Robert Johnson died in 1938 at the age of 27. He only recorded 29 songs in his lifetime. Yet he is widely recognized as the King of the Delta Blues. His singing, guitar playing and songwriting have influenced musicians to this day. Yet the man’s life was filled with mystery. Was he murdered by a jealous husband? And what about that pact that he supposedly made with the devil? This is the story of blues legend Robert Johnson.

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Sources

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Johnson

https://www.udiscovermusic.com/stories/devils-music-myth-robert-johnson/

https://magnoliatribune.com/2023/07/13/robert-johnson-the-man-myth-legend-and-legacy/

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The root of most conflict is misunderstanding and miscommunication. But what if there was a universal language that everyone could speak? Would such a language help avoid communication problems. To a dress this, in 1887, Ludovic Zamenhof created a brand new language: Esperanto. This was a constructed language to try and facilitate communication across ethnic and geographic lines. Today it is spoken by tens of thousands of people. This is the history of Esperanto.

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Sources

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC61387/

https://zamenhof.info/en/biografio

Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Esperanto_bandera.jpg

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We like things that go boom. Cannons, fireworks, dynamite - you name it. Explosive blasts - big and small - have an 'aha' factor that’s hard to deny. The source of all those booms goes back nearly 2,000 years to the alchemists of ancient China. This is the story of gunpowder.

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Sources

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunpowder
https://www.britannica.com/technology/gunpowder

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In 1961, the Soviet backed East German government grew tired of its citizens fleeing into West Berlin. And thus, the East Germans began construction of a fortified wall that would completely surround West Berlin from the world. This wall would become the most notable - and hated - symbol of the Soviet era. This is the story of the Berlin Wall.

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Sources

https://diplomacy.state.gov/berlin-wall/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Wall

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One of the worst ecological disasters in the 21st century was the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Thanks to greed, mismanagement, and poor practices, an explosion on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico caused the deaths of 11 people, and nearly 5 million barrels of oil spilled into the ocean, costing billions of dollars in damage and untold harm to the environment. This is the story of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

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Sources

https://response.restoration.noaa.gov/deepwater-horizon-oil-spill-case-study

https://ocean.si.edu/conservation/pollution/gulf-oil-spill

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill

Image: by DVIDSHUB: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Flickr_-_DVIDSHUB_-_Oil_Spill.jpg

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In the 1890s in South Australia, a murdering bushranger terrorized the area of Coorong. However, this was not a large scary outlaw on horseback - but instead, a small man wearing gold jewelry and riding an Ostrich. This is the story of John Francis Peggotty - the Birdman of Coorong.

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Sources

https://coorongcountry.com.au/coorong-bushranger/

https://aguidetoaustralianbushranging.wordpress.com/2018/02/21/john-francis-peggotty-the-birdman-of-coorong/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Francis_Peggotty

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One year ago today we dropped the first 10 episodes of History Dispatches. And except for a single week, we have released one episode every single weekday. And while we try our best, we are far from perfect. This is a catalog of every mistake - that we know of - from the past year.

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On August 1, 1966, Marine veteran Charles Whitman murdered his mother and his wife, then went to the 28th floor observation deck of the University of Texas Austin's main building. When he was done,17 people were dead and 31 injured - making it one of the nation's worst shootings of all time.

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Sources

https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/university-of-texas-tower-shooting-1966

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Whitman

Images: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Charles_Whitman_(1963).jpg

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Charles_Whitman%27s_arsenal.jpg"

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The nation with the most pyramids is not Egypt but its neighbor to the south, Sudan, with over 250. However, these were not built by the ancient Egyptians, but by the Kingdom of Kush, from 800 BC to the 4th century AD went on a pyramid building boom. And the crown jewel of these sites is the Pyramids of Meroë - a cemetery with 147 pyramids and the final resting place to dozens of Kushite kings. This is the story of the Pyramids of Meroë.

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Sources

https://artsexperiments.withgoogle.com/meroe/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramids_of_Meroë

https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1336/

Image: by Chubbyrump - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Pyramids_of_Meroe.jpg

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On Feb. 1, 1960, in Greensboro, NC, four young black students went into a Woolworth’s department store, sat at the lunch counter and ordered food. They were denied service. But instead of going home and not returning - the men came back the next day. And the next. And the next - until thousands of people were staging sit-ins all over the south in protest of segregated seating at restaurants. This is the story of the Greensboro sit-ins.

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Sources

https://northcarolinahistory.org/encyclopedia/greensboro-sit-in/

https://www.history.com/articles/the-greensboro-sit-in

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greensboro_sit-ins

Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Greensboro_Four.jpg

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For the Halloween special of Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre on the Air, in 1938, they performed a radio adaptation of HG Wells’ landmark science fiction novel 'War of the Worlds.' The only problem is that it was so realistic, it caused panic amongst listeners, who thought a Martian invasion was imminent. At least, allegedly. This is the story of the 'War of the Worlds' broadcast.

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Sources

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9q7tN7MhQ4I

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_of_the_Worlds_(1938_radio_drama)

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/infamous-war-worlds-radio-broadcast-was-magnificent-fluke-180955180/

Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Orson-Welles-Studio-1938.jpg

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