October 11, 2017 • 34 mins
In the 12th century, two children, green in color, appeared in Suffolk, England. The green children were written about in the 12th and 13th centuries as fact, but some people today classify as this tale as folklore.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. Still in
our favorite month of the year, October, Yes, Halloween season,
(00:23):
and so we have an episode that I know a
lot of people have requested that the only person I
wrote down was Betty, So thank you Betty and everyone
that I forgot to write down in addition to Betty.
It is a topic that was written about in the
twelfth and thirteen centuries as a factual thing that really happened,
but some people today classify at more as folklore. And
(00:44):
it is the green children of Woolpit who made a
really eerie appearance in Suffolk, England in the twelfth century.
We accidentally have a little theme of like odd happenings
in England at the beginning of this season. We're kicking
off with weird English stuff apparently, and by today's standards.
(01:04):
The village of Wolpit is quite small, with a population
of only about two thousand people traveling by car. It's
a couple of hours northeast of London. That's about thirty
six miles or fifty eight kilometers east of Cambridge, and
in the twelfth century the area was not exactly bustling,
but it was more densely populated than much of rural England,
and it was a thriving agricultural center. So, according to
(01:27):
the story, one day in Woolpit, two children, a boy
and a girl, emerged from a series of pits that
were used for trapping wolves. These these wolf pits, and
not the fabric of wool are where Wolpit gets its name,
is named after wolf pits. There are two chronicles of
(01:47):
this event and what happened after these two children appeared.
One is by Ralph Abbot of Cogschal, who wrote his
explanation of what happened as part of the Chronicon Anglicanum,
and the other is by William of Newburgh and the
Historia Rerum Anglicarum, or the History of English Affairs, and
both men wrote these accounts in Latin. A translation of
(02:10):
William's version by Joseph Stevenson is part of a truly
colossal set of volumes called The Church Historians of England,
which was published in eighteen fifty three and is available
online archive dot org if you want to check it out.
Stevenson translated Ralph's version two, but we couldn't find that
part of the Chronicon anglican Um in English online. So
(02:32):
instead of subjecting everyone to Ralph's Latin, shoved through Google Translate,
which is a hilarious activity if you ever want to
want to get some comedy in your life. We're going
to read Stevenson's translation of William's version. I did, indeed
of Ralph's Latin version through Google Translate, and that was
my amusement for a good chunk of afternoon. Before we
(02:54):
get to William's version of this story, though, I want
to have a brief digression about Joseph Stevenson because he
is character. He was the son of a surgeon, but
he also helped his uncle out in his job as
a smuggler. In his youth, he was not particularly a
good student either. While he was enrolled at a grammar
school that was attached to Durham Cathedral, for some reason,
(03:15):
he was keeping a loaded pistol among his possessions, which
went off while being handled by a servant, and according
to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, that that had
quote dramatic, although not grave, consequences I feel like a
tea set must have been destroyed and other things as well.
(03:36):
It gave no detail, but it makes it sound like
Fortunately no one was harmed in this accidental discharge of
a firearm, but there was some dramatic incident. And in
spite of this checkered background, Stevenson wound up working at
the British Museum. He married and he had two children,
and then he changed courses to join the clergy after
he was traumatized by the death of his brother. He
(03:59):
became a pre east after the death of his wife.
So where we come around to these monumental volumes of
translated works of history. He turned out to really have
a knack for translating and editing historical documents. He did
a lot of work for the Historical Manuscript's Commission. He
put together a bunch of different gigantic collections of historical
documents for various different clubs and historical societies. These ranged
(04:23):
from four to eight volumes in length. Some of them
were these gargantia wine editions of old religious and secular histories.
And this was just his thing. Apparently he was also
extremely personable and generous as well. So this is the
guy that did the translation of the thing that we're
about to read. Yeah. Worthy of a little mini biography
there for sure. Uh And back to the story. In
(04:46):
Stevenson's translation, William begins his account by saying that it
doesn't seem right to skip over the story of the
Green Children, but at the same time he had some
doubts about the matter. It seemed both ridiculous and serious.
But at the same time he had heard about it
from so many people, all of them very respectable and competent,
(05:07):
that he was quote compelled to believe. I feel like
this is a twelfth century version of the X Files poster.
I know, well, it's also a great that couching that
happens for spooky stories. And like, I know, this is ridiculous,
but there are enough reasonable people to believe it that
there must be truth in it. Yes, So we are
(05:28):
going to read his whole account because I love it
and I want to share it with all of you.
And it's a bit long, So we are going to
take turns, as we recently did when we talked about
the Devil's hoof prints. We took turns on a rather
lengthy passage. That's so what we're going to do again today.
So he he got into the story, saying, in East Anglia,
there's a village distant, as it is said, four or
(05:50):
five miles from the noble monastery of the Blessed King
and Martyr Edmund. Near this place are seen some very
ancient cavities called wolf pits, that in English pits for wolves,
and which give their name to the adjacent village. During harvest,
while the reapers were employed in gathering the produce of
the fields, two children, a boy and a girl, completely
(06:14):
green in their persons and clad in garments of a
strange color and unknown materials, emerged from these excavations while
wandering through the fields in astonishment. They were seized by
the reapers and conducted to the village, and many persons
coming to see so novel a sight. They were kept
some days without food, But when they were nearly exhausted
(06:37):
with hunger and yet could relish no species of support
which was offered to them, it happened that some beans
were brought in from the field, which they immediately seized
with avidity and examined the stock for the pulse, but
not finding it in the hollow of the stock, they
wept bitterly. Upon this, one of the bystandards, taking the
(06:58):
beans from the pods, offered them to the children, who
seized them directly and ate them with pleasure. This next
sentence is my favorite sentence, and the entire thing by
this food. They were supported for many months until they
learned the use of bread. At length by degrees, they
(07:19):
changed their original color through the natural effect of our food,
and became like ourselves, and also learned our language. It
seemed fitting to certain discreet persons that they should receive
the sacrament of baptism, which was administered accordingly. The boy,
who appeared to be the younger, surviving his baptism but
a little time, died prematurely. His sister, however, continued in
(07:43):
good health and differed not in the least from the
women of our own country. Afterwards, as it is reported,
she was married at Lynne, and was living a few
years since, at least, so they say. Moreover, after they
had acquired our language, on being asked who and whence
they were, they are said to have replied, we are
(08:03):
inhabitants of the land of St. Martin, who was regarded
with peculiar veneration in the country which gave us birth.
Being further asked where that land was and how they
came thence hither they answered, we are ignorant of both
these circumstances, and we only remember this that on a
certain day, when we were feeding our father's flocks in
(08:23):
the fields, we heard a great sound, such as we
are now accustomed to hear at St. Edmund's when the
bells are charming. And whilst listening to the sound and admiration,
we became, on a sudden, as it were entranced, and
found ourselves among you in the fields where you were reaping.
