Speaker 1: You.
Speaker 2: I'm now listening to soft Core History. Hello, and welcome
in to soft Core History. I'm your host for the week, Damagester,
joined as always by Rob Fox.
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me back. Thanks for having me back.
Speaker 2: It's your show.
Speaker 1: Been a while. Yeah, it's nice that you've slid in
and decided to, you know, take up hosting duties.
Speaker 2: I'm more like a behind the scenes kind of guy. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, literally you are the behind the scenes.
Speaker 2: I do all of it. Yeah yeah, yeah, So me
actually talking on the podcast, it's additional.
Speaker 1: It's a bonus. Yeah, and I'm proud of you.
Speaker 2: I wrote an episode, but you're more than capable to
handle it your s Yeah, I got it.
Speaker 1: Let's get it going.
Speaker 2: We have no guests this week.
Speaker 1: No, yeah, no one to introduce you to to man show.
Just boys, boys date boys night.
Speaker 2: I missed you.
Speaker 1: It's fine. No, I'm in a couple of days. Yeah,
this is gonna be a big week for me. Like
the kids and wife are going out of town. I'm
just gonna fucking do nothing. It's gonna be bachelor Rob
Glorious Michael get drunk at the Mexican restaurant across the
highway from my house. Like that, it's a real shithole.
Speaker 2: Get smoked on the way back.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would rather risk a UI than getting hit
by an eighteen wheeler.
Speaker 2: Like just trying to run across like six lanes.
Speaker 1: Fuck that, it's it's yeah, it's like five lanes and
it's it's there's no way in the middle of the night,
No fucking way.
Speaker 2: He died doing what he loved, playing Frogger drunk.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't love doing that at all. I actually
have a friend, I have an attorney brother who was
literally hit by an eighteen wheeler.
Speaker 2: He survived. He did.
Speaker 1: He was walking on the side of the highway trying
to get to White Oh.
Speaker 2: So he got clipped. He like mirror, No it he
got hit.
Speaker 1: It's apparent according to the police, it threw him like
hundred feet. Did he stick the landing apparently because it
had been raining that night and the grass was wet
that softened the blow.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 1: And I was like, where he got hit didn't make
any sense because it was like, no one in their
right mind at MISSOO would be walking there except for
one reason. And it was really weird. I was like,
how drunk were you? And He's like, I don't remember anything,
like from like eight pm on and I was like
we and this is like three in the morning. He
was like yeah.
Speaker 2: I was like, were you this is how people fall
into the river and were.
Speaker 1: You walking to white Castle? Because white Castle is like
in the fucking hood in Columbia and he was like
a dig.
Speaker 2: So sometimes it just calls he on the side of
the highway. You see that bright in the online, Yeah,
like I need to go to white Castle. This entire
movie franchise based off it.
Speaker 1: But I mean he was straight up. He wasn't full
on like obviously run over, but it hit him like
part of the actual front.
Speaker 2: Truck hent it in h hit him and threw imprint
of Yeah him, my my.
Speaker 1: Is another one of our buddies. Every year of the
anniversary of that, he just takes a picture of him
and post it to Instagram and it's like truck free
since twenty eleven.
Speaker 2: Love that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, he got hit by a fucking truck.
Speaker 2: It's a relatively interesting story.
Speaker 1: Oh thank you.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: You know how many friends have been hit by an
eighteen wheeler.
Speaker 2: Not that I'm aware of. They haven't at least told me.
They's like low key, they're like, oh yeah, dude, it
this happened to me twice. I just never really found
the proper space to tell the story.
Speaker 1: Yeah they Oh you didn't that never cared that. You
never thought that should come up, that a truck hit you,
an actual truck, a big rig. I don't know. I'm
not a show off. I don't like to make things
about me.
Speaker 2: Which is a weird day, man.
Speaker 1: I got like got the first text was too Nick
got hit by an eighteen wheeler and I was.
Speaker 2: Like, is Nick dead? Like they didn't tell me?
Speaker 1: I was They're like, no, he's in the hospital, in
the ICU. And I was like, oh my god.
Speaker 2: Oh fuck. Sounds like an interesting fellow.
Speaker 1: He is.
Speaker 2: And I'm gonna use that as a transition and raise
you another way more interesting guy.
Speaker 1: Let's go, I don't know if he didn't get hit
by any trucks.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, you're right, he'd never got hit by a truck.
Speaker 1: Well, then we're off to a bad.
Speaker 2: Start because for a majority of his life, trucks didn't exist. Okay,
but he did have a chance, there was a chance.
Didn't happen, dam it. But today we're talking about Frederick
Russell Burnham. Okay, familiar with this guy, not in the
least who's born on a Dakota Sioux reservation in Minnesota
on May eleventh, eighteen sixty one to a missionary family
that lived in a nearby pioneer town.
Speaker 1: Oh so was he born while they were out converting them?
Speaker 2: His father was a preacher. Yeah, he was trying, trying,
trying his hottest.
Speaker 1: He was like, you need to stop worshiping the buffalo.
Let me tell you about a man with got hit
by a figurative truck for your sins.
Speaker 2: In August of eighteen sixty two, when Freddy was only
one chief little Crow and the Sioux attacked the town.
His preacher father was at the store buy an AMMO
at the time. That's very convenient for him. Yeah right, It's.
Speaker 1: Almost like the aircraft carriers not being at Pearl Harbor,
you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's weird. Maybe they gave him a little tip off.
His mother saw the warriors out far enough to hide
him in a basket covered by husk in the cornfields
and make her own escape on foot, because she was like,
I just can't get away fast enough with the baby
in my hand. Yeah, so leaves the baby in the cornfield,
almost like a Moses origin story.
