Today I thought a change of pace would be in order, I know people tune in for the dark or mysterious tales of history but sometimes it’s just better to leave the heavy stuff for an episode or two. Today we will celebrate some of the mind-bending, bizarre, absurd, and downright unbelievable stories that have happened in history. Join us as we uncover the weirdest, wildest, and most WTF stories that have shaped the course of human history.
Hi everyone and welcome back to the dark history podcast where we explore the darkest parts of human history. hope everyone is well I’m Rob your host as always. Welcome to season 3 episode 6, WTF historical tales vol 1, these are going to be some of the most outrageous stories from history that make you go what the actual fuck is going on, some you may have heard them before abut others you may never have. believe me, there are tonnes of these so I will sprinkle these into the seasons going forward. I know in the past couple of episodes we haven't got down into the trenches of the death and destruction of years gone by, but the detritus and evil will return I thought maybe a little pallet cleanser would be in order from the moroseness that this channel some times can bring. Some of these stories may make you laugh, some may make you upset but all will make you say what the fuck.
Before start I want to thank today's sponsor history on the rock
So without further ado please turn off those lights sit back and relax next to the fire for more dark history.
To start we will travel to Brazil, a land of rainforests, white sandy beaches, carnivals and Confederate soldiers.
After the Civil War, Southerners who couldn't stand to live in a world without slavery slipped away from the United States and—just as the Nazis would do in the final days of World War II—fled to Brazil. It wasn't just a handful of Confederate soldiers who left the United States forever: Their numbers were somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000. Known as the Confederados, some of these men returned to the States following the Reconstruction, but many of them stayed in South America to build a life and a haven for some of the worst people in existence.
Fearing recrimination for fighting alongside the Confederate Army during the Civil War, many Southerners left the South in 1865. Former Confederate President Jefferson Davis and General Robert E. Lee pleaded with Southerners to stay put, but many of them refused to stick around and see how things worked out in the ashes of the Civil War, so mass immigration was soon underway. Some of them fled west to the western territories, but many former Confederates ventures south. They couldn't imagine a world where a landowner wasn't also allowed to own people, and slavery was still legal in Brazil, so it seemed like a natural fit.
Of course, there were plenty of countries where slavery was still legal in 1865, but Brazil wasn't just chosen at random. At the time, Brazil's cotton industry was just beginning to pick up steam, so Emperor Dom Pedro II offered tax incentives to anyone from the American South, known for its cotton plantations, who wanted a change of scenery. Eager to jump back into the fluffy white fray, Southern expats who had lost their land accepted the invitation by the thousands. They introduced South Americans to Southern cuisine like chess pie, had children, and created a lineage of people who felt indebted to the Confederacy long after its death.
The Confederados also considerably boosted the country's slave trade. In 1866, Charles G. Gunter, a former Alabama state representative, paid $12,500 for 40 slaves, a steal compared to what he would have paid a decade earlier in the United States. Other Confederate loyalists took part in the South American government, like Colonel William Hutchinson Norris, who served as imperial congressman for the state of São Paulo. Meanwhile, Major Lansford Hastings of Ohio—notable for creating the "Hastings Cutoff," the alleged shortcut to California that played a major factor in the Donner Party's final days—wrote The Emigrant's Guide to Brazil during his time in South America to bring in even more expats.
Despite the backing of Emperor Pedro and a still-robust Atlantic slave trade in South America, most Southerners were unable to recreate the plantation life that they were so obsessed with. They failed for several reasons, but primarily because they didn’t speak Portuguese and didn't know anyone. Without a hookup, there was no way to purchase slaves. Before they could find one, Brazil went and outlawed slavery in 1888, and the Confederados had no idea how to make a profit on cotton without free labour.
As their South American plantations failed and the patriarchs of Southern families started dying out, many Confederados either left Brazil for other parts of South America or returned to the Union following the end of Reconstruction. By then, the Jim Crow laws had once again ensured inequality in the South, so it wasn't a total loss, as far as they were concerned. Even today Near the town of Americana, there's an annual festival of the Fraternidade Descendência Americana, the brotherhood of Confederate descendants in Brazil, who meet up to pay respects to the failed Southern rebellion by flying Confederate flags and dining on fried chicken and vinegar pie.
For our second story, we head to 19th-century Paris. A city famous for romance you won't be surprised to know that city of light was the birthplace of the most kissed women in the world, but it's the way she has been kissed that will surprise you.
