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April 3, 2021 11 mins

On this day in 1860, the Pony Express mail service was founded. / On this day in 1948, leftists launched an uprising on Jeju Island in South Korea.

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, y'all, we're rerunning two episodes today. Enjoy the show.
Hey guys, welcome to this Day in History class, where
we bring you a new tidbit from history every day.

(00:23):
The day was April three, eighteen sixty. The first mail
delivered be a Pony Express left from St. Joseph, Missouri,
on a rider in horse relay to Sacramento, California. The
rider used a motila, which was a leather cover over
a horse's saddle that riders used as a mail bag.
The mochila included a letter from President James Buchanan to

(00:45):
John Downey, the governor of California. The letter of congratulations
have been telegraphed that morning from Washington, d C. To St. Joseph.
That first ride and the entire Pony Express service was
great at getting mail across long distances as compared to
the extremely inefficient mail delivery process that was standard at

(01:05):
the time. But the Pony Express didn't last two years
thanks to technological advances in money woes. In the mid
eighteen hundreds, mail delivery to California, a brand new state,
was slow. Stage coaches could take weeks to carry mail overland,
and steamships took circuitous routes around South America are through

(01:26):
the Isthmus of Panama or the Isthmus atron Tepec in
Mexico to make it to its final destination. But the
twenty four day overland service from Missouri to California was
just not going to be sufficient anymore, as the approach
of the Civil War made fast mail delivery imperative. The
origins of the idea for the Pony Express have been

(01:47):
linked to several people, including California Senator William M. Gwyn
u S, Secretary of War John B. Floyd, and Benjamin Fickland. Regardless,
the private freighting firm Russell Agers and Waddell set out
to create the Central Overland California and Pike's Peak Express Company,
better known as the Pony Express. St. Joseph, Missouri, a

(02:11):
prime location because of its access to the East through
railroads and telegraph, was chosen as the eastern terminus of
the mail route. Sacramento, California's capital, would be the western
end of the route. The route started off following the
Oregon Trail, then departed from that trail west of Salt
Lake City, Utah. It traveled through the modern day states

(02:32):
of Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, and California
and covered a distance of more than eighteen hundred miles
or kilometers. Benjamin Fickland was a superintendent of the route,
and he divided the route into five divisions, with superintendents
for each. There were about two hundred relay stations ten

(02:54):
to fifteen miles apart along the route, where riders would
transfer the motila to the next mount and change horses
every about nine and twenty miles. There were home stations
where riders would eat and sleep after handing the mail
off to the next rider. More than four hundred horses
were purchased for the route, and station keepers and stock
tenders were hired. In addition to riders, riders had to

(03:17):
meet specific requirements. They had to be brave, relatively thin,
experienced riders with knowledge of the trail. They would be
assigned to and ad ran in the Sacramento Union on
March nineteenth, eighteen sixty to recruit the perfect workers. It
read man wanted. The undersigned wishes to hire ten or
a dozen men familiar with the management of horses. As

(03:39):
hustlers are riders on the Overland Express Route Viassault Lake
City wages fifty dollars per month and found found means
room and board. On April third, eighteen sixty, the first rider,
Johnny Fry, took off on his horse around seven fifteen
pm and headed west, crossing the Missouri River by ferry
and speeding across cans this for ninety miles until it

(04:01):
was time for him to hand off the proverbial baton.
Forty writers took part in that first delivery to Sacramento,
and by five five pm on April thirte the last
rider arrived in Sacramento too much fanfare. The mail was
then taken by the steamboat Antelope to San Francisco. We
may scoff at the delivery time today, since we're spoiled

(04:23):
with overnight shipping and the promise of drone delivery, but
the Pony Express took only ten days on average to
deliver mail from Missouri to the West coast the Pony Express.
His best time was seven days and seventeen hours when
riders delivered Abraham Lincoln's inaugural address from Nebraska to California.
There were some notable writers too, like Robert Pony Bob Haslam,

(04:46):
who in May eighteen sixty traveled three hundred and eighty
miles in less than forty hours because another relay writer
was afraid he would run into pie eat people's who
had been attacking stations. The Pony Express was successful and
that the riders delivered more than thirty five thousand pieces
of mail in record times and only one bag of

