As it sometimes does, this week's topic presented itself to me. Determined to find out why the little known story of a woman most people have never heard of needed to be told so badly, I dug in. Join me to uncover the story of Grace Sherwood for yourself, the only woman ever to be convicted of witchcraft in Virginia. We'll examine the factors that led to Grace's conviction and the "recipe" for witch hunts that has plagued our past and potentially (but hopefully not!) our future.

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• Join the Patreon (patreon.com/historyfixpodcast)
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Sources:

• Transcripts of Grace Sherwood's trial for witchcraft
• "A Place In Time: The Age of the Witch of Pungo" by Belinda Nash and Danielle Sheets
• Salem Witch Museum "Grace Sherwood: the 'Witch' of Pungo"
• Ferry Plantation "Trial of Grace Sherwood - the Witch of Pungo"
• Virginia Museum of History and Culture "Grace Sherwood: the 'Witch of Pungo'"
• The Washington Post "Va. Gov. Gives Informal Pardon to Witch"
• Wikipedia "Grace Sherwood"

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Welcome to Spooktober! It's my favorite month on History Fix because I get to bust out all of the spooky stories I've been saving. This week, we're talking about the notorious serial killer who operated in New Orleans in the nineteen teens known as the Axeman. The Axeman attacked strictly Italian grocers, breaking into their houses with stolen axes to bludgeon them to death. This guy has been embraced by popular culture, appearing on television shows like American Horror Story, not because of his brutal acts or the fact that we still have no idea who he was today. He's been embraced mostly because of a letter that was published in the local newspaper purporting that he loved jazz music and would spare anyone listening to jazz on a particular night in the spring of 1919. But who was the Axeman? And what does any of this have to do with jazz? Let's fix that.

Support the show!

• Join the Patreon (patreon.com/historyfixpodcast)
• Buy some merch
• Buy Me a Coffee
• Venmo @Shea-LaFountaine

Sources:

• "The Axeman of New Orleans: The True Story" by Miriam Davis
• Country Roads Magazine "The Axeman of New Orleans"
• Smithsonian Magazine "The Axeman of New Orleans Preyed on Italian Immigrants"
• The Historic New Orleans Collection "The Mysterious Axeman's Jazz"
• Wikipedia "Axeman of New Orleans"

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I'm back again this week with four more "lost cities" for you. First we'll explore the Egyptian city of Thonis-Heracleion that literally sank beneath the Mediterranean Sea and was rediscovered some 1,200 years later. Next, we'll hop over to Jordan to discover the ancient Nabataean city of Petra with it's grand facades etched into the red rock landscape. After that it's off to Cambodia to learn about the not actually lost at all Khmer city of Angkor. And finally the mountains of Peru where majestic and little understood Machu Picchu looms among the picturesque peaks. But, while it's fun to think about "lost cities," the obvious lesson of this week's episode is: be careful what you call "lost" and be careful how easily you throw out the term "discovered." These words carry weight and they've already caused a lot of damage. Let's fix that.

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• Join the Patreon (patreon.com/historyfixpodcast)
• Buy some merch
• Buy Me a Coffee
• Venmo @Shea-LaFountaine

Sources:

• The Guardian "Lost Cities #6: how Thonis-Heracleion resurfaced after 1,000 years under water"
• The British Museum "Timeline of Ancient Egypt"
• Franckgoddio.org "Sunken Civilizations"
• National Geographic "Who built the 'lost city' of Petra and why did they leave?"
• Natural History Museum of Utah "Angkor: The 'Lost City' That Never Needed to be Discovered"
• Wikipedia "Angkor"
• Wikipedia "Machu Picchu"

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We'll be visiting 8 lost cities over the next couple of weeks! This week we'll journey to an ancient city of mythic proportions that most thought to be fictional until it was actually discovered in the mid 1800s: Troy of Homer's Iliad fame. Next we'll make our way to southern Pakistan to explore the ruins of the completely unknown and yet stunningly advanced city of Mohenjo Daro. Then we'll hop the pond to the jungles of Guatemala to get lost in the sprawling Maya capital city of El Mirador. And finally, we'll revisit Pompeii, an ancient Roman time capsule completely preserved in volcanic ash.

Support the show!

• Join the Patreon (patreon.com/historyfixpodcast)
• Buy some merch
• Buy Me a Coffee
• Venmo @Shea-LaFountaine

Sources:

• The British Museum "The search for the lost city of Troy"
• BBC "Did the Trojan War actually happen?
• BBC "Pakistan's lost city of 40,000 people"
• National Geographic "Recovering the lost city of Mohenjo Daro"
• Smithsonian Magazine "El Mirador, the Lost City of the Maya"
• Wikipedia "El Mirador"
• History Fix Episode 18 "Pompeii"

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William Shakespeare is undoubtedly one of the greatest literary geniuses of all time. Author of over 30 plays and over 150 poems, he masterfully knit together over 20,000 English words, all out inventing some 1,700 of them, to beautifully capture full ranges of complex emotions and subtle nuances of human nature that still capture audiences over 400 years later. Pretty impressive for a 16th century man from a modest family with only a grammar school education, illiterate parents, illiterate children, who never left the country, didn’t seem to own any books, and has no surviving handwritten letters or documents of any kind today. So impressive, in fact, it actually raises some pretty big questions. How exactly did a man like William Shakespeare write such an impressive collection of literary masterpieces? Or didn’t he? Let’s fix that.

