History Dispatches

From 2008-10, the Lower Merion School District - in suburban Philadelphia - issued laptops to more than 2,300 high school students for school and home use. What they didn’t tell the kids or their parents was that the district loaded the laptops with secret software that gave officials the ability to remotely take photos from those laptops. What followed was WebcamGate - one o...

Defenestrate is a highly specific word. It means to throw someone out of a window. And it comes from the city of Prague where several people were tossed out of a window and helped ignite a brutal religious war. And then it happened again 200 years later. This is the story of the Defenestrations of Prague.

Sources

https://english.radi...

By the 1940s, government officials were looking to re-introduce the beaver to a region of Idaho to help improve the health of the area’s wetlands. But hauling live beavers through forests and over mountains was not easy - or cheap. And thus someone came up with the idea of parachuting beavers into these remote areas. This is the story of Idaho’s Parachuting Beavers - or parab...

On Dec. 29, 1975, a bomb tore through LaGuardia Airport in New York City. The blast killed 11 people and wounded 74. No one claimed responsibility for the bombing. And the bombers were never found. This is the story of the 1975 LaGuardia Airport Bombing.

Sources

https://observer.com/2016/01/why-hasnt-washington-explained-the-1975-lag...

One of the most beloved comic strips in history is Calvin and Hobbes. It is the adventures of a mischievous six-year old boy and his equally naughty stuffed tiger - who only comes alive for Calvin. To look at the history of Calvin and Hobbes, we brought on some experts - Ryan and Indy from the Magic of Calvin and Hobbes podcast.

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