InterestingPOD

About InterestingPOD

Not every tale from history made the textbooks. Some were too strange. Too secret. Too… interesting. Debunking myths and digging up the facts, we don't peddle half-baked lies, rumors, or unfounded conspiracies. And we don't accept easy answers either. Your host is Doctor Chase: historian, author, storyteller. You bring the curiosity, and we'll bring the intrigue. Ready for a mystery? Or an adventure? Let's go!

Publisher

Dr. Chase A. Thompson

Category

history · society & culture

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

12 Jul 2025

Latest episode

22 Sept 2025

Latest episodes

10 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   22 Sept 2025

   Anatoli Bugorski and the Splitting Headache. (Hit in the Face with a Particle Accelerator)

   Episode 9: Anatoli Bugorski. Anatoli and the Splitting Headache. One more story to tell today in our mini series of scientific heroes who work in dangerous mediums and, like the last couple of episodes, today’s story  is also a cautionary tale of sorts, but it’s a story of a mistake most of us won’t even have a chance to duplicate even if we wanted to. I’m looking forward to telling you about today’s subject, Anatoli Bugorski, but even MORE looking forward to the next few episodes when we dive into the primary sources - pre all of this societal polarization and vitriol - and learn in their own words what a Nazi is and what a Fascist is. What did each of those parties believe, what were their planks, and how did they behave? In a world where everybody who disagrees with you politically is a vile Nazi or Fascist, it might just be helpful to look up what each party was all about. That’s history-history, and a time period that is right in my wheelhouse, a few years before and after WW2. Sometimes science brushes so close to the edge that it leaves a scorch mark. Today’s story is about a man, unlike our other heroes of science, who escaped the flash “brighter than a thousand suns” ( Discover), even though it hit him square in the head.  It’s also about how a human life can thread the needle between disaster and miracle and keep on going, to finish a PhD, show up to work, and survive. This is the tale of Anatoli Petrovich Bugorski, “a Russian retired particle physicist … known for having survived a radiation accident in 1978, when a high-energy proton beam from a particle accelerator passed through his head.” Yep, you heard me correctly. Essentially, he is the Phineas Gage of the nuclear era. And if you don’t know about Gage…look him up. Ouch! We start in Protvino, in the Russian SFSR, at the Institute for High Energy Physics. Bugorski “worked with the largest particle accelerator in the Soviet Union, the U-70 synchrotron” (..). On July 13, 1978, he walked into the kind of malfunction that turns a routine check into legend: “he was checking a malfunctioning piece of equipment when the safety mechanisms failed. Bugorski was leaning over the equipment when he stuck his head in the path of the 76 Giga electron volt proton beam” (..). He didn’t really feel pain as such, at least not immediately. Instead, he saw light. Specifically, he “reportedly saw a flash ‘brighter than a thousand suns’” In that instant the beam “passed through the back of his head, the occipital and temporal lobes of his brain, the left middle ear, and out through the left-hand side of his nose”  The dose in the exposed pathway: “200,000 to 300,000 roentgens  Discover puts the energy another way: “2,000 grays … on the way in, and … 3,000 grays by the time it left. A dose of around 5 gray can be lethal to humans” (Discover). How do those two things cohere, considering that Bugorski didn’t die? I’ve no idea. Like Homer Simpson, I’m no nuclear scientist, and unlike Homor Simpson, I don’t even work at a nuclear power plant. Somehow, someway, Bugorski “understood the severity of what had happened, but continued working on the malfunctioning equipment, and initially opted not to tell anyone” (..). That detail feels very Soviet, very scientist, and very human: finish the job, then process the catastrophe. It reminds me of the time I was bit by a racoon…..And, you know what? Don’t expect anybody to make a podcast in the future about my raccoon incident…Bugorski’s story is a billion times better. Let’s talk about What Particle Beams Do (And Don’t Do) to Flesh There’s a reason we generally don’t put our hands in beams. When I was a kid, if I heard my mom say that once, I heard her say it a million times. As The Atlantic frames the broader thought experiment: “What would happen if you stuck your body inside a particle accelerator? The scenario seems like the start of a bad Marvel comic” (The Atlantic), according to the Atlantic, but a GOOD Marvel comic if you’re asking me. Accelerators “allow physicists to study subatomic particles by speeding them up in powerful magnetic fields and then tracing the interactions that result from collisions” (The Atlantic). But that neat chalkboard world becomes very real when “a beam of subatomic particles traveling at nearly the speed of light meets the flesh of the human body” (The Atlantic). Discover says it plainly: “protons are still very much physical objects, and when you take trillions of them and force them through something as delicate and complex as a human cell, the collisions tend to tear biological structures apart” (Discover). Radiation harms by “breaking apart chemical bonds that hold DNA and other cellular components together” (Discover). With enough energy, “cells are unable to duplicate and begin to die, leading to organ failure” (Discover). And yet, unlike fallout or whole-body exposure, “the particle beam was narrowly focused,” meaning “only his brain received any exposure to the radiation, keeping the damage concentrated to a single area” (Discover). That narrowness, Discover suggests, may be part of why he lived: “He may have just been lucky, and the beam missed important areas of his brain, or perhaps proton beams affect the body differently than other sorts of radiation” (Discover). Reading the Discover article, I wonder if they realize just how important the brain is. I don’t feel like Bugorski got lucky because the particle accelerator beam only hit him in the face. The Atlantic zooms out: this kind of radiation—protons at these energies—“is a rare beast indeed”  Almost no one ever encounters a dose like this in such a focused line. When they do, it’s usually deliberate and medical: “Particle accelerators can deliver targeted doses of radiation to cancer patients, a process known as proton beam therapy … Those doses are around 300 times smaller than the one Bugorski sustained” (Discover). So cancer-destroying proton beams are 300 times smaller than the beam that smacked our guy in the head. Wild! So no, this isn’t an origin story for Super-Anatoli. As the Discover article cracks: “Were this a comic book, Bugorski would certainly be endowed with fearsome powers … As it is, he’s probably just happy to be alive”  One possibility they didn’t consider is that Burgorski did, in fact, develop superpowers, but like Superman with his glasses on, he is clever enough not to advertise his powers to the rest of the world. Yeah, that’s the ticket. Back to 1978. Like with Slotin, Kelley, and Daghlian, Bugorski’s Doctors expected a death watch. “They expected him to die, but he survived with severe but non-fatal injuries” (..). The physical toll was immediate and visual: “The left half of Bugorski’s face swelled up beyond recognition and, over the next several days, the skin started to peel, revealing the path that the proton beam had burned through parts of his face, his bone, and the brain tissue underneath” (..). Discover’s article version is also a tad grisly but concise: “his skin blistered and peeled off where the beam had struck” (Discover). Permanent damage for Bugorski coincided with the beam’s route through his head. He “completely lost hearing in the left ear, replaced by a form of tinnitus” (..). “The left half of his face became paralyzed due to the destruction of nerves” (..). “He was able to function well, except for occasional complex partial seizures and rare tonic-clonic seizures.” Or as Discover translates the neurology: “in the long-term, Bugorski suffered for a time from both petit mal and grand mal seizures and found that he became more easily mentally fatigued” (Discover). One other side effect: Apparently, The paralyzed side of his face never aged, but if you are dealing with wrinkles and looking for a fountain of youth style medical cure here, you might want to verify that in person before sticking your body into a particle accelerator. What about his mind? Did he lose his wits? Most reports note that “There was virtually no damage to his intellectual capacity, but the fatigue of mental work increased markedly” (..). After the accident, Discover magazine reports that Bugorski “nevertheless went on to earn his doctorate, and even returned to work at the same facility where his accident occurred” (Discover). The Atlantic underscores the same improbable normalcy: “Despite having nothing less than a particle accelerator beam pass through his brain, Bugorski’s intellect remained intact, and he successfully completed his doctorate after the accident” That’s pretty impressive, and puts him in a tier of one. I’m pretty sure he’s the only guy in history to earn a doctoral degree after taking a million-mile fastball from a particle accelerator to the face. Impressive. After the accident, he “continued to work as a physicist … eventually becoming the experiment coordinator for the same particle accelerator by which he was injured” (..). In an institutional world that can sometimes be quick to sideline, that’s a quiet triumph. The human story here runs on two tracks: private medical vigilance and public silence. .. again: “Because of the Soviet Union’s policy of maintaining secrecy on nuclear power-related issues, Bugorski did not speak publicly about the accident for over a decade” (..). Meanwhile, he “continued going to the Moscow radiation clinic twice a year for examinations and to meet with other nuclear accident victims” (..). In that circle, he was “described as ‘a poster boy for Soviet and Russian radiation medicine’” (..). Money and medication brought their own hard edges. “In 1996, Bugorski applied unsuccessfully for disability status to receive free epilepsy medication” (..). It’s not just the US that denies legit insurance claims, folks. He “showed interest in making himself available for study to Western researchers but could not afford to leave Protvino” (..). There’s sadness tucked between those lines: a unique case that could teach the world, a scientist willing to help, and a visa-sized wall of costs and borders, red tape and bureaucracy. Ugh. Through it all, life continued. “Bugorski got married to Vera Nikolaevna, and they have a son named Peter” (..). Sometimes the most radical sentence, after 2,000 grays of piercing radiation in and 3,000 grays out, that’s pretty remarkable. Particle accelerators are weird and hard to understand for laymen like most of us. The Atlantic reminds us that particle physics often lives far from intuitive analogies. Compared to pictures from Mars, “CERN’s research doesn’t produce stunning, tangible images. Instead, the study of particle physics is best described by chalkboard equations and squiggly lines called Feynman diagrams” (The Atlantic). That distance from common experience is why even “some professional physicists” hesitate when asked what happens if you put a body part in a beam; in one interview, “Professor Michael Merrifield put it succinctly: ‘That’s a good question. I don’t know is the answer. Probably be very bad for you’” (The Atlantic). Now, about the numbers. The U-70’s beam energy was “76 billion electron volts,” and The Atlantic speculates Bugorski “might have experienced the full wrath of a beam with more than 300 times” the energy typically used in therapeutic settings (The Atlantic). That’s beyond catastrophic, if it’s delivered broadly. But, as Discover stresses, “only his brain received any exposure,” sparing “organ system[s]” that usually fail in radiation sickness And that flash? The Atlantic ties it to astronaut lore: “Apollo astronauts … exposed to cosmic rays containing protons … reported flashes of visual light, a harbinger of what would welcome Bugorski” (The Atlantic). Bugorski’s own report—“brighter than a thousand suns”—is both poetry and neurology. You know how they say that statistics lie? Here is a statistic that is a bit of a paradox in that it is both 100 percent true and a 100 percent misleading. Based on empirical evidence, the chances of dying from a direct hit in the face by a particle accelerator beam is 0 percent. Put another way, in the statistics of the world, 0 percent of the people hit by a particle accelerator beam in the head have died. It is, on paper, one of the single safest incidents known to man. Walking out to your mailbox, blowing your nose, swivelling in your chair, adjusting your airpods, and bending over to pet a friendly animal ALL have a higher likelihood of killing you - based on available statistics - then does a full on head shot from a fully operational particle accelerator, because Bugorski, as near as I can tell, is the only human in history to experience that, and he is still alive. It could be argued, in fact, that being hit in the face with a particle accelerator makes you absolutely immortal, but we should probably continue our observations a little longer before we break that news to the rest of the world. When we tell stories about scientific accidents, we often end with a policy, a protocol, a new rule on a laminated card. In this case, much of what survives is a man—and some unanswered questions. According to Discover: “what prevented him from experiencing much more damage is still unknown” (Discover). The focus of the beam “likely helped,” but perhaps “proton beams affect the body differently than other sorts of radiation” (Discover). The Atlantic adds that accidents like this are so rare that “the effects of super-high energy proton beams on the body are relatively unknown” (The Atlantic). That’s science’s honest shrug: sample size of one, no control group, ethics that forbid replication. As V.S. Ramachandran, the Indian-American neuroscientist, says,  “it takes only one talking pig to prove that pigs can talk” (The Atlantic). Bugorski is the talking pig of particle-beam human exposure—a phrase he surely never asked for, but one that marks a singular place in the medical literature of the unimaginable. By the way, I like the way Ramachandran’s mind works. One thing this episode and its predecessor have taught me is that radiation and dangerous chemicals rarely, if ever, lead to superheroes, and that is one of the great disappointments of my life. In my spare time, I like to treasure hunt with my metal detector, and have found all sorts of treasures and old coins, but no magic rings. After the accident, Bugorski lived under secrecy, under observation, under the ceiling of a clinic he visited “twice a year” (..). He tried for disability medication help and was denied, but He kept working. He finished the doctorate. He coordinated the accelerator (..). He has a wife, and a family. He is, depending on what line you read last, either an emblem—“a poster boy for Soviet and Russian radiation medicine” or a private citizen who did the impossible thing and went home for dinner. He is still alive today and in his 80s. My deficit in the speaking and reading of Russian is a barrier to finding out much about his current life, as English speaking sources lack very few contemporary details on the life of Bugorski. What can we learn from Anatoli Bugorski? Just this: When life hits you full in the face with a focused beam from a giant particle accelerator, don’t quit, don’t give up, don’t stop…earn your doctoral degree and keep moving forward. And maybe get married and have a kid named Peter. Something like that. Our next set of episodes are all about what it actually means to be a Nazi or Fascist using primary sources from the 1930s-1960s…before all of today’s inflammatory rhetoric. I can’t go a day right now without reading a progressive on social media call a conservative a Nazi or Fascist or vice versa, and I hope it is time for all of us to learn precisely what those words mean, so that they don’t just become a synonym for something/somebody I don’t like. Until then - Keep Digging! Quoted Sources (as cited inline) Discover Magazine — “If You Stuck Your Head in a Particle Accelerator …” (Nathaniel Scharping, 2017): (Discover) The Atlantic (Aeon) — “What Happens If You Stick Your Head in a Particle Accelerator?” (Joel Frohlich/Aeon):. (The Atlantic/Aeon)

2. 

