Episodes

  • Podcast - The Pig War of 1859

    Podcast - The Pig War of 1859
    Apr 18 2026
    A Pig Walks into a Potato Patch…On the morning of June 15th, 1859, an American farmer named Lyman Cutlar walked out of his cabin on San Juan Island. He saw a large black pig rooting around in his potato patch. Again.This pig had been eating his potatoes for weeks. Cutlar had chased it off. He had complained about it. He had asked the pig’s owner to control it. Nothing worked. The pig kept coming back for the potatoes.So Cutlar grabbed his rifle and shot the pig.That single shot almost started a war between the United States and the British Empire. Within weeks, 461 American soldiers and 2,140 British troops would face each other across the island. Five British warships would be anchored offshore. Cannons would be aimed. Orders would be shouted.All because of one hungry pig and some potatoes.Welcome to the ShowYou’re listening to, Wait! That Actually Happened?, the podcast where we prove history is stranger than fiction. I’m your host, author Daniel P. Douglas, and today we’re heading to the Pacific Northwest in 1859 for the weirdest war that almost happened.This is the story of the Pig War. A 12-year military standoff between two global superpowers over a single dead hog. It has warships. It has angry generals. It has a kaiser from Germany who had to come settle the whole mess. And it all started with some potatoes and a pig.How Two Countries Ended Up Sharing an IslandFirst, let’s figure out where the heck we are.San Juan Island sits in the Pacific Northwest, tucked between the Washington mainland and Canada’s Vancouver Island. It’s part of an archipelago of over 400 islands and rocks known as the San Juan Islands. Only about 128 of them are named. Only 4 are big enough to get regular ferry service. The whole group sits in the Salish Sea, which is the shared name for the waters between Washington and British Columbia.Here’s where the geology starts making trouble. These islands are actually the tops of a sunken mountain range. About 17,000 years ago, during the last ice age, a massive glacier called the Vashon covered this whole area. The ice was 4,200 feet thick. As the glacier moved south, it scraped, carved, and gouged out the landscape like a giant bulldozer made of ice.When the glacier finally melted, it left behind deep canyons that filled with seawater. It left behind a scattered mess of mountain tops poking out of the waves. And it left behind not one, not two, but several different channels running through the islands.This is the geological headache at the heart of the Pig War. When Britain and the United States later tried to draw a border through “the middle of the channel,” they had a problem. The glacier had carved multiple channels. The two big ones were Haro Strait on the west side of the islands and Rosario Strait on the east side. Either one could reasonably be called the middle channel. There was even a third option running right between the islands themselves.Whichever channel got picked would decide who owned the islands. Pick Haro Strait? The Americans get them. Pick Rosario Strait? The British get them. Pick the middle option? Everybody gets confused and it goes to court.So when we say the Pig War started because of a pig, that’s only half true. It really started because of a glacier that carved a mess of channels 17,000 years too early and left two empires with an unsolvable geography problem.To understand why a dead pig almost triggered a war, we need to back up 13 years.In 1846, the United States and Great Britain signed the Oregon Treaty. This was supposed to settle a big argument about who owned the Pacific Northwest. Both countries had been arguing over the land for decades. The treaty drew a border along the 49th parallel. That’s the line you see today between Washington State and Canada.Simple enough, right? Well, no.The treaty said the border would run west along the 49th parallel, then drop south through the middle of the channel between the mainland and Vancouver Island. But as we just covered, the glaciers had left behind more than one channel to choose from. The treaty writers didn’t specify which one. They probably didn’t even realize the problem existed.Nobody could agree. So both countries just started acting like they owned the islands.By the 1850s, the British Hudson’s Bay Company had set up a large sheep farm on San Juan Island called Belle Vue Farm. They had thousands of sheep, plus pigs, cattle, and crops. An Irish man named Charles Griffin ran the whole operation. He let his pigs roam free across the island.Meanwhile, American settlers started showing up too. Most of them were failed gold miners. They were tired, broke, and looking for free land. One of them was a 27-year-old farmer from Kentucky named Lyman Cutlar.In April of 1859, Cutlar staked a claim to 160 acres on the island. He built a little cabin. He planted a potato patch. He did not build a fence around that patch. This would turn out to be a problem.The American ...
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    18 mins
  • Podcast - The Cadaver Synod

    Podcast - The Cadaver Synod
    Jan 16 2026

    In January 897, Pope Stephen VI ordered the corpse of his predecessor Pope Formosus dug up from its tomb, dressed in papal robes, and propped up on a throne to stand trial for crimes including “coveting the papacy” and illegally switching dioceses. The decomposing body was assigned a teenage deacon as its defense attorney while Stephen screamed accusations at it, and the inevitable guilty verdict resulted in the corpse having its three blessing fingers cut off before being thrown into the Tiber River.

