August 10, 2024 • 43 mins
Today the United States Military Academy at West Point is known as one the country's top-notch training institutions, but back in 1826 it was home to a night of pure egg-nog-fueled pandemonium. Join Ben and Noel as they retrace the drunken, crazed steps of cooped-up cadets who decided to fight the power one Christmas in today's Classic episode.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Folks, Welcome to our classic episode of ridiculous History. Shout
out to everybody who has ever attended West Point. It
is one of the top notch training institutions in the
United States and in the world. They're very buttoned up people.
I almost had to go, and I'm with great respect
to people who did go to West Point. I don't know, man,
(00:22):
they got a lot of rules exactly.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
And when you got a lot of rules, that means
sometimes you gotta unwind. And sometimes that unwinding can get
out of hand, especially around the holidays. You know what
do they call it? R and r ben which can
very quickly once you introduce spirits, not the ghosty kinds
into the mix.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Oh yeah, eggnog, right, this is the proverbial feather on
the camel's back. We've talked at great length about George
Washington's famous agnog recipe growing up kind of a square kid,
I did not realized that agnog historically contains alcohol. I
(01:05):
was not aware of that.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Yeah, I mean, I grew up as just being a
tasty treat, you know, for kids. But as we also
friend of the show and our crack producer, Alex Williams
hip us all too. George Washington has a very famous
eggnog recipe that is like ninety percent the boozes, and
this would have been very close to what these these
(01:27):
cadets were consuming.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
Yeah, so join us as we retrace the absolutely drunken,
crazed escalation of these cooped up cadets who decided to
fight the power. One Christmas Ridiculous History is a production
of iHeartRadio. One quart cream, one quart milk, one dozen
(02:17):
tablespoons sugar, one pint brandy, one half pint rye whiskey,
one half pint Jamaica rum, one fourth pint sherry. Mix
liquor first, then separate yolks and whites of eggs. Add
sugar to beaten yolks. Mix well. Add milk and cream
slowly beating. Beat whites of eggs until stiff, and fold
(02:40):
slowly into mixture. Let's set in cool place for several days.
Taste frequently. That is a recipe for eggnow by none
other than George Washington.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
I only assumed that it was a James Bond villain's
egnog recipe from the voice.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
Yeah, funny, funny story. All James Bond villains are based
on George Washington accent wise. Hey, everybody, welcome to the show.
I'm Ben.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
That's that famous Mount Vernon accent I've heard so much about, right,
I'm knowl Yeah, this is ridiculous history. And we started
off with a really functional little nugget there that was nice.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
Yeah, that's a recipe that is genuinely believed to be
George Washington's eggnog recipe. But there's one very important missing
part of this recipe. Did you catch it? No, he
doesn't say how many eggs should be in there. And
you'll see a lot of versions of this recipe wherein
(03:37):
someone has assumed, like based on the ratio of other ingredients,
that it would be about a dozen eggs, But he
didn't actually say that.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
What's the batch? Which what's the yield on this recipe?
Speaker 1 (03:49):
Well, I guess that's up to how much you like eggnog? Man?
Speaker 2 (03:52):
I guess. So? Doesn't the recipe typically.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
Include number of surveyans? Yeah, it was a very different time.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
This wasn't from Tasty, right, This one wasn't Taste Made
Epicurious Now or Good Eats or anything. Yeah, what's funny
you should mention Washington's nog because our coworker and pal
Alex Williams, who composed our theme Around the holidays, he
made a big old batch of Washington's nog and distributed
around the office in these delightful little Mason jars. I
(04:20):
was lucky enough to get my hands on one, and
it packed quite a wall up because a big thing
leading up to doing this episode is how could you
possibly get off your tits drunk on eggnog? Right?
Speaker 1 (04:32):
Right? Because nowadays we typically associate eggnog ays this very
seasonally based cozy drink like you sip it by a fire.
It's a comfort drink. It's a comfort drink, a gug
in drink form. Yeah, Yeah, it's a it's a it's
a slightly boozy atta boy for you around the holidays.
(04:53):
But if you, as you could tell from the recipe,
we started the show with eggnog back in the day
used to pack quite a punch. This was after it
evolved from a much older drink known as posset.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
Yeah, which was also known as a milk punch, which
sounds disgusting so.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
Bad, it's there's something in and please listeners, friends and neighbors,
say hello to our super producer Casey pegram. There's something
that I heard of before. I've never tried, but I
want to learn about. It was called milk salad. Does
that not sound disgusting?
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Really bad?
Speaker 3 (05:33):
It makes me think of our jello episode.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
Right, We got some great emails about that today. And
this beginning, folks may make you think that my co
host and I are delving into the history of agnog,
and we do just a little bit, but it's to
set the scene for a ridiculous event, and we thought
(05:56):
this would be the yummiest, weirdest place to start.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
Well, first I just want to describe what passet is.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
We talked about milk punch and the precursor or the
spiritual cousin that predates eggnog called posset. That was a
hot milk punch using curdled milk, and it was curdled
with wine or beer or I guess you get curdles
when you heat it, and then eventually it was thickened
(06:22):
with eggs and kind of became more what we know
today as traditional eggnog. But our story is really about
a riot involving drunken cadets.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
I'm going to go with a quote unquote riot on
this would know. Really, Okay, at what threshold does fracas
or brew haha become a full on riot.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
It's true. I was going to open the show with
the joke about how many eighteen hundred's West Point Cadets
does it take to assault to officers and break all
of the china And when we know the answer, we'll
get to that.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
We'll get to that. So let's talk a little bit
about west Point in general. West Point remains famous today.
It is a storied institution here in the United States.
It is named west Point because, in a stunning plot twist,
it is located in West Point, New York.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
Yeah, it's about fifty miles outside of New York City,
and storied it was. However, it didn't used to be
the model of discipline and steadfastness fastidiousness that it is
today because in the early days of the school, it
was ridiculously easy to get in in that they let
(07:42):
anyone in and you could get join any time during
the year, and it was just kind of a loose
grouping of ramshackled little huts. And I think there's about
ten cadets that were taught by I think only three teachers.
You know, a little thing called the War of eighteen
twelve happened, which was you know, against Britain, because the
(08:05):
Brits were attempting to restrict trade and they kept arresting
American seamen, which is not cool, as we know, and
also inciting Indian attacks on the US frontier. So that
aggression would not stand, my friend, So we decided to
go to war with the Brits. And that also led
to a need for disciplined.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
Soldiers, right, disciplined, professional, competent soldiers. And there's a character
here in the evolution of West Point that we must
absolutely mention, if only because he has an awesome name.
Speaker 3 (08:41):
It's like a dumbledorean awesome name.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
Sylvanis Thayer, Ladies and gentlemen. In eighteen seventeen, then President
James Monroe ordered Fayre to become the superintendent of the
Military Academy after the resignation of the former superintendent, Alden
Partridge and a pretty cool name also yeah by zone right,
(09:05):
not Harry Potter esque, but cool nonetheless and accidentally Ryan.
Under Thayer's leadership, the Academy began to make incredibly impressive
leaps and bounds in terms of discipline, in terms of
quality of education. It became the nation's first college of engineering.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
Well, Thayer didn't take no guph, my friend.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
He didn't put up with any horseplay, shenanigans, or buffoonery,
especially when it pertained to consuming or even possessing alcohol
of any kind.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
Right, alcohol could not be possessed, sold, or brought into
West Point at all. And this was just another part
of his overall very strict regime. For instance, he kept
the students on a diet of beef, bread, and water
(10:03):
to accustom them to military rations. Their days were strictly
controlled as far as the way their time was organized,
and they had a lot of pressure on them. So
imagine these students like springs that are increasingly compressed, storing
up more energy and tension.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
Yeah, they weren't even allowed these some of these rules
are I don't understand. They weren't allowed to leave campus.
I guess I can get that, because if you leave
campus you can get booze. I guess that's n's that
in the bud. Also, they couldn't cook in their dorms
or duel right right, this team related. I made a
note in the margins here in this uh this article
from the Smithsonian eggnog. It's all fun and games until
(10:43):
someone starts a holiday riot. It said before they are
West Point sucked or was awesome whatever.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
Yeah, that's uh, that's by Natasha Gealing. And yeah, this
article is very well written. And I noticed some of
the same rules you're talking about here, And to me,
the dueling one makes a lot of sense because you imagine,
you know, they're in a homogeneous population, right, this was
strictly segregated, but for the time it started to become
(11:14):
relatively progressive because it was important for kids from a
lower income level, right, or a lower socioeconomic bracket to
receive the same caliber of education if they were qualified
for it. But with all the discipline in the harsh environment,
I can easily imagine that if duels were allowed, these
(11:36):
kids would be punching each other up and pulling cards
left and right.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
Yeah. Yeah, fisticuffs and gun battles galore. It's interesting because
even though alcohol was forbidden at West Point, it was
surrounded by normal things that you have in towns, like pubs.
