Citation Needed

Barack Obama, the 44th president of the United States, was involved in multiple security incidents, including several assassination threats and plots, starting from when he became a presidential candidate in 2007. Secret Service protection for Obama began after he received a death threat in 2007, while serving as the junior United States senator from Illinois and running for president. This marked the earliest time a candidate received such protection before being nominated.[1] Security was increased early for Obama due to fears of possible assassination attempts by white supremacist or other racist groups or individuals against the first African American major party presidential nominee.[2][3][4]

Frédéric Pierre Bourdin[1] (born 13 June 1974)[2] is a French serial impostor the press has nicknamed "The Chameleon".[3] He began his impersonations as a child and claims to have assumed at least 500 false identities; [4] three being teenage missing people.[3][5]

Elmer J. McCurdy (January 1, 1880 – October 7, 1911) was an American outlaw who was killed in a shoot-out with police after robbing a train in Oklahoma in October 1911. Dubbed "The Bandit Who Wouldn't Give Up", his mummified body was first put on display at an Oklahoma funeral home and then became a fixture on the traveling carnival and sideshow circuit during the 1920s through the 1960s. After changing ownership several times, McCurdy's remains eventually wound up at The Pike amusement zone in Long Beach, California, where they were discovered by crew members for the television series The Six Million Dollar Man and positively identified in December 1976.

Bonnie Elizabeth Parker (October 1, 1910 – May 23, 1934) and Clyde Chestnut "Champion" Barrow (March 24, 1909 – May 23, 1934) were American outlaws who traveled the Central United States with their gang during the Great Depression, committing a series of criminal acts such as bank robberies, kidnappings, and murders between 1932 and 1934. The couple were known for their bank robberies and multiple murders, although they preferred to rob small stores or rural gas stations. Their exploits captured the attention of the American press and its readership during what is occasionally referred to as the "public enemy era" between 1931 and 1934. They were ambushed by police and shot dead in Bienville Parish, Louisiana. They are believed to have murdered at least nine police officers and four civilians.[1][2]

The Cuban Missile Crisis, also known as the October Crisis (Spanish: Crisis de Octubre) in Cuba, or the Caribbean Crisis (Russian: Карибский кризис, romanized: Karibskiy krizis), was a 13-day confrontation between the governments of the United States and the Soviet Union, when American deployments of nuclear missiles in Italy and Turkey were matched by Soviet deployments of nuclear missiles in Cuba. The crisis lasted from 16 to 28 October 1962. The confrontation is widely considered the closest the Cold War came to escalating into full-scale nuclear war.[1]

The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was an intelligence agency of the United States during World War II. The OSS was formed as an agency of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS)[3] to coordinate espionage activities behind enemy lines for all branches of the United States Armed Forces. Other OSS functions included the use of propaganda, subversion, and post-war planning.

2 op-eds by Ross Douthat https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/30/opinion/abortion-dobbs-supreme-court.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/07/opinion/religion-god.html

Audie Leon Murphy (20 June 1925 – 28 May 1971)[1] was an American soldier, actor, and songwriter. He was widely celebrated as the most decorated American combat soldier of World War II,[4] and has been described as the most highly decorated enlisted soldier in U.S. history.[5][6] He received every military combat award for valor available from the United States Army, as well as French and Belgian awards for heroism. Murphy received the Medal of Honor for valor that he demonstrated at age 19 for single-handedly holding off a company of German soldiers for an hour at the Colmar Pocket in France in January 1945, before leading a successful counterattack while wounded.

"The Little Mermaid" (Danish: Den lille havfrue), sometimes translated in English as "The Little Sea Maid",[1] is a fairy tale written by Danish author Hans Christian Andersen. Originally published in 1837 as part of a collection of fairy tales for children, the story follows the journey of a young mermaid princess who is willing to give up her life in the sea as a mermaid to gain a human soul.

