This week we're talking about the Vietnam War, one of the most unpopular wars in US history. Tomorrow is Memorial Day and while I very much want to honor and remember the over 58,000 Americans who lost their lives fighting for their country in Vietnam, around one third of them drafted, that’s not exactly the focus of this episode. Instead, I want to explore a side to the war we don’t often think about. I want to explore what happens if you’re drafted, but you know you can’t do it. You can’t go fight in a war, kill people, lots of people, for a cause you don’t believe in, a war you are morally opposed to. Because for many, that was the reality. So what are you going to do? What options do you have? Join me and special guest Bruce Wasser, author of "90: A Conscientious Objector's Journey of Quiet Resistance" to uncover Bruce's experience as a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War.

Purchase Bruce's book here!

Check your birthdate draft number here

Watch a video of the December 1, 1969 birthdate draft lottery here

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Sources:

• BBC "The Vietnam War"
• History.com "How the Vietnam War Ratcheted Up Under 5 US Presidents"
• Selective Service System "Vietnam Lotteries"
• PHData "Analyzing the 1969 Vietnam War Draft Lottery"

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This week I’m very excited to share with you some recent developments in the story of the “Lost Colony” of Roanoke. I’m joined by Scott Dawson, who runs the Lost Colony Museum in the town of Buxton, on Hatteras Island. For a long time, Scott has been working with British archaeologist Dr. Mark Horton to excavate sites of old Native American villages in Buxton, left by a group known as the Croatoan. What they have discovered recently may just be the first real “smoking gun” evidence to prove what really happened to the colonists. And, no spoilers, but it’s pretty much exactly what we should have already realized happened.

Support the Croatoan Archaeological Society here! - cashatteras.com

Earlier Roanoke Colony Episodes - Episode 27 (part 1) and episode 28 (part 2)

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Sources:

• "The Head in Edward Nugent's Hand" by Michael Leroy Oberg
• Island Free Press "‘Smoking gun’ evidence of Lost Colony’s relocation to Hatteras Island makes international news"

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This episode is all about the history of feeding babies which has been necessary and yet surprisingly difficult since the beginning of mankind. In fact, it's so necessary that to forgo it, up until very recently, the last hundred years or so, was a death sentence for the infant. We don’t often think about feeding babies. It’s something mothers take care of behind the scenes, part of the invisible load. We certainly don’t pause to think about the history of it, the immense challenges faced throughout the ages. But we should. As necessary as infant feeding is, as necessary as it has always been, society still does not make it easy for mothers to pull off. And that should concern you, even if you aren’t a mother, even if you aren’t a baby. Because you were once, and so was I, and so was literally everyone. Let’s fix that.

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• Join the Patreon (patreon.com/historyfixpodcast)
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• Buy Me a Coffee
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Sources:

• The Journal of Perinatal Education "A History of Infant Feeding" by Stevens, Patrick, and Pickler
• CDC "Trends in Breastfeeding Among American Mothers"
• US Department of Labor "FLSA Protections to Pump at Work"
• Mamava "The History of Breastfeeding"
• GinPolMed Project "A history of breastfeeding"
• Time Magazine "Desperate Women, Desperate Doctors and the Surprising History Behind the Breastfeeding Debate"
• NC Health News "Distant echoes of slavery affect breastfeeding attitudes of Black women"

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This week, we'll continue digging into the story of infamous Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler, beginning where we left off last week with the Reichstag Fire, a suspicious incident that led to the destruction of democracy and withdrawal of civil liberties in Germany. As you'll see, once those civil liberties were gone, Hitler was free to do as he pleased and what "he pleased" happened to include a world war and the mass murders of millions. We'll examine how it all went down, how he was finally stopped, and assess the risk of another Hitler-like monster rising to power today.

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

Sources:

• National WWII Museum "How did Adolf Hitler Happen?"
• History.com "Adolf Hitler"
• BBC "Adolf Hitler: Man and Monster"
• Time Magazine "Adolf Hitler: Man of the Year, 1938"
• The Atlantic "How Hitler Dismantled a Democracy in 53 Days"
• The Conversation "Understanding how Hitler became German helps us with modern-day extremists"
• The Atlantic "What the Press Got Wrong About Hitler"
• History Extra "Hitler's millionaire backers: how Germany's elite facilitated the rise of the Nazis"
• The Globalist "Trump and Hitler: How Accurate a Comparison?"
• Vanity Fair "Hitler's Doomed Angel"
• BBC "Hitler's Appointment as Chancellor, 1933"
• Wikipedia "Hitler Family"
• US Holocaust Memorial Museum "How and why did ordinary people across Europe contribute to the persecution of their Jewish neighbors
• Jewish Virtual Library "When Did the World Find Out About the Holocaust?"
• Smithsonian Magazine "The True Story of the Reichstag Power and the Nazi Rise to Power"
• US Holocaust Memorial Museum "The Reichstag Fire"

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Throughout all of history there is one name that rises above all the others possibly as the most depraved, heinous, vile human being ever to have walked the planet. Humans worldwide almost unanimously agree, some from the start but most in hindsight, that this man was pure evil. Yes, I am talking of course about the infamous dictator Adolf Hitler. BBC writes quote “Few names from history inspire such immediate and emphatic revulsion as that of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. His hands are stained with the blood of millions killed in the devastation of the Second World War and the horror of the Holocaust. But Hitler was not born a brutal tyrant, he became one,” end quote. He became one. Well that begs the question, of course, how did he become one? How does a normal Austrian boy born to a family of modest means come to take over another country’s government so fully that he acquires the power to engage the entire world in a bloody war while simultaneously murdering millions of innocent men, women, and children? Oh, what, you thought Hitler was German? Turns out, there’s a lot the masses don’t know about Adolf Hitler and his rise to power. And as we well know, to forget history is to risk repeating it. Let’s fix that.

