right, because.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
This has got Southern roots, don't it like our neck
of the woods.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
Yeah, break it down a little bit, well, just just that.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
It was a conflict between land. That was that the
Spanish and English were at odds over in South Carolina
and Florida. But this had been going on for like
hundreds of years, right, and then you had the formal
conflict starting in seventeen thirty nine, and this is you know,
Georgia had been founded as a colony by this point.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
Yeah, you can find excellent article on Georgia Encyclopedia dot
org about this by Julie and Sweet, and it really
I think drives home the significance of this for colonial
Georgia because in a lot of these cases, we're going
to see, with these various wars, there might be one
(15:56):
thing that happened that is a good story and so
we named the war or after that, but there's almost
always a ton of other context or other factors that
have commingled and driven the two nations of conflict into
an open war.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
Yeah, and the arrow that shot the she camel in
the neck?
Speaker 1 (16:16):
Right, Yeah, there we go, exactly a nice way to
bring it back around nol So Robert Jenkins, we should
also point out what he was doing when he was smuggling,
he was also raiding Spanish ships. That's why he was
being attacked and humiliated, but he did not die. They
after they let him go and with or without giving
(16:37):
him his ear, which remains a subject of debate today.
He made it back to Britain and in June of
the same year he told the King about what happened.
He gave a deposition that was passed to the Duke
of Newcastle, who at that time was the Secretary for
(16:57):
the Southern Colonies, so in charge of Georgia as well,
and he said that the Spanish captain quote took hold
of his left ear with his cutlass, slit it down,
and then another of the Spaniards took hold of it
and tore it off, but gave him the piece of
his ea.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
Again, what do you think it would sound like to
have your ear ripped off?
Speaker 1 (17:16):
It's probably like a wet lower sound actually, yeah, like
a no. No, it's wetter than that.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
I think it would also, I would think it would
start low and then go high. No, I'm gonna rip.
It might go the other way around, because as you're
losing the year, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
And then you scream. You definitely scream. Oh, and what
would it sound like to you?
Speaker 2 (17:32):
Wow? If that doesn't what I mean, that's okay to
you in your own ear hole, that would be all
that was left. We have gotten grizzly with this.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
I think that's very interesting from a scientific perspective.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
Yeah, let us know what you think you ever had
your ear torn off?
Speaker 1 (17:45):
Yeah, don't do it just for this, No, please let
us know. So after this, there's another there's another myth here.
You'll hear claims that in seventeen thirty eight, just before
the war formally begins, drink and tells his story in
an embellished version before members of the House of Commons,
(18:05):
and then part way through the story check this out,
he pulls out a jar where he's got his pickled ear. Yeah.
I think that's so weird. There's no proof though.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
Well do you think, because in those days it's something
like that happened, do you think there was any hope
that you'd ever get it reattached? It was pretty much
just like it's done, right, Yeah, it's done. The best
you can do is put it in a jar to
show people.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
At put if it's still if it's still like partially attached,
depend on how it was cut, it would be possible
maybe to sew it back together and hope for the best.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
Right, But chances are I would just rot it would
like it would it would not? Yeah, yeah, right to us.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
If you just ripped your ear off and then sewed
it back, tell us what it's out.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
With medical science, you know they can help you out.
Back back in these days that the jar was about
the best you could hope for. You keep it on
the nightstand.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
You use it as like a like a table setting,
piece of ice breaker.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
Yeah, you know, good conversation starter. Yeah, what was the results?
He has the thing too about these wars again, so
much context, so much conflict. You get a name like
this attached to something because it's got it's got hootspot,
you know it. It gives it a sense of grandiosity
or whatever. It got legs, it's got well yeah, or ears.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
Yeah whatever, Lets you have one ear.
Speaker 2 (19:17):
But what was the outcome?
Speaker 1 (19:18):
So eventually, whether or not he actually appeared with his
severity or in front of the House of Commons, the
Parliament begins pushing the King to seek compensation, redress apologies
from Spain.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
It's gonna be a theme in many of these conflicts. Yeah,
I don't think we got into it with the camel situation,
but I bet you there was. Maybe they didn't. They
were so incense. There wasn't even discussion of pay me
for the loss of my camel. It was much more
based on just sheer outrage and the principles.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
And they tried to send out right, Yeah, it's a shame.
But so they did attempt diplomacy. But by seventeen thirty
nine that was clearly not going to be a viable path.
So King George said in July tenth he told his
(20:11):
Admiralty Board to start quote initiating reprisals against Spain.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
So at this point the Governor of the British Colony
of Georgia, James Oglethorpe, got involved, and he amassed some
forces and went into Florida, took down some Spanish forts.
We've got your Fort Picolata, and you got your fort
San Francisco. Dupopo, puopo. I'm gonna go with poopo, p upo. Okay,
(20:49):
I'm gonna go with that. And yeah, I went into
parts of Florida, Saint Augustine along the Saint John's River,
and again fantastic information coming from Georgia and psyc the
Peda dot org and his aim was to cut off
supplies to the Spanish and you know, kind of head
(21:11):
them off of the pass and get those supplies from
the forts. Then the Spanish are going to arrive the
forces that were deployed in this situation. And that's kind
of what his whole strategy was.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
There, right right, and denying access to resources is a
tried and true method of warfare.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
But I guess for whatever reason, it didn't quite work
out the way he wanted and he ended up having
to kind of take a step back and just seeing
where the pieces fell. When the Spanish finally did show
up and invade.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
And that happened in the summer of seventeen forty two
Spanish forces landed on the tip of Saint Simon's Island.
They got together to just the tip, just the tip,
they got together to attack Fort Frederica. Relation to our
longtime friend Matt Frederick or maybe.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
There is you know, know, we have to check.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
But so Oglethorpe was having already having a problem with
organizing his army. I believe he had a lot of
diverse commanders and the siege that he had an attempted
didn't work because he could not coordinate the navel and
land based assaults. But as soon as the English forces
(22:27):
got word of the Spanish parties arriving, I think they
found a scouting party Oglethorpe aggressively led a charge against
the Spanish.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
What did they do? Well, I got one for you
in a question. Yeah, what's the difference between a battle
and a skirmish?
Speaker 1 (22:44):
A battle in a skirmish? You know, I don't know
whether there is a technical, hard and fast difference.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
It's like there between a fight versus a scrap.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
You know, right right, or an argument versus a spat
a tiff.
Speaker 2 (22:57):
Perhaps, Yeah, I think that's what it is.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
So I would imagine if we're just speculating, anythink you
can go with me on this. If we're just speculating,
I would I would imagine that a skirmish is properly
lower in terms of number of people injured and number
of people killed. You know what I mean, It's like
shots fired.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
Well, my friend Webster describes a skirmish as an episode
of irregular or unpremeditated fighting, especially between small or outlying
parts of armies.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
Fleets, so ships in the night they bump into each other,
not the big show.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
Yeah, yeah, And.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
They go, holy smokes, they kill it's them, yeah, exactly,
and they freak out and then people die. Half the
people scream kill, half the people scream run.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
And you know, I'm sure we know this too. You
can use skirmish as a verb. You can, you can,
you can you know they's skirmishing? Mm hm yes, yes.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
And also this is American English, which I love because
it means we can use almost anything as a verb.
We can say that you got jenkins or you jinkins that.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
For our purposes here, yeah, we're not a military history
deep dive show. The point being is that all of this,
all of these skirmishes and battles and fracases and TIFFs
and what have you and deaths all resulted from a
smuggler being kind of tortured, mister Blond style.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
The story of a smuggler.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
That's the thing, right, because the story is way cooler
because I'm already kind of getting a little snoozed out
going through every little the stories.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
But the stories are important in that they are the
easiest way to motivate absolute population. Ultimately, we fast forward
a bit. The end of this war occurs at the
Treaty of ax La Chappelle in seventeen forty eight, and
it returns all the colonial claims to the previous owners,
(24:54):
and the two nations unofficially agree on the border between
Georgia and Florida. They name it, they say the Saint
John River the Saint John's River rather And because of
this war, because of ogle Thorpe's actions, and because, at
least in some aspect, because a guy named Robert Jenkins
got his ear cut off, Georgia remained an English possession. So, uh,
(25:19):
you know, if somebody, if your friend gets their ear
cut off, don't don't feel like you have to wage
war over it.