And there were a couple there was one called Benny
Haven and then another one called North Town, And those
will come into play in a little bit but Benny
(12:03):
Haven is also known for being the main hangout for
Edgar Allan Poe when he attended West Point. Admittedly not
for a very long time, because he mainly just hung
out and got sloshed the whole time.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
That's the story.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
But there was a history of getting sloshed at West
Point before our pal Fayer came in the days before
his iron fisted grip tightened around these cadets and tried
to whip those boys into shape. They had a yearly
kind of revelry kind of thing going on around the holidays,
didn't they.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
Right, this is important. It may seem strange to day,
but in the past, in those days, heavy drinking was
or drinking in general was more common. It was something
that was normal for people to do. You'll also hear
some stories about early founding fathers and influential historical figures
(12:58):
being several mattress factory amounts of sheets to the wind.
And we're establishing this because when Thayer came in, he
wasn't creating out of whole cloth this strict set of rules.
He was reacting to what he saws laxity in the past,
and people, students, officers alike were well aware of the
(13:21):
previous traditions.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
Oh and you mentioned historical figures and founding fathers. One.
A couple that are part of the story are boy
Jeff Davis Jefferson for long and Robert E.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
Lee.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
We're both involved in this tale of debauchery and chastisement.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
Yes, okay, So here's how it happens. Up until eighteen
twenty five, Cadets alcohol was still banned, but there were
two days a year that they could drink. That was
the fourth of July. Makes sense, yep, go us right,
live it up, and then of course Christmas. And then
(14:02):
this changed because on the fourth of July eighteen twenty five,
a bunch of Cadets drinking led to a snake dance,
which led to the hoisting of the school's commandant onto
the student's shoulders. And Thayer said, you.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
Know what, this is too much a snake dance. Snake
dance like, is that some kind of is it a
conga line? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (14:27):
Or is it a bunch of people just sort of
slithering up and down.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
They didn't like it because it just wasn't dignified.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
You know, it makes me think of remember when we
did the episode about the poison squad when Wiley got
booted from his professorship for riding a bike. So maybe
it was just the idea that this was such a
lack of discipline for them to put someone on their
shoulders that he said no alcohol.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
Ever, Well, yeah, I did say he was not fond
of horsing around. That sounds like the very definition of
horsing around, making around. There we go, So Ben just
want to get this straight. So yeah, he still allowed
this revelry at first and then shut it down after
one of these went awry by his standards.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
Yeah, eighteen twenty six onward. No alcohol, not once, never,
not a drop?
Speaker 2 (15:18):
Was he a teetotaler? Do you think or do you
think he would get in his cups? Privately? He seems
like a pretty straight shooter. He seems like a straight shooter.
But you know, you have to wonder if he applied
those same rules to himself.
Speaker 3 (15:30):
Do as I say, not as I get hammered.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
Right right right, Drink as I say, not as I drink.
And you know, I love that you mentioned these taverns
because they didn't magically disappear. Oh no, after eighteen twenty
six and Benny Haven is the really interesting one there
because of those two taverns we mentioned earlier, Benny Haven
was the only one that allowed a barter system.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
For the students. Oh, I know, this is really interesting.
So they could like trade shoes and taloons and you know,
maybe potatoes, who know anything. I guess that was on
the table, except if it came from the school. Right,
no uniform, No, because that would be that would be stealing.
And they do not want to get on the bad
side of Colonel Fayer. No, certainly do not, right, right,
(16:17):
and sounds like a tough customer that Colonel Fair.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
Yeah, people took him seriously. But you also have to
wonder would you barter stuff for booze?
Speaker 3 (16:26):
Yes, you would if I didn't have any pocket money, if.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
You didn't have thirty five cents on hand, which will
come into play later.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
Oh cool, okay, yeah, no, I don't know. I mean,
I wouldn't barter away the clothes on my back, but
if I had something of value that I could part
with and I wanted a nice stiff drink, I'm not
opposed to that.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
So when does judging me?
Speaker 2 (16:45):
Are you silently judging me? Then?
Speaker 1 (16:47):
No? No, no, no, I'm judging myself okay, fair enough,
me too. No, Ben, You're great, You're you know what.
We're together, we're solid eight out of ten. And you
know we can never compare to Casey Pegram, which is
not a bad thing.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
Well, none can, few, can few, very few. Between the
two of us, we practically make a whole person. We're
getting there for sure. So, Noel, this situation is unsustainable
to the students, right to the cadets.
Speaker 3 (17:14):
The afore mentioned winding spring ready to pop.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
So this all comes to a head when Christmas Eve
of eighteen twenty six rules around again. That's one of
the two days the cadets are allowed to drink, to imbibe,
and this is the first time they can't and you.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
Know, no one likes it when you tell them they
can't do something. Sure, tell me what I can't do, Ben.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
Yeah, don't tell me what I can't do. I will
automatically go do it. Yeah. Reverse psychology is real, it's dangerous,
and people know it works.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
It's clearly fair. That was not his style. He was
much more of a prohibitor than a than a mind manipulator.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
A mind wrangler.
Speaker 3 (18:03):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
So you know these cadets on Christmas Eve of eighteen
twenty six, about seventy of them, as it turns out,
which I think was someone in the neighborhood.
Speaker 3 (18:12):
Of a third of the student body of West Point.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
Decided to hatch a little plot where they were going
to go against old Colonel payers wishes and get themselves
some boozy egnog.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
Right, So they decided that they would go off campus
and go to the place they knew that was going
to be the friendliest tavern, which was, of course Benny
Haven Benny Haven.
Speaker 3 (18:42):
Maybe they brought some extra pairs of socks with which
to barter.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
However, Benny Haven proved without us remarking on the socks
or the pantaloons or whatever they brought with them, doesn't matter, right,
Benny Haven's was too expensive, too steep. Yeah, they could
buy a little little liquor, but not as much as
they wanted. So they had to go to Plan B.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
They wanted to get rip and drunk.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
Oh we should call it Plan H. I like it
because why because they crossed the Hudson River. Oh exactly,
that's the very very good foreshadow in their band. So yes,
they did in fact cross the Hudson River. I imagine
on some sort of sloop, perhaps a.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
Barge, some sort of maybe surely they had vessels at
their disposal. Right, it's a military academy. What do you think,
what do you picture them crossing on?
Speaker 1 (19:27):
One would imagine they wouldn't swim because of the weather. Yeah,
it'd be cold, So they were probably on you know,
a small boat or something. Maybe they just rowed across.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
I like it. I like it.
Speaker 3 (19:37):
I'm just trying to set the scene as all you know.
Speaker 2 (19:40):
So this is under the cover of night, no doubt.
They go over to the pub we mentioned briefly earlier,
the tavern, I guess North's tavern where they made a
deal with the the bartender, the barkeep, and they procured
in the neighborhood of three or four gallons of whiskey.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
Yeah, they they want to do it. Yeah, they've got
They got gallons of whiskey. And while they were there,
they had the historical quote, we found a few glasses themselves. Now,
this I think leads into this one for the chef.
It leads to the domino domino effect we'll see later.
(20:20):
Because the size of those glasses as we record this,
that size is lost to history, so we have no
idea how large these glasses were. But anyway, the death's
knocked back a few They went back to the dock
and they found a soldier who was standing guard. But
they said, you know what, man turn a blind eye,
which wasn't unusual, right, And he said, what price do
(20:45):
you expect me to put on my morals? This conversation
is inspired by a true story, I should say, And
they they named a price, and he accepted. And what
was that price?
Speaker 2 (20:56):
It was thirty five cents?
Speaker 1 (20:57):
It was thirty five cents.
Speaker 2 (20:59):
Do you want to plug that into your handy dandy
inflation calculator?
Speaker 1 (21:02):
Ben, you're going to find this hilarious, and listeners, I
hope you enjoy this too. In eighteen twenty six, thirty
five cents was the equivalent of Casey, can we get
a drum roll please? Eight dollars and nine cents?
Speaker 2 (21:28):
Okay?
Speaker 3 (21:29):
So yeah, his cheap, cheap, cheap morals.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
Eight dollars and nine cents.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
Wow, I mean.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
That's bizarre. I can't imagine a bribe that would work
at that price level.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
Yeah, no, I can't either. I would have at least
asked for some of that whiskey, right, Maybe he did.
Surely they plied him with booze. Let's editorialize here. I mean,
come on, no one's gonna take eight fit without a
little without a couple of shots first, right.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
Yes, yeah, so we go back to we go back
to Colonel Fair and sure it was a bit draconian,
but that doesn't make him a dunderhead. It doesn't make
him stupid.
Speaker 3 (22:14):
No, no, no, no. He was clearly a pretty savvy.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
Fellow, and he knew that cadets had smuggled alcohol into
the academy before. In fact, one of our characters near
has a history that we'll get to in a bit.
But he had always and the staff and officer structure
of West Point had always dealt with these on a
case by case basis. So he assumed, reasonably so that
(22:40):
there would be at least one bad or should we say,
one drunk apple, one fermented apple out a bunch. So
he had talked about it with some of the staff
and the fellow officers, but he just took the regular precautions,
like two guards ye Captain Ethan Allen Hitchcock and Lieutenant
(23:02):
William A. Thornton. They were to monitor the North Barracks.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
Old Hitchcock and Thornton. They have they're about to have
have some fun.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, they go to bed, They knock
off around midnight, right.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
Yep, that's right, at which point the boys who set off,
who salied forth for the north, huh, the tavern, are
now back in their respective dorms. I guess they they
snuck into the kitchen and made the nog.