Speaker 1: It's an actual miracle that that baby didn't make any noise,
Like that's a miracle.
Speaker 2: It's a chill ass baby, Like it.
Speaker 1: Doesn't happen how much. How he was a year old.
Speaker 2: He's about a a little over a year okay, so
he can move two, he can crawl, and he just chilled.
I guess he knew.
Speaker 1: She put some whiskey on his gums. Perhaps that's that's
what you have to do. Actually, it's like get the
baby drunk.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just here you go, little baby.
Speaker 1: Just a little bit of bourbon on the on the law,
on the colms.
Speaker 2: Stay quiet, shoo shoo, shoo, shush baby. Once the assault
was pushed back, she returned to find the house was
burned down, but baby Freddie was safe asleep in his basket.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's she gave him something like alaudanum or something.
Speaker 2: Some type of drug.
Speaker 1: A one year old baby just doesn't fucking chill while.
Speaker 2: The house is burning down, like fifty feet.
Speaker 1: Away, their gunshots like all this shit.
Speaker 2: Like no, yeah, she.
Speaker 1: Gave him drugs or booze. Like there's just no question.
Speaker 2: He didn't move, didn't move, so that's kind of where
he started in Minnesota was on the border of Iowa,
so yep, kind of went to school in Iowa here
and there, But eventually his family moved to la when
Fred was ten and his father was severely injured building
the homestead and died from injury complications two years later,
leaving the family destitute.
Speaker 1: God, moving now.
Speaker 2: Is a fuckings moving across the country and then having
to build your house.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, the amount of convincing that would take me, Like, honey,
we're gonna walk to California and then you are going
to be chopping down up and upwards of forty trees,
harvesting all of that lumber yourself, plenty of redwoods and
yeah maybe just one tree, maybe just one redwood, and
then building the home. I would be like, we are
staying next to the Indians that want to murder us,
Like I'm not. There's no fucking way go.
Speaker 2: Across the country. You make it all the way and
then you're like, all right, heart, part's.
Speaker 1: Over, hard, part's just getting started.
Speaker 2: Hurts himself building the house to the point that it's
like serious enough that it causes his death to yours.
Speaker 1: Maybe he just fell off a ladder.
Speaker 2: That's how I play. That's probably how that or that's
how that. Uh.
Speaker 1: Some XMLB Pitture a couple months ago died that way.
Octavio not Octavo Hotel. Uh fuck I forget his name,
but he pitched for the Braves anyway. Yeah, he fell
off a ladder at his house. He's like cleaning the gutters.
Speaker 2: Just bam hit his head. I guess damn.
Speaker 1: I don't want to put up Christmas lights anymore.
Speaker 2: I understand why people have those projectors now. Yeah, they
look like shit, but I get it. I get it.
Speaker 1: You just walk out of the yard with an extend
and gord fucking PLoP down a projector and you're like,
merry Christmas.
Speaker 2: Pieces.
Speaker 1: Wouldn't an asshole, but I get it. At least it's
not inflatable.
Speaker 2: So his father dies, His mother takes his three year
old brother, Howard back to her parents in Iowa. Oh,
they go back. He doesn't I.
Speaker 1: Know what they do.
Speaker 2: Freddy stays Jesus in La to pay off his family debts.
Speaker 1: Someone's got to do it. He's is he wait, did
you say older younger brother?
Speaker 2: His younger brother.
Speaker 1: Okay, he's a man.
Speaker 2: He's the man of the house. Yeah, so he has
to take care of, you know, all the bills that
they probably racked up moving there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well they don't rack up any debt moving back.
Is it free to go back?
Speaker 2: Moving back to her parents? Yeah? So you cast money
to get there, Yeah, I know. He did so by
working as a mounted messenger for the Western Union Telegraph
Company for California and Arizona. Despite getting his horse stolen
by a notorious bandit Toberco Vasquez, Freddie was able to
turn his experience into a scouting Indian tracking gig for
the US Army at just the age of fourteen.
Speaker 1: So this is eighteen seventies.
Speaker 2: Now, who was he hunting for the US Army as
a Indian scouting tracker? Geronimo one, Geronimo Yeah, in the
Apache Wars.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so what is this the eighteen seventies.
Speaker 2: Now, he's born in sixty one, he's about fourteen years old, So.
Speaker 1: Yes, the seventies, okay, eighteen seventy five.
Speaker 2: By twenty he got caught up in a family feud
in Arizona. Between the Grams and Talksberry's Jake did an
episode on this like a while back at our old
studio It was called the Pleasant Valley War or Tonto
Basin Feud, which was just a bunch of like cattle
and sheep ranchers having beef with one another.
Speaker 1: They were mad at the sheep people because the sheep
were fucking up their land.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yea, yeah, yeah, But it wasn't just those families.
It ends up just kind of quickly spilling over to
like all the cowboys in the area and families and
friends of families and friends of friends.
Speaker 1: You know what. They should have called it the Red
Meat Wars.
Speaker 2: Honestly that people remember that. Freddie got involved through his
pal Tommy Gordon. Of course, Tommy's always been trouble and
his family in Globe, Arizona. Between raids, Freddie would incessantly
practice his pistol, becoming a dead eye shot with both
hands and from the back of a galloping horse. His
faction ultimately lost the conflict, but Freddy was able to
escape the ordeal, broke his hell and still with plenty
of enemies on the other side. Yeah, but he leveled up,
he got xp he got out. Yeah, but yeah, he
leveled up his skill set. An easy opportunity to make
some cash came stealing cattle for outlaw Curly Bill, but
Freddie ultimately rejected it as he didn't see himself as
a criminal or a thief, okay, kind of a decent guy.