Being questioned whether in that land they believed in Christ
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or whether the sun arose, they replied that the country
was Christian and possessed churches. But said, they quote, the
sun does not rise upon our countrymen. Our land is
little cheered by its beams. We are contented with that
twilight which among you precedes the sunrise or follows the sunset. Moreover,
(09:06):
a certain luminous country is seeing not far distant from ours,
and divided from it by a very considerable river. These
and many other matters too numerous to particularize. They are
said to have recounted to curious inquirers, let everyone say
as he pleases and reason on such matters according to
his abilities. I feel no regret at having recorded an
(09:29):
event so prodigious and miraculous. So that's the story. I know.
Obviously they were asked a whole lot of other questions,
but it tickles me that the ones that he was
compelled to write down here were do you believe in Christ?
And also does the sun exist there? Uh? Yeah, maybe
they thought they were from another planet the realm that's
(09:49):
gonna come up. Yeah, they're from Saturn. Clearly. Obviously we're
gonna take a quick break before we get into some
of the historical elements that really eight to this story. Overall,
Williams and Ralph's versions of what happened with these Green
(10:11):
children are consistent with each other, although Williams is a
little bit longer and it has a few more details.
Both agreed that the children were taken to the home
of Lord Richard de Cown, who lived in Whites, which
is about six miles to the north of a little pit.
Williams mentioned of this isn't a footnote, which we didn't read,
which is why it probably does not ring a bell.
They both talk about the children having green skin and
(10:33):
only eating beans, and eventually assimilating with the rest of
the community, with the brother dying sometime after being baptized,
and unlike in the version we read, though, Ralph makes
it sound as though only the sister lived long enough
to tell their story. He doesn't mention a particular name
for where they came from, and there's no certain luminous
country that they could see from their home. There's also
(10:55):
a slight difference in the two accounts concerning how the
children claimed that they came to be in Wolpit. We
read in William's version that they had been tending the
flocks before hearing a loud noise, quotes such as we
are now accustomed to hear at St. Edmunds when the
bells are chiming, but they didn't otherwise know how they
had wound up in Wolpit. Ralph, on the other hand,
said the children reported that they had become disoriented while
(11:18):
tending cattle, and they got lost, and then they followed
the sound of chiming bells through a long series of
underground passages before emerge emerging from a cave near Wolpit.
So bells are involved in both of them in a
slightly different way. One is sort of like they're hoping
to get home theoretically right, and the other is just
(11:39):
that they the bells put them in some odd mental state,
that they went into a fugue state and traveled to Wolpit. Yes, okay.
The two accounts do diverge in what happened to the
surviving sister of the pair as well. So we read
in William's account that she married a man living in Lynn,
but Ralph says that she became a servant in Lord
Richard de Cown's house and of there for many years,
(12:01):
not necessarily happily, though he calls her quote very wanton
and impudent. Regardless, William indicates that she was still living
when he wrote his chronicle down, and there's been some
discussion about exactly when in the twelfth century this event
might have happened. William of Newburgh lived from roughly eleven
thirty six to eleven His version was probably written down
(12:25):
towards the end of his life. Ralph's version made it
into print after William's death sometime around twelve twenty, so
a lot of times we think, okay, the later account
is probably not quite as accurate, but even though Ralph's
version was written down later, he actually lived a lot
closer to Woolpit than William did, and he said he
had learned the story directly from Lord Richard to count
(12:47):
himself um, whereas William was hearing it all at least
second hand. And William notes that it was at harvest
time during the reign of King Stephen, which was from
five to eleven fifty four. Ralph, on the other hand,
says that it took place during the reign of his successor,
Henry the Second, which was from eleven fifty four to
(13:08):
eleven eighty nine. Author and archaeologist Brian Haughton points out
that there's no mention of the children in the Anglo
Saxon Chronicle, which documents English history up until Stephen's death
and includes a number of other odd and wondrous stories.
It's certainly possible that the Green Children aren't in the
Anglo Saxon Chronicle because its authors didn't know about it
(13:29):
or just didn't think it needed to be included. But
if it's not included because it hadn't happened yet, that
would put the time frame into Henry the Second's reign
rather than Stevens, and regarding William's notation of it being
harvest time, the beans that they were eating would have
been broad beans, which are more commonly known as s
fava beans in the United States. Those were picked around
(13:50):
July in August, so that's the approximate time of year,
and there is a lot to suggest that something really
did happen. The two accounts seemed who have been written
completely independently of one another, and although William does a
bit of protesting about how he knows that this story
sounds unbelievable, both men wrote as though they were documenting
(14:11):
a real event that actually happened. At the same time,
when both men were writing purportedly mystical, supernatural and miraculous
events were a lot more likely to be accepted at
face value than they might be today. It was pretty
much normal to write down something as odd as two
green children crawling out of a wolf pit and just
accepting the idea that something supernatural was at work without
(14:34):
really having to examine it further. The story of the
Green Children of Wolpit definitely stuck around into the thirteenth century,
and from there it became a little more obscure outside
the immediate area until the late fifteen hundreds, when the
first printed edition of Williams Historia Rim and Glacaram came out.
A new edition that came out in sixteen ten also
(14:56):
included Ralph's version to the story as a compliments to Williams.
With that it started making more appearances in written works
by other authors, who sometimes got understandably confused about which
version was Ralph's and which which version was Williams. I
in fact, got few confused about that repeatedly when working
on this podcast. It's easy to do retellings of the
(15:19):
story from the fifteenth century and beyond. Also, we're not
usually quite as credulous as Ralph and William had been.
William Camden writing in his work Britannia in six is
one example. Here's his description, and I wish I could
share all of the delightful spelling in his description with everyone.
It's pretty great. It's pretty awesome. Wolp. It is a
(15:40):
market town which meant merchant and soundeth as much as
the wolves Pit. And if we may believe new Brigensis,
who had told as pretty and formal a tale of
the place as is that fable called the True Narration
of Lucian, namely how two little boys for suits of
green color hand of satyrs kind after they had made
(16:02):
a long journey by passages underground, from out of another world,
from the antipoties in St. Martin's land, came up here
of whom you would know more repair to the author himself,
where you will find such a matter as will make
you laugh, your phil if you have a laughing spleen.
I feel like I definitely have a laughing spleen. I
(16:24):
think so yet that we have um made that prognosis.
That's official. I will call my family doctor uh. Newbrigensis
was a name for William of Newburgh. The quote True
Narration of Lucian is a second century satire by Lucian
of sam Asada which details a trip to the moon
that would rival our great Moon Hoax episode. There's a
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whole bit about men with dogs heads that fight from
winged acorns, and flees as big as twelve elephants. Oh,
that's terrifying, and warriors armed with radishes flung from slings.
