October 2, 2017 • 31 mins
In February 1855, mysterious prints that looked like hoof marks appeared all over the English seaside county of Devon. But figuring out who or what made those prints is a puzzle that continues to befuddle people.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, listeners, we are soon to be appearing at New
York Comic Con as part of New York Comic Con
presents their evening programming. We are going to do an
episode about the creation of what is usually credited as
the first comic book, and we'll be talking about the
man who did it and how that came to be
and if you want to get in on that, we
would love to see you for our live show. It
is taking place on October six, from nine thirty to
(00:22):
eleven at the Hudson Mercantile. Again that runs during New
York Comic Con, and for more information on it, you
can visit our website Missed in History dot com. You
will click on the link this is live shows and
you can get all the info and a link to
order your tickets. We hope to see you there. Welcome
to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how Stuff
(00:43):
Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Holly Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. Tracy, we are
officially into my favorite time of year. I know you're
so excited. It's spooky episodes sees uh And as regular
(01:04):
listeners know, this is a time when we explore some
of the weirder bits of history, we get a little looser.
Some of our research comes from kind of crazier sources. Um.
And this episode may sound spooky based on the title,
and it is a history mystery, but the reality is
definitely more of a fun and pretty silly mystery than
anything that's scary. So if you are one of those
(01:26):
people I know we sometimes have listeners right in and
say they are a little too afraid sometimes or spooked
by our October episodes, uh, this one is not going
to get too frightening. You don't have to worry about
it at all on this one. Uh And I will
say this too. The term the devil's footprints gets applied
to a lot of different things, but this to me
(01:47):
seems like the most common one, which is an incident
that happened in England in eighteen ft five. So if
you are thinking it is another one, it is not. Yeah.
They're also like a lot of local ghost stories that
have of some combination of devilish figure and walking around
like places where plants don't grow, like the Devil's tramping
(02:10):
Ground is one I recall from my childhood. Uh And
and that is actually what I thought this was going
to be about before I started reading your outline, and
then that is not what it's about. It is about
something sillier. I do think it's sillier. It's very silly.
It's very silly. In the May six, eighteen fifty five
edition of Bell's Life in Sydney and Sporting Reviewer, the
(02:34):
following headline ran Panic caused by the appearance of the
Devil in Devonshire sounds very frightening, and indeed, on February
eightifty five, and theoretically for a day or two after,
depending on which account you're looking at, a very curious
(02:55):
thing happened in Devon, which is a coastal county in
the southwest of England, had an unusually cold winter for England,
and there had been nothing above freezing temperature since January.
The rivers were totally frozen over, and there were snowfall
after snowfall with no thought in between. The rivers themselves
were so solidly iced over that a feast had been
(03:17):
held on one of them. I mean, it's not uncommon
for places with really cold rivers to have events on
frozen lakes, but rivers are a little dicier, so it
had been particularly cold the night the mystery started. It
had snowed really heavily and then warmed up to a
point that there had been some rain, and then the
temperature dropped steeply once again, and all of that precipitation
(03:40):
froze over, and the people of Devon discovered in the
morning that unaccountable hoof prints were everywhere everywhere. We're gonna
get into that. Uh something it seemed had been tramping
all around the area, even in the most peculiar of places.
And not long after the event, and well before the
Sydney paper ran its sensational headline, the following letter appeared
(04:04):
in an English paper describing the event. This is a
very long letter, so Tracy and I will alternate reading
paragraphs of it. Okay, I'm excited that I get to
read this part because it begins to the editor of
the Exeter and Plymouth the Gazette, Sir. Thursday night, the
eighth of February was marked by a heavy fall of snow,
(04:26):
followed by rain and boisterous wind from the east, and
in the morning frost. The return of daylight revealed the
ramblings of some most busy and mysterious animal endowed with
the power of ubiquity, as its footprints were to be
seen in all kinds of unaccountable places, on the tops
of houses, narrow walls and gardens, and courtyards enclosed by
(04:50):
high walls and palings, as well as in the open fields.
The creature seems to have frolic about through Exmouth, little Um, Limpstone,
would Bury Topsham, star Cross, Tamouth, etcetera, etcetera. The letter
goes on, there is hardly a garden in Limbstone where
his footprints are not observable, and in this parish he
(05:13):
appears to have gambled with inexpressible activity. Its track appears
more like that of a biped than a quadruped, and
the steps are generally eight inches in advance of each other,
though in some cases twelve or fourteen, and are alternate
like the steps of a man, and would be included
between two parallel lines six inches apart. The letter goes on,
(05:34):
the impression of the foot closely resembles that of a
donkey's shoe, and measures from an inch and a half
to in some cases two inches and a half across here,
and they're appearing as if the foot was cleft, but
in the in the generality of its steps, the impression
of the shoe was continuous and perfect. In the center
(05:56):
of the snow remains entire merely showing the outer dust
of the foot, which therefore must have been convex. The
creature seems to have advanced to the doors of several houses,
and then to have rechased its steps, but no one
is able to discern the starting or resting point of
this mysterious visitor. Everyone is wondering, but no one is
(06:17):
able to explain the mystery. The poor are full of superstition,
and consider it little short of a visit from Old
Satan or some of his imps. And the letter actually
goes on for some time after this uh and it
describes in particular a recent sermon that was given in
Limbstone by a Reverend musk Grave, in which the minister
spoke at length about Satan as a tempter who wish
(06:39):
nothing more than to take men from a virtuous path.
But he did not think that this was what was
going on in their their town. Reverend musk Grave, apparently,
based on this sermon, believed, according to the letter writer,
that the hoofprints were actually those of a very busy kangaroo,
which hilarious kangaroos don't have. Who's just want to say that,
(07:05):
I mean, yeah, and we're gonna revisit this kangaroo thing
in a little bit as well, along with another of
other animals who don't have hooves or wear shoes. The
writer measured horse prints that were left the same night
and notes that they did not match these mystery prints. Additionally,
he mentions that a kangaroo's foot has claws of an
(07:27):
uneven length, so really, how could the print looks so
like that of a donkey? He or she? Because we
don't know who wrote the letter, then wonders if the
prince couldn't have been the result of a cat. Wherein
the back and front footsteps over left? Uh? The letter
writer wrote, quote, I think it very likely that the
(07:47):
combined impression of a hind and four foot in the
thawing snow may have produced the mystery And this letter
to the editor concludes there and is then signed yours
obediently sectator. So accounts of this events are a little sparse,
(08:07):
but as a few contemporary descriptions were pieced together, it
started to appear that these hoof marks had been recorded
along a stretch of dozens and dozens of miles. The
prints were reported in depths ranging from one and a
half to four inches, and is mentioned in the letter above.
