March 28, 2024 • 30 mins
As early miscalculations and subsequent confusion continued to build, Delaware found itself in a three-state beef over a tiny section of land -- and though the land itself might not be a large chunk of real estate, the beef it produced led to dangerous conflict more than once. Would the newly-minted US be able to resolve this internal discord without an inter-state war? Learn more in the second part of this two-part series.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
for tuning in. Let's have a special shout out to
our super producer, Max the Wedge Williams and you're old
Brown size. I know, yeah, it's I like that. It's creative.
You know, it's better than when people do like a
(00:48):
what what.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
It's it's it's it's kind of fun mouthfeel. I know
it has some sort of creepy uh anime nerds and
cell tendencies, but I'm taking it back, y'all. I'm taking
it back for the people, for the ridiculous storians out there.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
And as one of my favorite musicians once said, allow
me to reintroduce myself. My name is Ben Boland. Don't
call it a comeback. He's been here for years.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
I'm Noel. We got Max here on the Ones in
the twos and I don't know, guys, what do you
say we we we get Weggie with it? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Oh, I like that, Get Weggie with it. I'm gonna
order some crab cakes from Maryland.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
I'm sorry.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
Looking online at Maryland crab Cakes, you'll probably.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
Get in that gold belly situation though the ship here
dry Ice where. I don't know exactly where we split this,
but we were in the midst of discussing this hilarious
and ridiculous conflict, and I guess we'll join it already
in progress.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
It turns out the Maryland is not the only state
Pennsylvania is beefing with. There is a sliver of land
in the northwest corner of Delaware, and this becomes a
source of great discord between Delaware and Pennsylvania for well
over one hundred years, like one hundred and fifty years,
(02:11):
they're beefs and it's like smaller than Central Park.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
Dude, Dude, we see this. We do so much of
this stuff. It's sometimes it's hard to put my finger
exactly on it. But there have been multiple skirmishes and
issues and disagreements between countries and states over less. You know,
it's like it's such petty ridiculousness, Frank, like beer to.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Will right out there on the African continent, the part
of the little piece of land that nobody wants for
strange reasons.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
Oh that's funny, Ben, because that actually does pertain to
our Terinolius episode, there's definitely some stuff about land nobody wants,
and in getting to that in the conversation we do
talk a little bit about some bizarre border disputes. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
And also just for a sense of scale, this is
a cool fact that Max found. Just for a sense
of scale. Yes, this part of the land that they're
fighting over, it is smaller than Central Park, but it's
larger than the entire country of Monaco Ergo or therefore
Monaco is smaller than Central Park.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Wow, that's interesting, you know. And then as parks go,
central parks pretty big. It is pretty big. It is
pretty big.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
So if we go back to the to our special
real estate agent we mentioned earlier, Thomas Craceup, cressapp will
see that the conclusion of what people called Cresap's War
resulted in the in the drawing of the Mason Dixon
line by the colonial aristocrats. But it leads to further
(03:51):
problems because Mason and Dixon, despite being super famous in
American history, are also not super great at surveying things,
even though that is their job.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
They're not the luminaries of drawing lines. It's a certain
set of skills. But as it was, as it lay,
you know, based on the I'm sure diligence due diligence
that Mason and Dixon did for their line. It is
a north to south line in the del Marva Peninsula,
intended to establish the border between Delaware and Maryland, and
(04:26):
something called the arc circle with a radius of twelve
miles as measured from the courthouse in Newcastle, Delaware. And
this was to give them sort of a frame of
reference for where to start measuring. At this point. The
arc circle wasn't really meant to be a boundary. It
was more like a reference point, right, Yeah, a place
(04:46):
to set up some markers and a benchmark to assist
with the surveying. But as we're going to get to
maybe not the best frame of reference.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
Yeah, and to like you know, go back to like
earlier like this, this whole a twelve mile radius circle
that came from that like nonsense like bit from Pennsylvania's
charter earlier on. So it's like if that was always
so flawed that if this is being used, it's.
Speaker 4 (05:12):
It's like using bad rounded numbers to do.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Math, exactly.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
Yeah, And you see a domino effect, you see a
cumulative effect of errors, right, you know, it's like building
a wall. If you start with a bad foundation, the
wall's just gonna get worse the further up you go.
And so Delaware is sucked into this because at the time,
this period of the seventeen hundreds, it's still part of
(05:39):
the William Penn Land Grant. Penn's first landing at his
what would become his new colony took place at Newcastle,
which still Delaware today. And Delaware was it had its
own legislative body, it was semi autonomous in the day
to day municipal activities, but it was still considered part
(06:01):
of Pennsylvania. And so with that in mind, uh, the
three counties of Delaware today were the lower three counties
of Pennsylvania. And so Mason and Dixon reacted to that,
and that's part of where they started getting things even
more wrong, especially like you were talking about that line
(06:22):
at the del Marva Peninsula.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
Yeah, and you know, there was I don't think there
was any outright incompetence or certainly no malice here. It's
just this is there's a lot of a lot of
variables and things that can go wrong and that can compound.
Right when you're measuring this kind of stuff, like over
long enough distances. So here you're right is where they
used a previously drawn line on that Del Marvel Peninsula,
(06:47):
which another surveying team had marked as the midpoint of
the peninsula. And the line was supposed to split the
Del Marvel Peninsula as evenly as humanly possible. And again,
we know, guys, when you're talking about splitting up land,
it's not like magical, perfectly configured puzzle pieces that just
(07:09):
lock in together. There's a lot of you know, kind
of improvisation that has to go into figuring out the
best way to do this stuff because they are not
clean lines of demarcation. This is like wilderness. You know,
if you look at the map, we're used to sing,
this is the shape of a state, and we've committed
that to our minds. But to get to that shape
(07:29):
took a lot of interesting cocktail map. Yeah, and there's.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
A reason, you know, I studied this in the past
and previous life. There's a reason that most original borders
are geographically based. They're based on things like mountains, they're
based livings like deserts, a river is great or a
big enough lake, and that's that's because it's a natural
(07:54):
line of demarcation. So when you're like you're saying, when
they're having to split this in a man made reckoning,
then it's very easy to get things wrong.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
Well, are beefing about like, no, no, it's got to
be this is mine. I've made a claim to this. Okay, Well,
now we have to take that into account and that
and again, all with the best of intentions to make
both sides happy. No neither side ends up happy. Right,
But what I'm saying is even like the issue is
that the earth is big and people are very small.