Speaker 2 (25:25):
Yeah, don't go crying over sliced ears. Yeah you cry.
I'd cry. I don't know if it was my ear
or the ear of a loved one.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
I would go into like deep meditation techniques to try
to not feel it. They got to a hospital or bandage.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
I think, what sets what's what sets these stories not
a part at all, what puts them together, what joins
them is that it's these kind of simple acts that
have the power to push humans in positions to create huge, horrible,
long line consequences and conflicts to their limits. And they
(26:04):
get it done. But as you say, we've talked about
this constantly with these powder keg moments, and like history,
you always hear about the moment, but then the details
are always there, the context is.
Speaker 1 (26:15):
Always so, and we find the moment retroactively too often.
You know, we have somebody who looks back when they're
writing about an event that occurredreds of years ago, and
they go, oh, it's because that it's that fart, that's
what it was. But we have more examples, and no,
you found one that really fascinated me.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
All right, Well, I had two, one about an inanimate
object and one about an animal. Which one would you
like to hear? Oh?
Speaker 1 (26:43):
Man, okay, let's let's go to the inanimate object and
then because it'd be nice to circle back with the animal.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
Yeah, okay, I'm down with that. The inanimate object in question,
my friend, is a bucket.
Speaker 1 (26:56):
A bucket?
Speaker 2 (26:57):
A bucket?
Speaker 1 (26:59):
Could I ask you just this is an honest question.
Is this thing gonna end up being called the bucket War?
Speaker 2 (27:05):
Yeah, or the War of the Buckets, or you know,
the the Skirmish of the pale I love it, ok yeah, whatever,
But this one was pretty gnarly, you know, as was
the we didn't talk about deaths in the jenkins Ear War.
Speaker 1 (27:23):
A lot of people died. It's cool, very tragedy, not cool.
Speaker 2 (27:26):
I figured as much. No, not, I mean cool, like
the cool day that it's meant like cool. We got
that out. We admitted that war is tragic or people die.
It's heck, as you say, is that an acronym? What
is heck? It's a good, good, good, clean Christian boy
stand in for the other word. Yep, yeah, which we
can say on the show is a PG thirteen show.
Speaker 1 (27:44):
I know, but I like saying heck.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
I know. It's very endearing. Thank you.
Speaker 1 (27:47):
So the bucket War, the bucket War. When did this happen?
Speaker 2 (27:50):
Well, I was in thirteen twenty five. And this also
involves clashes between let's call them clans, I guess, for
lack of a better No, it's fine, we want to
need a better one.
Speaker 1 (27:59):
We're gonna go with clans, family, family, communities, right, or
they're bonded through a biological relationship, right.
Speaker 2 (28:06):
This is right, this is correct. And you know medieval society,
family was everything, right, and you would organize around family,
and it was all about your house. And you know
that you know and I'm just using Game of Thrones
rules here, but I'm pretty sure that was all based
on our boy. George or Martin did his homework so
we didn't have to.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
Yeah, just check out his audio books.
Speaker 2 (28:24):
You need to finish those books though, George. Come on, man,
the show is happening.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
It's it's never coming out.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
Yeah. So this particular clash of clans was between the
the Ghibelines and the Gelfs.
Speaker 1 (28:37):
He sound like made up Doctor Who Aliens.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
Yes, the Guelfs. Maybe it was Gelflings, but that was
in the dark Crystal, I think. Yeah, the little puppet
guys and the bad guys were the slee Stacks. That
that's close. They were the Skexies. Skexies what a slee Stacks.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
Slee Stacks are from Land of the Lost. Do you
remember that show?
Speaker 3 (28:57):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (28:57):
Yeah, the dimator kind of thing where it was like
time travel. They accidentally stepped through a portal into the
Land of the Lost.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
Yeah, and it's always explained in the theme song, Oh
I love it, I love it. They're like we were
in a boat and then you're living in a Land
of the Lost. Yeah, there are slea Stacks were evil
creatures who would evolve to anthropomorphoid forms from reptile.
Speaker 2 (29:20):
Okay, okay, well there's none of that in those particular conflicts.
This is strictly human. No reptilians or weird little elf
people fashioned by the Jim Henson studio. Well, buckets, right,
definitely buckets. So here's the thing. I might need little
help from you with this, because these are always just
like a bit of a mind sure, a mind frack.
(29:41):
You've got these warring sides that support different head honchos
of God. Right, yes, so we've got the Holy Roman
Emperor Frederick Barbosa, who was also the King of Germany,
and then you have the Pope.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
Right, yeah, yeah, you specifically have Pope John twenty two.
Speaker 2 (30:05):
All this began are kicked off in earnest or this
conflict in the region when the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick
Barbosa invaded Italy, and he did this with what he
believed was God's blessing, as like like crowning him for
all intents and purposes as God's conduit on Earth. But
(30:26):
that didn't fly super well with others who believed that
the Pope was the only one that was crowned with
God's conduitness.
Speaker 1 (30:36):
And that was the normal thing, right, that was the
established norm. And you were telling me that the Gelphs
and the Ghibelines were on different sides of this.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
That is absolutely correct, because you see, the Ghibelines supported
the Emperor, the Holy Roman Emperor in this conflict, and
the Guelphs supported the Pope, and Italy was just a
use agglomeration. He taught me that word ben and I'm
gonna keep using it. Of these little city states kind
of and like the story we talked about with the
(31:09):
Albasis War and honestly with jenkins Ear, you've got these
folks that think they own the border. Like if you're
at a border area, you're like, no, this is mine.
Because there's no official lines. It's probably based on some
geographical thing, but that's all up for debate, especially when
you start beefing with each other. And so eventually Frederick
(31:30):
was ousted, They kicked him out. He was done. He
now the Pope ultimately ranged supreme in these early disagreements,
but that did not mean that there were not sympathizers
that remained. So he kind of had his ultimate fu
moment by leaving the country kind of completely divided. Right,
(31:50):
So you still have these warring city states, and then
you had these opposing you know groups. I think it's
the pope who is the direct communicator with God. I
think it's the Holy Roman m for now we fight.
Speaker 1 (32:02):
And it's complicated because with these shifting borders for these
city states, one state could largely support the Holy Roman
Emperor and one state could largely support the Pope. And
the problem is that these could be very close together,
especially in the example of Modina and Bologna.
Speaker 2 (32:23):
Right, yes, and I think at the top of this
section I mentioned that this took place in Castello de
serraval and in the region that is Emilia Romagna. That's
what it would be referred to as today. At the
time of this story, they were, as you say, ben
Modemia and Bologna.
Speaker 1 (32:42):
And those are barely thirty miles apart, or maybe around
thirty thirty one miles apart. So tensions are always always
going to be high. They're virtually adjacent to each other.
It seems like an unsustainable situation. I'm just guessing.
Speaker 2 (32:58):
And here here we are back with lot of skirmishes
because they're gonna be caught, They're not going to be
full all out wars. They're just gonna be little conflicts
between folks standing on opposite sides of the particular borders.
And this bucket war here we go is just such
an event.
Speaker 1 (33:15):
They're raiding farms and they're burning.
Speaker 2 (33:18):
Fields, generally thumbing the nose of the opposition, you know,
and just kind of trying to mess them up because
they fundamentally disagree with what everything they stand for, and
yet they're somehow neighbors. Right, Okay, all right, so Ben,
as you say, in thirteen twenty five, we've got these
uh what mini fights, these skirmishes, fightlets. Oh yes, we're
(33:42):
going with that's that's the new way. And they just
keep happening, and then things keep escalating. Then finally in
July you've got some of these bolonnaise. I can't say
that without getting hungry into delicious.