They defied logic in their placement and a lot of
(08:28):
cases not only did they wander vast different distances with
no apparent return trip, but they also appeared on rooftops,
and they dropped off and resumed on either side of
obstacles that seemed impossible for immortal being to just get over.
One account even indicated that whatever it was had passed
through a haystack. And in addition to these prints in Devon,
(08:52):
which seemed to indicate that the mystery creature had made
its way to almost every house that had encountered, these
steps went right up to doors and sometimes all of
the doors in an area. Uh there were a smaller
number of these prints reported in Dorset to the East
as well. All in all, thirty different locations reported visitation
from whatever it was making these tracks over the course
(09:15):
of a couple of nights. One of the oddest aspects
of this whole mystery was the uniformity of the prints.
They looked as though they had been left by a
biped and for the most part, each print was in
line with the next and single file rather than side
by side. Some but not all, of the prints looked
cloven as described by the Spectator and the letter, and
(09:37):
the steps, even the longest stride that was reported really
appeared to have been quite short. Yeah, and you'll note
in that Spectator letter h the writer suggests that they
are side by side like a humans walking would be,
with about six inches apart. But most of the accounts
actually have them in a straight line, not as though
someone or something we're taking alternate steps. One calculation actually
(10:01):
determined that all, if all of these hoof prints were
the work of one creature for it to have traveled
as far as it was reported and used the stride
distance the prints indicated, but to have happened, you know,
on a given night or over the course of a
couple of nights, it would have had to have made
six steps per second. So you may be thinking, what
were these tracks going Somewhere? We will talk about that
(10:24):
after we pause for a word from one of our sponsors.
So it wasn't long after that first point of discovery.
On the morning after the night of February eight that
the locals decided to do exactly what most people would do,
I probably would do it. They tried to follow the
tracks to find their source. Uh. Presumably these particular people
(10:48):
did not think that they were going to find the
actual devil at the end of the line. Either that
or they were just very brave souls. Some of the
people who followed the prince did arm themselves so that
they were ready for it to pretend actually be the
devil or something else dangerous. A group of men from
Dollish followed the tracks for about five miles and they
turned up nothing. And a pair of people and Cliff St.
(11:11):
George followed a set of markings as well, and their
effort turned up more than the Dollars group. They found
four pieces of feces, each slightly larger than a grape
and sort of whiteish in color. Tracings made by people
in various locations, and then compared later on showed that
the prints were very much the same regardless of where
they were made. But unfortunately, no one tracked any of
(11:34):
the print trails far enough to see if they all
linked up somewhere. And we'll actually um come back to
this in just a moment so the vicar of the
parish and Cliff St George, Reverend HT Ellacombe, collected assorted
letters and tracings of Hoof marks, and he actually kept
all of that in the parish records for literally years
(11:55):
and years and years. They went mostly unnoticed until about
two and then they were published in the Report and
Transactions of the Devonshire Association that year after the local
historian got a folklore is interested in them, so they
got talked about again, but they had just been sitting
there since the mid eighteen hundreds. The reverend also compiled
accounts from his parishioners as well as his own observations,
(12:18):
and also sent a sample of this Whitish execrament to
naturalist Richard Owen, the scholar who had become famous for
his work in anatomy and paleontology, and was superintendent of
the British Museum's National Natural History Department starting in eighteen
fifty six, which was the year after the mysterious Hoof
prints had appeared. He never got back to him, no,
(12:41):
but he does weigh in on the subject later on.
One of the accounts that Ellacombe had collected indicated that
at least one set of prints was obviously isolated and
not connected to any others, and this was a series
of tracks in the middle of a field. Uh So
this suggests that it could not have been a single
entity that caused this. And additionally, there were fairly organic
(13:04):
variations in sizes of prints that were found in different locations,
so it makes it really unlikely that just one animal
or even human hoaxers provide the explanation. To further complicate
the whole mystery from modern salutes or theorists, forty years
after the fact, some of the people who had been
in Devon at the time of the odd footprints recalled
(13:26):
that icy February, but their recollections get a lot more varied.
Some of this is surely because of how much time
had passed and the legend sort of degrading their actual
memories that were being recounted. Yeah, we've talked about on
the show so many times that one eyewitness accounts are
not reliable anyway, and as time goes on they get
less and less and less reliable. And in this case,
(13:49):
the legend had grown completely up around this incident, so
undoubtedly their recollections were colored by things they had repeated
or heard or discussed along the way, and so this
has built up a series of eyewitness accounts that are
flatly wrong and have completely muddied the waters as to
what exactly happened. For example, several of the count the
(14:09):
accounts relayed decades later, kind of upp to the spooky
factor of the prints, including details such as all the
prints being in oddly straight lines, which they absolutely were
not so in the face of such an odd mystery,
naturally all kinds of theories have come up, and we
are going to walk through a few of the most common.
(14:29):
So this is where it gets really fun to me,
because it's absurd. There's a lot of crazy animal theories.
River otters have been offered up as the culprits, and
otters certainly could have passed through some of the narrow
openings that the perpetrator of the so called Devil's footprints
allegedly traversed. That was one of the things that people
found so odd that it would go through like a
hole in a hedge. River otters would likely have been
(14:53):
desperate for food in the icy winter, and these tracks
were all close to rivers or smaller streams, but the
sheer number of prints and the ones that are way
up in high places make this a very unlikely solution. Uh.
One thing we should point out is that like, yes,
many of these animals have feet that are not hoofs,
(15:13):
but there's always this this thing that comes up in
these discussions of animals that are not hoofed of like, well,
but if they put their feet together in a certain way,
and because there was a little bit of a rainfall
and then a refreeze, they may have frozen in a
more uniform shape than they actually made. But really, river
rotters very unlike like I get, I live in a
(15:35):
place where there's lots of snow, and it's definitely true
that when an animal tracks through somewhere and then there's
a freeze, at a thought, a bunch of changes in
the weather, like the shape of those tracks does not
hold up. But having a bunch of otters, or even
one very industrious otter who's entire track all over everywhere
(15:57):
uniformly suddenly became a horshoe shape like stretch right, Well,
my thing too is like how odd would it have
been like an army of any one of these animals
just ran through Devon one night and then never again
another theory. Naturalist Richard Owen, the one who never answered
(16:19):
the reverend in his inquiry, put forth an idea that
the prince worthy work of badgers. This theory wasn't developed
so much with the Prince themselves in mind. It was
more of a Knockham's razor situation. Badgers are the only
animal that would have been near enough, nocturnal and known
to travel long distances in search of food and cold temperatures.
