July 21, 2020 • 10 mins
John Scopes was found guilty of teaching evolution on this day in 1925. / On this day in 365 C.E., an earthquake off the coast of Crete triggered a tsunami and destruction in the Eastern Mediterranean.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everyone, Technically you're getting two days in history today
because we were running two episodes from the History Vault.
You'll also hear two hosts, me and Tracy V. Wilson.
Hope you enjoy. Welcome to this day in History class.
It's July one today in John Scopes was found guilty
(00:21):
of teaching evolution in Dayton, Tennessee. Here is how a
lot of people imagine this story. It's a small town
in the nineteen twenties. A science teacher defies all the
community norms and teaches a class on evolution. And then
a student, usually imagined as a girl, tearfully says during
class that the learning this is against her religion. And
(00:44):
then she goes home and confesses to a parent that
she has learned something offensive or sacrilegious in school. And
then her outraged father it's usually her father, goes to
the principal or the school board of the police. The
teacher is arrested and put on trial. That is not
how this happened at all. Charles Darwin's theories of evolution
(01:04):
were more than fifty years old at this point. They
had made their way into lots of standard biology textbooks,
such as the nineteen fourteen edition of a Civic Biology
presented in Problems, which was the one that was being
used in Dayton, Tennessee. And at the same time, more
and more school systems were standardizing their educational policies and
(01:25):
their school curricula. These two things happening at the same time.
We're also going on at the same time as a
rise in Christian fundamentalism, so all of this was happening simultaneously,
and a lot of Christian fundamentalists objected to Charles Darwin's
writing on evolution. Some of this was because it just
contradicted the creation story in the Christian Bible, but there
(01:49):
were also objections to the idea that people came from monkeys.
To be clear, that is not how Darwin described evolution.
He did not write that people came from monkeyse that
was a mischaracterization of his work. But in the face
of the simultaneous standardization of schools and rise in fundamentalism,
(02:09):
a lot of states started banning the teaching of evolution.
Florida and Oklahoma passed laws that were related to the
issue in nineteen three, and then Tennessee explicitly outlawed it
in nine in legislation called the Butler Act. The Butler
Act made it illegal to quote teach any theory that
denies the story of the divine creation of ban as
(02:30):
taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man
has descended from a lower order of animals. So this
law got the attention of the American Civil Liberties Union
or the a c l U. They ran an ad
in a Chattanooga newspaper on May fourth, saying they were
looking for a test case. They offered to publicly defend
(02:51):
any teacher who was charged with the teaching of evolution,
and at this point a bunch of community leaders in Dayton, Tennessee,
population eighteen hundred, thought this might be a good chance
to bring some much needed tourism to their town. They
approached teacher John Thomas Scopes, who was a relative newcomer
to the town, and he said he had probably taught
(03:13):
some evolution when he was substituting for a biology teacher
during a recent exam review. So he was arrested and indicted,
and the town got ready to host a bunch of
news media and visitors this These visitors, some of them
were very high profile. They included Clarence Darrow, one of
the most famous attorneys in the country, and Arthur Garfield
(03:35):
Hayes of New York, who was the a c O
used General Counsel. They were both on the defense, and
then the prosecution included William Jennings Bryan, who had run
for president three times and served as a Secretary of State.
They seriously got ready for a media onslaught. They built
a tourist camp. They updated the courthouse to accommodate more
media people, including adding camera platforms and places for microphones.
(03:58):
The town formed a Scopes Trial Entertainment Committee, businesses sort
of hanging up pictures of monkeys in their windows selling
monkey themed products. The trial itself played out before a
packed courtroom and eventually had to be moved outside because
of cracks that were forming in the ceiling. And then,
in a bizarre turn of events, Clarence Darrow put defense
(04:21):
attorney William Jennings Brian on the stand and then I
asked him a bunch of like leading trick you questions.
He asked the kind of bad faith questions that people
on the internet ask is kind of a gotcha, and
then afterward the press lampooned Brian. He actually died in
his sleep five days after the trial was over, the
(04:42):
media lampooned the town of Dayton as well. But even so,
even with all of this fun making in the press,
numerous other states started introducing laws banning the teaching of evolution.