Speaker 1: He thought that was a proper war right, like.
Speaker 2: He was just riding for his boys, his friends. And
then towards the end too, he was like, uh, maybe
I'm on the wrong side of this, not just because
we're losing, but because like there's no there's no honor
in this.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Then Curly Bill comes calling, Hey, steal this cattle for me,
and he's just like, ah, give it to your next guy.
It was a good, good decision for him because the
man that did take the job gets killed stealing the livestock. Yeah,
so he avoids that. Now does he get.
Speaker 1: Killed in the act or caught and immediately hung for stealing?
Speaker 2: Like four thousand he gets shot while trying to steal?
Speaker 1: Okay, Because it is still funny to me that we
used to give people the death penalty for like stealing
a horse, yeah, or a cow or whatever.
Speaker 2: If we did that the car thieves, now.
Speaker 1: I don't, I mean, horse thievery was still pretty rampant,
so I don't think it was a good deterrent.
Speaker 2: But again, it was the wild West. You just move
a town over. Yeah, that was my horse. You become
the sheriff, You become the law. Freddy wanted out of
the Tonto base in bad Blood all together, and his
buddy was able to help him escape to Tombstone.
Speaker 1: Oh boy, I feel like I see where this is going.
Speaker 2: This was a couple of months after the Okay Corral.
Speaker 1: Oh all right, well, I don't see where this is
going at all.
Speaker 2: Though. Now he was able to lay low working for
gunfighter and smuggler Neil mccloyd Okay. Once the heat was
off him, he briefly worked as a deputy sheriff for
Pinal County, Arizona, did some prospecting in the silver mines.
An occasional scout chop would come his way and he
make a little extra coin. He would go back to
Iowa in late eighteen eighty three to visit family and
reconnect with his childhood sweetie Blanche. Oh love those names
back then. Blanch.
Speaker 1: Can you imagine just like going bananas on a Blanche, Just.
Speaker 2: Like that Blanche? Yeah, yeah, Rode that dig Blanche doesn't work,
doesn't work like that? Blanch?
Speaker 1: Yeah. Oh, this is my girlfriend, Blanche. She's just like,
the only way that you can pull that off is
if you are just unfathomably attractive.
Speaker 2: She wasn't, but you know maybe she was.
Speaker 1: Anyone could pull that off. That that's like back then
Blanches like Kristen, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: It's They married soon after on February sixth, eighteen eighty four,
when he was just twenty three. The two Old Man, though,
set off to Pasadena, California to start in Orange Grove,
but Freddy still did some prospecting in scouting as it
came to him. I guess during this time he gets
involved with the Freemasons and rises to the level of
thirty second degree Mason of the Scottish Right, they kind
of breeze through this and all his biographies, and you know,
men haves to have hobbies.
Speaker 1: I boy, I just don't know where this episode is going.
I thought it was going to take an okay, coral turn,
and it didn't. Now I've already now, like within the
last ten minutes, I've been like, oh, so he was
at the Oka Oh nope, okay, Oh so it's like
a Freemason thing. Oh okay, I guess not either he's
just huge is in it's just in it?
Speaker 2: Yeah, just kind of a YadA YadA YadA.
Speaker 1: I mean it's just an adult fraternity, you know what
I mean. It's just like a men's club for people
to do something.
Speaker 2: Especially the Scottish rites is on like sect of it. Yeah,
is that like for the poors. No, this episode, you're
really not gonna have any idea where it's going. I don't,
I've I'm this man lived an eventful life.
Speaker 1: It's it seems like he is Forrest gumping to an extent.
Speaker 2: Kind of. Yeah. He's also a short king, standing at
five foot four, but muscular and cut.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: He had a square jaw and a boyish face that
he often took advantage of when he was scouting or
laying low from any adversaries he picked up along the way.
Speaker 1: So like someone would be like, right, well you're doing
on my learning.
Speaker 2: Like, oh gee whizz mister. Yeah, he'd be like, I'm
just twelve. I'm just a boy, just a wee pump.
Speaker 1: I don't mean nothing, but it it's like I saw
you kill three Indians riding at full gallop. No, just
a boy, Oh, get on.
Speaker 2: It's believable.
Speaker 1: I'll get on.
Speaker 2: You see his face, You see he's a tiny man.
Five to four for the time is small.
Speaker 1: Yes, I won't give my normal argument. Five to four
is short in any time post industrial revolutions.
Speaker 2: Certainly, honestly great though, if you're in a gunfight, small target,
and especially if you're I feel like people typically shoot high. Yeah.
Speaker 1: If you're on a horse in a gunfight too, that
hor you're cut going at some one the horse, you know,
it's easier to get down. The horses can take all
your bullets.
Speaker 2: He wasn't much of a drinker and he did not smoke,
fearing it would kill his sense of smell. That was
vitally important for him tracking. So when he first got
into Indian track, in one of the key ways to
help find Geronimo and the Apache was they would burn
mescal for cooking. Okay, So he started to get like
an acute sense of like the smell of mescal burning
in the air. That's how he's able to track stuff.
So he like started to pick up these little cues
and he used a sense of smell. He was like
a fucking dog damn with his smell.
Speaker 1: Interesting that somehow the ever present cloud of secondhand smoke
didn't still kill his sense of smell, like any I
guess he wasn't a big drinker. But if he's like
ever hanging out in a saloon or whatever, like it's
just gotta be nothing but cigar smoke.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess second hand smoke is bullshit.
Speaker 1: Roight, Yeah, I think it is, like we kind of
learned something today.
Speaker 2: He trained himself to run his body on several power
naps throughout the day rather than one prolonged sleep at night. Okay,
so he would just kind of like snooze for about
fifteen to twenty minutes and then be back at it.
