Citation Needed

The Zimmermann Telegram (or Zimmermann Note or Zimmerman Cable) was a secret diplomatic communication issued from the German Foreign Office in January 1917 that proposed a military alliance between Germany and Mexico if the United States entered World War I against Germany. Mexico would recover Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico. The telegram was intercepted and decoded by British intelligence. Our theme song was written and performed by Anna Bosnick. If you’d like to support the show on a per episode basis, you can find our Patreon page here.  Be sure to check our website for more details.

The Suez Canal (Arabic: قَنَاةُ السُّوَيْسِ‎, Qanātu s-Suways) is an artificial sea-level waterway in Egypt, connecting the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea through the Isthmus of Suez and dividing Africa and Asia. In 1858, Ferdinand de Lesseps formed the Suez Canal Company for the express purpose of building the canal. Construction of the canal lasted from 1859 to 1869 and took place under the regional authority of the Ottoman Empire. The canal officially opened on 17 November 1869. It offers vessels a direct route between the North Atlantic and northern Indian oceans via the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea, avoiding the South Atlantic and southern Indian oceans and reducing the journey distance from the Arabian Sea to London by approximately 8,900 kilometres (5,500 mi), or 10 days at 20 knots (37 km/h; 23 mph) to 8 days at 24 knots (44 km/h; 28 mph).[1] The canal extends from the northern terminus of Port Said to the southern terminus of Port Tewfik at the city of Suez. Its length is 193.30 km (120.11 mi)

Louis Jay Pearlman (June 19, 1954 – August 19, 2016) was an American record producer. He was the creator of successful 1990s boy bands such as Backstreet Boys and NSYNC. In 2006, he was accused of running one of the largest and longest-running Ponzi schemes in US history, leaving more than $300 million in debts. After being apprehended, he pled guilty to conspiracy, money laundering, and making false statements during a bankruptcy proceeding. In 2008, Pearlman was convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison.[3][4] He died in federal custody in 2016.

Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin [a] (9 March 1934 – 27 March 1968) was a Soviet pilot and cosmonaut who became the first human to journey into outer space, achieving a major milestone in the Space Race; his capsule, Vostok 1, completed one orbit of Earth on 12 April 1961. Gagarin became an international celebrity and was awarded many medals and titles, including Hero of the Soviet Union, his nation's highest honour. Our theme song was written and performed by Anna Bosnick. If you’d like to support the show on a per episode basis, you can find our Patreon page here.  Be sure to check our website for more details.

"The Death of Superman" is a crossover story event featured in DC Comics' Superman-related publications. The crossover, which originated from editor Mike Carlin and writers Dan Jurgens, Roger Stern, Louise Simonson, Jerry Ordway, and Karl Kesel, began in December 1992 and lasted until October 1993. It was published in Superman, Action Comics, The Adventures of Superman, Superman: The Man of Steel, Justice League America, and Green Lantern. Since its initial publication, "The Death of Superman" has been reprinted in various formats and editions. Our theme song was written and performed by Anna Bosnick. If you’d like to support the show on a per episode basis, you can find our Patreon page here.  Be sure to check our website for more details.

Vantablack is a material developed by Surrey NanoSystems in the United Kingdom and is one of the darkest substances known, absorbing up to 99.965% of visible light (at 663 nm if the light is perpendicular to the material).[4][5]

Caligula (/kəˈlɪɡjʊlə/; 31 August 12 – 24 January 41 AD), formally known as Gaius (Gaius Caesar Augustus Germanicus), was the third Roman emperor, ruling from 37 to 41. The son of the popular Roman general Germanicus and Augustus's granddaughter Agrippina the Elder, Caligula was born into the first ruling family of the Roman Empire, conventionally known as the Julio-Claudian dynasty.

Tetris (Russian: Тетрис [ˈtɛtrʲɪs]) is a tile-matching video game created by Russian software engineer Alexey Pajitnov in 1984. It has been published by several companies, most prominently during a dispute over the appropriation of the rights in the late 1980s. After a significant period of publication by Nintendo, the rights reverted to Pajitnov in 1996, who co-founded The Tetris Company with Henk Rogers to manage licensing.

The Great Famine (Irish: an Gorta Mór [anˠ ˈɡɔɾˠt̪ˠə ˈmˠoːɾˠ]), also known as the Great Hunger, the Great Starvation, the Famine (mostly within Ireland) or the Irish Potato Famine (mostly outside Ireland),[1][2] was a period of mass starvation and disease in Ireland from 1845 to 1852.[3] With the most severely affected areas in the west and south of Ireland, where the Irish language was dominant, the period was contemporaneously known in Irish as An Drochshaol,[4] loosely translated as "the hard times" (or literally "the bad life"). The worst year of the period was 1847, known as "Black '47".[5][6] During the Great Hunger, about 1 million people died and more than a million fled the country,[7] causing the country's population to fall by 20%–25%, in some towns falling as much as 67% between 1841 and 1851.[8][9][10] Between 1845 and 1855, no less than 2.1 million people left Ireland, primarily on packet ships but also steamboats and barks—one of the greatest mass exoduses from a single island in history.[11][1

In psychology, a false memory is a phenomenon where someone recalls something that did not happen or recalls it differently from the way it actually happened. Suggestibility, activation of associated information, the incorporation of misinformation, and source misattribution have been suggested to be several mechanisms underlying a variety of types of false memory phenomena.