After this is over and if you passed them, the
Butler Act actually stayed on the books in Tennessee until
seven and then. Court cases related to whether any of
(05:04):
this is constitutional have also been making their way through
the courts for decades. Every time the court comes to
a consensus on one issue, another approach will filter into
the mix and make its way through the courts again.
You can learn more about the Scopes trial and some
of these other cases that followed it on the episode
of Stuff You Miss and History Class, and you can
(05:25):
subscribe to This Day in History Class on Apple podcasts,
Google podcasts, and whatever else you get your podcasts. Next up,
we will have a medical breakthrough and some debate about
who should get the credit for it. Hello, Welcome to
(05:48):
This Day in History class, where we flipped through the
book of history and bring you a new page every day.
The day was July one, three six. An earthquake off
(06:08):
the coast of Crete triggered a tsunami and was likely
part of a larger sequence of sizemake events that caused
destruction in Peloponneseis, the Greek islands Sicily, Libya, Cyprus. In Egypt,
there was no way to measure earthquakes in the fourth century,
but since then scientists have estimated the quake's magnitude to
have been at least eight point oh The earthquake, which
(06:31):
happened in the early morning, destroyed almost all the towns
in Crete. Areas of land and crete were lifted by
at least thirty feet or nine meters. The city of
ancient Fula Sarna was uplifted so that it's harbor could
not be used anymore. Researchers at the University of Cambridge
carbon dated corals on the coast of Crete and determined
(06:52):
that a quake lifted them thirty three ft or ten
ms in one push. That meant that there must have
been an earthquake in a steep fault in the Hellenic
Trench near Crete. The Hellenic Trent is a linear depression
that forms the boundary between the Hellenic tectonic Plate and
the African Plate. The earthquake and subsequent tsunami were blamed
(07:13):
for destruction in the Noile Delta and on other coasts
in the eastern Mediterranean, and for the death of thousands
of people. Roman historian Ammianus Marcelinists described the destruction that
the earthquake and tsunami caused. Slightly after daybreak, and heralded
by a thick succession of fiercely shaken thunderbolts, the solidity
(07:34):
of the whole earth was made to shake and shudder,
and the sea was driven away. Its waves were rolled back,
and it disappeared, so that the abyss of the depths
was uncovered, and many shaped varieties of sea creatures were
seen stuck in the slime, the great waste of those
valleys and mountains which the very creation had dismissed beneath
(07:54):
the vast whirlpools at that moment, as it was given
to be believed, looked up at the sun's rays. Many
ships then were stranded as if on dry land, and
people wandered at will about the paltry remains of the
waters to collect fish in the like in their hands.
Then the roaring sea, as if insulted by its repulse,
(08:15):
rises back in turn, and through the teeming shoals dashed
itself violently on islands and extensive tracks of the mainland,
and flattened innumerable buildings in towns or wherever they were found.
Damage in the Eastern Mediterranean and three six was applied spread,
leading researchers to conclude that the July twenty one earthquake
(08:37):
was not isolated, but part of a series of local
earthquakes that might have included major events off of Cyprus
and between Sicily and Libya. In addition to crete, these
sizemic events may have happened in such a short period
that historical accounts regarded them as a single event. In fact,
historical and archaeological data suggest that the fourth to sixth
(09:01):
centuries was a period with a lot of seismic activity
in the Eastern Mediterranean, which may reflect a reactivation of
all plate boundaries in the region. Debate continues over whether
ancient accounts of the July twenty one earthquake describe a
single regional catastrophe or represented the conflation of several quakes
that occurred in the fourth and fifth centuries. The disaster
(09:25):
was recognized as a Day of Horror in some archaeological sources,
while some researchers have said that the three six CE
disaster lad to the split of the already declining Roman
Empire thirty years later. Others have said that the earthquake
was not the cause of any major cultural change. I'm
Eve Jeff Cote and hopefully you know a little more
(09:47):
about history today than you did yesterday. And if you
like to follow us on social media, you can find
us at T D i h C Podcast on Twitter, Instagram,
and Facebook. Come back tomorrow for another Tidbit from History
m HM. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit
(10:15):
the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Hey, everyone, Technically you're getting two days in history today
because we were running two episodes from the History Vault.
