May 30, 2019 • 41 mins
Did you know you can become an honorary citizen of the United States? It's true -- but it isn't easy. Join the guys as they explore the life and times of the rare few who managed to become honorary citizens in the United States.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:28):
Ridiculous Historians. Thanks for tuning in a little bit of
background at the top of the show. Today we have
been gallivanting, uh, hither and yawing. Let's see, no, where
we're Where were you recently? Oh? I was in Mauritania
for a little while, and then before that I went
to Fraggle Rock, and then I spent a little bit
(00:49):
of time down under uh in little Australia. Yeah, let's see.
I went to uh, Texas, I pursued some of my
old SKA band dreams. What does that mean? Is Texas
like scot Central? No? No, this was after Texas. After Texas,
I went to Brussels, where my SKA band lives. It's
(01:12):
a long story. And then also, let's see between us,
we've got Chicago, Los Angeles, some other countries. Again, we
can't mention those uh. Fraggle Rock was by far my
favorite through Those little dozers are adorable users. I think
there are an authoritarian regime. I have serious problems with
their government, but they're still cutest buttons. So uh So,
(01:36):
despite all of our travels, I gotta say, it feels
so good to be back in good old Atlanta g
a US. We are joined today by our guest producer,
Paul Mission controlled decade. Let's give it up for him. Uh,
(01:58):
and what we said your name? You're an I am
Even if we didn't, I still am. Okay and I'm bed. Yeah,
we get. We don't need to have your name said
for you to have an identity, sir. That's true, that's true.
But if you want to be a citizen of the
United States, there is some paperwork involved as well as
(02:18):
some verbiage. If you're side an oath, got to speak
an oath, you gotta put your bloody thumb print on
a document, sign your name and in blood. Now, well,
you know it's changed over time. You still have to
have interviews, you have to take citizenship tests. Naturalization is
what they call it, right, and all three of us
(02:39):
recording today, and quite a few of us listening today
are citizens of the United States. Oh. What's strange about
this is that the United States is one of the
countries that gives you citizenship just for being born here.
Not every country is that way. But if regardless of
(03:01):
what your parents past is, etcetera, if you were born
on US soil, typically for most of history, that makes
you a US citizen. However, you and I started looking
into a very very strange story something about honorary citizenship.
You know this this means that you're allowing the US
(03:24):
to kind of claim you. They're like, all right, she
or he is one of the good ones. But they
don't have to actually do anything, and you don't have
to do anything getting an honorary degree, you know, just
for being a good guy. But like how a professor
emeritis doesn't teach classes, really, yeah, Emeritus justumplies some sort
of like ephemeral kind of like honor, you know, or
(03:46):
just by virtue of being this luminary in the field,
you you get to be this thing, yes, exactly, and
that sort of applies here as well. That's I agree.
I agree, uh, And I think that's spot on, because
it would be cool to be an honorary citizen of
a country, like I'd love to be an honorary citizen
of Baton or Vanuatu, which will show up in a
(04:08):
later episode. But in the case of the u S,
we found out that it is, uh, it is a
real thing. You can't have honorary citizenship if you don't
want the whole kitten caboodle. The problem is the honorary
citizenship may be one of the most difficult things to
achieve in this country of ours. It's right. It is
granted by an Act of Congress and the President. Uh
(04:32):
And to this day, unless we're missing one, only eight
honorary citizenships have been bestowed the entire time. Only time,
only eight. Here's what the State Department says about honorary citizenship.
Honorary citizenship does not carry with it the rights and
privileges of ord ursitisenship, and such status does not confer
(04:53):
any special entry, travel, or immigration benefits upon the honoree
or the honoree's relatives and dependents. You are in Texas,
weren't you been. It also does not impose additional duties
or responsibilities in the United States or internationally on the honoree.
It is a strictly symbolic act and no oath is required. Ah,
so it's not quite that. So it's literally just like
(05:15):
a wave of the hand and then it happens. It's
like a key to this. It's just like that. And
it's first of all, you they can they can give
it to you without your consent. To, can't they? Yes,
sort of the way that the Church of Latter day
Saints got in trouble for proxy baptism. Right, that's a
whole kind of worms there. But yeah, that's the thing.
(05:35):
None of these people are like asking for this as
as some sort of benefit or like it's going to
do something positive for their lives or they're going to
be able to use it in any functional way. It's
a strictly symbolic act that implies that this individual, not
a citizen, has done great things to aid our struggle
as a country. It's such an atta boy, And that's
why it's such a thin list, because it has to
(05:56):
be a lot like the burden of uh, you know,
do goodery is quite high. That's true. That's true. So
what we wanted to do today was explore the stories
of these eight honorary citizens, many of whom will be
familiar to you, some of whom may be deep cuts.
So let's get started with h first and foremost, one
(06:19):
of the most pugnacious, uh, one of one of the
most pugnacious, acerbic characters in modern European history, Winston Churchill,
who is his drunken escapades are worth an episode alone,
I would say, but Winston Churchill was the first foreign
(06:41):
national to receive honorary citizenship in the United States. Eight states,
this is interesting had already granted him citizenship, just not
the federal government, which I didn't know was the thing
that could happen. You know, if you're I guess if
you're the the governor of New Mexico, or maybe you're
the what what's a different state? What's the state? No
(07:01):
one talks about Delaware Rock still not a statement. What's
legally a territory? It's telling you it's because they have
tremendous not human rights abuses, but fraggle rights. You don't
think they should get honorary statehood and just for their
contribution to popular culture? No, man, those war crimes are
really bugged. Have you read the U N reports? Oh man,
(07:24):
they're heavily redacted. So yes they are, and they should be.
I am not a fan of puppet crime, which is
why I support Sesame Street. But you can love them both, right,
it's not a Pepsi cooat thing. So yeah, I did not.
I was not aware that states could individually grant citizenship,
(07:44):
but eight states had already granted citizenship to Winston Churchill.
His mother was American. Uh, and this happened all before
JFK and Congress followed suit. So we have a quote
from Kennedy in his proclamation. Here's what he said about
Winston Churchill. Yeah, this proclamation praised Churchill for his quote,
(08:07):
brave ray, charity and valor, both in law and peace,
have been a flame of inspiration and freedom's darkest dollar.
That Okay, Kennedy, I mean there's probably a Kennedy. There's
a little bit of Kennedy. Kennedy and there was there
was like maybe ten percent Kennedy. Oh, we gotta mixed up.
Let's keep it interesting, right, Like it's like potted meat.
(08:27):
It's like potted meat. H Now with tim percent Kennedy exactly,
I would I would buy that at the grocery store.
So Churchill's watching this. He is despite the flagrant abuse
he subjected his body to over the decades, he is
still alive. He is eighty eight years old. He's watching
a satellite relay of this from his home in London,
(08:48):
and his son Randolph accepts the honor on his behalf.
One other interesting fact, uh, one other interesting fact about
church He was also the recipient of the nineteen fifty
three Nobel Prize for Literature, which a lot of people
didn't know. But that's him. That's that's an easy one,
(09:10):
the famous rip roaring Okay, I can't keep saying Winston
Churchill is a rip roaring drunk unless I do at
least one quote rip roaring, cigar smoking drunk. Here we go, yeah, perfect,
Let's let's just pull up one of his weirdest, weirdest
drunk quote a real hum dinger. So once upon a time,
(09:33):
Winston Churchill is in a conversation with MP Bessie Braddock
uh or, the conservative lady Astor who was the first
female MP, and one of them accuses the Prime Minister
of being quote disgustingly drunk, to which he responds, my dear,
you are ugly, and what's more, you are discostly ugly.
(09:56):
But tomorrow I shall be sober and you will still
be dec Oh man. If that didn't get him a
swift slap across the jowls, I don't know what would.
He's got jewels that are hard to miss. So it
wasn't perfect, but he had tremendous influence on the course
(10:16):
of the world, in which we lived to day and
he's an honorary US citizen. Wasn't he also like weirdly
eugenic or he did like you had something, you had
some really weird, weird, deep cut Churchill issues. Probably he's not.