   21 Sept 2025

   Quicksilver: The Life and Loss of Karen Wetterhahn

   Quicksilver: The Life and Loss of Karen Wetterhahn Hello friends, and welcome to episode #8. Today we have another riveting but tragic story for you. If you haven’t listened to episode 7 yet, it isn’t absolutely necessary, but it would do you well to hear the stories of early nuclear pioneers like Louis Sloten, Cecil Kelly, and Harry Daghlian, and the dangers that ended their lives. I think this is going to be an intriguing episode, with a fascinating scientist that most won’t be familiar with. Today is not so much in my wheelhouse - Nuclear history, toxic chemical history, safety history, and high velocity subatomic history. I’m not a scientist, and I didn’t stay recently at a Holiday Inn, but I am certainly a science hobbyist, and keep up with science news daily, and the fact that the last few topics are out of my milieu, so to speak, means I’ve had to research them more thoroughly, fact-check my assumptions, look up terms, and generally do the due-dilligance to get things right. I may miss something here or there, but I am trying hard to get it right. Just let me know where I whiff, and I can tell the DJ to fix it in the mix. You know the podcast things. Sharing the show, telling people about it, posting about it, and leaving Apple Podcast reviews all help…a lot. I appreciate those of you who do that. Thank you! Some stories make you hold your breath. Some make you check your gloves. Today we’ll do both, and hopefully, when we do - we’ll be all the better for it. We begin with the story of Dr. Karen Elizabeth Wetterhahn, chemist, teacher, builder of programs, and teacher of  people, and of one “tiny glistening drop” that rewrote laboratory safety across the world . It’s a story I want to tell with reverence and a little warmth, because we are talking about a person who balanced world-class science with backyard pool parties and baby rabbits. We’re also going to talk frankly about a super-toxic compound, because Karen would have insisted that we learn everything we can. And I know what you might think when you hear the word Karen, but let’s be fair. Karen Wetterhahn was anything but, and the Karens I’ve known have all been lovely. Don’t judge people by their name - they had no say in it. Karen Wetterhahn was born October 16, 1948, in Plattsburgh, New York. She grew into a scholar of the highest order. “She earned her bachelor's degree from St. Lawrence University in 1970 and her doctorate from Columbia University in 1975,” and joined Dartmouth in 1976, publishing “more than 85 research papers” (Wikipedia). Dartmouth later remembered her as “the founding director of Dartmouth’s Toxic Metals Superfund Research Program,” an “expert in the mechanisms of metal toxicity,” and a scholar with “expertise in biochemistry and molecular toxicology” (Dartmouth Tribute). She rose to become Dartmouth’s Albert Bradley Third Century Professor in the Sciences (Dartmouth Tribute) and in 1990 helped establish the Women in Science Project, which “helped to raise the share of women science majors from 13 to 25 percent” … and has become a national model for recruiting more ladies into STEM careers. She didn’t just research metals; she organized people. She “played an integral role in the administration of the sciences at Dartmouth,” serving as Dean of Graduate Studies, Associate Dean of the Faculty for the Sciences, and Acting Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (Dartmouth Tribute). She “trained 14 postdoctoral research associates, 20 graduate students and over 50 undergraduate research students” (Dartmouth Tribute). And she did this while building programs that actively welcomed women into the lab. She was “co-founder of Dartmouth’s Women in Science Project … and was active in the Women in Cancer Research group” (Dartmouth Tribute). Now bring in the home front—because Karen’s life was never just pipettes and publications. Neighbors remembered that “we never knew she was a world-famous scientist,” because, in Lyme, New Hampshire, “she was just Char and Leon’s mom” (The Tennessean/AP). She loved “rock music—heavy metal was her favorite,” she “tended her garden,” and she hosted some great neighborhood pool parties. (The Tennessean/AP). This is the paradox and the beauty: the same person who would lecture in Norway and Hawaii would also her drag family to the golf course and cheer at Ashley’s hockey game (The Tennessean/AP). A life in balance. On a summer day in 1996, the story turns. Karen was “studying the way mercury ions interact with DNA repair proteins” and also investigating cadmium (Wikipedia). She was using an incredibly dangerous substance that we really don’t mess with much anymore called dimethylmercury—Hg(CH₃)₂ She did what a careful chemist does. She wore “safety glasses and latex gloves,” worked “in a fume cupboard,” handled “very small quantities behind the fume cupboard sash,” and the sample arrived in a “sealed glass vial” cooled in ice water to reduce volatility (Bristol “Dimethylmercury”). On August 14th, she transferred liquid and, by her own later recollection, “spilled several drops of dimethylmercury from the tip of a pipette onto her latex-gloved hand” (Wikipedia; NEJM). “Not believing herself in any immediate danger, as she was taking all recommended precautions,” she cleaned up before removing the gloves (Wikipedia). That detail—the glove—matters. Tests later showed dimethylmercury “can, in fact, rapidly permeate several kinds of latex gloves and enter the skin within about 15 seconds” (Wikipedia; Bristol “Dimethylmercury”). In other words, the glove was no barrier, but rather provided a false sense of security, like many other modern protective measures. The Tennessean would capture the image like this: “It was just a drop of liquid, just a tiny glistening drop. It glided over her glove like a jewel” (The Tennessean/AP). There’s poetry in that line, and tragedy too. The article adds: “She washed her hands, cleaned her instruments and went home. It was just a drop of liquid, just a tiny glistening drop” (The Tennessean/AP). Dimethylmercury is slow, stealthy, and cumulative. It is the very definition of insidious and more perfidious than Agatha Harkness. It is “one of the most potent neurotoxins known,” crosses the blood-brain barrier, and “is a cumulative poison, being very slowly excreted from the body, and by the time its effects are noted it is too late to do anything about it” (Bristol “Dimethylmercury”). What an awful, awful sentence. Like the Blue Flash of a supercritical reaction that we discussed in our last episode, once that Dimethylmercury hits you, it’s too late…even if it takes you much slower than Gamma or neutron radiation does. For months, there were no obvious signs. Then her body started sending signals. Roughly “three months after the initial accident,” there were “brief episodes of abdominal discomfort” and “significant weight loss.” “The more distinctive neurological symptoms … including loss of balance and slurred speech, appeared in January 1997, five months after the accident” (Wikipedia). The NEJM case report—the clinical, careful voice of medicine—notes that she presented with “a five-day history of progressive deterioration in balance, gait, and speech,” after losing “6.8 kg (15 lb) over a period of two months,” with episodes of “nausea, diarrhea, and abdominal discomfort” (NEJM).  How many of us would know what caused such symptoms when they didn’t begin until 3 months after exposure?? Her own memory solved the riddle: “in August 1996 … she spilled several drops … onto the dorsum of her gloved hand” (NEJM). Hair analysis would later show a “dramatic jump in mercury levels 17 days after the initial accident, peaking at 39 days,” then a slow decline (Wikipedia). In the hospital, the numbers were grim: “whole-blood mercury, 4000 μg per liter (normal range, 1 to 8; toxic level, >200); urinary mercury, 234 μg per liter (normal range, 1 to 5; toxic level, >50)” (NEJM). That’s a lot, an awful lot of dimethyl mercury. Clinicians tried everything they reasonably could: chelation, and Vitamin E was added “as a potentially protective antioxidant” (NEJM). They even attempted exchange transfusion, and it had partial impacts, as her “mean whole-blood mercury concentration” dipped from 2230 to 1630 μg/L two hours after, only to re-equilibrate to 2070 μg/L by 16 hours (NEJM). How does that happen? I know a microgram is a tiny, tiny amount of material - 1 millionth of a gram, but that is wild to me that the mercury concentration would seemingly reduce, then come back. For reference, one sand grain weighs around 12 milligrams, or 12000 micrograms, so maybe the measurements in the 1990s weren’t the most precise, or maybe mercury levels can fluctuate. Dimethyl mercury is extremely toxic, and .1 milliliters is enough to kill you, I repeat, POINT 1 milliliters. One milliliter of water weighs one gram, and is about 1 cubic centimeter, or 10 cubic millimeters in size. .1 milliliters would be 10 percent of that size, or more like 1 cubic millimeter in size. That is small, considering a flea can be about 3 milimeters in size, and a regular black garden ant - the small kind - can grow to well over 4 milimeters long…but we’re not done yet, because dimethyl mercury is almost three times denser than water, so a drop of it big enough to kill you would be about a third the size of water of comparative mass. This means a drop of dimethly mercury large enough to kill you would be a good bit less than 1 cubic milimeter in size, provided my math is correct…a somewhat dodgy caveat. How big is that? The average size of a drop of water from an eyedropper is .05 mililiters, so - factoring in the density of dimethyl mercury, the amount that’s needed to kill you would be smaller than the drop of water from an eyedropper. Would you even notice such a small amount hitting your glove?? I probably wouldn’t. We’ve done some math there - hopefully, let’s do some chemistry now. Dimethylmercury is a liquid “with a faint sweet smell (but don’t smell it, for Heaven’s sake!),” It boils at 92°C/197.6 F (density 2.96 g/cm³ ). It’s “supertoxic,”  and it “readily crosses the blood-brain barrier,” likely via “a methylmercury-cysteine complex,” has “a high affinity for sulphur” and attacks “the thiol groups of enzymes,” inhibiting neurotransmission (Bristol “Dimethylmercury”). Clinically, symptoms include “ataxia (lack of muscle coordination), sensory disturbance and changes in mental state,” with “delayed but ultimately fatal neurotoxic effects” (Bristol “Dimethylmercury”; NEJM). The hair-mercury curve in Karen’s case soared to “almost 1100 ng per milligram,” then declined with a half-life of “74.6 days” (NEJM). Those kinetics tell a story of a toxin that builds silently and leaves reluctantly. Dr. Wetterhahn’s brain, in particular the visual and auditory cortices and the cerebellum, was profoundly injured by the mercury exposure. The mercury content in the frontal lobe and her visual cortex averaged “3.1 μg per gram (3100 ppb),” with high levels also in the liver and kidney cortex (NEJM). Outside the lab, values and scans, family and colleagues were living a vigil. The Tennessean’s account is devastating and tender. Karen—who “had never been sick, never stopped working, never complained”—now found “words … getting stuck in her throat,” “her hands tingled,” and her “whole body was moving in slow motion” (The Tennessean/AP). Friends rushed her to the hospital. After the diagnosis, “Karen beamed when she heard the news. Finally, something she understood. … Science would cure her,” she thought (The Tennessean/AP). But dimethylmercury had other plans. “Doctors didn’t know it could break down the body over the course of a few months, slowly, insidiously, irreversibly.” (The Tennessean/AP).  Like in the case with radiation accidents and Slotin and Daghlian, we learned a lot about dimethylmercury poisoning from Karen’s case. The hospital room became a command center of love and science. “E-mails flew around campus, and around the country. Students emptied libraries of books on mercury … seizing on any sliver of information” (The Tennessean/AP). Thomas Clarkson, who had studied mercury disasters, confessed: “I felt such a sense of helplessness. ‘Here was one of the world's most distinguished scientists, and I was looking at this woman dying, realizing there is nothing the scientific or medical communities can do’” (The Tennessean/AP). A colleague remembered Karen’s husband seeing “tears rolling down her face.” When asked if she was in pain, “The doctors said it didn't appear that her brain could even register pain” (Wikipedia). On February 6, “22 days after the first neurologic symptoms,” she “became unresponsive to all visual, verbal, and light-touch stimuli” (NEJM). The newspaper captures the family’s promise: in the ambulance, Karen pointed to letters“N” and “H”and “Leon nodded. He promised that, whatever the outcome, he would take her home, to New Hampshire” (The Tennessean/AP). He did. On June 8, 1997—“ten months after her initial exposure”—Karen died (Wikipedia; NEJM). Like with Daghlian and Slotin, Karen Wetterhahn’s case revealed that the safety culture around “super-toxic” chemicals needed to change, and change rapidly. “The case proved that the standard precautions at the time, all of which Wetterhahn had carefully followed, were inadequate for ‘hyper-toxic’ chemicals like dimethylmercury” (Wikipedia). Wetterhahn was not careless; she was not dramatic; she didn’t display the understandable wartime bravado of Slotin - she was doing her job soberly, with the best understanding of safety and protective gear that they had in the mid-1990s, and it just wasn’t enough. She taught us that, and probably saved many lives in the process. Back in the lab, her colleagues got empirical. They “tested various safety gloves against dimethylmercury and found that the small, apolar molecule diffuses through most of them in seconds” (Wikipedia). The Bristol write-up is direct: “it is now accepted that the only safe precaution … is to wear highly resistant laminated gloves underneath a pair of long-cuffed neoprene (or other heavy duty) gloves” (Bristol “Dimethylmercury”). In short: double up, laminate first. Her accident had a broad scientific ripple. Dimethylmercury had been “the common calibration standard for 199Hg (199 Mercury)NMR spectroscopy” What is 199 Mercury NMR Spectroscopy? I totally know off the top of my head, and if you’ll give me a second to Google it - I mean, uh, look it up, I’ll tell you. Of course, 199Hg NMR spectroscopy is a Nuclear Magnetic Resonance technique that uses the 199Hg isotope of mercury to study the structure, dynamics, and binding of mercury-containing compounds, particularly inorganic and biological complexes. And if you don’t understand that, then you probably aren’t a high-level chemist, and, uh, I can’t explain it to you. Nah, I’m just kidding. I don’t really understand precisely how they were using that isotope of 199 Mercury in NMRs either. That’s the thing about brilliant people who know their field comprehensively. The most brilliant ones can explain things so clearly that non-experts can grasp it, and I simply can’t do that, because I am not anywhere close to brilliant in this field. After Karen’s death, “the use of dimethylmercury for any purpose has been highly discouraged” (Wikipedia). The NEJM paper was blunt about the substance itself: “Dimethylmercury may be even more dangerous than methylmercury compounds,” permitting “transdermal absorption” and providing toxic exposure via inhalation; “lethal at a dose of approximately 400 mg … a few drops” (NEJM). Their conclusion: this “case illustrates the potent toxicity of dimethylmercury and the need for additional safety precautions if it is to be used in any scientific research” (NEJM). And there was legacy in people and programs. Dartmouth established “The Karen E. Wetterhahn Graduate Fellowship in Chemistry” to encourage other women in science, “whenever possible, a woman is preferred for the award” (Wikipedia). The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences created the “Karen Wetterhahn Memorial Award,” given annually (Wikipedia). Her broader legacy, Dartmouth College notes, is in the community she built: as “founding director” of the Toxic Metals Superfund Research Program and as a dean who “helped guide the growth and development of the science division and its graduate programs” (Dartmouth Tribute). Her death “prompted consideration of using an alternative reference material for mercury NMR spectroscopy experiments” (Wikipedia). Her life prompted many to become scientists and engage in their own brave, knowledge-expanding experimentation. If after this you need a laboratory proverb to tape above your hood, try this: the only thing that should pass through your glove in fifteen seconds is regret. Everything else needs SilverShield under neoprene. As the University of Bristol writes up on Dr. Wetterhan, “Doing chemistry is safe, much safer than driving a car,” but “it is only by ceaseless vigilance and attention to safety that it remains so.” Pioneers like Wetterahn, Slotin, and Daghlian have made science safer by their sacrifice. (Bristol “Dimethylmercury”). Ceaseless vigilance is just another way of saying: love your people enough to over-protect your hands. There’s a sentence late in the AP story that won’t leave me: “In many ways, Karen Wetterhahn’s death was as important as her life” (The Tennessean/AP). That shouldn’t diminish her life, but it’s to honor her wish. “While she could still speak, she urged doctors to learn everything they could from her accident. And they did” (The Tennessean/AP). Out of that courage came data, papers, safety circulars, and—most importantly—policies that mean other scientists go home after their experiments. Her colleagues’ early ignorance of dimethylmercury’s glove permeation wasn’t negligence; it was a gap that Karen’s tragedy closed. “Wetterhahn’s accidental exposure occurred despite her having taken all measures required at that time. … her colleagues tested various safety gloves … [and] as a result, it is now recommended by OSHA to wear Silver Shield laminate gloves … while handling dimethylmercury” (Wikipedia). The NEJM article adds the sober medical coda: they could find “only three previously reported cases of poisoning with dimethylmercury, all of which were fatal” (NEJM). This is a chemical for which there is no margin. And yet, this is also a story about love—the way her husband Leon promised “New Hampshire” with two letters; the way friends filled hospital walls with photos; the way students “stayed up all night to translate obscure research papers,” riding waves of “elation … then crying” (The Tennessean/AP). It’s about a scientist who could still crack a line with the hospital psychologist. Asked if she was depressed, she smiled: “‘Wouldn’t you be?’” I appreciate the Ph.D level gallows humor there, and her bravery in the face of the unknown terrors ahead. Karen’s death galvanized institutions. OSHA guidance changed. NMR standards were reconsidered (Wikipedia). Dartmouth and NIEHS named awards in her memory (Wikipedia). Her Superfund program continued, drawing “scientists from Dartmouth College and the Geisel School of Medicine,” with collaborators from other institutions (Dartmouth Tribute). The woman who built bridges in life kept building them after, helping others cross safely. The AP article leaves us with her husband’s ongoing ache: “He still wakes in the middle of the night and wonders if it's true. He still half expects her to come striding through the door with her laptop and her notes and her smile” (The Tennessean/AP). And then there’s the photo in that article that Leon held: “Karen working in her lab, a study of intensity in her goggles and gloves, staring at her test-tubes and vials. ‘She loved her work,’ he says. ‘It made her happy’” (The Tennessean/AP). So what do we do with this story, so sad and poignant?  First, we say her name with gratitude: Dr. Karen E. Wetterhahn. Second, we adopt her final lesson like a lab oath: super-toxic chemicals demand super-protective habits. And third, we remember that safety is love in practice—because someone is waiting at home who thinks of you as more than a scientist. They think of you as Mom, or Dad, or friend, or mentor. They don’t care how elegant your NMR spectrum is if the glove fails. Maybe you aren’t a chemist, but you’d still be missed if you were gone, so be vigilant. Thank you, Dr. Karen Elizabeth Wetterhahn, teacher, builder, scientist, for teaching us to give careful thought to our ways. Next episode, we meet Dr. Anatoli Bugorski, the Soviet scientist who survived - somehow - a direct hit to the face from a particle beam fired by a giant particle accelerator. Tell your people about the show - give us some reviews or shares on social media, yeah, yeah. You know the drill. Until next time…keep digging! Quoted Sources Wikipedia (Wikipedia: Karen Wetterhahn). Dartmouth Tribute: Biographical and institutional roles, Superfund program, administrative leadership, mentoring, and program-building (Dartmouth College: A Tribute to Karen Wetterhahn). Bristol College (Chemistry, Molecule of the Month) Narrative of the lab procedures and spill, glove permeability “within 15 seconds,” physical properties, toxicology, neurotoxicity, and safety admonition (“Doing chemistry is safe … only by ceaseless vigilance …”) (University of Bristol: The Karen Wetterhahn Story / Dimethylmercury). New England Journal of Medicine(1998 Case Report) Clinical course, dates, mercury levels, chelation and exchange transfusion details, hair kinetics, half-lives, autopsy findings, and “supertoxic” dose characterization (Nierenberg et al., “Delayed Cerebellar Disease and Death after Accidental Exposure to Dimethylmercury,” New England Journal of Medicine, 1998). The Tennessean / Associated Press (Sept. 20, 1997) Human-angle reporting: “tiny glistening drop,” family vignettes, Leon’s promise (“N” and “H”), student and colleague efforts, Clarkson’s quote, OSHA note, and closing reflections (Helen O’Neill, AP, The Tennessean).