You'll also hear two hosts, me and Tracy V. Wilson.
Hope you enjoy. Welcome to this day in History class.
It's July one today in John Scopes was found guilty
(00:21):
of teaching evolution in Dayton, Tennessee. Here is how a
lot of people imagine this story. It's a small town
in the nineteen twenties. A science teacher defies all the
community norms and teaches a class on evolution. And then
a student, usually imagined as a girl, tearfully says during
class that the learning this is against her religion. And
(00:44):
then she goes home and confesses to a parent that
she has learned something offensive or sacrilegious in school. And
then her outraged father it's usually her father, goes to
the principal or the school board of the police. The
teacher is arrested and put on trial. That is not
how this happened at all. Charles Darwin's theories of evolution
(01:04):
were more than fifty years old at this point. They
had made their way into lots of standard biology textbooks,
such as the nineteen fourteen edition of a Civic Biology
presented in Problems, which was the one that was being
used in Dayton, Tennessee. And at the same time, more
and more school systems were standardizing their educational policies and
(01:25):
their school curricula. These two things happening at the same time.
We're also going on at the same time as a
rise in Christian fundamentalism, so all of this was happening simultaneously,
and a lot of Christian fundamentalists objected to Charles Darwin's
writing on evolution. Some of this was because it just
contradicted the creation story in the Christian Bible, but there
(01:49):
were also objections to the idea that people came from monkeys.
To be clear, that is not how Darwin described evolution.
He did not write that people came from monkeyse that
was a mischaracterization of his work. But in the face
of the simultaneous standardization of schools and rise in fundamentalism,
(02:09):
a lot of states started banning the teaching of evolution.
Florida and Oklahoma passed laws that were related to the
issue in nineteen three, and then Tennessee explicitly outlawed it
in nine in legislation called the Butler Act. The Butler
Act made it illegal to quote teach any theory that
denies the story of the divine creation of ban as
(02:30):
taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man
has descended from a lower order of animals. So this
law got the attention of the American Civil Liberties Union
or the a c l U. They ran an ad
in a Chattanooga newspaper on May fourth, saying they were
looking for a test case. They offered to publicly defend
(02:51):
any teacher who was charged with the teaching of evolution,
and at this point a bunch of community leaders in Dayton, Tennessee,
population eighteen hundred, thought this might be a good chance
to bring some much needed tourism to their town. They
approached teacher John Thomas Scopes, who was a relative newcomer
to the town, and he said he had probably taught
(03:13):
some evolution when he was substituting for a biology teacher
during a recent exam review. So he was arrested and indicted,
and the town got ready to host a bunch of
news media and visitors this These visitors, some of them
were very high profile. They included Clarence Darrow, one of
the most famous attorneys in the country, and Arthur Garfield
(03:35):
Hayes of New York, who was the a c O
used General Counsel. They were both on the defense, and
then the prosecution included William Jennings Bryan, who had run
for president three times and served as a Secretary of State.
They seriously got ready for a media onslaught. They built
a tourist camp. They updated the courthouse to accommodate more
media people, including adding camera platforms and places for microphones.
(03:58):
The town formed a Scopes Trial Entertainment Committee, businesses sort
of hanging up pictures of monkeys in their windows selling
monkey themed products. The trial itself played out before a
packed courtroom and eventually had to be moved outside because
of cracks that were forming in the ceiling. And then,
in a bizarre turn of events, Clarence Darrow put defense
(04:21):
attorney William Jennings Brian on the stand and then I
asked him a bunch of like leading trick you questions.
He asked the kind of bad faith questions that people
on the internet ask is kind of a gotcha, and
then afterward the press lampooned Brian. He actually died in
his sleep five days after the trial was over, the
(04:42):
media lampooned the town of Dayton as well. But even so,
even with all of this fun making in the press,
numerous other states started introducing laws banning the teaching of evolution.