He's not super cool. He's not a cool guy. He
was just very racist, that's what it was. Yeah, against
people who lived on the Indian subcontinent. Yeah, he was
(10:36):
still very much a son of the Empire, as in
like the colonizer, kind of like mentality. It was Star
Wars like evil Empire. Yes, yeah, most of most of
the prequel Star Wars films are actually based off Winston Churchill.
He even kind of sounds like the Emperor. He does
ah as I the Emperor at the last second. And
(11:00):
this is the biggest controversy about Star Wars. They actually
cut out Winston Churchill's character and replaced him with jar
Jar Binks. So if you look back next time you
watch Star Wars, you remember how much people disliked Jarge
our Binks. Just imagine it in its original form with
Winston Churchill. Do it's great. It's a it's a good,
(11:23):
it's a good, it's a good piece of cinema. So
that that was the first one in the era of JFK.
But who was after that? It wasn't until nineteen eighty one, shockingly,
which I guess makes sense considering how few of these
there are in the grand scheme of things. But we
(11:45):
have Raoul Wallenberg, who was a historical figure I was
not aware of, but something of a of a Oscar
Schindler type figure. Yeah. Yeah, So Hungary fought alongside Germany
during World War Two and past past anti Semitic discriminatory
laws towards Jewish people, but the Jewish population of Hungary
(12:10):
was to a degree spared the tragic, horrific genocide of
the Holocaust. Once Hungry wavered in the Axis Cause, Hitler
ordered the country immediately occupied and Jewish people living in
Hungary were ordered to be rounded up and deported, and
(12:30):
within the space of one year a half million people
were murdered by the German regime. And this is where
Raoul Wallenberg comes in. What what makes him a Schindler
esque figure. So Wallenberg was a businessman who got sent
to the Swedish embassy in Hungary, and he was an
(12:51):
issuer of passports. He issued six fifty passports to Hungarian
Jews with ties to Sweden and that would offer them
protection from deportation. So when Wallomberg got into this post,
he um looked at how massive this humanitarian crisis was
and decided he needed to really take take charge and
(13:15):
step up his game. Um. And so with a little
bit of creative paperwork, a little bit of you know,
kind of um maverick like diplomacy, he was able to
protect in the same way that Schindler shielded Jews with
jobs in his factory and kept them from getting, you know,
sent to the camps. He was able to shield them
(13:37):
with this paperwork and these passports. Yeah, and he didn't
have the luxury of thinking in a very long term
way about this as a crisis situation. He's just attempting
to save innocent lives. The Fascist learn of Wallenberg's operation,
(14:00):
they pick up the scent, and so they immediately invalidate
all the paperwork they can find. They round up Jewish
people who had escaped with his help, and they forced
these people to walk to the Austrian border. But Wallenburg
is undeterred. So he is driving behind this forced march
(14:22):
and people are pointing guns at him, and he's ignoring it.
He's he's feeding these people, he's bringing the water, he's
attempting to do anything he can medicinally, and he still
keeps issuing these documents. So at this point there's a
good argument to make that he has defied death, that
(14:43):
he should have been shot. Right, So let's fast forward
to the Soviet Union. They occupy Hungary in January of
n and they take Wallenberg into custody, and here is
where we stumbled across a mystery. Raoul Wallenberg, you see,
was never seen in public again. That's that's so anytime
you say that statement shivers of my friend and they
(15:06):
were never heard from again, has to be a pregnant
pause before it again if you just leave it as
never never heard from and that's sort of like it's
very vague. It's kind of like what we don't need.
They didn't call. You don't know how you don't call.
They had they had a throat thing, they couldn't speak. Now, well,
this was you know, this was Cold War era, so
(15:29):
information was tightly controlled, and we do not know what
happened to Wallenberg. We know that the Soviet government said
that he died shortly after being taken into custody that
he had a heart attack in a prison in Moscow
in ninety seven, but still no official word, no confirmation.
(15:50):
And that is why in nineteen eighty one he was
declared an honorary US citizen, which makes you wonder, you
know how much of that was a propaganda move. Well,
I mean, this is clearly has a lot of propaganda potential. Right.
There is the aim of Uncle Sam at this point
on the record at least is they said, you know,
(16:12):
we're going to make him an honorary citizen because this
will pressure the Soviets or the you know, the Reds
or whatever they called him at the time, to disclose
information about Wallenberg. It did not work, now, definitely did.
He was never heard from a Gain Gain gang game. Paul,
(16:33):
can we get a little a little ghosts? I felt
that a crossma spine? Al right, Bett? Who we got next?
Only a scant two years later? A scant two years later. Four.
Our third honorary citizen is William Penn. So this story
(16:56):
dates back to the sixteen eighties. There was a guy
named Charles the Second. He was in charge of a
place called Britain. He owed the Penn family money like
Lanister style, you know what I mean. So he settled
a debt with them in one by giving William Penn
forty five thousand square miles of land north of Maryland.
(17:19):
He gave that, he said, you know, I can't pay
you the cash, but here, here's all this land. What
they call it been Pennville, pent Town. Uh, pennywait, no,
penny wise. Okay. I like that. I'm thinking it's something
more familiar than we may have heard it before. Although
now that I'm thinking about it, why penn Why Sylvania?
Where I want to know the origin of of penn Sylvania.
(17:41):
It's like Transylvania. Do you think that's what it is?
Sylvan means forest. That's a good point, so as Sylvania
is a Sylvan region, penn forest. Maybe. Yeah, this is
what we call real time etymology. We just kind of
spit ball it out. Probably true, possibly not true. This
is this is what we ca what we call speculative
(18:01):
speculative etymology. I like that. That's gonna be Uh, it's
gonna be my new my new title. I like the validation.
I'm gonna gonna get a certificate that decreas me to
be a speculative etymologist. I think he deserved that ben
any more. So. It's true Penn's colony, which he dubbed
Pennsylvania in honor of his father, which you know also
(18:22):
one could argue in honor of himself. Hey, hey, you
know he is his father's son. Um. You know how
that they share the name. But it was a religious haven,
which you guys do you guys know about this for
for his fellow Quakers and um settlers of different faiths.
And Penn was a huge proponent of the rights of
(18:44):
representative government UM and also religious freedom and the ability
to receive trial by jury, uh, public education, a lot
of the important tenets of the U s constitution. And
are you know, wonderful country, a good look at out, dude?
Thank you On a personal level, I I enjoy all
of the things that you are into, if you can
(19:07):
hear me from beyond the grave. So the wheels of
justice grinding slow but exceedingly fine. And thus it comes
to pass that more than three hundred years after Penn
first arrived in this colony, he received honorary citizenship in
a country that he never lived to see established because
(19:28):
the US didn't become a thing until after Penn's death,
which leads us to Hannah Callowhill Pen, who also received
honorary citizenship in that very same year of nineteen hundred
and eighty four. She lived in Pennsylvania for only about
two years UM, and she was Penn's second wife, twenty
(19:49):
four years younger than him. I'm okay with that. Now,
that doesn't work. That doesn't actually work out with the
with the math, the math. Have you guys heard the
you guys heard the dating math? What is it? It's
half your age plus seven seven? Is that the Every
time I have heard that, outside of outside of our
(20:11):
our irreverent conversations, every time I've heard somebody say that seriously,
it's a little bit off putting, you know what I mean.
It's like some guy you don't really know, You're at
a bar and they're telling you about their life and
then they refer to the math capital t capital in
exactly which also could you? I mean, I would love
to believe that that in that context is some sort
of acronym that we have. There we go, we have
(20:33):
yet to fully decode. Uh, the master age technical hierarchy?
I like that? Or how about this the master age transgression? Shoot?
I want to say gradient there's no g and then
that would be cool the math only, Um, what I
want to know is where's the magic. We've got the math, Now,
(20:54):
where's the magic? Just wait, you will hear more about that.