Speaker 3 (23:33):
Speaking of which, what what part of the egg is
the nog?
Speaker 2 (23:36):
Ben?
Speaker 3 (23:36):
That's that's the question. I think everyone wants to know.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
What's a good question. Let's see is there an answer.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
There is I was being a little koy, So no
one knows exactly. And it's certainly a bit of a
turn of phrase. There is no nog to the egg.
It's not it's not a part of the egg. I
think you will probably already knew that. But it turns
out that the word nog was an old English slang
for a very stiff beer. Oh okay, And you've also
(24:05):
heard like grog. Sure, and so I'm assuming that there's
there's some relation there. And then another one is that
the idea that these wooden mugs that you could find
in taverns all across the land were called noggins. Oh
and so apparently, and this is from an article on
a delightful blog called Sustainable Table about the history of eggnog,
(24:28):
and they conjecture that when you combine noggin with egg
you get eggnog. So I don't know.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
Yeah, there's a little aside that's solid. Oh, but we
should also add that the three cadets who went across
the Hudson were not alone in their endeavor. This was
a group effort. According to the Eggnog Riot on Laugham's
Quarterly by Michelle Legro, they were joined with conspirators colluters.
(25:02):
You see, another group brought a gallon of brandy and
a gallon of wine, and another one, get this phrasal
organized a gallon of liquor on credit, and then someone
else bought the eggs, the milk, and the nutmeg. So
they had all the ingredients as symboled together and they
got wasted. They got so wasted that four hours after midnight,
(25:27):
the two officers we mentioned, Thornton and Hitchcock, woke up
with a very we're family show. So let's call it
a very OMG WTF reaction.
Speaker 3 (25:36):
Yeah, it was a clamor a hubbub.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
There arose such a clamor.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
Yes, indeed, but it was not jolly old Saint Nick. No,
it was a bunch of unruly, drunken military school cadets.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
Which has just gotta be the worst. They were, well,
let me correct here. So after the officers went to bed,
they start to drinking, the cadets, and then you'll hear,
either around two am or four am, the feather of
drunken noise broke the proverbial camel of silences back.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
We all know the sound if you've lived next door
to a frat house or anything, if you've ever had
any kind of unruly neighbors that are having a party
when you're trying to sleep, it's a very specific sound.
Sounds totally different when you yourself are drunk, sounds delightful. Oh,
it sounds just like the sound of fun.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
Sounds merry, you know.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
But when you're when you're trying to sleep, sure, it's
an instant enrager.
Speaker 1 (26:32):
So they were making mary. Around two am, Jefferson Davis
and eight other cadets started singing very loudly. Another student
tried to do the eighteen twenty six version of sh
you guys, come on specheese, and by four am this
sounds blasting through the floorboards, and that triggers the investigation.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
Do we talk about Jeff Davis?
Speaker 1 (26:59):
Jeffy, you're talking about Jeff Davis because we just mentioned
him as leading the singing. He was.
Speaker 3 (27:05):
He was one of those kids with a past, absolutely
and the future.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
He went on to become the president of the US Confederacy,
that's the one. But he was what you might describe
as an incorrigible drunk.
Speaker 1 (27:18):
Yeah. Yeah, he had a history of being censured for
leaving his post to drink at the bar. In fact,
he racked up an arrest. He did, He got arrested.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
I think he was the first student to be arrested
for sneaking away to go to Benny Haven. And not
long before the the egnog riot that we're talking about,
he was with some pals sneaking and he fell into
a pit and his pals cried out, are you alive?
(27:52):
And thankfully he was. He was alive.
Speaker 3 (27:55):
But he you know, you don't know, man Ravine, right,
good lord, he.
Speaker 1 (27:59):
Could have hit his head on a that's sixty feet
so that's nothing to sneeze at. So this guy, when
they're when they're organizing this secret Christmas party. Jefferson Davis
is one of the top picks. He's like a veteran
of this sort of thing.
Speaker 3 (28:14):
Yeah, he was totally on board.
Speaker 2 (28:16):
And our heroes, uh for all in disent purposes, heroes
or bus kills depends on what side of this. I'm
annoyed at the cadets, to be honest, that's where I stand.
I think they're being a little disrespectful. I feel you.
Speaker 1 (28:30):
But it's Christmas, eve Man.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
No it's not. It's Christmas.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
Oh yeah, now it's officially Christmas. Okay, even more, it's
Christmas Day.
Speaker 3 (28:39):
I have a little charity where Okay.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
So, but I'm saying, like I've been around drunk people
when I'm sober and trying to sleep enough that I
am feeling these two guards perspective here pretty hard. So
one of them, Hitchcock, leaps out of bed with a
start and finds a handful of the boys, six or
seven of them visibly sloshed, and he he I loved
(29:03):
the way this article puts it, the Smithsonian article.
Speaker 3 (29:07):
He ordered them to disperse, right, right right, and they refused.
Speaker 2 (29:14):
They refused to.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
Disperse, And it sounds so formal at this point, you know,
it sounds as though they had a decision making process,
but that's it was. It had to be more sloppy
and more emotionally charged. He thought it was just that
one room at first, but it turns out it wasn't.
Speaker 2 (29:32):
Oh no, no, it wasn't. He then went into another
room and he was actually followed by our boy jeff Davis,
who tried to give his compatriots the heads up by shouting,
put away the grog boys, old hitches, come in, old Hitchcock,
you know. But of course he was already there. He
was literally right behind him or right in front of him,
(29:54):
so you know, he looked like a chump. And then
Hitchcock ordered Jeffy to disperse and he agreed, which is
probably the one thing that saved him from getting court
martialed and expelled. So you know, we can thank Hitchcock
and his kind hearted nature for you know, Jefferson Davis
is a future in politics.
Speaker 1 (30:16):
Yeah, no one knew what was going to happen in
the time exactly. So Davis is arrested, others are arrested,
ordered to their rooms. And this is this is weird
because we asked at the top of the show what
(30:37):
constitutes a riot. Apparently Hitchcock read the group the Riot Act,
which declared any group of twelve or more unlawfully assembled.
Speaker 2 (30:47):
Wait, that's a real thing, the Riot Acts.
Speaker 1 (30:50):
Well, they have it here.
Speaker 2 (30:51):
You say, when you're reading someone the Riot Act, that's
literally like you're telling them their rights.
Speaker 1 (30:57):
Yeah. The original Riot Act again, real thing was passed
back in seventeen fourteen in Britain, and it essentially ruled
that if a group of a dozen or more people
got together and started acting unruly, an officer of the
law could approach them and tell them to disperse, but
to do so they literally had to read the Riot Act.
(31:19):
So the cadets are really poed right now because they
had this one party in their minds. It's one of
two nights they can let loose the entire year.
Speaker 3 (31:31):
Yeah, because we can't forget that.
Speaker 2 (31:33):
It's you know, it's hard to come in and like
just change things overnight, like if they're used to having
these parties and then you've got this this killjoy fayer
coming in and denying them there two nights of revelry
a year. That's that stings a little. You know, this
was very refreshed for them.
Speaker 1 (31:51):
So here's where I start to lose sympathy for the cadets.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
So after now they're angry at Hitchcock, were ruining the
soiree right right to get together. They decide to hunt
the captain down. They decide that vengeance is theirs. And
we have a great quote for how that segment of
the night began.
Speaker 2 (32:15):
Yeah, Hitchcock took off and then one of the drunken
cadets screamed, get your dirks and bayonets and pistols. If
you have them before the night is.
Speaker 3 (32:25):
Over, Hitchcock will be dead.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
So that's you know, that's a threat of bodily harm
to a superior officer. That's probably not not gonna fly.
Speaker 1 (32:35):
Right, right, right, right. So there's a book written by
James b Agnew called the Agnog Riot the Christmas Mutiny
at West Point. Maybe mutiny is a little better word,
but again he did read the Riot Act. So so
this book gives a minute by minute treatment account or
(32:57):
estimation about how things went down and from that point.
So let's say it's around four am. Over the next
two hours there was a cat and mouse game between
the drunk students, the faculty of West Point, and the
sober students, you know, the nerds who woke up to
(33:17):
side with the faculty against their fellow cadets.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
Yeah. And then the other guy, Thornton, the other guard,
he had a sword brandished in his face. He got
brained with a piece of wood, got knocked on his butt.
And I think Hitchcock was trying to break into a
door that had been barricaded and someone.
Speaker 3 (33:36):
Took a shot at him from the other side of
the door. Yeah, the pistol. I mean, this is I
think riot is absolutely fair.
Speaker 1 (33:42):
Right, And just to go back a second to establish
how drunk these cadets were when Hitchcock originally busted them.
Several of them, Noel, try to hide under blankets, like
while he's there, Like, if I just hide under this blanket,
no one will see me, right.
Speaker 2 (33:59):
I think some of them took their hats and covered
their faces, Like you think that's gonna work.
Speaker 1 (34:04):
Right, right? Right?
Speaker 2 (34:05):
What's going on?