Support the show!

• Join the Patreon (patreon.com/historyfixpodcast)
• Buy some merch
• Buy Me a Coffee
• Venmo @Shea-LaFountaine

Sources:

• poets.org "About William Shakespeare"
• Shakespeare Birthplace Trust "William Shakespeare Biography"
• shakespeareauthorship.com "How Do We Know That Shakespeare Wrote Shakespeare?"
• History Extra "The Globe Theatre Fire of 1613"
• Book Brunch "The British and Reading: a Short History"
• Shakespeare Birthplace Trust "Shakespeare's Words"
• History.com "10 Things You Didn't Know About William Shakespeare"
• Encyclopedia Britannica "William Shakespeare"
• biography.com "Was Shakespeare the Real Author of His Plays?"
• EBSCO "Shakespeare Authorship Question"
• Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship "How Wrote Shakespeare? Shakespeare Authorship 101"

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In this week's episode, I delve farther into one of the character's from last week's episode about the War of the Roses: Richard III. Richard is a highly misunderstood historical figure, whose reputation was tainted by later Tudor propaganda during the reigns of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, the son and granddaughter of his usurper, Henry VII. But how much of that reputation was deserved? And, possibly more interesting, what did we learn from the 2012 discovery of Richard's body crammed unadorned and coffin-less into a too small grave beneath a parking lot in Leicester, England? Let's fix that.

Support the show!

• Join the Patreon (patreon.com/historyfixpodcast)
• Buy some merch
• Buy Me a Coffee
• Venmo @Shea-LaFountaine

Sources:

• Historic UK "The life of King Edward IV"
• Cambridge University "Deciphering Two Opaque Sources on the Death of King Edward IV of England"
• History Hit "Bosworth Field - Actual Site"
• King Richard III Visitor's Center "An Incredible Discovery"
• University of Leicester "The King's Grave"
• University of Leicester "Injuries"
• CNN "Five things we've learned about Richard III since he was found"

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Link to family tree! Game of Thrones is typically considered to be the most popular television show of all time based on its massive global reach and deep cultural impact. If you haven’t seen it, it’s an 8 season historical fantasy series based on a book series by George R. R. Martin about different houses, different families, the Starks, the Lannisters, the Targaryens, the Baratheons, all battling and plotting and backstabbing each other to try to sit on the iron throne. It’s pretty awesome. It’s definitely worth watching. But this episode isn’t about Game of Thrones, not the fictional one anyway. It’s about the real life game of thrones that went down in 15th century England, the inspiration for the books and the show, the War of the Roses. In today's story the House of Lancaster and the House of York will duke it out, not for the iron throne, but for the throne of England an an unlikely victor will arise.

Support the show!

• Join the Patreon (patreon.com/historyfixpodcast)
• Buy some merch
• Buy Me a Coffee
• Venmo @Shea-LaFountaine

Sources:

• Encyclopedia Britannica "War of the Roses"
• British Library "The bride's journey"
• Historic Royal Palaces "The Princes in the Tower"
• Wikipedia "John of Gaunt"
• Heritage History "Henry VII"
• Wikipedia "War of the Roses"
• History.com "War of the Roses"
• ThoughtCo "War of the Roses: An Overview"

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In this episode, I tackle the history of education from prehistoric hunter-gatherer days all the way to today. We'll look at the many motives that have shaped the education and formal schooling of children from the agricultural revolution, through ancient times, to the protestant reformation and the industrial revolution. Through it all, motives have been... questionable. We educated children because we needed them to work the land. We educated them because we needed to train them as future politicians and soldiers. We needed them to be scribes. We needed them to be able to read the Bible. We needed them to be factory workers. But what about the children? What about what's best for them? Let's fix that.

Support the show!

• Join the Patreon (patreon.com/historyfixpodcast)
• Buy some merch
• Buy Me a Coffee
• Venmo @Shea-LaFountaine

Sources:

• Peter Gray "A Brief History of Education"
• PBS Only a Teacher Schoolhouse Pioneers "Horace Mann"
• Duke Sanford Center for Strategic Philanthropy and Civil Society "General Education Board"
• Marathon County Historical Society "A Day in a One Room Schoolhouse"
• Think International Schools "The Evolution of Education: A Journey Through Time"
• Center of Education Policy "History and Evolution of Public Education in the US"
• Wikipedia "History of Education"

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