You see in this episode, uh so or in one
of these episodes. So she's only lived two years in
Pennsylvania and you know we're we're joking about the math
or whatever. But you know, if people are happy and
(21:14):
they're not hurting anyone, let them be happy. Right. She
didn't get honorary citizenship because she because of her husband.
She in her own right was known to be an
activist and an advocate for espousing the same principles that
William Penn also evangelized for. Yeah, when William m became
(21:40):
sick in seventeen twelve, he had a bunch of strokes sexually,
I didn't really realize that and gradually became worse and
worse and just wasn't all there. She was able to
kind of take over the business that he had started
and carry on that mantle and really managed the colony's affairs,
and she would have was sending letters to various um
(22:03):
officials within the colonial governorship. And when William passed away
in seventeen eighteen. She became the essentially the governor herself.
But that's not what they called it. Um. They called
it sort of an acting proprietor, which I guess is
sort of like being, uh, what do you call that
when you're interim governor? I like a substitute landlord, which
(22:28):
is Yeah, it's a little bit diminutive for sure. Now
it's a lot of bit dominative. And then she passed
away in sevent and she was the longest serving woman
in control of a British colony, a very important colony
as well. Hannah Calo Hill pen Uh. She is I
would say one of the more upstanding people on our list,
(22:54):
speaking of uh, speaking of controversy, which I have foreshadowed
just a bit here fun we'll see. Our next one
is Mother Teresa. Her first name was Agnes, but everybody
called her mother Teresa. And if you grew up around
the time that Nolan I grew up, then you have
(23:14):
you heard about her as a kid. She was hot,
she was big, yeah, and the scene. Yeah, she was
a real she was a real guaranteed headline, Right, you
have a Mother Teresa headline? Boom papers are selling out
back when people used to read physical newspapers. Agnes guna bojacksu. Uh.
That's g o n x h a b o j
(23:36):
x Hi. You not gonna lie. We had to google
that one pronunciation. Yeah, yeah, we did. Uh. She, like Churchill,
was named an honorary citizen while she was still alive.
Get this, She and Winston Churchill were the only people
so far to be named honorary citizens while they're still alive.
(23:57):
It makes me think of um current. See. You know,
like here in the US, you don't get your face
on currency or coin until well after your death. So far,
some of the Teresa was Albanian. She was an Albanian nun,
and she had already received tons of the highest unit
US accolades in terms of the Nobel Peace Prize, Presidential
(24:19):
Medal of Freedom UM. And the funny thing is that
she didn't really spend a whole lot of time in
the United States to begin with. She worked with soup
kitchens under the Missionaries of Charity that she founded in
nineteen fifty. UM had emergency shelters, nursing homes, after school programs.
I almost said after school specials. That's something different, that's
(24:40):
a little more fraggle rock. Really it's very much so.
And she, you know, she just founded all of these
really really important nonprofits essentially that were designed to help
and nurture the poor and the homeless and just the
less fortunate. And when she did receive that on a
racitizenship when she was eighty six years old, uh, the
ambassador to India, which is the country where she first
(25:03):
started doing all of these good deeds good works, called
her quote a daughter of America, and she had done
a lot of work in Calcutta, which was known for
its poverty. And she actually went on to be canonized
as well and received saint hood in ten But this
is a really interesting story and the process that goes
into canonizing someone within the Catholic Church is fascinating to me,
(25:25):
and some things that I was not aware of. Right
for a long time, the Vatican had a step in
the canonization process that required someone literally deemed as a
devil's advocate, and their entire role was to argue against
beautification and canonization, to say this person doesn't qualify as
(25:46):
a saint for the following reasons. You know, there were
no snakes in Ireland to begin with, right, something like
that it was abolished in the eighties, but the Vaticans
still still floods around with the idea. And Christopher Hitchens,
the famously militant atheist, testified as her devil's advocate. Wait
(26:08):
a minute, what why how did he get involved in
the proceedings if he's not even the believer. I think
he just likes to likes to stir up that pots,
that bear, he likes to he likes to bag that badger.
I guess he uh he said he represented the devil
pro bono. A little bit. More on Mother Theresa. Yeah,
she was canonized on September four, sixteen, and she still
(26:35):
had some controversy throughout throughout her life and afterwards because
certain people would would study her clinics and say, hey,
they received millions of dollars in donations, but they don't
have medical care, good diagnoses, systems, necessary nutrition and so on,
and three Canadian academics actually, uh say, said that she
(27:01):
was purposely allowing people to suffer. Specifically, they said Mother
Teresa believed the sick must suffer like Christ on the cross.
And then Christopher Hitchens was one of Mother Teresa's most
outspoken critics for for a long long, long, long time.
(27:23):
He he said she was not a friend to the poor,
that she saw poverty is is a necessary gift of
suffering from God. So he had stake in the game. Next,
we arrive at one of my favorite rappers, one of
(27:47):
my favorite recent rappers, I should say Nelly, No, the
the Marquis de Lafayette. Ah. Yes, of course, he's from
the Hamilton's Musical, played by David Diggs, who has a
great who has a great hip hop group. I want
to say on the West Coast. Maybe they're called Clipping
without period of fun. They're great. He's also gonna be
(28:07):
blind Spotting, which is quite good. Yes, yes, I believe
he wrote that. I think he did. He he co
wrote it. He's on movie Crush with Chuck, him and
his co writer for that movie. We're on movie Crush
talking about I can't remember what their favorite movie was,
but you should check it out. Was it Police Academy?
For it had to have been. That should be everyone's
favorite movie, because otherwise I'm cold classic. Otherwise, you know,
(28:29):
Chuck and a great friends, but I'm not gonna listen
to it. That's fair. Um. Yeah, So there's an article
on mental mental flaws that goes through eight of these
honorary citizens, and they make the point that I think
is completely valid that the United States would not exist
had it not been for the Marquis de Laffi. Yet. Yeah,
I haven't seen them. I'm not gonna do no spoilers.
(28:51):
I haven't seen the musical. I don't know really any
of the music. Just listen to the soundtrack. I should. Yeah, Yeah,
it's pretty good. It's pretty good. It's pretty it's solid. Uh,
I would, I would say, you know, if you're like
fold and laundry or something, it's good. Or you're on
a long walk, maybe a plane. I don't know, got it, Well,
I do a flight to me, maybe I'll check it out.
But yeah, he was the French general who was in
(29:12):
charge of divisions in the Continental Army during the American Revolution. Yeah. Yeah,
So a lot of the story you might hear in
Hamilton's is true. This guy came in supporting the ideas
of liberty, equality and so on, and he really didn't
(29:32):
have to have a stake in this game. But he
is primarily the reason that France came to aid the
US colonies against Great Britain, and then later when he
went back to France. He introduced the Declaration of the
Rights of Man and of the Citizen before the National
Constituent Assembly, and he co wrote this with Thomas Jefferson.
(29:57):
You may remember from previous episodes, because no one's heard
of Thomas Jefferson until they listen to Ridiculous History, right.
I certainly hadn't been. I certainly hadn't. You know. What's
weird is the way the way statistics work. There's probably
someone named Thomas Jefferson right now, and they're probably mad
that their parents named them Thomas. I agree. Yeah, it's
(30:20):
definitely like sort of that names sort of been ruined.
I mean, okay, one could argue that name has been
lifted up and elevate it. It's taken. It's totally taken.
It's taken. It's like it's like Michael Bolton right right right,
or or you know, there are two Nick caves I
remember that always. That always astounded me. Well, they're the
artist Nick cave but the people typically think of Nick
(30:42):
Cave in the bad seats. Yeah yeah, yeah, but the
artist Nick cave Is is equally awesome in his own right.
It makes sound suits and you know he actually did
a performance here at the building where we did very
very cool. Paul, did you work on that documentary? Paul's
given us the NOD Mission Control worked on it, so
it's got his stamp of approval. But uh, names aside.
