The Black Curtain Club
Welcome to The Black Curtain Club Podcast, where a fearless group of women pull back the veil on the topics that keep their minds buzzing. From spine-chilling hauntings and cryptids that lurk in the shadows, to true crime tales that keep them up at night, nothing is off-limits. Tune in as they dive into pop culture, unpack their personal kinks, explore paranormal mysteries, and even shuffle the tarot deck to see what’s written in the cards. No topic is too taboo, too eerie, or too bizarre for this bold and unfiltered crew. If it’s been pent up in their brains, it’s time to let it out—join the conversation!
The Black Curtain Club
Weird History
We dive into the weirdest historical facts we could find, sharing bizarre stories and historical oddities that you won't believe actually happened.
• Alexander the Great may have been buried alive due to a neurological disorder that paralyzed him but left him mentally aware
• Sigmund Freud studied the sex lives of eels while using cocaine, which he considered a miracle drug
• The 1919 Boston Molasses Tsunami created 40-foot waves of syrup that devastated the city
• Johnny Appleseed was a real, somewhat eccentric figure who refused to wear shoes and allegedly terrorized children
and much more!
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Before we begin today's episode of the Black Curtain Club podcast, we would like to share a quick disclaimer. The views, opinions and statements expressed by the hosts and guests on this podcast are their own personal views and are provided in their own personal capacity. All content is editorial, opinion-based and intended for entertainment purposes only. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2:Hi everyone and welcome back On today's episode of the Black Curtain Club podcast. We're having a casual crash course into the weirdest history facts we could find, whether they're new to us or new to each other. We are here to have some fun. I'm Becca and I'm joined by my lovely co-hosts, angela and Brooke. How are we feeling today, ladies?
Speaker 1:I'm feeling ready.
Speaker 3:I'm feeling good, a little vexed from some technical difficulties, but I'm okay right now.
Speaker 2:Good, it's good to hear yeah. So I think the best way to do this would just be to go into it. I'll read my first fact, we'll talk about it for a little bit, and if you guys want to jump in with one after that, I think that would be a pretty good way to go. All right, so for my first fact, did you know? There's a chance Alexander the Great was accidentally buried alive? So scientists believe Alexander suffered from a neurological disorder called Guillain-Barre syndrome, and they believe that when he died he was actually just paralyzed and mentally aware. What do you think?
Speaker 1:Oh, no, who's Alexander the Great?
Speaker 2:He was a conqueror, like way back in the way back. Yeah, he got sick, okay Right, his kidneys hurt, he died and for six days his body didn't start decomposing. And that's what makes people think now that it might have been some kind of neurological disorder. Back then they were like like, well, he was this big, impressive guy. He died. He's not decomposing in a normal way. It must just be because he was magic, right. But now we're thinking maybe he was buried oh my god sounds horrific.
Speaker 3:Oh my god, what a way to go oh, the poor thing.
Speaker 2:I thought so too. I thought it was fascinating.
Speaker 1:I feel so bad, I know, I know.
Speaker 3:He's magic. Yeah Well, I am going to take us in a totally different direction with my fun history fact. So another dude way, way in the way back, Emperor Claudius issued an official edict allowing farting at the Roman dinner tables after hearing that a man had almost died from holding in his flatulence. So what do you think about that fun fact?
Speaker 2:Farting at the dinner table. I like the idea of people being like we're taxpaying citizens and this is what we're passing laws about.
Speaker 1:The roads are so bad my question is, like you obviously have to use the bathroom before you go to dinner. Like why hold it in until you're at the dinner? And you're just like, oh my god, like I have regret, like I need to like let one out. Why didn't I? Why didn't I do this before? Or like why didn't I take a shit before I came to this dinner with the king? Like it's just so funny. Like also like just excuse yourself and go to the bathroom. Like we have to go all the way into being like yeah, you're just like allowed to fart.
Speaker 3:Someone fucking died from it but I think it was considered rude back then to like you're having dinner. It was considered rude to get up from the dinner table for any reason. And the only reason I say that is because I know this other guy in history which I would love to unpack one day Tycho Brahe. He was an astronomer.
