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I have to talk about sweating sickness. For some reason it has always completely fascinated me. What was this mysterious and highly deadly illness that plagued mostly just the upper class in England during the Tudor dynasty? Why such a specific and unlikely target victim? Why did it go away just as suddenly as it appeared? Join me to examine the evidence and the theories and let me know in the comments... what do you think sweating sickness was?

Sources:

• https://pharmaceutical-journal.com/article/opinion/just-what-was-english-sweating-sickness
• https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3917436/
• https://www.healthdisgroup.us/articles/GJIDCR-11-163.php
• https://www.britannica.com/science/sweating-sickness

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Absinthe, a pale green drink consisting of mostly alcohol and small amounts of wormwood oil, has only recently been legalized in much of the western world after a nearly century long ban. Everyone knows the myths about absinthe - that it causes hallucinations, that it'll make you go crazy. They banned it for a reason after all right? It's powerful, dangerous stuff which, in many ways, makes it all the more alluring to the masses. But what if I told you that thujone, the psychoactive chemical found in wormwood, doesn't cause hallucinations at all? That the degeneration and "poisoning of the population" blamed entirely on absinthe at the turn of the 20th century was much likely to have been caused by the near 70% alcohol it contained? So why was absinthe really banned? Who turned the "green fairy" into the "green demon?" Let's fix that.

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• Join the Patreon (patreon.com/historyfixpodcast)
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Sources:

• Distillations Magazine "The Devil in a Little Green Bottle: A History of Absinthe"
• Healthline "Does Absinthe Really Make You Hallucinate?"
• Alandia "Absinthe History: From invention to ban and re-legalization"
• Food52 "The Folklore-Filled History of Absinthe"

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For this mini fix, I asked you guys on Instagram to choose between 3 Queen Elizabeth I related topics and the majority of you picked the mysterious death of Amy Dudley! The results were:

• What the heck was sweating sickness - 24%
• The mysterious death of Amy Dudley - 44%
• The execution of Sir Walter Raleigh 32%

Make sure you follow me on Instagram (@historyfixpodcast) to cast your vote next time I do something like this!

This not so mini fix was so dang interesting it stretched past the 30 minute mark, making it my longest mini fix ever. To listen to the full thing, you can subscribe to the Patreon for $5 a month or just pay $3 to listen to this one episode. Totally worth it!

Support the show!

• Join the Patreon (patreon.com/historyfixpodcast)
• Buy some merch
• Buy Me a Coffee
• Venmo @Shea-LaFountaine

Sources:

• UK National Archives “Coroner’s Report”
• History Hit “Amy Dudley: Accident, Suicide, or Murder?”
• Wikipedia “Amy Robsart”

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This week is all about a lady I've danced around for far too long: Queen Elizabeth I. Born an utter disappointment to literally everyone and declared illegitimate after her mother’s execution, disinherited as a toddler, the future throne snatched out from under her, Elizabeth would go on to shatter all possible expectations and would end her 44 year reign as one of the most beloved and successful queens, nay monarchs, the world has ever known. How? Let’s fix that.

Support the show!

• Join the Patreon (patreon.com/historyfixpodcast)
• Buy some merch
• Buy Me a Coffee
• Venmo @Shea-LaFountaine

Sources:

• Historic Royal Palaces "Elizabeth I, the last Tudor"
• BBC "Elizabeth I: Troubled child to beloved queen"
• Royal Museums Greenwich "Queen Eliabeth I facts and myths"
• royal.uk "Elizabeth I"
• UK National Archives "The Golden Speech"
• History Extra "Did Thomas Seymour sexually abuse the teenage Princess Elizabeth?"

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In my off week, I'm popping into the Patreon feed to talk about the 1986 Challenger disaster, when the Challenger space shuttle burst into flames and blew apart, killing all 7 passengers onboard, while millions of people, including many children, watched live. What actually happened that cold January morning 40 years ago? And more importantly... why were the rocket engineer's dire warnings ignored? Let's fix that.

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• Join the Patreon (patreon.com/historyfixpodcast)
• Buy some merch
• Buy Me a Coffee
• Venmo @Shea-LaFountaine

Sources:

• NPR “40 years after Challenger: Lingering guilt and lessons learned”
• History.com “5 Facts You May Not Know About the Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster”
• NASA “The Crew of the Space Shuttle Challenger STS-51L Mission”

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Join me this week as I delve into the history of reincarnation, the idea that, when you die, you can be reborn into the body of another. Where did the idea come from? Who believes in it today? And what evidence is there to support it? Let’s fix that.

Support the show!

• Join the Patreon (patreon.com/historyfixpodcast)
• Buy some merch
• Buy Me a Coffee
• Venmo @Shea-LaFountaine

Sources:

• Medium "Reincarnation"
• Readers Digest "Chilling Reincarnation Stories: Meet 6 People Who Lived Before"
• Institute of Noetic Sciences "Exploring the History of Reincarnation Beliefs"
• Indian Journal of Psychiatry "The mystery of reincarnation"
• Encyclopedia Britannica "Reincarnation"
• Wikipedia "Reincarnation"

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Head to Patreon to listen to this full mini fix episode!

Join me inside Japan's Unit 731, a top secret human experimentation and biowarfare camp during World War II. The atrocities committed here against mostly Chinese prisoners are truly unthinkable. In fact, they're so hard to believe, many people straight up refuse to believe it. To this day, the Japanese government has never confirmed nor denied what went down at Unit 731. But when declassified records emerged in the US of all places in the 1990s, it became harder and harder to deny.

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• Join the Patreon (patreon.com/historyfixpodcast)
• Buy some merch
• Buy Me a Coffee
• Venmo @Shea-LaFountaine

Sources:

• NPR "New details emerge about Japan's notorious WWII germ warfare program"
• The Asahi Shimbun "Former member of Unit 731 fights nightmares, atrocity deniers"
• Pacific Atrocities Education "Immunity for Atrocity: The US Cover Up of Unit 731 and the Corruption of Postwar Bioethics
• Pacific Atrocities Education "Human Experimentation at Unit 731"
• Wikipedia "Unit 731"

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This week I sit down with Jenny Chan, director of Pacific Atrocities Education, to talk about the many "comfort women" who were forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese government in the years leading up to and during World War II. We've talked about the generals, the battles, the military movements, but we haven't yet focused on the victims. These women from China, Korea, etc. were often tricked or even downright abducted and forced into comfort stations where they were repeatedly abused by members of the Japanese Imperial Army around the clock. But who's telling their story? To this day there are many who deny this sort of government sanctioned sexual slavery even happened. Let's fix that.

Check out the Pacific Atrocities Education website here!

Snag Jenny's book "The Undrowning Lotus" here!

Support the show!

• Join the Patreon (patreon.com/historyfixpodcast)
• Buy some merch
• Buy Me a Coffee
• Venmo @Shea-LaFountaine

Sources:

• Wikipedia "Nanjing Massacre"
• Encyclopedia Britannica "Russo-Japanese War"
• Encyclopedia Britannica "Treaty of Portsmouth"
• Harvard Law School "J. Mark Ramseyer"

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