Oh my god. He was described as modest, but not shy,
never wont to brag, but certainly not one to back
down either. In eighteen ninety, the US Census Bureau closed
the American Frontier system that allowed land to be sold
cheaply to pioneers. The Wild West legends were leaving and
becoming entertainers and put on shows with natives like Sitting Bowl,
Chief Joseph and Geronimo. The Old West was dying, and
the appeal of a new frontier captivated Freddy.
Speaker 1: It's really almost sad the way all those Old West people.
It's like it's like watching like a fat Allen Iverson
in the Big Three or something like that.
Speaker 2: Just getting it's worse, but it is worse. This was
the people's lives. Yeah, Like they were outlaws, they were chiefs,
and they were like respected at one point in time
and now they're just side shows.
Speaker 1: The chiefs had it especially bad because the cowboys they
were like, look at what this cowboy does. They got
a rope caddle col wild Bill Rock chasing off to
Buffalo and then they like bring in sitting bowl and
they're like look at him.
Speaker 2: Look at it. Yeah, you're a zoo animal.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like he didn't do They was like, what are
you gonna do? Like, what do you mean what he's
gonna do? Look at this guy?
Speaker 2: And honestly a pretty good deal for wild Bill instead
of like being hung Yeah, oh no, just entertained the masses.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're a superstar.
Speaker 2: He heard of Cecil Roads and the work he was
doing in Southern Africa building a railroad from Cape Town
to Cairo. Burnham sold everything he owned and then eighteen
ninety three picked up and set sail for Durban, South
Africa with his wife and young son Roderick did about
seven at the time.
Speaker 1: Did not see Africa cut not.
Speaker 2: Many doo, yeah, not many, just think let's go to Africa.
Speaker 1: And now I don't know the history of this, but
I feel like there's no fucking way that railroad was
ever completed. And then look into it Cape to Cairo railway,
unfinished project what it says.
Speaker 2: By the time they got into town in eighteen ninety three,
Cecil Roads and his British South Africa Company were fully
ingrained in a war with the local tribe. Freddy joined
the Calls immediately as a scout and was picked to
be chief of Scouts by Major Allen Wilson.
Speaker 1: Cecil Rhoads also, I thought this. I was pretty sure
it was true, but I had to relook it up.
Rhodes scholar. That makes sense, the Rhodes scholars.
Speaker 2: It's through Cecil Roads.
Speaker 1: Cecil Roads.
Speaker 2: Yeah. During the Shanghai patrol in December of eighteen ninety three,
Wilson and a dozen of his men, including Freddy, came
across a bunch of tribe women and children who claimed
to know whether king was hiding. Freddy sens the trap
was in the works and warrned to Wilson, but Wilson
decided to keep pursuing. The tribe's leader. Freddy was like,
there's a trap. Look it's about Wilson sent a letter
for reinforcements, but was only given twenty more men. The
patrol came across the warriors camp on the other side
of the Shangani River. Wilson was setting up a plan
of attack and they were ambushed by the tribal warriors.
Wilson ordered Freddy and two others to make a break
for it and try to get more reinforcements in time.
Once they got away, looked back at the party and
saw hundreds of warriors surrounding Wilson and his men and
the butcher that followed. Yeah.
Speaker 1: One thing that's always really interesting to me about I
guess really like all of colonialism is like whether you're
watching like late like African colonism stuff, like if you
watch the movie Zulu or even like the Spanish and
early English settlers, is like, there's there's like nine of you.
Speaker 2: And you're conquering so much.
Speaker 1: How did this succeed at all?
Speaker 2: I mean, our very first episode is about a man
who just became president of Nicaragua.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like it's never a lot of like it would
be one thing, right if like a dude from Tennessee
a legion of Spaniards land in Mexico, or like five
divisions of British soldiers land, but it's like it's like, oh,
right to conquer.
Speaker 2: All of South Africa, we have forty dudes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, send a platoon and it's just like what how what?
Speaker 2: Okay, the platoon do it?
Speaker 1: I don't think it will. And then like five months
later they're like, you're roll, I did it. Yeah, that's weird.
Speaker 2: It's up for debate now whether or not Freddy and
those two men were given orders to leave the battle
to help or simply just deserted to save their own lives.
Speaker 1: Hard to hard to say, one of my favorite things ever.
I don't think we'll ever do an episode on it.
But in the movie Zulu, which with this would be
related to Zulu, the Zulu battle Rourks Drift and is
Luwando which proceeded happened a little couple probably twenty ars
before this, but rock Strift was like this battle where
the main British force had.
Speaker 2: Been slaughtered by the Zulus, just.
Speaker 1: Caught unaware and just fucking slaughtered and there was just
like just this little outpost nearby called Rourks Drift and
there was like one hundred dudes there and an army
of like several thousand Zulus comes to wipe out this
this outpost and like, against all odds, they hold out.
It's an awesome movie. It's Michael Kaine's first screen credit.
Actually really yeah, it's a really good movie. And anyway,
I read this like a while back, it's still the
funniest thing ever. A bunch of people from Roorksdrift got
the Victorious Cross, which is the British Medal of Honor
basically and apparently a bunch including the two commanders, one
of whom Michael Kine plays, and apparently like all of
their superior officers, because the British Army was still kind
of like you buy your commission, like it's a gentleman's game, right.
All the officers, like all their superiors were like furious
because they were like they didn't they didn't do anything.
Speaker 3: They just they were trapped rats. They had to fight.