The Battle of Cartagena de Indias (Spanish: Sitio de Cartagena de Indias, lit. 'Siege of Cartagena de Indias') took place during the 1739 to 1748 War of Jenkins' Ear between Spain and Great Britain. The result of long-standing commercial tensions, the war was primarily fought in the Caribbean; the British tried to capture key Spanish ports in the region, including Porto Bello and Chagres in Panama, Havana, and Cartagena de Indias in present-day Colombia.

https://www.pornhub.com/insights/2024-year-in-review   Use code CITATION at the link below and get 60% off an annual plan: http://incogni.com/citation    

Three op-eds by billionaires. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/10/28/jeff-bezos-washington-post-trust/ https://about.fb.com/news/2020/02/big-tech-needs-more-regulation/ https://www.ft.com/content/a46cb128-1f74-4621-ab0b-242a76583105

A ghost ship, also known as a phantom ship, is a vessel with no living crew aboard; it may be a fictional ghostly vessel, such as the Flying Dutchman, or a physical derelict found adrift with its crew missing or dead, like the Mary Celeste.[1][2] The term is sometimes used for ships that have been decommissioned but not yet scrapped, as well as drifting boats that have been found after breaking loose of their ropes and being carried away by the wind or the waves.

The Bonus Army was a group of 43,000 demonstrators – 17,000 veterans of U.S. involvement in World War I, their families, and affiliated groups – who gathered in Washington, D.C., in mid-1932 to demand early cash redemption of their service bonus certificates. Organizers called the demonstrators the Bonus Expeditionary Force (B.E.F.), to echo the name of World War I's American Expeditionary Forces, while the media referred to them as the "Bonus Army" or "Bonus Marchers". The demonstrators were led by Walter W. Waters, a former sergeant.

Tom cleans out his unrelated chrome tabs on interesting wikipedia articles. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_ironing https://woodcarvingillustrated.com/deep-sea-jack-o-lanterns/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobby_tunneling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaver_drop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Thomas_Knight

So we actually recorded this last week on Monday so one of the last paragraphs of the episode has outdated info in it. The Pizzagate guy was killed by police during a traffic stop after allegedly pulling out a gun and pointing it at police. This incident happened 4 days after we recorded this episode. https://www.npr.org/2025/01/10/g-s1-42040/pizzagate-gunman-killed-police-north-carolina "Pizzagate" is a conspiracy theory that went viral during the 2016 United States presidential election cycle, falsely claiming that the New York City Police Department (NYPD) had discovered a pedophilia ring linked to members of the Democratic Party while searching through Anthony Weiner's emails.[1][2][3] It has been extensively discredited by a wide range of organizations, including the Washington, D.C. police.[2][3][4]

Pythagoras of Samos[a] (Ancient Greek: Πυθαγόρας; c. 570 – c. 495 BC)[b], often known mononymously as Pythagoras, was an ancient Ionian Greek philosopher, polymath, and the eponymous founder of Pythagoreanism. His political and religious teachings were well known in Magna Graecia and influenced the philosophies of Plato, Aristotle, and, through them, the West in general. Knowledge of his life is clouded by legend; modern scholars disagree regarding Pythagoras's education and influences, but they do agree that, around 530 BC, he travelled to Croton in southern Italy, where he founded a school in which initiates were sworn to secrecy and lived a communal, ascetic lifestyle.

This episode was inspired by our tall tales episode. We each take a crack a writing another host's fictional bio. This was supposed to be a Christmas Episode but was delayed.

The Holy Prepuce, or Holy Foreskin (Latin præputium or prepucium), is one of several relics attributed to Jesus, consisting of the foreskin removed during the circumcision of Jesus. At various points in history, a number of churches in Europe have claimed to possess the Prepuce, sometimes at the same time. Various miraculous powers have been ascribed to it.

Two mean reviews. One from the Sydney Morning Herald on Coco Roco...and the other from the New York Times on Guy's American Kitchen & Bar.