Stuff You Missed in History Class

This 2015 episode delves into carousels. They're part of childhood, but they were originally billed as an entertainment for adults and children alike. And even further back than that, it's believed that they were used to train horsemen.

Tracy shares the logistics of assembling her lists for Unearthed!, and she and Holly talk about criteria for leaving details out of the show on purpose. They also discuss confusion over days off, and Holly's excitement about Dutch Golden Age paintings.

In the second part of the year-end edition of Unearthed! the show covers necropolises and art, and edibles and potables, shipwrecks, and potpourri. But there are also a few last-minute additions to the list before the potpourri!

It's time for what was unearthed in the last quarter of 2021! Part one this time includes lots of updates to previous episodes, as well as books and letters, exhumations and and repatriations.

This 2014 episode discusses Jules Verreaux and his two brothers, who collected an impressive array of flora and fauna specimens from around the world for placement with museums and collectors. They also did some really unsavory things that had long-term ramifications.

Tracy and Holly discuss the natural tendency to find the platypus suspect as an animal. They also talk about some of the tangential pieces of the Cyrano story that didn't make it into Wednesday's episode.

Cyrano de Bergerac is often called a man of letters, a philosopher, a soldier, a duelist, a playwright and many more things. But what he may have been best at was self-invention. His real story is blurry to begin with, and he contributed to that blur, but it’s been even more obscured obscured over the centuries by the fictionalized versions of his life.

When European naturalists saw a platypus for the first time, they found it so bizarre that they thought it was fake, and then argued about how to classify it for almost a century. This happened in tandem with similar discussions about another Australian animal – the echidna, or spiny anteater – and discussions of scientific taxonomy in general. 

This 2016 episode covers the Piltdown Man, which is one of the world's most infamous instances of scientific fraud. It derailed the study of evolution for decades. How exactly did scientists in 1912 fall so completely for a hoax?

Holly and Tracy discuss Daguerre's life, and veer off into VR, and the nature of Daguerre's monetization of photography. Then they talk about the famously handsome Cornelius and the importance of photography to our modern world.

Cornelius is famous for having taken what’s often called the world’s first selfie - and he's noted for how handsome he looks in it. But he was smart and inventive in a variety of ways, and he innovated in lighting fixtures the same way he did with photography.

Daguerre comes up almost any time we mention photography, but we’ve never covered his life story. Well before he figured out how to capture images through a camera obscura, he was an artist and innovator in entertainment.

This 2018 episode takes a look at three creative works that have become staples of the Christmas season. All three of them have played a huge part in how people observe and celebrate Christmas in parts of the world, and they all had milestone birthdays that year.

Tracy and Holly discuss Tracy being frightened by Ichabod Crane's fate in the Disney Sleepy Hollow cartoon as a kid, and the letters between Dickens and Irving. They then discuss the trickiness of researching a historical topic that has the same name as a band.

You may recognize the name as that of a band, but Jethro Tull was an 18th-century gentleman farmer often credited with inventing the seed drill.

Washington Irving may come to mind more in connection with Halloween, but his writing had a significant influence on the way Christmas is celebrated in the U.S.

This 2014 episode covers the life of a woman who was smart and learned, but not a particularly good ruler. Her entire life was marked by being kind of a contradictory, restless character - starting basically from the moment she was born.

Tracy and Holly discuss their preferences in ways the Nutcracker should be staged, and their love of it from the audience and performer perspectives. Then they compare notes on Caesar salads, anchovies, and the troubles with Sylvester Graham.

This eponymous food episode features a(nother) salad that came together improvisationally out of necessity, and a cracker made to align with specific dietary guidelines, with a namesake who would undoubtedly be horrified at how that item has evolved.