3. 

   15 Sept 2025

   The Nefarious Demon Core and the Physicists it Killed in the Pursuit of Nuclear Dominance. (Dangers in the workplace #1)

4. 

   4 Sept 2025

   Balloon Boy and Jetpack Guy Take to the Skies! Wacky History of Flight #4.

   EPISODE 6: Balloon Boy and Jetpack Guy Take to the Skies! Wacky History of Flight #4. Well, we finally made it! This is the final episode of our look at the lesser known facets of the history of flight. I thought this would be a short task, but each week’s research unearthed more and more fascinating stories and interesting characters to the point where my shownotes for all four episodes put together check in at almost 25,000 words - enough for a short book. Maybe one day! Next week we launch into an entirely new series of episodes, which I hope should be fascinating too, as we learn about the immensely dangerous demon core that killed two fantastic physicists, as well as the pioneering toxicologist killed by a single drop of lethal poison that bled through her safety suit, and the still living particle physicist who was literally blasted in the face by a particle accelerator. But today’s episode is much lighter than that - both literally and figuratively. But before we get to that, let me do the typical podcast host drivel for a moment. SHARE THE SHOW. One example of those different times happened much more recently, and also involved a balloon and a backyard launch. “Live From Fort Collins: A Silver Saucer, a Missing Kid, and the Media’s Longest Two Hours” October 15, 2009. Fort Collins, Colorado. A homemade, helium-filled craft shaped like a silver flying saucer, equal parts science project and shiny backyard UFO, just like Larry’s contraption, slips its leash and rises into the bright mountain air. Two parents, Richard and Mayumi Heene, ostensibly panic with fear their six-year-old son Falcon is inside that backyard UFO. Newsrooms do the fastest pivot known to man: from morning show banter to rolling Breaking News. National Guard helicopters scramble. Commercial planes adjust. America stares at live video of a silver dot drifting for miles and miles and wonders: Is there a child in that thing? By late afternoon, the balloon lands near Denver International Airport. Rescuers rush in, pry, peer—and find nothing. No child. Cue a wider-than-Colorado search. There are actually alarming and terrifying reports that someone saw “something” fall, and then, finally, the twist: The boy, named Falcon - you can’t make this stuff up! -  is alive, uninjured, and at home, discovered in a box tucked up in the rafters above the family’s garage. I remember this story, and if you do too, If you felt whiplash watching it live, imagine being the sheriff. Or the pilots chasing the balloon. What happened? Let’s rewind a few years, all the way back to 1997, where Richard and Mayumi Heene met at an acting school in Los Angeles and married. If you’re a detective, you just got a big fat clue. These two people met at ACTING SCHOOL. Unlike Agatha Christie, I just spelled it out for you. They tried acting and stand-up comedy, produced demo reels for actors, and Richard worked as a handyman and storm chaser. Accounts describe him as a “shameless self-promoter who would do almost anything to advance his latest endeavor.” He chased tornadoes (once on a motorcycle) literally and said he flew a small plane around the perimeter of Hurricane Wilma in 2005. The Heenes took their kids along storm-chasing and UFO-hunting; they also appeared on a tv show called  Wife Swap twice—once as a fan-favorite return for the show’s 100th episode. Reality-TV pitches (including The PSIence Detectives) were floated before 2009; network interest, not so much. By the way, I’m happy to report that Wife-Swap - a show I’ve never watched - has been off the air for five years, which I think is a good thing for the collective nation’s psyche. Enter the saucer. Richard - Mr. Heene, the dad, called the contraption an early prototype of a vehicle people could “pull out of their garage and hover above traffic.” He also claimed that with “the high voltage timer” on, the balloon would “emit one million volts every five minutes for one minute” to move left and right—statements that set off approximately one million eyebrow lifts among engineers, and probably more groans and laughs than that. The craft was about 20 feet in diameter and 5 feet high, built from plastic tarps taped together and covered with aluminum foil, tied up with string and duct tape. The gondola area was a thin plywood/cardboard box, also lashed by string and duct tape. At full inflation, the balloon held a little over 1,000 cubic feet of helium, with lift estimates ranging—under ideal conditions—from roughly 65 pounds at sea level to 48 pounds at 8,000 feet, so this podcaster ain’t flying around in that thing. Fort Collins sits around 5,000 feet; authorities later measured the balloon and concluded it couldn’t lift a 6-year-old of Falcon’s size. More on that in a bit. What we know from the calls and reports: the family contacted authorities; there were media calls; a 911 call at 11:29 a.m. in which Richard referenced the balloon “emits a million volts on the outer skin.” That sounds like a lot, but A. it probably didn’t, and B. The power or danger of a million volts depends on the amperage (current) and energy available from the source, as voltage alone does not determine the overall power of an electrical source or shock. As an example, a tiny, non-harmful static discharge can have high voltage, but not be dangerous. The balloon drifted roughly 60 miles through Colorado, passing through multiple counties. Planes were rerouted around the flight path. One report that Denver International Airport shut down briefly was later determined to be incorrect, though some sources indicate at least a short closure, or consideration of same. Even with a story less than 20 years old, it can be difficult separating myth from fact. The next day after the incident, a home video of the ‘launch’ surfaces: It shows Dad Richard inspecting the base, a family countdown—“three, two, one”—then the release. The craft rises; panic erupts. In the recording you can hear Richard shout amid a flurry of language not commonly used in Sunday School: “You didn’t put the blank tether down!” Notably, no one on the video says Falcon is in the balloon in that moment; accounts differ on what the family believed as it floated away. Two hours after launch, or t-minus two hours in NASA parlance, around 1:35 p.m., the balloon “saucer” lands near Keenesburg, about 12 miles northeast of the Denver airport. Upon examination, the capsule is empty. A deputy had reported seeing something fall earlier near Platteville; and indeed, some photographs appeared to show a small black dot beneath the balloon at one point; so panicked searchers fan out. Then, just past 4 p.m., the sheriff’s briefing gets interrupted with the words everyone wanted to hear: Falcon is safe, found at home, reportedly in a cardboard box in the garage rafters. On camera with CBS4 Denver, Falcon says, “I was hiding because my dad yelled at me.” Asked why he got yelled at, he replies: “I was playing in the flying saucer.” What a mess! The recovery operation’s price tag is as follows: search and rescue costs estimated at more than $40,000—about $14,500 of that for helicopter flights (the Colorado National Guard used a Black Hawk and a Kiowa). Even at government rates, that’s a lot of rotor time for a box in a garage. Honestly, in terms of military prices, that sounds kind of cheap, but in terms of a regular dad paying for something out of pocket - that’s a lot of simolians. After that, just like the Lawnchair Larry incident, the publicity machine ramped up and along came the evening interviews. On Larry King Live, Wolf Blitzer asks Falcon why he didn’t come out when people were calling his name. After his parents prompt him to answer, Falcon says, “You guys said that, um, we did this for the show.” #awkward. You can feel the floor drop out of the room. The next morning on Good Morning America and Today, Falcon literally barfs on camera when asked about the comment, then barfs again when his dad is asked about it. That is sketch as a millennial might say, or Sus as my kids would have said last year or the year before. I don’t know what they say now, because I am old. All of this caused Investigations kicked up. Early on, Larimer County Sheriff Jim Alderden was, if not naive, at least encouragingly credulous, and he said that the whole thing didn’t “appear to be a hoax,” but by October 18—three days after the flight, he announced his conclusion: it was a hoax, “a publicity stunt…to better market themselves for a reality show.” He suggested a grab bag of potential charges: conspiracy, contributing to the delinquency of a minor, filing a false report, and attempting to influence a public servant. In a press conference, Alderden also admitted his earlier public credulity was part of a “game plan” to earn the family’s trust while investigators kept digging. As a line, “on the bizarre meter, this rates a 10,” pretty much sums up the week. I’d love to know if Alderden was really that clever - kind of a Walt Longmire type - or was he just covering? I feel like the latter is more likely, but what do I know? Physics joined the party. A Colorado State University professor initially told authorities—based on dimensions Richard provided—that lift with a child might be plausible, but more precise measurements were needed to be sure. After the balloon was analyzed, that changed: the craft weighed more than claimed and, by the revised math, couldn’t have carried Falcon as alleged. Meanwhile, a supporting affidavit asserted that mom Mayumi later admitted she “knew all along that Falcon was hiding in the residence,” and alleged that the couple planned the stunt about two weeks prior and instructed their three sons to lie, all to make the family more marketable for “future media interests.” As we will discuss, Mr. Heene will dispute these allegations of hoax down the road. By mid-November 2009, lawyers announced both parents would plead guilty, with prosecutors recommending probation—motivated in part, their counsel said, by fears that Mayumi, a Japanese citizen, could face deportation if they fought the charges and lost. On November 13, Richard pleaded guilty to a felony—attempting to influence a public servant. Mayumi later pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor—false reporting. Sentencing came in December: Richard got 90 days in jail, 100 hours of community service. He also had to produce a written apology to the agencies that searched, and $36,000 in restitution. Mayumi received 20 days of jail-supervised community service (structured so a parent was always home), and both were barred from profiting from the incident for several years. The FAA, for its part, floated an $11,000 civil fine for launching an unauthorized aircraft. (If you’re keeping score at home: homemade saucer, national panic, a child in the attic, felony, restitution, and a long lesson in administrative law.) I tried in vain to locate the law that says it is illegal to fly a balloon or lawn chair from your backyard, but I’m a historian, not a lawyer, and I trust it is a real law. In January 2010 and again in interviews years later, the Heenes said they pleaded guilty only to avoid Mayumi’s possible deportation. A 2019 ABC News feature revisits that claim; the family insists it wasn’t a hoax. Falcon—older, long-haired, and fronting a heavy metal band with his brothers—leans into the “Balloon Boy” nickname. In fact, the Heene bros have a band called the Heene Boyz, like the Hardy Boyz - the wrestlers with a Z not the detectives with an ‘S’ and they have a song called “Balloon Boy No Hoax. The video is on YouTube, and I watched it for this episode. It’s…awful and surreal. And almost put me off of heavy metal music forever. But, at least one of the boyz knows how to play guitar, so that’s something, and there is video footage of the boyz building a flying balloon, so that’s….interesting. Hoax or not, something unexpected happened on December 23, 2020, right in the middle of a deadly Covid surge, Colorado Governor Jared Polis pardoned Richard and Mayumi Heene, clearing the convictions from their records. His rationale wasn’t to relitigate the facts; he said simply that the family had “paid the price in the eyes of the public,” served their sentences, and it was time to move on—that a permanent record from the saga shouldn’t drag on their lives forever. Their attorney declared, “The balloonacy has ended.” (Credit where due: that pun takes nerve.)   Do you want an attorney that says things like “The baloonacy has ended”??? I kind of think you do, but I can’t fully tell if that’s clever or awful. The pardon restores Richard’s voting rights and opens doors like a general contractor license. Whatever you think about 2009, the executive message in 2020 was: let’s stop letting this one day be the anchor for an entire family’s future. For hours that day in 2009, the saucer drew wall-to-wall, global coverage—news copters chasing, anchors vamping, graphics spinning, blogs and social feeds churning out parodies even before the boy’s safety was confirmed - I remember following the story, but I’m not sure I followed it live or not. “Balloon Boy” rocketed to the top of Google trends; Saturday Night Live joked about it on Weekend Update; and by week’s end, the newscycle had its moral ready: we modern Americans are collectively very good at chasing a shiny thing and not nearly as good at reality-checking it in real time. Editor & Publisher tut-tutted that many TV hosts only emphasized the reports were “unverified” AFTER the landing. A Syracuse media scholar called it a wake-up call the industry would likely “sleep through.” On this, he may have been a prophet. Scratch that, he was a prophet, or at least, he would have been a prophet if he had said such a thing in the 1950s, because the media has been unreliable and sensationalistic for a lot longer than just a handful of years. In 2011, Richard auctioned the balloon for $2,502, with proceeds pledged for victims of the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami. A decade later, retrospectives multiplied; the family reiterated its denials; and in 2025 a Netflix documentary (Trainwreck: Balloon Boy) revisited the saga through archival footage, staking the incident’s place in the modern-myth cabinet with a neat label and a streaming thumbnail. You could watch that documentary, and the trailer is really, really well done - it makes you think it would be awesome, but it only gets a 5.5 on IMDB. I’m a big IMDB snob - if a tv show I want to watch doesn’t get at least an 8, I usually avoid it. That said, you should watch the trailer, because that balloon that the Heene family built is far, far cooler than what I was envisioning in my mind. It really did look like a UFO, which makes you wonder how many UFO sightings could be attributed to backyard shenanigans like the ones we’ve been talking about. What does it all mean? A few gentle takeaways—equal parts historian, pastor, and guy who has seen a few media cycles: 1) Live pictures are intoxicating; verification is boring—and essential. Saying “we don’t know yet what is going on” is not cowardice; it’s wisdom. 2) Reality TV incentives don’t mix well with public safety. Whether you see the Heenes as schemers or strivers who made terrible choices, the aftermath is clear: helicopters flew, responders searched, and the public paid a bill. Fame is a poor flight plan, especially when children are onboard—literally or figuratively. 4) Whatever you think, don’t blame the kids. The Heene boys had front-row seats to all of it—panic, press, puke, pundits. Years later, they’re making music and fixing up houses and trying to live beyond a nickname. No need to judge them. If there’s a moral here, it might be: Verify before you broadcast. Also: don’t use your kids as tools to become famous. That is happening all the time on YouTube these days, and it’s just gross.  And if you build a shiny thing in the backyard, maybe keep the kids out of the “basket,” tether it twice, and don’t call the TV station before you call 911. One more story as we prepare to end the episode. This one a bit of an aeronautical mystery. Well we’ve talked about Lawnchair Larry and Balloon Boy - just one more guy to talk about, and we don’t have the time to give him the attention he deserves, because if he’s real - BIG IF - he’s the most interesting of them all! Los Angeles, 2020: Pilots on approach report a human at 3,000 feet, rocketing, not ballooning near LAX in what sounds like a Marvel audition tape. Over the next two years, at least five more reports roll in from airline crews, witnesses, pilots and flight instructors, many around 5,000–6,000 feet—an altitude better suited for 737s than cosplay. Whether it’s one person or several isn’t known; whether it’s a person at all is also up for debate. THE SIGHTINGS (AND THEORIES) The five year anniversary of the first sighting just happened a few days ago, as Jet Man #1 made his first appearance at LAX on August 30, 2020: American 1997: “Tower, American 1997, we just passed a guy in a jetpack… Off the left side, maybe 300 yards or so, about our altitude.” SkyWest pilot: “We just saw the guy passing by us in the jetpack.” By October 14, 2020, China Airlines 006 reports “a flying object like a flight suit jetpack” at 6,000 feet during approach. On December 21, 2020, a Sling Pilot Academy instructor films an object near Palos Verdes/Catalina at about 3,000 feet, posting: “The video appears to show a jet pack, but it could also be a drone or some other object….”   Keep in mind - these are pilots, not Bubba’s nursing a six pack. They saw something…weird. later, in November 2020, an LAPD helicopter records what looks suspiciously like a Jack Skellington balloon floating over Beverly Hills. When the footage is released a year later, the FBI says none of the jetpack reports “have been verified,” adding: “One working theory is that pilots might have seen balloons.”  I feel like there is a great difference between a jetpack man and a balloon man, but nobody calls me Hawkeye because #1 I’m not that good of a shot with a bow, and #2, my glasses do not set the world record for thinness. Flash-forward to July 28, 2021: roughly 15 miles off the coast, a pilot calls “possible jetpack man… about 5000 feet,” sparking peak L.A. radio banter: LAX Tower: “Did you see the UFO?” SkyWest 3626: “We were looking but we did not see Iron Man.” LAX Tower: “Attention, all aircraft, use caution for the jetpack… around 5000…” 747 pilot: “Where’d you say Iron Man was flying around again?” Presumably, they didn’t find Iron Man/JPG that day. A sixth sighting occurred in June 2022, 15 miles east of LAX at about 4,500 feet. Maybe a drone or a balloon or something. SO - if Jet Pack Guy really IS a guy on a jet pack, that would be one of the best stories ever, but it’s a stretch. Not sure we really have that level of technology outside the MCU just yet. So what was it? Was it this world’s Tony Stark? Jack Skellington? Or a balloon with great PR? Is the military testing a new prototype? Maybe just another lawnchair Larry zooming by. In Elijah’s words, sometimes the Lord’s not in the wind or the earthquake; sometimes it’s just… a whisper. Or in this case, a helium sigh.