I love all of this. This work is obviously not
meant to be taken as fact, and Camden obviously does
not take the green children seriously at all. From there
(17:09):
the story of the Green Children started to influence other
more fanciful works. Francis Godwin, The Man in the Moon,
or a Discourse of a Voyage thither, which he called
a quote essay of fancy, talks about a novel disciplinary
method employed by parents on the moon where they would
send their unruly children down to Earth and brings them
(17:32):
earthly children back in their place. And in this whole
story he made reference to quote certain stories he had
heard confirming this idea it was true. And those certain
stories were Williams, Historia, Retram and Lucaram. I want to
know what happened to the earthly kids that lived on
the moon. Did they eventually get fed beans and turned green?
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There's so many questions, he might say, I didn't read
the whole thing. The Green Children have continued to make
appearances in fiction into the twentieth century and beyond. Herbert
Reid's novel The Green Child came out in nineteen thirty four.
The Green Children of Bagnios, set in Spain in eighteen
eighty seven, was part of John Macklin's nineteen sixty five
(18:16):
book Strange Destinies. The Spanish setting is echoed in the
nineteen seven ten thousand Maniacs on Green Children, which starts
in August Day in the Hills of Spain, a pair
of children emerged from a cave. And of course there
are lots of other stories and books and TV episodes
and the like that all draw from this as well.
And it's not totally clear whether the Green Children are
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the inspiration for the basic idea of Martians as little
green men, but they were definitely described as green, and
people were also speculating that maybe they were aliens. Early
and as the sixteenth century and outside of the world
of fiction, the Green Children also started being written about
as folklore in the nineteenth century. In eighteen fifty, Thomas
(19:00):
Kitelee included bits of both Williams and Ralph's accounts in
his work Fairy Mythology. This was the first time the
story was available to people who did not read Latin,
and since it was in a book by a folklorist
called Fairy Mythology, a lot of people from this point
assumed that story was inherently folkloric. Sometimes they're specifically fairies,
(19:21):
such as in Catherine Briggs Dictionary of Fairies, which came
out in nineteen seventy six. And there are also people
who interpret them as forest spirits or personifications of nature.
I feel like the whole like fairy myth right up through.
Tinkerbell was very informed by all of this. About the
same time as Kitele was documenting the story as folklore,
(19:43):
the Green Children were also becoming more widely known to
the general public. In eighteen seventy five, a guide book
to East Anglia referenced the Green Children, and then other
mentions and other travel guides followed, as you know, interesting
points of interests and interesting tidbits about the place that
you're visit it ng A sign at will Pit honoring
the story was erected in nineteen seventy seven as part
(20:05):
of Queen Elizabeth Silver Jubilee, and today the story is
like they're on the Village of Wilpit's web page. And
of course there are also a lot of rational or
not so rational explanations for what was really going on here,
and we're going to dive into those possibilities after we
first paused for a little sponsor break. So unsurprisingly, there
(20:33):
are lots of hypotheses about who the Green Children were
and where they came from. One connects them to the
Babes in the Wood, which was first written down as
a ballad in and The basic story of the Babes
in the Wood is that a very greedy uncle was
guardian to two young children and he was hoping to
steal their fortunes, so he hired some men to take
(20:54):
them into the woods and murder them. As so often
happens in these kinds of stories, the men he hired
didn't have the heart to do it and abandoned them instead,
so in the story, they eventually starved. This folk tale
is typically set in Whyland Wood, which is about thirty
miles or forty eight kilometers away from Woolpit, so people
suggesting that the Green Children were really the Babes in
(21:16):
the Wood just move the location closer by. And also
about four hundred years earlier than the ballads first written appearance.
That definitely doesn't mean the ballad didn't exist earlier, but
like four years of a long time for a ballad
to go without being written down, or story to go
without being written down, at least by this point in history.
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So compounding the kind of far fetchedness of this explanation
is they go to rationale for why they were green,
which is chlorosis, otherwise known as green sickness. Now, while
there are rare forms of anemia that can cause a
person to have a kind of greenish pallor, along with
the idea that people who are really nauseated are described
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as looking sometimes green sickness is not that. Green sickness
was described in medical literature from the sixteenth to late
nineteenth century. It was diagnosed almost exclusively in young women,
and it was also called the virgin's disease. The symptoms
included things like restlessness, irritability, fatigue, too little appetite, too
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much appetite, indigestion, headache, and an absence of menstrual periods.
Treatments included blood letting, marriage always on a prescription pad,
and medicines to bring on menstrual flow. To be clear,
marriage really meant sex in this case, And there are
some extremely suggestive ballads dating back to the sixteenth and
(22:45):
seventeen centuries about treatments, and we're using the air quotes
there for green sickness. There's actually a Sawbones episode about
green sickness if you want to hear a whole lot
more about this. It also does not really take a
lot of Google effort to find these extremely suggestive ballads,
ballads about how to treat green sickness. So obviously they
(23:08):
probably didn't have green sickness, because that's not a real thing. Right.
And also those in in this sort of combination story
of the green children in the babes in the wood,
the folks who don't suggest that maybe they had clurosis
often suggest that maybe the hired men did actually try
to kill them using arsenic, that they had survived with
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the arsenic had turned their skin green. This is a
weird conflation of sort of two different historical things. While
arsenic has definitely been used to make green dies, it
was typically exposure to those diyes that made a person's
skin turned green, not surviving an attempt to be poisoned
with it. Right, Arsenic in itself does not carry that
(23:51):
pigment right to a person's person. I guess if you
tried to murder someone with green dye, which you could
have done, you could have done, then you have green skin.
You'll be so fashionable and deceased. Yeah, that would be
a weird way to murder people. I'll make a great
story for any of our writers out there. You just
take that one, ather. Uh. The idea that the Green
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children might have been aliens, which I love, goes all
the way back to William Camden, who suggested that they
were either Satyrs meaning wild men, or Antipodeans meaning aliens.
Robert Burton also made a passing reference to the idea
that they may have come from another planet in Anatomy
of Melancholy, which was published in sixteen twenty one. So
(24:35):
the aliens hypothesis has been around for a really long
time and it has persisted to the present. In article
in Analog, which is a science fiction magazine, Duncan Lunin
asserted that they were from a human colony on an
alien planet, sent here through a malfunctioning transporter, and this
explanation also involves the Knights Templar in some way. This
(24:58):
is one of the few things I didn't actually you
get to read for myself all the way through, some
relying on someone else's synopsis of it. But uh. Interestingly,
in a much more down to earth portion of this article,
he also pieced together a family treat for Richard to
count and claims that the surviving sister was baptized as
Agnes and that the man she married was a royal
(25:20):
official named Richard Barr. So that's a fascinating, possibly totally
legit historical fact in the context of this overall aliens
article with the Knights Templar involved, I wonder if that
means that someone could trace their alien heritage all the
way back to Agnes and you could know that you
are part from another planet, which you really all are,
(25:43):
because we're all made to start us to some degree.