Speaker 1 (34:06):
So this is where they start doing incredible physical damage,
not just threatening the officers, but damaging the property as well,
breaking windows, ripping banisters off a staircases.
Speaker 2 (34:19):
Yeah, just like shredding the curtains, whatever they could get
their hands on. I mean it was a melee, and
so Hitchcock and Thornton decided they better call in the cavalry.
And it was these guys called the bombadiers, who were
the guards that always kind of stood watch to make sure.
It's sort of like internal affairs for cops. You know,
(34:40):
it's like nobody likes internal affairs if you're a cop,
because they're like, it's like a snitch. So the cadets
did not care for the bombadiers, and once they got
called in.
Speaker 3 (34:50):
Things just got even even nastier, right, because the cadets
hated these artillery men and they thought Hitchcock summoning them
was this quote affront to their integrity. And if you
read between the lines of history here, it sounds like
they were just sloshed enough that they were were going
to get angry about anything.
Speaker 2 (35:11):
Well, they were obviously having delusions of grand are too.
It's like, who the hell do they think they are?
You know, they were trained in warfare. What I mean's
saying like they're students at this school. These are their
commanding officers. There is a you know, two nights of
partying a year or no, there is a military structure
in place here, right, Yeah, like this just seems like
(35:31):
a you know, a mass hysteria kind of situation.
Speaker 1 (35:35):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And as things went further off the rails,
it turned out that the bombadiers or these artillery men
never actually showed up. And slowly, painfully, I would imagine,
these cadets began to sober up, but not successfully, not
(35:56):
in enough time to be up at their scheduled hour,
which was six.
Speaker 2 (36:01):
Am, six am.
Speaker 1 (36:04):
On a regular day.
Speaker 2 (36:05):
They would exactly. They were probably not feeling super well.
And finally, a man who was the Commandant of Cadets.
Sounds like a really intense name, sort of like the
King of Cartoons from Pewey Herman.
Speaker 1 (36:17):
Yeah, there we go, the.
Speaker 3 (36:17):
Commandant of Cadets. He struck enough fear.
Speaker 2 (36:21):
Into the hearts of these boys that they they'd chilled out.
Speaker 3 (36:24):
They stopped breaking stuff.
Speaker 1 (36:26):
They were probably also getting tired, Yeah so and puky Yeah.
Jefferson Davis, according to the accounts, had missed the bulk
of the Knight's events because instead of resisting arrest, when
he was put under his arrest, he stumbled to his room,
threw up a little bit, and passed out. So that
actually turned out well for him because he wasn't party
(36:49):
to a lot of the more violent events. In his memoirs.
He would later claim that he didn't name names or
you know, snitch on other people, essentially yea. But the
record show he indicated that his roommate was involved in
the conflict when the cadet returned to their dorm, waking
Davis up as he loaded his gun. So his roommate
(37:10):
was the one who fired the shot.
Speaker 3 (37:13):
Not a good look. So Thayer was rightfully pretty upset.
Speaker 2 (37:17):
He gathered all of his staff for an inquiry on
the next night, and then over the following weeks they
placed twenty two cadets on restriction, and then they started
to develop an investigation a court of inquiry, and that
was issued by Major General Alexander McComb, who was the
(37:38):
Chief Engineer of the Army and Inspector of the Academy.
And this is actually from an article on the US
Army's website in the eggnog Riat and they have access
to it. Is apparently a whole lot of ink that
was spilled over this thing in terms of internal records.
Speaker 1 (37:52):
This is a big deal, right, Oh, yeah, of course
is a huge deal. He's a premier institution and we
have the names of the cadets that we could list off.
I'm going to do it very quickly.
Speaker 2 (38:02):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (38:04):
The cadets were ainswith Berry and Bamford, Burnley, Faarreley, Fitzgerald, Guard, Guyon, Humphries, Johnson, Lewis, Mercer, Murdoch, Norvelle,
Robert Scriven, Stocker, Swords, and Thompson. They all stood trial,
and other cadets, including Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee,
testified for the defense. Eleven of that group were dismissed,
(38:28):
and the remainder were allowed to stay, although three of them, Guard,
Murdoch and Norvelle chose to leave the academy anyway. You
can't fire me. I quit indeed.
Speaker 3 (38:39):
And you know, and you might think there were way
more people involved.
Speaker 2 (38:42):
In this than went down for it, right, yeah, but
you gotta think this was like a third of the
population of the school. And he was just getting things
moved away from the old ways, the old debaucherous ways
of West Point. That sounds funny, getting things on track
for his government.
Speaker 3 (39:00):
You know, he'd been given some outa boys.
Speaker 2 (39:02):
And he didn't want to lose everybody. He just wanted
like the main aggressors to take the fall and have
it be a teachable moment which I can appreciate.
Speaker 1 (39:11):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, tough but fair. And so the
riot included, as Nolan I believe you point out earlier,
nearly one third of West Point students, and it changed
the change the approach in the face of the academy
for decades to come. But West Points command historian Sherman Fleek.
Speaker 2 (39:36):
That name is on Fleek?
Speaker 1 (39:37):
Is it is literally on Fleek famously was incorrect when
he said.
Speaker 2 (39:44):
Hardly anyone knows about it if pooled among forty four
hundred cadets, I don't know why I think he talks
like this a three thousand federal employees, fifteen hundred military
staff and faculty. I doubt thirty people will know a
thing about it. This guy's not even old Timy. He's
in our current DNA. It doesn't matter supposed to. Why
would I not do.
Speaker 1 (40:04):
A voice right? But way more than thirty people know
about this, and you know, more than thirty people should.
Speaker 2 (40:13):
Yeah, I don't know. I think nowadays Eggnog is maybe
remembered less as the source of drunken, riotous revelry at
West Point and more of a non alcoholic kind of
holiday drink. You know, my kid likes agnog. They have
agnog milkshakes at Sonic and you know egnog frappuccinos.
Speaker 1 (40:33):
Yeah, it's Starbucks.
Speaker 2 (40:34):
Yeah yeah.
Speaker 1 (40:35):
An agnog is certainly not associated with crazy college parties
gone wrong. That's more of a Jaeger bomb thing, that's true.
Speaker 3 (40:44):
My whole thing with eggnog is it's got so much
sugar and milk and cream in it. It just seems
like it would make you sick before you'd get drunk enough.
Speaker 2 (40:52):
It feels like a Labowski drink to me, Just drink
the whiskey, man, Yeah, just drink the whiskey.
Speaker 1 (40:58):
Is that our PSA? Is that our moral for this
today's episode?
Speaker 2 (41:02):
Why not just.
Speaker 1 (41:03):
Drink the whiskey, the rum and the wine, whatever you got.
We are going to wrap it up. We would like
to hear from you. Does this change the way you
feel about West Point? I don't know why we're going
we're going with that question. We want to hear about
your experience with agnog. Do you have your own eggnog
recipe because a lot of people do you know our
(41:25):
composer Alex Williams, As you said, modeled his after George Washington,
but he had to figure out the amount of eggs himself.
Speaker 2 (41:32):
Yeah, exactly, And why not make a batch of your
own George Washington eggnog and send us a note and
let us know how you liked it. It's ridiculous At
HowStuffWorks dot com. You can also write us on the
facebooks where we are Ridiculous History, and we have a
nifty new Facebook group called the Ridiculous Historians.
Speaker 1 (41:49):
Where you can find your fellow listeners hipping each other
to ridiculous stories throughout the span of human civilization. You
can also find us two jokers on there as well. Well,
yeah we lurk, Yeah, we lurk. Hey, we comment as well,
and we do also look to this page for inspiration
for future topics. So thanks to everyone who's already made
(42:11):
so many excellent suggestions. You can also find us on Twitter,
you can find us on Instagram. You can find us
wherever you get podcasts. Oh gosh, that's right. We even
have a website nol.
Speaker 2 (42:22):
Do you know that I did know?
Speaker 1 (42:23):
That?
Speaker 2 (42:24):
Isn't it Ridiculous historyshow dot com?
Speaker 1 (42:26):
Spot on my friend that's where you can find every
episode that we have ever done, so check it out
and let us know what you would like to hear next.
We're be getting some fantastic emails and it always makes
our day to read them. And as always, we want
to thank our super producer and agnog enthusiast. Wait, let
(42:47):
me check Casey No, Okay, super producer Casey Pegram who
is not a fan of agnog No, not.
Speaker 2 (42:56):
Not an NOD guy. I think Casey would probably agree
with me and saying, just drink the whiskey, man, Just
drink the whiskey.
Speaker 1 (43:02):
And we want to thank Lori L. Dove, our regular contributor,
for her excellent article on how stuff works.
Speaker 2 (43:09):
And I guess most importantly other than thanking.
Speaker 1 (43:11):
You, Ben, oh, thank you.
Speaker 2 (43:13):
No, let me do this every time.
Speaker 1 (43:15):
I don't know, you know, Let's not force it, Let's
just let it happen.
Speaker 2 (43:17):
Okay, I'm up into that. We'd like to thank you
folks for listening to the show, and we hope you'll
join us for our next episode, where.