5. 

   3 Sept 2025

   Lawnchair Larry, the Floating Hero-Priest and Backyard Aeronauts Take Flight. (History of Flight #3)

   Interesting Pod #5 - LawnChair Larry and Backyard Aeronauts Take Flight. Today we finally get to the inspiration for this set of episodes: Lawnchair Larry himself - the man who tied a bunch of balloons to his lawnchair and flew off into history. A great, great story - and a cautionary tale. But before we get to that, let me do the typical podcast host drivel for a moment. As an Indie show not hosted by a celebrity, the Interesting Pod relies on word of mouth. Please tell folks about us, and share episodes on social media. Our growth depends, in large part, on you guys. Leaving a review on Apple Podcasts would be helpful as well. I’ve been podcasting since 2005, and believe in the medium as an excellent way to communicate. From about 2005 to 2015, podcasting was a ground-leveling way for normal people to reach lots of people with all kinds of fascinating topics, but now the podcasting world is flooded and saturated with celebrities. That’s fine, I suppose, but I hope there’s still a place for indie shows and little podcasts like this one, and when you tell people about it, you help little efforts like this carve a niche. Thank you! On our last episode, we introduced you to the real Wonder Twins - The scientists, aeronauts and deep sea exploring Piccard Twins, likely the inspiration behind Starfleet Captain Jean Luc Picard. Before the Piccard twins inspired the creation of Captain Picard, however, they inspired another luminary, this one much more like Dr. Zefram Cochrane than Picard. A high-strung - in more ways than one - truck driver and aeronaut named Larry Walters. He dreamed of becoming an ace pilot in the USAF, but poor eyesight and maybe other factors grounded him. At least, it grounded him temporarily, but not permanently! I’m Chase, and today we’re telling the story of Lawnchair Larry—the man who lashed helium-filled weather balloons to a lawn chair, rose to an altitude that Isaiah might call “mounting up with wings like eagles,” and drifted his way into American folklore, aviation case studies, and even a blackout in Long Beach. This is a story about ingenuity and longing, the thin line between gumption and folly, bravery and recklessness, and some of the depressing factors of life after kissing the sky. It’s July 2, 1982, and Los Angeles is doing what Los Angeles does best, sunshine, smog, and improbable dreams. The front page of the LA Times for that day discussed the benefits and dangers of radio therapists - around 11 years before Frasier appeared on the airwaves. Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization were, unsurprisingly, going at it, and Ronald Reagan weighed in on the insanity plea of his would-be assassin John Hinkley. The weather that day called for a high of 78 and a low of 59, a bit cold for LA at that time of year. In the backyard of a San Pedro home, a Sears aluminum lawn chair is tethered to dozens of weather balloons like a suburban version of Jules Verne. A rope slips loose earlier than planned, and our hero, Larry Walters, truck driver and thwarted Air Force hopeful, shoots into the relatively cool Southern California sky. Not metaphorically. Literally. Up, up, and away…straight toward controlled airspace. A Delta pilot gawks. A TWA pilot confirms. And somewhere on a CB radio, Larry calmly informs the REACT volunteers: “Ah, the difficulty is, ah, this was an unauthorized balloon launch.” You don’t say, Larry. Long before he tangled with those power lines, Larry tangled with a different kind of line: the Air Force’s vision requirements. He wanted to fly, but his eyesight grounded the dream. Like many of us who don’t get Plan A, he did what you do, he settled. Truck driver by trade; dreamer by nature. And that dream, according to Larry, started early. At 13, he walked into a military surplus store, looks up at a ceiling of weather balloons, and thinks: there’s a way to get airborne without a fighter jet. The seed is planted. Fast forward to 1982. Ronald Reagan’s in the White House, E.T. is in theaters, and Larry, now in his early thirties, decides to cash in the dream. The plan is simple in a Rube Goldberg kind of way: attach roughly 42 (sometimes Larry said 43) eight-foot weather balloons to a lawn chair, fill them with helium, lift off gently, drift over the Mojave, and, this is the key, shoot a few balloons with a pellet gun when it’s time to descend. What could go wrong besides literally everything? Oh yeah,  about that lawn chair. It was reportedly a Sears special, about $109 at the time… Pause - $109 for a lawnchair in the early 1980s?? That’s like 350 today. On the one hand, if you are going to take your lawnchair up to the edge of space, then I get wanting to have the absolute best lawnchair possible. On the other hand, that’s a LOT of money for a lawnchair! This is the American tinker spirit with a dash of…creative paperwork, because Larry and his longtime girlfriend, Carol Van Deusen, bought 45 balloons and helium, using some forged documents and fudged reasonings. The launch site? The backyard at 1633 West 7th Street, San Pedro, which turned out to be Carol’s mom’s house. Equipment list for this manned aerostat included: parachute, CB radio, sandwiches, Coca-Cola - that’s regular Coca Cola before the New Coke debacle -  a pellet gun, and a camera he would later be too awestruck (read: busy not dying) to use. Let’s talk about that backyard at 1633 West 7th Street. If you aren’t from Cali, you may not know this, but if you are a californian not named Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerburg, you probably live in a house with a surprisingly small backyard. I come from Alabama, where giant backyards are owned by even lower middle class folks, and in Cali, even upper middle class and some rich folks have comparatively small backyards. Carol’s mom’s house fits this bill. I’ve never been there, but I’m looking at it on satellite view right now, and it is TINY. Like so small it could only fit a few lawnchairs. But I guess it really only had to fit that one! Then, the critical moment: Larry’s sitting in his chair, hovering a bit, and hoping for a SOFT launch. He’s attached balloons to his chair, and it is held to the ground by a seemingly strong tether. Unfortunately, that tether snaps earlier than planned. No gentle 30-foot float; instead, Larry rockets skyward to something like 16,000 feet—three miles up—right into controlled airspace near Long Beach Airport. I ride roller coasters, but I get nervous as they go up steep hills - especially huge roller coasters like Six Flag’s Goliath. One time in Atlanta, I looked at my friend Sam as we rode up together, and simply asked him - “What are we doing? This is insane.” I can only imagine that Larry had similar thoughts as he rocketed from 10 feet to 16,000 feet IN A LAWN CHAIR. And somewhere on the ground, a handful of friends are staring upward at a little aluminum throne sailing the firmament, wondering if this is still technically a backyard barbecue. Unfortunately, as Plane and Pilot reports, Larry got too high, too fast:  I can almost hear the power-chords and wails from Dokken as Larry goes up, Too high to fly, but you should've seen him there (Yeah) The sun shines down on his face, but he did feel a thing, sadly. Larry didn’t need to look at his altimeter to know he went much higher than he had intended. He began to feel cold and dizzy from the thin air and feared that if he shot out any of the balloons that the balance of his chair would become unstable, causing him to fall. Which is the kind of thing he might should have considered earlier. He used his CB radio to call REACT, a citizens' band radio monitoring organization. REACT: “What information do you wish me to tell [the airport] at this time as to your location and your difficulty??” Larry: “Ah, the difficulty is… this was an unauthorized balloon launch… I’m sure my ground crew has alerted the proper authority… just tell them I’m okay.”  This transcript is real, recorded by REACT—the volunteer radio monitors who found themselves dealing with perhaps the most unique mayday in SoCal history. After about 45 minutes in the air, he finally found the courage to shoot out some of the balloons, starting with those in the outer ring, but accidentally dropped his gun in the process. He poured out ballast to control the descent from there. Let me repeat what you just heard…Larry eventually starts carefully shooting balloons to descend…and then drops the pellet gun. That seems like one of the more significant fumbles in history. A small, gravity-obedient mistake, but by then he’d punctured enough balloons to begin coming down—slowly, and then not so slowly, but - grace upon grace - Larry and his makeshift gondola snagged some power lines in Long Beach. Bummer for the neighborhood though, because Lights flicker and die across a broad swath of the community.  Twenty minutes of blackout, so nobody lost their steaks or anything. Larry, by grace and plastic tethers, avoids electrocution, clambers off the chair, and steps back onto the earth. Unharmed. Score one for improbable Providence—and maybe for water-jug ballast. Sadly for Larry, but unsurprisingly for everyone else, The Long Beach Police Department is waiting. Larry is promptly arrested, a bewildered slow and confused, “what do we even charge this guy with?” kind of arrest. An FAA regional safety inspector, Neal Savoy, says the line that belongs in a museum of deadpan regulation: We know he broke some part of the Federal Aviation Act, and as soon as we decide which part it is, some type of charge will be filed. That right there is a stereotypical bureaucrat speaking. This looks and feels wrong, but we don’t know why it’s wrong until we pore over the standards and regulations. I don’t disagree with Neil, but that’s definitely hall of fame level bureaucrat thinking there. If Larry had a pilot’s license, they’d suspend it. He did not. It’s hard to revoke a license from a man who just flew a lawn chair. Initially, Larry gets slapped with a $4,000 fine (in early-80s dollars - that’s not quite $15,000 today, not chump change)  for multiple regulatory sins: entering an airport traffic area without proper two-way radio contact, creating a hazard, and operating what the FAA first treated like a civil aircraft. On appeal, the FAA eventually drops the airworthiness-certificate angle, and reduces the fine to $1,500. Even the feds, it seems, recognize the difference between malice and misadventure. But hey, $5000 bucks is $5000 bucks! I wouldn’t want to get hit by a fine like that, and I’m a very wealthy podcaster! Well, I’m a podcaster anyway. Larry’s public comments, though, are not the swagger of a daredevil. They sound more like a pilgrim. “It was something I had to do. I had this dream for twenty years, and if I hadn’t done it, I think I would have ended up in the funny farm.” In another line, he credits God: “Since I was 13 years old, I’ve dreamed of going up into the clear blue sky in a weather balloon… By the grace of God, I fulfilled my dream.” Those aren’t victory-laps; they’re testimony. He did the thing he’d longed to do, and he knew it wasn’t exactly prudent, but I imagine it was quite fulfilling. The world, predictably, goes bonkers for Lawnchair Larry. Ten days after the flight, he’s on Late Night with David Letterman. He does Johnny Carson. He gives speeches for a bit, even snags a Timex print ad years later. Yes, you heard that right - Timex featured "Lawnchair" Larry Walters in a series of ads for their watches in 1992, focusing on his ambitious flight and adventurous spirit. The ad specifically highlighted that Larry was wearing a Timex "moon dial" watch while he was in his lawn chair. Someone dubs his craft Inspiration I, a name as earnest and backyard-poetic as the flight itself. Meanwhile, the great sorting hat of modern folklore places him in the orbit of the Darwin Awards, where he’s labeled an “At-Risk Survivor” (in other words, spectacularly lucky) in 1993. The cultural verdict lands somewhere between admiration for chutzpah and a universal parental eye-roll. And the chair? What became of that amazing and ridiculously expensive lawn chair? (Maybe I shouldn’t be so critical - it did survive and keep Larry safe.) Well, that aluminum recliner becomes an artifact. Larry gave it away to a neighborhood kid, Jerry Fleck, in a move he later regretted when institutions started calling. Eventually, Jerry surfaces years later, the chair still in his garage with some original ballast jugs attached, and loans it to the San Diego Air & Space Museum. It is later donated to the Smithsonian, displayed at  the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, and today it’s part of the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.—a place that houses the Wright Flyer, the Apollo command module, and…a surprisingly expensive, but sturdy aluminum patio chair that once blacked out Long Beach. God bless America! Fifteen years after the flight, in 1997, the early Internet rediscovered Larry, and the story ballooned again. A widely shared post claimed all sorts of specifics, painting a dramatic scene involving LAX, helicopters, offshore rescues, and one very quotable line as he’s led away in cuffs: “A man can’t just sit around.” It’s sensational, cinematic…and, as Snopes.com pointed out, full of embellishments. The core is true—Larry really did fly, and he really did hit 16,000 feet, and there really was a blackout—but many details from the 1997 viral version were just that: viral. Consider this a friendly reminder that folklore accumulates barnacles, especially online. Legends, like toenails, tend to grow. Larry’s flight also inspired imitators—most notably Kevin Walsh in 1984, who ascended under 57 balloons from a Massachusetts airfield, hit 9,000 feet in minutes, and parachuted down, promptly earning his own FAA paperwork. Think about that - parachuting out of a lawnchair at almost two miles high! Larry had become a genre and an inspiration to many, many others. And then there’s the pop-culture wake: the Australian film Danny Deckchair, a stage musical (The Flight of the Lawn Chair Man), and countless magazine features. That movie gets a fairly decent 6.7 IMDB rating, and stars two guys named Rhys - spell it - which is something. Actually, it's kind of weird, because Danny Deckchair is an Aussie film, and Rhys is a Welsh name. Oh well, we live in a strange world. I watched the trailer for that 2003 film. It looks…odd, but maybe decent. Spoiler alert - I guess, I only watched the trailer - but this Larry, or Danny - doesn’t land in powerlines, but his balloons get blown up by a fireworks show, and he plummets out of the sky, landing in a backyard tree where a woman nurses him to health and - it appears - falls in love with him, even though he uses her leg shaving razor to shave his face. Which is gross on two different accounts. Lawnchair Larry lives on to this day - every now and then a new batch of people discover his story on websites like Reddit and Tik Tok as recent listicles and social news aggregation sites keep rediscovering and retelling, some faithfully, some fancifully, the day a lawn chair shared airspace with airliners. The fact-checked bottom line, though, is stranger and better than fiction: a backyard dream rode a thermal right into the history books. Let’s talk meaning. Why does Lawnchair Larry endure when so many stunts fade? Part of it is the quintessentially American cocktail: restraint-defying ingenuity, Home Depot aesthetics, and a stubborn refusal to accept that flying requires permission. Larry is a folk saint of the DIY imagination—equal parts Huck Finn and Apollo 11. Another part is the sheer audacity of earnestness. He wasn’t trying to sell a sneaker or set a sponsored content record. He was chasing a twenty-year prayer with a parachute and a pellet gun. And, man - he did it - he climbed up over 3 miles high where the airplanes go with just stuff you can buy at Home Depot! At this point a pastor’s brain can’t help but surface. The Bible is not short on sky metaphors or cautionary tales about vertical ambition. The Tower of Babel warns us about building up in our own name (Genesis 11), and Ecclesiastes has strong words for “chasing the wind.” But Scripture also gives us Isaiah 40—“those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength; they will mount up with wings like eagles”—and Peter, who actually stepped out onto water when Jesus said “come.” Faith can look like audacious obedience; folly can look like audacious self-promotion. The difference is motive, wisdom, and maybe just a sprinkle of wise counsel. With Larry, I don’t read arrogance but antsiness, unease, maybe even ADHD, but also a lot of good old fashioned earnestness, and it’s important to be earnest, right Oscar? “By the grace of God, I fulfilled my dream.” said Larry, afterwards.  Maybe that’s not exactly Babel; but more like Pilgrim’s Progress with helium. Maybe that’s too generous. Wisdom might have thought better of this excercise: romantic visions don’t absolve us from neighbor-love or hazard mitigation. Larry’s flight cut power to a community for twenty minutes. There’s a balance between holy daring and humble diligence. In pastoral counseling, I often see this tension: God-given desires that, if pursued without wisdom, planning or restraint, create collateral damage. The call isn’t to stop desiring; it’s to apprentice desire to faith and patience. Larry’s story is at once beautiful and complicated: a dream realized, a community briefly blacked out, a nation delighted, and a bureaucracy perplexed. It is in so many ways a quintessential human story. I can’t throw stones, because it sounds like the kind of thing I would have done in my 20s. The next day, Larry Walters was famous, and plastered across the front page news of the Los Angeles Times. I’m looking at the paper as I type this. Two headlines frame a picture  - not a very good picture, sadly - of Larry on his lawnchair. If you’re thinking these are helium party balloons that lofted him three miles high, then think again. These balloons are big - as in, each balloon appears to be way bigger than Larry and his lawnchair, and there were over 40 of them. Let’s read the article! (READ THE PAPER) That’s a big deal - I’ve never done anything to make the frontpage of the newspaper, and the closest I’ve come is making the front page of the Birmingham Grotto of the National Speleological Society’s newsletter in 1991 because I got myself stuck in a cave and rescued by the cave rescue team. Another story for another day. Larry was famous, but Fame is fickle.  He did the talk shows, hit the circuit, and then, people turned their attention to other things and real life resumed. Unfortunately, Walters didn’t realize fame is fleeting, and he retired from his main job to become a motivational speaker, a decision that appears to not have gone very well. Over the years, He hiked the San Gabriel Mountains, volunteered with the U.S. Forest Service and did some odd-job security work. He broke up with his girlfriend of 15 years - ouch, that’s a long time to date and not marry - and had to deal with real life, jobs, bills and the dogged reality that the mountaintop—literal, in his case—isn’t where we live most days. And then, in October 1993, at age 44, Larry walked into one of his favorite hiking places and died by suicide in the Angeles National Forest. News reports were matter of fact, somber, restrained, and sad. The man whose flight made millions laugh and gasp had been carrying more weight than any balloons could lift. All of us feel that way some of the time. Even many of the great saints in the Bible - Moses, Job, Elijah, dealt with depression and fought suicidal thoughts. If you’re listening to this and you are fighting that struggle, allow me to encourage you to NOT fight alone. Reach out. More people care than you realize, and if you can’t find somebody in your local context, then call 988 and you will find help. Life is hard, and it’s not meant to be lived alone. Larry’s death complicates his legend in the way real endings often do. The Tik-Tok video wants an uncomplicated hero or a punchline. The truth gives us a warty person, someone who sought wonder and brushed the heavens and then struggled in the valley. If anything, his story invites gentleness, and should cause us to ponder what those around us are grappling with. Ecclesiastes again: “There is a time to laugh” and a time to weep. We can do both. What can we learn from our guy Larry? First, dreams need craft. Larry didn’t just wish; he planned, he sourced, he calculated lift (not perfectly, but he tried), he strapped on a parachute, and he brought redundancy—well, until the pellet gun plummeted. Aspiration without preparation is a recipe for blackouts. For all of his foibles, Larry reached the heavens and returned. That’s really impressive. Second, wisdom is communal. Larry’s story reminds me of an old Solomnic proverb,  "Where there is no guidance, a people falls, but in an abundance of counselors there is safety." Had an FAA-style mind been in the backyard that morning, some hazards might have been avoided. In an abundance of counselors, there is safety—and probably fewer neighborhood outages. But you know what? I get it - put an FAA-style mind in that backyard, and Larry probably never takes off. That balance between prudence and daring-do is so hard to navigate. The prudent rarely, if ever, touch the heavens in lawnchairs, but neither do they end up at the bottom of Strids in Bolton either. Third, the afterlife of artifacts tells a story. That chair’s journey—from a San Pedro yard to a kid’s garage to the Smithsonian—says a lot about what we value. America keeps odd company under glass: lunar landers and lawn furniture, Kitty Hawk and cul-de-sacs. There’s something delightfully patriotic about that. The next time I go to the Smithsonian, I’m making a bee line to that lawnchair, and want to see it up close more than almost anything else in that museum. Fourth, folklore is fun, but facts matter. The Internet’s 1997 myth-saturated, turbo-charged version gave Larry a Hollywood makeover he never needed. The truth is interesting enough: a lawn chair entered controlled airspace and made airline pilots do double-takes. That story is so beautiful it needs not makeup or implants or lies or embellishments. Larry’s launch wasn’t policy-compliant. But it was sincere, and it was impressive. He looked up at a big sky, and rather than merely envy the pilots who used it, he gave himself thirty minutes in that expanse, trusting a pellet gun, some water jugs, and grace. He made us laugh, made the FAA frown, made the lights flicker, and made history. If you’re dreaming today—about scholarship, a deeper calling, a story to write, a song to compose—tie your balloons thoughtfully. Invite wiser friends to look over your ropes. Surround yourself with a mixture of dreamers and unstifled bureaucrats…you’ll need ‘em both.  File the metaphorical flight plan. And when you finally rise, do so in boldness and prudence, wisdom and adventure. You may not cause a blackout or capture the attention of airline pilots, but you’ll make an impact, and likely live to tell about it to your grandkids. This has been the story—and the aftermath—of Lawnchair Larry Walters: the backyard aviator who drifted into controlled airspace and cultural memory. For the record: do not try this at home, at church, or really anywhere. If Larry got a slap on the wrist in 1982, you can bet they’d put you under the jail in 2025. These are different times! Larry spawned a lot of copycats, as such events often do. I could talk about many of them, but I will focus a little bit on the most impressive and maybe the saddest. We need to talk about Adelir Antônio de Carli. Initially, de Carli had humble beginnings, born in Brazil, but lived for much of his childhood in Paraguay until his mom died of cancer. As a teen, he worked as a tire repairman and later as a gas station attendant at his uncle's gas station, while also painting tablecloths as a side job. He was described as a quiet and humble person, and was an excellent student. In other news, I don’t know what painting tablecloths means, but I guess that is a job. In his early 30s, de Carli went to seminary, and was ordained in 2003 as a Catholic priest. He was a man of deep compassion, advocating for the homeless before it was cool to do so, and he also created the Pastoral Rodoviária, a rest area for truckers. Fuelled by a "necessity to spread God's message", he conceived the project with the intent of assisting and evangelizing the truck drivers who would pass by the port - creating a rest space for them, where he offered pastoral care. It was this ministry that would lead to him reaching higher than any other amateur chair-cluster balloonist, and would also lead to his tragic death. In April 20, 2008, shortly after leading Mass, de Carli planned a record-breaking balloon flight to raise awareness for his truck stop ministry. He was not unprepared, having attended paragliding classes (where he was unfortunately expelled, but also taking jungle-survival and mountain-climbing courses. This wasn’t his first attempt to fly. On January 13, 2008, in Ampére, Brazil, he rose beneath 600 helium giant party balloons, climbing to about 5,300 meters (17,400 ft). He drifted across borders and landed safely in Argentina. Impressive. Very impressive. Three months later, he tried again. Lifting off from Paranaguá, de Carli aimed to travel roughly (450 mi) inland to Dourados. This time he used a chair slung under 1,000 balloons, climbing to about 6,100 meters (20,000 ft). But he hadn’t checked the forecast. A storm swept in. Though he carried a GPS, he didn’t know how to operate it. About eight hours after liftoff, his final radio call reported he’d drifted off the coast, approaching water, unable to give his position. The transcript reads: “I need to get in touch with the staff so they can teach me how to operate this GPS here to give the latitude and longitude coordinates, which is the only way anyone on the ground can know where I am. The satellite cell phone keeps going out of range and furthermore the battery is getting low.” Unfortunately, storms caught him and He crashed into the Atlantic. Weeks later, on July 4, 2008, the Brazilian Navy recovered his remains near an offshore oil platform. A daring heart, a pastoral calling, a passion for evangelism and careteaking. What a guy, what a unit.  This is a good place to end today’s episode. May his memory call us to courage—and to wisdom—before we loose the ropes and trust the wind. Our next episode - out this week, Lord willing and the creek don’t wise - looks at the amazing Balloon boy story, and also the mysterious JPG - Jet Pack Guy AKA Ironman.  Share the show, and stay tuned!