True story, we're all aliens. The most complete practical explanation
for what might have happened came from Paul Harris in
and that was published in forty in Studies, which is
an offshoot of forty Times. I actually used a lot
of writing from one of the editors there for our
Devil's Footprints episode. Uh. And that's a magazine that's devoted
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to strange phenomena. And he suggests that all of this
really happened in eleven seventy three in the Reign of
Henry the Second. In brief, Harris suggests that these were
the children of Flemish immigrants and that their parents were
killed at the Battle of Fornhum in eleven seventy three.
The St. Martin's Land that the sister referred to was
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Fornhum St Martin, roughly ten miles or sixteen kilometers from Woolpits.
They're not that far away and also not far from
the River Lark, so there would have been a river nearby.
According to this theory, they escaped the battle, and then
the two children fled into Thetford forest and took refuge
in flint mines there before following the bells from Barry
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St Edmund's to find their way out and make their
way to Woolpit. So their unknown tongue and clothing were
just Flemish and their skin was greenish due to malnutrition
due to this extended time of being abandoned and wandering
in flint mines. That all holds up. Uh. It all
sounds like it fits so very well, But of course
(27:09):
there are a few problems. One, the Flemish people killed
at for Hum were mercenaries hired to fight with English
rebels against Henry the Seconds Forces. Mercenaries generally, as a rule,
did not bring their children with them into battle. Uh. Two,
it seems unlikely that no one around Wolpit spoke Flemish
or some other version of Dutch, at least enough to
(27:31):
spot it as a known language rather than some unrecognizable tongue. Three,
the river Lark isn't really that big and even to
a child's eye, it's probably not quote a very considerable river.
So that descriptor does not really hold up. And for
this Fornhum to Thetford to Bury St Edmund's to Woolpit
trek really goes way out of the way. It's actually
(27:53):
a total of about thirty miles or fifty two kilometers,
the first leg of it going in nearly the direct
opposite direction from Wolpit. Thattford is also way too far
away from Barry st Edmund's to hear the bells from there. Also,
want a lot more just immediate non synchronization in the descriptions.
(28:13):
That battle happened in October. So unless those two kids
wandered for months and months and months before arriving in Wolpit, like,
there would not have been any fresh beans harvest and
that because you'll remember that was what June July, I
think July August was when they are generally harvested. That's
nine months including winter, right with two tiny children. Yeah,
(28:39):
so malnourished, tiny children. So it's a mystery. Maybe they
made the Devil's footprints. Maybe so sick little side trip
play a little frank time traveled seven years maybe or
some other number of years, depending which account you ready.
So pretty much all of a historical um accounts, and
(29:03):
then also a lot of the his like farther back
in the past. Works of fiction that we talked about
today are all on the internet for free, and they
will all be linked from our show notes to this episode.
If you just really want to go read either a
colossally long history of the Church in England as translated
(29:23):
UH in the nineteenth century, or if you just want
to read some weird science fictionesque stories about the moon
written in the distant past, Like that's all there. Who
doesn't want to read those? I kind of do the
whole thing about the flying acorns and the dog faced
people and the the specifically multiple number of elephants that
the fleas were as big as it's all, But people
(29:44):
are pretty much on their own if they want to
go looking for the dirty ballads? Is that where we
decided the Dirty Ballads are not linked into one of
them is definitely not safe for work. Um. But so,
as I was trying to put together some thoughts about
green sickness. I found a larger than I would expect
(30:06):
number of just very incredulous papers published in journals that
were like, do you think green sickness could have been
caused by malnutrition? No? I think green sickness probably was
caused by misogyny. But but one of them like this,
it started out seeming like they were genuinely asking whether
(30:28):
there was some kind of organic mechanism at work, and
then the conclusion was like no, really, like people just
got really into Hippocrates and started making these Hippocratic diagnoses,
and that's why it suddenly enters this historical record at
this time and leaves and this time. But it was
through that one article that I found this particularly risk
(30:50):
a ballad which you know, if you're an adult person
with kind of a skewed sense of humor, it is
always funny to me and a little a little bit
of a silly and almost borderline charming way to read
sort of dirty writing. And I'm again I'm using the
air quotes from really olden times because their choice of
(31:11):
words is just very funny to today's year, and that's
what makes it hilarious. Yeah, So I don't know. If
you try to search for this yourself and you come
up with with no responses, just send us an email
history podcast at how stuff works dot com. I will
tell you where to find it. Tracy is going to
peddle the dirty paddles. You have listener mail that is
(31:32):
not a dirty valid I sure do, and it's not
dirty yet. All Kyle sent us a note, and Kyle says, Ladies,
I would like to start off by saying, this is
my first time writing in, but I love your podcast
and listen to it all the time at work. I'm
a huge history buff and I'm always fascinated how the
actions and events surrounding a single person can affect the
(31:52):
entire world of billions. Three perfect examples of this were
in your episode three Nuclear Close Calls. They were very
intra stories about how people in the Cold War prevented
armageddon through quick thinking and faith and their fellow humans.
I'm sure I won't be the only person to write
in about this, but news just came in a few
hours ago confirming the death of Stanislav Petrov, one of
(32:13):
the three people featured in the podcast. He passed away
in May, according to multiple sources, but most people are
just learning of it now. He was the perfect example
of how the level headed thinking of one individual can
and did save the world as we know it today.
I was born after the incident which happened in three
but I can say with confidence that I and so
many more would not be alive if not for his actions.
(32:35):
And then Uh notes that his parents lived in a
city that, as I probably would have been a target.
The world owes Mr Petrov and so many others like
him a tremendous debt, and I am glad that now,
if delayed, many mainstream media outlets are publishing stories about
his deeds. Keep up the great work your podcast keep
me saye during some of my most tedious hours at work.
So thanks for that. And then he included some links
(32:58):
to stories about the death of Stanislav Petrov. Thank you
so much, Kyle. That music came UH to the four.
It's true. It was like back in May that he
that he died. Um, but this news started to circulate
while I was on vacation and Holly was at Salt
Lake Comic Con, so it was like we were not
really at our desks to just spread the word on
(33:20):
our social media or whatever. So I want to take
the opportunity to note it in the show today. Yeah,
thanks Kyle, Yeah, thank you very much. Thanks to everyone
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(33:41):
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(34:02):
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stuff Works dot com.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. Still in
our favorite month of the year, October, Yes, Halloween season,
(00:23):
and so we have an episode that I know a
lot of people have requested that the only person I
wrote down was Betty, So thank you Betty and everyone
that I forgot to write down in addition to Betty.