(31:05):
You're right, there is a tremendous argument to be made
that this country would not exist without the efforts of
la Fayette. And I would say he really earned this
honorary citizenship. When he died, the U. S. House and
Senate draped the chambers in black. They knew we owed
(31:27):
this guy. But when did he When did he become
an honorary citizen? It was after his death, right two
thousand and two, quite a bit after his death during
a joint resolution. Yes, he was given that citizenship, but
that was the federal citizenship because he was given uh
citizenship via Maryland before then, right while he was still alive. Oh,
(31:49):
that's what we're talking about the top of the show,
this who little the mini citizenship. Yeah, that seems like
a stretch, doesn't it. I mean, I would you think
of it this way if one province of Canada gave
you citizenship and you know, you could travel there or something,
but you were still a foreign entity in any of
(32:10):
the other provinces. That's weird, you know what I mean? Well, like,
what if Utah gave you honorary citizenship, Now you gotta
get into and out of Utah. Seriously, I think we're
gonna air drop you in there. I guess that this didn't. Yeah, well, anyway,
it's it's obviously a symbolic act on on all fronts here.
But that's an interesting one to me. Uh so, what
(32:31):
do we have next? We have Kazimir Pulaski. So, Kazimir
Pulaski also set sail for North America to help the
American side in the War for Independence, right, he wanted
to fight for the continental cause. He did a bunch
of stuff. Famously, during the Battle of Brandywine, he led
(32:54):
a cavalry charge that saved the life of George Washington.
It was promoted to a general who organized mounted soldiers.
He even wrote the book on cavalry tactics. Literally, he
wrote a book about it. That's like mounted attacks. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's all about formation, formation, strategy, flanking. No one when
(33:15):
to hold him, when to fold him, when to charge them,
when to scold him, when to scold him, And say Hey, buddy,
you're not riding that horse very well. You're doing a
bad job. And when to mold them, get with It's
all about molding them. It's all about excellent cavalrymen. Yes, yes,
uh yeah. He's one of the fathers of American cavalry,
and for a century or so his death has been
(33:40):
a holiday or a day of remembrance. Pulaski Day. Yeah,
is that a thing? I guess so it's you and
I must be a horrible patriots, Paul. Have you ever
heard of Pulaski Day? Casimir Pulaski. Paul is saying that
it's a Sufian Stephens song and I, to which I replied, uh,
it is probably bigger in Michigan. Okay, let's let's actually incorrect.
(34:05):
It's it's in big in Chicago, which was the second
Sufian Stephens state based album, We go Feel the Illinois,
Come on and Feel the ill And I hope he
gets the other ones. I hope he does it one day.
I keep thinking about that. That bugs me. I stay
up at night thinking about you and your albums. Suf
I call him suf uh So Pulaski Day, which we
(34:29):
have to celebrate in October eleventh. Let's let's get up
to Chicago. He's one Illinois's favorite son. Lard. We'll celebrate
Pulaski Day. We'll get a get a Chicago dog, will
go see a Cubs game in Wrigleyville. Dropped by Second City.
See what they have going on Polaski wise, since that's
(34:50):
a big celebration. Uh yeah, yeah, so it is a holiday.
Uh and he said he sounded like a superhero coming in.
So he's a Polish military officer. When he arrives in America,
he looked at Washington and he says, I came here
where freedom is being defended, to serve it and to
live or die for it. Hard as nails, really tough,
(35:12):
tough guy, tough sounding dude, like the cut of his jim.
And so we come to the last, but not least,
honorary citizen of the US bestowed inten to Bernardo de Galvaz.
In seventeen seventy seven, Colonel Bernardo of Galvez was made
(35:33):
the interim governor of Louisiana, and at the time Louisiana
was under Spanish control. Galvez hated the British, so he
helped smuggle supplies to the Continental forces through the ports
city of New Orleans. He also orchestrated a campaign against
the Red Coats, defeating them in several battles, including Bottom Rouge,
(35:57):
and he became general like you do. Yeah, So that's
when he won some pretty significant battles in the Battle
of Fort Charlotte. UM, and he took mobile away from
the British after all these years, low these many years,
and that's when Washington UM really praised Galvez as being
(36:19):
a deciding factor in the outcome of the Revolutionary War. UM.
And then in when this resolution was drafted that made
Galvez an honorary citizen UM. That was quoted and put
in the in the paperwork, the documentation. He's also, you know,
this is the most contemporary honorary citizenship that we've got
(36:40):
on the books. Who knows. Who knows what's next? Ben
who knows who will come next? Maybe maybe someone listening today,
it could be you. It could be you want to
be a citizen for the United States who don't want
to do the work. Just become a key military lynch
pen in some really important conflict that changes everything, or
or you know, do something people will appreciate. Two hundred
(37:01):
years after that. Interesting facts about Galvez. Uh, he is,
although he's little known today, he is the namesake of Galveston, Texas,
which I I didn't know. I thought that sounded familiar, right, Uh,
he's It's weird because he played such an instrumental role
(37:22):
but is relatively little known, but didn't play any instruments,
the accordion. Perhaps, I don't know. Accordion is a lot
to haul with you. Uh maybe he Yeah, because he
wasn't the father of Calvary. He's no Pulaski Polaski, being
both from Poland and riding on horses all the time.
Surely he's my accordion pick I like it. I don't
(37:43):
want to pigeonholer stereotype. I just think he's more likely
to have an accordion, and I think about that a
lot when we're doing this show. I think much of
these historical figures is most likely to have an accordion
and to have accordion chops. So how did he die?
Spoiler alert? He's dead. Yeah, he definitely died. Um and
his remains are lost to history. Yep, we're we're doing
(38:09):
our own sound effects now. But while his bodily remains
may be lost to history, his legacy is not. The
bar is very high when it comes to honorary citizenship.
And while many of these people on this list are
controversial for one action or another, uh, the truth remains
(38:29):
that they did fundamentally huge things for the US and
in the case of Mother Teresa, for people who are
suffering in other parts of the world. That's right. So
our hats off, our collective hats off to all these
folks because they really did make a big impact, enough
so that we were able to grant them citizenship. In
(38:49):
these days, the citizenship is becoming more and more of
a divisive thing. Um, So it's sort of like almost
the highest honor that you can you know, it's it's
not easy to get citizenship, and it's becau even more
difficult to get citizenship and to become a naturalized citizen.
So hats off to all of these players, players, players, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
(39:10):
And we want to hear your deep cuts, folks. Who
do you think is deserving of honorary citizenship to day?
And more importantly, who do you think you are? Let
us know. You can write to us at Ridiculous at
I Heart radio dot com. Yeah, you know, that's a
little confrontational. Hey man, you know, are you punchy? Are
(39:32):
you punching? I'm not punchy. I'm just punching. Okay, I'm punching,
punching above my weight class and below the belt at
the same time. You can. You can find us on Instagram.
You can find us on Twitter. You can find our
favorite part of the show, your fellow listeners on our
Facebook page or Ridiculous Historians uh, and you can follow
our own strange adventures. I am at Ben Bowling on Instagram.
(39:56):
I am at how Now Noel Brown on Instagram as well. Big, big,
big thanks to Alex Williams, who composed the track and
recently appeared on an episode of Ridiculous History with us.
Do tune into that if you haven't checked it out. Uh, Paul,
Mission Control decade. I'm making eye contact with you outside
the studio to thank you so much. Dude. Casey is
(40:17):
pursuing his double life. He is as La Bouche, as
La Bush and yes yes uh where he wears a
leather jacket and as a single ear ring, single dangly
cross earring. And we think he has two secret families
that don't know about each other and lots of other
secret stuff. Did we mention this on air? Yeah, totally okay,
I think we mentioned it at the top of the
(40:38):
show during the emeral episode. Great well, Hats off to you,
La Bush, you are missed. Uh and thanks I as
always to Gabe, our research associate. Thanks to you Ben.