Speaker 1 (33:56):
So we have our computers up to eight and I
want to confess to you and everyone listening, fellow ridiculous historians,
when we started saying bolotese, I may have googled bolletes
recipe and started planning what to make for dinner.
Speaker 2 (34:14):
Well maybe you know what, maybe we can bump that
right on up to lunch because there's a lovely popsa
place downstairs, and we've been at it a long time.
Today we owe it to ourselves. Let's treat ourselves. It's
Friday anyway, though, as you say, slaughtering folks, burning fields,
just making a mess, looting and polluting all that stuff,
and they end up taking a bunch of stuff back
(34:34):
with them over the border. They keep doing this. They're
just doing a lot of damage, really really really reckon
the place. And then in September you got some revenge
being exacted because some of these troops were captured, and
you know, the Modenese had had it. So in under
cover of dark, the Modanese soldiers or a group of them,
(34:57):
they snuck across the border into the city center and
next to something called the San Felice Gate, where they
found an oaken bucket filled with loot, with booty that
belonged to Modina originally plunder that's right, and said bucket
was nabbed, was nicked. They took it and put it
(35:20):
under their arms and ran back and showed it off
in their city center for all of the Emotonese to see.
Speaker 1 (35:27):
Right, and for the residents of Bologna to see as well,
so the people at Bologna are furious and they say,
give us back that bucket. They better have that stuff
we stole earlier at it too. It is pretty hypocritical
that they were angry that's something they had stolen, had
(35:48):
just been restolen.
Speaker 2 (35:49):
Yes, it's pretty petty and childlike behavior, but again we're
seeing that with all these stories, So that's kind of
they demanded the return of the bucket. I guess they
were more concerned about the booty, but I haven't seen
specifically what it was. I'm imagining it's maybe coin plundered
(36:10):
from I just picturing like role playing games there all
the money. It's just in like sacks that are just
littered around the place, emeralds or something. You just kind
of step on it and then you hear a kit
chi chin sound and then it shows up in your inventory.
Speaker 1 (36:22):
You know what it probably I can tell you what
it probably wasn't. It probably was not a religious artifactor
or reliquary, because then the war would have been named
after that instead of the bucket. Probably just like straight
up cash money or fine fine clothing.
Speaker 2 (36:39):
Yeah, And speaking of which, that's when this particular conflict
began in earnest On November fifteenth of thirteen twenty five,
a guy by the name of Mala Testino del Occio,
who was the Lord of Remini, led his people the
Bolanese and any allies they had been able to amass
(37:00):
to besiege the city state of Mardinia and get that
bucket back.
Speaker 1 (37:07):
So ridiculous, man. So they were met by a pretty
strong resistant soldiers from Modina, Mantua and Ferrara, as well
as some Germans sent by our boy, the Holy Roman
Emperor Frederick.
Speaker 2 (37:24):
Yeah, Frederick himself, that's right, but not to be bested
the pope in question XXIII. He sent thirty thousand, so
they were vastly outnumbered.
Speaker 1 (37:37):
Yeah, and that's in the additional couple thousand knights on horseback.
So what we're seeing happen here is a proxy war
essentially over a bucket that, again, you know, in defense
of the bucket was not empty. So the Modenese, as
you said, nol were pretty well out numbered.
Speaker 2 (37:55):
Yeah, where they have like six thousand troops I think
a combination of foot soldiers and horseman as well. And yeah,
they went at.
Speaker 1 (38:04):
It and despite those numbers, they really kicked some solid
tookts absolutely.
Speaker 2 (38:10):
Yeah, they did something that read where they they disrupted
it's called a route. They disrupted the activities and the
organization of the larger army. And that's the thing, right, Yeah,
smaller force you can get out numbered, but it's a
little easier to control maybe and everybody and check your
nimble and the larger force. If you can disrupt their
communications with this thing called a route, you can cause
(38:33):
chaos and their ranks and they're not going to know
which way is up.
Speaker 1 (38:37):
Absolutely, and I think that's a very important point, especially
for this story. So the Modonese succeeded, but this was
a bloody conflict by this point, right.
Speaker 2 (38:47):
Yeah, I think we had we lost about two thousand
on both sides, which I would have just thought it
would have just been a total blood bath from the
pope led thirty thirty two thousand, you know, against the
only seven thousand, But only about two thousand lives were
lost on both sides. But that's pretty insane. That's a
lot of it's a lot of people, yeah, over a bucket.
Speaker 1 (39:08):
Yeah, So that's that's my next big question that's burning
in my mind. First, what happened after this? Did the
war end? And even more importantly, what happened to the bucket?
Speaker 2 (39:18):
Yeah, the war did eventually end. It raged on until
fifteen twenty nine, when we've got Charles of Spain, the
first that is, who by that point became a holy
Roman emperor. That's the thing you can inherit that, I guess.
Speaker 1 (39:33):
But I feel like Brad Pitt's character at the end
of seven, I keep going, what's in the bucket?
Speaker 2 (39:39):
Yeah, oh well, we don't. I don't know. I think
that's lost to time because now the bucket does remain
in its just bucket form, and you can see it
in Modena and it's at the Tora de la Giralandina
and that's just, like I guess, a mock up of it, right, okay, yeah, yeah,
just you know, to commemorate the day and the one
(40:00):
though you can find at the Palazzo Communal.
Speaker 1 (40:03):
Even today, the modern day, I believe. So that's so cool.
Speaker 2 (40:07):
Book your tickets now, book.
Speaker 1 (40:09):
Your bucket tickets. I've never been sow into a bucket.
Speaker 2 (40:11):
What if somebody had that bucket on their bucket lists?
There we go. What if a bucket list was just
a list of famous buckets that you see before you done.
Speaker 1 (40:19):
I was thinking the same thing you mind, reader, Let's
make let's make a bucket list. I want to find
more famous buckets in history.
Speaker 2 (40:27):
So huge props to Shehan Russell from a war history
online for the bloodiest Medieval war was fought because of
a bucket, because I Pilford heavily from that article for
this one. But it's a fun story. Fun that's not
the right word for it. But it's a ridiculous story
because it just goes to show how the simplest things
and the pettiest interactions can lead to serious bloodshed.
Speaker 1 (40:50):
It's kind of like that old line where if you
already decided that you don't like someone, whatever they do
is just going to make you not like them. Still,
it doesn't matter how innocuous it is. And that applies
to states and nations that want.
Speaker 2 (41:05):
To go to war.
Speaker 1 (41:06):
If they need it causes ballet, or they need a
reason to go to war, they can just find one.
Oh man, okay, everyone off off air. We checked what
time we were at and we got so into this that, Noel,
do you realize we've been We've been fascinated by buckets,
(41:27):
ears and camels for like an hour.
Speaker 2 (41:31):
Oh my buckets. Here the cavels. Oh bye, I'm fine
with that, though, you know, we gave them their due
and then and there's just one that we're gonna I
think we're gonna leave on the table. So once again
we kind of over prepared. But I guess it's better
than under delivering. Sure, that's what I always say. Yeah, so, yeah,
we got two that we're leaving on the table. But
maybe we'll just turn those in episodes of their own,
because each one of these could have really been an
(41:52):
episode on their own.
Speaker 1 (41:52):
That's that's true, except the camel one.
Speaker 2 (41:56):
I guess it.
Speaker 1 (41:57):
Depends on how much we want to learn about pre
Islam tribal relations and the biology of camels.
Speaker 2 (42:04):
But that is Can you milk a camel? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (42:06):
You can? You can milk a camel? Is it gonna
be worth it?
Speaker 2 (42:09):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (42:10):
Did you know you can milk pigs too?
Speaker 3 (42:12):
Well?
Speaker 2 (42:12):
I mean I've seen, you know, you always see the
little pig that's suckling on the big the big sal Yeah,
so I'm assuming that. Yeah, you hear about pig milk though.