Speaker 3 (43:25):
We talk about weird people who built weird stuff.
Speaker 1 (43:28):
That is literally going to be the title.
Speaker 2 (43:30):
Yep. See you then. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit
the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Folks, Welcome to our classic episode of ridiculous History. Shout
out to everybody who has ever attended West Point. It
is one of the top notch training institutions in the
United States and in the world. They're very buttoned up people.
I almost had to go, and I'm with great respect
to people who did go to West Point. I don't know, man,
(00:22):
they got a lot of rules exactly.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
And when you got a lot of rules, that means
sometimes you gotta unwind. And sometimes that unwinding can get
out of hand, especially around the holidays. You know what
do they call it? R and r ben which can
very quickly once you introduce spirits, not the ghosty kinds
into the mix.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Oh yeah, eggnog, right, this is the proverbial feather on
the camel's back. We've talked at great length about George
Washington's famous agnog recipe growing up kind of a square kid,
I did not realized that agnog historically contains alcohol. I
(01:05):
was not aware of that.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Yeah, I mean, I grew up as just being a
tasty treat, you know, for kids. But as we also
friend of the show and our crack producer, Alex Williams
hip us all too. George Washington has a very famous
eggnog recipe that is like ninety percent the boozes, and
this would have been very close to what these these
(01:27):
cadets were consuming.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
Yeah, so join us as we retrace the absolutely drunken,
crazed escalation of these cooped up cadets who decided to
fight the power. One Christmas Ridiculous History is a production
of iHeartRadio. One quart cream, one quart milk, one dozen
(02:17):
tablespoons sugar, one pint brandy, one half pint rye whiskey,
one half pint Jamaica rum, one fourth pint sherry. Mix
liquor first, then separate yolks and whites of eggs. Add
sugar to beaten yolks. Mix well. Add milk and cream
slowly beating. Beat whites of eggs until stiff, and fold
(02:40):
slowly into mixture. Let's set in cool place for several days.
Taste frequently. That is a recipe for eggnow by none
other than George Washington.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
I only assumed that it was a James Bond villain's
egnog recipe from the voice.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
Yeah, funny, funny story. All James Bond villains are based
on George Washington accent wise. Hey, everybody, welcome to the show.
I'm Ben.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
That's that famous Mount Vernon accent I've heard so much about, right,
I'm knowl Yeah, this is ridiculous history. And we started
off with a really functional little nugget there that was nice.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
Yeah, that's a recipe that is genuinely believed to be
George Washington's eggnog recipe. But there's one very important missing
part of this recipe. Did you catch it? No, he
doesn't say how many eggs should be in there. And
you'll see a lot of versions of this recipe wherein
(03:37):
someone has assumed, like based on the ratio of other ingredients,
that it would be about a dozen eggs, But he
didn't actually say that.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
What's the batch? Which what's the yield on this recipe?
Speaker 1 (03:49):
Well, I guess that's up to how much you like eggnog? Man?
Speaker 2 (03:52):
I guess. So? Doesn't the recipe typically.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
Include number of surveyans? Yeah, it was a very different time.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
This wasn't from Tasty, right, This one wasn't Taste Made
Epicurious Now or Good Eats or anything. Yeah, what's funny
you should mention Washington's nog because our coworker and pal
Alex Williams, who composed our theme Around the holidays, he
made a big old batch of Washington's nog and distributed
around the office in these delightful little Mason jars. I
(04:20):
was lucky enough to get my hands on one, and
it packed quite a wall up because a big thing
leading up to doing this episode is how could you
possibly get off your tits drunk on eggnog? Right?
Speaker 1 (04:32):
Right? Because nowadays we typically associate eggnog ays this very
seasonally based cozy drink like you sip it by a fire.
It's a comfort drink. It's a comfort drink, a gug
in drink form. Yeah, Yeah, it's a it's a it's
a slightly boozy atta boy for you around the holidays.
(04:53):
But if you, as you could tell from the recipe,
we started the show with eggnog back in the day
used to pack quite a punch. This was after it
evolved from a much older drink known as posset.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
Yeah, which was also known as a milk punch, which
sounds disgusting so.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
Bad, it's there's something in and please listeners, friends and neighbors,
say hello to our super producer Casey pegram. There's something
that I heard of before. I've never tried, but I
want to learn about. It was called milk salad. Does
that not sound disgusting?
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Really bad?
Speaker 3 (05:33):
It makes me think of our jello episode.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
Right, We got some great emails about that today. And
this beginning, folks may make you think that my co
host and I are delving into the history of agnog,
and we do just a little bit, but it's to
set the scene for a ridiculous event, and we thought
(05:56):
this would be the yummiest, weirdest place to start.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
Well, first I just want to describe what passet is.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
We talked about milk punch and the precursor or the
spiritual cousin that predates eggnog called posset. That was a
hot milk punch using curdled milk, and it was curdled
with wine or beer or I guess you get curdles
when you heat it, and then eventually it was thickened
(06:22):
with eggs and kind of became more what we know
today as traditional eggnog. But our story is really about
a riot involving drunken cadets.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
I'm going to go with a quote unquote riot on
this would know. Really, Okay, at what threshold does fracas
or brew haha become a full on riot.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
It's true. I was going to open the show with
the joke about how many eighteen hundred's West Point Cadets
does it take to assault to officers and break all
of the china And when we know the answer, we'll
get to that.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
We'll get to that. So let's talk a little bit
about west Point in general. West Point remains famous today.
It is a storied institution here in the United States.
It is named west Point because, in a stunning plot twist,
it is located in West Point, New York.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
Yeah, it's about fifty miles outside of New York City,
and storied it was. However, it didn't used to be
the model of discipline and steadfastness fastidiousness that it is
today because in the early days of the school, it
was ridiculously easy to get in in that they let
(07:42):
anyone in and you could get join any time during
the year, and it was just kind of a loose
grouping of ramshackled little huts. And I think there's about
ten cadets that were taught by I think only three teachers.
You know, a little thing called the War of eighteen
twelve happened, which was you know, against Britain, because the
(08:05):
Brits were attempting to restrict trade and they kept arresting
American seamen, which is not cool, as we know, and
also inciting Indian attacks on the US frontier. So that
aggression would not stand, my friend, So we decided to
go to war with the Brits. And that also led
to a need for disciplined.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
Soldiers, right, disciplined, professional, competent soldiers. And there's a character
here in the evolution of West Point that we must
absolutely mention, if only because he has an awesome name.
Speaker 3 (08:41):
It's like a dumbledorean awesome name.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
Sylvanis Thayer, Ladies and gentlemen. In eighteen seventeen, then President
James Monroe ordered Fayre to become the superintendent of the
Military Academy after the resignation of the former superintendent, Alden
Partridge and a pretty cool name also yeah by zone right,
(09:05):
not Harry Potter esque, but cool nonetheless and accidentally Ryan.
Under Thayer's leadership, the Academy began to make incredibly impressive
leaps and bounds in terms of discipline, in terms of
quality of education. It became the nation's first college of engineering.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
Well, Thayer didn't take no guph, my friend.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
He didn't put up with any horseplay, shenanigans, or buffoonery,
especially when it pertained to consuming or even possessing alcohol
of any kind.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
Right, alcohol could not be possessed, sold, or brought into
West Point at all. And this was just another part
of his overall very strict regime. For instance, he kept
the students on a diet of beef, bread, and water
(10:03):
to accustom them to military rations. Their days were strictly
controlled as far as the way their time was organized,
and they had a lot of pressure on them. So
imagine these students like springs that are increasingly compressed, storing
up more energy and tension.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
Yeah, they weren't even allowed these some of these rules
are I don't understand. They weren't allowed to leave campus.
I guess I can get that, because if you leave
campus you can get booze. I guess that's n's that
in the bud. Also, they couldn't cook in their dorms
or duel right right, this team related. I made a
note in the margins here in this uh this article
from the Smithsonian eggnog. It's all fun and games until
(10:43):
someone starts a holiday riot. It said before they are
West Point sucked or was awesome whatever.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
Yeah, that's uh, that's by Natasha Gealing. And yeah, this
article is very well written. And I noticed some of
the same rules you're talking about here, And to me,
the dueling one makes a lot of sense because you imagine,
you know, they're in a homogeneous population, right, this was
strictly segregated, but for the time it started to become
(11:14):
relatively progressive because it was important for kids from a
lower income level, right, or a lower socioeconomic bracket to
receive the same caliber of education if they were qualified
for it. But with all the discipline in the harsh environment,
I can easily imagine that if duels were allowed, these
(11:36):
kids would be punching each other up and pulling cards
left and right.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
Yeah. Yeah, fisticuffs and gun battles galore. It's interesting because
even though alcohol was forbidden at West Point, it was
surrounded by normal things that you have in towns, like pubs.