Thanks to you Pal, you really make it easy. We'll
see you next time. For more podcasts for my heart Radio,
(41:19):
visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:28):
Ridiculous Historians. Thanks for tuning in a little bit of
background at the top of the show. Today we have
been gallivanting, uh, hither and yawing. Let's see, no, where
we're Where were you recently? Oh? I was in Mauritania
for a little while, and then before that I went
to Fraggle Rock, and then I spent a little bit
(00:49):
of time down under uh in little Australia. Yeah, let's see.
I went to uh, Texas, I pursued some of my
old SKA band dreams. What does that mean? Is Texas
like scot Central? No? No, this was after Texas. After Texas,
I went to Brussels, where my SKA band lives. It's
(01:12):
a long story. And then also, let's see between us,
we've got Chicago, Los Angeles, some other countries. Again, we
can't mention those uh. Fraggle Rock was by far my
favorite through Those little dozers are adorable users. I think
there are an authoritarian regime. I have serious problems with
their government, but they're still cutest buttons. So uh So,
(01:36):
despite all of our travels, I gotta say, it feels
so good to be back in good old Atlanta g
a US. We are joined today by our guest producer,
Paul Mission controlled decade. Let's give it up for him. Uh,
(01:58):
and what we said your name? You're an I am
Even if we didn't, I still am. Okay and I'm bed. Yeah,
we get. We don't need to have your name said
for you to have an identity, sir. That's true, that's true.
But if you want to be a citizen of the
United States, there is some paperwork involved as well as
(02:18):
some verbiage. If you're side an oath, got to speak
an oath, you gotta put your bloody thumb print on
a document, sign your name and in blood. Now, well,
you know it's changed over time. You still have to
have interviews, you have to take citizenship tests. Naturalization is
what they call it, right, and all three of us
(02:39):
recording today, and quite a few of us listening today
are citizens of the United States. Oh. What's strange about
this is that the United States is one of the
countries that gives you citizenship just for being born here.
Not every country is that way. But if regardless of
(03:01):
what your parents past is, etcetera, if you were born
on US soil, typically for most of history, that makes
you a US citizen. However, you and I started looking
into a very very strange story something about honorary citizenship.
You know this this means that you're allowing the US
(03:24):
to kind of claim you. They're like, all right, she
or he is one of the good ones. But they
don't have to actually do anything, and you don't have
to do anything getting an honorary degree, you know, just
for being a good guy. But like how a professor
emeritis doesn't teach classes, really, yeah, Emeritus justumplies some sort
of like ephemeral kind of like honor, you know, or
(03:46):
just by virtue of being this luminary in the field,
you you get to be this thing, yes, exactly, and
that sort of applies here as well. That's I agree.
I agree, uh, And I think that's spot on, because
it would be cool to be an honorary citizen of
a country, like I'd love to be an honorary citizen
of Baton or Vanuatu, which will show up in a
(04:08):
later episode. But in the case of the u S,
we found out that it is, uh, it is a
real thing. You can't have honorary citizenship if you don't
want the whole kitten caboodle. The problem is the honorary
citizenship may be one of the most difficult things to
achieve in this country of ours. It's right. It is
granted by an Act of Congress and the President. Uh
(04:32):
And to this day, unless we're missing one, only eight
honorary citizenships have been bestowed the entire time. Only time,
only eight. Here's what the State Department says about honorary citizenship.
Honorary citizenship does not carry with it the rights and
privileges of ord ursitisenship, and such status does not confer
(04:53):
any special entry, travel, or immigration benefits upon the honoree
or the honoree's relatives and dependents. You are in Texas,
weren't you been. It also does not impose additional duties
or responsibilities in the United States or internationally on the honoree.
It is a strictly symbolic act and no oath is required. Ah,
so it's not quite that. So it's literally just like
(05:15):
a wave of the hand and then it happens. It's
like a key to this. It's just like that. And
it's first of all, you they can they can give
it to you without your consent. To, can't they? Yes,
sort of the way that the Church of Latter day
Saints got in trouble for proxy baptism. Right, that's a
whole kind of worms there. But yeah, that's the thing.
(05:35):
None of these people are like asking for this as
as some sort of benefit or like it's going to
do something positive for their lives or they're going to
be able to use it in any functional way. It's
a strictly symbolic act that implies that this individual, not
a citizen, has done great things to aid our struggle
as a country. It's such an atta boy, And that's
why it's such a thin list, because it has to
(05:56):
be a lot like the burden of uh, you know,
do goodery is quite high. That's true. That's true. So
what we wanted to do today was explore the stories
of these eight honorary citizens, many of whom will be
familiar to you, some of whom may be deep cuts.
So let's get started with h first and foremost, one
(06:19):
of the most pugnacious, uh, one of one of the
most pugnacious, acerbic characters in modern European history, Winston Churchill,
who is his drunken escapades are worth an episode alone,
I would say, but Winston Churchill was the first foreign
(06:41):
national to receive honorary citizenship in the United States. Eight states,
this is interesting had already granted him citizenship, just not
the federal government, which I didn't know was the thing
that could happen. You know, if you're I guess if
you're the the governor of New Mexico, or maybe you're
the what what's a different state? What's the state? No
(07:01):
one talks about Delaware Rock still not a statement. What's
legally a territory? It's telling you it's because they have
tremendous not human rights abuses, but fraggle rights. You don't
think they should get honorary statehood and just for their
contribution to popular culture? No, man, those war crimes are
really bugged. Have you read the U N reports? Oh man,
(07:24):
they're heavily redacted. So yes they are, and they should be.
I am not a fan of puppet crime, which is
why I support Sesame Street. But you can love them both, right,
it's not a Pepsi cooat thing. So yeah, I did not.
I was not aware that states could individually grant citizenship,
(07:44):
but eight states had already granted citizenship to Winston Churchill.
His mother was American. Uh, and this happened all before
JFK and Congress followed suit. So we have a quote
from Kennedy in his proclamation. Here's what he said about
Winston Churchill. Yeah, this proclamation praised Churchill for his quote,
(08:07):
brave ray, charity and valor, both in law and peace,
have been a flame of inspiration and freedom's darkest dollar.
That Okay, Kennedy, I mean there's probably a Kennedy. There's
a little bit of Kennedy. Kennedy and there was there
was like maybe ten percent Kennedy. Oh, we gotta mixed up.
Let's keep it interesting, right, Like it's like potted meat.
(08:27):
It's like potted meat. H Now with tim percent Kennedy exactly,
I would I would buy that at the grocery store.
So Churchill's watching this. He is despite the flagrant abuse
he subjected his body to over the decades, he is
still alive. He is eighty eight years old. He's watching
a satellite relay of this from his home in London,
(08:48):
and his son Randolph accepts the honor on his behalf.
One other interesting fact, uh, one other interesting fact about
church He was also the recipient of the nineteen fifty
three Nobel Prize for Literature, which a lot of people
didn't know. But that's him. That's that's an easy one,
(09:10):
the famous rip roaring Okay, I can't keep saying Winston
Churchill is a rip roaring drunk unless I do at
least one quote rip roaring, cigar smoking drunk. Here we go, yeah, perfect,
Let's let's just pull up one of his weirdest, weirdest
drunk quote a real hum dinger. So once upon a time,
(09:33):
Winston Churchill is in a conversation with MP Bessie Braddock
uh or, the conservative lady Astor who was the first
female MP, and one of them accuses the Prime Minister
of being quote disgustingly drunk, to which he responds, my dear,
you are ugly, and what's more, you are discostly ugly.
(09:56):
But tomorrow I shall be sober and you will still
be dec Oh man. If that didn't get him a
swift slap across the jowls, I don't know what would.
He's got jewels that are hard to miss. So it
wasn't perfect, but he had tremendous influence on the course
(10:16):
of the world, in which we lived to day and
he's an honorary US citizen. Wasn't he also like weirdly
eugenic or he did like you had something, you had
some really weird, weird, deep cut Churchill issues. Probably he's not.