Speaker 1 (42:20):
Yeah, no, I think we used it once in a
story on a different show, just because it's such a
weird term. But we digress, and yes, that is part
of the nature of Ridiculous History. Today we are going
to wrap it up. Stay tuned for possible future explanations
of the two ridiculous wars we did not get to today.
(42:41):
In the meantime, we of course always want to hear
from you. Let us know your favorite ridiculous cause of
a conflict, a skirmish, or a war. You can do
it in any number of ways. We are all over
the internet. You can find us on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook,
and of course one of our favorite places online, Ridiculous Historians.
Speaker 2 (43:01):
Yeah it's true. We actually just recorded a future episode
that features a lot of the amazing humans on that
community page. So if you want to be a part
of that and get in on the fund, you can
go to Ridiculous Historians on Facebook and asked to be
a member unless you're like clearly a awful person, where
we'll let you you know, you all are welcome.
Speaker 1 (43:22):
And again, just to be completely completely clear, do not
cut off your ears.
Speaker 2 (43:27):
No, yeah, don't do a van go just just don't
do it even to make your point just not worth it.
Speaker 1 (43:33):
And we want to of course thank our super producer,
Casey Pegram. We want to thank Alex Williams, who composed
this track.
Speaker 2 (43:41):
We'd also like to thank Christopher Hasiotis, who I had
a good old time with on the Louis Louis episode
hanging out with in Person, and I think listeners did
as well, for being our a number one super bad
plus research guy. We really appreciate a lot and he
kind of helped kick us off down this road of
ridiculous conflicts.
Speaker 1 (44:01):
And of course thank you, specifically you. This show does
not exist without you, so feel free to like our
show on your various platforms of choice, and if you're
feeling charitable, leave us a review. It always makes our day,
it really does.
Speaker 2 (44:16):
And yeah, as I just tease a minute ago, next time,
we will be exploring some really really cool stuff that
was pitched on our Ridiculous Historians page and I think
there's a lot to like and chew on in that one.
So we hope you'll join us then and we will
see you next time. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit
(44:39):
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Hey, Noel, riddle me this. What do a camel, a bucket,
and an ear have in common?
Speaker 2 (00:06):
An ear like on our head or like an ear
of corn? You know what?
Speaker 3 (00:11):
Prescient? Prescient? This is a classic episode. Just making sure
I understand the assignment. Riddle you that each was at
some point responsible for starting a war. So why don't
we dive into this classic episode about weird wars that
were fought for stupid reasons.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
War.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
To paraphraze, the common figure of speech is heck, it's
not a it's not a pretty thing. It's been an
unfortunately common occurrence throughout the span of human history. Some
people will even argue that it is an economic necessity.
But today we are here to tell you that war
can also be ridiculous. Hi, I'm Ben.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
I am no Ben. You gamer? You a fair weather
gamer like me?
Speaker 1 (01:22):
A fair weather gamer.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
There.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
I've had some pretty intense gaming experiences, But I don't
play video games every day. I mean I don't play games.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
That's right. It kicks you out of kindergarten because I
don't play it don't play. But yeah, there's another good war.
It never changes that's the opening line for the Fallout games,
which I'm a big fan of. And you know, the
point being that the war depicted in those games is
a future slash past post apocalyptic nuclear war, but it
(01:54):
never changes because it's all about the human costs and
about the stuff that goes on on the ground and
the way humans interact with each other. And in our
story today, animals.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Yes, animals, of course we're we're referring to actual non
human animals. But we like to begin every show with
a shout out to our favorite party animal, super producer,
Casey Pegrim. So today we want to open the story with,
as you said, Noel, a story of an animal. This
(02:26):
is a little bit of a legend. But travel back
with us to four ninety four CE. There were two
Arab tribes that were tangentially related.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Right with the dag Lebe and the Bakar.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
Perfect hold one man, I'm bad, not bad, not bad
at all, not bad at all.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
Come at us, Internet, Please come.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
At us politely or or or with a sense of humor.
That's always good. That's great. That goes a long way
with us. So this this happens in the in Arabia
in the pre Islamic era, and supposedly the story starts
when a woman named al Basos went to visit her niece,
(03:09):
a woman named Jalila bent Mura Jalila. Although she was
a member of the Baker tribe, this game be a
little confusing. She was married to a guy named Kulib
who was the leader of a different tribe, the Toglub tribe.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
Right, that's right. He was apparently a real pill about
you know, ownership of stuff, which would have been a
pretty common trait back in those days. I mean, you
gotta you know, what's mine is mine. It's like a
very mad Max kind of world where you gotta protect
your stuff or else you're gonna get got.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
Do you get gotten or do you go get those
are the choices.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
Are you a go getter? Are you a get got her?
Speaker 1 (03:49):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (03:49):
Right?
Speaker 1 (03:50):
And this guy club, as you said, only says he's
a bit of a pill. He saw an unidentified camel
in his territory and he shot it with an arrow,
But he did not know that this camel was owned
by a refugee who was under the protection of Albasos,
(04:11):
the lady we mentioned earlier, Right, And the man's name
was Sad bin Shum's I believe.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
That sounds good. Okay, great, quick question right up front. Yeah,
you see an unidentified camel, you know you see never mind,
it feels like it. We don't know what that is.
Why do you shoot it? Why don't you just wrangle
it and take it? Why would you why would you
kill a perfectly good ship of the desert? I guess
because you make bad decisions? Because well that's yeah, that's
(04:40):
the theme here for sure. So Arrow is loosed into
said camel, and owner of said camel, Albe seuss Uh,
wasn't having it.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
Furious. She is livid. She is screaming, ranting, and raving
about this. She helps her nephew Jossis that she has
been personally humiliated. Jossis is also mad. He hears about it.
He gets steamed too, and he goes to the leader
of the Toglub tribe, this guy cool yob right, and
(05:15):
he kills him. He kills his brother in law.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
Yikes, oh man. And this essentially, no, it did. Yeah,
it's not hedge bets here triggered trigger warning war, trigger
a war that lasted, As the legend goes, forty years
between these two tribes and the idea of warring tribes
(05:38):
in this part of the country. It remains to this day,
does it not? Yeah, it does.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
And what we see next after this confrontation in this
murder is a series of increasingly terrible events. So one
of Baker's allies thinks that this is kind of dumb.
We can't be killing real people. Bull over just one
you see roaming around the desert. You are unidentified roaming camel.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
What do you think? I like it? Okay, I don't
like it. It's it's it sucks. But yeah, I like
I like your I like the cut of your jib.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
You like your camel's identified. That's one thing I've always
respected about you.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
I do. But there's more bloodshed before we've we've triggered
this this forty and this number forty comes into play
at least in the places we've read this. So there
is another leader of the Todd Lab who is the
brother of the of the leader who was killed the chieftain,
right is that is that? Can we use that term here?
His name is al moja Haal al Mohallal. I like that,
(06:38):
and he wants to to get to you. Snit this
in the bud. You know, let's do a truce. And
there was apparently I'm reading this really great article that
sums us up beautifully on revolvi dot com. There was
a tradition here that you would send one of your own,
putting your bloodline at risk, you know, as an emissary
to make peace. So he sent his son o Jair
(06:59):
to parley with the Bakar and they killed him right away.
This camel beef is intense. That's good. I like that.