(16:41):
Of course, leaving out the prints as part of the
set of requirements opened this theory up to naysayers, and
rightly so. Badgers have a really wide, staggered tread that
would have resulted in parallel tracks, uh which most of
these were not, and badgers are certainly not known for
being able to hop on two roofs or over walls.
(17:03):
Also in the same category, rodents, A lot of rice
mice and rats are known to hop with their feet
together in a way that does kind of resemble the
hoof marks. But the volume of prince and the idea
that this huge number of rodents had all been hopping
about lots of long distance makes that fall apart pretty quickly.
(17:24):
If it had been rodent tracks, one would think that
anyone ever nearby had seemed to something similar before. Yeah,
rodents are common. So we get back to my favorite,
which is the kangaroo theory, which was one of the
most popular at the time. So Reverend GM Musgrave, who
(17:46):
we referenced earlier, actually wrote to the Illustrated London News
to counter the account of a person who had signed
their letter as South Devon. We'll talk about that more
in a bit uh and asserted the data that was
lied by South Devon's letter, who claimed to be a
tracker and have some ideas about this, was inaccurate. Musgrave
was the reverend referenced in the Spectator letter who told
(18:09):
his congregation that he believed an escaped kangaroo was to blame.
Musgrave himself did not actually believe this theory, but he
was really concerned that the idea of the double loose
in their area was far more damaging to his congregation
than letting them believe that a kangaroo was on the loose.
There were two kangaroos and a nearby private zoo, but
(18:31):
neither of them is known to have escaped. There were
similar theories about an escaped monkey or a wolf, and
missing monkey has never appeared in the records, and wolves
have been extinct in England since the fourteenth century. I
also sort of think with this whole kangaroo situation. This
isn't an acronym, but this is like a bugs bunny
level of kangaroo behavior. It really is. Uh. The prince
(18:57):
certainly looked like those of a donkey, which was another theory,
And it turns out that donkeys do often plant their
feet in a single line behind one another, so that
gives that some credence, and for a moment, the idea
that the prince were left by a donkey seems perfectly
reasonable exampt for those pesky roof tracks and instances where
(19:19):
the tracks stopped and started on either side of an obstacle.
I am very on board with the idea that they
were flying donkeys. So these are not the only absurd ideas.
And we are going to talk about some more, including
a lengthy discussion about birds after we first take a
quick sponsor break. So still unraveling this mystery of the
(19:44):
devon footprints or hoofprints. While agile cats certainly could have
gotten up to roof level, the theory that it was
cats has the obvious flaw of the hoof prints, and
as you may recall, that writer of the first letter
we mentioned suggested that if a cat's back paw landed
in the same spot as the front pot, it could
maybe make the right print. That this seems really far fetched,
(20:05):
as all of the cats involved would have had to
make that perfect print every single time, all over the place. Yeah,
I have cats. It goes back to all the other
theories about non hooved animals that may have done it,
like the idea that that that many prints over miles
and miles and miles of tracks would have uniformly made
(20:26):
that shape. If it's so far fetched, Yeah, I mean
we've both had cats. I still have a lot of cats.
They they sometimes fall down just while they're walking. I
can't imagine they would they would get that level of
precision every single time, especially on ice. Yeah. Uh. Birds
(20:46):
have become one of the most popular explanations for the
devil's footprints, and this theory was already popular back in
eighteen fifty five. Birds could alight at random intervals, They
could easily leave prints on top of buildings or other
high places. They could hop over fences easily, but of
course they don't have hooves, although now I want to
(21:07):
make a bird drawing that has a hoof, and it
would be funny to counter the bird flock idea. There
are the writings in the Illustrated London News by the
signer that we referenced earlier named South Devon, and he
starts birds could not have left these marks, as no
bird's foot leaves the impression of a hoof, or even
were there a bird capable of doing so, could it
(21:30):
proceed in the direct manner above stated? Nor would birds,
even if they had donkey's feet, confine themselves to one
direct line but hop here and there. But the nature
of the mark at once sets aside it's being the
track of a bird. The effect of the atmosphere upon
these marks is given by many as a solution. But
how could it be possible for the atmosphere to affect
(21:52):
one impression and not affect another. On the morning that
the above was observed, the snow bore the fresh marks
of cats, dog, rabbits, birds and men clearly defined. Why then,
should a continuous track far more clearly defined, so clearly
even that the raising in the center of the frog
of the foot could be plainly seen. Why then should
(22:14):
this particular mark be the only one which was affected
by the atmosphere and all the others left as they were. Besides,
the most singular circumstance connected with it was that this
particular mark removed the snow wherever it appeared, clear as
if cut with a diamond or branded with a hot iron.
In one instance, this track entered a covered shed and
(22:34):
passed through it out of a broken part of the
wall at the other end, where the atmosphere could not
affect it. The letter continues, the writer of the above
has passed a five months of winter in the backwoods
of Canada and has had much experience in tracking wild
animals and birds upon the snow, and can safely say
he has never seen him were clearly defined track, or
(22:54):
one that appeared to be less altered by the atmosphere
than the one in question. Marks left upon thin snow,
especially may after a time blur a little, but never
lose their distinctive character. As everyone will know who has
been accustomed to follow the track of the American partridge,
and it was later discovered through the Reverend Ellacomb's record,
so that the person that had signed the name South
(23:16):
Devon was actually a young man named Durban who was
nineteen at the time that all this happened. So in
a paper about the so called Devil's footprints, Mike Dash
asserts that it is certainly worth considering that Durban's youth
may have colored his dismissal of a relatively mundane source
for the Prince. And now we get to the thing
that I might have thought of first, the possibility of
(23:38):
human hoaxers, and so naturally that has come up over time.