The Paris Morgue strived as a tourist attraction throughout the 19th century. Found in the year 1804, the morgue was located on Île de la Cité. At the time, Parisians began socializing and the free theatre was the Theatre of Death.
In 1864, it was shifted to a bigger location at the edge of the Seine River. There were two reasons for this.
One is to easily pick corpses off the streets and river. These were generally unidentified and the open morgue helped with the identification. Two, the area surrounding the river drew in a lot of tourists and visitors and provided increased visibility.
Needless to say, La Morgue was at the peak of attraction and was open every day of the week from early morning to 6 pm.
At the Morgue, the bodies were stripped naked, inspected, frozen, and then laid on blocks of black marble stones. Freezing water dripped from the ceiling to slow down decomposition. But this gave the dead a bloated, blotchy appearance. After three days, the bodies were removed due to decomposition and were replaced by a plaque or a wax cast.
There was young woman about 16 years of age found in the river of Seine. Though no cause of death was found, it was suspected that she had committed suicide.
An attendant at the morgue was fascinated by her calm smile and took a death mask off her face. Her body was put on display at the Theatre of Death. Her appearance drew in a lot of people (or so the legend says) and soon after her death mask was hung at the morgue, people started assembling for a likeness of the cast as a souvenir.
The mask started selling like hotcakes in gift and facsimile shops and everyone wanted one of the otherworldly plaster masks.
Soon, it became the fodder of creativity for writers, poets, and artists. Since, the poor, drowned girl was unidentified and her background unknown, people were able to romanticize her life story. A failed love story, perhaps? Maybe that is why she committed suicide.
Her mask spread from France to Britain, Germany, and other parts of Europe.
Asmund Laerdal was a toymaker based in Norway. In his early career, during the 1940s, he made children’s books and small toys made of wood. Later, he proceeded to make soft, malleable toys out of the newfound material called plastic. One of his most popular dolls was a female with half-closed, sleepy eyes and a calm smile called Anne.
It started one day when Laerdal’s son, Tore, fell into an unknown source of water and nearly drowned. Laerdal fished his son out of the water and pumped his chest to push the water out. Tore was saved. This incident made Laerdal sympathetic towards saving people from drowning.
When a group of anesthesiologists approached Laerdal to make a life-sized doll to train people on the process of CPR or Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation, Laerdal was immediately interested.
Keeping Anne as an inspiration, he wanted a face that moved people’s hearts. Then, he remembered the plaster mask of L’Inconnue de la Seine in his mother-in-law’s house and recreated its face for the CPR doll. The Mannequin was named Anne after the doll. It was later known as Resusci Anne.
The Mannequin had a collapsible chest for simulating compressions and a slightly open mouth for mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. He was especially firm on the doll being a female as the men at that time were reluctant to kiss a male doll.
Over the years, many CPR dolls came onto the market, but the most famous one was always Anne. Many practiced mouth-to-mouth resuscitations on Anne L’Inconnue de la Seine and hence, became the “most kissed” woman till today.
Our next and final two stories of this episode give meaning to the luck of the Irish.
Violet Jessop was born on 2nd October 1887 near the city of Bahía Blanca in Argentina. The daughter of Irish immigrants, William and Katherine Jessop, she moved to England at 16 following the death of her father. After initially enrolling in a convent school, Violet left to provide money for her large family when her mother became ill. She secured a job as a stewardess aboard the RMS Orinoco, travelling between England and the Caribbean.
In 1911, Violet joined White Star Line and was assigned a job on the company’s brand-new flagship ocean liner - the RMS Olympic.
Olympic was the first of three ‘Olympic-class’ transatlantic ocean liners built in Belfast to be the new gold standard in luxury transatlantic travel. Her sister ships were the Titanic and the Britannic.
While Violet was on the Olympic, the liner collided with the Royal Navy destroyer HMS Hawke in the Solent shortly after leaving Southampton. The Olympic was badly damaged and had to be returned to Belfast for extensive repairs. The incident cost White Star a fortune after an inquiry found the company to blame for the collision. This led not only to an enormous repair bill and loss of revenue but also a large legal bill.
In 1912, Violet was offered a position on the newly completed RMS Titanic. The heart-stopping collision with HMS Hawke aside, she had enjoyed her time at the Olympics and was reluctant to leave. However, a friend persuaded her that it would be a fantastic opportunity, so Violet took the job.
