Stuff You Missed in History Class
Join Holly and Tracy as they bring you the greatest and strangest Stuff You Missed In History Class in this podcast by iHeartRadio.
Episodes
The first installment of the deeper examination of Charles Sumner's life begins with his early years, including his close relationships with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Samuel Gridley Howe.
Research:
- "Sumner, Charles (1811-1874)." Encyclopedia of World Biography, Gale, 1998. Gale Academic OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A148425674/GPS?u=mlin_n_melpub&sid=bookmark-GPS&xid=95485851. Accessed 31 Oct. 2025.
- “Rober...
This 2019 episode covers Thomas Cook, a pioneer of the idea of a travel agency to manage tourist holidays. But Cook was initially motivated by his support of the temperance movement and his deeply held religious beliefs.
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Tracy and Holly talk about the proclivity for destruction that was part of the balloon craze. They also discuss cat trees and how hard it is to find one that's cute.
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Cat litter, it could be argued, kicked off the pet products industry. After its invention in the 1940s, other inventors started to come up with products that today are standard in the homes of people with pets.
Research:
- Caminiti, Kasey. “Inside the Secret Lives of Pets With Allen Simon.” DuJour. https://dujour.com/life/allen-simon-founder-wee-wee-pad-pet-products/
- “Clays.” U.S. Geological Survey. https...
Ballooning became a huge fad starting in the late 18th century, and there was a surprising amount of rioting associated with it. Fervor, excitement, and intoxication in some instances, meant that balloon events were prone to get out of control.
Research:
- Bond, Elizabeth Andrews. “Popular Science and Public Participation.” From The Writing Public: Participatory Knowledge Production in Enlightenment and Revolutionary...
This 2018 episode covers the period in the late 1820s when north Georgia became the site of a gold rush that predated the California gold rush by two decades. It's also tied to some of the darkest parts of U.S. history regarding the treatment of Native Americans.
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Tracy shares the surprising benefit of not having access to a lot of specifics regarding the work of Mary Golda Ross. Holly talks about Marjorie Merriwether Post being a serial monogamist.
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Marjorie Merriweather Post is most often mentioned today as the person who built Mar-a-Lago. But she was a unique figure as a woman who helmed a huge corporation when she was still in her 20s in the early 20th century.
Research:
- Britannica Editors. "C.W. Post". Encyclopedia Britannica, 22 Oct. 2025, https://www.britannica.com/biography/C-W-Post
- “C.W. Post a Suicide in California Home.” New York Times. May 10, ...
Mary Golda Ross was the first Indigenous woman in the U.S. known to have become an engineer. Her impact on the field of aerospace engineering is hard to quantify, because much of her work is still classified.
Research:
- Agnew, Brad. “Cherokee engineer a space exploration pioneer.” Tahlequah Daily Press. 3/27/2016. https://www.tahlequahdailypress.com/news/golda-ross-left-teaching-to-support-war-effort/article_c500cbc...
This 2019 episode covers Alexandre Dumas, who wrote hundreds and hundreds of works, including “The Three Musketeers,” “The Count of Monte Cristo,” and even a dictionary of cuisine.
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Tracy discusses the challenge of parsing all the nuance of the French Revolution. Holly talks about how little Clarence Birdseye shared of his interior thoughts.
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Before Clarence Birdseye, frozen food was perceived as being low-quality and kind of gross. But after spending time in extremely cold climates, Birdseye figured out that speed freezing was the key to retaining freshness.
Research:
- “$1,900,000 Fraud Attempt Alleged in Insurance Deal.” St. Louis Post-Dispatch. May 2, 1917. https://www.newspapers.com/image/138253870/?match=1&terms=%22Clarence%20Birdseye%22
- “...
The Great Fear was a panic during the French Revolution that spread through rural areas. It all started with a conspiracy theory.
Research:
- Davies, Alun. “The Origins of the French Peasant Revolution of 1789.” History, 1964, Vol. 49, No. 165 (1964). https://www.jstor.org/stable/24404527
- Elster, Jon. “The Two Great Fears of 1789.” Prepared for the Conference on “Emotions and Civil War”, Coll&...
This 2019 episode is about general Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, who sounds like a character out of one of his son’s books. His life was a series of dramatic and daring adventures, including his rise up through the ranks of the French military.
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Holly talks about the unsubstantiated stories associated with the Villa de Vecchi in northern Italy. Tracy talks about getting angry about a passage she read in Wednesday's show.
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In late 1803, accounts of ghost sightings began to circulate in Hammersmith, England. This led to a tragic event, and a legal case that revealed some limitations in existing English law.
Research:
- “The case of the murdered ghost.” BBC News. January 3, 2004. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/london/3364467.stm
- “Fears of a Ghost and the Fatal Catastrophe.” The Morning Chronicle. Jan 5, 1804...
Today’s topic is an abandoned mansion, but it was once a gorgeous and luxurious home designed for a prominent citizen of northern Italy. It’s often described as haunted and as having a dark history, but there are some interesting contradictions regarding that story.
Research:
- “Caravan Journal, the rediscovered manuscript. The Orient through the eyes of a forgotten Milanese patriot: Felice De Vecchi.” Ar...
This 2021 episode covers Aleister Crowley, a truly prolific and deliberately transgressive occultist whose practices included sex and drug use. He influenced modern Satanism, as well as other new religious movements.
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Holly and Tracy talk about ghost experiences in their lives. Tracy thanks all the listeners who suggested ghost towns for this week's episode.
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We've had a lot of listener requests related to ghost towns, so this Halloween season, we've got six places in the U.S. that could be labeled as such. But not not all are empty today.
Research:
- Knutson, Julie. “The End of Centralia’s Abandoned, Colorful, Anarchic ‘Graffiti Highway.’” Atlas Obscura. 9/14/2020. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/centralia-graffiti-highway-buried
- California State ...
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