November 28, 2023 • 9 mins
Anne Bonny and Mary Read were convicted of piracy on this day in 1720. You can find more to the story in the August 15, 2016 episode of Stuff You Missed in History Class.
On this day in 1967, astrophysicist Jocelyn Bell Burnell became the first person to detect a radio pulsar.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey there, history fans. We're taking a break so that
we can bring in new episodes all December. Law In
the meantime, enjoy these flashback episodes from the TDI HC
Vault and I'll see you back here on December first.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Welcome to This Day in History Class from HowStuffWorks dot
com and from the desk of Stuff you Missed in
History Class. It's the show where we explore the past
one day at a time with a quick look at
what happened today in history. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy V. Wilson, and it's November twenty, eighth Honest Day.
(00:35):
In seventeen twenty and Bonnie and Mary Reid were convicted
of piracy. As is often the case with pirates, their
early life is something of a fog. They each though,
wound up aboard the ship of Calico Jack Rackham. The
story generally goes that Anne's husband, John Bonnie, had been
working in the Bahamas for Governor Woods Rogers, and he
(00:57):
had been a pirate informant, but then and fell in
love with one of the targets of her husband's informant activity,
which was Jack Rackham, joined his pirate crew. Mary on
the other hand, was disguising herself as a man to
join the crew, and earlier on in her life she
had similarly disguised herself to be a footboy and a soldier,
(01:18):
basically occupations that weren't open to women. On August twenty
second of seventeen twenty, Jack Rackham and Bonnie and the
rest of a party stole a ship called the William,
which belonged to a man named John Hamm. They took
on a crew of twelve and started sailing the William
around the Bahamas, plundering as they went. They mostly went
(01:38):
after small boats, especially fishing boats. They would basically take
all the fish in the tackle and then be on
their way. Sources disagree about whether Bonnie and Reed say
disguised as men this whole time. In some versions, when
they had a raid like this, they would be dressed
as men, but they were in women's clothes the rest
of the time. In others they were just dressed as women. Whatever.
(02:00):
It's really all over the map. In October of seventeen twenty, though,
one of the boats they encountered was a canoe that
was being helmed by a woman named Dorothy Thomas and
Rackham let her go over Bonnie and Reid's objections that
she might notify the authorities of where they were. The
authorities already knew, though Governor Woods Rogers had already heard
(02:22):
about Rackham's piratical activities off the coast of Jamaica. He
had already dispatched the privateer captain Jonathan Barnett to take
care of it. Bonnie and Reed were the ones on
deck when Barnett's ship found and approached them on October
twenty second of seventeen twenty. Most of the rest of
the crew, though, were below decks. They were intoxicated, so
(02:44):
Bonnie and Reed stayed above decks. They were fighting back
to back with both pistols and cutlasses and shouting below
to the men to come up and help. At one point,
Reid reportedly fired her pistol below deck to try to
get their attention and wound up hitting one of them. Ultimately,
though they were all captured, trials for Rackham and his
(03:05):
crew started on November sixteenth, seventeen twenty. They were all
found guilty and hanged. Rackham's last request was supposedly to
see Anne Bonnie again, and she had no patience for that. Saying, quote,
if you had fought like a man, you need not
have been hanged like a dog. Anne Bonnie and Mary
Reid were tried on November twenty eighth, and according to
(03:28):
the General History of the Pirates quote, two other pirates
were tried that belonged to Rackham's crew. That was Anne
and Mary being convicted. They were brought up and asked
if either of them had anything to say, why the
sentence of death should not pass upon them in like
manner as had been done to all the rest, And
both of them pleaded their bellies, being quick with child
(03:50):
and prayed that execution might be stayed, whereupon the court
passed sentence as in cases of piracy, but ordered them
back till a proper jury could be appointed to inquire
to the matter. So they basically both argued that they
should be spared hanging because they were pregnant. They were
sent to prison, and Ann Bonnie apparently survived her time
in prison, but it's unclear what happened to her after that.