Wasn't brave they had a choice? Should get a medal
for that? Like they held off thousands and they were
just like, well, they didn't have a choice in the matt.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they probably wouldn't like Freddy. Then it's still just
the funniest fucking thing to be. It's like, I don't know, man,
they did a pretty good job.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: In eighteen ninety five, Freddy oversaw and led an exploration
to set up copper Minds in northern eastern Rhodesia for
the British South Africa Company. For his efforts, he was
elected a Fellow for the Royal Geographical Society. Meanwhile, his
wife Blanche watched their newborn daughter and animals learning how
to shoot a rifle and.
Speaker 1: Good lord, it's just a nightmare. Like there's certain parts
of Africa where you live that where it's like just
makes Florida look like you know what I mean. It's
like like I still there's parts of Florida. Like Jake
sent me a picture the other day of his backyard
and there was like deer in it at a pond
and he said, or no, it was a video, And
I was like, I was expecting like a gator to
pop up.
Speaker 2: I was expecting a getter to eat those deer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because it's like a dude, it's a green pond.
You know what I mean, like a like a bright
green pond looks like it's like to the point where
as soon as I saw it, I was like, I
will never be taking my children to Jake's house in Florida. Literally. Ever.
Speaker 2: Listen, they gotta learn life lessons.
Speaker 1: That's Alligators aren't a life lesson you have to learn,
if you know, if you don't live in Florida, if
you're at all you need to do is just not
swim at the pond.
Speaker 2: They're making a way to Texas. They're in Louisia there
they are, No, they're in They're they're in Houston as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're in eastern Texas.
Speaker 2: But people don't know this. But in Lake Austin, a
couple gators there are. I did know that. Actual, there's
also a hippo. People say that a couple of years
ago when we were paddle boarding and we went to
like the center where everybody kind of like congregates and
there's a DJ in just the middle of the fucking lake.
Speaker 1: Dude, someone should just we started.
Speaker 2: A rumor that there was a hippo when we were
trying to see how long it would take before that
got back to us.
Speaker 1: That would be a funny prank to just release a
bunch of hippos into Lake Austin one night.
Speaker 2: That's a silly prank.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a silly, funny prank.
Speaker 2: How many people would have I mean, maybe that's what's happening.
There is no serial killer. The hippos are getting.
Speaker 1: Them hungry hungry hippos. But yeah, like Africa though, like
I know, I've seen like videos and shit, it's it's
towns usually not cities, but like they'll have like hyenas
wandering through the streets at night. I was just like,
that's a fucking nightmare. And wild dogs too, like the
painted dogs that are like dickheads and basically act like
velocent raptors.
Speaker 2: It's a nightmare.
Speaker 1: Their teamwork, yeah, dude, it's fucking I couldn't even imagine.
Speaker 2: Their eldest Roderick, was sent to boarding school in France
and military school in England. He would go on to
be the starting running back in Frattborough at the University
of Arizona.
Speaker 1: Took an odd turn. Ye, I thought you're gonna say,
like like Cornell or something.
Speaker 2: Nah, University of Arizona started running back.
Speaker 1: What year is this? Was? He their first student.
Speaker 2: It's pretty early. What year was this? How old do
you think the University of Arizona is.
Speaker 1: It's gotta be younger than the state.
Speaker 2: It was founded. Let's look at it.
Speaker 1: It was Arizona became a state in nineteen twelve.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the University of Arizona is older than the state.
Speaker 1: That's insane.
Speaker 2: March twelfth, eighteen eighty five, those twenty years. Well, you
have to be a state to one would think start
a university.
Speaker 1: One would think to have to have a land grant
state university. One would think the state might need to exist.
Speaker 2: When now you learned something I did not. School is
older than the state.
Speaker 1: Arizona became a state the same year my grandfather was born.
Speaker 2: It's pretty sweet.
Speaker 1: I have old I had old grandparents.
Speaker 2: Their parents a pretty old right now they are.
Speaker 1: My parents are both in their seventies. I like, I
think my grandparents had kids pretty late. My parents, great,
you're pretty old. And my hair is actually it doesn't
look it on camera, quite a bit more salt and
pepper than then it appears on camera.
Speaker 2: You got the Frederick Burnham face.
Speaker 1: That's right. I still to this day I'll be doing
something horrible and someone will be like.
Speaker 2: Hey, what even know what? I'm like, Oh, I'm sorry, mister.
Oh just a kid got your hat backwards. Yeah, I
fall for it every time, Like who looked this child in.
Speaker 1: Its fucking high school? Kid? Go ahead, I'll take it.
Speaker 2: Roderick also would work in oil serve in World War
One and eventually start an airline in Guatemala with the
founder of Paramount Pictures. So kind of an interesting guy
in his own right. Yeah, their daughter not a rat
was in Deeke Okay, no any deeks George W.
Speaker 1: Bush, Yeah, John Carrey, but like personally no, uh no,
because we didn't have dec Their daughter, Nada, did not
have such a prosperous life.
Speaker 2: In eighteen ninety six, the tribe attacked the colonists of
the British South African Company. Again, Nada died of a
fever and starvation. During a siege of the town Bummer,
the settlers had to hunker down, waiting months for troops
to be sent. Fred helped direct the townspeople fight off
the warriors with access to artillery and machine guns. Ooh
they had artillery.
Speaker 1: It's are we talking like like our the episode would
do with my wife where like Salem had little cannons.
Speaker 2: I think they had some heavy duty shit.
Speaker 1: Hell yeah, some howitzers or whatever. I mean the fact
that they had machine guns, some maxims probably I imagine.
Speaker 2: Mow down the tribe. Yeah, it's kind of like when
I was telling you, hey, you go back to uh
the Alamo, and I give you modern weapons.
Speaker 1: Someone in the chat was like, you could do it.
Speaker 2: You can mow down they already know how to use
a gun.