(08:25):
Also true, it's a matter of scale. Yeah, you're right.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
So this line that they work on, they go into
this knowing it's going to be one of the most
difficult parts of their journey because they have to cross
several rivers on the peninsula. They have to literally wade
through marshland and try to keep things up to snuff.
And the line that they were drawing meets up with
(08:57):
the east west line. You may on a map to
play a lot of home, folks, but the circle we
mentioned earlier doesn't meet up with everything until you get
a few miles further south. This forms a triangle of
land that becomes known as the wedge.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
Ah yes, the titular wedge of the podcast that we're
doing right now. Initially not a huge problem when Maryland
and Pennsylvania agreed to those initial survey results in seventeen
sixty seven, but a merre you know, decade later in
seventeen seventy six, or a decade in change, as the
(09:36):
American Revolution becomes a much more ideologically driven war for independence, right, Delaware,
in keeping with the thinking of the time, the zeitgeist,
you know, broke away from the crown and the penn
proprietorship in order to establish themselves as the thirteenth Colony.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
Yeah, yeah, because Penn is like a fan of the crowd, right,
He's associated with this. So if they want to be
part of the American experiment, then they also.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
Can't be part of Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
So the circle arc becomes Delaware's northern boundary, and the
big question begins who actually owns this wedge? And then
the question you might have now, which we certainly had, is.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
Why would you argue about.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
Such a comparatively small piece of land. According to authors
like Stephen Marx, the bottom line is a matter of
following the money. The taxation said that it's a square mile.
But there's money involved, and every penny counts, So people
want ownership because you know, the colonies are often hard
(10:45):
pressed to finance their rebellion against the king. So this
this becomes kind of a I don't want to say,
quite a holy grail, but it becomes something that everybody
is chasing.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
It represents something, right, It's less about the function of
the land and more about the principle you know, of
the thing, right, yeah, yeah, And it's about the money
that you can make off of it.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
And now at this point we have to take a
moment and make space, as they say, for the innocent bystanders,
the you know, the farmers just living on the wedge,
and they're like, who is in charge here? You're telling
me to pay taxes? But are you the person I'm
(11:35):
supposed to be paying taxes to? Are you part of Maryland?
You're part of Pennsylvania? What is going on?
Speaker 2 (11:41):
Yeah? And David Tristan of ABC twenty seven wrote in
a piece called who Wants the Wedge? For nearly seventy years,
Pennsylvania and Dela argued over who on the wedge? A
sliver of land created when two lines from the Mason
Dixon survey didn't quite intersect. Again, this is like a
madical error. For the most part, administration of the wedge
(12:04):
fell to Delaware simply because it was more practical. But
by the eighteen forties some of the original marker stones
set in the area by Mason and Dixon had strangely
gone missing. In eighteen forty nine, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland
decided it was time to re survey the area. Enter
(12:26):
Lieutenant Colonel James D. Graham of the US Core of
Topographical Engineers, which is a US Corps. I was not
aware of Bumppom. So before we get in this, can
we just talk about this?
Speaker 4 (12:39):
Yeah, why is it Core?
Speaker 2 (12:41):
Yeah? Yeah, it's.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
It's a strange story, and I think it's a future episode.
So let's note that. Also, it's funny that you are
mentioning it's funny that we're going to talk about pronunciation,
because colonel is pronounced like a popcorn colonel, but it's
spelled in.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
A very yeah, and growing up with a lot of
colonels and military members in my family, they don't think
it's funny to ask about that. Anyway.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
It also reminds me we had an earlier conversation about
the city of Wooster or Worcester in Massachusetts, and Max,
you will like this fact in particular, a good thing
about that town. They just decided that for their library system,
they're not they're replacing late fees or lost book fees
or damage fees and what you'll guess instead of paying
(13:34):
them with cash, you pay them with Can you guess
this is a real thing?
Speaker 2 (13:39):
It kind of sounds like cat's got a cast sound
as we're a family show, We're going we'll tell you
the truth. Well played, I said, give them the point. No,
it's feet picks. Now, it could be.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
It could be feet picks kind of as long as
it's a picture of a cat. You can pay your
library fees in something they're called March Meowdness, which so
it's only for March. I hope it continues. I think
it's gonna I think it's gonna stick around. I co
sign on all this anyway.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
We thought that would be.
Speaker 3 (14:10):
I have so many cat photos that this is perfect
for me, like physical ones.
Speaker 4 (14:14):
Oh I could print them out. I I I.
Speaker 3 (14:17):
Had a painting at one point that someone bought that
had a white cat, and people just give me stuff
with white cats and when you have a very loud
and very distinct white cat, people decide that that's like
all that gets you in your life is like white
cat things. I just have so many white cat things.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
Nobody gets me neibelung Swag, which is fine, that's the
that's the type of cats I have.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
M hm, you know that that's from Wagner. Yeah, the
Ring of the Nebs, the name of the the that's
I I had no idea that was a capri.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
So back to the story we just had. We had
a pretty cool conversation about cats.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
That it's not going to make the air.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
It's just for us, just for us, it's for the outtakes.
But back to the story. There is this colonel and
this lieutenant Colonel James Graham. He is tasked with finally
sorting order from the chaos, and he has to figure
out exactly where this arc line meets this north line.
(15:22):
And then he said, okay, I'll do the math. I'll
look at this. You know, it is my job. And
in eighteen fifty he gives them the final draft of
his report and he says, the true meeting point of
these three states has the infamous wedge as part of
Philadelphia people don't like this, especially people in Delaware. They
(15:46):
see this and they say, on hell nah, you done
up and done it. The Delawaress are not shout out
to nappy roots, the Delawareans, which is the term. They
are not happy. Nothing seems to get solved. The things
go back to this unquiet status quo, and the poor
(16:07):
residents of the Wedge yet again walk around, look at
each other and say, beat me here, Max, who the
fuck is in charge here?