After this is over and if you passed them, the
Butler Act actually stayed on the books in Tennessee until
seven and then. Court cases related to whether any of
(05:04):
this is constitutional have also been making their way through
the courts for decades. Every time the court comes to
a consensus on one issue, another approach will filter into
the mix and make its way through the courts again.
You can learn more about the Scopes trial and some
of these other cases that followed it on the episode
of Stuff You Miss and History Class, and you can
(05:25):
subscribe to This Day in History Class on Apple podcasts,
Google podcasts, and whatever else you get your podcasts. Next up,
we will have a medical breakthrough and some debate about
who should get the credit for it. Hello, Welcome to
(05:48):
This Day in History class, where we flipped through the
book of history and bring you a new page every day.
The day was July one, three six. An earthquake off
(06:08):
the coast of Crete triggered a tsunami and was likely
part of a larger sequence of sizemake events that caused
destruction in Peloponneseis, the Greek islands Sicily, Libya, Cyprus. In Egypt,
there was no way to measure earthquakes in the fourth century,
but since then scientists have estimated the quake's magnitude to
have been at least eight point oh The earthquake, which
(06:31):
happened in the early morning, destroyed almost all the towns
in Crete. Areas of land and crete were lifted by
at least thirty feet or nine meters. The city of
ancient Fula Sarna was uplifted so that it's harbor could
not be used anymore. Researchers at the University of Cambridge
carbon dated corals on the coast of Crete and determined
(06:52):
that a quake lifted them thirty three ft or ten
ms in one push. That meant that there must have
been an earthquake in a steep fault in the Hellenic
Trench near Crete. The Hellenic Trent is a linear depression
that forms the boundary between the Hellenic tectonic Plate and
the African Plate. The earthquake and subsequent tsunami were blamed
(07:13):
for destruction in the Noile Delta and on other coasts
in the eastern Mediterranean, and for the death of thousands
of people. Roman historian Ammianus Marcelinists described the destruction that
the earthquake and tsunami caused. Slightly after daybreak, and heralded
by a thick succession of fiercely shaken thunderbolts, the solidity
(07:34):
of the whole earth was made to shake and shudder,
and the sea was driven away. Its waves were rolled back,
and it disappeared, so that the abyss of the depths
was uncovered, and many shaped varieties of sea creatures were
seen stuck in the slime, the great waste of those
valleys and mountains which the very creation had dismissed beneath
(07:54):
the vast whirlpools at that moment, as it was given
to be believed, looked up at the sun's rays. Many
ships then were stranded as if on dry land, and
people wandered at will about the paltry remains of the
waters to collect fish in the like in their hands.
Then the roaring sea, as if insulted by its repulse,
(08:15):
rises back in turn, and through the teeming shoals dashed
itself violently on islands and extensive tracks of the mainland,
and flattened innumerable buildings in towns or wherever they were found.
Damage in the Eastern Mediterranean and three six was applied spread,
leading researchers to conclude that the July twenty one earthquake
(08:37):
was not isolated, but part of a series of local
earthquakes that might have included major events off of Cyprus
and between Sicily and Libya. In addition to crete, these
sizemic events may have happened in such a short period
that historical accounts regarded them as a single event. In fact,
historical and archaeological data suggest that the fourth to sixth
(09:01):
centuries was a period with a lot of seismic activity
in the Eastern Mediterranean, which may reflect a reactivation of
all plate boundaries in the region. Debate continues over whether
ancient accounts of the July twenty one earthquake describe a
single regional catastrophe or represented the conflation of several quakes
that occurred in the fourth and fifth centuries. The disaster
(09:25):
was recognized as a Day of Horror in some archaeological sources,
while some researchers have said that the three six CE
disaster lad to the split of the already declining Roman
Empire thirty years later. Others have said that the earthquake
was not the cause of any major cultural change. I'm
Eve Jeff Cote and hopefully you know a little more
(09:47):
about history today than you did yesterday. And if you
like to follow us on social media, you can find
us at T D i h C Podcast on Twitter, Instagram,
and Facebook. Come back tomorrow for another Tidbit from History
m HM. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit
(10:15):
the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
This Day in History Class News
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