Maybe it's because I'm hungry.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
But it was completely expected that when o jer traveled
to Soush for peace, he would be forgiven because they
were obeying the traditional rules and mores for this kind
of situation. But almohallhall as you said, completely broke murdered
o Jeer. And then this is where the number forty
(07:32):
comes back into play, right because the father who is
mourning this alahaithibin Abad recites a poem of forty verses.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
Yeah, he was the one that wasn't having it. That
was like, come on, guys, we can fix this. But
now they've crossed the line, they've killed his son. He's
just free forming this misery poem, and it all becomes
kind of part of the war. He gets his men
to shave their heads, to shave their horses manes and
tails off, and now that becomes a tradition to an
(08:05):
Arabic culture. It's a sign of you grieving until you
have gotten Here's the kicker here, revenge, Because we all
know revenge is a sticky wicket because even when you
get it, or the perception of revenge, you don't really
feel better. And it's something that you just kind of
can go on seeking everywhere you see, you see it,
(08:26):
do you see what I mean? I mean, yeah, well,
I think it's it's true.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
You know, revenge is as damaging to the person seeking
vengeance as it is to their target. Often this war,
which continued, as we said, for forty years again over
a RC absolutely led to a massacre of the Toaglub
tribe and almost into the tribe altogether. The last few
Taglab when they were still alive. The tribal leader, he mentioned,
(08:52):
the poet Alharith ibin Abad, said his famous quote, I
will not talk to Taglab until Earth talks to me.
In other words, never never, yeah, because Earth don't talk,
Earth don't talk.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
No. But yeah, the thing that's interesting about this and
as it's a good set piece kind of kick off
this episode is the term basis war kind of became
a stand in for a pointless and stupid war.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
A pointless beef. Yes, yeah, there is a happy ending
to Boss's war.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
The way the story goes, and again this is a
story is that when the Toglub tribe thought it was
going to be the end of days for them, in desperation,
they dug a trench along a road where this Alhariz
guy was passing by, and a man from the tribe
hid there in the trench. And while the guy was
riding by, this member of the Toglub tribe recited a
(09:51):
poem asking for forgiveness and technically fulfilling the condition of
the earth, speaking to what. Here's tricksy, here's the crazy thing.
It worked, and the war ended.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
It is very strange, Okay.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
Poetry seems to play a very powerful role here.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
Well here's the thing though, too, As is the case
for a lot of these larger than life historical accounts,
there's more than a little liberty taken right. You know.
There's a great article from IO nine called ten the
ten most Insignificant Wars in History of which this is
one in the list, and they're kind of asking how
(10:32):
much this is true. What they've discovered and we have
confirmed and what we've read as well is that, yeah,
there most likely was a war in four ninety four
CE when stuff like this happened in this flavor. But
this notion of a war lasting for or this war
lasting forty years is probably a little bit overstating the case.
(10:54):
Have you ever heard of any other wars that lasted
forty years?
Speaker 3 (10:56):
Been?
Speaker 2 (10:57):
Wasn't there a little thing called the yeah named in
a burst of creating a burst of creativity, we got
forty verses in this sadness poem, one verse a year,
one verse the year. And then there's another story in
this inine article that's very similar from around the same
time that talks about these two particularly warring tribes. Because
there were a lot of tribes. This was a tribal culture, right, right.
(11:20):
This was not just like a left and right situation.
There were tons of these factions, you know. And another
story talks about two tribes that went to war for
forty because they couldn't decide which had won a horse race.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
And this is just the beginning. If you were a
fan of our Weird People who Built Weird Stuff episode,
which we still are receiving emails about, and thank you
very much. Then you are going to enjoy this grab bag.
Today we are inspired to explore other wars that began
for ridiculous reasons, and also along the way we will
(12:00):
help determine how much truth there is or how little
truth there is to these stories.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
What do you Noel, Well, I just want to like
backtrack a little bit or backpedal rather. I sat up
at the beginning of the show that a lot of
these had to do with animals, which is very true,
but also inanimate objects and severed body parts. Yes, yeah,
that's true. How don't you go first give.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
Us seven body if you want to go body parts? Yeah, yeah,
all right, Okay, this is one that really stood out
to me. There was a war between Great Britain and
Spain that began in October seventeen thirty nine, and it
eventually merged into the War of the Austrian Secession. This
war today is known as the War of Jenkins.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
Ear it was this Jenkins, Oh.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
Yes, Jenkins, Jenkins Jenkins the Welsh master mariner Robert Jenkins,
who is now slightly less famous than his own ear.
So he was born around the seventeen thirties forties. He
was returning from a trading voyage in the West Indies
in charge of a brig named Rebecca in seventeen thirty
(13:09):
one when his ship was stopped and boarded by a
privateer a ship the law Isabella on suspicion of smuggling.
And here's where the story gets into allegedly territory. The
commander of Isabela was a guy named Juan de Leon Fandinho,
and he had Jenkins tied up to a mast. He
(13:31):
sliced one of Jenkinson's ears off with his sword and
then told him to tell the British King the same
will happen to him if he's caught doing the same.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
Yeah, this reminds me of reminds me of that scene
in Reservoir Dogs where mister Blonde played by Michael Madson
is torturing the poor tied up police officer undercover police officer,
and he slices his ear off and he's dancing around
at him with his severed ear, pours gasoline on him
and all that stuff. Yeah, I wonder if I wonder
(14:03):
if that was inspired by the War of jenkins Ear.
We can only hope I would love it if.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
In an interview later, Quentin Tarantino says, okay, the you know,
the parrots out of the pouch. This parrot's out of
the purse or whatever. This is entirely my exploration.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Of the War of jenkins Ear. Yeah, but it was
a real thing.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
So he survives, Jenkins survives, and which point out it
was his left ear according to the story. There's another
version of the story that was published in the Pennsylvania
Gazette in seventeen thirty one. Same year, it was October,
a few months after the event, and it says that
it was actually a Spanish lieutenant known as Dorsey who
(14:45):
cut off Jenkins's left ear, and then another Spanish crew
member took it and tore it off, but then gave
it back to him and said take that to the king.
I know, grizzly stuff.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
Did we talk about the groundwork for this e ear? Beef?
Speaker 3 (15:02):
Like?
Speaker 2 (15:02):
What were they what were they fighting for?
Speaker 1 (15:04):
There was a lot of context already here, right, because.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
This has got Southern roots, don't it like our neck
of the woods.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
Yeah, break it down a little bit, well, just just that.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
It was a conflict between land. That was that the
Spanish and English were at odds over in South Carolina
and Florida. But this had been going on for like
hundreds of years, right, and then you had the formal
conflict starting in seventeen thirty nine, and this is you know,
Georgia had been founded as a colony by this point.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
Yeah, you can find excellent article on Georgia Encyclopedia dot
org about this by Julie and Sweet, and it really
I think drives home the significance of this for colonial
Georgia because in a lot of these cases, we're going
to see, with these various wars, there might be one
(15:56):
thing that happened that is a good story and so
we named the war or after that, but there's almost
always a ton of other context or other factors that
have commingled and driven the two nations of conflict into
an open war.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
Yeah, and the arrow that shot the she camel in
the neck?
Speaker 1 (16:16):
Right, Yeah, there we go, exactly a nice way to
bring it back around nol So Robert Jenkins, we should
also point out what he was doing when he was smuggling,
he was also raiding Spanish ships. That's why he was
being attacked and humiliated, but he did not die. They
after they let him go and with or without giving
(16:37):
him his ear, which remains a subject of debate today.
He made it back to Britain and in June of
the same year he told the King about what happened.
He gave a deposition that was passed to the Duke
of Newcastle, who at that time was the Secretary for
(16:57):
the Southern Colonies, so in charge of Georgia as well,
and he said that the Spanish captain quote took hold
of his left ear with his cutlass, slit it down,
and then another of the Spaniards took hold of it
and tore it off, but gave him the piece of
his ea.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
Again, what do you think it would sound like to
have your ear ripped off?
Speaker 1 (17:16):
It's probably like a wet lower sound actually, yeah, like
a no. No, it's wetter than that.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
I think it would also, I would think it would
start low and then go high. No, I'm gonna rip.
It might go the other way around, because as you're
losing the year, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
And then you scream. You definitely scream. Oh, and what
would it sound like to you?