And there were a couple there was one called Benny
Haven and then another one called North Town, And those
will come into play in a little bit but Benny
(12:03):
Haven is also known for being the main hangout for
Edgar Allan Poe when he attended West Point. Admittedly not
for a very long time, because he mainly just hung
out and got sloshed the whole time.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
That's the story.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
But there was a history of getting sloshed at West
Point before our pal Fayer came in the days before
his iron fisted grip tightened around these cadets and tried
to whip those boys into shape. They had a yearly
kind of revelry kind of thing going on around the holidays,
didn't they.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
Right, this is important. It may seem strange to day,
but in the past, in those days, heavy drinking was
or drinking in general was more common. It was something
that was normal for people to do. You'll also hear
some stories about early founding fathers and influential historical figures
(12:58):
being several mattress factory amounts of sheets to the wind.
And we're establishing this because when Thayer came in, he
wasn't creating out of whole cloth this strict set of rules.
He was reacting to what he saws laxity in the past,
and people, students, officers alike were well aware of the
(13:21):
previous traditions.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
Oh and you mentioned historical figures and founding fathers. One.
A couple that are part of the story are boy
Jeff Davis Jefferson for long and Robert E.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
Lee.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
We're both involved in this tale of debauchery and chastisement.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
Yes, okay, So here's how it happens. Up until eighteen
twenty five, Cadets alcohol was still banned, but there were
two days a year that they could drink. That was
the fourth of July. Makes sense, yep, go us right,
live it up, and then of course Christmas. And then
(14:02):
this changed because on the fourth of July eighteen twenty five,
a bunch of Cadets drinking led to a snake dance,
which led to the hoisting of the school's commandant onto
the student's shoulders. And Thayer said, you.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
Know what, this is too much a snake dance. Snake
dance like, is that some kind of is it a
conga line? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (14:27):
Or is it a bunch of people just sort of
slithering up and down.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
They didn't like it because it just wasn't dignified.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
You know, it makes me think of remember when we
did the episode about the poison squad when Wiley got
booted from his professorship for riding a bike. So maybe
it was just the idea that this was such a
lack of discipline for them to put someone on their
shoulders that he said no alcohol.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
Ever, Well, yeah, I did say he was not fond
of horsing around. That sounds like the very definition of
horsing around, making around. There we go, So Ben just
want to get this straight. So yeah, he still allowed
this revelry at first and then shut it down after
one of these went awry by his standards.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
Yeah, eighteen twenty six onward. No alcohol, not once, never,
not a drop?
Speaker 2 (15:18):
Was he a teetotaler? Do you think or do you
think he would get in his cups? Privately? He seems
like a pretty straight shooter. He seems like a straight shooter.
But you know, you have to wonder if he applied
those same rules to himself.
Speaker 3 (15:30):
Do as I say, not as I get hammered.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
Right right right, Drink as I say, not as I drink.
And you know, I love that you mentioned these taverns
because they didn't magically disappear. Oh no, after eighteen twenty
six and Benny Haven is the really interesting one there
because of those two taverns we mentioned earlier, Benny Haven
was the only one that allowed a barter system.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
For the students. Oh, I know, this is really interesting.
So they could like trade shoes and taloons and you know,
maybe potatoes, who know anything. I guess that was on
the table, except if it came from the school. Right,
no uniform, No, because that would be that would be stealing.
And they do not want to get on the bad
side of Colonel Fayer. No, certainly do not, right, right,
(16:17):
and sounds like a tough customer that Colonel Fair.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
Yeah, people took him seriously. But you also have to
wonder would you barter stuff for booze?
Speaker 3 (16:26):
Yes, you would if I didn't have any pocket money, if.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
You didn't have thirty five cents on hand, which will
come into play later.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
Oh cool, okay, yeah, no, I don't know. I mean,
I wouldn't barter away the clothes on my back, but
if I had something of value that I could part
with and I wanted a nice stiff drink, I'm not
opposed to that.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
So when does judging me?
Speaker 2 (16:45):
Are you silently judging me? Then?
Speaker 1 (16:47):
No? No, no, no, I'm judging myself okay, fair enough,
me too. No, Ben, You're great, You're you know what.
We're together, we're solid eight out of ten. And you
know we can never compare to Casey Pegram, which is
not a bad thing.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
Well, none can, few, can few, very few. Between the
two of us, we practically make a whole person. We're
getting there for sure. So, Noel, this situation is unsustainable
to the students, right to the cadets.
Speaker 3 (17:14):
The afore mentioned winding spring ready to pop.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
So this all comes to a head when Christmas Eve
of eighteen twenty six rules around again. That's one of
the two days the cadets are allowed to drink, to imbibe,
and this is the first time they can't and you.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
Know, no one likes it when you tell them they
can't do something. Sure, tell me what I can't do, Ben.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
Yeah, don't tell me what I can't do. I will
automatically go do it. Yeah. Reverse psychology is real, it's dangerous,
and people know it works.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
It's clearly fair. That was not his style. He was
much more of a prohibitor than a than a mind manipulator.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
A mind wrangler.
Speaker 3 (18:03):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
So you know these cadets on Christmas Eve of eighteen
twenty six, about seventy of them, as it turns out,
which I think was someone in the neighborhood.
Speaker 3 (18:12):
Of a third of the student body of West Point.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
Decided to hatch a little plot where they were going
to go against old Colonel payers wishes and get themselves
some boozy egnog.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
Right, So they decided that they would go off campus
and go to the place they knew that was going
to be the friendliest tavern, which was, of course Benny
Haven Benny Haven.
Speaker 3 (18:42):
Maybe they brought some extra pairs of socks with which
to barter.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
However, Benny Haven proved without us remarking on the socks
or the pantaloons or whatever they brought with them, doesn't matter, right,
Benny Haven's was too expensive, too steep. Yeah, they could
buy a little little liquor, but not as much as
they wanted. So they had to go to Plan B.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
They wanted to get rip and drunk.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
Oh we should call it Plan H. I like it
because why because they crossed the Hudson River. Oh exactly,
that's the very very good foreshadow in their band. So yes,
they did in fact cross the Hudson River. I imagine
on some sort of sloop, perhaps a.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
Barge, some sort of maybe surely they had vessels at
their disposal. Right, it's a military academy. What do you think,
what do you picture them crossing on?
Speaker 1 (19:27):
One would imagine they wouldn't swim because of the weather. Yeah,
it'd be cold, So they were probably on you know,
a small boat or something. Maybe they just rowed across.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
I like it. I like it.
Speaker 3 (19:37):
I'm just trying to set the scene as all you know.
Speaker 2 (19:40):
So this is under the cover of night, no doubt.
They go over to the pub we mentioned briefly earlier,
the tavern, I guess North's tavern where they made a
deal with the the bartender, the barkeep, and they procured
in the neighborhood of three or four gallons of whiskey.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
Yeah, they they want to do it. Yeah, they've got
They got gallons of whiskey. And while they were there,
they had the historical quote, we found a few glasses themselves. Now,
this I think leads into this one for the chef.
It leads to the domino domino effect we'll see later.
(20:20):
Because the size of those glasses as we record this,
that size is lost to history, so we have no
idea how large these glasses were. But anyway, the death's
knocked back a few They went back to the dock
and they found a soldier who was standing guard. But
they said, you know what, man turn a blind eye,
which wasn't unusual, right, And he said, what price do
(20:45):
you expect me to put on my morals? This conversation
is inspired by a true story, I should say, And
they they named a price, and he accepted. And what
was that price?
Speaker 2 (20:56):
It was thirty five cents?
Speaker 1 (20:57):
It was thirty five cents.
Speaker 2 (20:59):
Do you want to plug that into your handy dandy
inflation calculator?
Speaker 1 (21:02):
Ben, you're going to find this hilarious, and listeners, I
hope you enjoy this too. In eighteen twenty six, thirty
five cents was the equivalent of Casey, can we get
a drum roll please? Eight dollars and nine cents?
Speaker 2 (21:28):
Okay?
Speaker 3 (21:29):
So yeah, his cheap, cheap, cheap morals.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
Eight dollars and nine cents.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
Wow, I mean.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
That's bizarre. I can't imagine a bribe that would work
at that price level.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
Yeah, no, I can't either. I would have at least
asked for some of that whiskey, right, Maybe he did.
Surely they plied him with booze. Let's editorialize here. I mean,
come on, no one's gonna take eight fit without a
little without a couple of shots first, right.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
Yes, yeah, so we go back to we go back
to Colonel Fair and sure it was a bit draconian,
but that doesn't make him a dunderhead. It doesn't make
him stupid.
Speaker 3 (22:14):
No, no, no, no. He was clearly a pretty savvy.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
Fellow, and he knew that cadets had smuggled alcohol into
the academy before. In fact, one of our characters near
has a history that we'll get to in a bit.
But he had always and the staff and officer structure
of West Point had always dealt with these on a
case by case basis. So he assumed, reasonably so that
(22:40):
there would be at least one bad or should we say,
one drunk apple, one fermented apple out a bunch. So
he had talked about it with some of the staff
and the fellow officers, but he just took the regular precautions,
like two guards ye Captain Ethan Allen Hitchcock and Lieutenant
(23:02):
William A. Thornton. They were to monitor the North Barracks.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
Old Hitchcock and Thornton. They have they're about to have
have some fun.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, they go to bed, They knock
off around midnight, right.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
Yep, that's right, at which point the boys who set off,
who salied forth for the north, huh, the tavern, are
now back in their respective dorms. I guess they they
snuck into the kitchen and made the nog.