6. 

   23 Aug 2025

   The Space Race Begins: The Real Wonder Twins, First Female in Space, First Female Astronaut, and other Flight Adventures.

   Interesting Pod #4 - The Space Race Begins: The Real Wonder Twins, First Female in Space, First Female Astronaut, and other Flight Adventures. Last week we put on our wingsuit, or aired up our balloon, which is probably safer, and took a look at the history of humans engaging in flight, and a few early aeronautical pioneers like the Montgolfier Brothers and Franz Reichelt, and also a few early aviation disasters like the Hindenburg explosion. Flying is risky, and today’s episode chronicles some of the riskiest - and bravest - attempts by amateur flyers to ascend to the Heavens. Some, like Icarus, had a bad ending to their airspirations, but others accomplished some really impressive feats of flying with readily available technology. And some, just plane pulled our leg with tales of children flying off into the ether. Welcome to the Interesting Pod. Our goal on this show is to tell stories that have two characteristics. One is in the name - Interesting. We want to be INTERESTING. But not only that - I’m a historian, working on finishing up a Ph.D in history, and not only do we want to be interesting, but we also want to have accuracy based on historical rigor - good research - without being tedious or dry, pedantic, or condescending. Interesting means that we will seek to tell stories that are fascinating and moving. Some episodes might be inspiring, some wacky, some unnerving, some downright scary, but all should be - hopefully - interesting. But we want to be ACCURATE too. Practically, what that looks like is that this week, we had a seemingly good source that said that Tacitus, the first-century Roman historian, had accused Livia, the first-century wife of Caesar Augustus, of using aphrodisiacs to help control the Roman court and have her way. This was reported by a fairly reputable book, but it didn’t have a direct source or quotation from Tacitus, so I spent some extra time combing through Tacitus’ Annals to try and find that story, and failed. It might be there, but this podcast isn’t a dissertation, and it was a minutely important facet of the story, so I didn’t want to spend all day on it. So when we talk about it, you’ll know that the story is possibly apocryphal. Thus, we aim for interesting, and we do our due diligence. That doesn’t mean the show will be infallible, but we’ll try! Today we’re going to look at the wild balloon rides of the Catholic priest Adelir de Carli, who attached 1,000 helium-filled party balloons to a chair, rose to over 20,000 feet, and got caught in a terrible storm over the Atlantic Ocean. We will also find out about Jonathan Trappe, who crossed the English Channel over the White Cliffs of Dover, the Piccard twins, who pioneered balloon flights to the edge of space AND the bottom of the ocean, and the magician David Blaine, who may have outflown them all, reaching nearly 25,000 feet via hand-held balloons. So this episode is fun for anybody who is interested in the history of flight, OR those who dream of insane adventures that launch from your own backyard. You are NOT alone. And you may not survive. Our ultimate focus today is on Lawnchair Larry, the backyard pilot who strapped balloons to his - lawnchair - and flew over three miles high - but before we get to our guy Larry, we’re going to go back in time a little bit. All the way to Jean Piccard. No, actually, not that Jean Piccard, but possibly the guy he’s named after. Actually, not just Jean Piccard, but also his brother Auguste Piccard, and not just them, but also Jean’s wife Jeanette, who may have been the best balloon pilot of them all. So let’s talk about the amazing Piccard family. Jules Piccard, born in 1840, was a Swiss chemist and the father of the Piccard twins Jean and Auguste. His mentor at the University of Heidelberg was Robert Bunsen, and yes! That’s the same guy who invented the Bunsen burner that you used in high school chemistry class. Jules studied a bunch of weird chemicals, including Dinitro-ortho-cresol, which is a poison that kills people and bugs, and also cantharidan, which is interesting enough to talk about for 60 seconds or so. Cantharidan is odorless and colorless, but extremely dangerous. Some people know it as Spanish Fly, and it is said that the first-century Roman historian Tacitus discusses cantharidan as an aphrodisiac, and notes that Livia, the wife of Augustus Caesar, supposedly used it as part of her nefarious scheming, but I couldn’t find that in any primary sources. Regardless, does it work? Maybe…but more importantly than that - it kills. Cantharidan is an extreme poison, and as little as 10 milligrams - which is about the weight of a large grain of sand or salt - can kill a person. So, no thank you!  The archives of Mcgill University also tell me that Jules Piccard did research into the chemical weight of Rubidium, which I’ve nver heard of, but melts at 102.7 degrees and looks a lot like Mercury.    So yeah - rabbit trails - Jules was the father of Jean and Auguste, who were really quite remarkable. Jean followed in his father’s steps as a chemist, and Auguste bucked the trend and became a physicist, but both brothers were aeronauts and balloon pioneers, and one of the brothers was ALSO a hydronaut - a deep sea pioneer! Who should we talk about first - they are both so interesting! I guess let’s start with Auguste, who was born in January of 1884 in Basel, Switzerland. Auguste was a big science kid, and he went to the prestigious Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, and ultimately became a physics professor at the University of Brussels, Belgium the same year his son Jacques Piccard was born. Auguste was very interested in flight and ballooning, and in 1930 he designed an aluminum pressurized gondola that would be attached to a balloon and allow somebody to ascend to unheard of heights into the atmosphere without dying.   Two things in that sentence should pique your interest. First - a gondola, second the part about ascending without dying. If you’re like me, and you hear the word ‘gondola’, you might be thinking of a flat bottomed boat piloted by an oarsman in Venice that travels around the canals there. That is indeed a gondola.  If you live near the mountains - particularly mountains that have skiing - when you hear gondola, you might be thinking of an enclosed cabin-style ski-lift, suspended from a cable, that can carry groups of people up into the mountains. That is also a gondola. OR, in this case, a gondola is the basket or enclosed capsule like thing that is suspended below a balloon, and it usually has room for passengers, equipment, and maybe even instruments. So a gondola is all three things - an enclosed people carrier on a ski lift, a flat-bottom boat dating back to the 1000s primarily used in Venice’s canals, and the basket or capsule below a balloon. By the way - rabbit trail alert - a gondelier is what they call the pilot of a gondola in Venice. This is a licensed position by the city, there are about 400 licenses given per year, and it takes 400 hours of intense training over a period of six months to become a gondolier…which pays around $150,000/year in US equivalent salary, so it’s a pretty decent job! Anyway, back to my sentence with two interest-piquing facts. Auguste Piccard designed the first pressurized, enclosed gondola, and the reason he designed it is because of the second interesting thing in that sentence, the part about ascending the heights without dying. What’s that all about? Well, to answer that question, we need to go back a few years to the mid 1920s, and there we will meet a heroic captain in the U.S. Army Air Corps - no Air Force yet - named Hawthorne Charles Gray. Captain Gray was an aeronaut and a brave man. He was born in Pasco, Washington to a prominent steamboat captain, who outlived his son by a few years, always a tragedy. In 1921, young Gray, then a second Lieutenant, began piloting balloons with the US Army Air Service, and showed a remarkable ability as a balloonist. March 9, 1927, Captain Gray climbed to previously unreached heights in his balloon launched from Scott field near Belleville, Illinois, climbing to 28,510 feet. On that trip, in what would be a portend of the future, Gray passed out from lack of oxygen in such thin air, and barely regained consciousness in time to drop the ballast he needed to slow his balloon down before it landed. May 4, Gray set another unofficial record for highest altitude reached by a human being, becoming the first man to climb above 42,000 feet above the earth. This time, his balloon was coming down too fast yet again, so Gray parachuted out of it at 8,000 feet, landing safely. His November 4, 1937 flight would not go so well. On ascent, Gray, who was using oxygen to survive, threw one of his empty tanks out of the gondola and it broke his radio antenna, which cut off contact between him and the ground.  One wonders about that oxygen tank…I hope it didn’t land on anybody! Can you imagine? That would be quite a mystery for a Hercule Poirot or what’s an American detective active in the 1920s….maybe an Ellery Queen or Continental Op.  They come upon a dead body who has been smashed over the head with an oxygen tank, laying nearby. Quite a mystery to solve unless you read the newspapers! So - Captain Gray is ascending, heading up to 40,000 feet. He kept a journal of the flight, and his last entry says, “Sky deep blue, sun very bright, sand all gone.”  Somewhere around 40,000 feet, Gray loses consciousness again, but the balloon rises a bit more, reaching somewhere over 43,000 feet and under 44,000 feet. Eventually, it begins to drop without Gray … and it rapidly descends. This time, Captain Gray doesn’t wake up, and he either died due to crash landing, or due to hypoxia, or possibly even organ rupture/failure due to the extreme low pressure up that high, because atmospheric pressure reduces with height. Let’s all salute Captain Gray - one time holder of the highest height by a human record. These and other deaths inspired our guy Auguste Piccard to design that pressurized gondola so that aeronauts could ascend without fear. Well, that’s probably not at all true. So they could ascend with LESS fear. So Auguste invented a spherical and pressurized dome that would allow our pioneering aeronauts to go to the edge of space without wearing a pressure suit and without passing out in the low-pressure, low-oxygen, low-heat atmosphere. And you know what? It worked! May of 1931, less than four years after Captain Gray’s 43,000 foot ascent and death, Auguste Piccard and Paul Kipfer used the Piccard Gondola to great effect, reaching a record altitude of 51,775 feet, which essentially makes them - arguably - the first humans in space, because they were the first humans to enter the stratosphere. While they were up there, they used their instruments to gather data on the upper atmosphere and make measurements on cosmic rays. The August 1931 edition of Popular Science focused on Piccard’s record breaking journey into the edge of space, writing, “"A huge yellow balloon soared skyward, a few weeks ago, from Augsberg, Germany. Instead of a basket, it trailed an air-thin black-and-silver aluminum ball. Within the contraption, Prof. Auguste Piccard, physicist, and Charles Kipfer aimed to explore the air 50,000 feet up. Seventeen hours later, after being given up for dead, they returned safely from an estimated height of more than 52,000 feet, almost ten miles, shattering every aircraft altitude record." Popular Science, August 1931. This ascent, as well as many others, really began the space race between the USSR and the USA - way before president Kennedy’s announcement of his intentions to put a man on the moon, and before the first flight of cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. For years in the 1930s and 1940s, the Russians and Americans went back and forth seeking supremacy in the skies. In September of 1934, the Soviets launched a large balloon with three russian Aeronauts on board that became the first to go above 60,000 feet, beating Auguste Piccard’s record by nearly 10,000 feet. Interestingly, FAI - Federation Aeronatique Internationale - the sort of Guinness Book of World Records for aviation at the time - did NOT recognize the Russian record for highest humans, because Russia wasn’t a member of the FAI at the time. Which, honestly, seems kind of petty. That gave Thomas “Tex”Settle and Chester L. Fordney - American aeronauts the opportunity to claim the highest human record, and they did so in November of 1933, reaching the incredible height of 61,237 feet, and landing in a marsh in New Jersey that proved difficult to get out of. Though Settle and Fordney’s flight was about 1000 feet lower than the Russian one, they had the official record for a while, because they were part of the FAI. This flight did, however, impress the Russians, and as the U.S. Naval Institute website notes, the American Pilots received a telegram: “From Maxim Litvinoff, Foreign Commissar of the Soviet Union, came this message: HEARTY CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR GREAT ACHIEVEMENT. I AM SURE THAT YOUR COLLEAGUES IN THE SOVIET UNION HAVE WATCHED WITH GREATEST INTEREST YOUR FLIGHT. MAY BOTH OUR COUNTRIES CONTINUE TO CONTEST THE HEIGHTS IN EVERY SPHERE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNIQUE. "Contest the heights"—these were the words that Litvinoff used. The Soviet intent to compete with American technology had been declared, the challenge given, the race towards space begun. Russia's response to the new American record came only two months after the Settle Fordney flight. The Osoaviakhim, with a crew of three, Fedossejenko, Vassenko, and Oussyskine, climbed to a height of 72,182 feet on 30 January 1934. During descent, however, the balloon fell, out of control, killing all on board. The Soviets said that the crew, in their enthusiasm, had simply over-expended their ballast, failing to keep enough to control their descent. American balloonists, quick to doubt that their Russian counterparts would make such a fundamental error, were more inclined to believe that the Osoaviakhim, or Sirius as it was also known, had iced up during its descent through the clouds. One factor was unclear—why the flight had been attempted at such an unfavorable time of year. Later, newspaper sources would provide an interesting, perhaps accurate, answer. That week in January was the week when the 17th All-Union Communist Party Congress was meeting in Moscow. Stalin, so the story went, anxious that a spectacular Soviet achievement take place while the Congress was in session, let it be known that he expected the Osoaviakhim to provide that achievement. When adverse mid-winter weather threatened to cancel the operation, he allegedly sent word direct: "You go ... or else!" Perhaps, then, with good reason, Fedossejenko had leaned from the hatch at take-off to cry "Long Live the 17th Party Congress! Long Live the World Revolution!" Source: https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1963/august/when-race-space-began After all of this, Auguste Piccard’s interests seem to have had a big, big shift. He realized that his idea of a pressurized gondola of sorts could not only allow exploration into space, but ALSO into the DEPTHS of the ocean! So he applied his pressurized gondola principles to the construction of a bathyscaphe, which is like a deep-sea submersible that is suspended by a tether below a float. After a few designs and redesigns of his model, Auguste and his son Jacques built an improved version of his bathyscaphe and in 1953, they set the all time human DEPTH record into the sea at over 10,335 feet deep. Jacques would later go on to be one of the greatest undersea explorers of all time. In January of 1960, Jacques Piccard and his friend the American oceanographer Lieutenant Don Walsh boarded the Trieste - a bathyscaphe of Jacques Piccard’s design - and went to the floor of the Mariana Trench, the literal deepest place in the world. They got down to 35,797 feet in a descent that took over four hours. So not only was Auguste’s son Jacques an amazing balloonist and undersea pioneer, but his grandson (and Jacque’s son) Bertrand Piccard is ALSO a pretty amazing guy. As a youngster, he was - shockingly - afraid of heights, but he overcame that fear and took up hang-gliding as a 16 year old. His degree - he’s still alive at 67 - is in psychiatry, but like his dad and granddad, he is also an adventurer, and is a record setter in his own right! In 1999, Bertrand and his friend Brian Jones completed the first non-stop balloon world circumnavigation in LESS THAN 20 days. NON STOP! And in less than 80 days! Think about that. This ONE guy - Auguste - a nerdy academic - at least to look at him - at one point held the all time human record for highest height ascended and deepest depth ascended, and had an equally impressive son and grandson. That’s crazy fascinating, and yet not one in a hundred college students today could probably tell you much of anything about Auguste Piccard. Or, his twin brother Jean. Jean was born in 1884 in Switzerland and in 1931 moved to the US where he taught chemistry at the University of Chicago. While teaching there, he met Jeannette Ridlon, a graduate student, and they eventually got married. Jean was also an aeronaut, and a chemist like his father, but also an inventor like his brother. He invented a frost-free window that one could use in the gondola to look out and see the surroundings at extreme altitudes, and also a liquid oxygen converter that could convert liquid o2 to breathable air at high and cold altitudes. He also taught and inspired Robert R. Gilruth, who would go on to become the first director of NASA’s Manned Spacecraft Center. In addition to ALL of that, he was also a pioneer in the invention of the plastic balloon AND the inventor of cluster ballooning, which refers to the use of multiple balloons in flight. This is going to be important soon when we finally get to our guy Lawnchair Larry, the inspiration for this series. Jean wasn’t just an inventor, he was also a doer, and so was his wife. Jeanette obtained a doctoral degree in education in 1942, and also graduated from seminary in 1973. Jeanette and Jean both became flight pioneers in October of 1934 when they lifted off from From Airport in Dearborn, Michigan with Henry Ford and Orville Wright both watching. Jeanette was the pilot of the Piccard Gondola, Jean was in charge of scientific instruments and testing, and their pet turtle, Fleur de Lys, was in charge of security. Though they did not break the world HUMAN altitude record, two important records were broken that day. Jeanette became the first human in space - having reached the stratosphere - and also became the highest female human in history. As well, presumably, Fleur de Lys set the all time turtle altitude record, which is pretty significant for reptiles. Jeanette’s highest female ever record lasted for almost 30 years until in 1963, Valentina Tereshkova became the first female astronaut/cosmonaut. Speaking of - here is a fascinating woman that most people have ALSO never heard of. Tereshkova, born in 1937 in the former USSR, was trained in engineering and skydiving at an early age. In 1961, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human in OUTER space, completing an orbit of earth aboard the Vostok 1 space capsule. Gagarin reached a maximum altitude of 203 miles - way beyond the capability of balloons. Russia had won the first leg of the space race. But, they were monitoring American/NASA progress, and noted that female pilots were training to be astronauts in the U.S. as part of the Mercury 13 program. This caused Nikolai Kamanin, the USSR director of Cosmonaut training, to contend, “"We cannot allow that the first woman in space will be American. This would be an insult to the patriotic feelings of Soviet women."  And, true to his word, that’s exactly what happened. Valentina Tereshkova, along with a group of prospective Russian female cosmonauts, went through a rigorous training and selection period, which culminated in Tereshkova being selected to be the first woman in space. On a June morning in 1963, barely two years after Gagarin’s historic flight, Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova climbed into a metal marble called Vostok 6, took the call sign “Chaika” (“Seagull”), and became the first woman to ride a controlled explosion into orbit. For just under three days, about 71 hours, she circled our planet 48 times, a tour count that would make Phileas Fogg jealous and most stomachs mutiny. starchild.gsfc.nasa.gov Context first: the Soviets staged Vostok 6 as a duet with Vostok 5, flown by Valery Bykovsky. They drifted to within a few miles, chattered on the radio, and gave the world a celestial his-and-hers photo-op that also happened to be serious science: how would a woman’s body handle spaceflight? (Short answer: quite well, though the PR gloss was thicker than a Moscow winter.) During the flight, Tereshkova even beamed live TV back to Earth, which, in 1963, felt like sorcery with wires. She also had a “Kremlin-to-cosmos” chat with Premier Nikita Khrushchev—imagine your boss phoning you at 17,000 mph to ask how your day is going. SpaceEuropean Space Agency (https://www.esa.int/About_Us/50_years_of_ESA/50_years_of_humans_in_space/First_woman_in_space_Valentina?utm_source=chatgpt.com) Some people - men and women, get carsick just driving to the store. And one can only imagine that a drive through space is stunning; but space food, especially early space food, less so. Tereshkova later reported that while attempting to eat, she vomited, chalk it up to the cuisine, not the cosmos,and then carried on with her checklist. That detail survived the censors and post-flight euphemisms and comes straight from technical reconstructions of the mission. It’s the kind of gritty, unfussy note that makes the achievement feel human: this was pioneering science done in a tin ball with a menu that fought back. She was pretty cagey in reporting this incident to mission control until she was back on terra firma. russianspaceweb.com Her kit list also included a small lesson in logistics. Years later, Tereshkova dryly revealed that ground crews packed food, water, and toothpaste… but no toothbrush. Soviet engineering could put a “Seagull” in orbit; Soviet packing could still forget the bristles. Not having a toothbrush after barfing is a pretty big bummer, considering she was in space for 2 days, 22 hours and 50 minutes. She improvised; history moved on. (And yes, she also disclosed a far more serious glitch: the capsule’s guidance was initially set to climb, not descend—later corrected from the ground. But that’s another tale.) The Guardian The work itself was real. Tereshkova kept medical logs, took photographs of Earth’s horizon, which was useful for studying atmospheric layers, and reported on her condition in coded language if needed. (“Palm tree” would have meant she felt unwell; “rowan tree,” that she’d vomited. She didn’t rely on the euphemisms; she relied on grit.) In a program where image often outran information, her notes and photos added data points to a thin file about human adaptation to space. Smithsonian Magazine Then came the bit that makes Vostok flights sound like daredevilry wrapped in bureaucracy: reentry by ejection. The capsule plunged, Tereshkova blew the hatch around 20,000 feet, and parachuted to Earth like it was just another weekend at the aeroclub, because for her, it almost was. Touchdown was safe; and she immediately became a legend, though not a very well known legend outside of Red borders. She’d spent more time in orbit than all American astronauts combined to that date, and she did it solo. Space History later tried to sand down the edges. Official Soviet assessments called her performance “adequate,” which is how bureaucracies spell “historic but imperfect.” Yet the record is the record: first woman in space; 48 orbits; a tough flight in a cramped sphere with a stubborn menu and a missing toothbrush, capped by a parachute landing and a phone call from the Soviet premier. It’s hard to imagine a neater encapsulation of the Khrushchev era: audacious, improvised, successful—and just a bit absurd. starchild.gsfc.nasa.govEuropean Space Agency If you want a moral, here’s mine: the barrier wasn’t broken by a flawless robot; it was crossed by a human being who did the job, handled the mess, and came home. “Seagull” flew into history. Pretty impressive, if you ask me, as are pretty much all of our pioneering aeronauts and astronauts. Tereshkova is the first woman in outer space, the ONLY woman ever to be on a solo space mission, and the youngest woman to orbit the Earth. Amazingly, Tereshkova is STILL ALIVE TODAY! And you know what? That’s a good place to end. Let me pull back the podcasting curtain a little bit, and give you a peak into the process. Initially, this episode, or - rather, the last episode was supposed to be all about Lawnchair Larry and the history of wacky human flights like his - crazy guys who donned wingsuits too early for the technology to have matured, or people who attached balloons to their chairs and floated off into the ether. But, the more I researched, the more fascinating and surprising stories I found from the history of aviation, so the last episode ended, and we hadn’t got to Lawnchair Larry. No problem, I thought, I guess we will lead episode #2 with him. And, yeah.  So - here we are at episode two, and we haven’t even gotten to the inspiration for this mini-series…which is just insane to me, but I hope you have enjoyed learning about the Montgolfier brothers and Franz Reichelt from last week’s episode, and the Wonder Twins - Pierre and Auguste Piccard plus Valentina Tereshkova, from this week’s episode. There’s so much more to the history of flight than I had realized, and that’s what I love so much about history. It’s as deep as humanity. There’s literally billions of untold interesting stories out there, and I hope to at least get to tell you about a few of them. Tell a friend about the show, share it on social media, whatever. A podcast like this survives by word of mouth and social media shares, so however much of that you do, I surely appreciate it! Like last week, we will close this week’s episode with a song all about the first human-powered flight, a failed jump off of the Eiffel Tower, the Hindenburg Disaster and Lawnchair Larry’s amazing trip across the West coast floating at 16,000 feet in his lawnchair. This song was commissioned by our Dayton, Ohio band friends Four for Flying out of the Kayfabe Municipal Airport there. Thanks for listening!