It's entirely conceivable that somebody wanted to make a bunch
of their fellow neighbors think the devil was larking about
right outside their homes just for a laugh. We have,
of course seen this be the case in other houses
throughout history, not specifically with devils outside the door, but
other weird, unexplained stuff. Working against this theory is the
(24:02):
sheer number of prints and the variation in the prince
that the thought and the refreeze could be but likely
isn't an explanation there, Yeah, And it would have just
had to have been a massive number of people involved. Um,
there is a secondary people theory that we'll talk about
here in just a moment. Uh. There have been some
(24:23):
modern theories about the tracks that were not part of
the contemporary theory set. Like at the time this was
going on, pretty much all of the theories we've just
talked about, we're all being discussed and analyzed. But in
the modern era many new ideas have come up, including UFOs,
which we aren't really going to get into, but basically
some people think UFOs. One less sensational theory suggests that
(24:44):
a balloon with a dangling rope that was maybe kind
of uh hopping along the ground may have made the marks,
but the consistent shape of the tracks kind of shoots
that one down pretty quickly. Another fairly recent theory is
that a group of Romani tribes put on animal like
stilts to make the tracks and to try to scare
away superstitious arrivals. Sort of how I was imagining that
(25:07):
these tracks might have been made in the first place,
But backing up the serious kind of a stretch, it
seems kind of unlikely when you consider that hundreds of
people would have needed to be involved, and yet nobody
was witnessed doing it like it it does. It does
seem like there's a huge crowd of people on hoof stilts,
someone probably would have noticed. But I love the idea
(25:29):
of a huge crowd of people trumping through the snow
on hoof stilts. That's a beautiful image. There's also a
whole thing that's been cooked up about why this wouldn't work,
involving how like they would have had to have used
ladders to get on some of the places that they were,
and whether or not they were doing that but still
trying to get the same impression if they were using
some sort of hand stamp versus their feet, or if
(25:50):
they were trying to get on ladders on these stilts. Basically,
it's it's a popular theory in recent times, but it's
also very tricky to kind of back up. Uh. One
of the more plausible, though it's still pretty weird, twentieth
century theories, has to do with a weather event creating
the tracks. According to a Scotland native named j Ellen Renny,
(26:11):
warm air coming into contact with extremely cold temperatures could
create condensation in such a way that it fell as
large blobs rather than drops the way the rain is
normally seen. And Rennie claimed to have seen this phenomenon
several times in his life, and this would certainly account
for the vast assortment of odd places that the Prince
(26:32):
or rain blob marks were found. So this explanation seems
pretty sensible. But by Rennie's own account, the instances where
he encountered it happening resulted in much larger marks that
were spaced much farther apart. They tended to fall in
a long line, not in the meandering patterns that were
(26:52):
seen in Devon in eighteen fifty five. Additionally, meteorologists have
dismissed this phenomenon, which only Renny claimed that he has seen. Yeah,
no one else has ever claimed to see anything like it. Uh.
In any case, part of what makes the Devin footprints
so unusual, aside from their characteristics that we've already discussed,
is the fact that this was a one time event,
(27:14):
at least it probably was. Allegedly a woman in Devon
had a similar phenomenon happened in her garden in two
thousand nine, but the primary source on that is the
Daily Mail, which is a tabloid, so that is not
really a serious claim. I kind of here's what I
think happened. Yes, I think we have a small number
(27:36):
of people on hoof stilts, also carrying hoof pokers, and
so they are both walking and poking the ground, and
then it's a giant made made hoax combining pokers and stilts.
But that's the That's one of the contradictions of the
Romani theory is that they were making the exact same
(27:56):
kind of imprints if they had hand stamps that they
made with their foot and that's almost impossible to do,
So that was the that was the why maybe not
on that one, but then how did they pass through
tiny holes? That's a fine One of the things that's
a wonderful sort of exhilarating and frustrating thing about this
is that no one theory can really cover all the bases.
(28:19):
But I like the hoax theory myself as well. Regardless,
for now and probably forever, we don't really know what
causes odd spade of footprints. In one instance in Devon
in eight, it is pretty fun to speculate odds are
regardless of what the real answer is probably pretty benign, really,
(28:41):
not the devil walking along the English coast. The kangaroo
sounds fun, I really think though, if a kangaroo jumped
up on your roof, you'd hear it and maybe see it.
When it came through your roof into your kitchen and
I'd be like, Hi, kangaroo, please don't kick me to
my death. Would you like a snack? I mean, you know,
(29:03):
kangaroos are good stuff. Um, do you have listener mail
for us? I do. This listener mail is a little
gift parcel from our listener, Angie. She writes, Hello, Tracy
and Holly. First off, I wanted to tell you guys
that I love listening to your podcast. I am a
grower at a greenhouse of flowers and veggies, and some
of my daily tasks can get a little boring, so
(29:25):
your podcast keeps me entertained in thinking. I've been making
my way through the archives and I came across the Pluto,
the demoted dwarf planet from and I got super excited
because my hometown is street Or, Illinois, home of Clyde Tombaugh,
the man credited for discovering Pluto. It was so cool
to hear my hometown mentioned in one of my favorite podcasts.
I just had to write and tell you guys about
(29:46):
my hometown, Proud Pluto Town. Recently, Streeter has established Pluto Fest. Basically,
it's like a little festival with live music and vendors
and food trucks to celebrate Pluto. The City Park has
a Pluto statue and there is a mural on Main
Street of Clyde and his telescope. I've included a couple
of couzies and some collectible stamps from Pluto Fest with
(30:06):
the pictures of Clyde and Pluto. Keep up the great
podcast and enjoy the coozies. Thank you so much. This
is so cute and it's really cool to have a
like a little cooler beverage cooler with Clyde Tamba on it. Uh.
And the stamps are lovely, so I will make sure
that Tracy gets hers. And I just love them and
I love anytime we talked about space specifically, and Clyde
(30:28):
Tombos seemed to have been such a delightful man that
it's great to have him celebrated. UH. If you would
like to write to us, you can do so at
History Podcast at how Stuff works dot com. You can
also find us across the spectrum of social media as
Missed in History That includes Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest.
