Here's the thing: saving money with Geico was almost better than playing pick up basketball because there's always that guy joint your game ever passes the rock he constantly Rex theories and who completely happy when put his hands up and say no foul, no foul with Geico. It's easy to switch save on car insurance, no need Fagin Ankle sprain, because you're absolutely exhausted. So which in save with Geiger it's almost better than sports pay list, as we are soon to be appearing at New York COMECON as part of New York COMECON presents their evening programming. We are going in episode about the creation of what is used. Credited as the first comic book and will be talking about the man who did it and how it came to be. You want to give him a man. We would love to see you for a wife show. It is taking place on October, sixth, from nine thirty, two eleven its and mercantile again that runs during New York COMECON and for more

Commissioner, you can visit our website missed in history, dot com, you click on This is live shows and you can get all the info and a link to order your tickets. We hope to see there. Why couldn't you stuff? You missed in history class from Housetop works dot com. Hello and welcomes the bypass I'm Tracy. We will then I'm Holly, fried sallying 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 racks a lot of times, it's something a lot less tangible, with way less risk of injury or death like

bad speeches or product launches that go really terrible. Like really crimson cringe worthy tv shows things that are not really ready, Mohammed things that are not really gonna caused somebody to actually die. We describe as like, watching a train wreck, we thought that was kind of weird, but we would doesn't like you know somebody bad talent, show entry, that's just awful! You just can't stop staring out like why we would describe that is like asking if it turns out that for a break window from the weight eighteen hundreds into the early eighteen hundred, people in the United States were watching train rex for fun. It's hard to come up with exact tally of how many of them there were, because there were several

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. Here's reminds me of when my husband and 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 too, which are good and one which was really junkie. So we gave them good went away to somebody who needed one and then the junkie wine. We took on the back patio. We blew stuff up in it, so I kind of endless trainer and when I was a kid my elementary school had

between carnival every year and one of the things that they would do for this Halloween Karnak Carnival is that they would go by a really junkie used car and you could pay. A dollar to take a swing at it with a baseball bat. Yes, so yes, this is. It still seems weird, though that's what we're gonna talk about that I also had spent like we needed a little bit of a lighter topic without some heavy, your things latelies away or sub too. I in particular those had research so really have yet been. So I would like to see 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 Rex, so we can all get them. There is an inherent level of comedy there. Yes, sir we're gonna start there with the one that they actually have a few fatalities. This is them

famous and most deadly of the United States train stage, train rex, and it was known as the crash at crush which took place in September of eighteen. Ninety six, and this was the brainchild of William George Crush passenger agent at the Missouri Kansas Texas, railroad company, also known as the Katy, which was short down from its initials MP by eating be five. The year before this event took place. The Katy had a hundred and thirty 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 a danger in any way by 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 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 like my microwave. The venue that he proposed for this stage. Train wreck would be a pop up. Town named crush located about fifteen miles north of Waco in about three miles south of the town of West, conveniently close to the existing Waco Dallas track. The designated spot was in a small valley with hills. Three sides: making a natural amphitheatre with plenty of viewing locations. They'd supplement this with things like a restaurant, a grand stand and carnival attractions selling to die,

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 and of one or both of locomotives might explode on impact. So they asked 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. We go Dallas lime, terminating added, two thousand one hundred foot, but six hundred and forty meter depot platform complete 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 the natural slopes of the land, and this gave the track a slight downward greed from each and towards

middle, which would help the locomotives pick up more speed locomotives. Nine. Ninety nine and one thousand one were chosen for the crash with one painted green with red trim, any other painted red with green trim for their pop up town. They drilled wells and installed spigots for fresh water, along with spectator area, William Crush, which was parenting. His fortuitous, but actual real name was friends with Pity Barnum. So he bore a circus debt from Barnum to house a restaurant. They also constructed lemonade, stands to telegraph offices, a stand for reporters and a ban stand. They built a wooden jail, which I found from one source saying that that was made up, caboose: they hired two hundred constables to patrol on a day and they all say, made plans for a huge carnival complete with games and medicine shoes and a variety of other diversion. Clearly they were expecting us to be a party