Speaker 1:They believe he died from holding in his pee and like his bladder burst because he wouldn't get up from dinner, and that's why he died so Well that's how they did it back then like they went on for hours yes, because, like, when I'm having dinner, I'm like 20 minutes, okay, if I'm like, if I'm out, maybe like an hour, two hours at the most, but dinner sounds like it's like a whole day thing, like they're like oh you know what, no breakfast. We're to start with dinner at breakfast time and we're still going to be having dinner at 10 o'clock at night. It's going to be dark out and now you can fart.
Speaker 1:I wonder if the person who died from it was, if they died at the dinner table. That's what I want to know.
Speaker 2:Like arguably the death ruined the dinner more than the fart.
Speaker 1:That would be such a bummer.
Speaker 3:Give it up to Claudius, though he was just like, hey, this isn't right, we should be allowed to fart whenever we need to at the dinner A man of the people.
Speaker 2:Wow, a man of the people, free the farts, free the farts, free the farts okay, I am going to start with the weirdest man.
Speaker 1:To me this is like the king of weird, sigmund freud. We all know how weird this man is. I chose him because I actually also share a birthday with him, which is May 6th. Only, he was born in 1856, and I was obviously not born in 1856. Because if I was, I'd probably also have to be magic, just like our first man who was buried alive. But I was trying to find something really wacky that he said, but I couldn't, so I just went with this. One. Turns out that he studied the sex lives of eels. After his professor at the University of Vienna told him to study the eels, he couldn't find any male eels. The eels spend most of their early lives as male and then when they mature, they become female. So then they switch to a different type of the reproduction stage once they're more of an adult, and so Freud was like getting pissed. He was like I can't find any male eels. He's like why are they all female? Like we know how Freud feels about females. He's like pissed, these eels.
Speaker 2:I think it's very rich of him to pick apart our sex lives, but this man is spending all of his free time trying to watch eels fuck, trying to round up the different genders of eels so he can study that. I think he should be looking at himself a little more. I was?
Speaker 3:wasn't he also like, really hopped up on cocaine all the time?
Speaker 1:that was. Another fact that I found about him was that he thought cocaine was a miracle drug.
Speaker 2:I think a lot of people feel like imagine, like being at a university, you're trying to study eels and you're just like taking rails while you're like watching.
Speaker 1:I think a lot of people feel that way, just like. Imagine like being at a university You're trying to study eels and you're just like taking rails, while you're like watching these eels and you're like they're not having sex with each other. Like, why are they all female?
Speaker 2:I can see in the eel's soul right now. All right, for my next fact I have another animal themed one. So in 1386 a pig was executed in france, in the middle ages. The pig who attacked the child. The child later died from the wounds. The pig was arrested, kept in prison and then sent to court where it stood trial for murder, was found guilty and then executed by hanging. Uh, I want to add, the pig was given a new suit for the occasion and a crowd dressed in their finest clothing gathered to witness it oh my god that poor pig.
Speaker 2:I wish all they did was hang it. But that's all I wrote down. I didn't want to go into too much detail. They were very mad at the pig.
Speaker 1:I mean, like I hope they at least used it as bacon after. Like, what was the pig for in the first place? Was it a wild pig? Was it a farm pig? Was it a bacon pig? Like, what were they doing with the pig?
Speaker 2:I believe it was like a farm pig and it, just like you know, the kid got too close to the pen and the pig went ham on it.
Speaker 3:Nobody did it and then they went ham on it I'm just, I'm just I have more empathy for the pig they were.
Speaker 1:Ham died angela I don't know you never know, maybe the pig was trying to eat the kid, like pigs do eat children maybe it was very gruesome.
Speaker 2:It was a gruesome pig attack and it was gruesome what they did to the pig in return it's a pig pig world out there guys yeah, but to dress it up in a suit like that's weird.
Speaker 1:They have to pay their respects to the pig.