You can just find us everywhere. UH. You can also
(30:49):
come and visit our website which is Missed in History
dot com, and there you will find every episode that's
ever existed of the show ever, going all the way
back to the original host which were long before our
time time. If you were looking at episodes that Tracy
and I have worked on, there are also show notes
for you to peruse, so we encourage you come and
visit us at missed in History dot com and you
(31:09):
can check out all that we have to offer. For
more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how
staff works dot com
Hey, listeners, we are soon to be appearing at New
York Comic Con as part of New York Comic Con
presents their evening programming. We are going to do an
episode about the creation of what is usually credited as
the first comic book, and we'll be talking about the
man who did it and how that came to be
and if you want to get in on that, we
would love to see you for our live show. It
is taking place on October six, from nine thirty to
(00:22):
eleven at the Hudson Mercantile. Again that runs during New
York Comic Con, and for more information on it, you
can visit our website Missed in History dot com. You
will click on the link this is live shows and
you can get all the info and a link to
order your tickets. We hope to see you there. Welcome
to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how Stuff
(00:43):
Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Holly Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. Tracy, we are
officially into my favorite time of year. I know you're
so excited. It's spooky episodes sees uh And as regular
(01:04):
listeners know, this is a time when we explore some
of the weirder bits of history, we get a little looser.
Some of our research comes from kind of crazier sources. Um.
And this episode may sound spooky based on the title,
and it is a history mystery, but the reality is
definitely more of a fun and pretty silly mystery than
anything that's scary. So if you are one of those
(01:26):
people I know we sometimes have listeners right in and
say they are a little too afraid sometimes or spooked
by our October episodes, uh, this one is not going
to get too frightening. You don't have to worry about
it at all on this one. Uh And I will
say this too. The term the devil's footprints gets applied
to a lot of different things, but this to me
(01:47):
seems like the most common one, which is an incident
that happened in England in eighteen ft five. So if
you are thinking it is another one, it is not. Yeah.
They're also like a lot of local ghost stories that
have of some combination of devilish figure and walking around
like places where plants don't grow, like the Devil's tramping
(02:10):
Ground is one I recall from my childhood. Uh And
and that is actually what I thought this was going
to be about before I started reading your outline, and
then that is not what it's about. It is about
something sillier. I do think it's sillier. It's very silly.
It's very silly. In the May six, eighteen fifty five
edition of Bell's Life in Sydney and Sporting Reviewer, the
(02:34):
following headline ran Panic caused by the appearance of the
Devil in Devonshire sounds very frightening, and indeed, on February
eightifty five, and theoretically for a day or two after,
depending on which account you're looking at, a very curious
(02:55):
thing happened in Devon, which is a coastal county in
the southwest of England, had an unusually cold winter for England,
and there had been nothing above freezing temperature since January.
The rivers were totally frozen over, and there were snowfall
after snowfall with no thought in between. The rivers themselves
were so solidly iced over that a feast had been
(03:17):
held on one of them. I mean, it's not uncommon
for places with really cold rivers to have events on
frozen lakes, but rivers are a little dicier, so it
had been particularly cold the night the mystery started. It
had snowed really heavily and then warmed up to a
point that there had been some rain, and then the
temperature dropped steeply once again, and all of that precipitation
(03:40):
froze over, and the people of Devon discovered in the
morning that unaccountable hoof prints were everywhere everywhere. We're gonna
get into that. Uh something it seemed had been tramping
all around the area, even in the most peculiar of places.
And not long after the event, and well before the
Sydney paper ran its sensational headline, the following letter appeared
(04:04):
in an English paper describing the event. This is a
very long letter, so Tracy and I will alternate reading
paragraphs of it. Okay, I'm excited that I get to
read this part because it begins to the editor of
the Exeter and Plymouth the Gazette, Sir. Thursday night, the
eighth of February was marked by a heavy fall of snow,
(04:26):
followed by rain and boisterous wind from the east, and
in the morning frost. The return of daylight revealed the
ramblings of some most busy and mysterious animal endowed with
the power of ubiquity, as its footprints were to be
seen in all kinds of unaccountable places, on the tops
of houses, narrow walls and gardens, and courtyards enclosed by
(04:50):
high walls and palings, as well as in the open fields.
The creature seems to have frolic about through Exmouth, little Um, Limpstone,
would Bury Topsham, star Cross, Tamouth, etcetera, etcetera. The letter
goes on, there is hardly a garden in Limbstone where
his footprints are not observable, and in this parish he
(05:13):
appears to have gambled with inexpressible activity. Its track appears
more like that of a biped than a quadruped, and
the steps are generally eight inches in advance of each other,
though in some cases twelve or fourteen, and are alternate
like the steps of a man, and would be included
between two parallel lines six inches apart. The letter goes on,
(05:34):
the impression of the foot closely resembles that of a
donkey's shoe, and measures from an inch and a half
to in some cases two inches and a half across here,
and they're appearing as if the foot was cleft, but
in the in the generality of its steps, the impression
of the shoe was continuous and perfect. In the center
(05:56):
of the snow remains entire merely showing the outer dust
of the foot, which therefore must have been convex. The
creature seems to have advanced to the doors of several houses,
and then to have rechased its steps, but no one
is able to discern the starting or resting point of
this mysterious visitor. Everyone is wondering, but no one is
(06:17):
able to explain the mystery. The poor are full of superstition,
and consider it little short of a visit from Old
Satan or some of his imps. And the letter actually
goes on for some time after this uh and it
describes in particular a recent sermon that was given in
Limbstone by a Reverend musk Grave, in which the minister
spoke at length about Satan as a tempter who wish
(06:39):
nothing more than to take men from a virtuous path.
But he did not think that this was what was
going on in their their town. Reverend musk Grave, apparently,
based on this sermon, believed, according to the letter writer,
that the hoofprints were actually those of a very busy kangaroo,
which hilarious kangaroos don't have. Who's just want to say that,
(07:05):
I mean, yeah, and we're gonna revisit this kangaroo thing
in a little bit as well, along with another of
other animals who don't have hooves or wear shoes. The
writer measured horse prints that were left the same night
and notes that they did not match these mystery prints. Additionally,
he mentions that a kangaroo's foot has claws of an
(07:27):
uneven length, so really, how could the print looks so
like that of a donkey? He or she? Because we
don't know who wrote the letter, then wonders if the
prince couldn't have been the result of a cat. Wherein
the back and front footsteps over left? Uh? The letter
writer wrote, quote, I think it very likely that the
(07:47):
combined impression of a hind and four foot in the
thawing snow may have produced the mystery And this letter
to the editor concludes there and is then signed yours
obediently sectator. So accounts of this events are a little sparse,
(08:07):
but as a few contemporary descriptions were pieced together, it
started to appear that these hoof marks had been recorded
along a stretch of dozens and dozens of miles. The
prints were reported in depths ranging from one and a
half to four inches, and is mentioned in the letter above.