Speaker 1: Like, it's just a slight update. I will say too, there's.
Speaker 2: More Constantinople to defend the gates.
Speaker 1: That's just too many people. There's a lot of Turks.
You need a lot of AMMO for that. But maybe
maybe the Turks did lose it Vienna and they outnumbered
those guys like fucking three to one. Yeah. There's a
total war game called Showgun Total War where it's like
it's essentially the last Samurai era, like Tom Cruise or whatever,
and you can be like, you know, the Europeans and
fighting the Japanese and you get like early Spanish American
War era maximum machine guns and.
Speaker 2: You get the mowdown dudes with Samurai swords.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's not very fair, but it is very funny.
It is very funny.
Speaker 2: Because they were fucking thugs. They were mostly gangsters that
could just not answer to the wall at all. They
could cut you down if they were if you were
below them, they could cut you down without any consequence.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Oh man, I've seen a new a new thing
going around on Twitter recently. I actually think one of
our bosses talked about it. There's this stupid like then
this is stupid kind of. I mean, it's fine in
terms of like you want to make it, make it whatever,
but the framing is dumb of as tech batman. Have
you seen that? No, Yeah, there's like an Aztec batman
and he's like, I guess, helping fight off the Spanish.
Speaker 2: It's interesting because you know, most of the traps in
the area took down the astechs.
Speaker 1: Right, So this is dumb on So that's dumb because
the Aztecs were dicks and tech Tonctica Clan or however
you say. It was certainly very much like you know,
got theam City in that it deserved to die but wanted.
Speaker 2: They were rich enough they would have a Bruce Wayne. Oh.
Speaker 1: Certainly, although it was probably just Monazuma was Monazuma batman.
I don't know. I haven't seen it.
Speaker 2: He could be yeah, we don't know.
Speaker 1: But now I'm seeing people say obviously, there's always an overcorrection,
the same way it's like at Churchill was the bad
guy actually over correction where they're like, this is bullshit.
The Spanish were the good guys. I've seen that said where,
and I'm just like, hey, check it out. What if,
like most of history, there weren't any good guys.
Speaker 2: What if it was all self interest?
Speaker 1: Yeah? What if it was just two dickhead groups meeting
and fighting one of them won. Yeah, there doesn't need
to be a good guy at all.
Speaker 2: Well, they're spreading Christianity to South America, rob.
Speaker 1: I mean true Catholicism specifically, because I actually I almost
wish the Natives would have won in North America against
the English because they were spreading bastardized Christianity.
Speaker 2: But we'll get down with that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, especially Puritans. I mean the French should have. Really,
they had it right to the whole continent as far
as I'm concerned. But yeah, I saw that, I was like, oh, yeah,
that is dumb. The Aztecs are dicks. And then I
saw the reactions and I was like come on, man,
why are you overshooting the runway that hard? You could
just stop at the Aztecs were actually dicks.
Speaker 2: Because nuance is not a thing. No, we must choose something.
Come on. So he helps the townspeople kind of like
barricade the town with barb wire. They got some things
that they could light to in case of worst case scenario,
you know, if things they breach, yeah, and get inside.
But yeah, they got a bunch of machine guns, they
got a bunch of fucking artillery. They're just kind of
like mowing down and holding their own.
Speaker 1: I assume though, that the tribes people do have some
rifles at this point here and there. Yeah, I don't
know how good they are with them, but not great.
Yeah enough to keep you honest, you know what I mean?
Speaker 2: Yeah, fred Even started leading gorilla offensive campaigns against the tribe.
Speaker 1: Keep Mother toes.
Speaker 2: Frederick Even. He was able to track down the tribe's king, Milimo,
to a sacred cave in the Matapos Hills.
Speaker 1: This just sounds racist.
Speaker 2: Freddie waited until Milimo started a dance of immunity.
Speaker 1: Sounds super racist before.
Speaker 2: He withdrew his pistol and shot the chief just below
the heart.
Speaker 1: I just like if you wrote that, like I just
check it out, Like if you're writing a movie and
you were like, yeah, this is how the white guy
kills the African chief because he finds out the African
cheese chief is doing an invincibility dance in a cave
and he walks in and shoots him with his Western
man weapon. You would never work again.
Speaker 2: Check it out. That's just fucking Indiana.
Speaker 1: Jones is other than India. The Indiana Jones scene was
not inspired by that. It was inspired by Harrison Ford
having the flu and he was like, I can't do
a full fight scene today. Why don't I just shoot him?
I have a gun.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that makes way more sense.
Speaker 1: And it was one of the best scenes in Spielberg's
entire filmography.
Speaker 2: So he waited for Melma to start dancing shoot them
in the chest. Obviously, the chief dies. Freddy and his
companion were able to make an escape. As the warriors
went into a frenzy and search for who was responsible
for gunming down their leader.
Speaker 1: What do you mean he was the guy in the
hot dog suit.
Speaker 2: We're all looking for the guy they did this?
Speaker 1: Were they pointing at each other?
Speaker 2: I guess because nobody saw they heard him get shot
because he was doing I think he was in the
cave by himself. Okay, so they were waiting in the cave.
They ambushed him as soon as he starts dancing, shoot him,
make their way out, and I think everyone kind of
hears a gunshock go off and like try to goes in,
try to find them, but they can't. They're not in time.
They see their beloved leader bleeding out.
Speaker 1: Before he could complete ability dance again. A real thing
that happened. And if you wrote that word for word,
portrayed it at all, you would be who's the clan guy,
the one that's always on the news, I don't know,
David Duke, You would essentially be the David Duke of screenwriters.