Speaker 2 (16:18):
You know he's supposed to be on the word, not
after it. I know you did good, right? Who is
in charge? Indeed? This, you know, like a lot of
parts of the country at this time, had largely been
considered sort of an unoccupied no man's land, according to
Stephen Mars, the director and archivist at the Delaware Public Archive.
(16:39):
He goes on to say that there weren't that many
people living there, and these people were quite independent. He
also knows that the Wedge wasn't a particularly important political
peace for either state, and then goes on to say
that when you're trying to govern more populated areas, how
much attention are you going to pay to the answer
(17:01):
being not very much so. In eighteen eighty nine, Pennsylvania
and Delaware decided to have another crack in it settling
their dispute. This is this is the one, This is
the time it will work. Sure we got it this time.
So they set up sort of a I don't know,
a summit of sorts to determine the boundary and ordered another,
(17:21):
yet another survey under the direction of W. C. Hodgkins.
Sounds like a real proper surveying chap of the Office
of the US Coast and Geodetic Survey. Geodetic, how about
that we're learning about all kinds of new niche little
agencies that largely probably don't exist anymore. And his survey
(17:44):
was conducted from the east west borderline of that arc
line by extending it just to touch over three quarters
of a mile. And really, micro, did I tell you
guys that I think I'm not gonna make a fuss
about it, but I'm technically in a border dispute with
my neighbor right now. Yes, yeah, he just he just
came a knocking and said, hey, awkward, but just FYI,
(18:08):
I hired a surveyor and apparently your fence is about
three feet onto my property, you know, and this this
property hadn't been occupied since I bought the bought my house,
and this guy just bought this lot and now he
and so I'm like, do I hire a counter surveyor
to confirm his findings. It's really no skin off my back,
but it just goes to show that it's all about
the attitude that you take that three feet to somebody
(18:31):
else might be an active of war. Those are no
hell no, those are my three feet. People die for
very small It's wild, isn't it. And I can care less.
But now that I'm do all this, I'm like, should
I care more? It's my land, man, So yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:47):
This is but the you know, credit to Pennsylvania, Delaware,
and Maryland. They are all trying to determine this dispute
through non warlike means, you know, and there's just a
lot of negotiation and I hope that you don't get
involved in a hot war over the fence. But as
(19:07):
a result of this eighteen eighty nine initiative, eventually the
Pennsylvania Assembly approves the results of the latest survey, and
Delaware says, hang on a tick because one of the
surveyors looking at the older work said, whoops. The original
(19:29):
measurement for that arc circle we mentioned earlier is off
by two thousand feet. We corrected the error, and so
now we've made a new weird shape that is controversial.
It's a stretch of land called the Horn.
Speaker 4 (19:43):
I'll tell you right now.
Speaker 3 (19:44):
I spent an hour trying to find a photo of
the Horn or more descriptions than the Horn.
Speaker 4 (19:49):
There's nothing that's not a thing.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
And they say, the Horn goes to Pennsylvania, you are
all made whole. But the wedge goes to Delaware and
penzyl you'll get the horn. That is fair, it is right,
and just the problem is that the Horn is part
of Delaware, and the people who are living in the
Horn are like, we're Delawareans, not Pennsylvanians, and so the
(20:14):
the people there are also people in the Wedge who
consider themselves Pennsylvanians despite the Wedge going to Delaware.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
And this.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
We see stuff like this in the modern day in
the Balkans, in Eastern Europe, like anywhere there's an enclave
of people, you know, there are a lot of folks
who say, yes, I live in you know, Moldova or something,
but I am Russian, you know, and I identify with Russia.
That's what I consider my government. So anyway, Delaware politicians say,
(20:45):
all right, we're gonna wait for everybody to calm down,
get a level head, and then we're gonna move forward
with the survey. And they waited twenty four years. So
it feels like they were waiting for the angriest people
(21:06):
in the crowd to die.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
Chill. Well, I was about to state, to chill most
literally is and to go cold. That's oftentimes that's the
name of the game, right is waiting out the assholes.
Speaker 1 (21:17):
Yeah, And so it came to pass that after twenty
four years, Delaware ratifies the survey. The United States Congress
over the moon to get this done with.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
Co signes it.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
They give it the stamp of approval. The two states
set up an official marker to show where the east
west line meets the circle arc, and in nineteen twenty one,
the issue of the wedge and the horn is finally settled,
about one hundred and fifty four years after it first
became a problem. That is one of history's weirdest, most
(21:52):
dariously ridiculous arguments. Over six hundred and eighty four acres
of land, all which prompts are powered Max to ask,
should we have just done a golf episode?
Speaker 2 (22:04):
You know, with all of the golf talk at the top,
we kind of did it. We did already.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
Well we kind of like we got golfish with it.
Speaker 2 (22:12):
No, no, but but the history of golf is weird,
The golfish is fast. It's it's a bizarre game and
a game that requires so much land and and and
uh you know, and and resources right and me.
Speaker 4 (22:25):
I mean it's basically curling.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
Okay, Max, I think you're coming from a position of
of of bias there perhaps.
Speaker 3 (22:31):
I yeah, but they are both believed to be Scottish
inventions that got been around for a very long time.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
Well, if you think about if you think about the
mechanics of golf right and the history of it, then
it's clearly based on sumo wrestling.
Speaker 4 (22:46):
But back in the think about.
Speaker 3 (22:47):
It, this is the true story when you putted people
actually did sweep the green.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, I got you.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
We should do a golf episode because there's a lot
of there's so much socioeconomic street tied up, there's so
much there's so much skill required too. It's not a
lazy game. And I think sometimes we will misread it
as such. We wanted to in our episode here with
(23:15):
a couple of tangents in trivia weird facts about Delaware.