They defied logic in their placement and a lot of
(08:28):
cases not only did they wander vast different distances with
no apparent return trip, but they also appeared on rooftops,
and they dropped off and resumed on either side of
obstacles that seemed impossible for immortal being to just get over.
One account even indicated that whatever it was had passed
through a haystack. And in addition to these prints in Devon,
(08:52):
which seemed to indicate that the mystery creature had made
its way to almost every house that had encountered, these
steps went right up to doors and sometimes all of
the doors in an area. Uh there were a smaller
number of these prints reported in Dorset to the East
as well. All in all, thirty different locations reported visitation
from whatever it was making these tracks over the course
(09:15):
of a couple of nights. One of the oddest aspects
of this whole mystery was the uniformity of the prints.
They looked as though they had been left by a
biped and for the most part, each print was in
line with the next and single file rather than side
by side. Some but not all, of the prints looked
cloven as described by the Spectator and the letter, and
(09:37):
the steps, even the longest stride that was reported really
appeared to have been quite short. Yeah, and you'll note
in that Spectator letter h the writer suggests that they
are side by side like a humans walking would be,
with about six inches apart. But most of the accounts
actually have them in a straight line, not as though
someone or something we're taking alternate steps. One calculation actually
(10:01):
determined that all, if all of these hoof prints were
the work of one creature for it to have traveled
as far as it was reported and used the stride
distance the prints indicated, but to have happened, you know,
on a given night or over the course of a
couple of nights, it would have had to have made
six steps per second. So you may be thinking, what
were these tracks going Somewhere? We will talk about that
(10:24):
after we pause for a word from one of our sponsors.
So it wasn't long after that first point of discovery.
On the morning after the night of February eight that
the locals decided to do exactly what most people would do,
I probably would do it. They tried to follow the
tracks to find their source. Uh. Presumably these particular people
(10:48):
did not think that they were going to find the
actual devil at the end of the line. Either that
or they were just very brave souls. Some of the
people who followed the prince did arm themselves so that
they were ready for it to pretend actually be the
devil or something else dangerous. A group of men from
Dollish followed the tracks for about five miles and they
turned up nothing. And a pair of people and Cliff St.
(11:11):
George followed a set of markings as well, and their
effort turned up more than the Dollars group. They found
four pieces of feces, each slightly larger than a grape
and sort of whiteish in color. Tracings made by people
in various locations, and then compared later on showed that
the prints were very much the same regardless of where
they were made. But unfortunately, no one tracked any of
(11:34):
the print trails far enough to see if they all
linked up somewhere. And we'll actually um come back to
this in just a moment so the vicar of the
parish and Cliff St George, Reverend HT Ellacombe, collected assorted
letters and tracings of Hoof marks, and he actually kept
all of that in the parish records for literally years
(11:55):
and years and years. They went mostly unnoticed until about
two and then they were published in the Report and
Transactions of the Devonshire Association that year after the local
historian got a folklore is interested in them, so they
got talked about again, but they had just been sitting
there since the mid eighteen hundreds. The reverend also compiled
accounts from his parishioners as well as his own observations,
(12:18):
and also sent a sample of this Whitish execrament to
naturalist Richard Owen, the scholar who had become famous for
his work in anatomy and paleontology, and was superintendent of
the British Museum's National Natural History Department starting in eighteen
fifty six, which was the year after the mysterious Hoof
prints had appeared. He never got back to him, no,
(12:41):
but he does weigh in on the subject later on.
One of the accounts that Ellacombe had collected indicated that
at least one set of prints was obviously isolated and
not connected to any others, and this was a series
of tracks in the middle of a field. Uh So
this suggests that it could not have been a single
entity that caused this. And additionally, there were fairly organic
(13:04):
variations in sizes of prints that were found in different locations,
so it makes it really unlikely that just one animal
or even human hoaxers provide the explanation. To further complicate
the whole mystery from modern salutes or theorists, forty years
after the fact, some of the people who had been
in Devon at the time of the odd footprints recalled
(13:26):
that icy February, but their recollections get a lot more varied.
Some of this is surely because of how much time
had passed and the legend sort of degrading their actual
memories that were being recounted. Yeah, we've talked about on
the show so many times that one eyewitness accounts are
not reliable anyway, and as time goes on they get
less and less and less reliable. And in this case,
(13:49):
the legend had grown completely up around this incident, so
undoubtedly their recollections were colored by things they had repeated
or heard or discussed along the way, and so this
has built up a series of eyewitness accounts that are
flatly wrong and have completely muddied the waters as to
what exactly happened. For example, several of the count the
(14:09):
accounts relayed decades later, kind of upp to the spooky
factor of the prints, including details such as all the
prints being in oddly straight lines, which they absolutely were
not so in the face of such an odd mystery,
naturally all kinds of theories have come up, and we
are going to walk through a few of the most common.
(14:29):
So this is where it gets really fun to me,
because it's absurd. There's a lot of crazy animal theories.
River otters have been offered up as the culprits, and
otters certainly could have passed through some of the narrow
openings that the perpetrator of the so called Devil's footprints
allegedly traversed. That was one of the things that people
found so odd that it would go through like a
hole in a hedge. River otters would likely have been
(14:53):
desperate for food in the icy winter, and these tracks
were all close to rivers or smaller streams, but the
sheer number of prints and the ones that are way
up in high places make this a very unlikely solution. Uh.
One thing we should point out is that like, yes,
many of these animals have feet that are not hoofs,
(15:13):
but there's always this this thing that comes up in
these discussions of animals that are not hoofed of like, well,
but if they put their feet together in a certain way,
and because there was a little bit of a rainfall
and then a refreeze, they may have frozen in a
more uniform shape than they actually made. But really, river
rotters very unlike like I get, I live in a
(15:35):
place where there's lots of snow, and it's definitely true
that when an animal tracks through somewhere and then there's
a freeze, at a thought, a bunch of changes in
the weather, like the shape of those tracks does not
hold up. But having a bunch of otters, or even
one very industrious otter who's entire track all over everywhere
(15:57):
uniformly suddenly became a horshoe shape like stretch right, Well,
my thing too is like how odd would it have
been like an army of any one of these animals
just ran through Devon one night and then never again
another theory. Naturalist Richard Owen, the one who never answered
(16:19):
the reverend in his inquiry, put forth an idea that
the prince worthy work of badgers. This theory wasn't developed
so much with the Prince themselves in mind. It was
more of a Knockham's razor situation. Badgers are the only
animal that would have been near enough, nocturnal and known
to travel long distances in search of food and cold temperatures.
