S.2 Ep.5 - Bay of Pigs and Operation Northwoods

Ah, the 1960’s. Peace. Love. Threats of nuclear war. What a time to be alive, and of course the ever creeping threat of Communism. This week we are talking a little about the Cuban Revolution where Castro took over, then we’re going to talk about how this was almost IMMEDIATELY a problem for Washington. And when Washington DC has a problem like this the most common solution is to… Remove the cause… After months of planning and practice they sent men into the Bay of Pigs to have it go wrong from the get go. Then there’s the whole Cuban Missile thing, and a President getting shot after he decided against something called Operation Northwoods. That was a series of plans that the US GOVERNMENT put ON PAPER about how to commit FALSE FLAG ATTACKS to get into a war with Cuba. But hey, none of that is true. None of that would ever happen. Right? Keep that Reynolds Wrap handy, we're going down a rabbithole...  

Christmas Bonus : The Christmas Truce of 1914

War is hell. Trench warfare is a special kind of hell. What’s special is finding out that the men across the stretch that nobody crosses have more in common with you than the leaders sending you to your death is something special. Every once in a while, in the most inhuman times, soldiers find common ground. 

Today we're all brothers

Tonight we're all friends

A moment of peace in a war that never ends

Today we're all brothers

We drink and unite

Now Christmas has arrived and the snow turns the ground white

Hear carols from the trenches

We sing O Holy Night

Our guns laid to rest among snowflakes

A Christmas in the trenches

A Christmas on the front far from home.

S.2 Ep. 4 - Samuel Whittemore

This time we jump back into the American Revolution to visit a soldier turned Statesmen. He started off as the son of a farmer and became a British soldier and then officer during the Austrian War of Succession and then the French and Indian War. After his warfighting was done, Samuel Whittemore became a low level politician in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts at a pivotal time in the Colonies. He would pen many letters to other towns in the area and help launch the War of Independence. We never learned about this guy but, holy crap is his story wild. Especially the end of it!

S.2 Ep. 3 - Operation Wraith of God

Following the events of the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, the Israelis took the fight to anyone they considered an enemy of the state. Members of Black September, the PLO and other assorted terrorist groups would meet some pretty gruesome fates at the hands of Mossad, the Israeli government's most dangerous tool. 

S. 2 Ep.2 : The Munich Olympics

The 1972 Summer Olympics are being held in Germany for the first time since 1936. There a guy in charge at the time that gave Germany a not so great reputation so, the German government wanted to do everything they could to make this experience feel less… militant than it was in 1936. Unfortunately that meant incredibly lax security measures which was bad news for the Israeli athletes that took part in the games. Months of planning on the part of a group called Black September, an offshoot of the PLO would culminate in a tragic hostage situation. Then check out the next episode where I go into the Israeli response to the hostage situation…

We are starting Season 2 with a bang. Have you ever gone outside at night and looked up at the vast starfield above you and thought, “Man, I bet so many people have died in space…” Well… Not a ton but more than a handful have met their maker after slipping the bonds of our atmosphere, attempting to go where no man has gone before. The Final Frontier. Anyways, here's a bunch of stories about space commies that died due to unreliable equipment and some American astronauts that either barely or didn’t at all make it off the ground. 

Join me from the comfort of my couch (and yours) for a little teaser of things to come in Season 2.

History Goon Ep. 30 - Dallas Stoudenmire

We are closing out Season 1 with some Cowboy stuff! And with a name like Dallas Stoudenmire you bet your boots he is gonna do some cowboy lawman stuff. Drunk fist fights. Drunk gunfights. Chasing bad guys… Drunk of course. He was one of the better lawmen that the city of El Paso had seen at the time and he didn’t take s**t from anyone. That is until the Manning Brothers (not those ones) show up and start causing trouble that he would fight for the rest of his life.  

This week we are talking about one of the most notorious and violent broad-daylight robberies in the history of the United States, The North Hollywood Shootout. 2 scumbags with a taste for automatic rifles and trying to cosplay Heat (which I got to watch for research purposes) started off robbing armored cars full of cash but would eventually step up to banks. What happens when 2 guys in homemade body armor and AKs walk into a bank at the EXACT SAME TIME that a police patrol drives by? Well, you get the most violent 44 minutes that North Hollywood, California has ever seen. 

History Goon Ep. 28 - The Bennington Triangle 

Back home. Vermont. This time we are going to visit one of the creepiest places in my little state; The Bennington Triangle. This place has it all: Murders, insanity, a failed town, monsters, man eating rocks, missing people and the formation of the Vermont State Police. Are those things related? You be the judge. Is it strange? Yeah, it absolutely is. 

History Goon Ep. 27 - Tanks for the Memories

This week, I'm bringing you some of the silliest, scariest and weirdest tanks ever designed. Some of them never saw combat (thankfully) and some did and had varying levels of success. Everything from the Kugelpanzer which was basically the Atlasphere from American Gladiators but with a machinegun, to the Russians being God's silliest gooses and trying to build a flying tank. Oh, and Germany's first entry into BattleBots, Russian anti-tank dogs and a crazy Commie that basically got into a fist fight with a tank. And there's witches in here somewhere too. Little. Bit. Of. Everything. 

