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To Monday to to read the epic friction: podcast two men returns are women before oh, yes, you have no choice? It has to be done. What have you done? Listen only. I ha radio broadcasts. Wherever you get your broadcasts, Everybody here is an episode from our ten episode, playlists that recalling off history yeah we're adding this too, are our regular publishing schedule as one kind of big drop all at the same time on March nineteenth, and that is southern that you Baby have a little bit of extra entertainment options available to you, particularly if you are self quarantined or sheltering,

welcome to stuff you missed in history class, a production of Iheart radio, hello and welcomes the buyer cast I'm Tracy. We will then I'm Holly fried. So how do you know how sometimes, when something terrible is happening, that we just can't look away from waste? They like watching a train wreck? Yes, yes, although people do describe actual catastrophes and strain lacks a lot of times, it's something a lot less tangible with way less risk of injury or death law big bad speeches or product launches that go really terrible, like really crimson cringe, where tv shows things that are not really ready.

Dammit things that are not really gonna cost somebody to actually die. We describe as like watching a train wreck, and I always thought that was on a weird, but we would doesn't, like you know, somebody's talent, show entry. That's just awful that you just can't stop staring out like why we would describe that is like asking a it turns out that for a brief window from the late eighteen. Hundreds into the early nineteen hundred people in the United States or watching train rex for fun it's hard to come up with exact tally of how many of them there were, because there were seven different people who were arranging these things, indifferent venues over the span of about forty years. There were definitely at least seventy five planned train rex to watch for fun most playing out in the south. Western and midwestern United States often had events like state fares,

that's weird recover my ears. Eyes we of some other women when I got married and we merged our households. We found that we had multiples of things Somehow we may be all we had three microwaves, two which were pretty good and one which was really junkie. So we get The really good went away to somebody who needed one and then the junkie one we took out on the back patio. We blew stuff up in it, so I kind of endless train wreck. When I was a kid. My element school, had Halloween carnival every year and one of the things that they would do for those Halloween Karnak Carnival is that they would go by a really junkie used car and you could pay a dollar two. To take a swing at it with a baseball bat. Yes, so yes, this is, it still seems weird Thoap says what we're gonna talk about today

also I had spent like we needed a little bit of a lighter topic. We ve had some heavier things latelies to buy in particular, though, had researched some really heavy stuff in it. So I was like to do some goofy. I will say this is mostly goofy. It does have a little bit a tragedy, but is overall, weird and fun. Yes, the concept of some one going hey, let's stage some Rex, so we can all get them. There is an inherent level of comedy there. Yes, so we are going to start there with the one that they actually have a few fatalities. This is them the famous and most deadly of the United States Trade stage train Rex, and it was known as the crash at crush, which took place in September were of eighteen. Ninety six in this the brainchild of William George Crush passenger agent at the Missouri Kansas Texas, railroad company, also known as the Katy would

shortened down from its initials MP by eating be five. The year before this event took place. The Katy had a hundred and thirty three locomotives and a hundred and sixty three cars. William George crash came up with this idea to try to drum up some publicity for the railroad and to sell tickets on the railroad. The railroad was really in fighting no danger in any way, but the nation was just starting to come out of the panic of eighteen. Ninety three, so the Katy was definitely interested in protecting its bottom line. The railroad was all also in the process of replacing its thirty five tonne locomotives with sixty tonne models so crash proposed. They take two of those retired thirty five time locomotives and smash them together. It really is just my microwave the venue that he proposed for

states, train wreck would be a pop up. Town named crush located about fifteen miles north of Waco and about three miles south of the town of West, conveniently close to the existing Waco Dallas track. The designated but was in a small valley with hills on three sides making a natural. Amphitheatre with plenty of viewing locations. They'd supplement this with things like arrest, or on a grand stand and carnival attractions selling you dollar round trip tickets on the Katy to get there and back the Katy had some concerns about the safety of this scheme. Namely that the boilers of or one or both of locomotives might explode on impact. So they ask the opinions of several of the railroads engineers all but one of whom agreed that the risk of an explosion was low, so William Crash was given the go ahead to proceed.