Speaker 3 (23:33):
Speaking of which, what what part of the egg is
the nog?
Speaker 2 (23:36):
Ben?
Speaker 3 (23:36):
That's that's the question. I think everyone wants to know.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
What's a good question. Let's see is there an answer.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
There is I was being a little koy, So no
one knows exactly. And it's certainly a bit of a
turn of phrase. There is no nog to the egg.
It's not it's not a part of the egg. I
think you will probably already knew that. But it turns
out that the word nog was an old English slang
for a very stiff beer. Oh okay, And you've also
(24:05):
heard like grog. Sure, and so I'm assuming that there's
there's some relation there. And then another one is that
the idea that these wooden mugs that you could find
in taverns all across the land were called noggins. Oh
and so apparently, and this is from an article on
a delightful blog called Sustainable Table about the history of eggnog,
(24:28):
and they conjecture that when you combine noggin with egg
you get eggnog. So I don't know.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
Yeah, there's a little aside that's solid. Oh, but we
should also add that the three cadets who went across
the Hudson were not alone in their endeavor. This was
a group effort. According to the Eggnog Riot on Laugham's
Quarterly by Michelle Legro, they were joined with conspirators colluters.
(25:02):
You see, another group brought a gallon of brandy and
a gallon of wine, and another one, get this phrasal
organized a gallon of liquor on credit, and then someone
else bought the eggs, the milk, and the nutmeg. So
they had all the ingredients as symboled together and they
got wasted. They got so wasted that four hours after midnight,
(25:27):
the two officers we mentioned, Thornton and Hitchcock, woke up
with a very we're family show. So let's call it
a very OMG WTF reaction.
Speaker 3 (25:36):
Yeah, it was a clamor a hubbub.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
There arose such a clamor.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
Yes, indeed, but it was not jolly old Saint Nick. No,
it was a bunch of unruly, drunken military school cadets.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
Which has just gotta be the worst. They were, well,
let me correct here. So after the officers went to bed,
they start to drinking, the cadets, and then you'll hear,
either around two am or four am, the feather of
drunken noise broke the proverbial camel of silences back.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
We all know the sound if you've lived next door
to a frat house or anything, if you've ever had
any kind of unruly neighbors that are having a party
when you're trying to sleep, it's a very specific sound.
Sounds totally different when you yourself are drunk, sounds delightful. Oh,
it sounds just like the sound of fun.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
Sounds merry, you know.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
But when you're when you're trying to sleep, sure, it's
an instant enrager.
Speaker 1 (26:32):
So they were making mary. Around two am, Jefferson Davis
and eight other cadets started singing very loudly. Another student
tried to do the eighteen twenty six version of sh
you guys, come on specheese, and by four am this
sounds blasting through the floorboards, and that triggers the investigation.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
Do we talk about Jeff Davis?
Speaker 1 (26:59):
Jeffy, you're talking about Jeff Davis because we just mentioned
him as leading the singing. He was.
Speaker 3 (27:05):
He was one of those kids with a past, absolutely
and the future.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
He went on to become the president of the US Confederacy,
that's the one. But he was what you might describe
as an incorrigible drunk.
Speaker 1 (27:18):
Yeah. Yeah, he had a history of being censured for
leaving his post to drink at the bar. In fact,
he racked up an arrest. He did, He got arrested.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
I think he was the first student to be arrested
for sneaking away to go to Benny Haven. And not
long before the the egnog riot that we're talking about,
he was with some pals sneaking and he fell into
a pit and his pals cried out, are you alive?
(27:52):
And thankfully he was. He was alive.
Speaker 3 (27:55):
But he you know, you don't know, man Ravine, right,
good lord, he.
Speaker 1 (27:59):
Could have hit his head on a that's sixty feet
so that's nothing to sneeze at. So this guy, when
they're when they're organizing this secret Christmas party. Jefferson Davis
is one of the top picks. He's like a veteran
of this sort of thing.
Speaker 3 (28:14):
Yeah, he was totally on board.
Speaker 2 (28:16):
And our heroes, uh for all in disent purposes, heroes
or bus kills depends on what side of this. I'm
annoyed at the cadets, to be honest, that's where I stand.
I think they're being a little disrespectful. I feel you.
Speaker 1 (28:30):
But it's Christmas, eve Man.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
No it's not. It's Christmas.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
Oh yeah, now it's officially Christmas. Okay, even more, it's
Christmas Day.
Speaker 3 (28:39):
I have a little charity where Okay.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
So, but I'm saying, like I've been around drunk people
when I'm sober and trying to sleep enough that I
am feeling these two guards perspective here pretty hard. So
one of them, Hitchcock, leaps out of bed with a
start and finds a handful of the boys, six or
seven of them visibly sloshed, and he he I loved
(29:03):
the way this article puts it, the Smithsonian article.
Speaker 3 (29:07):
He ordered them to disperse, right, right right, and they refused.
Speaker 2 (29:14):
They refused to.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
Disperse, And it sounds so formal at this point, you know,
it sounds as though they had a decision making process,
but that's it was. It had to be more sloppy
and more emotionally charged. He thought it was just that
one room at first, but it turns out it wasn't.
Speaker 2 (29:32):
Oh no, no, it wasn't. He then went into another
room and he was actually followed by our boy jeff Davis,
who tried to give his compatriots the heads up by shouting,
put away the grog boys, old hitches, come in, old Hitchcock,
you know. But of course he was already there. He
was literally right behind him or right in front of him,
(29:54):
so you know, he looked like a chump. And then
Hitchcock ordered Jeffy to disperse and he agreed, which is
probably the one thing that saved him from getting court
martialed and expelled. So you know, we can thank Hitchcock
and his kind hearted nature for you know, Jefferson Davis
is a future in politics.
Speaker 1 (30:16):
Yeah, no one knew what was going to happen in
the time exactly. So Davis is arrested, others are arrested,
ordered to their rooms. And this is this is weird
because we asked at the top of the show what
(30:37):
constitutes a riot. Apparently Hitchcock read the group the Riot Act,
which declared any group of twelve or more unlawfully assembled.
Speaker 2 (30:47):
Wait, that's a real thing, the Riot Acts.
Speaker 1 (30:50):
Well, they have it here.
Speaker 2 (30:51):
You say, when you're reading someone the Riot Act, that's
literally like you're telling them their rights.
Speaker 1 (30:57):
Yeah. The original Riot Act again, real thing was passed
back in seventeen fourteen in Britain, and it essentially ruled
that if a group of a dozen or more people
got together and started acting unruly, an officer of the
law could approach them and tell them to disperse, but
to do so they literally had to read the Riot Act.
(31:19):
So the cadets are really poed right now because they
had this one party in their minds. It's one of
two nights they can let loose the entire year.
Speaker 3 (31:31):
Yeah, because we can't forget that.
Speaker 2 (31:33):
It's you know, it's hard to come in and like
just change things overnight, like if they're used to having
these parties and then you've got this this killjoy fayer
coming in and denying them there two nights of revelry
a year. That's that stings a little. You know, this
was very refreshed for them.
Speaker 1 (31:51):
So here's where I start to lose sympathy for the cadets.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
So after now they're angry at Hitchcock, were ruining the
soiree right right to get together. They decide to hunt
the captain down. They decide that vengeance is theirs. And
we have a great quote for how that segment of
the night began.
Speaker 2 (32:15):
Yeah, Hitchcock took off and then one of the drunken
cadets screamed, get your dirks and bayonets and pistols. If
you have them before the night is.
Speaker 3 (32:25):
Over, Hitchcock will be dead.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
So that's you know, that's a threat of bodily harm
to a superior officer. That's probably not not gonna fly.
Speaker 1 (32:35):
Right, right, right, right. So there's a book written by
James b Agnew called the Agnog Riot the Christmas Mutiny
at West Point. Maybe mutiny is a little better word,
but again he did read the Riot Act. So so
this book gives a minute by minute treatment account or
(32:57):
estimation about how things went down and from that point.
So let's say it's around four am. Over the next
two hours there was a cat and mouse game between
the drunk students, the faculty of West Point, and the
sober students, you know, the nerds who woke up to
(33:17):
side with the faculty against their fellow cadets.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
Yeah. And then the other guy, Thornton, the other guard,
he had a sword brandished in his face. He got
brained with a piece of wood, got knocked on his butt.
And I think Hitchcock was trying to break into a
door that had been barricaded and someone.
Speaker 3 (33:36):
Took a shot at him from the other side of
the door. Yeah, the pistol. I mean, this is I
think riot is absolutely fair.
Speaker 1 (33:42):
Right, And just to go back a second to establish
how drunk these cadets were when Hitchcock originally busted them.
Several of them, Noel, try to hide under blankets, like
while he's there, Like, if I just hide under this blanket,
no one will see me, right.
Speaker 2 (33:59):
I think some of them took their hats and covered
their faces, Like you think that's gonna work.
Speaker 1 (34:04):
Right, right? Right?
Speaker 2 (34:05):
What's going on?
Speaker 1 (34:06):
So this is where they start doing incredible physical damage,
not just threatening the officers, but damaging the property as well,
breaking windows, ripping banisters off a staircases.