(04:12):
Mary Reid died of a fever or possibly due to
complications of childbirth before she was released. She's probably the
same Mary Reid who's listened in a death record for
April twenty eighth of seventeen twenty one. You can learn
more about all this in the August fifteenth, twenty sixteen
episode of Stuff You Missed in History Class, including why
(04:34):
that general history of the Pirates that I just read
from is a source you should really take with a
grade of salt. That's why there's also so much supposedly
and reportedly in this episode. Thanks to Casey Pegram and
Chandler Mays for their work on this show, and you
can subscribe to This Day in History Class on Apple Podcasts,
Google Podcasts, and wherever real to hit your podcasts. You
(04:54):
could tune in tomorrow for a massacre at sea.
Speaker 3 (05:03):
Greetings, I'm Eves, and welcome to This Day in History Class,
a show that believes no day in history is a
slow day. The day was November twenty eighth, nineteen sixty seven.
(05:24):
Astro physicist Joscelyn Bell Burnell became the first person to
detect a radio pulsar. A pulsar is a celestial source
of pulsating electromagnetic radiation that is thought to be a
rapidly rotating neutron star. Pulsars emit pulses of radiation like
radio waves at short, relatively constant intervals. In nineteen sixty seven,
(05:46):
Jocelyn Bell was pursuing her doctorate at the University of Cambridge,
where her advisor was radio astronomer Anthony Hwish. That year,
Huish and his graduate students completed a radio telescope that
was designed to observe the scintillation of stars, particularly quasars.
A quasar is a region at the center of a
(06:06):
galaxy that emits an exceptionally large amount of energy. The
first quasars were discovered by the early nineteen sixties. Bell
helped build the telescope at the Millard Radio Astronomy Observatory.
Once the telescope went into operation in July of nineteen
sixty seven, Bell began operating it and analyzing the data
by hand. One day, she noticed a strange signal at
(06:30):
a wavelength of three point seven meters. The signal continued
to appear over the next several months. On November twenty eighth,
she captured a recording of the signal that gave more detail.
Bell called the reading a quote bit of scruff in
the data. It showed that the signal corresponded to a
burst of radio energy that came in regular intervals of
(06:52):
about one point three seconds. The reading was synced with
sidereal time rather than Earth time, and it consistently came
from the same part of the sky, So she set
about determining the source of the signal. It couldn't be
coming from any natural sources like stars, galaxies, or solar wind,
and it did not come from any human or human
(07:13):
made sources like radar reflected off the Moon, other radio astronomers,
television signals, orbiting satellites, or buildings near the telescope. After
rolling out all those sources, she and Huish called the
signal LGM one because they couldn't rule out little Green
men aka aliens. But soon Bell found another signal, this
(07:35):
one pulsing at one point two second intervals. This signal
was coming from a different part of the sky. That
meant that the signal was likely not sent by extraterrestrial beings.
Later that year, Bell noticed a couple more of these
unusual signals. In January nineteen sixty eight, Bell, Hwish in
colleagues submitted a paper describing their discovery to the journal Nature,
(07:59):
and the paper, observation of a rapidly pulsating radio source
was published on February twenty four. The paper noted that
they had recorded unusual signals from pulsating radio sources and
posited that the radiation may be associated with oscillations of
white dwarf or neutron stars. But even though they had
(08:19):
announced the discovery, they still didn't know the source of
the signal. That didn't stop other scientists from trying to
discover more of these pulsating sources and where they were
coming from. By the end of nineteen sixty eight, more
had been discovered, and it had been suggested that neutron
stars were a source. Hwish first used the word pulsar
(08:41):
in an interview with the Daily Telegraph in nineteen sixty eight.
Bell and Huish changed the name of the signal from
LGM to CP or Cambridge pulsar, and the first radio
pulsar they detected was dubbed CP. Nineteen nineteen. Huish received
the nineteen seventy four a Nobel Prize in Physics for
his role in the discovery of pulsars, a controversial decision
(09:04):
because Bell's contributions were not recognized. Since their discovery, pulsars
have been used to study extreme states of matter and
search for gravitational waves. I'm Eve Jeffcote and hopefully you
know a little more about history today than you did yesterday.