It is a topic that was written about in the
twelfth and thirteen centuries as a factual thing that really happened,
but some people today classify at more as folklore. And
(00:44):
it is the green children of Woolpit who made a
really eerie appearance in Suffolk, England in the twelfth century.
We accidentally have a little theme of like odd happenings
in England at the beginning of this season. We're kicking
off with weird English stuff apparently, and by today's standards.
(01:04):
The village of Wolpit is quite small, with a population
of only about two thousand people traveling by car. It's
a couple of hours northeast of London. That's about thirty
six miles or fifty eight kilometers east of Cambridge, and
in the twelfth century the area was not exactly bustling,
but it was more densely populated than much of rural England,
and it was a thriving agricultural center. So, according to
(01:27):
the story, one day in Woolpit, two children, a boy
and a girl, emerged from a series of pits that
were used for trapping wolves. These these wolf pits, and
not the fabric of wool are where Wolpit gets its name,
is named after wolf pits. There are two chronicles of
(01:47):
this event and what happened after these two children appeared.
One is by Ralph Abbot of Cogschal, who wrote his
explanation of what happened as part of the Chronicon Anglicanum,
and the other is by William of Newburgh and the
Historia Rerum Anglicarum, or the History of English Affairs, and
both men wrote these accounts in Latin. A translation of
(02:10):
William's version by Joseph Stevenson is part of a truly
colossal set of volumes called The Church Historians of England,
which was published in eighteen fifty three and is available
online archive dot org if you want to check it out.
Stevenson translated Ralph's version two, but we couldn't find that
part of the Chronicon anglican Um in English online. So
(02:32):
instead of subjecting everyone to Ralph's Latin, shoved through Google Translate,
which is a hilarious activity if you ever want to
want to get some comedy in your life. We're going
to read Stevenson's translation of William's version. I did, indeed
of Ralph's Latin version through Google Translate, and that was
my amusement for a good chunk of afternoon. Before we
(02:54):
get to William's version of this story, though, I want
to have a brief digression about Joseph Stevenson because he
is character. He was the son of a surgeon, but
he also helped his uncle out in his job as
a smuggler. In his youth, he was not particularly a
good student either. While he was enrolled at a grammar
school that was attached to Durham Cathedral, for some reason,
(03:15):
he was keeping a loaded pistol among his possessions, which
went off while being handled by a servant, and according
to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, that that had
quote dramatic, although not grave, consequences I feel like a
tea set must have been destroyed and other things as well.
(03:36):
It gave no detail, but it makes it sound like
Fortunately no one was harmed in this accidental discharge of
a firearm, but there was some dramatic incident. And in
spite of this checkered background, Stevenson wound up working at
the British Museum. He married and he had two children,
and then he changed courses to join the clergy after
he was traumatized by the death of his brother. He
(03:59):
became a pre east after the death of his wife.
So where we come around to these monumental volumes of
translated works of history. He turned out to really have
a knack for translating and editing historical documents. He did
a lot of work for the Historical Manuscript's Commission. He
put together a bunch of different gigantic collections of historical
documents for various different clubs and historical societies. These ranged
(04:23):
from four to eight volumes in length. Some of them
were these gargantia wine editions of old religious and secular histories.
And this was just his thing. Apparently he was also
extremely personable and generous as well. So this is the
guy that did the translation of the thing that we're
about to read. Yeah. Worthy of a little mini biography
there for sure. Uh And back to the story. In
(04:46):
Stevenson's translation, William begins his account by saying that it
doesn't seem right to skip over the story of the
Green Children, but at the same time he had some
doubts about the matter. It seemed both ridiculous and serious.
But at the same time he had heard about it
from so many people, all of them very respectable and competent,
(05:07):
that he was quote compelled to believe. I feel like
this is a twelfth century version of the X Files poster.
I know, well, it's also a great that couching that
happens for spooky stories. And like, I know, this is ridiculous,
but there are enough reasonable people to believe it that
there must be truth in it. Yes, So we are
(05:28):
going to read his whole account because I love it
and I want to share it with all of you.
And it's a bit long, So we are going to
take turns, as we recently did when we talked about
the Devil's hoof prints. We took turns on a rather
lengthy passage. That's so what we're going to do again today.
So he he got into the story, saying, in East Anglia,
there's a village distant, as it is said, four or
(05:50):
five miles from the noble monastery of the Blessed King
and Martyr Edmund. Near this place are seen some very
ancient cavities called wolf pits, that in English pits for wolves,
and which give their name to the adjacent village. During harvest,
while the reapers were employed in gathering the produce of
the fields, two children, a boy and a girl, completely
(06:14):
green in their persons and clad in garments of a
strange color and unknown materials, emerged from these excavations while
wandering through the fields in astonishment. They were seized by
the reapers and conducted to the village, and many persons
coming to see so novel a sight. They were kept
some days without food, But when they were nearly exhausted
(06:37):
with hunger and yet could relish no species of support
which was offered to them, it happened that some beans
were brought in from the field, which they immediately seized
with avidity and examined the stock for the pulse, but
not finding it in the hollow of the stock, they
wept bitterly. Upon this, one of the bystandards, taking the
(06:58):
beans from the pods, offered them to the children, who
seized them directly and ate them with pleasure. This next
sentence is my favorite sentence, and the entire thing by
this food. They were supported for many months until they
learned the use of bread. At length by degrees, they
(07:19):
changed their original color through the natural effect of our food,
and became like ourselves, and also learned our language. It
seemed fitting to certain discreet persons that they should receive
the sacrament of baptism, which was administered accordingly. The boy,
who appeared to be the younger, surviving his baptism but
a little time, died prematurely. His sister, however, continued in
(07:43):
good health and differed not in the least from the
women of our own country. Afterwards, as it is reported,
she was married at Lynne, and was living a few
years since, at least, so they say. Moreover, after they
had acquired our language, on being asked who and whence
they were, they are said to have replied, we are
(08:03):
inhabitants of the land of St. Martin, who was regarded
with peculiar veneration in the country which gave us birth.
Being further asked where that land was and how they
came thence hither they answered, we are ignorant of both
these circumstances, and we only remember this that on a
certain day, when we were feeding our father's flocks in
(08:23):
the fields, we heard a great sound, such as we
are now accustomed to hear at St. Edmund's when the
bells are charming. And whilst listening to the sound and admiration,
we became, on a sudden, as it were entranced, and
found ourselves among you in the fields where you were reaping.
Being questioned whether in that land they believed in Christ
(08:45):
or whether the sun arose, they replied that the country
was Christian and possessed churches. But said, they quote, the
sun does not rise upon our countrymen. Our land is
little cheered by its beams. We are contented with that
twilight which among you precedes the sunrise or follows the sunset. Moreover,
(09:06):
a certain luminous country is seeing not far distant from ours,
and divided from it by a very considerable river. These
and many other matters too numerous to particularize. They are
said to have recounted to curious inquirers, let everyone say
as he pleases and reason on such matters according to
his abilities. I feel no regret at having recorded an
(09:29):
event so prodigious and miraculous. So that's the story. I know.