Speaker 3:I'll be damned if that pig is dressed nicer than me okay, so I have, we're gonna change and go to another part of the world. So the ancient Romans and the Chinese would deploy tickle torture. So the Romans would apply salt on the soles of feet and then have a goat lick it off until it became extremely painful, while the Chinese use this torture on the nobility because there was little evidence left behind and recovery was quit. Oh my God.
Speaker 3:Imagine, after you're released, you get tickled by your significant other and like it just brings you back the PTSD and like it just brings you back to tickle georgia, the ptsd, just crying out why I mean I can't imagine a worse hell. I have really ticklish feet and reading that that they would put salt on the soles of the feet and have a goat lick it off like I can't even imagine what kind of fresh hell that is.
Speaker 2:They would have to really tie me down. I'd be kicking that goat in the teeth.
Speaker 1:I know that is diabolical, I know.
Speaker 2:The poor goat All this again.
Speaker 1:What if the goat doesn't want to lick your feet? They're salty though.
Speaker 3:I know it has a desire for salt.
Speaker 2:It's like my cousin's a milking goat, but I get to beat the torture goat. I bring my family honor.
Speaker 1:All right, I have some weird laws from the USA, so I am bringing us back to the States. In Alaska, you're not allowed to push a moose out of an airplane. It's actually in their statue 2.20.080. Couldn't find a story behind it, but I'm guessing this has happened on more than one occasion. And then in Missouri we have you're not allowed to drive with uncaged bears. It says that this is dating back to a time when it was more common to travel with circus animals. So we have a little bit of more understandable explanation. But Alaska is just straight up like, yeah, don't push a moose out of an airplane there's a lot to unpack here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there is a lot. I'm picturing a public service announcement like the clicker ticket, but it's like if you have a bear loose in your car, we will know and you will be pulled over it's just so weirdly specific I'm still thinking about the moose what was it?
Speaker 1:how did you get them? How did you get the moose in the airplane?
Speaker 3:like those doors are so small, like moose are massive like they are them out of, like how do you push a moose? Because I would think if a moose didn't want to go out of the plane, it would let you know.
Speaker 2:Well, how do you get the moose out? If you can't push it out, it just lives there. Now, what if a moose invaded your plane. Like you just parked your plane and you come back and there's a moose in it. You're like great.
Speaker 1:I'm not allowed to push out. I wouldn't take off with the moose in the plane though. I'd just be like all right, well, I'm leaving the door open for you, Please leave. I mean, I don't think moose can understand, but sooner or later it'll leave. Like why are why are people pushing moose out of airplanes?
Speaker 2:I don't understand it's like the geneva convention. We're not supposed to do warfare with like chemical weapons. But and you also can't be pushing moose out on your enemies either you're just like crop dusting moose imagine if that was a war tactic, though yeah I was gonna say they just drop a moose on someone's tank and it's like we got 20 pissed off that's the canadian that's the canadian. You can still do it in Canada, you just can't do it in Alaska.
Speaker 3:Yeah right, it's the Canadian attack Alaska's like we're not going to sue that one.
Speaker 1:I thought this was the land of the free, all right.
Speaker 2:My next one's weird. In 1998, 1,200 bones from some 10 human bodies were found in the basement of Benjamin Franklin's house. Now, before you go crafting a murder mystery about the founding father. It was revealed that the bodies were used in the study of human anatomy. I'm just like that's what I would say too. No, I wasn't murdering people, I was studying them.
Speaker 3:I have heard that theory, though before, that he was a serial killer.
Speaker 1:Um, I mean, like where was he getting the bodies to study them in the first place? Like was he just like digging them up? Were people donating the bodies to him? Like you'd think that when they found them, like whoever found them would be like yeah, like he'd have like documented evidence of whoever gave him the bodies or like where he got them from. So like I am suspicious I'm definitely suspicious.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I want to know, like why are we just accepting that at face value? I would like to like analyze the dna of these people, figure out who they were like. Did they go missing? You know what I mean? 1200 bones is a lot of bones, those are like fragmented a lot of like yeah, benjamin franklin, what have you been up to my guy?
Speaker 1:benjamin franklin seems like he was honestly lit, like I have this shirt that says benjamin drank it and I'm like, yeah, that's just the type of guy he was like. He was just like there for the parties, he was there for the.