Thanks for listening, and we'll see you tomorrow.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hey there, history fans. We're taking a break so that
we can bring in new episodes all December. Law In
the meantime, enjoy these flashback episodes from the TDI HC
Vault and I'll see you back here on December first.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Welcome to This Day in History Class from HowStuffWorks dot
com and from the desk of Stuff you Missed in
History Class. It's the show where we explore the past
one day at a time with a quick look at
what happened today in history. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy V. Wilson, and it's November twenty, eighth Honest Day.
(00:35):
In seventeen twenty and Bonnie and Mary Reid were convicted
of piracy. As is often the case with pirates, their
early life is something of a fog. They each though,
wound up aboard the ship of Calico Jack Rackham. The
story generally goes that Anne's husband, John Bonnie, had been
working in the Bahamas for Governor Woods Rogers, and he
(00:57):
had been a pirate informant, but then and fell in
love with one of the targets of her husband's informant activity,
which was Jack Rackham, joined his pirate crew. Mary on
the other hand, was disguising herself as a man to
join the crew, and earlier on in her life she
had similarly disguised herself to be a footboy and a soldier,
(01:18):
basically occupations that weren't open to women. On August twenty
second of seventeen twenty, Jack Rackham and Bonnie and the
rest of a party stole a ship called the William,
which belonged to a man named John Hamm. They took
on a crew of twelve and started sailing the William
around the Bahamas, plundering as they went. They mostly went
(01:38):
after small boats, especially fishing boats. They would basically take
all the fish in the tackle and then be on
their way. Sources disagree about whether Bonnie and Reed say
disguised as men this whole time. In some versions, when
they had a raid like this, they would be dressed
as men, but they were in women's clothes the rest
of the time. In others they were just dressed as women. Whatever.
(02:00):
It's really all over the map. In October of seventeen twenty, though,
one of the boats they encountered was a canoe that
was being helmed by a woman named Dorothy Thomas and
Rackham let her go over Bonnie and Reid's objections that
she might notify the authorities of where they were. The
authorities already knew, though Governor Woods Rogers had already heard
(02:22):
about Rackham's piratical activities off the coast of Jamaica. He
had already dispatched the privateer captain Jonathan Barnett to take
care of it. Bonnie and Reed were the ones on
deck when Barnett's ship found and approached them on October
twenty second of seventeen twenty. Most of the rest of
the crew, though, were below decks. They were intoxicated, so
(02:44):
Bonnie and Reed stayed above decks. They were fighting back
to back with both pistols and cutlasses and shouting below
to the men to come up and help. At one point,
Reid reportedly fired her pistol below deck to try to
get their attention and wound up hitting one of them. Ultimately,
though they were all captured, trials for Rackham and his
(03:05):
crew started on November sixteenth, seventeen twenty. They were all
found guilty and hanged. Rackham's last request was supposedly to
see Anne Bonnie again, and she had no patience for that. Saying, quote,
if you had fought like a man, you need not
have been hanged like a dog. Anne Bonnie and Mary
Reid were tried on November twenty eighth, and according to
(03:28):
the General History of the Pirates quote, two other pirates
were tried that belonged to Rackham's crew. That was Anne
and Mary being convicted. They were brought up and asked
if either of them had anything to say, why the
sentence of death should not pass upon them in like
manner as had been done to all the rest, And
both of them pleaded their bellies, being quick with child
(03:50):
and prayed that execution might be stayed, whereupon the court
passed sentence as in cases of piracy, but ordered them
back till a proper jury could be appointed to inquire
to the matter. So they basically both argued that they
should be spared hanging because they were pregnant. They were
sent to prison, and Ann Bonnie apparently survived her time
in prison, but it's unclear what happened to her after that.