He's not super cool. He's not a cool guy. He
was just very racist, that's what it was. Yeah, against
people who lived on the Indian subcontinent. Yeah, he was
(10:36):
still very much a son of the Empire, as in
like the colonizer, kind of like mentality. It was Star
Wars like evil Empire. Yes, yeah, most of most of
the prequel Star Wars films are actually based off Winston Churchill.
He even kind of sounds like the Emperor. He does
ah as I the Emperor at the last second. And
(11:00):
this is the biggest controversy about Star Wars. They actually
cut out Winston Churchill's character and replaced him with jar
Jar Binks. So if you look back next time you
watch Star Wars, you remember how much people disliked Jarge
our Binks. Just imagine it in its original form with
Winston Churchill. Do it's great. It's a it's a good,
(11:23):
it's a good, it's a good piece of cinema. So
that that was the first one in the era of JFK.
But who was after that? It wasn't until nineteen eighty one, shockingly,
which I guess makes sense considering how few of these
there are in the grand scheme of things. But we
(11:45):
have Raoul Wallenberg, who was a historical figure I was
not aware of, but something of a of a Oscar
Schindler type figure. Yeah. Yeah, So Hungary fought alongside Germany
during World War Two and past past anti Semitic discriminatory
laws towards Jewish people, but the Jewish population of Hungary
(12:10):
was to a degree spared the tragic, horrific genocide of
the Holocaust. Once Hungry wavered in the Axis Cause, Hitler
ordered the country immediately occupied and Jewish people living in
Hungary were ordered to be rounded up and deported, and
(12:30):
within the space of one year a half million people
were murdered by the German regime. And this is where
Raoul Wallenberg comes in. What what makes him a Schindler
esque figure. So Wallenberg was a businessman who got sent
to the Swedish embassy in Hungary, and he was an
(12:51):
issuer of passports. He issued six fifty passports to Hungarian
Jews with ties to Sweden and that would offer them
protection from deportation. So when Wallomberg got into this post,
he um looked at how massive this humanitarian crisis was
and decided he needed to really take take charge and
(13:15):
step up his game. Um. And so with a little
bit of creative paperwork, a little bit of you know,
kind of um maverick like diplomacy, he was able to
protect in the same way that Schindler shielded Jews with
jobs in his factory and kept them from getting, you know,
sent to the camps. He was able to shield them
(13:37):
with this paperwork and these passports. Yeah, and he didn't
have the luxury of thinking in a very long term
way about this as a crisis situation. He's just attempting
to save innocent lives. The Fascist learn of Wallenberg's operation,
(14:00):
they pick up the scent, and so they immediately invalidate
all the paperwork they can find. They round up Jewish
people who had escaped with his help, and they forced
these people to walk to the Austrian border. But Wallenburg
is undeterred. So he is driving behind this forced march
(14:22):
and people are pointing guns at him, and he's ignoring it.
He's he's feeding these people, he's bringing the water, he's
attempting to do anything he can medicinally, and he still
keeps issuing these documents. So at this point there's a
good argument to make that he has defied death, that
(14:43):
he should have been shot. Right, So let's fast forward
to the Soviet Union. They occupy Hungary in January of
n and they take Wallenberg into custody, and here is
where we stumbled across a mystery. Raoul Wallenberg, you see,
was never seen in public again. That's that's so anytime
you say that statement shivers of my friend and they
(15:06):
were never heard from again, has to be a pregnant
pause before it again if you just leave it as
never never heard from and that's sort of like it's
very vague. It's kind of like what we don't need.
They didn't call. You don't know how you don't call.
They had they had a throat thing, they couldn't speak. Now, well,
this was you know, this was Cold War era, so
(15:29):
information was tightly controlled, and we do not know what
happened to Wallenberg. We know that the Soviet government said
that he died shortly after being taken into custody that
he had a heart attack in a prison in Moscow
in ninety seven, but still no official word, no confirmation.
(15:50):
And that is why in nineteen eighty one he was
declared an honorary US citizen, which makes you wonder, you
know how much of that was a propaganda move. Well,
I mean, this is clearly has a lot of propaganda potential. Right.
There is the aim of Uncle Sam at this point
on the record at least is they said, you know,
(16:12):
we're going to make him an honorary citizen because this
will pressure the Soviets or the you know, the Reds
or whatever they called him at the time, to disclose
information about Wallenberg. It did not work, now, definitely did.
He was never heard from a Gain Gain gang game. Paul,
(16:33):
can we get a little a little ghosts? I felt
that a crossma spine? Al right, Bett? Who we got next?
Only a scant two years later? A scant two years later. Four.
Our third honorary citizen is William Penn. So this story
(16:56):
dates back to the sixteen eighties. There was a guy
named Charles the Second. He was in charge of a
place called Britain. He owed the Penn family money like
Lanister style, you know what I mean. So he settled
a debt with them in one by giving William Penn
forty five thousand square miles of land north of Maryland.
(17:19):
He gave that, he said, you know, I can't pay
you the cash, but here, here's all this land. What
they call it been Pennville, pent Town. Uh, pennywait, no,
penny wise. Okay. I like that. I'm thinking it's something
more familiar than we may have heard it before. Although
now that I'm thinking about it, why penn Why Sylvania?
Where I want to know the origin of of penn Sylvania.
(17:41):
It's like Transylvania. Do you think that's what it is?
Sylvan means forest. That's a good point, so as Sylvania
is a Sylvan region, penn forest. Maybe. Yeah, this is
what we call real time etymology. We just kind of
spit ball it out. Probably true, possibly not true. This
is this is what we ca what we call speculative
(18:01):
speculative etymology. I like that. That's gonna be Uh, it's
gonna be my new my new title. I like the validation.
I'm gonna gonna get a certificate that decreas me to
be a speculative etymologist. I think he deserved that ben
any more. So. It's true Penn's colony, which he dubbed
Pennsylvania in honor of his father, which you know also
(18:22):
one could argue in honor of himself. Hey, hey, you
know he is his father's son. Um. You know how
that they share the name. But it was a religious haven,
which you guys do you guys know about this for
for his fellow Quakers and um settlers of different faiths.
And Penn was a huge proponent of the rights of
(18:44):
representative government UM and also religious freedom and the ability
to receive trial by jury, uh, public education, a lot
of the important tenets of the U s constitution. And
are you know, wonderful country, a good look at out, dude?
Thank you On a personal level, I I enjoy all
of the things that you are into, if you can
(19:07):
hear me from beyond the grave. So the wheels of
justice grinding slow but exceedingly fine. And thus it comes
to pass that more than three hundred years after Penn
first arrived in this colony, he received honorary citizenship in
a country that he never lived to see established because
(19:28):
the US didn't become a thing until after Penn's death,
which leads us to Hannah Callowhill Pen, who also received
honorary citizenship in that very same year of nineteen hundred
and eighty four. She lived in Pennsylvania for only about
two years UM, and she was Penn's second wife, twenty
(19:49):
four years younger than him. I'm okay with that. Now,
that doesn't work. That doesn't actually work out with the
with the math, the math. Have you guys heard the
you guys heard the dating math? What is it? It's
half your age plus seven seven? Is that the Every
time I have heard that, outside of outside of our
(20:11):
our irreverent conversations, every time I've heard somebody say that seriously,
it's a little bit off putting, you know what I mean.
It's like some guy you don't really know, You're at
a bar and they're telling you about their life and
then they refer to the math capital t capital in
exactly which also could you? I mean, I would love
to believe that that in that context is some sort
of acronym that we have. There we go, we have
(20:33):
yet to fully decode. Uh, the master age technical hierarchy?
I like that? Or how about this the master age transgression? Shoot?
I want to say gradient there's no g and then
that would be cool the math only, Um, what I
want to know is where's the magic. We've got the math, Now,
(20:54):
where's the magic? Just wait, you will hear more about that.