First. They laid track from the existing Waco, Dallas, Mime terminal, edit two thousand one hundred foot, but six hundred and forty meter depot platform COM with a sign telling passengers that they had arrived at crush There was also a stretch of track for the two trains to travel down and crash into each other, which followed natural slopes of the land, and this gave the track as downward greed from each and toward the middle, which would help the locomotives pick up more speed. Locomotive, nine hundred and ninety nine one thousand, and one were chosen for the crash with one painted green with red trim and the other painted red with green trim for their pop up town. They drilled wells and installed spigots for freshwater along the spectator area, William Crush, which was apparently his fortuitous, but actual real name was friends with Pt Barnum. So she borrowed a circus tent from Barnum to house a restaurant. They also constructed lemon

stands to telegraph offices, a stand for reporters and a they built, a wooden jail which I found found. One source, saying that that was made out of a caboose. They hide two hundred constables to patrol I'm a day, and they also made plans for a huge carnival com with games and medicine shows and a variety of other diversions. Clearly they were expecting this to be a party William Crush and Katy advertise the spectacle heavily all through the summer of eighteen. Ninety six calling it the monster, crash the crash and the preparations for it became regular news items all throughout the Texas papers and outside the state is well organised, There's fielded queries from all over the country and in the days leading up to the actual event, William Crush estimated, that there would be fifteen thousand to twenty thousand spectators

William Crush, had arranged for thirty three trains to provide passenger service to crush and the Katy started, dropping passengers around dawn on September, fifteenth, eighteen, ninety six by ten and therein there were at least ten thousand people already on the scene. They were picnicking and playing games and listening to political speeches. While they waited more trains kept arrive, all through the morning and afternoon, some of them so crowded that people were riding on the roofs of the cars the monster crash was, Post to start at four. But people still arriving as that our drew near so they delayed the start until five p m, at which point there were about forty thousand people their double. What William Crush had estimate in first, the two locomotives came together. You're very slowly on track and touched their cow catcher together. That's that little great looking thing

The right of a locomotive they touch their cow together, kind of like boxers, touching their gloves before a match. Then they were reversed apart again and William, crush on horseback raised, hat into the air and whipped it down to give the signal for the wreck to officially begin the two local mode, lives pulling empty box cars that we're festoon with advertisements and decorations then began toward each other and picking up speed. There engineer pull their whistle cords and tied them down than jumped clear and ran away from the track. The estimated that at the moment of impact each locomotive was travelling at about fifty miles per hour when they crashed into each other. The collision was incredibly violate the box cars. Unsurprisingly, shattered into splinters, but the locomotives didn't behave as they expected Org.

Others have thought thought they would basically push each other up into an inverted viii and they would expand most of that energy and upward trajectory of doing that. It was more like squeezing accordion are collapsing, a telescope and the two giant locomotives just folded into each other and then to the prize of everyone, except perhaps that one scenting engineer, both their boilers exploded scalding, water and flying debris from the locomotives, including pieces of iron and steel of all shapes and sizes fleet, into the crowd most. Of whom were along the hills. At least two hundred yards away. At least two people were killed. How there's some account say there were three earnest darnel who had but who had climbed up a mesquite tree to watch was hit with a ten pound linked the brake chain

killed instantly. A young girl was it with a chunk of iron that fractured her skull, and although she was reported to be resting, comfortably afterward, she died on the way home. There is a third and John Morrison who survived the wreck itself, but fell between train cars on the way home and was run over by the train and died haven't quite figured out. If that is the third person, some of the counts refer to as being killed or if that was a separate issue, there were also a lot of injuries from the flying debris in boiling water than at least six of those were serious, and some of them were sustained more than a mile away from the actual crash J C d a photographer from Waco, had been hired to take pictures of the event. He lost an eye when a bolt from the wreck tore through it. His response was to get up and keep working telling his brothers