William crash and the Katy advertise the spectacle heavily all through the summer of eighteen. Ninety six calling it the monster crash the crash and approach. Patients for it, became regular news items all throughout the Texas papers and outside the state, as well organizers, 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 crash had arranged for thirty three trains to provide passenger service to crush and the Katy started dry Passengers off around dawn on September, fifteenth eighteen, ninety six by ten- I am 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, Catherine

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 supposed to start at four p m, we're still arriving. Is that our drew near so they delay 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 very slowly on the track and touched their cow catcher together. That's that little great looking thing the fry, a locomotive. They touch their cultures together, kind of like boxers, touching their gloves before a match. Then they were reversed apart again and William, crush on horseback raised a lot hat into the air and whipped down to give the signal for the wreck to officially begin the two locomotives pulling empty box. Cars that were festoon with advertisements and decorations then began moving toward each other and picking up speed. There, engineers,

their whistle cords and tied them down than jumped clear and ran away from the track. They estimated that at the moment, impact. Each locomotive was travelling at about fifty miles per hour when they crashed into each other. The collision was incredibly violet. The box cars unsurprisingly shattered into splinters, but the locomotives didn't behave as they expected. Organizers had thought that 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. Instead, it was more like squeezing accordion are collapsing, a telescope and the two giant locomotives just folded into each other and then too 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, flew 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 was 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 ass where'd she died on the way home. There is a third man, 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 incident, 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 system

and more than a mile away from the actual crash J C Dean, a photographer from Waco had been hired to take pictures of the affair, and 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, who were 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 adventure had finished, workers struck, the ten and the other structures erected for the town and the whole thing was essentially gone by nightfall. William crash was fired immediately. The pen

This was at the Katy realized they had an incredibly profitable day in spite of the tragedy, so they hired him back the next day and he worked at the railroad until his retirement and who, 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 been killed. Photographer Gc Dean was paid ten thousand dollars and given a lifetime pass on the train, there was merely of much public. The nation, as you might expect, from an event that 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 at crush composer and pianist Scott Joplin published his great crash collision March, Joplin would go on to be known as the king of Ragtime, whose other most famous pieces include maple leaf rag and the entertainer, which would become the theme music for the nineteen seventy three film.

Thing, stirring, Paul, Luman, Robber, Redford and Robert Shaw is unclear whether Joplin was actually at the crash, but the great crush collision Marge was one of his earliest publish pieces of music and a relatively early example of ragtime, which is a distinctly african american form of music that was at the height of its popularity from the MID eighteen. Ninety is through the nineteen teens and we're gonna linked to that in the show notes, so people can listen to it. Scott Joplin is the reason I took place. The lessons of the child really yeah, love it, and the part of me that wants to do pursued about him, is at odds with the part of me that that does not like the sad aspect of the story. Just as death at a very early age from untreated syphilis. So the gaiety went through waves of financial success and difficulty after this point until really starting to struggle along with the rest of the industry in the nineties,

fifty years it was ultimately bought by the Missouri Pacific, railroad company and nineteen. Eighty nine. There is a historic plaque commemorating the crash at crash in the Plenum County fifteen miles north of Waco crash. It crashes, the most famous of these staged rex that wasn't actually the first one, and so we are going to talk about that. First, one and some others. After a quick sponsor break this episode of stuff, you missed in history, glasses brought. You buy Norton three

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slash. History, that's Norton dot com, slash history for twenty five percent off really made when the crash I crash is described as the first stage to train wreck and the United States was something that drew a big crowd but which no other actual real company, tried again afterward for obvious reasons, but that September fifteenth eighteen. Ninety six event was actually pre data,

by one staged by a man named a l streeter. He was a railway equipment salesmen from Illinois, Streeter first trying to stage a train wreck in Illinois, but wasn't able to generate enough attention. So he turned his attention to Ohio where he got the ok to conduct a crash on July twentieth. Eighteen, ninety five, a couple of miles outside Canton: here's how he described it and one of the ass 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