We didn't even mention its largest city as Wilbington. But
here's something I thought, you know, I'll find interesting. The
state symbol of Delaware is a blue hen.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
Huh. You know that really does kind of make me
a little less skeptical of the idea of Ben Franklin
wanting the United States bird to be the Turkey a
blue hen. Huh.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
Yeah, because during the Revolutionary War, US soldiers would carry
around blue hencocks for like entertainment, and we don't know
exactly the nature of that entertainment.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
Did they.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
I have a picture of all of us you listening
a long at home too, folks. I have a picture
of all of us hanging out during the Revolutionary War
and where people forget sometimes that.
Speaker 2 (24:07):
War can be very boring. Oh so it becomes horrific,
a lot of hurry up and wait for the movie.
So I have this picture of us sitting around a campfire.
We've already discussed any topic of interest that we could
have over the over the past few months, and one
of us is like bored, and then someone else says,
(24:29):
you want to get the hen and then we like, yeah,
say yeah, we'll get the hint. And then we just
put the hen out and we watch it walk around.
We're like, at, look at that guy, look at the like.
That sounds pretty accurate, doesn't it It does.
Speaker 4 (24:43):
It sounds pretty fun.
Speaker 1 (24:46):
So yeah, and we may have a weird nerdy idea
of fun here, folks. I didn't know Wilmington was Wilmington,
Delaware was home to Bob Marley.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
Oh geez, what that doesn't seem right. He wasn't born there, Okay, Yeah,
but he moved there in sixty five, and that's even
weirder it would be it would. I mean, I know
he wasn't born in the United States, but I'm saying,
why would Bob Marley want to hang out? Again? No
shade on Delaware, but it seems like the least Bob
Marley blaze. Maybe it was different in the sixties. I
(25:17):
don't know.
Speaker 4 (25:17):
I mean he actually got to follow up on this.
Speaker 3 (25:19):
Yeah, according to Only in your State their page in Delaware,
not only did Bob Marley live there, but he worked
for the DuPonts.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
Yes, he did as a as a lab assistant. So
wait this, but this is not in the heyday of
his career, right.
Speaker 1 (25:37):
He was like living with his mother for twelve years,
so he was still growing He's still growing up. He's
a younger guy and he I think he was also
working for Chrysler at some point. It was a forklift driver.
He had regular dude jobs.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
That is very interesting. I had no idea. It's a
weird one, huh.
Speaker 3 (25:56):
Yeah, And I found an interesting one. It kind of
relates back to remember an episode about Blue Loss. But
like you know how some of them stuck around for
a while in this. According to Delaware Online, in nineteen eleven,
Upton Sinclair, you know, very famous author was arrested for
(26:16):
playing baseball in selling ice cream on Sunday.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
Oh dear the heretic months.
Speaker 3 (26:22):
They be ten other people that we should point out
there was also ten other people who got arrested.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
Good good, you know, like Syhai the Prince said no
dope on Sundays. That's about Blue Laws exactly.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
Well, you know, we do have a fun little side
to kind of take us out with because we've been
talking a lot about this snipy kind of back and forth.
Bad neighbor vibes and we're on the way to April
h That's right. So there was I guess you could
call it not really an incident, It was sort of
a fun thing. On April first of twenty twenty one,
(26:56):
the Newcastle County officials the big Ways sided to give
the Wedge back to Pennsylvania. Psich, pich you thought April first. Indeed,
Josh Shannon, writing for the Newark Post, had this to
say about it. Newcastle County government had some fun on
(27:16):
social media for April Fool's Day, tweeting that it is
giving the Wedge, a tryang shaped area near Newark with
a colorful history. You can say that again. Yeah, back
to Pennsylvania, and they said, I like this right here.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
They said, to the terms of our one hundred year
rental agreement with Pennsylvania, we're returning the Wedge to our
neighbors to the north today. Best of luck to all
the Firmer First Countians living there. And then they and
then they came for the Chester County government, so they
were it's a joke about how confusing it was to
(27:52):
live in the Wedge for one hundred and fifty years.
It is a pretty good joke. But as you said, Noel,
it was all in good fun. The wedge is still
part of Delaware today.
Speaker 2 (28:06):
Yeah. I don't think it's stings so much anymore. I
think this would have been taken as intended with a
little bit of a wink wink in yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:13):
You know these a lot of these folks know each other,
so they're they're like texting like, oh haha, nice one,
Todd or whatever.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
Did you know that there are more people per square
mile named Todd and Delaware than in any other place
in the universe. I did not, but it sounds true.
It's it's completely true. Don't fact check it. This was fun.
This was fun.
Speaker 4 (28:35):
This is this is more fun than it seemed.
Speaker 2 (28:37):
To Davity business being frankly, it was.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
It was a blast. We hope you join us in
the future.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
Folks.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
We've got some great episodes coming up thanks to our
super producer mister Max Williams and his uh you know,
his brother Alex Williams who composed the Bangin Bop you're
hearing right now.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
Huge thanks to Christopher hasciotis here in spirit. You know,
I realized Christophers this is kind of that. We continue
to thank him and inferred him being here in spirit
because he was really our first ever research associate and
kind of set the tone for like the way we
do our our setups, with the way we do our documents,
with all the tangents and trivia and things. So if
anyone's ever wondering about who this mystical being is, that's
(29:17):
that's who he is. The Gay Blues. Ye.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
Yeah, and of course shout out you know who we
need to shout out more often, guys, Casey Pegram.
Speaker 2 (29:25):
Oh yes, of course Casey on the case. We you
know he recently had not recent gosh time, it is weird.
It feels like it was so long. It was a
while ago. But yeah, he's a dad now. He's a
dad now. But okay, borderline don't care for that. But
we have been threatening to have him on the show
(29:46):
to do some francophile francophone content. And I think now
is the time to reach out and boom because I've
got I've got one for good I'm working on. I
think it will be great.
Speaker 1 (29:56):
Yeah, a shout out shout out to Casey, Shout out
to you. Jonathan Strickland, a k a.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
The Quizter. The beef is still a thing. And we're
hoping that he'll return soon, fresh beef fresh with some
fresh beef it, we'll call old Baby J Fresh beef
Stricklands exactly. How about We'll see you next time, folks.