Speaker 2 (34:19):
Yeah, just like shredding the curtains, whatever they could get
their hands on. I mean it was a melee, and
so Hitchcock and Thornton decided they better call in the cavalry.
And it was these guys called the bombadiers, who were
the guards that always kind of stood watch to make sure.
It's sort of like internal affairs for cops. You know,
(34:40):
it's like nobody likes internal affairs if you're a cop,
because they're like, it's like a snitch. So the cadets
did not care for the bombadiers, and once they got
called in.
Speaker 3 (34:50):
Things just got even even nastier, right, because the cadets
hated these artillery men and they thought Hitchcock summoning them
was this quote affront to their integrity. And if you
read between the lines of history here, it sounds like
they were just sloshed enough that they were were going
to get angry about anything.
Speaker 2 (35:11):
Well, they were obviously having delusions of grand are too.
It's like, who the hell do they think they are?
You know, they were trained in warfare. What I mean's
saying like they're students at this school. These are their
commanding officers. There is a you know, two nights of
partying a year or no, there is a military structure
in place here, right, Yeah, like this just seems like
(35:31):
a you know, a mass hysteria kind of situation.
Speaker 1 (35:35):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And as things went further off the rails,
it turned out that the bombadiers or these artillery men
never actually showed up. And slowly, painfully, I would imagine,
these cadets began to sober up, but not successfully, not
(35:56):
in enough time to be up at their scheduled hour,
which was six.
Speaker 2 (36:01):
Am, six am.
Speaker 1 (36:04):
On a regular day.
Speaker 2 (36:05):
They would exactly. They were probably not feeling super well.
And finally, a man who was the Commandant of Cadets.
Sounds like a really intense name, sort of like the
King of Cartoons from Pewey Herman.
Speaker 1 (36:17):
Yeah, there we go, the.
Speaker 3 (36:17):
Commandant of Cadets. He struck enough fear.
Speaker 2 (36:21):
Into the hearts of these boys that they they'd chilled out.
Speaker 3 (36:24):
They stopped breaking stuff.
Speaker 1 (36:26):
They were probably also getting tired, Yeah so and puky Yeah.
Jefferson Davis, according to the accounts, had missed the bulk
of the Knight's events because instead of resisting arrest, when
he was put under his arrest, he stumbled to his room,
threw up a little bit, and passed out. So that
actually turned out well for him because he wasn't party
(36:49):
to a lot of the more violent events. In his memoirs.
He would later claim that he didn't name names or
you know, snitch on other people, essentially yea. But the
record show he indicated that his roommate was involved in
the conflict when the cadet returned to their dorm, waking
Davis up as he loaded his gun. So his roommate
(37:10):
was the one who fired the shot.
Speaker 3 (37:13):
Not a good look. So Thayer was rightfully pretty upset.
Speaker 2 (37:17):
He gathered all of his staff for an inquiry on
the next night, and then over the following weeks they
placed twenty two cadets on restriction, and then they started
to develop an investigation a court of inquiry, and that
was issued by Major General Alexander McComb, who was the
(37:38):
Chief Engineer of the Army and Inspector of the Academy.
And this is actually from an article on the US
Army's website in the eggnog Riat and they have access
to it. Is apparently a whole lot of ink that
was spilled over this thing in terms of internal records.
Speaker 1 (37:52):
This is a big deal, right, Oh, yeah, of course
is a huge deal. He's a premier institution and we
have the names of the cadets that we could list off.
I'm going to do it very quickly.
Speaker 2 (38:02):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (38:04):
The cadets were ainswith Berry and Bamford, Burnley, Faarreley, Fitzgerald, Guard, Guyon, Humphries, Johnson, Lewis, Mercer, Murdoch, Norvelle,
Robert Scriven, Stocker, Swords, and Thompson. They all stood trial,
and other cadets, including Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee,
testified for the defense. Eleven of that group were dismissed,
(38:28):
and the remainder were allowed to stay, although three of them, Guard,
Murdoch and Norvelle chose to leave the academy anyway. You
can't fire me. I quit indeed.
Speaker 3 (38:39):
And you know, and you might think there were way
more people involved.
Speaker 2 (38:42):
In this than went down for it, right, yeah, but
you gotta think this was like a third of the
population of the school. And he was just getting things
moved away from the old ways, the old debaucherous ways
of West Point. That sounds funny, getting things on track
for his government.
Speaker 3 (39:00):
You know, he'd been given some outa boys.
Speaker 2 (39:02):
And he didn't want to lose everybody. He just wanted
like the main aggressors to take the fall and have
it be a teachable moment which I can appreciate.
Speaker 1 (39:11):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, tough but fair. And so the
riot included, as Nolan I believe you point out earlier,
nearly one third of West Point students, and it changed
the change the approach in the face of the academy
for decades to come. But West Points command historian Sherman Fleek.
Speaker 2 (39:36):
That name is on Fleek?
Speaker 1 (39:37):
Is it is literally on Fleek famously was incorrect when
he said.
Speaker 2 (39:44):
Hardly anyone knows about it if pooled among forty four
hundred cadets, I don't know why I think he talks
like this a three thousand federal employees, fifteen hundred military
staff and faculty. I doubt thirty people will know a
thing about it. This guy's not even old Timy. He's
in our current DNA. It doesn't matter supposed to. Why
would I not do.
Speaker 1 (40:04):
A voice right? But way more than thirty people know
about this, and you know, more than thirty people should.
Speaker 2 (40:13):
Yeah, I don't know. I think nowadays Eggnog is maybe
remembered less as the source of drunken, riotous revelry at
West Point and more of a non alcoholic kind of
holiday drink. You know, my kid likes agnog. They have
agnog milkshakes at Sonic and you know egnog frappuccinos.
Speaker 1 (40:33):
Yeah, it's Starbucks.
Speaker 2 (40:34):
Yeah yeah.
Speaker 1 (40:35):
An agnog is certainly not associated with crazy college parties
gone wrong. That's more of a Jaeger bomb thing, that's true.
Speaker 3 (40:44):
My whole thing with eggnog is it's got so much
sugar and milk and cream in it. It just seems
like it would make you sick before you'd get drunk enough.
Speaker 2 (40:52):
It feels like a Labowski drink to me, Just drink
the whiskey, man, Yeah, just drink the whiskey.
Speaker 1 (40:58):
Is that our PSA? Is that our moral for this
today's episode?
Speaker 2 (41:02):
Why not just.
Speaker 1 (41:03):
Drink the whiskey, the rum and the wine, whatever you got.
We are going to wrap it up. We would like
to hear from you. Does this change the way you
feel about West Point? I don't know why we're going
we're going with that question. We want to hear about
your experience with agnog. Do you have your own eggnog
recipe because a lot of people do you know our
(41:25):
composer Alex Williams, As you said, modeled his after George Washington,
but he had to figure out the amount of eggs himself.
Speaker 2 (41:32):
Yeah, exactly, And why not make a batch of your
own George Washington eggnog and send us a note and
let us know how you liked it. It's ridiculous At
HowStuffWorks dot com. You can also write us on the
facebooks where we are Ridiculous History, and we have a
nifty new Facebook group called the Ridiculous Historians.
Speaker 1 (41:49):
Where you can find your fellow listeners hipping each other
to ridiculous stories throughout the span of human civilization. You
can also find us two jokers on there as well. Well,
yeah we lurk, Yeah, we lurk. Hey, we comment as well,
and we do also look to this page for inspiration
for future topics. So thanks to everyone who's already made
(42:11):
so many excellent suggestions. You can also find us on Twitter,
you can find us on Instagram. You can find us
wherever you get podcasts. Oh gosh, that's right. We even
have a website nol.
Speaker 2 (42:22):
Do you know that I did know?
Speaker 1 (42:23):
That?
Speaker 2 (42:24):
Isn't it Ridiculous historyshow dot com?
Speaker 1 (42:26):
Spot on my friend that's where you can find every
episode that we have ever done, so check it out
and let us know what you would like to hear next.
We're be getting some fantastic emails and it always makes
our day to read them. And as always, we want
to thank our super producer and agnog enthusiast. Wait, let
(42:47):
me check Casey No, Okay, super producer Casey Pegram who
is not a fan of agnog No, not.
Speaker 2 (42:56):
Not an NOD guy. I think Casey would probably agree
with me and saying, just drink the whiskey, man, Just
drink the whiskey.
Speaker 1 (43:02):
And we want to thank Lori L. Dove, our regular contributor,
for her excellent article on how stuff works.
Speaker 2 (43:09):
And I guess most importantly other than thanking.
Speaker 1 (43:11):
You, Ben, oh, thank you.
Speaker 2 (43:13):
No, let me do this every time.
Speaker 1 (43:15):
I don't know, you know, Let's not force it, Let's
just let it happen.
Speaker 2 (43:17):
Okay, I'm up into that. We'd like to thank you
folks for listening to the show, and we hope you'll
join us for our next episode, where.
Speaker 3 (43:25):
We talk about weird people who built weird stuff.
Speaker 1 (43:28):
That is literally going to be the title.
Speaker 2 (43:30):
Yep. See you then. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit
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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