cohesion ever seen or heard of streeter made arrangements to buy a couple of retired locomotives and decorated them. One 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 crash. Part of strangers. Plan involves selling train tickets, but fifteen cent fair on the Cleveland can and southern railroad would get people to the actual location for the crash. But once people got that location admission to the crash itself was not free hope to sell twenty thousand ticket, that seventy five cents, a peace, so that people could then watch the crash from a designated viewing area. However, the 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, these two locomotives never wrecked the whole event, was cancelled at the last possible minute, Streeter claimed it was because spectators got too 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 four hundred as for the retired locomotives, which he had never paid, so the railroad exercise their right to take them back. Spectators, of course, were outraged and the ones who had paid demanded a refund also upset. They had spent that 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

heart in Marietta Ohio about twenty five miles, southeast of Columbus. The locomotive this time were named the El Streeter and the W H Fisher Fisher worked for the Columbus hawking and to railroad. 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. Clare Matters wrote about the event and 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 on sped, 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

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, whose staged at least seventy three racks between eighteen. Ninety six in nineteen thirty two and became the most famous organiser of plans train Rex, I found one account that said that he tried to sue some one first, staging a train wreck and using the term had on when that was clearly is, but I couldn't find any evidence that he had actually I had a register that trademark so not sure what the actual status of that was regardless, though, head on Joe, had worked and theatre in mind for decades before putting his hand to staging train racks and he was scrupulous about safety, he had a very specific set of safety rules that had to be followed. At any rate, he stage the also

told reporters that he had a quote: lifelong desire to see such disaster without danger to himself and thought many other people harboured the same secret ere? He was also a showman and ass. His rex went on. He did things to make them more and more dramatic. He started leanings all 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 the cars in fuel and fill them 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 irish 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. That seemed like seeing two huge trains have wrecked against each other for sport, needlessly wasteful in a time when so many people were hurting for money. This was doubly, when word started, spread that Connally had charge the fair eight thousand dollars to stage the wreck and that the fair had lost sixty five thousand dollars that 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 locomotives themselves, Ale Streeter and had on Connally weren't. The only people organizing these staged racks has another example and September nineteen o six. Approximately six thousand people paid the sea to engines that had been retired from the SALT Lake Railroad crash together and agriculture. Park near downtown, LOS Angeles organizers. For this, when, where James, morally and former promote football coach, Walter SIMPLE, this particular rack, didn't go all that. Well, the engineers tried to extort extra pay from the oars. Answers in the middle of the event. They were doing a prolonged. The run up to the actual crash in which they run the trains at one another and then stopped them before a collision

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 in general engineers were pretty eager to volunteer so the regional engineers, were fired, and then the event proceeded as planned. The idea that you would get to just on purpose run a locomotive. There was normally where you had to spend your working life into another locomotive, unjust smashed to pieces like that purely was active. Member of the- and I really didn't find anything- indication that any of them were seriously injured. While doing this, although I did find climate was

an engineer who fell while trying to jump free of the locomotive and sprained his ankle. So in this event, at the agricultural park there near doubt, how must analyse the locomotive did run into each other whistles blaring, but the end result was it's like climactic, they just 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, and these are just examples there were lots and lots of others and there's actually footage of several of them on Youtube. We're gonna linked to that footage in the show notes, Baxter gonna talk about some ideas about why? Maybe this caught on so well, This episode of stuff you missed in history class is brought to you by W W, formerly wait watchers they

launched a new might be to be programme as their most groundbreaking and customize programme. Ever I joined Debbie W because I was really looking for something that was going to help encourage means. You make healthier eating choices. They have really done that when you join them W W program, you will take a personal assessment. It ask questions you're eating habits in your behaviors minute, scientifically matches you up with which plan is going to be the best for you, I'm on the who plan and it has made such a big difference or me in terms of encouraging Meis eat. Healthy foods join W W, formerly wait. Watchers unlock your customers weight loss plan that can make losing weight easier for you head on where'd you Debbie Debbie, dot com, that's w w dot com to joint Debbie Debbie today, with a limited time, offer So thirty or forty years staged, train wreck swore a really big deal

in the mid western and south western parts of the United States, the biggest crowd reported at one of these, it was a hundred and sixty thousand people and attendance, was routinely in the tens of thousands, the town of crush had about the same population of as Dallas or San Antonio for the few hours that it existed, and nineteen twenty a staged wreck on opening day of the Minnesota State, Fair doubled. The fairest first stay attendants 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, and this has led some people to speculate 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 and issue a staged wreck