Obviously they were asked a whole lot of other questions,
but it tickles me that the ones that he was
compelled to write down here were do you believe in Christ?
And also does the sun exist there? Uh? Yeah, maybe
they thought they were from another planet the realm that's
(09:49):
gonna come up. Yeah, they're from Saturn. Clearly. Obviously we're
gonna take a quick break before we get into some
of the historical elements that really eight to this story. Overall,
Williams and Ralph's versions of what happened with these Green
(10:11):
children are consistent with each other, although Williams is a
little bit longer and it has a few more details.
Both agreed that the children were taken to the home
of Lord Richard de Cown, who lived in Whites, which
is about six miles to the north of a little pit.
Williams mentioned of this isn't a footnote, which we didn't read,
which is why it probably does not ring a bell.
They both talk about the children having green skin and
(10:33):
only eating beans, and eventually assimilating with the rest of
the community, with the brother dying sometime after being baptized,
and unlike in the version we read, though, Ralph makes
it sound as though only the sister lived long enough
to tell their story. He doesn't mention a particular name
for where they came from, and there's no certain luminous
country that they could see from their home. There's also
(10:55):
a slight difference in the two accounts concerning how the
children claimed that they came to be in Wolpit. We
read in William's version that they had been tending the
flocks before hearing a loud noise, quotes such as we
are now accustomed to hear at St. Edmunds when the
bells are chiming, but they didn't otherwise know how they
had wound up in Wolpit. Ralph, on the other hand,
said the children reported that they had become disoriented while
(11:18):
tending cattle, and they got lost, and then they followed
the sound of chiming bells through a long series of
underground passages before emerge emerging from a cave near Wolpit.
So bells are involved in both of them in a
slightly different way. One is sort of like they're hoping
to get home theoretically right, and the other is just
(11:39):
that they the bells put them in some odd mental state,
that they went into a fugue state and traveled to Wolpit. Yes, okay.
The two accounts do diverge in what happened to the
surviving sister of the pair as well. So we read
in William's account that she married a man living in Lynn,
but Ralph says that she became a servant in Lord
Richard de Cown's house and of there for many years,
(12:01):
not necessarily happily, though he calls her quote very wanton
and impudent. Regardless, William indicates that she was still living
when he wrote his chronicle down, and there's been some
discussion about exactly when in the twelfth century this event
might have happened. William of Newburgh lived from roughly eleven
thirty six to eleven His version was probably written down
(12:25):
towards the end of his life. Ralph's version made it
into print after William's death sometime around twelve twenty, so
a lot of times we think, okay, the later account
is probably not quite as accurate, but even though Ralph's
version was written down later, he actually lived a lot
closer to Woolpit than William did, and he said he
had learned the story directly from Lord Richard to count
(12:47):
himself um, whereas William was hearing it all at least
second hand. And William notes that it was at harvest
time during the reign of King Stephen, which was from
five to eleven fifty four. Ralph, on the other hand,
says that it took place during the reign of his successor,
Henry the Second, which was from eleven fifty four to
(13:08):
eleven eighty nine. Author and archaeologist Brian Haughton points out
that there's no mention of the children in the Anglo
Saxon Chronicle, which documents English history up until Stephen's death
and includes a number of other odd and wondrous stories.
It's certainly possible that the Green Children aren't in the
Anglo Saxon Chronicle because its authors didn't know about it
(13:29):
or just didn't think it needed to be included. But
if it's not included because it hadn't happened yet, that
would put the time frame into Henry the Second's reign
rather than Stevens, and regarding William's notation of it being
harvest time, the beans that they were eating would have
been broad beans, which are more commonly known as s
fava beans in the United States. Those were picked around
(13:50):
July in August, so that's the approximate time of year,
and there is a lot to suggest that something really
did happen. The two accounts seemed who have been written
completely independently of one another, and although William does a
bit of protesting about how he knows that this story
sounds unbelievable, both men wrote as though they were documenting
(14:11):
a real event that actually happened. At the same time,
when both men were writing purportedly mystical, supernatural and miraculous
events were a lot more likely to be accepted at
face value than they might be today. It was pretty
much normal to write down something as odd as two
green children crawling out of a wolf pit and just
accepting the idea that something supernatural was at work without
(14:34):
really having to examine it further. The story of the
Green Children of Wolpit definitely stuck around into the thirteenth century,
and from there it became a little more obscure outside
the immediate area until the late fifteen hundreds, when the
first printed edition of Williams Historia Rim and Glacaram came out.
A new edition that came out in sixteen ten also
(14:56):
included Ralph's version to the story as a compliments to Williams.
With that it started making more appearances in written works
by other authors, who sometimes got understandably confused about which
version was Ralph's and which which version was Williams. I
in fact, got few confused about that repeatedly when working
on this podcast. It's easy to do retellings of the
(15:19):
story from the fifteenth century and beyond. Also, we're not
usually quite as credulous as Ralph and William had been.
William Camden writing in his work Britannia in six is
one example. Here's his description, and I wish I could
share all of the delightful spelling in his description with everyone.
It's pretty great. It's pretty awesome. Wolp. It is a
(15:40):
market town which meant merchant and soundeth as much as
the wolves Pit. And if we may believe new Brigensis,
who had told as pretty and formal a tale of
the place as is that fable called the True Narration
of Lucian, namely how two little boys for suits of
green color hand of satyrs kind after they had made
(16:02):
a long journey by passages underground, from out of another world,
from the antipoties in St. Martin's land, came up here
of whom you would know more repair to the author himself,
where you will find such a matter as will make
you laugh, your phil if you have a laughing spleen.
I feel like I definitely have a laughing spleen. I
(16:24):
think so yet that we have um made that prognosis.
That's official. I will call my family doctor uh. Newbrigensis
was a name for William of Newburgh. The quote True
Narration of Lucian is a second century satire by Lucian
of sam Asada which details a trip to the moon
that would rival our great Moon Hoax episode. There's a
(16:47):
whole bit about men with dogs heads that fight from
winged acorns, and flees as big as twelve elephants. Oh,
that's terrifying, and warriors armed with radishes flung from slings.
I love all of this. This work is obviously not
meant to be taken as fact, and Camden obviously does
not take the green children seriously at all. From there
(17:09):
the story of the Green Children started to influence other
more fanciful works. Francis Godwin, The Man in the Moon,
or a Discourse of a Voyage thither, which he called
a quote essay of fancy, talks about a novel disciplinary
method employed by parents on the moon where they would
send their unruly children down to Earth and brings them
(17:32):
earthly children back in their place. And in this whole
story he made reference to quote certain stories he had
heard confirming this idea it was true. And those certain
stories were Williams, Historia, Retram and Lucaram. I want to
know what happened to the earthly kids that lived on
the moon. Did they eventually get fed beans and turned green?
