Unhinged History
Unhinged History is a history podcast combining humor and the crazy stories you never learned in school. Theresa and Angie explore antics and hijinks throughout history. Each week they come together and share the bizarre stories they’ve only recently learned. Uncover facts like Napoleon getting attacked by bunnies or details of the Beer Flood of 1814. Their favorite topics cover historical hoaxes, random war stories, unsolved mysteries, spies, and stories that make you question everything you thought you knew.
Episodes
In another week of unexpected history, Theresa kicks things off with a story from Brazil. Meet Antonio Conselheiro, a man crushed by life who turns to following God. He wanders the back country of Brazil, preaching the Good News and fixing churches. He ends up building a community with recently freed Black people who have nowhere else to turn.
Because no good deed goes unpunished, farmers who lost their laborers raise an army, and...
Each week, we come up with some absolutely bonkers stories, and this week is no different.
Angie shares how Holland dealt with an unpopular Grand Pensionary (think prime minister). Johan de Witt sparked such anger among the crowd that on August 20, 1672, they tore him apart and ate his remains.
Theresa gingerly side-steps the cannibalism and shares how Cherokee Chief Sequoyah fell in love with the concept of written language and ...
Way back when King James II was attempting to bring his bride to England, her voyage hit some bad weather. So he blamed witches. Angie shares the North Berwick Witch Trials and how the king later regrets them. Theresa takes things down a dark path as she wades into some true crime, telling the story of the Lady of Crescent Lake. Come for the terrible relationship where the wife goes missing. Stay for the part where the lake relin...
Join us as Theresa kicks off the spooky season by sharing the origins of her favorite book, Frankenstein. She takes us through all the scientific advancements leading to the creation of the favorite creature. From resuscitating drowning victims to using electricity to generate muscle spasms in corpses, science hinted that reanimating the dead was just around the corner.
Theresa also shares some of the darker parts of Mary Shelley’...
Angie continues with her love affair with SAS member Paddy Mayne. Join us as she takes us through his work during WWII. Paddy is quite the hero. While demurely accepting medals for his valor, our favorite Irishman is leading his troops miles behind enemy lines and making the lives of the Axis powers rough.
This story pairs well with: Paddy Mane’s Intro to the SAS
Angie is riding her Paddy Mane trip for the second week. This week, she covered Paddy Mane's tumultuous start to military service and how he met the founders of the SAS.
Theresa takes us in a wildly different direction as she circles back on a previous story. Before she'd covered William Riker, the cult-founder of Holy City in episode 132. Today she covers William Riker's lawyer, Melvin Belli. This man fired a cannon from the roof...
History is strange and weird. Today's mash-up of stories proves it.
Theresa picks up where she left off last week. (Last week, she shared about that time North Korea sent 31 commandos into South Korea to take out their president.) This week, South Korea responds by forming its own squad, only spoiler alert: things go fantastically awry.
Angie collects her bearings before sharing the early years of her favorite SAS member, "Paddy" B...
History is jam-packed with stories you've never heard, and today's episode brings together two such tales. Angie starts with sharing Josef Mencik – the last knight, or the Knight of Strakonice. This Czech man of noble standing starts to enter the historical narrative by buying a castle, a suit of armour, and then stands up to a Nazi tank division.
Theresa takes the rest of the episode in a wildly different direction when she shares...
Do you remember how, in the past, Theresa and Angie explained the start of WWI as that time a Serbian shot an Austrian, so Britain declared war on Germany?
Well today, Theresa does a deep dive and explains how a secretive organization within the Serbian government referred to as The Black Hand is the group that trained the assassins who killed Archduke Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie.
This episode pairs well with:
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