Speaker 2 (17:32):
Wow? If that doesn't what I mean, that's okay to
you in your own ear hole, that would be all
that was left. We have gotten grizzly with this.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
I think that's very interesting from a scientific perspective.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
Yeah, let us know what you think you ever had
your ear torn off?
Speaker 1 (17:45):
Yeah, don't do it just for this, No, please let
us know. So after this, there's another there's another myth here.
You'll hear claims that in seventeen thirty eight, just before
the war formally begins, drink and tells his story in
an embellished version before members of the House of Commons,
(18:05):
and then part way through the story check this out,
he pulls out a jar where he's got his pickled ear. Yeah.
I think that's so weird. There's no proof though.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
Well do you think, because in those days it's something
like that happened, do you think there was any hope
that you'd ever get it reattached? It was pretty much
just like it's done, right, Yeah, it's done. The best
you can do is put it in a jar to
show people.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
At put if it's still if it's still like partially attached,
depend on how it was cut, it would be possible
maybe to sew it back together and hope for the best.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
Right, But chances are I would just rot it would
like it would it would not? Yeah, yeah, right to us.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
If you just ripped your ear off and then sewed
it back, tell us what it's out.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
With medical science, you know they can help you out.
Back back in these days that the jar was about
the best you could hope for. You keep it on
the nightstand.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
You use it as like a like a table setting,
piece of ice breaker.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
Yeah, you know, good conversation starter. Yeah, what was the results?
He has the thing too about these wars again, so
much context, so much conflict. You get a name like
this attached to something because it's got it's got hootspot,
you know it. It gives it a sense of grandiosity
or whatever. It got legs, it's got well yeah, or ears.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
Yeah whatever, Lets you have one ear.
Speaker 2 (19:17):
But what was the outcome?
Speaker 1 (19:18):
So eventually, whether or not he actually appeared with his
severity or in front of the House of Commons, the
Parliament begins pushing the King to seek compensation, redress apologies
from Spain.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
It's gonna be a theme in many of these conflicts. Yeah,
I don't think we got into it with the camel situation,
but I bet you there was. Maybe they didn't. They
were so incense. There wasn't even discussion of pay me
for the loss of my camel. It was much more
based on just sheer outrage and the principles.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
And they tried to send out right, Yeah, it's a shame.
But so they did attempt diplomacy. But by seventeen thirty
nine that was clearly not going to be a viable path.
So King George said in July tenth he told his
(20:11):
Admiralty Board to start quote initiating reprisals against Spain.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
So at this point the Governor of the British Colony
of Georgia, James Oglethorpe, got involved, and he amassed some
forces and went into Florida, took down some Spanish forts.
We've got your Fort Picolata, and you got your fort
San Francisco. Dupopo, puopo. I'm gonna go with poopo, p upo. Okay,
(20:49):
I'm gonna go with that. And yeah, I went into
parts of Florida, Saint Augustine along the Saint John's River,
and again fantastic information coming from Georgia and psyc the
Peda dot org and his aim was to cut off
supplies to the Spanish and you know, kind of head
(21:11):
them off of the pass and get those supplies from
the forts. Then the Spanish are going to arrive the
forces that were deployed in this situation. And that's kind
of what his whole strategy was.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
There, right right, and denying access to resources is a
tried and true method of warfare.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
But I guess for whatever reason, it didn't quite work
out the way he wanted and he ended up having
to kind of take a step back and just seeing
where the pieces fell. When the Spanish finally did show
up and invade.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
And that happened in the summer of seventeen forty two
Spanish forces landed on the tip of Saint Simon's Island.
They got together to just the tip, just the tip,
they got together to attack Fort Frederica. Relation to our
longtime friend Matt Frederick or maybe.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
There is you know, know, we have to check.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
But so Oglethorpe was having already having a problem with
organizing his army. I believe he had a lot of
diverse commanders and the siege that he had an attempted
didn't work because he could not coordinate the navel and
land based assaults. But as soon as the English forces
(22:27):
got word of the Spanish parties arriving, I think they
found a scouting party Oglethorpe aggressively led a charge against
the Spanish.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
What did they do? Well, I got one for you
in a question. Yeah, what's the difference between a battle
and a skirmish?
Speaker 1 (22:44):
A battle in a skirmish? You know, I don't know
whether there is a technical, hard and fast difference.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
It's like there between a fight versus a scrap.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
You know, right right, or an argument versus a spat
a tiff.
Speaker 2 (22:57):
Perhaps, Yeah, I think that's what it is.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
So I would imagine if we're just speculating, anythink you
can go with me on this. If we're just speculating,
I would I would imagine that a skirmish is properly
lower in terms of number of people injured and number
of people killed. You know what I mean, It's like
shots fired.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
Well, my friend Webster describes a skirmish as an episode
of irregular or unpremeditated fighting, especially between small or outlying
parts of armies.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
Fleets, so ships in the night they bump into each other,
not the big show.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
Yeah, yeah, And.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
They go, holy smokes, they kill it's them, yeah, exactly,
and they freak out and then people die. Half the
people scream kill, half the people scream run.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
And you know, I'm sure we know this too. You
can use skirmish as a verb. You can, you can,
you can you know they's skirmishing? Mm hm yes, yes.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
And also this is American English, which I love because
it means we can use almost anything as a verb.
We can say that you got jenkins or you jinkins that.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
For our purposes here, yeah, we're not a military history
deep dive show. The point being is that all of this,
all of these skirmishes and battles and fracases and TIFFs
and what have you and deaths all resulted from a
smuggler being kind of tortured, mister Blond style.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
The story of a smuggler.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
That's the thing, right, because the story is way cooler
because I'm already kind of getting a little snoozed out
going through every little the stories.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
But the stories are important in that they are the
easiest way to motivate absolute population. Ultimately, we fast forward
a bit. The end of this war occurs at the
Treaty of ax La Chappelle in seventeen forty eight, and
it returns all the colonial claims to the previous owners,
(24:54):
and the two nations unofficially agree on the border between
Georgia and Florida. They name it, they say the Saint
John River the Saint John's River rather And because of
this war, because of ogle Thorpe's actions, and because, at
least in some aspect, because a guy named Robert Jenkins
got his ear cut off, Georgia remained an English possession. So, uh,
(25:19):
you know, if somebody, if your friend gets their ear
cut off, don't don't feel like you have to wage
war over it.
Speaker 2 (25:25):
Yeah, don't go crying over sliced ears. Yeah you cry.
I'd cry. I don't know if it was my ear
or the ear of a loved one.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
I would go into like deep meditation techniques to try
to not feel it. They got to a hospital or bandage.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
I think, what sets what's what sets these stories not
a part at all, what puts them together, what joins
them is that it's these kind of simple acts that
have the power to push humans in positions to create huge, horrible,
long line consequences and conflicts to their limits. And they
(26:04):
get it done. But as you say, we've talked about
this constantly with these powder keg moments, and like history,
you always hear about the moment, but then the details
are always there, the context is.
Speaker 1 (26:15):
Always so, and we find the moment retroactively too often.
You know, we have somebody who looks back when they're
writing about an event that occurredreds of years ago, and
they go, oh, it's because that it's that fart, that's
what it was. But we have more examples, and no,
you found one that really fascinated me.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
All right, Well, I had two, one about an inanimate
object and one about an animal. Which one would you
like to hear? Oh?
Speaker 1 (26:43):
Man, okay, let's let's go to the inanimate object and
then because it'd be nice to circle back with the animal.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
Yeah, okay, I'm down with that. The inanimate object in question,
my friend, is a bucket.
Speaker 1 (26:56):
A bucket?
Speaker 2 (26:57):
A bucket?
Speaker 1 (26:59):
Could I ask you just this is an honest question.
Is this thing gonna end up being called the bucket War?
Speaker 2 (27:05):
Yeah, or the War of the Buckets, or you know,
the the Skirmish of the pale I love it, ok yeah, whatever,
But this one was pretty gnarly, you know, as was
the we didn't talk about deaths in the jenkins Ear War.