We are also photographers how to finish the shot that he had been framing, even in the midst of all this chaos in the tragedy that is unfolding, souvenir seekers rushed and try to claim pieces of the wreck. Record trains hold off the biggest remaining pieces. After the event was over, people began to leave the temporary town of crush. As soon as the advance had finished, workers struck the ten and the other structures erected for the town and the whole thing was a really gone by nightfall. William crush was fired immediately, but then officials at the Katy realized they had an incredibly profitable day in spite of the tragedy, so they hired him back. The next and he worked at the railroad until his retirement and his in nineteen. Forty. The Katy began quickly and quietly settling lawsuits and paying compensation to the people who had been injured and the families of those who had

killed, photographer Gc Deem was paid ten thousand dollars and given a lifetime pass on the train, there was merely of much public condemnation, as we might expect from an event killed at least two spectators and injured many others, but the news reporting at the time was actually relatively pragmatic about it, a few weeks after the crash crush composer and pianist Scott Joplin, published his great crush collision March, Joplin would go on to be known as the king of Ragtime, whose most famous pieces include maple Leafs rag and the entertainer, which would become the theme music for the nineteen. Seventy three film, the sting starring, Paul Newman Robber, Redford and Robert Shaw it is unclear whether Joplin was actually at the crash, but the great crush collision Marge was one of his earliest public. Pieces of music and a relatively early example of ragtime, which is a distinctly african american form of Music

it was at the height of its popularity from the MID eighteen nineties through the nineteen teens and we're gonna linked to that in the show. No, so people can listen to it. Scott Joplin is the reason I took p. No lessons as a child really yeah love it and the part of me that wants to do episode about. Him is at odds with the part of me that that does not like the sad aspect of story. Which is as death at a very early age from untreated syphilis. So the gaiety three waves of financial success and difficulty after this point until really starting to struggle along with them, for the industry in the nineteen fifty years it was ultimately bought, the Missouri Pacific Railroad Company and nineteen. Eighty nine. There is a historic black commemorating the crash at crush in Le Cleanin County fifteen miles north of Waco crash. It crashes, the most famous of these staged rex that wasn't actually the first one.

You're going to talk about that. First, one and some others after a quick sponsor break hello. This is run burgundy and you were listening to my voice, which commands trust and respect. Yes, what my ipod gases back and that's a wind for everyone mainly for me because of the money, but also because I love to hear myself doc, and so do you and if you're thinking it's time for a change in your insurance plan b, it automobile or home insurance think no further than state farm. You know the one with the catch the angel like a good neighbour state farmers, stay farmers bid in the insurance gave me

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by one staged by a man named a l streeter, he was a railway equipment salesmen from Illinois straighter First, try to stage a train wreck in Illinois, but wasn't able to generate enough attention, so he turned his head into Ohio, where he got the ok to conduct a crash July twenty of eighteen. Ninety five, a couple of miles outside Canton: here's how he described One of the ads that he ran to promote this event quote two monster locomotives with full head of steam, starting a mile apart or rushed toward each other at the rate of sixty or seventy miles an hour and allowed to come together with a crash that will result in the most horrible head on collision ever Seen or heard of Strader made arrangements to buy a couple of retired locomotives and decorated them well,. Was emblazoned with free trade and the other, with protection symbolically pitting the two economic theories against one another.

The two engines, would pull flat cars loaded down with rocks like the crash at crush part of Streeters plan involves selling train tickets, the zero dollars and fifteen cents fare on the Cleveland Canton, and southern railroad would get people to the actual location for the crash. But once people got to that location admission to the crash itself was not free. He hopes to sell twenty thousand get that seventy five cents a peace. So the people could then watch the crash from a designated viewing area. However, overwhelming majority of spectators had a different idea that was to climb treason together outside fish are viewing area and watch it for free. So he only said about two hundred tickets In the end, though, the two locomotives, never wrecked. The whole event was cancelled at the last possible minute.

Street or claimed it was because spectators got to close and refuse to move, ruining it for everyone else and forcing him to cancel for safety reasons, but the railroad claim that streeter owed them two thousand for three dollars for the retired locomotives which he had never paid so the, he'll road exercise. Their right to take them back. Spectators, of course, were outraged than the ones who had paid demanded. A refund people were also upset. Had spent back fifteen dollar train fair for something that didn't actually happen. Streeter was widely criticised in the press for wasting people's time and money, even as he claimed to have lost about eight hundred dollars of his personal funds in the venture. Strainer didn't give up, though, on memorial day. Eighteen, ninety six, he tried again this time in Buckeye, park in Marietta Ohio about twenty five miles, southeast of Columbus. The locomotive this