Speaker 3:I guess he was murdering, for science he was studying well, I'm gonna keep us in the states and I'm gonna talk about the molasses tsunami. So in 1919, 2.3 million gallon tank exploded and it would turn the streets of Boston into rivers of molasses, and according to some reports, the initial wave of syrup that hit the city was 40 feet high.
Speaker 2:Oh my, God, I mean talk about a sticky situation. Oh, and the way molasses smells. Was it hot, oh, hot. Well, it would have to be hot oh, that would not be good.
Speaker 1:Oh, because it cools down.
Speaker 2:It's like it like hardens, so it would have to be like hot flowing lava molasses fuck how many people got burnt, how many people ate it with their pancakes.
Speaker 1:I bet they don't want pancakes. What were they doing to try to survive, jack?
Speaker 2:and the Titanic, like floating on a door.
Speaker 1:I'll never let go, jack. They're like it's kind of like a hot tub, like, once we get off our little door, like we can relax in it.
Speaker 3:Maybe it was hungry, Jack the pancake mix.
Speaker 1:If you got into the molasses and it got all over you like that, like I feel like you'd be sticky for a really long time, like I don't think you'd ever be able to get all the way unsticky.
Speaker 2:Well, I imagine it's like being tarred and feathered, like it burns through your skin as soon as it touches you. There's no way, like you can't wipe it off, it'll just slough off your skin.
Speaker 1:Ugh.
Speaker 3:Ah, ah, just think of that. 40 feet of molasses, taller than me, taller than you. I hope they survive.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's taller than all of us stacked up together.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh Trench coat style. Yeah, it would wash us over.
Speaker 1:I have a Pope once declared war on cats. Pope Gregory IX once declared a war on cats because he was a man of the Catholic Church and he thought that cats were satanic. This happened in 1233. It lasted one year.
Speaker 3:Oh my god, poor cats. What a bad rap.
Speaker 1:Dude, no kidding. Yeah, and then the plague came after.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, see, they weren't there to get the rats and the fleas yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:Well, they brought that on themselves then no, pope gregory, oh once you've seen one pope, you've seen them all.
Speaker 1:Once you've seen one pope.
Speaker 2:You've seen them all pope, this pope, that it's not even his real name, oh my, gosh, we'll just unleash the cast on them, it'll be fine.
Speaker 2:okay, now this one is my last fact, but it's my longest. Johnnyleseed was a real person, right? A lot of people don't know that His real name was John Chapman and his hometown was Leominster, massachusetts. He also has a street named after him, though the city planners decided it would be more poetic to use his mythical name, johnny Appleseed Lane. So he was like an apple mogul, you guys. His great, great great grandfather came from England to Boston and when he died, in 1768, he left his wife 30 apple trees.
Speaker 2:It said that Johnny Appleseed slept outside. He refused to start campfires because he was afraid a bug would fly into it and be burned alive. He was like intensely religious, but it was like a weird newfound religion. He was vegetarian. Because of this, he thought it was cruel to harm any living creature. He thought trees were living and he found, like the practice of grafting to plant trees to be cruel. So that's why he dealt only in seeds. There's also a story of him stepping on a worm, and it made him so distraught that he threw his shoes away and never wore another pair since, it said, his feet were gray and scaly and tough, and he used to terrorize children by pressing hot coals into his soles or stabbing them with needles. It didn't hurt at all, he claimed. Oh my god and then here's another thing why was?
Speaker 2:he terrorizing the children because he was a weirdo and nobody talks about it. Brooke, he also planted a plant called dog fennel while he was like going about planting his apple trees because he thought it was a cure-all, but now it's considered a noxious invasive weed, so he's also an eco-terrorist. What the heck? We let Johnny Appleseed get away with it for too long.
Speaker 1:I was like how romantic. Like he left his wife 30 trees, like that's so sweet of him, like wow. And then you were like yeah, he terrorizes children with needles. I was like what, what is this man doing? At first I was like he sounds like kind of a Buddhist, like he doesn't like hurting nature, like he doesn't like hurting any kinds of bugs, he just wants to plant his little trees and he's a little bit religious and he wants to go on his merry way.