(30:26):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
for tuning in. Let's have a special shout out to
our super producer, Max the Wedge Williams and you're old
Brown size. I know, yeah, it's I like that. It's creative.
You know, it's better than when people do like a
(00:48):
what what.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
It's it's it's it's kind of fun mouthfeel. I know
it has some sort of creepy uh anime nerds and
cell tendencies, but I'm taking it back, y'all. I'm taking
it back for the people, for the ridiculous storians out there.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
And as one of my favorite musicians once said, allow
me to reintroduce myself. My name is Ben Boland. Don't
call it a comeback. He's been here for years.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
I'm Noel. We got Max here on the Ones in
the twos and I don't know, guys, what do you
say we we we get Weggie with it? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Oh, I like that, Get Weggie with it. I'm gonna
order some crab cakes from Maryland.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
I'm sorry.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
Looking online at Maryland crab Cakes, you'll probably.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
Get in that gold belly situation though the ship here
dry Ice where. I don't know exactly where we split this,
but we were in the midst of discussing this hilarious
and ridiculous conflict, and I guess we'll join it already
in progress.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
It turns out the Maryland is not the only state
Pennsylvania is beefing with. There is a sliver of land
in the northwest corner of Delaware, and this becomes a
source of great discord between Delaware and Pennsylvania for well
over one hundred years, like one hundred and fifty years,
(02:11):
they're beefs and it's like smaller than Central Park.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
Dude, Dude, we see this. We do so much of
this stuff. It's sometimes it's hard to put my finger
exactly on it. But there have been multiple skirmishes and
issues and disagreements between countries and states over less. You know,
it's like it's such petty ridiculousness, Frank, like beer to.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Will right out there on the African continent, the part
of the little piece of land that nobody wants for
strange reasons.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
Oh that's funny, Ben, because that actually does pertain to
our Terinolius episode, there's definitely some stuff about land nobody wants,
and in getting to that in the conversation we do
talk a little bit about some bizarre border disputes. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
And also just for a sense of scale, this is
a cool fact that Max found. Just for a sense
of scale. Yes, this part of the land that they're
fighting over, it is smaller than Central Park, but it's
larger than the entire country of Monaco Ergo or therefore
Monaco is smaller than Central Park.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Wow, that's interesting, you know. And then as parks go,
central parks pretty big. It is pretty big. It is
pretty big.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
So if we go back to the to our special
real estate agent we mentioned earlier, Thomas Craceup, cressapp will
see that the conclusion of what people called Cresap's War
resulted in the in the drawing of the Mason Dixon
line by the colonial aristocrats. But it leads to further
(03:51):
problems because Mason and Dixon, despite being super famous in
American history, are also not super great at surveying things,
even though that is their job.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
They're not the luminaries of drawing lines. It's a certain
set of skills. But as it was, as it lay,
you know, based on the I'm sure diligence due diligence
that Mason and Dixon did for their line. It is
a north to south line in the del Marva Peninsula,
intended to establish the border between Delaware and Maryland, and
(04:26):
something called the arc circle with a radius of twelve
miles as measured from the courthouse in Newcastle, Delaware. And
this was to give them sort of a frame of
reference for where to start measuring. At this point. The
arc circle wasn't really meant to be a boundary. It
was more like a reference point, right, Yeah, a place
(04:46):
to set up some markers and a benchmark to assist
with the surveying. But as we're going to get to
maybe not the best frame of reference.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
Yeah, and to like you know, go back to like
earlier like this, this whole a twelve mile radius circle
that came from that like nonsense like bit from Pennsylvania's
charter earlier on. So it's like if that was always
so flawed that if this is being used, it's.
Speaker 4 (05:12):
It's like using bad rounded numbers to do.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Math, exactly.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
Yeah, And you see a domino effect, you see a
cumulative effect of errors, right, you know, it's like building
a wall. If you start with a bad foundation, the
wall's just gonna get worse the further up you go.
And so Delaware is sucked into this because at the time,
this period of the seventeen hundreds, it's still part of
(05:39):
the William Penn Land Grant. Penn's first landing at his
what would become his new colony took place at Newcastle,
which still Delaware today. And Delaware was it had its
own legislative body, it was semi autonomous in the day
to day municipal activities, but it was still considered part
(06:01):
of Pennsylvania. And so with that in mind, uh, the
three counties of Delaware today were the lower three counties
of Pennsylvania. And so Mason and Dixon reacted to that,
and that's part of where they started getting things even
more wrong, especially like you were talking about that line
(06:22):
at the del Marva Peninsula.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
Yeah, and you know, there was I don't think there
was any outright incompetence or certainly no malice here. It's
just this is there's a lot of a lot of
variables and things that can go wrong and that can compound.
Right when you're measuring this kind of stuff, like over
long enough distances. So here you're right is where they
used a previously drawn line on that Del Marvel Peninsula,
(06:47):
which another surveying team had marked as the midpoint of
the peninsula. And the line was supposed to split the
Del Marvel Peninsula as evenly as humanly possible. And again,
we know, guys, when you're talking about splitting up land,
it's not like magical, perfectly configured puzzle pieces that just
(07:09):
lock in together. There's a lot of you know, kind
of improvisation that has to go into figuring out the
best way to do this stuff because they are not
clean lines of demarcation. This is like wilderness. You know,
if you look at the map, we're used to sing,
this is the shape of a state, and we've committed
that to our minds. But to get to that shape
(07:29):
took a lot of interesting cocktail map. Yeah, and there's.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
A reason, you know, I studied this in the past
and previous life. There's a reason that most original borders
are geographically based. They're based on things like mountains, they're
based livings like deserts, a river is great or a
big enough lake, and that's that's because it's a natural
(07:54):
line of demarcation. So when you're like you're saying, when
they're having to split this in a man made reckoning,
then it's very easy to get things wrong.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
Well, are beefing about like, no, no, it's got to
be this is mine. I've made a claim to this. Okay, Well,
now we have to take that into account and that
and again, all with the best of intentions to make
both sides happy. No neither side ends up happy. Right,
But what I'm saying is even like the issue is
that the earth is big and people are very small.