Joseph Frank Keaton (October 4, 1895 – February 1, 1966),[1] known professionally as Buster Keaton, was an American actor, comedian, film director, producer, screenwriter, and stunt performer.[2] He is best known for his silent films, in which his trademark was physical comedy with a consistently stoic, deadpan expression that earned him the nickname "The Great Stone Face".[3][4] Critic Roger Ebert wrote of Keaton's "extraordinary period from 1920 to 1929" when he "worked without interruption" on a series of films that make him "the greatest actor-director in the history of the movies".[4]   Our theme song was written and performed by Anna Bosnick. If you’d like to support the show on a per episode basis, you can find our Patreon page here.  Be sure to check our website for more details.

Harriet Tubman (born Araminta Ross, c. March 1822[1] – March 10, 1913) was an American abolitionist and political activist. Born into slavery, Tubman escaped and subsequently made some 13 missions to rescue approximately 70 enslaved people, including family and friends,[2] using the network of antislavery activists and safe houses known as the Underground Railroad. During the American Civil War, she served as an armed scout and spy for the Union Army. In her later years, Tubman was an activist in the movement for women's suffrage. Music Credit: Hitman by Kevin MacLeod Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3880-hitman License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license All other music was written and performed by Anna Bosnick. If you’d like to support the show on a per episode basis, you can find our Patreon page here.  Be sure to check our website for more details.

Washington's Birthday is a federal holiday in the United States celebrated on the third Monday of February in honor of George Washington, the first president of the United States, who was born on February 22, 1732. The Uniform Monday Holiday Act of 1971 moved this holiday to the third Monday, which can fall from February 15 to 21, inclusive.[1] Colloquially, the day is also now widely known as Presidents' Day (though the placement of the apostrophe, if any, varies) and is often an occasion to remember all the presidents.[2]   Our theme song was written and performed by Anna Bosnick. If you’d like to support the show on a per episode basis, you can find our Patreon page here.  Be sure to check our website for more details.

Cannabis (/ˈkænəbɪs/)[2] is a genus of flowering plants in the family Cannabaceae. The number of species within the genus is disputed. Three species may be recognized: Cannabis sativa, Cannabis indica, and Cannabis ruderalis; C. ruderalis may be included within C. sativa; all three may be treated as subspecies of a single species, C. sativa;[1][3][4][5] or C. sativa may be accepted as a single undivided species.[6] The genus is widely accepted as being indigenous to and originating from Central Asia, with some researchers also including upper South Asia in its origin.[7][8] --- Our theme song was written and performed by Anna Bosnick. If you’d like to support the show on a per episode basis, you can find our Patreon page here.  Be sure to check our website for more details.

The Antwerp diamond heist, dubbed the "heist of the century",[1] was by far the largest diamond heist and one of the largest robberies in history. Thieves stole loose diamonds, gold, silver and other types of jewelry valued at more than $100 million.[2][3] It took place in Antwerp, Belgium, during the weekend of 15–16 February 2003. Though arrests were made and time was served, most of the diamonds stolen remain unrecovered. Our theme song was written and performed by Anna Bosnick. If you’d like to support the show on a per episode basis, you can find our Patreon page here.  Be sure to check our website for more details.  

The Burke and Wills expedition was organised by the Royal Society of Victoria in Australia in 1860–61. It consisted of 19 men led by Robert O'Hara Burke and William John Wills, with the objective of crossing Australia from Melbourne in the south, to the Gulf of Carpentaria in the north, a distance of around 3,250 kilometres (approximately 2,000 miles).[1] At that time most of the inland of Australia had not been explored by non-Indigenous people and was largely unknown to the European settlers. Our theme song was written and performed by Anna Bosnick. If you’d like to support the show on a per episode basis, you can find our Patreon page here.  Be sure to check our website for more details.

The Battle of the Golden Spurs (Flemish: Guldensporenslag; French: Bataille des éperons d'or) was a military confrontation between the royal army of France and rebellious forces of the County of Flanders on 11 July 1302 during the Franco-Flemish War (1297–1305). It took place near the town of Kortrijk (Courtrai) in modern-day Belgium and resulted in an unexpected victory for the Flemish. It is sometimes referred to as the Battle of Courtrai. Our theme song was written and performed by Anna Bosnick. If you’d like to support the show on a per episode basis, you can find our Patreon page here.  Be sure to check our website for more details.

Alien abduction, sometimes also called abduction phenomenon, alien abduction syndrome or UFO abduction, is a personally held belief in which the alleged "abductee" describes "subjectively real experiences" of being secretly kidnapped by non-human entities (aliens) and subjected to physical and psychological experimentation.[1] Most scientists and mental health professionals explain these experiences by factors such as suggestibility (e.g. false memory syndrome), sleep paralysis, deception, and psychopathology.[2] Skeptic Robert Sheaffer sees similarity between the aliens depicted in science fiction films, in particular Invaders From Mars (1953), and some of those reported to have actually abducted people.[3] People claiming to have been abducted are usually called "abductees"[4] or "experiencers". --- Our theme song was written and performed by Anna Bosnick. If you’d like to support the show on a per episode basis, you can find our Patreon page here.  Be sure to check our website for more details.

This episode picks up on Wikipedia's list of unusual deaths, starting with the Medieval period. --- Our theme song was written and performed by Anna Bosnick. If you’d like to support the show on a per episode basis, you can find our Patreon page here.  Be sure to check our website for more details.

The Etruscan civilization (/ɪˈtrʌskən/) of ancient Italy covered a territory, at its greatest extent, of roughly what is now Tuscany, western Umbria, and northern Lazio,[2][3] as well as parts of what are now the Po Valley, Emilia-Romagna, south-eastern Lombardy, southern Veneto, and Campania.[4]