Speaker 3:But then he doesn't like hurting living things, but apparently hurting children is fine.
Speaker 2:Hurting them mentally Class A weirdo Right. So the way he would find a place to sleep for the night is he would preach on the streets about his weird newfound religion and try to encourage people to join the cause. And if people felt sorry enough to invite him into their home, he would make them pray in his weird prayer before he would let them eat and kept them up all night with these weird made up religious stories, and that's why he slept outside so much okay so he had a wife and he had a place where all of these trees were, but he needed to go.
Speaker 2:Grandfather, had a wife, so johnny apple seed stayed celibate his entire life and that was another part of his religion oh, my god married he never had sex he wanted to fuck the apple tree, bro, yeah he was a weird guy. Nobody talks about it that's so weird.
Speaker 1:At first I was like, oh, he has like a cute mystical name, like I want a cute mystical name, and then he's actually just a freak, like he kind of ruined mystical names for me well, brooke, you had weird laws in the united states.
Speaker 3:I have for you all a weird law that still exists in london. So this is called the metropolitan police act of 1839, and it criminalized a range of new nuisances such as knocking on a door and running away, flying kites, singing obscene ballads and sliding on ice in the street, and technically, all of these activities are still offenses within the Metropolitan Police Area of London and you can be given a fine up to 500 pounds.
Speaker 2:What is this? The town from Footloose.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like it still exists on this earth where literally like none of these things are really bothering people Except for, like I don't know, knocking on people's doors and running away. We used to call that Nicky, nicky, nine Doors when we were little, and every time I say that people are like no brooke, it's just called ding dong ditch and I'm like nah, it's nicki, nicki, nine doors oh my gosh, my heart sank when you started saying that I had no idea where you were going with that.
Speaker 2:Oh, nikki, nikki, nine doors.
Speaker 1:Okay, that is cute, I like that I just want to say that's like one of the most canadian things I've ever heard I feel like becca and I would be playing a lot of nikki nikki nine doors if we were together at any time, at any point in our lives, even as adults. I feel like we would do it now oh, that was my jam growing up.
Speaker 2:I was so good at it. I loved like diving into the bushes so dramatically.
Speaker 3:But you think in 1839, how many obscene ballads were being just randomly sung on the streets that they had to outlaw it probably a a lot.
Speaker 1:It's probably out like most are probably forgotten because of this.
Speaker 3:I guess there's no troubadours out there singing Doja Cat in London.
Speaker 2:Maiden had them, apple-bottom jeans.
Speaker 1:That'd be Johnny Appleseed's anthem. Do you have more, Angie?
Speaker 3:I do. I do have a few more, okay, but good, so I also have. When the USS Indianapolis was struck by a Japanese submarine in July of 1945, survivors were left in the water for four days, during which time around 600 men died of exposure, dehydration and shark attacks. Experts believe it may be the single greatest concentration of shark attacks in human history oh, as if you didn't need enough of a reason to never go in the ocean oh, I love going in the ocean.
Speaker 1:I'm not scared of sharks, I am scared of jellyfish yeah, but imagine like you.
Speaker 2:Like the ship flips right, like everybody gets all topsy-turvy. You finally make it out and you jump into the water hoping to swim to safety, and there's just sharks ripping people to ribbons. Oh my gosh, it's like a movie. Those must be some hungry sharks. A A frenzy of battle 600 600. I mean that's a lot. That's a lot, that's like a percentage of people.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So my other thing that I really wanted to talk about was something that happened in history in like the 1400s, 1500s. So in July of 1518, Frau Trophia began dancing in chaotic fever on the streets in Strasbourg. She danced for a week straight and soon others joined with her Within a month. The dancing plague of 1518 claimed between 50 and 400 victims. Historical sources make it clear the victims danced, but why they did remains unexplained remains unexplained. The same thing happened before there were these mysterious outbreaks. That happened in the 1020s. In Bernberg, Germany, A Christmas Eve service was disturbed when revelers inexplicably danced around the church In Aiken. In 1374, a large scale outbreak was recorded that spread to Cologne, Flanders, Hainaut and Strasbourg and some other towns. And then in 1428 in Schaffhausen, a monk even danced himself to death.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:Whoa, oh my gosh. See, this is London was like never again. No more music. This is where footlooses really come from.