(08:25):
Also true, it's a matter of scale. Yeah, you're right.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
So this line that they work on, they go into
this knowing it's going to be one of the most
difficult parts of their journey because they have to cross
several rivers on the peninsula. They have to literally wade
through marshland and try to keep things up to snuff.
And the line that they were drawing meets up with
(08:57):
the east west line. You may on a map to
play a lot of home, folks, but the circle we
mentioned earlier doesn't meet up with everything until you get
a few miles further south. This forms a triangle of
land that becomes known as the wedge.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
Ah yes, the titular wedge of the podcast that we're
doing right now. Initially not a huge problem when Maryland
and Pennsylvania agreed to those initial survey results in seventeen
sixty seven, but a merre you know, decade later in
seventeen seventy six, or a decade in change, as the
(09:36):
American Revolution becomes a much more ideologically driven war for independence, right, Delaware,
in keeping with the thinking of the time, the zeitgeist,
you know, broke away from the crown and the penn
proprietorship in order to establish themselves as the thirteenth Colony.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
Yeah, yeah, because Penn is like a fan of the crowd, right,
He's associated with this. So if they want to be
part of the American experiment, then they also.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
Can't be part of Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
So the circle arc becomes Delaware's northern boundary, and the
big question begins who actually owns this wedge? And then
the question you might have now, which we certainly had, is.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
Why would you argue about.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
Such a comparatively small piece of land. According to authors
like Stephen Marx, the bottom line is a matter of
following the money. The taxation said that it's a square mile.
But there's money involved, and every penny counts, So people
want ownership because you know, the colonies are often hard
(10:45):
pressed to finance their rebellion against the king. So this
this becomes kind of a I don't want to say,
quite a holy grail, but it becomes something that everybody
is chasing.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
It represents something, right, It's less about the function of
the land and more about the principle you know, of
the thing, right, yeah, yeah, And it's about the money
that you can make off of it.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
And now at this point we have to take a
moment and make space, as they say, for the innocent bystanders,
the you know, the farmers just living on the wedge,
and they're like, who is in charge here? You're telling
me to pay taxes? But are you the person I'm
(11:35):
supposed to be paying taxes to? Are you part of Maryland?
You're part of Pennsylvania? What is going on?
Speaker 2 (11:41):
Yeah? And David Tristan of ABC twenty seven wrote in
a piece called who Wants the Wedge? For nearly seventy years,
Pennsylvania and Dela argued over who on the wedge? A
sliver of land created when two lines from the Mason
Dixon survey didn't quite intersect. Again, this is like a
madical error. For the most part, administration of the wedge
(12:04):
fell to Delaware simply because it was more practical. But
by the eighteen forties some of the original marker stones
set in the area by Mason and Dixon had strangely
gone missing. In eighteen forty nine, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland
decided it was time to re survey the area. Enter
(12:26):
Lieutenant Colonel James D. Graham of the US Core of
Topographical Engineers, which is a US Corps. I was not
aware of Bumppom. So before we get in this, can
we just talk about this?
Speaker 4 (12:39):
Yeah, why is it Core?
Speaker 2 (12:41):
Yeah? Yeah, it's.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
It's a strange story, and I think it's a future episode.
So let's note that. Also, it's funny that you are
mentioning it's funny that we're going to talk about pronunciation,
because colonel is pronounced like a popcorn colonel, but it's
spelled in.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
A very yeah, and growing up with a lot of
colonels and military members in my family, they don't think
it's funny to ask about that. Anyway.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
It also reminds me we had an earlier conversation about
the city of Wooster or Worcester in Massachusetts, and Max,
you will like this fact in particular, a good thing
about that town. They just decided that for their library system,
they're not they're replacing late fees or lost book fees
or damage fees and what you'll guess instead of paying
(13:34):
them with cash, you pay them with Can you guess
this is a real thing?
Speaker 2 (13:39):
It kind of sounds like cat's got a cast sound
as we're a family show, We're going we'll tell you
the truth. Well played, I said, give them the point. No,
it's feet picks. Now, it could be.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
It could be feet picks kind of as long as
it's a picture of a cat. You can pay your
library fees in something they're called March Meowdness, which so
it's only for March. I hope it continues. I think
it's gonna I think it's gonna stick around. I co
sign on all this anyway.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
We thought that would be.
Speaker 3 (14:10):
I have so many cat photos that this is perfect
for me, like physical ones.
Speaker 4 (14:14):
Oh I could print them out. I I I.
Speaker 3 (14:17):
Had a painting at one point that someone bought that
had a white cat, and people just give me stuff
with white cats and when you have a very loud
and very distinct white cat, people decide that that's like
all that gets you in your life is like white
cat things. I just have so many white cat things.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
Nobody gets me neibelung Swag, which is fine, that's the
that's the type of cats I have.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
M hm, you know that that's from Wagner. Yeah, the
Ring of the Nebs, the name of the the that's
I I had no idea that was a capri.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
So back to the story we just had. We had
a pretty cool conversation about cats.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
That it's not going to make the air.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
It's just for us, just for us, it's for the outtakes.
But back to the story. There is this colonel and
this lieutenant Colonel James Graham. He is tasked with finally
sorting order from the chaos, and he has to figure
out exactly where this arc line meets this north line.
(15:22):
And then he said, okay, I'll do the math. I'll
look at this. You know, it is my job. And
in eighteen fifty he gives them the final draft of
his report and he says, the true meeting point of
these three states has the infamous wedge as part of
Philadelphia people don't like this, especially people in Delaware. They
(15:46):
see this and they say, on hell nah, you done
up and done it. The Delawaress are not shout out
to nappy roots, the Delawareans, which is the term. They
are not happy. Nothing seems to get solved. The things
go back to this unquiet status quo, and the poor
(16:07):
residents of the Wedge yet again walk around, look at
each other and say, beat me here, Max, who the
fuck is in charge here?