(17:56):
There's so many questions, he might say, I didn't read
the whole thing. The Green Children have continued to make
appearances in fiction into the twentieth century and beyond. Herbert
Reid's novel The Green Child came out in nineteen thirty four.
The Green Children of Bagnios, set in Spain in eighteen
eighty seven, was part of John Macklin's nineteen sixty five
(18:16):
book Strange Destinies. The Spanish setting is echoed in the
nineteen seven ten thousand Maniacs on Green Children, which starts
in August Day in the Hills of Spain, a pair
of children emerged from a cave. And of course there
are lots of other stories and books and TV episodes
and the like that all draw from this as well.
And it's not totally clear whether the Green Children are
(18:39):
the inspiration for the basic idea of Martians as little
green men, but they were definitely described as green, and
people were also speculating that maybe they were aliens. Early
and as the sixteenth century and outside of the world
of fiction, the Green Children also started being written about
as folklore in the nineteenth century. In eighteen fifty, Thomas
(19:00):
Kitelee included bits of both Williams and Ralph's accounts in
his work Fairy Mythology. This was the first time the
story was available to people who did not read Latin,
and since it was in a book by a folklorist
called Fairy Mythology, a lot of people from this point
assumed that story was inherently folkloric. Sometimes they're specifically fairies,
(19:21):
such as in Catherine Briggs Dictionary of Fairies, which came
out in nineteen seventy six. And there are also people
who interpret them as forest spirits or personifications of nature.
I feel like the whole like fairy myth right up through.
Tinkerbell was very informed by all of this. About the
same time as Kitele was documenting the story as folklore,
(19:43):
the Green Children were also becoming more widely known to
the general public. In eighteen seventy five, a guide book
to East Anglia referenced the Green Children, and then other
mentions and other travel guides followed, as you know, interesting
points of interests and interesting tidbits about the place that
you're visit it ng A sign at will Pit honoring
the story was erected in nineteen seventy seven as part
(20:05):
of Queen Elizabeth Silver Jubilee, and today the story is
like they're on the Village of Wilpit's web page. And
of course there are also a lot of rational or
not so rational explanations for what was really going on here,
and we're going to dive into those possibilities after we
first paused for a little sponsor break. So unsurprisingly, there
(20:33):
are lots of hypotheses about who the Green Children were
and where they came from. One connects them to the
Babes in the Wood, which was first written down as
a ballad in and The basic story of the Babes
in the Wood is that a very greedy uncle was
guardian to two young children and he was hoping to
steal their fortunes, so he hired some men to take
(20:54):
them into the woods and murder them. As so often
happens in these kinds of stories, the men he hired
didn't have the heart to do it and abandoned them instead,
so in the story, they eventually starved. This folk tale
is typically set in Whyland Wood, which is about thirty
miles or forty eight kilometers away from Woolpit, so people
suggesting that the Green Children were really the Babes in
(21:16):
the Wood just move the location closer by. And also
about four hundred years earlier than the ballads first written appearance.
That definitely doesn't mean the ballad didn't exist earlier, but
like four years of a long time for a ballad
to go without being written down, or story to go
without being written down, at least by this point in history.
(21:37):
So compounding the kind of far fetchedness of this explanation
is they go to rationale for why they were green,
which is chlorosis, otherwise known as green sickness. Now, while
there are rare forms of anemia that can cause a
person to have a kind of greenish pallor, along with
the idea that people who are really nauseated are described
(21:59):
as looking sometimes green sickness is not that. Green sickness
was described in medical literature from the sixteenth to late
nineteenth century. It was diagnosed almost exclusively in young women,
and it was also called the virgin's disease. The symptoms
included things like restlessness, irritability, fatigue, too little appetite, too
(22:22):
much appetite, indigestion, headache, and an absence of menstrual periods.
Treatments included blood letting, marriage always on a prescription pad,
and medicines to bring on menstrual flow. To be clear,
marriage really meant sex in this case, And there are
some extremely suggestive ballads dating back to the sixteenth and
(22:45):
seventeen centuries about treatments, and we're using the air quotes
there for green sickness. There's actually a Sawbones episode about
green sickness if you want to hear a whole lot
more about this. It also does not really take a
lot of Google effort to find these extremely suggestive ballads,
ballads about how to treat green sickness. So obviously they
(23:08):
probably didn't have green sickness, because that's not a real thing. Right.
And also those in in this sort of combination story
of the green children in the babes in the wood,
the folks who don't suggest that maybe they had clurosis
often suggest that maybe the hired men did actually try
to kill them using arsenic, that they had survived with
(23:28):
the arsenic had turned their skin green. This is a
weird conflation of sort of two different historical things. While
arsenic has definitely been used to make green dies, it
was typically exposure to those diyes that made a person's
skin turned green, not surviving an attempt to be poisoned
with it. Right, Arsenic in itself does not carry that
(23:51):
pigment right to a person's person. I guess if you
tried to murder someone with green dye, which you could
have done, you could have done, then you have green skin.
You'll be so fashionable and deceased. Yeah, that would be
a weird way to murder people. I'll make a great
story for any of our writers out there. You just
take that one, ather. Uh. The idea that the Green
(24:14):
children might have been aliens, which I love, goes all
the way back to William Camden, who suggested that they
were either Satyrs meaning wild men, or Antipodeans meaning aliens.
Robert Burton also made a passing reference to the idea
that they may have come from another planet in Anatomy
of Melancholy, which was published in sixteen twenty one. So
(24:35):
the aliens hypothesis has been around for a really long
time and it has persisted to the present. In article
in Analog, which is a science fiction magazine, Duncan Lunin
asserted that they were from a human colony on an
alien planet, sent here through a malfunctioning transporter, and this
explanation also involves the Knights Templar in some way. This
(24:58):
is one of the few things I didn't actually you
get to read for myself all the way through, some
relying on someone else's synopsis of it. But uh. Interestingly,
in a much more down to earth portion of this article,
he also pieced together a family treat for Richard to
count and claims that the surviving sister was baptized as
Agnes and that the man she married was a royal
(25:20):
official named Richard Barr. So that's a fascinating, possibly totally
legit historical fact in the context of this overall aliens
article with the Knights Templar involved, I wonder if that
means that someone could trace their alien heritage all the
way back to Agnes and you could know that you
are part from another planet, which you really all are,
(25:43):
because we're all made to start us to some degree.