Speaker 3:Yeah, what kind of plague, though, was that that just compelled people to dance themselves to death?
Speaker 1:this is like some a24 stuff yeah, I just thought it was the plague of I just want to have a good time. But then you started people like people started dying from dancing too much and I was like what in the world? Like maybe they just were just having so much fun, they didn't want to stop to eat or do whatever, and so they just died because they were like.
Speaker 2:I mean, I feel like you'd have to be on something, though, for that I mean humans kind of get into a herd mentality when they all get together and there's like a point when logic and reason go out the window and they're just going with the flow of the crowd. So maybe it was something that once it got like super big, more people were pulled in and it was just like I guess we're doing this now.
Speaker 1:It's crazy is it like a competitive thing, like you know how on um step up the what the cult one? No, no, the cult one. Wrap up step up.
Speaker 3:It was like a step up.
Speaker 1:You got served wow, I was thinking about midsummer and Becca was thinking about step up midsummer is good.
Speaker 1:That is really good because they did a lot of dancing where they're like literally like everyone has to dance and everyone is gonna die, except for the person who is dancing last. That's the only person who's gonna live, and they literally kill all of them, except for her. Um, once they stop dancing and she like becomes the queen or whatever, but like it's almost like that, but reverse, like it's like oh, we can't stop dancing, because if that other person's better than me, like I have to show them up, but instead they like dance themselves to death.
Speaker 3:It's crazy, right. So I do have and I lied, I do have one more that I'd like to close this out with. Yes, tell us and this made me giggle a lot. Okay, so, oh boy, see if I can get through this. In 1997, an excavation near the ancient Egyptian city of Thebes revealed the oldest prosthetic ever discovered. Do you want to take a guess what it was? A dick Weird, yeah, no discovered.
Speaker 2:Do you want to take a guess what it was?
Speaker 3:a dick, weird yeah no, I wish it was that weird, but it's not that it's so it. It was an engraved wooden toe. Fit it to the right foot of an egypt woman who lived 3,000 years ago the Cairo toe. This is what made me giggle. The Cairo toe was practical, modified over time to accommodate the woman's gait, but it was also designed with aesthetics in mind, intended to be worn in open toe sandals, not concealed so was it like permanently?
Speaker 1:was it permanently painted I?
Speaker 3:don't know the cairo toe. She was an influencer way before her time.
Speaker 1:Did it have a permanent toe ring on it?
Speaker 2:Imagine the wave of people cutting off their toes so they could be fashionable and get their own wooden toe. You know what happened.
Speaker 1:Probably that sounds like some Cinderella shit, like old Cinderella, where they cut off their heels.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, like Brothers Grimm's Cinderella, where it gets real awesome yeah, yeah. Her shoe's full of blood. She's not a noble woman.
Speaker 3:She's not an influencer oh, so that's it, that's.
Speaker 2:That's all the facts that I have for today it's good to know that we live in a very weird time, but it has always been a weird time to live on planet earth, so it kind of stays consistent that way, I guess. And honestly, if that doesn't sum it up, I don't know what does. This episode has been such a blast. Thank you so much for tuning in to the weird history episode of the black curtain club podcast. Um, don't forget to tune in every monday wherever podcasts are available. Make sure you like, rate and subscribe and make sure you don't miss it and be sure to share with just one person.
Speaker 3:The more that you can share, the more that we'll be able to make our goal. What am I trying to say? Fucking, scratch all of that.
Speaker 2:You just defeated yourself oh, just keep.
Speaker 3:Just keep this fucking podcast to yourself, don't share it with anyone don't? We don't deserve it no one, two, three, I know One, two, three.
Speaker 1:Bye, bye, my love, thank you.