Speaker 2 (16:18):
You know he's supposed to be on the word, not
after it. I know you did good, right? Who is
in charge? Indeed? This, you know, like a lot of
parts of the country at this time, had largely been
considered sort of an unoccupied no man's land, according to
Stephen Mars, the director and archivist at the Delaware Public Archive.
(16:39):
He goes on to say that there weren't that many
people living there, and these people were quite independent. He
also knows that the Wedge wasn't a particularly important political
peace for either state, and then goes on to say
that when you're trying to govern more populated areas, how
much attention are you going to pay to the answer
(17:01):
being not very much so. In eighteen eighty nine, Pennsylvania
and Delaware decided to have another crack in it settling
their dispute. This is this is the one, This is
the time it will work. Sure we got it this time.
So they set up sort of a I don't know,
a summit of sorts to determine the boundary and ordered another,
(17:21):
yet another survey under the direction of W. C. Hodgkins.
Sounds like a real proper surveying chap of the Office
of the US Coast and Geodetic Survey. Geodetic, how about
that we're learning about all kinds of new niche little
agencies that largely probably don't exist anymore. And his survey
(17:44):
was conducted from the east west borderline of that arc
line by extending it just to touch over three quarters
of a mile. And really, micro, did I tell you
guys that I think I'm not gonna make a fuss
about it, but I'm technically in a border dispute with
my neighbor right now. Yes, yeah, he just he just
came a knocking and said, hey, awkward, but just FYI,
(18:08):
I hired a surveyor and apparently your fence is about
three feet onto my property, you know, and this this
property hadn't been occupied since I bought the bought my house,
and this guy just bought this lot and now he
and so I'm like, do I hire a counter surveyor
to confirm his findings. It's really no skin off my back,
but it just goes to show that it's all about
the attitude that you take that three feet to somebody
(18:31):
else might be an active of war. Those are no
hell no, those are my three feet. People die for
very small It's wild, isn't it. And I can care less.
But now that I'm do all this, I'm like, should
I care more? It's my land, man, So yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:47):
This is but the you know, credit to Pennsylvania, Delaware,
and Maryland. They are all trying to determine this dispute
through non warlike means, you know, and there's just a
lot of negotiation and I hope that you don't get
involved in a hot war over the fence. But as
(19:07):
a result of this eighteen eighty nine initiative, eventually the
Pennsylvania Assembly approves the results of the latest survey, and
Delaware says, hang on a tick because one of the
surveyors looking at the older work said, whoops. The original
(19:29):
measurement for that arc circle we mentioned earlier is off
by two thousand feet. We corrected the error, and so
now we've made a new weird shape that is controversial.
It's a stretch of land called the Horn.
Speaker 4 (19:43):
I'll tell you right now.
Speaker 3 (19:44):
I spent an hour trying to find a photo of
the Horn or more descriptions than the Horn.
Speaker 4 (19:49):
There's nothing that's not a thing.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
And they say, the Horn goes to Pennsylvania, you are
all made whole. But the wedge goes to Delaware and
penzyl you'll get the horn. That is fair, it is right,
and just the problem is that the Horn is part
of Delaware, and the people who are living in the
Horn are like, we're Delawareans, not Pennsylvanians, and so the
(20:14):
the people there are also people in the Wedge who
consider themselves Pennsylvanians despite the Wedge going to Delaware.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
And this.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
We see stuff like this in the modern day in
the Balkans, in Eastern Europe, like anywhere there's an enclave
of people, you know, there are a lot of folks
who say, yes, I live in you know, Moldova or something,
but I am Russian, you know, and I identify with Russia.
That's what I consider my government. So anyway, Delaware politicians say,
(20:45):
all right, we're gonna wait for everybody to calm down,
get a level head, and then we're gonna move forward
with the survey. And they waited twenty four years. So
it feels like they were waiting for the angriest people
(21:06):
in the crowd to die.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
Chill. Well, I was about to state, to chill most
literally is and to go cold. That's oftentimes that's the
name of the game, right is waiting out the assholes.
Speaker 1 (21:17):
Yeah, And so it came to pass that after twenty
four years, Delaware ratifies the survey. The United States Congress
over the moon to get this done with.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
Co signes it.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
They give it the stamp of approval. The two states
set up an official marker to show where the east
west line meets the circle arc, and in nineteen twenty one,
the issue of the wedge and the horn is finally settled,
about one hundred and fifty four years after it first
became a problem. That is one of history's weirdest, most
(21:52):
dariously ridiculous arguments. Over six hundred and eighty four acres
of land, all which prompts are powered Max to ask,
should we have just done a golf episode?
Speaker 2 (22:04):
You know, with all of the golf talk at the top,
we kind of did it. We did already.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
Well we kind of like we got golfish with it.
Speaker 2 (22:12):
No, no, but but the history of golf is weird,
The golfish is fast. It's it's a bizarre game and
a game that requires so much land and and and
uh you know, and and resources right and me.
Speaker 4 (22:25):
I mean it's basically curling.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
Okay, Max, I think you're coming from a position of
of of bias there perhaps.
Speaker 3 (22:31):
I yeah, but they are both believed to be Scottish
inventions that got been around for a very long time.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
Well, if you think about if you think about the
mechanics of golf right and the history of it, then
it's clearly based on sumo wrestling.
Speaker 4 (22:46):
But back in the think about.
Speaker 3 (22:47):
It, this is the true story when you putted people
actually did sweep the green.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, I got you.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
We should do a golf episode because there's a lot
of there's so much socioeconomic street tied up, there's so
much there's so much skill required too. It's not a
lazy game. And I think sometimes we will misread it
as such. We wanted to in our episode here with
(23:15):
a couple of tangents in trivia weird facts about Delaware.