locomotives, dubbed evolution and fundamentalism. After the scope trial in nineteen twenty five, there was also a showdown between the National Recovery ACT. Part of the new deal verses old man, depression at the Minnesota state fear in nineteen. Thirty three, and for some people the attraction was aid more to the general politics of the day than any specific political issue. There is no 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 find to think about their destroying one another. And then, of course, there is this fact that humanity, pass kind of morbid fascination with destruction. There's a complicated set of emotion. And psychological responses that feed into the general human trade of morbid curiosity in the decades after stage tremor there were demolition, Derbyshire Monster, truck rallies, a whole slew of disaster films. True cried

shows and on and on. These are also money. There are so 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 would have which you know make 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 past upstairs so people go on the weird stuff What kind of episodes that happened when you are looking for something a little less

heavy to write about an you, Google, weird fads, I've done similar things. It is 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 primarily orchestrates such a thing, but Athens, very scary, yeah as well, and suddenly I just remembered when, when I was Also a kid in addition to having the elementary school Halloween carnivals rican 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, always be a crowd to watch that any time there's a building demolish, there's a crowd. We had one eleven not long ago and everyone who lived it.

Women had it all over their social media because they got him but an ungodly hour to go. Look at it. We line glowing fire, I mean I die, then feel very team for do you like what happens when you put a sea, Vienna, Micro and then by the way? It's very pretty. Do you have some listener? Mayo Do I was in our Atlantic office recently, which is the tree twin ever I get to do that and I went through some of our incoming parcels, and so I have some thank you used to give out for that. First is Katy. Katy sent us suffrage at sea he starts if you have not heard about suffrage at sea. Basically in the nineties teams during the summer We ve met

women were studying Jujitsu for self defense purposes, and so these are tee shirts showing a suffragette defending herself. Or depending on how you're looking at it just throw in a police officer. So thank you for the suffrage, it's? U shirts this is also from quite a while ago. After our episode on Walt Whitman Kristen sent us an exhibition. Catalogue called bold, cautious, true Walt Whitman, an american art of the civil war era, which is lovely collection and then lastly, thank you to Nancy for sending us the naughty fairies, adult colouring book of bad words. Then worse attitudes- and I was delighted to see a couple of copies of that

on my desk. So thanks to all three of you and to the other folks, you have sent us various parcels. It we try, we try to keep a list and then thank everybody. But I know: as we fail so usually loving. My failure, since I'm here and at all ends up on my desk their days when I'm sure I can look at it So busy working out a thing and then it gets pushed aside, and then there have been times, I'm sorry to admit this listeners where, like which no ghost Carson parcel has gotten jumbled and I'm like? Oh dear Mamma, I give you can. Sometimes there obviously get will reference the gift and other times. This is light years, a thing that we thought you would love like. I don't know which they use. So I'm here. I apologise that is my mediocre spatial organization skill. We also had a couple of things. The seer from listeners outside the United States run a foul of customs and be apparently tied up in customs for a really long time before getting dozen

Then it becomes awkward finger. Remember that thing emailed eight months ago that we just gotta thanks so anyway. Thank you so much dolly of our generous listeners for sending us such lovely and thoughtful things. If you would like to write to us where history podcast, that has the forks dot com or also on Facebook, Facebook, dot, com, Slash missed in history and on Twitter, it miss them three hour. Tumblr are Pinterest, are Instagram all of these things on social media we missed in history. Our website miss than history. Dot com is where you will find a searchable archive of every episode we have ever done. We will also find shone out, Sprawly episodes Holly and I have done together. We will link to several Youtube video of locomotive smashing at each other and in the player page, where this particular episode along.

Scott Joplin March. That was about a crash at crush, so it can do all that and a whole lot more at our website, which is missed in history. The dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics visit has to work. Stockholm in our past hush money we're going to get you talking. We debate the uncomfortable question money like going back to decide who is right, there's no such thing as strings Bremer there are some cake lies right now that its traditions that man's pay women due to reach the fake reach money, is one of those things that people like to ignore. You can be in all the episodes now on apple pot casts the heart radio app or wherever you get. Your part casts.