7. 

   14 Aug 2025

   Oh, the Humanity! - Lawnchair Larry, The French Superman, The Magnificent Montgolfiers, and the Pursuit of Human Flight!

   Who doesn’t want to fly?? From ancient times, humans have looked to the Heavens and imagined what it might be like to glide among the clouds. 1000 years before the birth of Christ, the Psalmist looked in wonder to the skies and imagined flying through them, writing, “If I go up to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. 9 If I fly on the wings of the dawn and settle down on the western horizon, 10 even there your hand will lead me; your right hand will hold on to me.” But flight wouldn’t be possible for humans for another 2800 years after he pinned those words, and even then, in the early and pioneering days of human flight, it was a dodgy and dangerous business. Today we are going to trace the history of human flight in a very non-traditional way. From wingsuits to straw-powered balloons, to flying bombs and levitating lawn chairs flying as high as jet planes. This episode’s song, which you can hear in full at the end of the podcast is all about the first human-powered flight, a failed jump off of the Eiffel Tower, the Hindenburg Disaster and Lawnchair Larry’s amazing trip across the West coast floating at 16,000 feet in his lawnchair. Here’s a little preview, put together just for the InterestingPod by our friends in Dayton, Ohio, the band Four for Flying out of the Kayfabe Municipal Airport. Franz Reichelt was an amazing guy, and a wannabee aeronaut who should serve as a cautionary tale for those who want to fly. Reichelt was born in Austria-Hungary, and immigrated to France in 1898, where he opened a successful dressmaking business. As you might guess, Franz was unmarried, because any married man who tried to jump off of a tall tower in a homemade wingsuit would be beaten mercilessly by his sensible wife until he gave up on the idea before it happened. At least, that’s what my wife would do. In love. Somewhere around the summer of 1910, Reichelt began to develop what he called a "parachute-suit" which was just a little more bulky than one normally worn by an aviator, but also contained some rods, a silk canopy and a small amount of rubber that should have allowed it to fold out to become what Reichelt hoped would be a practical and efficient parachute/wingsuit outfit. The February 5, 1912 edition of the Paris Le Petit Journal suggested that Reichelt had made a couple of experimental test jumps with dummies wearing his wingsuit from the first deck of the Eiffel Tower at some point in 1911. L'Ouest-Éclair similarly noted that in 1911, Reichelt had personally jumped from a height of around 30 feet at Joinville; a failed attempt that didn’t lead to serious injury because of a pile of straw that he landed on.  The Le Matin newspaper reported an attempt at Nogent from a height of 8 metres (26 ft) that ended with a broken leg. Pretty much all of Reichelt’s later tests failed, including the Eiffel tower ones, but Reichelt insanely convinced himself that the reason for their failure was not a design problem, but because the tests took place TOO CLOSE TO THE GROUND. So logically, he decided that his suit would perform better when used on a much HIGHER jump. Yeah, that’s the ticket. The Tailor Who Tried to Fly: Franz Reichelt’s Leap into History (and the Ground) On February 4, 1912, Paris awoke to an icy winter morning, a biting wind off the Seine, and the curious sight of a small Austrian-born tailor preparing to defy both gravity and common sense. Franz Reichelt, a 33-year-old single man whose moustache was as impressive and ambitious as his dreams - think Hercule Poirot here - stood at the base of the Eiffel Tower wearing his own invention: a hybrid contraption somewhere between a parachute, a wingsuit, and a very heavy set of curtains with a metal exoskeleton. I’m no engineer, but taking a look at his design, I imagine that if I wore it to jump off of my dresser onto my bed, it would hurt me worse to have it on when I landed, than not. Would Reichelt be correct, however, that his suit was made to thrive at high altitude jumps, rather than low altitude? You be the judge. Reichelt had a goal as noble as it was dangerous, which was to save the lives of aviators by giving them a wearable parachute they could deploy in midair. In an age when flying machines were fragile and safety regulations were more of a suggestion, this was no small contribution. Unfortunately, Reichelt also possessed a confidence so unshakable that it refused to be weighed down by things like wind resistance, aerodynamics, or prior testing from a safe height. There is a reason that most Darwin award winners are male. To be fair to Reichelt, he had previously tested versions of his wingsuit with some slight success. He dropped dummies from his fifth floor apartment building window, and his wingsuit had successfully protected them from harm. I doubt those dummies were made of ballistic gel, or were roughly as dense as humans, but we’ll never know. Unfortunately, later tests of his wingsuit design did not perform as well as the early tests, which probably should have been an important data point for our guy. Here’s how it happened. Reichelt had told the authorities that he was going to test his parachute from the Eiffel Tower using a dummy. This seemed sensible. After all, the Eiffel Tower is over 300 feet tall, and no human had yet tried to jump from it without immediately regretting the decision. However, when the big day came, the “dummy” turned out to be Reichelt himself. This reveal did not delight the Paris police, who had envisioned more of a “stuffed sack of flour” situation and less of a “live, breathing tailor with rent payments due” kind of scenario. The police tried to talk him out of it. His friends begged him to reconsider. A gathered crowd of journalists, photographers, and curiosity-seekers watched as he dismissed their concerns. “I want to try the experiment myself and without trickery, "as I intend to prove the worth of my invention." he declared. Famous last words, I guess.  Whether this was courage, stubbornness, or the 1912 equivalent of, “Hold my beer,” is still up for debate. Maybe Reichelt was actually born in Alabama? Nah, I’m just kidding. I think I can say that, because I myself was born in Alabama. Roll Tide! Now, about the suit: Imagine a heavy wool overcoat mated with a camping tent, then adopted a bat costume as its personal trainer. That’s roughly the silhouette. It was meant to fold up neatly for walking, then spread open to catch the air when falling. Reichelt believed it would open like the wings of a bird, cradle him gently, and float him to safety. The problem? Physics. Up on the first platform of the Eiffel Tower, Reichelt paced. The cameras rolled, yes, this was all caught on film, and yes, you can watch it today if you’re feeling historically morbid. I don’t recommend it, but I will tell you that he looks a lot like what the 1912 version of French Batman would look like, had superhero comic books existed back then. He tested the air, peered over the railing, and for a moment, seemed to have doubts. Then, with the kind of determination that makes both heroes and headlines, he climbed onto the railing, hesitated briefly, and leapt. Well, actually, that’s not accurate. He really hesitated for a long time…literally 29 seconds, and yes, I timed it. It’s hard to watch, and he looks, just - so brave…and so foolhardy. What followed was not flight. The suit, perhaps offended at being dragged into this, did not blossom into a parachute. It stayed mostly folded, flapping only slightly, the aerodynamic equivalent of a sigh. It just didn’t work, didn’t come close to working. Imagine a rock with a handkerchief parachute, and it looked something like that. The suit flaps helplessly in the wind, not even slowing Reichelt by a fraction, and he fell to earth like a very stylish anvil, striking the frozen ground moments later. He died immediately, which I guess is a small mercy, but it’s really heartbreaking to see, and I mean that literally. Not funny at all. What he did was just really dumb, but also really brave and really poignant. As I said, Like the Hindenburg disaster, Reichelt’s jump took place AFTER the invention of motion pictures, and there is video readily available online of both the airship burning up as people flee, and of Reichelt’s fateful and foolish jump. That said, I don’t advise you to watch either. They are both disturbing without being the least bit gory. The press called him “The Flying Tailor,” but he didn’t fly at all. His jump became infamous not only for its tragic outcome but for the fact that it was witnessed by so many, recorded for posterity, and served as a grim reminder that bravery and wisdom are not the same thing. In fairness to Reichelt, wearable parachutes were still in their infancy, and someone had to push the boundaries. Unfortunately, pushing the boundaries without rigorous testing tends to result in pushing up daisies. His design wasn’t entirely mad, and he was genuinely onto something. He was really something of a pioneer and later inventors would successfully create wingsuits and compact parachutes, but the materials, the weight, and the lack of prior human trials made success for Reichelt virtually impossible. He had the right idea but not the rigor needed to test that idea, admit failure and do the work to fail and keep failing forward until success can be found. Success for a pioneer never comes easy. There has to be volumes of trial and error, and Reichelt was just impatient with the process. We should learn from that! That said, it’s hard to dismiss him as merely foolish. I admire the guy…The man had vision. He wasn’t motivated by money or fame alone, though both would have been welcome. His goal was to save lives. He was a craftsman trying to solve a deadly problem with needle, thread, and imagination. He was a tailor, a skilled clothesmaker. If he had worked with a process, accepted failure, and kept attacking the problem with perseverance, he might have succeeded in making something helpful. Maybe not a suit that you can jump off of the Eiffel Tower with, but something useful and helpful that wouldn’t have cost him his life. He simply overestimated the readiness of his invention and underestimated the unforgiving nature of Parisian gravity. In the end, Franz Reichelt left behind more than a cautionary tale. He left a curious mixture of admiration and sadness. Admiration for his courage to strap his own fate to his work, and sadness that such determination led him not into history’s hall of successful innovators, but into its wing of “ambitious experiments that should’ve stayed in the lab.” His leap stands as a peculiar footnote in the early years of aviation, a reminder that progress is often written in a ledger of both victories and spectacular miscalculations. And if there’s any silver lining, it’s that Franz Reichelt, for all the grim outcome, has been immortalized in history — a man who sewed his dream together and dared to wear it, right to the edge. Gravity won that day, but even in loss, Franz Rechelt was immortalized. What does it take for one man - or woman - to reach the Heavens?   For the vast majority of human history, there was no answer to that question, right up until the late 18th century when the first human-powered flight in history took place. Every American pretty much knows Orville and Wilbur - the famous Wright Brothers, but almost nobody knows the REAL pioneers of human flight - the French Montgolfier brothers – Joseph-Michel Montgolfier 26 August 1740 – 26 June 1810) and Jacques-Étienne Montgolfier  mohn-gohl-FEE-ay Now, the Montgolfier brothers are absolutely extraordinary and might be the subject of a future InterestingPod. Their achievements, for whatever reason, are far greater than their current fame. They literally performed the FIRST HUMAN-POWERED FLIGHT IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD, which is just profoundly amazing. In terms of being pioneers, they SHOULD be up there with Neil Armstrong, Johannes Gutenberg, Marco Polo, and Carl Benz, Jacques Cousteau - one of the Montgolfier brothers was the FIRST HUMAN to FLY, - a big, big deal! Specifically, Etienne Montgolfier was the first human aeronaut - and if you aren’t familiar with that quaint and old-school term, an aeronaut is someone who participates in aeronautics, which generally refers to the science and technology of flight. Specifically, it often refers to someone who flies or navigates lighter-than-air aircraft like balloons. The term is related to "astronaut," but specifically applies to those involved with aeronautics, not necessarily space travel. And you know what? The deck was kind of stacked against the Montgolfier brothers to begin with. They were part of a family of 18 - two parents, SIXTEEN kids. You’d think they were the firstborns, but actually Joseph-Michel was #12 and Etienne #15, but Etienne was so gifted and had such an even temper and mind for business that, at the death of the actual firstborn Montgolfier, Raymond, Etienne was put in charge of the family business, skipping 13 elder siblings. Joseph Montgolfier, unlike his brothers, was a dreamer. Therese and Joseph Montgolfier's marriage certificate: One more note of interest on the Montgolfier brothers. A simple Google search will tell you that the brothers weren’t married, but Joseph Michel was actually married to Thérèse Filhol de Montgolfier. The fascinating thing about Therese is that the July 11, 1845 edition of the Liverpool Mercury newspaper reports the death of Madame Montgolfier, the widow of Joseph, and lists her age as 111!! Multiple sources confirm this, including the November 22, 1841 Hampshire Telegraph and Navy Chronicle which states that a healthy and hearty Madame Montgolfier - Aeronaut widow - was able to walk across a new bridge on the Seine with ease despite being 107 years old. Similarly, the June 15 1843, London Chronicle confirmed her age as 110, a little over a year before she died: What makes this interesting - interesting enough for the podcast, but of no bearing on our human-powered flight story - is that scholars generally accept Geert Adriaans Boomgaard, 1788-1899, as the first supercentenarian - a person who lives to be 110. (Only about 1 in 1000 centenarians - 100 year olds - live to be 110!)  But if these British newspapers are correct, then Madame Montgolfier achieved supercentenarian status before Geert Boomgaard. Some sources online credit Madame Montgolfier as being the inspiration for human powered flight, as the story, which dates back to at least 1910 goes, she was drying her petticoats above a fire one day and, noticing the billowing effect of the rising heat on her underclothing, she called in her husband to have a look, whereby he had something of a eureka moment. Science historian Charles Colston Gillispie tells a different story in his account of the Montgolfier’s and the history of flying, writing, “One evening in November 1782, by his own account, he was idly contemplating a print on the wall of his sitting room depicting the long siege of Gibraltar. From the time of the Spanish entry into the war of American independence in 1779 until the peace negotiations of 1783, the fortress was invested by Spanish forces. In vain. Impregnable by land, impregnable by sea—might not Gibraltar be taken from the air? The evenings were growing cool in Avignon. A fire burned in the grate. Surely the force that carried particles of smoke up the flue could be confined and harnessed to lift conveyances and float men above the surface of the earth. Such was the story told by Joseph in much later years to a friend, the philosopher Joseph Degerando, who incorporated it in a funeral oration. It is not inherently implausible, and there is independent and contemporary evidence.” Gillispie further describes Joseph Montgolfier as an absent minded professor of sort - the kind who would leave his wife behind at one location, while travelling by himself to another place. Gillispie writes, “Joseph was trying his hand all the while at various schemes, insulated by a certain distance from his own father's dismay at his rash borrowing and lending. For he was always having to be rescued from creditors by his father, by his Uncle Jacques in Paris, or by his brothers. He had little of what normally passes for self-discipline, but little anger either, and though he might and did rebel, he never lost his temper. He learned by ear and eye, by hand and thought. He was always trying the tools in the factory, taking machines apart and putting them together better, making his own furnaces, "and torturing various substances with fire in order to acquire knowledge of them…Joseph had a fine memory. After two or three hearings or readings, he would repeat entire songs and recite long poems by Voltaire. He was hopeless, however, in a conversation or discussion, following his fancy wherever it strayed instead of sticking to the point. His father tried, nevertheless, to do right by this wayward son, and put him into school, first in Annonay, and when that failed, in the Jesuit college at Tournon. The establishment was a famous one, and all its rules and priestly ways drove the boy to active rebellion. When he was twelve or thirteen, he ran off down the Rhone to the Mediterranean and freedom.” From: Gillispie, C. C. The Montgolfier brothers and the invention of aviation 1783–1784, pp. 10-11. So the history of flight began with an absent-minded, dreamer of a young man, who invented the first flying machine while day-dreaming about being a soldier and conquering what was then thought to be an impregnable fortress. Clever and creative as he was, Montgolfier may not have been an Einstein-level scientific genius, as he credited the smoke of the fire - rather than the actual mechanism of the heat from the fire reducing the density of the air in a balloon. As I understand it, a hot air balloon works by using heat to reduce the density of the air inside the balloon, making it lighter than the surrounding cooler air. This difference in density creates buoyancy, causing the balloon to rise. When the air inside is heated, the air molecules move faster and spread out, taking up more space and reducing the overall density. This less dense, hotter air is then buoyed upwards by the denser, cooler air outside the balloon, causing it to float. So buoyancy, the upward force exerted by a fluid or gas that opposes the weight of an immersed object, causes the balloon to fly, not smoke.  This will become important when we get to the meat of our story, which is about some bold but wacky aeronauts that turned their lawn chairs into spacecraft…or something like that. So in 1782, Joseph Montgolfier built a 3 foot by 3 foot box that he covered with lightweight cloth. Then he lit a fire under the box, and it shot up to the ceiling, causing an excitied Joseph to write to his brother Etienne to secure lots of cloth and cordage. The two brothers built a much larger levitating box that used wool and hay for fuel, and this one travelled over a mile! Which makes for a great trivia question…what powered the first long distance aircraft created by humans? Wool and hay! In 1783, the brothers constructed a balloon out of sackcloth that could hold 28,000 cubic feet of air, was held together by 1800 buttons, and weighed nearly 500 pounds. By early summer, they were ready to demonstrate their invention to the public. Once again, their contraption travelled over a mile, but this time, it rose to a height of over 5200 feet, though no cargo - human or otherwise - was carried. Things were getting serious, and the brothers were ready to put themselves in their balloon, but the king wasn’t ready for that, and many people thought that humans would not be able to breathe at such altitudes. The king suggested that criminals be used as test pilots, just in case they died, but the Montgolfier brothers instead used animals - a duck and rooster as controls, because they knew birds could survive flight, and a goat as the test subject, with the brothers reasoning that if the goat could survive the test flight, then so could they!   In September of 1783, at the Versailles castle with Queen Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI watching, the Montgolfier balloon with its duck, rooster and goat pilots managed to go 2 miles at an altitude of 1500 feet….AND THEY LANDED SAFELY! The King was impressed, so he allowed the brothers to build a balloon for humans, and they built this beautiful to look at strangely shaped hot air-balloon that was 75 feet tall, and 49 feet in diameter, capable of holding 60,000 cubic feet of air, which is just a little bit shy of the 65,000 or so cubic feet in the Oval Office of the U.S. President. By the way, you really need to see how beautiful this balloon was! You can go to our website, www.interestingpod.com (http://www.interestingpod.com) to check out some pictures. It’s weird looking in shape, but has some amazing colors and artwork, including several massive portraits of Louis XVI. On October 15, 1783, Etienne Montgolfier became the first ever human to lift off of the earth in a human made, fuel powered vehicle, albeit one that was tethered to the ground for safety. He made it up to 75-80 feet above ground, and later that same day, the physicist Pilatre pee-lah-tru," de Rozier did the same. A little more than a month later, Rozier and an army officer named D’arlandes became the first humans in world history to make a free flight in a human built, fuel powered vehicle, and they flew for 25 minutes, covering over 5.5 miles, and reaching a height of 3,000 feet above Paris. They could have flown further - maybe up to 20-25 miles, but, due to the Montgolfier’s belief that smoke caused the balloon to float, the fire that heated the air that actually gave buoyancy to the balloon didn’t burn clean fuel, and thus it shot out embers, and Rozier and D’arlandes constantly had to put out fires with sponges and even their coats, to keep the balloon from burning up. After the pioneering Montgolfiers, balloon advancements became the rage. December 1783 saw Jacques Charles take his hydrogen-powered balloon up to 1.9 miles - Oh the humanity…and in June of 1784, Earth had its first female aeronaut, Elisabeth Thible of Lyon. Her first flight lasted 45 minutes, covered 2.5 miles, and rose up to almost one mile high. On landing, she wrenched her ankle, but mostly recovered, though she did die a little over a year later at 27, possibly becoming one of the first members of that dubious club. Interestingly, as her first balloon flight was leaving the ground, Thimble and her co-pilot Monsieur Fleurant sang an operatic duet together. Eventually, the science caught up to ballooning, and scientists realized that it was the lift provided by buoyancy principles and heating air that caused a balloon to float, rather than smoke, and, for a time, hydrogen became the leading buoyancy provider for balloonists. As you might know, however, the 1935 Hindenburg Disaster changed all of that. The Hindenburg was a German airship or zeppelin - evolution of the balloon - that was in Manchester, New Jersey in May of 1937. Hindenburg flying over New Jerseyu, May 6, 1937: The Hindenburg was a beautiful airship - 800 feet long, and it carried 4,900,000 cubic feet of Hydrogen, or approximately 82 times more than the Montgolfier’s first human-carrying balloon. It was a passenger ship, carrying around 50 passengers and 56 crew, and could literally cross the Atlantic ocean, though it took around 60 or so hours to do so. The Hindenburg had a dining room, a kitchen, passenger quarters, a lounge, and more. It was really an incredible way to fly. It was a Nazi propaganda vessel, designed to impress people around the world and make them more amenable to the ruling Nazi party in Germany. The explosion of the Hindenburg was far from the first airship tragedy, and, surprisingly, it wasn’t even the worst. There were dozens of airship incidents and crashes before Hindenburg, incuding the worst, which was the crash of the USS Akron, a blimp/airship that was LITERALLY a flying aircraft carrier - eat your heart out, S.H.I.E.L.D. Unfortunately, the Akron crashed in a thunderstorm, off the coast of New Jersey, in 1933, and 73 of 76 lost their lives in that horrid crash. 52 were killed in an airship crash in France in 1923, 48 killed in a British airship crash in 1930, and another 44 were killed in a 1921 crash over Hull, United Kingdom. The fifth worst airship crash, and far and away the most famous, was the Hindenburg disaster, and it was probably famous due to it being caught on film. On May 6, 1937, the Hindenburg was set to land - or dock - in Manchester New Jersey, and its approach was filmed by an early news crew. At 7pm, the Hindenburg prepared to land, but the wind was blowing the ship around a bit, and shifting directions. By 7:21, the ship had dropped about a ton of water from its stern to balance itself, and it released its mooring lines to the ground crew below, who were to connect them to a winch on the ground that would pull the airship in. Four minutes after, the fabric of the airship fluttered and witnesses reported seeing a blue flame, which may have been static electricity, or the elusive St. Elmo’s Fire, which is a weather phenomenon where plasma is generated from a mast or the leading edge of a plane or other airborne vehicle. Within seconds, the entire Hindenburg was engulfed in flames - Hydrogen is EXTREMELY FLAMMABLE - and muffled detonations were heard. Unfortunately, at the precise time this happened, the cameraman who had been diligently filming that airship this whole time, decided to film the crew on the ground instead, and even though you can actually hear the muffled explosions on the film, the cameraman somehow failed to focus his lens on the ship for several seconds, only turning back when fire had engulfed the ship. This means that, to this day, people still debate the cause of the fire, and certainty is elusive. This is suspicious to me, and sabotage was an early speculation as to the cause of the disaster. Very likely, it was simply a case of using an unfortunately flammable fuel that was held in a relatively flimsy container that led to the disaster, possibly exacerbated by static electricity or St. Elmo’s fire. That said, one wonders if some elements of the U.S., British, or French governments, sensing a growing Nazi storm, might not have thought about striking a preemptive blow against that wicked government. So - there you go, a Hindenburg conspiracy theory. No matter the cause, many lives were lost, and it was horrific. The response of the U.S. military at the scene, however, was heroic, and Navy Chief Petty Officer Frederick J. "Bull" Tobin rallied his men in the face of the explosion, shouting, “Navy men, Stand fast!!” And those men did indeed stand fast, heroically rushing into danger to save whom they might. Interestingly, journalist Herbert Morrison was there when the Hindenburg crashed, and he was doing a live radio broadcast, during the disaster. The recording survives today, and is often paired with some of the newsreel footage from the crash. As you might imagine, it is hard to listen to, because Morrison is overwhelmed with genuine emotion as he watches the tragedy unfold. From this broadcast, we get the famous phrase, “Oh, the humanity,” which forms the title of this episode. Skip ahead a few seconds if you don’t want to hear the narration. HERBERT MORRISON NARRATION. It's practically standing still now they've dropped ropes out of the nose of the ship; and they've been taken ahold of down on the field by a number of men. It's starting to rain again; it's... the rain had slacked up a little bit. The back motors of the ship are just holding it just enough to keep it from...It's burst into flames! It burst into flames and it's falling, it's crashing! Watch it; watch it, folks get out of the way; Get out of the way; Get this, Charlie; get this, Charlie! It's fire... and it's crashing! It's crashing, terrible! Oh, my! Get out of the way, please! It's burning and bursting into flames and the... and it's falling on the mooring mast and all the folks beneath it! This is terrible; this is the worst of the worst catastrophes in the world. Oh it's... The flame's climbing! Oh, it's four or five hundred feet into the sky, and it's a terrific crash, ladies and gentlemen. There's smoke, and there's flames, now, and the frame is crashing to the ground, not quite to the mooring mast. Oh, the humanity, and all the passengers screaming around here! I don't believe it! I can't even talk to people whose friends are on there! Ah! It's... it... it's a... ah! I... I can't talk, ladies and gentlemen. Honest: it's just laying there, a massive smoking wreckage. Ah! And everybody can hardly breathe and talk and the screaming. I... I... I'm sorry. Honest: I... I can hardly breathe. I... I'm going to step inside, where I cannot see it. Charlie, that's terrible. Ah, ah... I can't. Listen, folks; I... I'm gonna have to stop for a minute because I've lost my voice. This is the worst thing I've ever witnessed. — Herbert Morrison, Transcription of WLS radio broadcast describing the Hindenburg disaster Things changed with balloon and airship travel after the Hindenburg disaster, as one might expect. Blimps largely stopped using hydrogen due to widespread public fear and worry about the flammability of Hydrogen. Helium - an inert gas almost as light as hydrogen- became the new lifting gas for balloons and airships, and that remains to this day. Due to a geological fluke, the US has a monopoly on helium, and, unlike hydrogen, it is NOT abundant on the Earth, and we don’t know how to create it chemically. Though Helium is abundant in the universe, humans lack the technology to obtain it from a distance, and current stocks are extremely limited. But that hasn’t stopped backyard aeronauts like Larry Walters, Kent Couch, Kevin Walsh, and a priest called Adelir Andonio De Carli to engage in the amazing and dangerous extreme sport of cluster-ballooning, which we will talk about on part two of this episode on the history of flight.  To give you a little preview…Walters is the guy who put some giant helium balloons on his lawn chair, grabbed a pellet gun to shoot the balloons if he went too high, a cb radio, couple of sandwiches, a two liter bottle of Coca-Cola, and, of course, a six-pack of beer…and flew off into the distance. To be precise, 16,000 feet high and 8 miles away from San Pedro in Los Angeles to Long Beach. How did he do it? Why did he do it? And how did Priest de Carli fly even higher in 2008 - over 20,000 feet? Well, join us on the next episode - part two of Oh, the Humanity, to find out. In the meantime, please tell your friends and neighbors and any squatters that might be living on your property about the podcast. Word of mouth is important for new works like this one, and I’d appreciate you sharing the love! You can leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, and share the show on social media. Thank you, and the second part of this episode should drop in a couple of days, so stay tuned. — Herbert Morrison, Transcription of WLS radio broadcast describing the Hindenburg disaster Things changed with balloon and airship travel after the Hindenburg disaster, as one might expect. Blimps largely stopped using hydrogen due to widespread public fear and worry about the flammability of Hydrogen. Helium - an inert gas almost as light as hydrogen- became the new lifting gas for balloons and airships, and that remains to this day. Due to a geological fluke, the US has a monopoly on helium, and, unlike hydrogen, it is NOT abundant on the Earth, and we don’t know how to create it chemically. Though Helium is abundant in the universe, humans lack the technology to obtain it from a distance, and current stocks are extremely limited. But that hasn’t stopped backyard aeronauts like Larry Walters, Kent Couch, Kevin Walsh, and a priest called Adelir Andonio De Carli to engage in the amazing and dangerous extreme sport of cluster-ballooning, which we will talk about on part two of this episode on the history of flight.  To give you a little preview…Walters is the guy who put some giant helium balloons on his lawn chair, grabbed a pellet gun to shoot the balloons if he went too high, a cb radio, couple of sandwiches, a two liter bottle of Coca-Cola, and, of course, a six-pack of beer…and flew off into the distance. To be precise, 16,000 feet high and 8 miles away from San Pedro in Los Angeles to Long Beach. How did he do it? Why did he do it? And how did Priest de Carli fly even higher in 2008 - over 20,000 feet? Well, join us on the next episode - part two of Oh, the Humanity, to find out. In the meantime, please tell your friends and neighbors and any squatters that might be living on your property about the podcast. Word of mouth is important for new works like this one, and I’d appreciate you sharing the love! You can leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, and share the show on social media. Thank you, and the second part of this episode should drop in a couple of days, so stay tuned.

8. 

   25 Jul 2025

   Myth Smashing: Is the Bolton Strid 100% Fatal? What is the MOST Dangerous Water Body in the World?