(05:07):
mail was reported to be lost over the course of
its year and a half run. But ultimately the Pony
Express failed because the service was too expensive for average people.
There was conflict among executives, and various setbacks meant the
company couldn't afford to support the service. It never turned
a profit. Even more pressing, though, was the connection of

(05:30):
the East and West coast by a transcontinental telegraph line
in October eighteen sixty one. The Pony Express shut down
in November. I'm eaves, Jeffcote, and hopefully you know a
little more about history today than you did yesterday. And
just an additional note about other mail routes that have

(05:50):
been established before the Pony Express. Ganghis Khan also instituted
a horse relay to deliver messages, and American newspapers used
horse relays between New York and Boss in between eight
and eighteen thirty. If you'd 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

(06:15):
tomorrow for another tidbit from History. Hey everyone, it's Eaves
again and welcome to This Day in History Class, a
show that takes history and squeezes it into bite size stories.

(06:43):
The day was April three, nineteen leftists launched an uprising
against police and right wing paramilitary groups on j Ju
Island in South Korea. The uprising lasted until May of
nineteen forty nine. It's suppression resulted in the day of
an estimated thirty thousand people, many of them killed by police, soldiers,

(07:06):
and anti communist That was around ten percent of the
island's population. The uprising is also known as the April
third incident. In August of nineteen forty five, the Japanese
surrendered to Allied forces in World War Two. That ended
the Japanese occupation of Korea, which had begun in nineteen ten.

(07:29):
Korea was then divided at the thirty eight parallel, with
the Soviets in the north and the Americans in the south.
The island of Jju was controlled by the United States
Army military government in Korea. Though there was a lot
of unrest on mainland Korea, the island of Jju was
geographically and politically isolated. During the first year of American occupation,

(07:51):
the situation on Jju remained relatively peaceful. The Jju People's
Committee gained a lot of support across the island, but
in nineteen forty six, Jju was incorporated as a separate
province of US backed South Korea. This led to more
righteous administrators and police being on the island. Late that year,

(08:12):
the Workers Party of South Korea, a communist party, one
control of the Jju People's Committee and uprising in the
southern provinces of the Korean mainland were blamed on communists
and contributed to more anti left tension on Jju. On
March first, nineteen forty seven, tens of thousands of Jju

(08:33):
residents gathered in Jju City to mark the anniversary of
the March First Movement, a demonstration against Japanese rule that
occurred in nineteen nineteen. The residents also opposed increased taxation,
the dissolution of the People's Committee, and police brutality. Police
fired into the crowd, killing six people and wounding others.

(08:55):
Many people in the Workers Party were arrested during the demonstrations.
There were a series of strikes in response to the shootings.
Following this incident, tensions grew between the right and the
left on Jju. In November of ninety seven, the United
Nations adopted a resolution calling for elections in the southern
part of Korea. The elections were set to take place

(09:18):
on May tenth, ninety eight. They would affirm the division
of the Korean Peninsula between the communist North and capitalist south.
As the elections approached, people in the Workers Party planned
protests against them. On April third, ninety people from the
Workers Party, alongside other communist supporters, attacked police stations on Jju,

(09:42):
killed police officers, and destroyed polling centers. The reasoning behind
the uprising has been debated. The commander of the police
forces attempted to negotiate with guerilla leaders, but they could
not come to a peaceful resolution. The fighting continued, disrupting
the May tenth elections. The Republic of Korea, also known

(10:04):
as South Korea, was established in August of nineteen forty eight.
By October, the South Korean government was ramping up efforts
to squash the uprising. Martial law was declared, and the
campaign against rebel forces turned brutally violent. Tens of thousands
of people were killed in the uprising and it's aftermath,

(10:26):
and thousands more fled the island. The uprising was effectively
suppressed by May of nineteen forty nine, though sporadic fighting
continued over the next several years. The Korean War began
in June of nineteen fifty when North Korea invaded South Korea.
The existence of the Jaju Uprising and any investigations into

(10:49):
it were suppressed in South Korea in the decades after
it happened. The United States role in the suppression of
the uprising has been the subject of a lot of debate.
The South Korean police apologized for the massacre for the
first time in twenty nineteen. I'm Eve Jeff Cote, and
hopefully you know a little more about history today than

(11:11):
you did yesterday. You can give us a shout or
a share on social media at t d I h
C Podcast, and you can also send us an email
at this day at I heeart media dot com. Thanks
again for tuning into the show and we'll see you tomorrow.

(11:35):
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