    The macabre spectacle backfired spectacularly when the body was recovered (reportedly performing miracles), an earthquake damaged the very basilica where the trial was held, and Stephen himself was deposed and strangled in prison within months. The so-called “Cadaver Synod” remains one of history’s most bizarre examples of political revenge, proving that medieval church politics made modern cancel culture look like amateur hour.

    Thanks for listening to Wait! That Actually Happened? from Author Daniel P. Douglas. This podcast is public, so feel free to share it!

    Subscribe to never miss history’s weirdest moments.

    Until then, remember: truth is stranger than fiction, and history is weirder than you think.

    Be sure to check out my Substack (Intelligence Bulletin from Author Daniel P. Douglas) for other podcasts, written articles, and links to my books.

    Thanks for listening. Have a memorable day!



    This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit authordanielpdouglas.substack.com
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    14 mins
  • Podcast - The Caga Tió

    Podcast - The Caga Tió
    Dec 20 2025

    Since the 1600s, families in Catalonia, Spain have gathered around a small wooden log with a painted smiley face and a red hat every Christmas Eve. They’ve spent the past two weeks “feeding” it scraps of food to fatten it up. Now comes the big moment: the children grab sticks and beat the log while singing songs demanding it poop out presents. When they lift the blanket covering the log, candy and small gifts have magically appeared underneath.

    This is Caga Tió, the “pooping log,” a tradition that evolved from ancient pagan winter solstice rituals into a beloved holiday custom that’s now over 400 years old. The ritual continues until the log “poops” out something gross like a head of garlic or a herring, signaling it’s empty. And yes, this is the same culture that has hidden a figurine of a pooping man in every nativity scene since the 1700s, because Catalonia committed fully to bathroom-themed holiday cheer centuries ago.

    Thanks for listening to Wait! That Actually Happened? from Author Daniel P. Douglas. This podcast is public, so feel free to share it!

    Subscribe to never miss history’s weirdest moments.

    Until then, remember: truth is stranger than fiction, and history is weirder than you think.

    Be sure to check out my Substack (Intelligence Bulletin from Author Daniel P. Douglas) for other podcast series, written articles, and links to my books.

    Thanks for listening. Have a memorable day!



    This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit authordanielpdouglas.substack.com
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    13 mins
  • Podcast - The Tulip Mania of 1637

    Podcast - The Tulip Mania of 1637
    Oct 29 2025

    In this episode of “Wait, That Actually Happened?” we explore Tulip Mania, the world’s first recorded financial bubble that gripped Holland from 1633 to 1637. During the Dutch Golden Age, tulip bulbs became so valuable that single bulbs sold for ten times a skilled worker’s annual salary, and people traded entire houses for just three rare bulbs. The market operated through taverns turned into flower exchanges, where merchants and craftsmen traded futures contracts on bulbs that hadn’t even grown yet, with some contracts changing hands ten times in a single day.

    The bubble spectacularly burst in February 1637 when an auction in Haarlem failed to attract any bidders, triggering a panic that saw prices plummet 99 percent within days. While myths have exaggerated the economic impact, the verified history is strange enough: Amsterdam’s bankruptcies doubled, the government had to void contracts, and the most beautiful tulips, ironically made gorgeous by a virus, went extinct. The episode draws parallels to modern bubbles like cryptocurrency and NFTs, showing how the “greater fool theory” has driven human behavior for nearly 400 years, proving that financial madness isn’t new, it just updates its format.

    Subscribe to never miss history’s weirdest moments.

    Until then, remember: truth is stranger than fiction, and history is weirder than you think.

    Be sure to check out my Substack (Intelligence Bulletin from Author Daniel P. Douglas) for other podcast series, written articles, and links to my books.

    Thanks for listening. Have a memorable day!

    Thanks for listening to Wait! That Actually Happened? from Author Daniel P. Douglas. This podcast is public, so feel free to share it!



    This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit authordanielpdouglas.substack.com
    Show More Show Less
    14 mins