(16:41):
Of course, leaving out the prints as part of the
set of requirements opened this theory up to naysayers, and
rightly so. Badgers have a really wide, staggered tread that
would have resulted in parallel tracks, uh which most of
these were not, and badgers are certainly not known for
being able to hop on two roofs or over walls.
(17:03):
Also in the same category, rodents, A lot of rice
mice and rats are known to hop with their feet
together in a way that does kind of resemble the
hoof marks. But the volume of prince and the idea
that this huge number of rodents had all been hopping
about lots of long distance makes that fall apart pretty quickly.
(17:24):
If it had been rodent tracks, one would think that
anyone ever nearby had seemed to something similar before. Yeah,
rodents are common. So we get back to my favorite,
which is the kangaroo theory, which was one of the
most popular at the time. So Reverend GM Musgrave, who
(17:46):
we referenced earlier, actually wrote to the Illustrated London News
to counter the account of a person who had signed
their letter as South Devon. We'll talk about that more
in a bit uh and asserted the data that was
lied by South Devon's letter, who claimed to be a
tracker and have some ideas about this, was inaccurate. Musgrave
was the reverend referenced in the Spectator letter who told
(18:09):
his congregation that he believed an escaped kangaroo was to blame.
Musgrave himself did not actually believe this theory, but he
was really concerned that the idea of the double loose
in their area was far more damaging to his congregation
than letting them believe that a kangaroo was on the loose.
There were two kangaroos and a nearby private zoo, but
(18:31):
neither of them is known to have escaped. There were
similar theories about an escaped monkey or a wolf, and
missing monkey has never appeared in the records, and wolves
have been extinct in England since the fourteenth century. I
also sort of think with this whole kangaroo situation. This
isn't an acronym, but this is like a bugs bunny
level of kangaroo behavior. It really is. Uh. The prince
(18:57):
certainly looked like those of a donkey, which was another theory,
And it turns out that donkeys do often plant their
feet in a single line behind one another, so that
gives that some credence, and for a moment, the idea
that the prince were left by a donkey seems perfectly
reasonable exampt for those pesky roof tracks and instances where
(19:19):
the tracks stopped and started on either side of an obstacle.
I am very on board with the idea that they
were flying donkeys. So these are not the only absurd ideas.
And we are going to talk about some more, including
a lengthy discussion about birds after we first take a
quick sponsor break. So still unraveling this mystery of the
(19:44):
devon footprints or hoofprints. While agile cats certainly could have
gotten up to roof level, the theory that it was
cats has the obvious flaw of the hoof prints, and
as you may recall, that writer of the first letter
we mentioned suggested that if a cat's back paw landed
in the same spot as the front pot, it could
maybe make the right print. That this seems really far fetched,
(20:05):
as all of the cats involved would have had to
make that perfect print every single time, all over the place. Yeah,
I have cats. It goes back to all the other
theories about non hooved animals that may have done it,
like the idea that that that many prints over miles
and miles and miles of tracks would have uniformly made
(20:26):
that shape. If it's so far fetched, Yeah, I mean
we've both had cats. I still have a lot of cats.
They they sometimes fall down just while they're walking. I
can't imagine they would they would get that level of
precision every single time, especially on ice. Yeah. Uh. Birds
(20:46):
have become one of the most popular explanations for the
devil's footprints, and this theory was already popular back in
eighteen fifty five. Birds could alight at random intervals, They
could easily leave prints on top of buildings or other
high places. They could hop over fences easily, but of
course they don't have hooves, although now I want to
(21:07):
make a bird drawing that has a hoof, and it
would be funny to counter the bird flock idea. There
are the writings in the Illustrated London News by the
signer that we referenced earlier named South Devon, and he
starts birds could not have left these marks, as no
bird's foot leaves the impression of a hoof, or even
were there a bird capable of doing so, could it
(21:30):
proceed in the direct manner above stated? Nor would birds,
even if they had donkey's feet, confine themselves to one
direct line but hop here and there. But the nature
of the mark at once sets aside it's being the
track of a bird. The effect of the atmosphere upon
these marks is given by many as a solution. But
how could it be possible for the atmosphere to affect
(21:52):
one impression and not affect another. On the morning that
the above was observed, the snow bore the fresh marks
of cats, dog, rabbits, birds and men clearly defined. Why then,
should a continuous track far more clearly defined, so clearly
even that the raising in the center of the frog
of the foot could be plainly seen. Why then should
(22:14):
this particular mark be the only one which was affected
by the atmosphere and all the others left as they were. Besides,
the most singular circumstance connected with it was that this
particular mark removed the snow wherever it appeared, clear as
if cut with a diamond or branded with a hot iron.
In one instance, this track entered a covered shed and
(22:34):
passed through it out of a broken part of the
wall at the other end, where the atmosphere could not
affect it. The letter continues, the writer of the above
has passed a five months of winter in the backwoods
of Canada and has had much experience in tracking wild
animals and birds upon the snow, and can safely say
he has never seen him were clearly defined track, or
(22:54):
one that appeared to be less altered by the atmosphere
than the one in question. Marks left upon thin snow,
especially may after a time blur a little, but never
lose their distinctive character. As everyone will know who has
been accustomed to follow the track of the American partridge,
and it was later discovered through the Reverend Ellacomb's record,
so that the person that had signed the name South
(23:16):
Devon was actually a young man named Durban who was
nineteen at the time that all this happened. So in
a paper about the so called Devil's footprints, Mike Dash
asserts that it is certainly worth considering that Durban's youth
may have colored his dismissal of a relatively mundane source
for the Prince. And now we get to the thing
that I might have thought of first, the possibility of
(23:38):
human hoaxers, and so naturally that has come up over time.