Speaker 2: Shortly after Cecil Rhodes made peace with the Mantibelli, ending
the Second Montabelli War, with the loss of his daughter
and a ton of his friends dying during the conflict,
Fred thought it was about time to get out of Africa. Yeah,
he heard of the Klondike gold rush in Alaska.
Speaker 1: This man, it's like a white pick of fence is
his kryptonite.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just gotta leave my wife.
Speaker 1: It's just He's just like, I don't know, like the way,
like I'll be like, you know the way like modern
men essentially have fomo, Like I really would to go
to the bors today. Like He's just like, God, I
just really want to be somewhere I could die.
Speaker 2: I want to cheat death every single I want to
be somewhere that'll killby. So he goes to Alaska with
his son Roderick, and they This is after they get
their wife and newborn son set up back in California.
So they replaced the dead daughter with a newborn son.
Good for that, Blanche and the new new kid or
just chilling in California. Okay, He and his oldest go
to Alaska in search of gold and good fortune.
Speaker 1: Dad, Hey didn't get drafted.
Speaker 2: This was right before the Spanish American War.
Speaker 1: Oh I'm at football.
Speaker 2: He's not old enough. He hasn't been to the University
of Arizona yet. Oh okay, okay, so Roderick, Yeah, yeah, sorry,
I'm kind of a time jump there a little bit,
but uh tell you what ends up happening with Roderick. Okay, Okay,
Roderick is like twelve at this time, all right, Yeah,
So he goes to La.
Speaker 1: He's all grit by the time he gets on the
grid iron for Arizona. He's been. He's been. He lived in.
Speaker 2: Fucking Africa fighting. He's Arizona scataboo. Yeah. Yeah. They prospected
until Frederick Roberts sent a telegram from Burnham asking if
he'd accept the position of chief of Scouts for his
men during the Second Boer War. Oh no, just when
he thought he was out Holy macoing. He also kind
of missed the Spanish American War by like three months.
Speaker 1: Oh, if he'd gotten back early, he could have done some.
Speaker 2: He went to Alaska and by the time they reached
that or he had heard or news got to him
that we were fighting the Spanish, by the time he
was about to come back, it was over.
Speaker 1: It was not a long war.
Speaker 2: It's like a three month war.
Speaker 1: It was not a long war.
Speaker 2: It was bad.
Speaker 1: People really don't really don't understand how like it was
the US that put Spain in its grave. Like any
there was still like a minor little chance they were
something of a player.
Speaker 2: But there's something to a self awareness with Spain knowing
that we should not drag this on. Let's just let's
call it yeah, let's tap out. Honestly, we were probably is.
I'd have to look this up.
Speaker 1: I don't know, but obviously the US is like massively
responsible for the French Revolution. M I wonder how responsible
we sort of are for the Spanish Civil War because
everything goes downhill after this.
Speaker 2: It's just passing on the Cubans. Let's sing the Cubans. Yes,
they started it, they got us into it. They did.
Speaker 1: It was like a weird like pet project Americans had
back then, where they're like, the Cubans deserve to be Cubans.
Speaker 2: Dope, I get it. And honestly, U Jake just sent
me an entire kind of slide show on Fidel Castro.
The more I learn about this man, the more I
cannot hate him. He had riz like he was so
goddamn cool. Yeah, the CIA tried to assassinate Castro six
hundred times.
Speaker 1: That's insane.
Speaker 2: Six hundred times.
Speaker 1: That's not a great batting average.
Speaker 2: We went zero for six hundred. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Six hundred, by the way, would be about the amount
of at bats you would have if you played every
single goal all one hundred and sixty two games. He'd
have about six hundred.
Speaker 2: Abes Castro's biggest vice was much like George Washington's ice
cream was ice cream. I actually read that today was
obsessed with dairy. Yes, yeah, so Jake probably sent it
to you as well.
Speaker 1: No, I just actually caught that online.
Speaker 2: Obsessed with dairy, had ice cream and milkshakes every day.
The closest we ever came to assassinating Castro was we
poisoned one of his milkshakes. But I guess he got
frozen and it like just got lodged on the side
and he didn't like ingest it. That's really funny. And
then he was obsessed with trying to create a supercow.
What Castro wanted to create super cows?
Speaker 1: He loved dairy, Okay, yeah, I guess it makes sense.
Speaker 2: And then he was trying to make like personal, like
dog sized cows for everyone's houses that which would have
been awesome.
Speaker 1: That's a man that thinks just a little cow you
can milk every day.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know they're not taking up too much space. Yeah,
you're kind of just standing in your kitchen backyard and
keep him in the house.
Speaker 1: Yeah, whatever, it's fine. You can probably train a cow
to shoot outside.
Speaker 2: Oh dude, if we had like little cow doors instead
of a doggy door.
Speaker 1: Yeah, be sick, damn it. We should get on that.
Speaker 2: Castro. I think he was a visionary.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he had a lot of big ideas.
Speaker 2: This is one of his best.
Speaker 1: But unlike Da Vinci, who also didn't get anything done,
I will give Castro credit.
Speaker 2: For his for his his big idea. He never made
the small cow, but he did make a super cow
that like produced I think a Guinness Book of World
records amount of milk in a day. It became a
national hero. The cow is just like cool. I forget
what it means in Spanish, but it's it translated to
white utter okay, So that was like his that was
it became a national hero of Cuba.
Speaker 1: That's awesome.
Speaker 2: And Castro, you know, he does have so much raise.
Speaker 1: He's just out there.
Speaker 2: He's so chill. I mean he did some terrible things, yeah,
awful things, but he kind of sounds like a good hang.
Speaker 1: He does something, all things considered. He can ball, good hang,
he can hoop a little bit. I'm just saying, on
my short list of people to go to, anyone from
history to go to a baseball game.