We didn't even mention its largest city as Wilbington. But
here's something I thought, you know, I'll find interesting. The
state symbol of Delaware is a blue hen.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
Huh. You know that really does kind of make me
a little less skeptical of the idea of Ben Franklin
wanting the United States bird to be the Turkey a
blue hen. Huh.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
Yeah, because during the Revolutionary War, US soldiers would carry
around blue hencocks for like entertainment, and we don't know
exactly the nature of that entertainment.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
Did they.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
I have a picture of all of us you listening
a long at home too, folks. I have a picture
of all of us hanging out during the Revolutionary War
and where people forget sometimes that.
Speaker 2 (24:07):
War can be very boring. Oh so it becomes horrific,
a lot of hurry up and wait for the movie.
So I have this picture of us sitting around a campfire.
We've already discussed any topic of interest that we could
have over the over the past few months, and one
of us is like bored, and then someone else says,
(24:29):
you want to get the hen and then we like, yeah,
say yeah, we'll get the hint. And then we just
put the hen out and we watch it walk around.
We're like, at, look at that guy, look at the like.
That sounds pretty accurate, doesn't it It does.
Speaker 4 (24:43):
It sounds pretty fun.
Speaker 1 (24:46):
So yeah, and we may have a weird nerdy idea
of fun here, folks. I didn't know Wilmington was Wilmington,
Delaware was home to Bob Marley.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
Oh geez, what that doesn't seem right. He wasn't born there, Okay, Yeah,
but he moved there in sixty five, and that's even
weirder it would be it would. I mean, I know
he wasn't born in the United States, but I'm saying,
why would Bob Marley want to hang out? Again? No
shade on Delaware, but it seems like the least Bob
Marley blaze. Maybe it was different in the sixties. I
(25:17):
don't know.
Speaker 4 (25:17):
I mean he actually got to follow up on this.
Speaker 3 (25:19):
Yeah, according to Only in your State their page in Delaware,
not only did Bob Marley live there, but he worked
for the DuPonts.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
Yes, he did as a as a lab assistant. So
wait this, but this is not in the heyday of
his career, right.
Speaker 1 (25:37):
He was like living with his mother for twelve years,
so he was still growing He's still growing up. He's
a younger guy and he I think he was also
working for Chrysler at some point. It was a forklift driver.
He had regular dude jobs.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
That is very interesting. I had no idea. It's a
weird one, huh.
Speaker 3 (25:56):
Yeah, And I found an interesting one. It kind of
relates back to remember an episode about Blue Loss. But
like you know how some of them stuck around for
a while in this. According to Delaware Online, in nineteen eleven,
Upton Sinclair, you know, very famous author was arrested for
(26:16):
playing baseball in selling ice cream on Sunday.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
Oh dear the heretic months.
Speaker 3 (26:22):
They be ten other people that we should point out
there was also ten other people who got arrested.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
Good good, you know, like Syhai the Prince said no
dope on Sundays. That's about Blue Laws exactly.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
Well, you know, we do have a fun little side
to kind of take us out with because we've been
talking a lot about this snipy kind of back and forth.
Bad neighbor vibes and we're on the way to April
h That's right. So there was I guess you could
call it not really an incident, It was sort of
a fun thing. On April first of twenty twenty one,
(26:56):
the Newcastle County officials the big Ways sided to give
the Wedge back to Pennsylvania. Psich, pich you thought April first. Indeed,
Josh Shannon, writing for the Newark Post, had this to
say about it. Newcastle County government had some fun on
(27:16):
social media for April Fool's Day, tweeting that it is
giving the Wedge, a tryang shaped area near Newark with
a colorful history. You can say that again. Yeah, back
to Pennsylvania, and they said, I like this right here.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
They said, to the terms of our one hundred year
rental agreement with Pennsylvania, we're returning the Wedge to our
neighbors to the north today. Best of luck to all
the Firmer First Countians living there. And then they and
then they came for the Chester County government, so they
were it's a joke about how confusing it was to
(27:52):
live in the Wedge for one hundred and fifty years.
It is a pretty good joke. But as you said, Noel,
it was all in good fun. The wedge is still
part of Delaware today.
Speaker 2 (28:06):
Yeah. I don't think it's stings so much anymore. I
think this would have been taken as intended with a
little bit of a wink wink in yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:13):
You know these a lot of these folks know each other,
so they're they're like texting like, oh haha, nice one,
Todd or whatever.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
Did you know that there are more people per square
mile named Todd and Delaware than in any other place
in the universe. I did not, but it sounds true.
It's it's completely true. Don't fact check it. This was fun.
This was fun.
Speaker 4 (28:35):
This is this is more fun than it seemed.
Speaker 2 (28:37):
To Davity business being frankly, it was.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
It was a blast. We hope you join us in
the future.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
Folks.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
We've got some great episodes coming up thanks to our
super producer mister Max Williams and his uh you know,
his brother Alex Williams who composed the Bangin Bop you're
hearing right now.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
Huge thanks to Christopher hasciotis here in spirit. You know,
I realized Christophers this is kind of that. We continue
to thank him and inferred him being here in spirit
because he was really our first ever research associate and
kind of set the tone for like the way we
do our our setups, with the way we do our documents,
with all the tangents and trivia and things. So if
anyone's ever wondering about who this mystical being is, that's
(29:17):
that's who he is. The Gay Blues. Ye.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
Yeah, and of course shout out you know who we
need to shout out more often, guys, Casey Pegram.
Speaker 2 (29:25):
Oh yes, of course Casey on the case. We you
know he recently had not recent gosh time, it is weird.
It feels like it was so long. It was a
while ago. But yeah, he's a dad now. He's a
dad now. But okay, borderline don't care for that. But
we have been threatening to have him on the show
(29:46):
to do some francophile francophone content. And I think now
is the time to reach out and boom because I've
got I've got one for good I'm working on. I
think it will be great.
Speaker 1 (29:56):
Yeah, a shout out shout out to Casey, Shout out
to you. Jonathan Strickland, a k a.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
The Quizter. The beef is still a thing. And we're
hoping that he'll return soon, fresh beef fresh with some
fresh beef it, we'll call old Baby J Fresh beef
Stricklands exactly. How about We'll see you next time, folks.
(30:26):
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Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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