We pick up from the last episode right after Cliff “Elvis” Walcott’s Blackhawk, Super 6-1 was shot down by an RPG. The guys on the ground have to scramble to get to the crash site before it’s too late but the militiamen have started blocking roads off and making life difficult for the Rangers and Delta. As they were fighting towards the crash site, Mike Durant in Super 6-4 was shot down. Things get really bad before Mike Durant gets captured and held hostage. The Rangers and Delta had to fight through the night, a mission that was supposed to take less than an hour is now stretching into a new day.  Thanks to the 10th Mountain Division and a Malaysian that wasn’t going to take no for an answer from the higher-up, help would be on the way…

History Goon Ep. 25 - Battle of Mogadishu Pt. 1 - Irene

This episode is part 1 of one of the most harrowing 24 hours in US Special Forces history. It all started as a UN Peacekeeping operation to try and feed the starving people of Somalia. Warlords had taken control of the country and started weaponizing hunger and food against their own people. After months of UN forces getting attacked and ambushed, they would have a helicopter shot down. The crew was killed and mutilated before being dragged through the streets, now it was time to try and stop the fighting. US Special Forces consisting of Army Rangers and Delta Operators would be sent into the city of Mogadishu to capture the warlord Mohammed Farah Aidid whose forces were responsible for hijacking UN food trucks and then killing people at the food handoff points. The Rangers and Delta teams got prepared, the word was given that the mission was a go. Irene. 

Back to WWII we go! Back to a familiar place (Operation Market Garden) with some people we’re familiar with (the British Paratroopers) but since we’re talking about the Brits during WWII YOU KNOW we’re in for a treat of just… Bonkers stories… Pat Glover is no exception to this rule. He may have been just a Quartermaster for his unit but, he was a badass also. Jumping into Holland for Market Garden, fighting Nazis, getting blown up, getting revenge for his beloved Para-Chicken Myrtle, being captured, being involved in one of the most famous rescues pulled off by Allied Forces during all of WWII. Ya know… Normal British stuff. Yeah, you read that right about the chicken too.          

This guy may be the most badass offering from Poland of all time. Jan Sobieski was born to a Noble family, he travelled Europe with his brother and learned like 75 languages then went home to fight. Not on foot, he’s a cavalry guy… He builds his own unit of Winged Hussars. Giant, metal, winged death machines. This was at a time where the Ottoman Empire was spreading through Europe, a very few would stand up to try and stop them. After the creation of the Holy League the Ottomans besieged the city of Vienna. One problem: Jan Sobieski is buddies with the Holy Roman Empire. Where Vienna just so happens to be… Spoiler Alert: They currently speak Polish in Poland

Baseball is my favorite sport. The Yankees are my LEAST favorite team. Billy Martin is my FAVORITE Yankee. It may be strange to have a favorite person on your least favorite team but, stick with me and you’ll see why I love this guy. He is an All American success story: He grew up poor, worked hard and earned an opportunity to fight other professional athletes in a non-combat sport. He played with and against a whos-who of would be and should be Hall of Famers on the diamond, he helped his team win championships and even led them there as a manager. He also beat the s**t out of everyone who he felt like mistreated him. Spiking him at second base? Beating. Talking to him during warmups? Beating. Driving a cab and liking football more than baseball? Beating. Selling marshmallows? Beating… Oh and let’s not forget his part in one of the most infamous moments in the ENTIRE HISTORY of baseball. There’s been a lot of crazy people in baseball but, there’s only ONE Billy Martin. 

Have you ever wanted to know what would happen to you in history if you did something silly like: say something about royalty, be a witch, be gay, have a miscarriage? Most of the time it’s horrible. Sometimes it's funny. It’s ALWAYS painful. Wanna hear about people getting tossed out windows? Skin peeled off? Squashed to death by the largest land mammal around? How bout mutilated limbs and eaten alive by bugs? If I can make ONE person uncomfortable with this episode I’ll consider it a win.

History Goon Ep. 20: Fred Burnaby

This week we are headed to a couple places we've visited before: England and Africa... Fred Burnaby was born into a family of note. His father was buddies with Dukes and Nobles and higher up in the local Church. Fred was lined up to follow in his fathers footsteps but decided he wanted to live a life of adventure. He would attend college, beat up the locals and eventually became a member of the Royal Cavalry. In his CRAZY AMOUNT OF FREE TIME he picked up some interesting hobbies: Fencing, Boxing, Bodybuilding, Writing and of all things Hot Air Ballooning... This guy is basically old timey Forrest Gump with some of the things and people he runs into in his daily life. Oh... He also eventually gets to go into combat. Even without that part, his life was WILD and deserved to have his story told! 

To piggyback off last week’s episode, on his death, Chief Cornstalk supposedly cursed the land he died on. That land was the spot of Point Pleasant, WV. 190 years later the steel beams of the Silver Bridge that connected Point Pleasant, WV and Gallipolis, OH would twist and break, sending cars plummeting into the icy water below. What’s strange is the events that lead up to this starting in 1967 with a fateful encounter on a dark section of highway. This story has it all; possible secret government organizations, strange communications, dogs, odd tracks, unbelievable sightings of an unknown creature, a curse playing out, tragic deaths. This one is a little out of the box from what you’d normally hear on the show but, I think it works.   

This week we are headed back to pre-Revolutionary War America for a lesser known war. Chief Cornstalk of the Shawnee was a man of peace. Until he was pushed to violence. The British Government in control of the Colonies had been signing treaties with tribes all over the area of what today is New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia, West Virginia and Kentucky. The problem began when a treaty was signed by a tribe that gave over land that didn’t belong to them… The Brits started moving in on Shawnee land and raiding their villages and towns, there’s only so far a peaceful man can be pushed until he has to fight back. Cornstalk would take the fight to the greatest military power on the planet at the time but, since Shawnee isn’t a language spoken in a large area of the country I’m sure you can figure out how that went. This story is a tragedy that leads to a possible curse as weird as that sounds. This isn’t a two part episode but this is the lead into far more strange and tragic things next time. Enjoy.