You see in this episode, uh so or in one
of these episodes. So she's only lived two years in
Pennsylvania and you know we're we're joking about the math
or whatever. But you know, if people are happy and
(21:14):
they're not hurting anyone, let them be happy. Right. She
didn't get honorary citizenship because she because of her husband.
She in her own right was known to be an
activist and an advocate for espousing the same principles that
William Penn also evangelized for. Yeah, when William m became
(21:40):
sick in seventeen twelve, he had a bunch of strokes sexually,
I didn't really realize that and gradually became worse and
worse and just wasn't all there. She was able to
kind of take over the business that he had started
and carry on that mantle and really managed the colony's affairs,
and she would have was sending letters to various um
(22:03):
officials within the colonial governorship. And when William passed away
in seventeen eighteen. She became the essentially the governor herself.
But that's not what they called it. Um. They called
it sort of an acting proprietor, which I guess is
sort of like being, uh, what do you call that
when you're interim governor? I like a substitute landlord, which
(22:28):
is Yeah, it's a little bit diminutive for sure. Now
it's a lot of bit dominative. And then she passed
away in sevent and she was the longest serving woman
in control of a British colony, a very important colony
as well. Hannah Calo Hill pen Uh. She is I
would say one of the more upstanding people on our list,
(22:54):
speaking of uh, speaking of controversy, which I have foreshadowed
just a bit here fun we'll see. Our next one
is Mother Teresa. Her first name was Agnes, but everybody
called her mother Teresa. And if you grew up around
the time that Nolan I grew up, then you have
(23:14):
you heard about her as a kid. She was hot,
she was big, yeah, and the scene. Yeah, she was
a real she was a real guaranteed headline, Right, you
have a Mother Teresa headline? Boom papers are selling out
back when people used to read physical newspapers. Agnes guna bojacksu. Uh.
That's g o n x h a b o j
(23:36):
x Hi. You not gonna lie. We had to google
that one pronunciation. Yeah, yeah, we did. Uh. She, like Churchill,
was named an honorary citizen while she was still alive.
Get this, She and Winston Churchill were the only people
so far to be named honorary citizens while they're still alive.
(23:57):
It makes me think of um current. See. You know,
like here in the US, you don't get your face
on currency or coin until well after your death. So far,
some of the Teresa was Albanian. She was an Albanian nun,
and she had already received tons of the highest unit
US accolades in terms of the Nobel Peace Prize, Presidential
(24:19):
Medal of Freedom UM. And the funny thing is that
she didn't really spend a whole lot of time in
the United States to begin with. She worked with soup
kitchens under the Missionaries of Charity that she founded in
nineteen fifty. UM had emergency shelters, nursing homes, after school programs.
I almost said after school specials. That's something different, that's
(24:40):
a little more fraggle rock. Really it's very much so.
And she, you know, she just founded all of these
really really important nonprofits essentially that were designed to help
and nurture the poor and the homeless and just the
less fortunate. And when she did receive that on a
racitizenship when she was eighty six years old, uh, the
ambassador to India, which is the country where she first
(25:03):
started doing all of these good deeds good works, called
her quote a daughter of America, and she had done
a lot of work in Calcutta, which was known for
its poverty. And she actually went on to be canonized
as well and received saint hood in ten But this
is a really interesting story and the process that goes
into canonizing someone within the Catholic Church is fascinating to me,
(25:25):
and some things that I was not aware of. Right
for a long time, the Vatican had a step in
the canonization process that required someone literally deemed as a
devil's advocate, and their entire role was to argue against
beautification and canonization, to say this person doesn't qualify as
(25:46):
a saint for the following reasons. You know, there were
no snakes in Ireland to begin with, right, something like
that it was abolished in the eighties, but the Vaticans
still still floods around with the idea. And Christopher Hitchens,
the famously militant atheist, testified as her devil's advocate. Wait
(26:08):
a minute, what why how did he get involved in
the proceedings if he's not even the believer. I think
he just likes to likes to stir up that pots,
that bear, he likes to he likes to bag that badger.
I guess he uh he said he represented the devil
pro bono. A little bit. More on Mother Theresa. Yeah,
she was canonized on September four, sixteen, and she still
(26:35):
had some controversy throughout throughout her life and afterwards because
certain people would would study her clinics and say, hey,
they received millions of dollars in donations, but they don't
have medical care, good diagnoses, systems, necessary nutrition and so on,
and three Canadian academics actually, uh say, said that she
(27:01):
was purposely allowing people to suffer. Specifically, they said Mother
Teresa believed the sick must suffer like Christ on the cross.
And then Christopher Hitchens was one of Mother Teresa's most
outspoken critics for for a long long, long, long time.
(27:23):
He he said she was not a friend to the poor,
that she saw poverty is is a necessary gift of
suffering from God. So he had stake in the game. Next,
we arrive at one of my favorite rappers, one of
(27:47):
my favorite recent rappers, I should say Nelly, No, the
the Marquis de Lafayette. Ah. Yes, of course, he's from
the Hamilton's Musical, played by David Diggs, who has a
great who has a great hip hop group. I want
to say on the West Coast. Maybe they're called Clipping
without period of fun. They're great. He's also gonna be
(28:07):
blind Spotting, which is quite good. Yes, yes, I believe
he wrote that. I think he did. He he co
wrote it. He's on movie Crush with Chuck, him and
his co writer for that movie. We're on movie Crush
talking about I can't remember what their favorite movie was,
but you should check it out. Was it Police Academy?
For it had to have been. That should be everyone's
favorite movie, because otherwise I'm cold classic. Otherwise, you know,
(28:29):
Chuck and a great friends, but I'm not gonna listen
to it. That's fair. Um. Yeah, So there's an article
on mental mental flaws that goes through eight of these
honorary citizens, and they make the point that I think
is completely valid that the United States would not exist
had it not been for the Marquis de Laffi. Yet. Yeah,
I haven't seen them. I'm not gonna do no spoilers.
(28:51):
I haven't seen the musical. I don't know really any
of the music. Just listen to the soundtrack. I should. Yeah, Yeah,
it's pretty good. It's pretty good. It's pretty it's solid. Uh,
I would, I would say, you know, if you're like
fold and laundry or something, it's good. Or you're on
a long walk, maybe a plane. I don't know, got it, Well,
I do a flight to me, maybe I'll check it out.
But yeah, he was the French general who was in
(29:12):
charge of divisions in the Continental Army during the American Revolution. Yeah. Yeah,
So a lot of the story you might hear in
Hamilton's is true. This guy came in supporting the ideas
of liberty, equality and so on, and he really didn't
(29:32):
have to have a stake in this game. But he
is primarily the reason that France came to aid the
US colonies against Great Britain, and then later when he
went back to France. He introduced the Declaration of the
Rights of Man and of the Citizen before the National
Constituent Assembly, and he co wrote this with Thomas Jefferson.
(29:57):
You may remember from previous episodes, because no one's heard
of Thomas Jefferson until they listen to Ridiculous History, right.
I certainly hadn't been. I certainly hadn't. You know. What's
weird is the way the way statistics work. There's probably
someone named Thomas Jefferson right now, and they're probably mad
that their parents named them Thomas. I agree. Yeah, it's
(30:20):
definitely like sort of that names sort of been ruined.
I mean, okay, one could argue that name has been
lifted up and elevate it. It's taken. It's totally taken.
It's taken. It's like it's like Michael Bolton right right right,
or or you know, there are two Nick caves I
remember that always. That always astounded me. Well, they're the
artist Nick cave but the people typically think of Nick
(30:42):
Cave in the bad seats. Yeah yeah, yeah, but the
artist Nick cave Is is equally awesome in his own right.
It makes sound suits and you know he actually did
a performance here at the building where we did very
very cool. Paul, did you work on that documentary? Paul's
given us the NOD Mission Control worked on it, so
it's got his stamp of approval. But uh, names aside.