Speaker 1 (27:23):
A lot of people died. It's cool, very tragedy, not cool.
Speaker 2 (27:26):
I figured as much. No, not, I mean cool, like
the cool day that it's meant like cool. We got
that out. We admitted that war is tragic or people die.
It's heck, as you say, is that an acronym? What
is heck? It's a good, good, good, clean Christian boy
stand in for the other word. Yep, yeah, which we
can say on the show is a PG thirteen show.
Speaker 1 (27:44):
I know, but I like saying heck.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
I know. It's very endearing. Thank you.
Speaker 1 (27:47):
So the bucket War, the bucket War. When did this happen?
Speaker 2 (27:50):
Well, I was in thirteen twenty five. And this also
involves clashes between let's call them clans, I guess, for
lack of a better No, it's fine, we want to
need a better one.
Speaker 1 (27:59):
We're gonna go with clans, family, family, communities, right, or
they're bonded through a biological relationship, right.
Speaker 2 (28:06):
This is right, this is correct. And you know medieval society,
family was everything, right, and you would organize around family,
and it was all about your house. And you know
that you know and I'm just using Game of Thrones
rules here, but I'm pretty sure that was all based
on our boy. George or Martin did his homework so
we didn't have to.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
Yeah, just check out his audio books.
Speaker 2 (28:24):
You need to finish those books though, George. Come on, man,
the show is happening.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
It's it's never coming out.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
Yeah. So this particular clash of clans was between the
the Ghibelines and the Gelfs.
Speaker 1 (28:37):
He sound like made up Doctor Who Aliens.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
Yes, the Guelfs. Maybe it was Gelflings, but that was
in the dark Crystal, I think. Yeah, the little puppet
guys and the bad guys were the slee Stacks. That
that's close. They were the Skexies. Skexies what a slee Stacks.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
Slee Stacks are from Land of the Lost. Do you
remember that show?
Speaker 3 (28:57):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (28:57):
Yeah, the dimator kind of thing where it was like
time travel. They accidentally stepped through a portal into the
Land of the Lost.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
Yeah, and it's always explained in the theme song, Oh
I love it, I love it. They're like we were
in a boat and then you're living in a Land
of the Lost. Yeah, there are slea Stacks were evil
creatures who would evolve to anthropomorphoid forms from reptile.
Speaker 2 (29:20):
Okay, okay, well there's none of that in those particular conflicts.
This is strictly human. No reptilians or weird little elf
people fashioned by the Jim Henson studio. Well, buckets, right,
definitely buckets. So here's the thing. I might need little
help from you with this, because these are always just
like a bit of a mind sure, a mind frack.
(29:41):
You've got these warring sides that support different head honchos
of God. Right, yes, so we've got the Holy Roman
Emperor Frederick Barbosa, who was also the King of Germany,
and then you have the Pope.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
Right, yeah, yeah, you specifically have Pope John twenty two.
Speaker 2 (30:05):
All this began are kicked off in earnest or this
conflict in the region when the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick
Barbosa invaded Italy, and he did this with what he
believed was God's blessing, as like like crowning him for
all intents and purposes as God's conduit on Earth. But
(30:26):
that didn't fly super well with others who believed that
the Pope was the only one that was crowned with
God's conduitness.
Speaker 1 (30:36):
And that was the normal thing, right, that was the
established norm. And you were telling me that the Gelphs
and the Ghibelines were on different sides of this.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
That is absolutely correct, because you see, the Ghibelines supported
the Emperor, the Holy Roman Emperor in this conflict, and
the Guelphs supported the Pope, and Italy was just a
use agglomeration. He taught me that word ben and I'm
gonna keep using it. Of these little city states kind
of and like the story we talked about with the
(31:09):
Albasis War and honestly with jenkins Ear, you've got these
folks that think they own the border. Like if you're
at a border area, you're like, no, this is mine.
Because there's no official lines. It's probably based on some
geographical thing, but that's all up for debate, especially when
you start beefing with each other. And so eventually Frederick
(31:30):
was ousted, They kicked him out. He was done. He
now the Pope ultimately ranged supreme in these early disagreements,
but that did not mean that there were not sympathizers
that remained. So he kind of had his ultimate fu
moment by leaving the country kind of completely divided. Right,
(31:50):
So you still have these warring city states, and then
you had these opposing you know groups. I think it's
the pope who is the direct communicator with God. I
think it's the Holy Roman m for now we fight.
Speaker 1 (32:02):
And it's complicated because with these shifting borders for these
city states, one state could largely support the Holy Roman
Emperor and one state could largely support the Pope. And
the problem is that these could be very close together,
especially in the example of Modina and Bologna.
Speaker 2 (32:23):
Right, yes, and I think at the top of this
section I mentioned that this took place in Castello de
serraval and in the region that is Emilia Romagna. That's
what it would be referred to as today. At the
time of this story, they were, as you say, ben
Modemia and Bologna.
Speaker 1 (32:42):
And those are barely thirty miles apart, or maybe around
thirty thirty one miles apart. So tensions are always always
going to be high. They're virtually adjacent to each other.
It seems like an unsustainable situation. I'm just guessing.
Speaker 2 (32:58):
And here here we are back with lot of skirmishes
because they're gonna be caught, They're not going to be
full all out wars. They're just gonna be little conflicts
between folks standing on opposite sides of the particular borders.
And this bucket war here we go is just such
an event.
Speaker 1 (33:15):
They're raiding farms and they're burning.
Speaker 2 (33:18):
Fields, generally thumbing the nose of the opposition, you know,
and just kind of trying to mess them up because
they fundamentally disagree with what everything they stand for, and
yet they're somehow neighbors. Right, Okay, all right, so Ben,
as you say, in thirteen twenty five, we've got these
uh what mini fights, these skirmishes, fightlets. Oh yes, we're
(33:42):
going with that's that's the new way. And they just
keep happening, and then things keep escalating. Then finally in
July you've got some of these bolonnaise. I can't say
that without getting hungry into delicious.
Speaker 1 (33:56):
So we have our computers up to eight and I
want to confess to you and everyone listening, fellow ridiculous historians,
when we started saying bolotese, I may have googled bolletes
recipe and started planning what to make for dinner.
Speaker 2 (34:14):
Well maybe you know what, maybe we can bump that
right on up to lunch because there's a lovely popsa
place downstairs, and we've been at it a long time.
Today we owe it to ourselves. Let's treat ourselves. It's
Friday anyway, though, as you say, slaughtering folks, burning fields,
just making a mess, looting and polluting all that stuff,
and they end up taking a bunch of stuff back
(34:34):
with them over the border. They keep doing this. They're
just doing a lot of damage, really really really reckon
the place. And then in September you got some revenge
being exacted because some of these troops were captured, and
you know, the Modenese had had it. So in under
cover of dark, the Modanese soldiers or a group of them,
(34:57):
they snuck across the border into the city center and
next to something called the San Felice Gate, where they
found an oaken bucket filled with loot, with booty that
belonged to Modina originally plunder that's right, and said bucket
was nabbed, was nicked. They took it and put it
(35:20):
under their arms and ran back and showed it off
in their city center for all of the Emotonese to see.
Speaker 1 (35:27):
Right, and for the residents of Bologna to see as well,
so the people at Bologna are furious and they say,
give us back that bucket. They better have that stuff
we stole earlier at it too. It is pretty hypocritical
that they were angry that's something they had stolen, had
(35:48):
just been restolen.
Speaker 2 (35:49):
Yes, it's pretty petty and childlike behavior, but again we're
seeing that with all these stories, So that's kind of
they demanded the return of the bucket. I guess they
were more concerned about the booty, but I haven't seen
specifically what it was. I'm imagining it's maybe coin plundered
(36:10):
from I just picturing like role playing games there all
the money. It's just in like sacks that are just
littered around the place, emeralds or something. You just kind
of step on it and then you hear a kit
chi chin sound and then it shows up in your inventory.
