In 1939, November had five Thursdays, which pushed Thanksgiving all the way to November 30 and left struggling Depression-era stores with only 24 shopping days until Christmas. Retail leaders asked President Franklin Roosevelt for help, and he agreed to move the holiday up a week to November 23. The country promptly lost its mind. Plymouth, Massachusetts objected, calendar makers were stuck with wrong calendars, college football schedules fell apart, and a Gallup poll found 62 percent of Americans against the change.

The Republican mayor of Atlantic City nicknamed the new date "Franksgiving," and because governors still set their own state holidays, the nation split almost perfectly in half, with Texas and Colorado simply celebrating both. The split happened again in 1940 and 1941, even after a government study showed the extra week did not boost sales. Just weeks after Pearl Harbor, Congress settled it for good by fixing Thanksgiving to the fourth Thursday in November, which is exactly where it lands this year. Just in time for the holiday, this episode tells the story of the year America could not agree on which Thursday to eat turkey.

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

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

Thanks for listening. Have a memorable day!

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Podcast Summary

In January 1838, the Lord Mayor of London read an anonymous letter aloud claiming that someone in disguise was terrorizing the villages around the city, and that seven ladies had already been frightened out of their senses. The newspapers printed the story, letters flooded in from across the suburbs, and Victorian England’s strangest legend was born: Spring-heeled Jack, the leaping phantom said to clear nine foot walls and breathe blue flame. Within weeks the story entered the official record, with sworn courtroom testimony from Jane Alsop, a suspect who walked free because he could not breathe fire, and a second reported attack in Limehouse days later. Suspicion fell on a prank-loving nobleman called the Mad Marquis, but nothing was ever proven.

Instead of fading, Jack kept appearing for 67 years: a costumed copycat convicted in Devon in 1847, sentries at the Aldershot garrison shooting at a bounding figure in 1877, a church rooftop in Liverpool in 1888, and a final flap of sightings in 1904. No one was ever caught for the original attacks, and no one ever explained the flames. This episode kicks off our October run of history that is actually a little scary, and it asks the question Victorians never answered. Who was Jack?

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

Subscribe to never miss history’s weirdest moments.

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

Thanks for listening to, “Wait, that Actually Happened?” This post and podcast are public so feel free to share them.

Podcast Summary

In 1818, a retired Army captain named John Cleves Symmes Jr. mailed 500 letters to Congress, colleges, and foreign governments announcing that the Earth was hollow, open at both poles, and ready to be explored. He even attached a doctor's certificate proving he was sane. What followed is one of the strangest chains of events in American history. Congress voted twice on funding his expedition, and 25 members said yes. A future Vice President presented his petition. His protégé Jeremiah Reynolds dropped the hollow part of the pitch and talked the government into the 1838 United States Exploring Expedition, which helped prove Antarctica is a continent and stocked the Smithsonian.

Along the way, the hollow Earth idea helped inspire Moby-Dick, fueled myths about a secret Nazi base in Antarctica, produced a fake Admiral Byrd diary about a civilization inside the planet, and gave us the infamous “Well to Hell” hoax, in which a Russian science borehole supposedly recorded the screams of the damned. The screams turned out to be a looped horror movie soundtrack. The real deepest hole on Earth found only solid rock and two-billion-year-old fossils.

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

Subscribe to never miss history’s weirdest moments.

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

Thanks for listening. Have a memorable day!

Thanks for listening to, “Wait, that Actually Happened?” This post and podcast are public so feel free to share them!