(04:12):
Mary Reid died of a fever or possibly due to
complications of childbirth before she was released. She's probably the
same Mary Reid who's listened in a death record for
April twenty eighth of seventeen twenty one. You can learn
more about all this in the August fifteenth, twenty sixteen
episode of Stuff You Missed in History Class, including why
(04:34):
that general history of the Pirates that I just read
from is a source you should really take with a
grade of salt. That's why there's also so much supposedly
and reportedly in this episode. Thanks to Casey Pegram and
Chandler Mays for their work on this show, and you
can subscribe to This Day in History Class on Apple Podcasts,
Google Podcasts, and wherever real to hit your podcasts. You
(04:54):
could tune in tomorrow for a massacre at sea.
Speaker 3 (05:03):
Greetings, I'm Eves, and welcome to This Day in History Class,
a show that believes no day in history is a
slow day. The day was November twenty eighth, nineteen sixty seven.
(05:24):
Astro physicist Joscelyn Bell Burnell became the first person to
detect a radio pulsar. A pulsar is a celestial source
of pulsating electromagnetic radiation that is thought to be a
rapidly rotating neutron star. Pulsars emit pulses of radiation like
radio waves at short, relatively constant intervals. In nineteen sixty seven,
(05:46):
Jocelyn Bell was pursuing her doctorate at the University of Cambridge,
where her advisor was radio astronomer Anthony Hwish. That year,
Huish and his graduate students completed a radio telescope that
was designed to observe the scintillation of stars, particularly quasars.
A quasar is a region at the center of a
(06:06):
galaxy that emits an exceptionally large amount of energy. The
first quasars were discovered by the early nineteen sixties. Bell
helped build the telescope at the Millard Radio Astronomy Observatory.
Once the telescope went into operation in July of nineteen
sixty seven, Bell began operating it and analyzing the data
by hand. One day, she noticed a strange signal at
(06:30):
a wavelength of three point seven meters. The signal continued
to appear over the next several months. On November twenty eighth,
she captured a recording of the signal that gave more detail.
Bell called the reading a quote bit of scruff in
the data. It showed that the signal corresponded to a
burst of radio energy that came in regular intervals of
(06:52):
about one point three seconds. The reading was synced with
sidereal time rather than Earth time, and it consistently came
from the same part of the sky, So she set
about determining the source of the signal. It couldn't be
coming from any natural sources like stars, galaxies, or solar wind,
and it did not come from any human or human
(07:13):
made sources like radar reflected off the Moon, other radio astronomers,
television signals, orbiting satellites, or buildings near the telescope. After
rolling out all those sources, she and Huish called the
signal LGM one because they couldn't rule out little Green
men aka aliens. But soon Bell found another signal, this
(07:35):
one pulsing at one point two second intervals. This signal
was coming from a different part of the sky. That
meant that the signal was likely not sent by extraterrestrial beings.
Later that year, Bell noticed a couple more of these
unusual signals. In January nineteen sixty eight, Bell, Hwish in
colleagues submitted a paper describing their discovery to the journal Nature,
(07:59):
and the paper, observation of a rapidly pulsating radio source
was published on February twenty four. The paper noted that
they had recorded unusual signals from pulsating radio sources and
posited that the radiation may be associated with oscillations of
white dwarf or neutron stars. But even though they had
(08:19):
announced the discovery, they still didn't know the source of
the signal. That didn't stop other scientists from trying to
discover more of these pulsating sources and where they were
coming from. By the end of nineteen sixty eight, more
had been discovered, and it had been suggested that neutron
stars were a source. Hwish first used the word pulsar
(08:41):
in an interview with the Daily Telegraph in nineteen sixty eight.
Bell and Huish changed the name of the signal from
LGM to CP or Cambridge pulsar, and the first radio
pulsar they detected was dubbed CP. Nineteen nineteen. Huish received
the nineteen seventy four a Nobel Prize in Physics for
his role in the discovery of pulsars, a controversial decision
(09:04):
because Bell's contributions were not recognized. Since their discovery, pulsars
have been used to study extreme states of matter and
search for gravitational waves. I'm Eve Jeffcote and hopefully you
know a little more about history today than you did yesterday.
Thanks for listening, and we'll see you tomorrow.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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