(31:05):
You're right, there is a tremendous argument to be made
that this country would not exist without the efforts of
la Fayette. And I would say he really earned this
honorary citizenship. When he died, the U. S. House and
Senate draped the chambers in black. They knew we owed
(31:27):
this guy. But when did he When did he become
an honorary citizen? It was after his death, right two
thousand and two, quite a bit after his death during
a joint resolution. Yes, he was given that citizenship, but
that was the federal citizenship because he was given uh
citizenship via Maryland before then, right while he was still alive. Oh,
(31:49):
that's what we're talking about the top of the show,
this who little the mini citizenship. Yeah, that seems like
a stretch, doesn't it. I mean, I would you think
of it this way if one province of Canada gave
you citizenship and you know, you could travel there or something,
but you were still a foreign entity in any of
(32:10):
the other provinces. That's weird, you know what I mean? Well, like,
what if Utah gave you honorary citizenship, Now you gotta
get into and out of Utah. Seriously, I think we're
gonna air drop you in there. I guess that this didn't. Yeah, well, anyway,
it's it's obviously a symbolic act on on all fronts here.
But that's an interesting one to me. Uh so, what
(32:31):
do we have next? We have Kazimir Pulaski. So, Kazimir
Pulaski also set sail for North America to help the
American side in the War for Independence, right, he wanted
to fight for the continental cause. He did a bunch
of stuff. Famously, during the Battle of Brandywine, he led
(32:54):
a cavalry charge that saved the life of George Washington.
It was promoted to a general who organized mounted soldiers.
He even wrote the book on cavalry tactics. Literally, he
wrote a book about it. That's like mounted attacks. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's all about formation, formation, strategy, flanking. No one when
(33:15):
to hold him, when to fold him, when to charge them,
when to scold him, when to scold him, And say Hey, buddy,
you're not riding that horse very well. You're doing a
bad job. And when to mold them, get with It's
all about molding them. It's all about excellent cavalrymen. Yes, yes,
uh yeah. He's one of the fathers of American cavalry,
and for a century or so his death has been
(33:40):
a holiday or a day of remembrance. Pulaski Day. Yeah,
is that a thing? I guess so it's you and
I must be a horrible patriots, Paul. Have you ever
heard of Pulaski Day? Casimir Pulaski. Paul is saying that
it's a Sufian Stephens song and I, to which I replied, uh,
it is probably bigger in Michigan. Okay, let's let's actually incorrect.
(34:05):
It's it's in big in Chicago, which was the second
Sufian Stephens state based album, We go Feel the Illinois,
Come on and Feel the ill And I hope he
gets the other ones. I hope he does it one day.
I keep thinking about that. That bugs me. I stay
up at night thinking about you and your albums. Suf
I call him suf uh So Pulaski Day, which we
(34:29):
have to celebrate in October eleventh. Let's let's get up
to Chicago. He's one Illinois's favorite son. Lard. We'll celebrate
Pulaski Day. We'll get a get a Chicago dog, will
go see a Cubs game in Wrigleyville. Dropped by Second City.
See what they have going on Polaski wise, since that's
(34:50):
a big celebration. Uh yeah, yeah, so it is a holiday.
Uh and he said he sounded like a superhero coming in.
So he's a Polish military officer. When he arrives in America,
he looked at Washington and he says, I came here
where freedom is being defended, to serve it and to
live or die for it. Hard as nails, really tough,
(35:12):
tough guy, tough sounding dude, like the cut of his jim.
And so we come to the last, but not least,
honorary citizen of the US bestowed inten to Bernardo de Galvaz.
In seventeen seventy seven, Colonel Bernardo of Galvez was made
(35:33):
the interim governor of Louisiana, and at the time Louisiana
was under Spanish control. Galvez hated the British, so he
helped smuggle supplies to the Continental forces through the ports
city of New Orleans. He also orchestrated a campaign against
the Red Coats, defeating them in several battles, including Bottom Rouge,
(35:57):
and he became general like you do. Yeah, So that's
when he won some pretty significant battles in the Battle
of Fort Charlotte. UM, and he took mobile away from
the British after all these years, low these many years,
and that's when Washington UM really praised Galvez as being
(36:19):
a deciding factor in the outcome of the Revolutionary War. UM.
And then in when this resolution was drafted that made
Galvez an honorary citizen UM. That was quoted and put
in the in the paperwork, the documentation. He's also, you know,
this is the most contemporary honorary citizenship that we've got
(36:40):
on the books. Who knows. Who knows what's next? Ben
who knows who will come next? Maybe maybe someone listening today,
it could be you. It could be you want to
be a citizen for the United States who don't want
to do the work. Just become a key military lynch
pen in some really important conflict that changes everything, or
or you know, do something people will appreciate. Two hundred
(37:01):
years after that. Interesting facts about Galvez. Uh, he is,
although he's little known today, he is the namesake of Galveston, Texas,
which I I didn't know. I thought that sounded familiar, right, Uh,
he's It's weird because he played such an instrumental role
(37:22):
but is relatively little known, but didn't play any instruments,
the accordion. Perhaps, I don't know. Accordion is a lot
to haul with you. Uh maybe he Yeah, because he
wasn't the father of Calvary. He's no Pulaski Polaski, being
both from Poland and riding on horses all the time.
Surely he's my accordion pick I like it. I don't
(37:43):
want to pigeonholer stereotype. I just think he's more likely
to have an accordion, and I think about that a
lot when we're doing this show. I think much of
these historical figures is most likely to have an accordion
and to have accordion chops. So how did he die?
Spoiler alert? He's dead. Yeah, he definitely died. Um and
his remains are lost to history. Yep, we're we're doing
(38:09):
our own sound effects now. But while his bodily remains
may be lost to history, his legacy is not. The
bar is very high when it comes to honorary citizenship.
And while many of these people on this list are
controversial for one action or another, uh, the truth remains
(38:29):
that they did fundamentally huge things for the US and
in the case of Mother Teresa, for people who are
suffering in other parts of the world. That's right. So
our hats off, our collective hats off to all these
folks because they really did make a big impact, enough
so that we were able to grant them citizenship. In
(38:49):
these days, the citizenship is becoming more and more of
a divisive thing. Um, So it's sort of like almost
the highest honor that you can you know, it's it's
not easy to get citizenship, and it's becau even more
difficult to get citizenship and to become a naturalized citizen.
So hats off to all of these players, players, players, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
(39:10):
And we want to hear your deep cuts, folks. Who
do you think is deserving of honorary citizenship to day?
And more importantly, who do you think you are? Let
us know. You can write to us at Ridiculous at
I Heart radio dot com. Yeah, you know, that's a
little confrontational. Hey man, you know, are you punchy? Are
(39:32):
you punching? I'm not punchy. I'm just punching. Okay, I'm punching,
punching above my weight class and below the belt at
the same time. You can. You can find us on Instagram.
You can find us on Twitter. You can find our
favorite part of the show, your fellow listeners on our
Facebook page or Ridiculous Historians uh, and you can follow
our own strange adventures. I am at Ben Bowling on Instagram.
(39:56):
I am at how Now Noel Brown on Instagram as well. Big, big,
big thanks to Alex Williams, who composed the track and
recently appeared on an episode of Ridiculous History with us.
Do tune into that if you haven't checked it out. Uh, Paul,
Mission Control decade. I'm making eye contact with you outside
the studio to thank you so much. Dude. Casey is
(40:17):
pursuing his double life. He is as La Bouche, as
La Bush and yes yes uh where he wears a
leather jacket and as a single ear ring, single dangly
cross earring. And we think he has two secret families
that don't know about each other and lots of other
secret stuff. Did we mention this on air? Yeah, totally okay,
I think we mentioned it at the top of the
(40:38):
show during the emeral episode. Great well, Hats off to you,
La Bush, you are missed. Uh and thanks I as
always to Gabe, our research associate. Thanks to you Ben.
Thanks to you Pal, you really make it easy. We'll
see you next time. For more podcasts for my heart Radio,
(41:19):
visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
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Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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