True story, we're all aliens. The most complete practical explanation
for what might have happened came from Paul Harris in
and that was published in forty in Studies, which is
an offshoot of forty Times. I actually used a lot
of writing from one of the editors there for our
Devil's Footprints episode. Uh. And that's a magazine that's devoted
(26:06):
to strange phenomena. And he suggests that all of this
really happened in eleven seventy three in the Reign of
Henry the Second. In brief, Harris suggests that these were
the children of Flemish immigrants and that their parents were
killed at the Battle of Fornhum in eleven seventy three.
The St. Martin's Land that the sister referred to was
(26:27):
Fornhum St Martin, roughly ten miles or sixteen kilometers from Woolpits.
They're not that far away and also not far from
the River Lark, so there would have been a river nearby.
According to this theory, they escaped the battle, and then
the two children fled into Thetford forest and took refuge
in flint mines there before following the bells from Barry
(26:49):
St Edmund's to find their way out and make their
way to Woolpit. So their unknown tongue and clothing were
just Flemish and their skin was greenish due to malnutrition
due to this extended time of being abandoned and wandering
in flint mines. That all holds up. Uh. It all
sounds like it fits so very well, But of course
(27:09):
there are a few problems. One, the Flemish people killed
at for Hum were mercenaries hired to fight with English
rebels against Henry the Seconds Forces. Mercenaries generally, as a rule,
did not bring their children with them into battle. Uh. Two,
it seems unlikely that no one around Wolpit spoke Flemish
or some other version of Dutch, at least enough to
(27:31):
spot it as a known language rather than some unrecognizable tongue. Three,
the river Lark isn't really that big and even to
a child's eye, it's probably not quote a very considerable river.
So that descriptor does not really hold up. And for
this Fornhum to Thetford to Bury St Edmund's to Woolpit
trek really goes way out of the way. It's actually
(27:53):
a total of about thirty miles or fifty two kilometers,
the first leg of it going in nearly the direct
opposite direction from Wolpit. Thattford is also way too far
away from Barry st Edmund's to hear the bells from there. Also,
want a lot more just immediate non synchronization in the descriptions.
(28:13):
That battle happened in October. So unless those two kids
wandered for months and months and months before arriving in Wolpit, like,
there would not have been any fresh beans harvest and
that because you'll remember that was what June July, I
think July August was when they are generally harvested. That's
nine months including winter, right with two tiny children. Yeah,
(28:39):
so malnourished, tiny children. So it's a mystery. Maybe they
made the Devil's footprints. Maybe so sick little side trip
play a little frank time traveled seven years maybe or
some other number of years, depending which account you ready.
So pretty much all of a historical um accounts, and
(29:03):
then also a lot of the his like farther back
in the past. Works of fiction that we talked about
today are all on the internet for free, and they
will all be linked from our show notes to this episode.
If you just really want to go read either a
colossally long history of the Church in England as translated
(29:23):
UH in the nineteenth century, or if you just want
to read some weird science fictionesque stories about the moon
written in the distant past, Like that's all there. Who
doesn't want to read those? I kind of do the
whole thing about the flying acorns and the dog faced
people and the the specifically multiple number of elephants that
the fleas were as big as it's all, But people
(29:44):
are pretty much on their own if they want to
go looking for the dirty ballads? Is that where we
decided the Dirty Ballads are not linked into one of
them is definitely not safe for work. Um. But so,
as I was trying to put together some thoughts about
green sickness. I found a larger than I would expect
(30:06):
number of just very incredulous papers published in journals that
were like, do you think green sickness could have been
caused by malnutrition? No? I think green sickness probably was
caused by misogyny. But but one of them like this,
it started out seeming like they were genuinely asking whether
(30:28):
there was some kind of organic mechanism at work, and
then the conclusion was like no, really, like people just
got really into Hippocrates and started making these Hippocratic diagnoses,
and that's why it suddenly enters this historical record at
this time and leaves and this time. But it was
through that one article that I found this particularly risk
(30:50):
a ballad which you know, if you're an adult person
with kind of a skewed sense of humor, it is
always funny to me and a little a little bit
of a silly and almost borderline charming way to read
sort of dirty writing. And I'm again I'm using the
air quotes from really olden times because their choice of
(31:11):
words is just very funny to today's year, and that's
what makes it hilarious. Yeah, So I don't know. If
you try to search for this yourself and you come
up with with no responses, just send us an email
history podcast at how stuff works dot com. I will
tell you where to find it. Tracy is going to
peddle the dirty paddles. You have listener mail that is
(31:32):
not a dirty valid I sure do, and it's not
dirty yet. All Kyle sent us a note, and Kyle says, Ladies,
I would like to start off by saying, this is
my first time writing in, but I love your podcast
and listen to it all the time at work. I'm
a huge history buff and I'm always fascinated how the
actions and events surrounding a single person can affect the
(31:52):
entire world of billions. Three perfect examples of this were
in your episode three Nuclear Close Calls. They were very
intra stories about how people in the Cold War prevented
armageddon through quick thinking and faith and their fellow humans.
I'm sure I won't be the only person to write
in about this, but news just came in a few
hours ago confirming the death of Stanislav Petrov, one of
(32:13):
the three people featured in the podcast. He passed away
in May, according to multiple sources, but most people are
just learning of it now. He was the perfect example
of how the level headed thinking of one individual can
and did save the world as we know it today.
I was born after the incident which happened in three
but I can say with confidence that I and so
many more would not be alive if not for his actions.
(32:35):
And then Uh notes that his parents lived in a
city that, as I probably would have been a target.
The world owes Mr Petrov and so many others like
him a tremendous debt, and I am glad that now,
if delayed, many mainstream media outlets are publishing stories about
his deeds. Keep up the great work your podcast keep
me saye during some of my most tedious hours at work.
So thanks for that. And then he included some links
(32:58):
to stories about the death of Stanislav Petrov. Thank you
so much, Kyle. That music came UH to the four.
It's true. It was like back in May that he
that he died. Um, but this news started to circulate
while I was on vacation and Holly was at Salt
Lake Comic Con, so it was like we were not
really at our desks to just spread the word on
(33:20):
our social media or whatever. So I want to take
the opportunity to note it in the show today. Yeah,
thanks Kyle, Yeah, thank you very much. Thanks to everyone
else who's written us awesome notes about things or queries
about where we have found things on our on our show.
So if you would like to write to us or
at history podcasts at how stuff works dot com. We're
(33:41):
also on Facebook and Pinterest and Tumbler and Instagram, all
of those at missed in History And if you come
to our website, which is missed in History dot com,
there's a searchable archive of all the episodes that have
ever been on the show. There are show notes for
all the episodes that Holly and I have ever done.
There are lots of tags that we have and you
(34:02):
can click on on our website and that will take
you to lots of other episodes that are about that
same subject. So there's a whole lot you can do
if you come to miss in History dot com. For
more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how
stuff Works dot com.
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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