The Titanic set sail from Southampton on her maiden voyage on 12th April 1915. At 11:40 pm on the night of the 14th, Violet was preparing to go to bed when she heard a loud bang followed by a screeching noise. Dressing quickly, she went to investigate the noise and was horrified to discover that the ship had struck an iceberg. Violet was told to don her life vest and head up to the ship’s top deck - as she later put it in her memoirs – to serve as an example to passengers who could not speak English about how to behave in a crisis.
Eventually, Violet was ordered into a lifeboat. As it was lowered into the water, a baby was thrust into her arms by one of the ship’s officers. The lifeboat hit the water and rowed away. Nearly 1,500 people lost their lives that night.
Rescue came three hours later with the arrival of the RMS Carpathia. As Violet stood on deck, a woman snatched the baby from her arms and ran off. No record exists of what happened to the baby Violet carried to safety. The Carpathia sailed into New York and deposited the survivors of the Titanic disaster. Shortly after, Violet returned to Southampton.
Two years later, World War I broke out and Violet enrolled with the British Red Cross. Still working as a stewardess, she was assigned to the HMHS Britannic. The youngest of the ‘Olympic-class’ liners, Britannic was requisitioned by the Admiralty in 1915 to act as a hospital ship carrying troops wounded in the Gallipoli campaign from Greece to England.
On the Britannic’s fourth trip out on 16th November 1916, she struck a mine. The blast caused the ship to flood and fall to one side as it sank. Violet and her fellow crew members gathered on deck, awaiting the order to abandon the ship. Despite the order not being given, lifeboats - one of which contained Violet - were lowered into the water. The boats were pulled towards one of Britannic’s giant spinning propellers, which had lifted out of the sea as the ship listed further to its side.
To the horror of those looking on, the lifeboats were smashed to pieces. As blood spattered up the white hull of the Britannic, Violet jumped from her lifeboat, receiving a serious head injury after plunging into the sea. Luckily, she was pulled from the water after Britannic’s captain ordered the ship’s engines to stop. For the second time in four years, Violet watched one of the White Star Line’s mighty ocean liners sink beneath the waves.
After the war, Violet went back to work for White Star. Thankfully, her career following the sinking of Titanic and Britannic was blissfully uneventful. Violet also had stints working for the Red Star Line and the Royal Mail Line before retiring to a little cottage in Suffolk. The ‘unsinkable’ Violet Jessop died of congenital heart failure in 1971. She was 83 years old.
And finally, John McGrogan was born in 1861 in the Carrick Hill area of Belfast, the eldest of three boys.
In 1902 he married Anne (Hannah) Dougan.
John McGrogan was a merchant seaman for most of his life and spent many years at sea, working as a greaser onboard such ships as the Mauretania, Lusitania and the Olympic before joining Titanic in 1912 for the delivery trip from Belfast to Southampton.
McGrogan may have intended to continue on the Titanic to New York but on Wednesday, 10th April 1912 from Southampton John McGrogan was nowhere to be found. The story goes that while on shore leave in Southampton, John and another man had a few drinks too many and ended up so drunk that they missed the Titanic's sailing to Cherbourg. John and his friend attempted to catch the Titanic by taking a train to Fishguard and then a boat from there to Rosslare and then a train on down to Queenstown on the very southern tip of Ireland, to try and catch the Titanic but were a day too late so he and his mate decided to get drunk again. After a couple of days and now Low on funds, they then made their way to Dublin and hence back to Belfast ready to face the wrath of his wife. Of course on their journey back to Belfast Titanic had hit an iceberg and sank to the depths of the Atlantic ocean. Back in Belfast, the news had come through about the disaster and John's whole family believed that he had lost his life on Titanic. When John arrived at his home, cap in hand and fully expecting to be scolded by his wife, he was surprised to find mourners praying and doing the rosary. You can imagine the shock on these people's faces as John walked into his wake, and John who is expecting a bollocking off his wife finds out he's at his wake alive and well. Who says drinking isn't the answer?
Anyway, John McGrogan would later rejoin Titanic's sister ship Olympic. He served during World War I and died in 1933. He is buried at Miltown Cemetery, Belfast.
Thank you for taking the time out of your day to listen to this less-dark episode. Some of these stories are just utter madness Violet Jessop the unsinkable woman and John Mcgrogan the luckiest man to be alive at the time, both even survived World War 1.
The story of the Confederates emigrating to Brazil shocked me when I found it I never knew some of them did that in the hope of keeping an aporent trade alive. On the other hand, I had heard the story of Resusci Anne before and i think its quite a sad story, what makes it sad is though her face is famous now and we know nothing about the actual woman's life, it brings into perspective our mark on the world and how we will be remembered if at all.
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