   On the last episode, we told you all about the Bolton Strid, which is a fairly short section of the River Wharfe in Northern England near Yorkshire that is legendary as a drowning machine. The Strid has had a reputation for literally CENTURIES as being a place where there is a 100% fatality rate - CERTAIN DEATH - for those who fall in. The reasons for that, as we discussed last time, have to do with the geomorphology of the river. In the Strid portion, it’s as if the River Wharfe turns on its sides and becomes very narrow but also very deep and rushing. Kind of like a river flowing rapidly through a canyon. And often, when people fall in, they are either immediately pulled under water or pulled underwater and under the rock shelves on the sides of the Strid, where rescue is impossible, and it is impossible to surface. It’s like you are all of the sudden cave diving without any sort of scuba gear.  All around the river are signs warning of danger, as well as something I’ve never seen around rivers before - boxes where you dial a code, and out comes a rescue rig and to throw into the water for people who are drowning. But is the river that dangerous? Is the Strid really 100 percent lethal? Or, as a travel writer Daniel Piggott wrote, is the Strid simply a legend, a myth that hasn’t actually verifiably claimed ANY lives?? Time to go to the archives and do some grunt work research.  I’ll add a few dilithium crystals to our time machine, and we will keep going back, back back. Here’s where we put on our historian’s robe and cowl. The oldest newspaper record I can find that covers the Strid comes from Felix Farley’s Bristol Journal, the February 20, 1819 edition. That article doesn’t talk much about the Strid itself, but favorably reviews Samuel Rogers’ epic poem, the Boy of Egremond, which is all about William De Romilly falling into the Strid. The next oldest easily accessible newspaper reference I can find to the Strid is from the Manchester Guardian, June 26, 1839, and it gives a colorfol description of the Strid: I found several non-detailed mentions of the Strid in books from the mid 1700s, but the earliest detailed record I can find of the Strid dates to 1780, with one likely exception from the 1500s…I’m sure there are older references out there, but alas, the brand new podcast budget doesn’t allow me a visit to Yorkshire and a few weeks going through the Abbey and local library records. So, we will have to settle for 1780’s Viator, a poem: or, a journey from London to Scarborough, by the way of York  by Thomas Maude. Maude was a bit of a dabbler in everything - a doctor, poet, essayist, estate manager and author. Maude and his wife were married at St Mary Magdalen Old Fish Street church, and I only mention that because I’ll bet some of you pastors listening might want to consider changing your church’s name to Saint Mary Magdalen Old Fish Street too! In his Viator book, Maude writes, “The Strid or Stride, falls here likewise under the traveller’s inspection. It is the cleft of a rock in the bed of the river through which chasm the Wharfe in Summer, entirely passes. In was in stepping this gulph that the last male hier of the family of Romelius lost is life.” Maude goes on to mention that there was a 1670 painting of the boy and his dog, but I do believe that painting is lost to history. It’s lost to me, at least. I couldn’t find it. The next oldest comes from an 1805 book that I do actually have a copy of Dr. Thomas Whitaker’s The History and Antiquities of the Deanery of Craven in the County of York. Which is a book written in 1805. If you don’t know Whitaker, he’s a pretty fascinating guy. He originally planned to be a lawyer, and got his doctoral degree in law even after getting called into ministry.  He started out at a smaller chapel and paid for the restoration of that chapel out of his own pocket in 1788. He wasn’t just a pastor/vicar/lawyer either - he was a peacemaker in the various villages of his parish and a scientist, studying and writing about topography and forestry. He wrote nine books, mostly on history, edited some others, and published multiple academic articles. He instituted a literary club, and had a vast library, and an impressive array of knowledge. He’s a legit historian, and a highly educated one. True, his doctoral degree wasn’t in history, but PhDs in history didn’t come along until after Whitaker. So when this guy writes about history, we should take notice. He’s not infallible, but he’s solid, and in 1805, writing about the Strid, he mentions the legend - or true story - behind Wordsworth’s poem. Whitaker writes, “In the deep solitude of the woods betwixt Bolton and Barden, the [River] Wharfe suddenly contracts itself to a rocky channel little more than four feet wide, and pours through the tremendous fissure with a rapidity proportioned to its confinement.  This place was then, as it is yet, called the Strid, from a feat often exercised by persons of more agility than prudence, who stride from brink to brink, regardless of the destruction which awaits a faltering step. (Great sentence!) Such, according to tradition, was the fate of young Romille, who inconsiderately bounding over the chasm with a greyhound in his leash, the animal hung back, and drew his unfortunate master into the torrent. The forester who accompanied Romille, and beheld his fate, returned to the Lady Aaliza, and, with despair in his countenance, inquired, "What is good for a bootless Bene?" To which the mother, apprehending that some great calamity had befallen her son, instantly replied, " Endless sorrow." The language of this question, almost unintelligible at present, proves the antiquity of the story, which nearly amounts to proving its truth. But bootless bene means unavailing prayer; and the meaning, though imperfectly expressed, seems to have been, "What remains when prayer is useless? " BACK TO ME: This misfortune is said to have occasioned the translation of the priory from Embsay to Bolton [around 1152], which was the nearest eligible site to the place where it happened.  Whitaker goes on to note that, even though history records young Romilly as signing documents in his adult life, that QUOTE “Yet I have little doubt that the story is true in the main; but that it refers to one of the sons of Cecilia de Romille, the first foundress, both of whom are known to have died young.” In other words, Whitaker believes that the a young Romille son died - just not the eldest one. Whitaker also describes the Strid colorfully later in his book writing,“This chasm, being incapable of receiving the winter floods, has formed on either side a broad strand of naked gritstone, full of rock basins which bear witness to the restless impetuosity of so many northern torrents. But, if the Wharf is here lost to the eye, it amply repays another sense by its deep and solemn roar, like the voice “of the angry spirit of the waters,” heard far above and beneath, amidst the silence of the surrounding woods. Coming shortly after Whitaker’s work, we have Ms. Barbara Hofland’s “A Season at Harrogate” which describes the Strid in spiritual terms: "Chid" is the past tense and past participle of the verb "chide," meaning to scold or rebuke someone, typically in a mild or constructive manner. One more find of note. W. Wheater edited an obscure book on Old Yorkshire in 1885, and that book contains a mixture of very old documents, and his reflections. I have a copy of that book, and in his discussion of the Arthington Priory, which was dissolved in Reformation fervor around 1540, Wheater includes a poem. The poem at least dates to the 1800s, but it very possibly, even likely dates to the 1500s. He simply does not say in the book for some reason. That poem discusses the Strid, and I believe it is one of the oldest extant references to the river (barring searching old, old books in monasteries and paper archives and such). I inadvertently took the name of this episode from that poem. By that, I named this episode, and it’s accompanying song by the Bolton Bardeaters, “The Merciless Strid,” and then decided to search and see if that name had been used. Turns out it has. One time in history, and it was in this poem that I think is from the 1500s, but could be from the 1800s.  it goes like this: Has the Wharfe*s limpid stream borne a curse down the dale From yon shavelings whom Romelli's bride Set to pray for the lad whom the merciless Strid Swept away with their o'er-weening pride? (A shaveling is a derogatory name for a Catholic monk/priest, wih a tonsured (monk haircut) shaved head) Alright, let’s Smash some myths. Generally speaking, the Bolton Strid is genuinely dangerous, and many, many people have drowned there. Buuuuttt. Have 100 percent of the people who have fallen into the Strid died? So many websites - even newspapers trumpet the supposed fact that the Strid has a 100 percent case fatality rate for all who enter into its waters. For instance, a 2024 Metro.co.uk (http://metro.co.uk) article claims, “None who have entered the Strid have ever come out alive” A slightly older Ranker article contends, “Bolton Strid: The Stream That Swallows Anyone Who Falls In” Many other sites say the same, but is it TRUE?    Actually, and happily, no, it is not true. In the same way that Rabies is not 100 percent fatal - but ALMOST - there have been people who have survived a plunge into the Strid. One example is Tom Barrett, an eight year old who got pulled into the Strid from the Wharfe in 1996. He says: “it was a moment that’s forever etched in his memory. One second I was laughing with friends and the next moment I couldn’t even shout for help because my head was going under the water and was getting into my lungs. I can picture it like it was yesterday and it still gives me shivers.” A nearby group of men were alerted to the trouble by Tom’s mother’s scream, and one of them dove in, and, as Tom says, ““He managed to get to me and carried me to the side of the river. I was gasping for breath when he put me down. If he hadn’t saved me, I would have died. No question about it. I was a goner.” “Nearly drowning at The Strid is something that I’ve never been able to get out of my head. What happened to that man? He risked his own life to save me.” At the end of the interview in the Telegraph and Argus, Tom solemnly warned parents, “Do not ever let your children swim in that river, I was very lucky.”  So Tom survived. Was he in the worst part of the Strid? Is his story true? We don’t know…but it seems pretty plausible and was reported by a decent newspaper. Another example is two scuba divers from Yorkshire who claim to have dived the Strid in the mid 1970s before such practices were completely banned. I’ve tried to confirm that story, but was unable to. I’m skeptical. Further, a man named barryfox2711 says, “My father jumped it when he was a lad and said it was probably the most stupid thing he ever did, given that he knew the consequences of falling in. Though I live in the US now I grew up alongside the Wharfe which, at another part a little downstream, claimed the life of a grammar school friend. The Wharfe is a treacherous river, full stop.” Again - unverified. But we do have at least two stories, highly reliable, that convincingly debunk the myth that the Strid is 100 percent deadly to those who fall in. First, the 1857 Leicester (“Lester”) Chronicle reports on a miraculous rescue of a Strid jumper who made it across on his leap, but lost his balance, and fell “headlong into the foaming abyss.” The paper reports that the “shrieks of his wife and friends were heartrending in the extreme.” With no Superman to be found,the Reverend John Mather of Rochdale near Manchester lept to action. He sprinted 30 yards downstream, and waited for the drowning man to come by…grabbing the man as soon as he could. Helpers assisted Mather in pulling the man in, and he recovered, leading the Leeds Mercury to note that this was the “First instance of a person who had fallen into the Strid being saved.” Conclusive proof, I think…but wait, there’s more! A similar incident happend in 1898 at the Strid, and another “Super pastor” was involved. On July 1, 1898, there was a Sunday school party at the Strid with members and pastors from several churches. A young lady from St. Peter’s church, spurred on by a previous conversation about leaping the Strid, made her own attempt, and like so many others, hit the opposite side well enough, but fell backwards into the Strid. Curate W.A. Challis immediately and heroically jumped in and rescued the young lady, helping her exit the Strid further down river. The June 10, 1898 edition of the Craven Herald and Pioneer also reports on the rescue of a lady who fell into the Strid AND WAS RESCUED, however, and heartwrenchingly, the four year old who was with her, and also fell in, was not rescued. Much later, In July of 1956, the Craven Herald and Pioneer reported on the rescue of young French daredevil Georges Quiter, Kee-tay from Normandy. Quieter was warned about the Strid by a local on a walk to the river, but nevertheless attempted a jump shortly after arrival, even though somebody shouted, “Don’t jump, Georges!”  He hit the other side, stumbled backwards and fell in. However, he was decent at swimming, and he started to swim downstream, where a group of quick-thinking men formed a human chain and rescued him. Shortly after rescue, Georges said, “The jump is rather deceptive, isn’t it?” The Craven Herald, the local paper to the area, pronounced Quieter the first man to be rescued from the Strid, which we know - thanks to our Leicester paper - isn’t true. So, I think it is fair to say with three verified rescues that we have smashed the myth of the River Strid being 100 percent fatal to all who fall in. No disrespect to the Strid, though. A recorded 30 people or so in the world have survived Rabies without shots, but it is still a terrifying disease if left untreated.  And while some have certainly fallen into the Strid and lived to tell the tale, the river is still incredibly dangerous. So this myth might not be technically true, but it is true enough. Is it the most dangerous swimming place in the world for drowning? Not by numbers, and it is nowhere close, and it isn’t even the most dangerous river by numbers of drowning deaths…though it may be by fatality rate. The Kern River, the “Killer Kern” has seen around 368 drownings since 1968. We all know about the hundreds lost in the recent Guadalajara river drownings in Texas that were absolutely gut-wrenching. The Ganges river sees dozens if not hundreds of drowning deaths each year. But no river tops the Yellow river in China over the last 200 years. In 1887 the Yellow River Flood killed 1-2 million people, one of the worst natural disasters in history. In 1938, around 500,000 were killed in another round of Yellow River flooding. A 1922 article in the Craven Herald and Pioneer - one of the closest newspapers to the Strid - reveals that local officials were actually considering dynamiting the Strid to open it up somehow and make the whole area safer. The writer of that article, however, questioned if such a thing was necessary, given the death toll of the Strid and River Wharfe nearby, which had only - according to him - totalled 12 drownings in the previous 30 years or so. (It does seem, however, based on the research in this article, that he missed a small amount of Strid deaths in that period.) Nowhere near that many lives have been lost in the Strid in the last 100 years. Is it even the most dangerous and risky body of water to just fall in? Almost certainly not. Given the choice between the Bolton Strid and the Boiling Lake of Dominica, I bet most of us would choose the good old Strid, though only barely. What’s the Boiling Lake? Where’s Dominica? Great questions! Dominica is a small island nation in the Caribbean, or, if you’re Billy Ocean, the Carabune. And since he was born in Trinidad, he probably knows better than I do. Dominica is about 375 miles southeast of Puerto Rico, and north of Martinique and Barbados. About 70,000 people live in Dominica, but very few of them live near Boiling Lake which is the second largest hot lake/hot spring in the world. The largest hot spring in the world is called Frying Pan lake. Now, Frying Pan Lake is in New Zealand and is almost 10 acres in size, and its water temp averages around 130 degrees, which is hot. Is it fatally hot? I don’t know. I’ve swam in 106 degree water, and that feels pretty nice…for a bit. But, 130°F (54.4°C) water is extremely dangerous to human health. Here’s why: Human skin begins to burn at just 111°F (44°C), at Third-degree burns can occur in: ~5 seconds at 140°F (60°C) ~30 seconds at 130°F (54°C) At 131°F, the core body temperature can rise dangerously fast, leading to: Heat stroke, Organ failure, Unconsciousness, And potentially death. I found that information at antiscald.com (http://antiscald.com) which appears to be a legit scientific website, but I am not a burnologist. So, swimming in Frying Pan lake would probably kill you in less than 30 seconds, and it would be a bad way to go. Boiling Lake in Dominica is far, far worse…or, far, far quicker, depending on your perspective. Boiling lake is about 200 feet wide and long, so not huge, but the water temp at the edge of the LITERALLY boiling lake is about 197 degrees. It’s almost certainly hotter in the middle, but nobody has figured out a way to measure the temp there. It’s also 200 feet deep. Boiling Lake's has grayish-blue water that is in a perpetual rolling-boil state which looks like a giant pot of water steaming on the stove. Rainfall and two streams keep it filled and that water then seeps down to the magma (from the volcano that boiling lake is on) and is heated to beyond boiling. The trail that leads to boiling lake also goes through another volcanic area called the Valley of Desolation. - remember that name! -  The air around the area is hot, steamy and moist - great word - and kind of smells like farts because of all of the sulfur and sulphide gas boiling to the surface. The Boiling Lake is hard to get to, and really, really deep. More than that, it is incredibly hot. You can tell by the name and by looking at it. Those bubbles coming up? That steamy humidity rolling off of the lake with sulfur smell? That isn’t just theatrics - that lake is literally BOILING. The water temp at the edge is only 197 degrees, and it clearly gets hotter towards the center, but nobody has really been able to measure it yet. Though, I kind of think you could with an industrial thermometer attached to a fishing rod. So, yeah. You swim in Boiling Lake and you’re pretty much instantly toast…or fried, or whatever. I’d rather take my chances in the Strid, and that’s saying something. Outro: And now we close with this week’s song, “The Merciless Strid.” Commissioned by the Interesting Pod, and written and performed by Yorkshire’s own Bolton Bardeaters, this Celtic/metal mashup is just fantastic. The lyrics, as mentioned earlier are by Wordsworth, with a few modern changes…but just a few. Wordsworth’s lyrics poem is actually based on a real legend. That dates all the way back to 1152, to be exact. In that year, young William de Romilly, being prepared to be the next King of Scotland was walking past the Strid with his faithful greyhound. Seeing the river, and perhaps having the impulse to do what he had done before - Romilly was overcome by one of those irresistible urges that guys get to test themselves. And so it was that he approached the creek and made a mighty leap, but his dog…far wiser than he…slammed on the brakes. Which yanked the young Crown Prince backwards just enough to prevent him from reaching the other side, plunging him into the icy rushing waters where he, like so many before him, was no match for the Strid. As the story goes, His mom, Lady Alice de Romilly, the owner of Skipton Castle and much of the surrounding lands, was so wrecked with grief and worry for her son’s soul that she gave some of her land to newly arrived Augustinian canons to build Bolton Priory. She supposedly wanted these canons to pray for her son’s soul so that he would be admitted to Heaven…which isn’t really how Christianity works at all.  These Augustinians weren’t just any canons either - they are the Black Canons, which sounds awesome and terrifying, and you’re probably expecting a ghost story, but alas, they were the "Black Canons" just because of the black habit (cassock and mantle), they wore, and they don’t appear to be well known for haunting the countryside and frightening children at night or anything cool like that. And, for my American friends picturing large metal guns that shoot bowling balls, I need to tell you that a Canon - with one ‘N’ is quite different from a two ‘N’ cannon. A canon in some Christian denominations is kind of like one step up from a Vicar or pastor or priest. You know like how a burrito supreme is still mostly a burrito, its just a fancier burrito.  A canon is a member of the clergy who is on the staff of a cathedral, or large church or something like that. The position is frequently conferred as an honorary one, so it’s like a special title. Is this story true? Well, it certainly makes for a great poem and a great song. It is true that the Black Canons took over that Priory in 1154, and they have built just a spectacular cathedral. Did William De Romilly really fall into the Bolton Strid in or around 1152?  Well, there’s obviously no way to prove or disprove this one. It is true that there is some indication that William De Romilly survived into adulthood, and the legend, copied but not invented by Wordsworth, that his mother Lady Alice De Romilly did donate lands to the Black Canons of Augustine to build their priory. I think eminent historian Charles Tyler Clay has it right in his introduction to volume 7 of the Early Yorkshire Charters, which is a massive collection of pre 13th century documents from the Yorkshire area. He says, “There is no reason, as assuredly there is no desire, to doubt the truth of the legend that the boy of Egremont - William de Romilly - was drowned in the Wharfe at the Strid at Bolton; but an examination of the charter evidence makes it impossible to believe the popular tradition that the foundation of Bolton Priory was due to his mother’s sorrow at his death.”  So, I think there is no valid historical reason to doubt that poor Lady Alice De Romilly/Rumilly lost a son to the Strid. Did it happen exactly the way Wordsworth said? God only knows. Well, that’s it for our coverage of the “Bloodthirsty River”: The Bolton Strid, as we go out, stick around for couple of minutes for one more performance of

9. 

   24 Jul 2025

   The Merciless Strid - Deadliest Body of Water in the World. 100% Fatal?!