I'm were, namely a l, Streeter and the W H Fisher Fisher, worked for the Columbus, Hawking and Toledo Railroad and to add some more drama street or put mannequin aboard. So it would actually look like there were people in there this time the wreck did indeed go as planned. Clarence matters wrote about the events in national magazine, saying quote: twenty five thousand pairs of eyes were riveted upon one engine or another as they rushed together, and so critical was the moment that scarcely a word was spoken on and on The two iron monsters, at the rate of over four miles an hour and when the crash came, it was terrific, both trains being practically destroyed, Strader continued to organise more of these spectacles around the country until the early twentieth century. But another man organised, so many of them that it became part of his personal brand and he was Joe Connally, who was known by the nickname head on Connally,

who stays at least. Seventy three wrecks between one thousand eight hundred and ninety six and one thousand nine hundred and thirty two and became the most. Organiser of plans train racks. I found one account that said that he tried to sue some one first, staging a train wreck and using the term head on when that was clearly is, but I couldn't find any evidence that he had actually trying to register that trademark. So not sure, the actual status that was regardless, though, head on Joe had worked in theatre in mind for decades before putting his hand to staging at racks, and he was scrupulous about safety. He had a very specific set of safety rules that had to be followed at any wreck. He stage he also told reporters that he had a quote lifelong desire to see such a disaster without danger to himself and thought other people harboured the same secret desire. He was also a showman and, as his rex went on, he did things, make them more and more dramatic,

He started laying small charges on the tracks that would explode when the trains rolled over them, creating tiny explosions that, in normal circumstances, Were used to war, another trains of incoming traffic he'd also doubts cars in fuel and fill them with flammable materials, so that they would burn after impact calmly made a lot of money stating these crashes over the years and his last one took place as the fad was really starting to wane. The sun was, at the Iowa, stay, fair in nineteen. Thirty to heed staged racks. At the I state Fair previously to a lot of fanfare, but in nineteen thirty to the United States was facing the great depression, even naming one of the locomotives. The Roosevelt and the other, the Hoover wasn't enough to make the event sit right with the crowd. The explosion itself was reported to be a good one, but the response from the audience was really lacklustre.

It seemed like seeing two huge trains have wrecked against each other, for sport was needlessly wasteful in a time when so many people were hurting for money. This was doubly you when word started, spread that Connally had charge the fair forty thousand dollars to stage the rack and that the fair had lost sixty five thousand dollars year, people who were already angry at the idea that the crash had been wasteful or furious that it had cost so much money, in addition to the wreckage of the local who did themselves ale Streeter and had on Connally weren't. The only people organizing the staged racks has another again apple in September, one thousand nine hundred and six, approximately six thousand people pay the C2 engines that have been retired from the SALT Lake Railroad crash together at an agricultural park near downtown LOS Angeles. Organizers for this, when, where James, morally and former promote a football coach, Walter Helpful, this particular rack didn't go all that well

The engineers tried to extort extra pay from the organizers in the middle of the event. They were doing approach, on the run up to the actual crash in which they run the trains at one another and then stopped them before a collision. The engineers thought it would probably be impossible to find replacements in the literal middle of the event, so they asked for an extra three hundred and fifty dollars organizers managed to find replacements with no problem, though, in general, here's, your pretty eager to volunteer so the regional engineers were fired and then the event proceeded as planned. The other idea that you would get to just on purpose run a locomotive was normally where you had to spend your working life into another locomotive, unjust smashed to pieces like that purely was tracked. It remember manoeuvres and I really didn't find indication that any of them were seriously injured while doing us, although I did find climate was

an engineer who fell while trying to jump free of the locomotive and this brain does angle. So in this event, at the agricultural park there near doubt, how must analyse the locomotives did run into each other whistles blaring, but the result was pretty anticlimactic, they d sort of way, I'm into each other with a third and then stopped, and nothing derailed and nothing caught on fire and nothing exploded, and so people were not particularly impressed these are just some example. There were lots and lots of others and there's actually footage of several of them on Youtube. We're going to link to that footage in the show notes to talk about some ideas about why maybe this caught on so well. This episode of stuff you missed in history class is grass you buy quip. I love my quip toothbrush. I've loved electric toothbrushes for a really long time, but my quip toothbrush.