Speaker 1 (36:22):
You know what it probably I can tell you what
it probably wasn't. It probably was not a religious artifactor
or reliquary, because then the war would have been named
after that instead of the bucket. Probably just like straight
up cash money or fine fine clothing.
Speaker 2 (36:39):
Yeah, And speaking of which, that's when this particular conflict
began in earnest On November fifteenth of thirteen twenty five,
a guy by the name of Mala Testino del Occio,
who was the Lord of Remini, led his people the
Bolanese and any allies they had been able to amass
(37:00):
to besiege the city state of Mardinia and get that
bucket back.
Speaker 1 (37:07):
So ridiculous, man. So they were met by a pretty
strong resistant soldiers from Modina, Mantua and Ferrara, as well
as some Germans sent by our boy, the Holy Roman
Emperor Frederick.
Speaker 2 (37:24):
Yeah, Frederick himself, that's right, but not to be bested
the pope in question XXIII. He sent thirty thousand, so
they were vastly outnumbered.
Speaker 1 (37:37):
Yeah, and that's in the additional couple thousand knights on horseback.
So what we're seeing happen here is a proxy war
essentially over a bucket that, again, you know, in defense
of the bucket was not empty. So the Modenese, as
you said, nol were pretty well out numbered.
Speaker 2 (37:55):
Yeah, where they have like six thousand troops I think
a combination of foot soldiers and horseman as well. And yeah,
they went at.
Speaker 1 (38:04):
It and despite those numbers, they really kicked some solid
tookts absolutely.
Speaker 2 (38:10):
Yeah, they did something that read where they they disrupted
it's called a route. They disrupted the activities and the
organization of the larger army. And that's the thing, right, Yeah,
smaller force you can get out numbered, but it's a
little easier to control maybe and everybody and check your
nimble and the larger force. If you can disrupt their
communications with this thing called a route, you can cause
(38:33):
chaos and their ranks and they're not going to know
which way is up.
Speaker 1 (38:37):
Absolutely, and I think that's a very important point, especially
for this story. So the Modonese succeeded, but this was
a bloody conflict by this point, right.
Speaker 2 (38:47):
Yeah, I think we had we lost about two thousand
on both sides, which I would have just thought it
would have just been a total blood bath from the
pope led thirty thirty two thousand, you know, against the
only seven thousand, But only about two thousand lives were
lost on both sides. But that's pretty insane. That's a
lot of it's a lot of people, yeah, over a bucket.
Speaker 1 (39:08):
Yeah, So that's that's my next big question that's burning
in my mind. First, what happened after this? Did the
war end? And even more importantly, what happened to the bucket?
Speaker 2 (39:18):
Yeah, the war did eventually end. It raged on until
fifteen twenty nine, when we've got Charles of Spain, the
first that is, who by that point became a holy
Roman emperor. That's the thing you can inherit that, I guess.
Speaker 1 (39:33):
But I feel like Brad Pitt's character at the end
of seven, I keep going, what's in the bucket?
Speaker 2 (39:39):
Yeah, oh well, we don't. I don't know. I think
that's lost to time because now the bucket does remain
in its just bucket form, and you can see it
in Modena and it's at the Tora de la Giralandina
and that's just, like I guess, a mock up of it, right, okay, yeah, yeah,
just you know, to commemorate the day and the one
(40:00):
though you can find at the Palazzo Communal.
Speaker 1 (40:03):
Even today, the modern day, I believe. So that's so cool.
Speaker 2 (40:07):
Book your tickets now, book.
Speaker 1 (40:09):
Your bucket tickets. I've never been sow into a bucket.
Speaker 2 (40:11):
What if somebody had that bucket on their bucket lists?
There we go. What if a bucket list was just
a list of famous buckets that you see before you done.
Speaker 1 (40:19):
I was thinking the same thing you mind, reader, Let's
make let's make a bucket list. I want to find
more famous buckets in history.
Speaker 2 (40:27):
So huge props to Shehan Russell from a war history
online for the bloodiest Medieval war was fought because of
a bucket, because I Pilford heavily from that article for
this one. But it's a fun story. Fun that's not
the right word for it. But it's a ridiculous story
because it just goes to show how the simplest things
and the pettiest interactions can lead to serious bloodshed.
Speaker 1 (40:50):
It's kind of like that old line where if you
already decided that you don't like someone, whatever they do
is just going to make you not like them. Still,
it doesn't matter how innocuous it is. And that applies
to states and nations that want.
Speaker 2 (41:05):
To go to war.
Speaker 1 (41:06):
If they need it causes ballet, or they need a
reason to go to war, they can just find one.
Oh man, okay, everyone off off air. We checked what
time we were at and we got so into this that, Noel,
do you realize we've been We've been fascinated by buckets,
(41:27):
ears and camels for like an hour.
Speaker 2 (41:31):
Oh my buckets. Here the cavels. Oh bye, I'm fine
with that, though, you know, we gave them their due
and then and there's just one that we're gonna I
think we're gonna leave on the table. So once again
we kind of over prepared. But I guess it's better
than under delivering. Sure, that's what I always say. Yeah, so, yeah,
we got two that we're leaving on the table. But
maybe we'll just turn those in episodes of their own,
because each one of these could have really been an
(41:52):
episode on their own.
Speaker 1 (41:52):
That's that's true, except the camel one.
Speaker 2 (41:56):
I guess it.
Speaker 1 (41:57):
Depends on how much we want to learn about pre
Islam tribal relations and the biology of camels.
Speaker 2 (42:04):
But that is Can you milk a camel? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (42:06):
You can? You can milk a camel? Is it gonna
be worth it?
Speaker 2 (42:09):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (42:10):
Did you know you can milk pigs too?
Speaker 3 (42:12):
Well?
Speaker 2 (42:12):
I mean I've seen, you know, you always see the
little pig that's suckling on the big the big sal Yeah,
so I'm assuming that. Yeah, you hear about pig milk though.
Speaker 1 (42:20):
Yeah, no, I think we used it once in a
story on a different show, just because it's such a
weird term. But we digress, and yes, that is part
of the nature of Ridiculous History. Today we are going
to wrap it up. Stay tuned for possible future explanations
of the two ridiculous wars we did not get to today.
(42:41):
In the meantime, we of course always want to hear
from you. Let us know your favorite ridiculous cause of
a conflict, a skirmish, or a war. You can do
it in any number of ways. We are all over
the internet. You can find us on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook,
and of course one of our favorite places online, Ridiculous Historians.
Speaker 2 (43:01):
Yeah it's true. We actually just recorded a future episode
that features a lot of the amazing humans on that
community page. So if you want to be a part
of that and get in on the fund, you can
go to Ridiculous Historians on Facebook and asked to be
a member unless you're like clearly a awful person, where
we'll let you you know, you all are welcome.
Speaker 1 (43:22):
And again, just to be completely completely clear, do not
cut off your ears.
Speaker 2 (43:27):
No, yeah, don't do a van go just just don't
do it even to make your point just not worth it.
Speaker 1 (43:33):
And we want to of course thank our super producer,
Casey Pegram. We want to thank Alex Williams, who composed
this track.
Speaker 2 (43:41):
We'd also like to thank Christopher Hasiotis, who I had
a good old time with on the Louis Louis episode
hanging out with in Person, and I think listeners did
as well, for being our a number one super bad
plus research guy. We really appreciate a lot and he
kind of helped kick us off down this road of
ridiculous conflicts.
Speaker 1 (44:01):
And of course thank you, specifically you. This show does
not exist without you, so feel free to like our
show on your various platforms of choice, and if you're
feeling charitable, leave us a review. It always makes our day,
it really does.
Speaker 2 (44:16):
And yeah, as I just tease a minute ago, next time,
we will be exploring some really really cool stuff that
was pitched on our Ridiculous Historians page and I think
there's a lot to like and chew on in that one.
So we hope you'll join us then and we will
see you next time. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit
(44:39):
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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