   Interesting Pod #1:  “Bloodthirsty River”: The Bolton Strid, The most dangerous body of water on earth - The Bolton Strid, River Wharfe, Bolton Abbey in Yorkshire. “ Thalassophobics beware - today we’re talking about one of the scariest bodies of water on Earth! From the book of Genesis until today, floods have been one of humanity's greatest enemies. On August 15, 1998, Barry and Lynn Collett were married at Long Sutton Church near Hampshire, UK, before spending their wedding night at a hotel in Maiden's Green, Berkshire, and travelling north on Sunday. By all accounts, the couple were sensible, fine people who loved each other greatly, but I can’t help but think their wedding day was marred by one of the worst United Kingdom terror incidents that happened in the twentieth century. You see, the day the Colletts were married was the same day the Real IRA a provisional splinter group of the I.R.A. (Irish Republican Army) set off a massive bomb in Omaugh (Owe-Muh), Northern Ireland, that killed 29 and injured 220. It was the deadliest Northern Ireland incident of the Troubles, and it happened because the Real IRA, who were not, in fact, the Real IRA, but just called themselves that, opposed the IRA's ceasefire and the Good Friday Agreement, signed earlier in the year. They were against peace. So I imagine that the Collett’s had mixed feelings in August as they drove towards the Bolton Abbey area of North Yorkshire, wondering if the bomb might be an omen, or a harbinger of something worse to come. Barry was a computer guy and his new wife Lynn a student nurse…good people. They got married on a Saturday, and by Sunday night, they were near Bolton Abbey, staying in a holiday cottage in Appletreewick, a tiny village of 200 on the shores of the River Wharfe. That Sunday night, they likely huddled up in that cottage as a fierce rain storm beat down, swelling the River Wharfe to dangerous levels. Monday the 17th, the rain abated for a bit, and Barry and Lynn decided to go for a walk by the river, not overly familiar with the area, and apparently not aware of the dangers of the Strid, a stretch of river that many today call a “drowning machine.” U.K. Officers believed the couple went into the water slightly north of Bardon Bridge near stepping stones after setting off from their honeymoon cottage at Appletreewick on Monday. They just wanted to have a bit of a nature walk and stretch their legs after a long drive, and being cooped up in their cottage during the rain. Totally understandable. Unfortunately, they were never seen alive again. A local, Desmond Thomas, of Pembroke Dock was walking near the river that fateful Monday with his family and said: "The level, speed, and turbulence of the water looked like flood water. It rose a matter of feet in seconds.” He also apparently saw Mr. Collett, caught in the deadly current of the Strid, rush past him in a blur. "I went to the water's edge and just as I got there I saw a man's body, who I now know to be Barry, pop out of the water. "The face popped up towards me and within a matter of seconds it disappeared." Terrifying and heart-wrenching. What happened? Many people over the years have tried to jump across the Strid. Certainly, it’s doable - only about 6.5 feet wide in some places, but on this particular Monday, that would have been even more ill-advised than normal. The River bailiff for that stretch of the Strid - if you’re American, think of a Game Warden - was Charles Hoyle. He found Mrs Collett's jacket in the water the Tuesday after she disappeared, and he said that on the Monday the couple was lost, he personally witnessed the river rise five feet in less than 60 seconds because of the rain from the night before. This was something he said he had only seen happen about six times before. ELEVEN LABS Superintendent Parker of the local Constabulary said, "They were a sensible couple. We do not believe they tried to jump the Strid - the water was very high and we have no reason to think they would do anything like that," We don’t know exactly what happened. We don’t know precisely how the Strid claimed those two lovely honeymooners, but it did. Somehow, someway, Barry and Lynn just got too close to what may well be the most dangerous tiny stretch of water in the world. There were not the first victims of the Strid, and they may not have been the 100th or even the 1000th. In 1875, the Craven Herald and Pioneer reports that two grappling irons - for rescue - were suspended from trees near the Strid so that people who fell in might somehow, someway, be rescued. The paper reports: For centuries, people in that area have respected and trembled at their beautiful river, and the poet William Wordsworth, he of “I wandered Lonely as a Cloud” fame, also wrote an utterly haunting, poignant, and striking poem over 200 years ago about a young boy who also lost his life while trying to leap across the Strid. Now, I need to tell you that I wasn’t ever much of a fan of poetry or Wordsworth back in the day when I began college as an English major. Had I been exposed to this poem, however, I might have felt quite different. It’s tragic, to be sure, but in a pretty evocative way, almost like a ghost story. Let’s read a few lines of that amazing poetry, and then - after that, I’d like to preview a song about the Strid that was written and performed JUST FOR THIS EPISODE by the Bolton Bardeaters. I’ll just play a short clip of the song, but you can listen to the whole thing at the end of the episode. It’s sad, but it hits hard, and I really like it. Hope you do too! Here’s Wordsworth’s The Force of Prayer, which revolves around a Strid disaster: Young Romilly through Barden Woods Is ranging high and low; And holds a Greyhound in a leash, To let slip upon buck or doe. And the Pair have reached that fearful chasm, How tempting to bestride! For lordly Wharf is there pent in With rocks on either side. 6:18 for 1000 words. This Striding-place is called The Strid, A name which it took of yore: A thousand years hath it borne that name, And shall, a thousand more. And hither is young Romilly come, And what may now forbid That he, perhaps for the hundredth time, Shall bound across The Strid? He sprang in glee,—for what cared he That the River was strong and the rocks were steep? —But the Greyhound in the leash hung back, And checked him in his leap. The Boy is in the arms of Wharf, And strangled by a merciless force; For never more was young Romilly seen Till he rose a lifeless corpse! Hello, and thanks for listening. I’m Doctor Chase, a historian and writer originally from Birmingham, now living in the Monterey, California area. The song you just heard was commissioned by the podcast for this episode, and was performed by a Bolton group, the Bolton Bardeaters, an ersatz Celtic fusion heavy metal group that might be from that area. You can hear the whole song in full at the end of the episode, and the lyrics were written by friend of the show William Wordsworth over 200 years ago, with a few modern modifications. I love history, and history is the whole focus of this podcast, but not just any history. Here, we specialize in the strange, the fascinating, the mysterious, the whimsical, the wild, the provoking, the adventurous, and, like today, the eerie. We’ll cover the topics that Dan Carlin and Hardcore History probably won’t touch, but we’ll try to do them with that kind of commitment to research and detail. I’ve got a doctoral degree in counseling, and am finishing up a PhD in history, but I never really grew up from that fifth-grade boy in Alabama that loved mysteries, urban legends, myths, and great stories. Now, with a bit of academic experience, I’d like to explore the truth of some of those fantastic tales, and I’m glad you’re willing to join me on that ride. For a show with interesting in the title, there’s a lot of pressure to pick out a really engaging, really captivating topic for the first episode, and I think you’ll be pleased with the choice, even if most of you have never even heard of the Bolton Strid, a harrowing and deadly stretch of the Wharfe River that runs for a few hundred meters in Northern England near the picturesque village of Bolton Abbey. Locals call the Strid "the stream that swallows people" and "England's Killer Creek" but even up close it doesn't appear to be all that dangerous. Like a coral snake, it is a beautiful sight to behold, until you touch it…or it, touches you. An 1839 article in the Manchester Guardian newspaper notes that nobody can stand beside the Strid long “without feeling a sense of its power and savage grandeur grow upon him. It is indeed a place “most tempting to bestride,” or jump across. “One slip of the foot, and the leap is into eternity.” The New York Times, in describing the Strid, writes, “The Strid is a segment of the River Wharfe, which runs past the tranquil ruins of Bolton Priory, an ancient monastery. A few yards upstream from the Strid, the river is shallow and wide, about 30 feet from bank to bank. But then the terrain squeezes the river so tightly that it is effectively turned on its side. Instead of wide and shallow, it becomes narrow and deep, a powerful wedge of water racing through a crevasse riddled with underwater caves and overhangs. This is the Bolton Strid.” Legend claims the Bolton Strid is the most dangerous stretch of water in the entire world. They say, and have said for decades if not centuries, that the Strid has a 100 percent fatality rate for those who fall in it. There’s no escape, and no rescue.  But to look at it, it’s just a rapidly flowing, but not terrifying stream, about 45 minutes northwest of Leeds and a little over an hour west of York, England in the middle of a wide patch of beautiful fields. The Strid is in Northern England, and just a hair under 2 hours drive from Gretna Green in Scotland, so that means the water is COLD.  If you’re American, or from pretty much anywhere other than Northern England, you’re probably wondering what in the world a “strid” is, anyway. The Strid itself is not a river…but a part of a river. Just north of the tiny village of Bolton Abbey, there is a short but potent stretch of the River Wharfe that has been called The Strid for hundreds of years. Its name comes from an Old English word stryth, which means 'turmoil'. This was later corrupted to Strid, like stride, and it referred to the possibility - the dangerous possibility - of striding across the river. More accurately, we might say bounding or leaping across the river, because the narrowest point of the Strid is only about 6.5 feet/2 meters wide, which is a pretty large stride for all but the Goliath’s and Victor Wimbanyana’s among us at normal walking speed. Usain Bolt’s stride at the height of his speeding powers, sprinting like a madman, was 2.8 metres, over 9 feet! So the Strid is a portion of the River Wharfe in Yorkshire, England. The Wharfe is a beautiful river that flows through stunning countryside, beginning around Beckermonds and Oughtershaw OUTERSHAW in Central Northwest England, and flowing southeast for 65 miles to where it ends just above Leeds. It’s a great place for flyfishing, and you can catch grayling or brown trout there. It’s also a wonderful river for birdwatching, and well over 200 species of birds have been seen along the River Wharfe. It’s not the longest river in the U.K. not even the twentieth longest, but it is remarkable for its beauty and mixture of serenity and kayabakle rapids…until you get near the Bolton Abbey Estates, when things drastically change. For most of the river’s 65 miles, the depth is pretty modest, usually 10 feet or less. There’s a couple of places where it gets up to 24 feet deep, but those spots are few and far between. The river is never very wide either, maybe 90 or so feet at its maximum, but something weird happens along that stretch they call the Strid. It’s like the river just kind of turns sideways - upside down even. Instead of being moderately wide and shallow, it becomes quite narrow, but perilously deep. What makes the River Wharfe stretch known as the Strid so dangerous? Carolyn Roberts, Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and Former Frank Jackson Professor of the Environment at Gresham College, London explains:  'Beautiful rivers can certainly be dangerous to humans – the Nile has lots of crocodiles, the Zambesi will push you over the Victoria Falls, and beware of swallowing water from the lower reaches of the Colorado. 'Whilst the Strid is also beautiful, and looks innocuous, it’s similarly deadly. It kills because of its geomorphology – the form of the channel, which is influenced by the nature of the rocks over which it tumbles.  'Rather than carving a stately way through silt, it twists and turns through flat and overhanging rocks falling over the edge of a limestone formation. Vortices in the flow will trap bodies under the water close to the bed or the sides, whilst the turbulence will render someone unconscious very quickly. It’s not a good place to play.” With the Strid portion of the river being so narrow…often around six or seven feet, one wonders about the depth. Nobody knows exactly how deep, but a Youtuber named Jack a Snacks went and measured the depth of the Strid in 2021 using sonar, and he came up with a depth of over 216 feet. Imagine that - not even ten feet wide, rushing, pulsing waters, and OVER 200 feet deep. There’s even one section where he measures the depth of the river at a place that looks no more than six feet across, and the depth measures well over 100 feet deep. It’s crazy!! And watching his video, I gotta tell you, that river just looks so innocent and pretty, right up until you get to the Strid part… then it's just angry, and surrounded by what looks like moss-covered rocks. Some have disputed those sonar findings, so we aren’t one hundred percent sure about the depth there, but it is deep enough to cause big trouble. Other Youtubers have immersed their waterproof go-pro style cameras into the Strid, and several cameras have likely been lost in this process. Some of the footage I’ve seen shows really turbulent waters as well as a genuinely scary ledge of stone a few feet below the surface where the river kind of expands underwater, which demonstrates one of the likely mechanisms for the danger - people can slip or fall into the seemingy shallow water, and then get yanked under those ledges far too quickly to get rescued or immerse somewhere else with their head above water. Barry and Lynn Collett’s story, which we led off with, reminds me of an incident with my family when we first moved to Monterey, except, by grace, our story ended much better. Monastery beach/Mortuary beach. Water is dangerous, and the Strid is reputedly one of the most dangerous bodies of water on Earth. Is this just hype? Is it An urban legend magnified by Wordsworth’s poetry and 19th-century horror stories like Gertrude Atherton's 'The Striding Place'? Great story, by the way, perfect for spooky season, and despite the fact that it was written in the 1800s, that last line punches above its weight. Read it…if you dare. In that story, Atherton describes the Strid writing, “There was no lonelier spot in England nor one which had the right to claim so many ghosts, if ghosts there were.” As the Times reports, an old English rhyme also points out the hazards of the Strid and the Wharfe river that holds it, “Wharfe is clear, and Aire is lithe; Where Aire kills one, Wharfe kills five.”  The River Aire, though 30 miles longer and wider, is far less dangerous than the River Wharfe. A recent popular YouTube video from around two years ago is titled, “THEY didn’t listen and the Strid MURDERED them” With murdered in all caps. Has the danger of this river been blown out of all proportion? It’s a good question, and of the many websites and Youtube videos that mention the Strid, it’s hard to find anybody that’s done real research into this place, but that’s what we’re going to do now. It’s Time Machine time…let’s go back into the past and see if the Strid is as dangerous as it’s cracked up to be! Newspaper reports brim with recent casualties all along the Wharfe River near the Strid. The Wharfe river - not the Strid section -  is popular for swimming during the summer, even though the water itself is quite cold. It also has swifter current than one might realize - even in the non-Strid sections - and lots of unpredictable dips and depth changes. In fact, less than a week ago at the time of this recording in July of 2025, a man dove into the Wharfe - not the Strid portion - near the Bolton Abbey to save his daughter from distress in the water - and succeeded in doing so - but the coldness of the water caused him to go into cardiac arrest, and he was only saved due to the diligence and lifesaving skills of two local men who rescued him and performed CPR until the air ambulance arrived. The Strid itself in modernity is surrounded by warning signs, but no fences. The signs warn: “The Strid is dangerous and has claimed lives in the past. Please stand well back and beware slippery rocks.” The signs keep most people away from the water, at least, and nobody seems to swim there…but they do fall in from time to time. In 2010, eight-year-old Aaron Page, from Pontefract, drowned after he slipped from a rock. Someone nearby quickly reached out and grabbed him but the young guy was dragged beneath the surface. The Strid also took the life of an artist who painted her and admired her beauty, the watercolour painter Arthur Reginald Smith. He fell in and drowned while on a trip to paint the river in 1934. As the Times also reports, “He was 63 at the time and many people were baffled as to why he had ended up in the water, as they believed he was too old to have attempted to jump across it.” The above four deaths are pretty much the only ones you can find on the internet attributed to the Strid. Most of the sites that warn of the horrors of the Strid mention those four deaths, and allude to hundreds of others. The Snopes website, which gives a “True” rating to the dangers of the Strid adds another death from  The August 14, 1877 Leeds Mercury reported that a man named Samuel Naylor from Pudsey in Leeds drowned while trying to jump across the Strid. Now, five deaths are horrible and a tragedy, but it is not by any means enough to earn the Strid many of the dark accolades it has received. Have others drowned there, or is this just a question of an amplified reputation for danger? One wannabe intrepid web reporter, Daniel Piggot, posting on the website Travelmademedoit.com (http://travelmademedoit.com), put on his myth-busting cap, and basically spat in the face of the river and its lore, writing: “Despite its infamy as a place of death, there is no official death toll at The Strid. Although a couple honeymooning in the area in 1998 was reported missing in the news, there is no proof that anyone has ever died at The Strid. The deathly reputation doesn’t come from any actual deaths it seems but from a cautionary tale!” Later in his article, Daniel, though warning readers to be careful, writes, “Anyway, let’s look into how you can visit this immensely beautiful (not deadly) place. Let’s start by looking at its exact location.”   The location of the Strid is certainly not hidden, but is Piggott right? Is this really just an inflated cautionary tale? Here’s where we have to do actual historical research and dive into some archives. But first, I need to say that the way Daniel sort of dismissed the deaths of the honeymooning couple that disappeared and said “there’s no proof that anyone has ever died at the Strid.” Is just patently ridiclous. Both Barry and Collett disappeared in the river at a time when it rose 5 feet in under five minutes. Barry was seen in the river actually drowning by an eyewitness and both of their bodies were discovered downstream of the Strid. Were those deaths and the other deaths already mentioned simply anomalies? Unfortunately and tragically, the record is grim. The Strid is all it's  cracked up to be, and maybe more. And Mr. Piggott, swell guy that he might be, apparently did not do enough journalism or research before declaring a very deadly stretch of river “not deadly.” The July 22, 1966 Craven Herald and Pioneer reports on the drowning death in the Strid of young Neville Cudbertson of Hazelwood orphanage, who was at the Strid on a school outing, with teachers walking behind the students, instead of directly with them, a factor which the coroner said contributed to the death of Neville, who simply slipped into the water and was whisked away. In 1961, the Guardian reports that 17-year-old Peter Gunning of Allerton fell in and drowned trying to jump over the gorge. The paper notes, “Many people have died trying to jump the Strid, or stride. The spot where a stride is possible is marked by a huge rounded stone in mid-channel, a few yards below the fall. It is possible to jump to the stone, but a slip means little chance of survival, for there are no handholds and the current runs under rocks which are hollowed out.”  How utterly awful. The July 21 1951, Manchester Guardian further reports on another drowning of a 70 year old David Hughes, formerly of Grafton Villas near Leeds. The June 9, 1932 Guardian again reports on the drowning death of a young 23-year old Mormon missionary named Lawrence T. Heath who drowned at the Strid. His friends report that he jumped across the Strid to a boulder in the river to take a photograph….”He was proceeding from the boulder to the other side when he slipped and fell into the stream.” He clung to a rock for a few seconds, and his friends went to look for a lifebelt/life jacket, but when they returned, the young man had just lost his handhold on the rock, and he was struggling in the water. Tragically, people have been losing their lives for dramatic photographs for well over one hundred years. A few years earlier, the Manchester Guardian also reports on the death of an athletic and relatively fit man, an engineer named William Taylor. The paper reports that Taylor had successfully jumped the Strid multiple times, but then “He attempted the leap at a point where it had never yet been known to be successfully accomplished…He jumped across, but over-balanced and turned a somersault backwards into the rapids and drowned before the eyes of his father and mother, despite the efforts of his friends to rescue him. He was a married man.”   What a gut-wrenching article, and what a cautionary tale. Such an empty death - trying to prove you can make a jump nobody else can - for a guy who seemed to be so well-loved and valued. Life is precious, and should be treated as such. Here’s another photograph related death. June, 1951 - Father and Son drowned. Mr Frank Johnson, 45 and his son Derek, 18. Surprisingly, it was dad, Mr. Frank, who was taking a picture near the Strid, and his foot slipped on a moss-covered rock - all around the river - and he fell backwards into the river. The 18 year old Derek heroically tried to rescue his dad, and managed to get to him, but they were both swept away and under the water by the strong undercurrent. Have mercy. Do you want me to recount all of the drownings? We’d be here for a long, long time, and I’m sure it wouldn’t do either of us much good mentally or emotionally, so let me just fly through some of the headlines: May 1869, Lady Firth, wife of Sir Charles Firth, falls into the Strid accidentally on a walk. September, 1870, a young man named P.A. Browne attempted to jump across the Strid, but fell short, falling in as his mother watched. Though people tried to help, he was lost quickly. The paper reports his brother was “unable to render any help, the rush of water being so strong.” The 1883 West Yorkshire Weekly Examiner reports on the drowning death of 46 or 19 year old George Benton, of Leeds, who attempted to jump across the Strid as so many others have, slipped, and fell to his death. He immediately surfaced once, but went under quickly, and though grappling irons were used, nobody could get to him. Apparently there is some discrepancy in which Benton died - the father, or the son, as the Lancaster Gazette reports the death of the father. September 11, 1894…Mr. George Henry Ashworth, a church organist went to the Strid on a fishing holiday, plunged in, never to be seen again. In 1898, the Liverpool Mercury reported on the sad death of 4 year old Margery Harrison, who had apparently wandered away from her mother and fallen in. August, 1922, young Malcolm Ellison of Harrowgate, a middle school boy visiting the Strid in the company of about 200 classmates and 10 teachers, lost his life in the Strid while the teachers were eating. His young friend, Harold Hitchin made a valiant attempt to save Malcolm, but just missed him. October 1927, Winifred May Hodgson, 29, Lept into the surging river…possibly intentionally. 1928 - Girl’s Leap into Torrent. Young 27 year old Miss Lily Baines lost her life in the Strid. The Craven Herald and Pioneer reports that Miss Baines was the second Strid victim in the past two months, and the Ramsbottom Observer claims she was the third victim. August, 1928, Mr. G.E. Thackeray, a retired bank manager somehow fell in. The paper notes that “Several people have been drowned there lately,” which leads one to believe that not every drowning has been reported in the papers. In June of 1937, Alec J. Towley, a gardener from  River View disappeared with his overcoat right next to the Strid, and almost certainly drowned therein, as reported by the Craven Herald and Pioneer. July, 1939, the Craven Herald and Pioneer reports the Strid-related drowning death of Stanley Horrell, a prominent Leeds businessman and former member of that city’s council. December 1958, Margaret Crabtree, in her mid 30s, drowned in the Strid. Her husband, school-teacher Selwyn, reports that “He did not think he had pushed her deliberately” when she fell into the Strid,” which might be the most suspicious statement ever. To be fair to Selwyn, however, the paper does report that he slipped and put out his arm to catch himself, and accidentally pushed his wife. The Craven Herald and Pioneer also reports on the 1964 death of Edward Robertshaw Wright, a 53 year old mill director from Halifax Those are an awful lot of drownings for one narrow and short length of river, and there are probably many more, but that sample should more than suffice. Quite certainly, this thin stretch of river, really is something of a killing machine. But did it really take the life of a potential future king of Scotland in the 1100s? We will have to travel further back in time to answer that one! I’ll close this first episode of the Pod with these poetic words from the May 19, 1859 edition of the Bradford Observer in an article entitled, “Pilgrimage to the Valley of Desolation: (Just like Boiling Lake, 4,100 miles away.) On the next episode, which should be out the same day as episode one, we will read some of the earliest historical coverage about The Strid, smash some myths, definitively prove whether or not the Strid has a legit 100% fatality rate AND tell you about the ACTUAL most deadly and dangerous body of water to fall into in the world, and - as a hint, it’s not the Strid. It’s much, much worse. One more thing - as an outro, please enjoy the new song, “The Merciless Strid” by the Bolton Bardeaters, commissioned just for this episode!! We’ll hear more about the song in episode #2. Sources: https://www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/news/8074114.well-take-them-home-together/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/bolton-strid/ http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/217851.stm https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJFQXT6PIP8 https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/30/world/what-in-the-world/six-feet-across-and-full-of-peril-englands-killer-creek.html#:~:text=The%20Strid%20is%20a%20segment,fails%20to%20leap%20the%20stream. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/travel_news/article-3588584/Is-world-s-dangerous-stretch-water-innocent-looking-river-Yorkshire-Strid-s-currents-pulverise-falls-in.html https://www.google.com/books/edition/Early_Yorkshire_Charters_Volume_7_The_Ho/PGnetE9YIc0C?hl=en https://www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/news/24230864.search-stranger-1996-saved-child-drowning-wharfe/

10. 

    12 Jul 2025

    InterestingPOD Trailer - Episode #0

    Not every tale from history made the textbooks. Some were too strange. Too secret. Too… interesting. Debunking myths and digging up the truth—we don’t peddle half-baked lies, rumors, or unfounded conspiracies. And we don’t accept easy answers either. You bring the curiosity—we’ll bring the intrigue. Ready for a mystery? Or an adventure? Well, here’s a preview of some of our first few episodes: Did you know that there is a forbidden Hawaiian island owned by one family, and the residents can leave when ever they want, but they can’t bring anybody back with them? If you’re lucky enough to live there, it’s rent free, you get all of the meat to eat that you want, but there’s not really much electricity, plumbing, internet, tv or running water. Speaking of primitive conditions, how would you survive a winter in Victorian England if you were dirt poor and homeless? Well, if you could somehow get at least a penny a day, you could sleep in a penny shelter sitting up on a bench. (NO LYING ON THE BENCH) And you’d likely be sitting next to one or two other dudes also. If you had two pennies, you could sleep hanging over on a rope at a two-penny hangover…but not on the floor. If you had FOUR pennies…well, my friend, you’re in luck because you’d be able to sleep in a coffin like box on a hard floor, with bugs in it, and you’d also have 50-100 more people in that seem ill-heated room, many of them sleeping in their own coffin boxes just inches away from you. Yuck! In another episode, we will shift gears and explore the documented prophetic dreams that predict the future. Could such a thing really happen? In 1979 David Booth dreamt ten nights in a row about a terrible air crash that would soon happen. He called Jack Barker with the FAA multiple times leading up to the cross, but though he provided specific details, and though Barker took him seriously, they couldn’t figure what exact plane Booth’s dream might be referring to. A few days later, in a scenario eerily similar to Booth’s dream, American Airlines flight 191 crashed shortly after takeoff, the worst aviation disaster in American history. How could that be possible? We will explore that incident in depth. A few more early episodes: Did John F. Kennedy, in trying to address a crowd in Berlin, inadvertently call himself a jelly donut in German? The truth might surprise you! Speaking of surprises, what about witches burned at the stake in Salem?? Everybody knows that happened, right? Right? Related to facts everybody knows…if you are even a casual sports fan, I’ll bet you know that Jackie Robinson was the first black Major league baseball player, right? Except…actually, he wasn’t. Well, that’s enough of a preview. I’m your host, Doctor Chase, and I’m a historian, author, storyteller and podcaster. I began podcasting in early 2005, and was one half of the first podcast in Alabama history, which is an achievement that probably won’t go on my gravestone. I have a doctoral degree in counseling, and I’m close to finishing a PhD in history. I care as much about footnotes, historiographical analyses, Turabian formatting, and memorizing dozens of dates as you do, but the thing I love about history is the STORIES. I love a good story, and I’ve stayed up many late nights listening and telling a good tale. That said, I also love truth, and facts. We live in an age of accelerated conspiracy theories, and urban legends are as common as online political disagreements. When I was a kid, I didn’t want to grow up to be a teacher, or a historian, or a pastor, or a counselor…I was a Hardy Boys guy. A wannabe Sherlock Holmes, and even though I was a History major in college, my eyes were dead set on being an FBI agent, or some other form of detective, and I even attended Criminal Justice graduate school at the University of Alabama before my life took a different turn…but I never lost my love of a good mystery, or love of investigations, and I want to apply that passion for investigating to history. On this show, we will put on our deerstalker hat (even if Holmes didn’t wear one in the canonical books) get out our magnifying glasses, and do the actual research that’s necessary to get at the truth. I can’t promise that we will be infallible, but I do promise you will get maximal effort to put together an interesting - hopefully fascinating -  podcast that prioritizes excellent research and values the truth. If we miss it, we’ll own it. It’s cliche for podcast hosts to tell people to “hit that subscribe button,” so I won’t say that, but deep down, I’ll secretly be hoping that you do.

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Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

2 ratings

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