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well in terms of exclusions, apply capital. One USA and aid so Leif thirty year worry years. Staged train wreck swore a really big deal in the midwestern and south western parts of the United States. The biggest crowd reported at one of these events was a hundred and sixty thousand people and attendance was routinely in the tens of thousands. The town of for us how about the same population of as Dallas or San Antonio for the few hours that it existed, and nineteen twenty a staged wreck opening day of the Minnesota State, Fair doubled. The fares first stay attendance from the year before all of this happened at a time when getting somewhere was a lot less comfortable inconvenient, then it can be today This has led some people to speculate as to why this all caught on so well. One aspect was certainly the marketing

organizers, promoted their events heavily getting lots of fanciful coverage in newspapers, and there was when a political theme to the declarations on the trains themselves. In it into the ones that we talked about already earlier in this show US he's drunk pitted locomotives, dubbed evolution and fundamentalism. After the scopes trial in nineteen, twenty five, there was Also, a showdown between the National Recovery ACT, part of the new deal, Ursus Old Man, depression at the Minnesota state, fear in nineteen thirty three and for some people the attraction related more to the general politics of the day that any specific political issue there is. It general idea that locomotives we're symbols of big businesses and industries that we're taking advantage of people and ruining the landscape, and so was really fine to think about their destroying one another, and then of There is this fact that humanity has kind of a morbid fascination with destruction. There's a complicated said,

emotional and psychological responses that feed into the general human trade of morbid curiosity. In the decades ahead, First stage tremor acts there were demolition, Derbyshire Monster, truck rallies, a whole slew of disaster, film, true crime shows, and on and on these are still moneymakers than many lives the cab. I mean that I think the thing that strikes me as the weird about the the train part is that locomotives are just so big debate like that's a lot of metal, smashing together and then doing gardener sending to the scrap heap or whatever which you know mate made made. It seem a little order to me. Then a demolition, derby or a monster truck rally or whatever, but also what we people did do as we have shown in our some passed up, says the show people go onto weird stuff,

What does the kind of episode that happens when you're looking for something a little less Heavy to write about an you, Google, weird fads right. I've done similar things. It is it I'm trying to think if there would ever be like in modern day equivalent attempted lake. Would anybody ever go? Let's try to crash planes together, I don't know how you would possibly orchestrates such a thing, but lessons very scary. Yes, well, and suddenly. I just remembered when, when I was Also a kid in addition to having the elementary school Halloween carnivals record, smash old cars with a baseball bat whenever the fire department would be conducting training by burning down a derelict building and extinguishing the fire. Oh yeah,

I bear would always be a crowd to watch that any time there's a building demolish, there's a crowd. We had one in Atlanta not long ago in every way, you lived in Atlanta, had it all over their social media because they got em but an ungodly hour to go. Look at it. We line glowing fire, I mean I buy them, feel very tame for, like being like what when you put a sea Vienna Micro entities, by the way, it's very pretty

Thank you so much for joining us today for this classic. If you will have heard any kind of email address or maybe a facebook, you are l during the course of the episode that might be obsolete. It might be doubly obsolete because we have changed our Emil address again. You can now reach us at history, podcast that I hurt radio dot com and we're all over social media at missed in history, and you can subscribe to our shadow on Apple podcast, Google Podcast, the eye heart radio app and wherever else he wasn't, the fog casts supplements than history classes. The production of high heart radio for more time casts from heart radio visit thy, her radio, app apple pie, tasks or wherever you listen,

your favorite chance. This episode is brought to you by Maloney cookies. Look sometimes that long, then yoga classes just now in the cards, so maybe a cookie is peppered farm. Mulatto believes you should make some time for yourself once in a while. I know I have a particular space in my sewing room that I like to just take a few minutes. Every day I sit there. I think about things, it's kind of like meditation and munching at the same time being that yummy beautiful cookie flavour, it makes it luxurious and delightful and I always feel recharge. Mulatto cookies are truly a treat worthy of your me time, their delicate and crispy, with luxuriously rich chocolate in the middle. You really want to keep these just for you,

so remember to save something for yourself with peppered farm Olano. I am Oscar Ramirez and I hope the Daily Corona virus update a daily podcast, bring you the latest on what to know about the global and damage we are facing. There's a lot of information going around about a virus spreading hotspots around the world and the United States possible treatments and best practices to keep you and your family healthy. It's more important than ever to follow this fast moving story and avoid misinformation, so you can keep up to date and make informed decisions, listen to the daily Corona virus, update on the eye, hard, radio, app apple podcast or wherever you get your pod cast