Support the show!

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

Sources:

• National WWII Museum "How did Adolf Hitler Happen?"
• History.com "Adolf Hitler"
• BBC "Adolf Hitler: Man and Monster"
• Time Magazine "Adolf Hitler: Man of the Year, 1938"
• The Atlantic "How Hitler Dismantled a Democracy in 53 Days"
• The Conversation "Understanding how Hitler became German helps us with modern-day extremists"
• The Atlantic "What the Press Got Wrong About Hitler"
• History Extra "Hitler's millionaire backers: how Germany's elite facilitated the rise of the Nazis"
• The Globalist "Trump and Hitler: How Accurate a Comparison?"
• Vanity Fair "Hitler's Doomed Angel"
• BBC "Hitler's Appointment as Chancellor, 1933"
• Wikipedia "Hitler Family"

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In April of 1722 Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen and his crew stumbled upon a tiny island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. They sailed for the Dutch West India Company in search of Terra Australis Incognita, a hypothetical undiscovered continent that doesn’t actually exist. The land they found instead was just a 64 square mile speck some 1,200 miles from the nearest island and over 2,000 miles from the nearest continent. This island, which they spotted on Easter Sunday, was incredibly small and incredibly remote. And yet, remarkably, there seemed to be people living there. Roggeveen and his crew were confused, as were the handful of Europeans who made occasional landfall in the centuries that followed. None of them could understand the mysterious people of Easter Island. Where did they come from? How did they get there? Why did they carve massive stone heads? How did they move them? There were so many unanswered questions that have led to a complete lack of answers even today. But the real mystery is, why didn’t anyone just ask the Rapanui people themselves? Perhaps, if they had, Easter Island, Rapa Nui wouldn't be the mystery it is today. Join me this week to finally learn about Rapa Nui. We’ll examine recent DNA evidence that completely debunks past theories and we’ll finally listen to the Rapanui people whose rich oral traditions, storytelling, have survived despite it all.

Support the show!

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

Sources:

• UNESCO "Rapa Nui National Park"
• Smithsonian Magazine "The Secrets of Easter Island"
• Smithsonian Magazine "Easter Island's Ancient Population Never Faced Ecological Collapse, Suggests Another Study
• Nature "Ancient Rapanui genomes reveal resilience and pre-European contact with the Americas
• EBSCO "European Discovery of Easter Island"
• Wikipedia "History of Easter Island"
• PBS NOVA Online "Secrets of Easter Island"

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In the 1950s, a strange story emerged about a ship called the USS Eldridge docked at a naval shipyard in Philadelphia. According to a man aboard another ship docked nearby, in October of 1948 the hull of the Eldridge suddenly glowed an eery blueish green and then the entire ship disappeared, became invisible. But that's not all. After it turned invisible, it then suddenly teleported 300 miles away to another naval shipyard in Norfolk, Virginia and back. The crew aboard the Eldridge reportedly suffered ill effects, disorientation, burns, and some of them even had body parts fused to the hull of the ship. This witness, a man named Carl Allen or sometimes Carlos Allende, claimed that what he had seen was a top secret government experiment gone wrong, an experiment that had been covered up ever since. But what was the Philadelphia Experiment really - a government conspiracy or a hoax turned urban legend? Let's fix that.

Support the show!

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

Sources:

• Naval History and Heritage Command "Philadelphia Experiment"
• Wikipedia "Philadelphia Experiment"
• Military.com "This Is the Truth Behind WWII's Creepy Philadelphia Experiment"
• Wikipedia "Carl Meredith Allen"
• ussslater.org "Destroyer Escort Anecdotes"
• How Stuff Works "How the Philadelphia Experiment Worked"
• Skeptical Inquirer "Solving a UFOlogical Murder: The Case of Morris K. Jessup"
• Wikipedia "Morris Ketchum Jesup"

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This week we're exploring what is, quite possibly, the weirdest and most mysterious of all the holidays: April Fools' Day. The real trick? No one even knows where this holiday came from or why we celebrate it. We'll dive in to some of the origin theories, from ancient Rome to medieval fables to Renaissance poetry. We'll also take a look how the holiday has evolved throughout time, including some of the greatest pranks ever pulled on April Fools' Day.

Support the show!

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

Sources:

• Library of Congress Blogs "April Fools: The Roots of an International Holiday"
• History.com "April Fools' Day"
• NPR "April Fools' Day might be the world's longest running joke. No one knows how it began"
• A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities
• BU Today "How a BU Prof April-Fooled the Country"
• Encyclopedia Britannica "Julian Calendar"
• History.com "9 Outrageous Pranks in History"

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