It's entirely conceivable that somebody wanted to make a bunch
of their fellow neighbors think the devil was larking about
right outside their homes just for a laugh. We have,
of course seen this be the case in other houses
throughout history, not specifically with devils outside the door, but
other weird, unexplained stuff. Working against this theory is the
(24:02):
sheer number of prints and the variation in the prince
that the thought and the refreeze could be but likely
isn't an explanation there, Yeah, And it would have just
had to have been a massive number of people involved. Um,
there is a secondary people theory that we'll talk about
here in just a moment. Uh. There have been some
(24:23):
modern theories about the tracks that were not part of
the contemporary theory set. Like at the time this was
going on, pretty much all of the theories we've just
talked about, we're all being discussed and analyzed. But in
the modern era many new ideas have come up, including UFOs,
which we aren't really going to get into, but basically
some people think UFOs. One less sensational theory suggests that
(24:44):
a balloon with a dangling rope that was maybe kind
of uh hopping along the ground may have made the marks,
but the consistent shape of the tracks kind of shoots
that one down pretty quickly. Another fairly recent theory is
that a group of Romani tribes put on animal like
stilts to make the tracks and to try to scare
away superstitious arrivals. Sort of how I was imagining that
(25:07):
these tracks might have been made in the first place,
But backing up the serious kind of a stretch, it
seems kind of unlikely when you consider that hundreds of
people would have needed to be involved, and yet nobody
was witnessed doing it like it it does. It does
seem like there's a huge crowd of people on hoof stilts,
someone probably would have noticed. But I love the idea
(25:29):
of a huge crowd of people trumping through the snow
on hoof stilts. That's a beautiful image. There's also a
whole thing that's been cooked up about why this wouldn't work,
involving how like they would have had to have used
ladders to get on some of the places that they were,
and whether or not they were doing that but still
trying to get the same impression if they were using
some sort of hand stamp versus their feet, or if
(25:50):
they were trying to get on ladders on these stilts. Basically,
it's it's a popular theory in recent times, but it's
also very tricky to kind of back up. Uh. One
of the more plausible, though it's still pretty weird, twentieth
century theories, has to do with a weather event creating
the tracks. According to a Scotland native named j Ellen Renny,
(26:11):
warm air coming into contact with extremely cold temperatures could
create condensation in such a way that it fell as
large blobs rather than drops the way the rain is
normally seen. And Rennie claimed to have seen this phenomenon
several times in his life, and this would certainly account
for the vast assortment of odd places that the Prince
(26:32):
or rain blob marks were found. So this explanation seems
pretty sensible. But by Rennie's own account, the instances where
he encountered it happening resulted in much larger marks that
were spaced much farther apart. They tended to fall in
a long line, not in the meandering patterns that were
(26:52):
seen in Devon in eighteen fifty five. Additionally, meteorologists have
dismissed this phenomenon, which only Renny claimed that he has seen. Yeah,
no one else has ever claimed to see anything like it. Uh.
In any case, part of what makes the Devin footprints
so unusual, aside from their characteristics that we've already discussed,
is the fact that this was a one time event,
(27:14):
at least it probably was. Allegedly a woman in Devon
had a similar phenomenon happened in her garden in two
thousand nine, but the primary source on that is the
Daily Mail, which is a tabloid, so that is not
really a serious claim. I kind of here's what I
think happened. Yes, I think we have a small number
(27:36):
of people on hoof stilts, also carrying hoof pokers, and
so they are both walking and poking the ground, and
then it's a giant made made hoax combining pokers and stilts.
But that's the That's one of the contradictions of the
Romani theory is that they were making the exact same
(27:56):
kind of imprints if they had hand stamps that they
made with their foot and that's almost impossible to do,
So that was the that was the why maybe not
on that one, but then how did they pass through
tiny holes? That's a fine One of the things that's
a wonderful sort of exhilarating and frustrating thing about this
is that no one theory can really cover all the bases.
(28:19):
But I like the hoax theory myself as well. Regardless,
for now and probably forever, we don't really know what
causes odd spade of footprints. In one instance in Devon
in eight, it is pretty fun to speculate odds are
regardless of what the real answer is probably pretty benign, really,
(28:41):
not the devil walking along the English coast. The kangaroo
sounds fun, I really think though, if a kangaroo jumped
up on your roof, you'd hear it and maybe see it.
When it came through your roof into your kitchen and
I'd be like, Hi, kangaroo, please don't kick me to
my death. Would you like a snack? I mean, you know,
(29:03):
kangaroos are good stuff. Um, do you have listener mail
for us? I do. This listener mail is a little
gift parcel from our listener, Angie. She writes, Hello, Tracy
and Holly. First off, I wanted to tell you guys
that I love listening to your podcast. I am a
grower at a greenhouse of flowers and veggies, and some
of my daily tasks can get a little boring, so
(29:25):
your podcast keeps me entertained in thinking. I've been making
my way through the archives and I came across the Pluto,
the demoted dwarf planet from and I got super excited
because my hometown is street Or, Illinois, home of Clyde Tombaugh,
the man credited for discovering Pluto. It was so cool
to hear my hometown mentioned in one of my favorite podcasts.
I just had to write and tell you guys about
(29:46):
my hometown, Proud Pluto Town. Recently, Streeter has established Pluto Fest. Basically,
it's like a little festival with live music and vendors
and food trucks to celebrate Pluto. The City Park has
a Pluto statue and there is a mural on Main
Street of Clyde and his telescope. I've included a couple
of couzies and some collectible stamps from Pluto Fest with
(30:06):
the pictures of Clyde and Pluto. Keep up the great
podcast and enjoy the coozies. Thank you so much. This
is so cute and it's really cool to have a
like a little cooler beverage cooler with Clyde Tamba on it. Uh.
And the stamps are lovely, so I will make sure
that Tracy gets hers. And I just love them and
I love anytime we talked about space specifically, and Clyde
(30:28):
Tombos seemed to have been such a delightful man that
it's great to have him celebrated. UH. If you would
like to write to us, you can do so at
History Podcast at how Stuff works dot com. You can
also find us across the spectrum of social media as
Missed in History That includes Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest.
You can just find us everywhere. UH. You can also
(30:49):
come and visit our website which is Missed in History
dot com, and there you will find every episode that's
ever existed of the show ever, going all the way
back to the original host which were long before our
time time. If you were looking at episodes that Tracy
and I have worked on, there are also show notes
for you to peruse, so we encourage you come and
visit us at missed in History dot com and you
(31:09):
can check out all that we have to offer. For
more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how
staff works dot com
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com