Speaker 2: With, I'm going with Castro. Yeah, he's on castro and
w like on both sides of me. You know, I
hate that. I would be a great time crushed nine
dogs and nine beers.
Speaker 1: But cas w who will drink of course?
Speaker 2: Yeah? But he also he's bringing some you know, white
powder to the party as well.
Speaker 1: You need fun w.
Speaker 2: Roberts also offered Burnham a command post in the rank
of captain, which was unusual for a non British citizen
in the British Army. Yeah for real. So he takes
the position and during the war he spent much of
the time behind Boar lines and was captured twice, escaping
both times.
Speaker 1: Feels like an easy place to get Wait, who is
the war was white on white, wasn't it?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, yeah, which I was not like super familiar with.
We don't really learn much about the Boer War.
Speaker 1: Why would we learn about the Boer War.
Speaker 2: It's like a two major powers though going at it.
Speaker 1: It's pretty recent war on the other side of the world.
It literally doesn't affect America in any way whatsoever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it's the Dutch in the English.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well is it the Dutch of Dutch?
Speaker 2: Just Dutch settlers, Dutch settlers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, So I don't even know if it's I
don't even know if the Dutch even give them.
Speaker 2: I think the Dutch still claim them.
Speaker 1: They're like, hey, I don't know, they can't do anything
I want.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I wonder if that kind of like globally stirred
the pot between those two powers.
Speaker 1: I don't think it did. I think the Dutch were
pretty much like nothing at that point. The Dutch are
one of those countries. I don't remember what happened in
the World War One, but I mean World War Two
they held out for like like three weeks or something.
I mean it was bad. They were rolled over.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean their heyday was like sixteen seventeen hundred
YEAP On June second, nineteen hundred, Freddy was on a
scouted mission alone when he was surrounded by bowers. He
tried to flee, but they shot his horse as he
was making his escape, and he sustained serious injuries when
the dead animal landed on him and knocked him unconscious.
Speaker 1: Don't do it.
Speaker 2: I guess the bowers just thought he was dead and
left him to wake up hours later alone. They shot
his horse, he fell, gets knocked out, and they think
he's just dead. Like we got him because they shot
him from the distance.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so they're just like whatever, check him for wounds,
like no bleeding, but be like it's weird. Not a
hole at him anywhere.
Speaker 2: So he completes his mission. He crawls up the bridge
that he was originally supposed to go to, placed two
charges and blew up the rail to disrupt the Bower
Gold and Supply transportation route. Good for him, blow up
a goddamn train.
Speaker 1: Bridge that's on the bores. You know, you run out,
you run out the hit right, run out the ground ball.
Speaker 2: I mean right now, UFC MMA. People are always complaining like, oh,
why do you have to hit him that second time
on the ground He was already knocked out until the
referee stops the fight. You gotta keep hitting them those
hammer fists.
Speaker 1: It's not on you. It's not on you to stop.
Speaker 2: It's on the ref So after he blew up the bridge,
he's like, I need to fucking hide somewhere. Finds an
empty animal enclosure. He spends two days in there, no food,
no water, He's bleeding. Yeah, it's like probably absolute.
Speaker 1: Misery, broken ribs and shit.
Speaker 2: And he starts to hear gunfire after a couple of days,
you know, no food, no water, you start to not care. Yeah,
you're just like let the chips fall where they may.
I'm gonna go towards the gunfire. Yeah, hopefully it's my guys.
If it's not, if it's the enemy, like whatever, they
can capture me, I'll be in a better spot. Right.
Thankfully it was the British. So they take him into
town where he received surgery for a torn stomach muscle
and a bursted blood vessel, and they say him not
eating or drinking water actually saved his life. Why because
I guess if he ate, it would have like pushed
out the torn stomach muscle and the blood. I don't know.
They said, it's just kind of like a passing comment
like it kind of it was a good thing he
didn't eat or drink. The luckiest man in the world.
I don't. Not a medical profession Yeah, maybe it's someone
of the medical professionals.
Speaker 1: It's like that interview. Have you read that interview after
the Titanic sank where they there this one guy's like
this one who's hammered, right, Yeah, the one guy's like
needling the chefs, Like yeah, he's like, what did you do.
Speaker 2: What exactly did you do?
Speaker 1: And it's like are you drink and the cold, well,
what did you drink? And another guy's like what, I
hardly think that, Mattos and the doctor like this is
all in the thing that one of the other guys
because I hardly think that Matos. And then the doctor's
like no, no, no, this is the point. Exactly what
did you drink? And he's like Brandy and then he's like, yeah,
they kept you alive, m because alcohol doesn't freeze and
you were full of it.
Speaker 2: You were ninety percent of He was ordered to England
by Lord Roberts and he was promoted to the Major
or the rank of major. He had dinner with Queen
Victoria and stayed in the Osborne House once he arrived
in England.
Speaker 1: She was a real star fucker. It feels like every
time we do an episode from this era on the
British and someone does anything.
Speaker 2: Queen Victoria shows up, it has a dinner with them.
Every time she had nothing to do.
Speaker 1: Those two Zulu commanders from Rourke's Drift also were invited
to dinner with Queen Victoria. Only one of them made
it because the other one was like he was out somewhere.
But yeah, like every time someone does anything, the Queen's like,
come eat dinner with me.
Speaker 2: A few months later, when Victoria died, King Edward the
seventh presented Freddie with the Queens South Africa Medal along
with the Cross of Distinguished Service Order. So he's a
war hero now, just not for us. I know, that's weird.
Burnham was also the inspiration for can you guess a
certain group in the both the US and internationally.
Speaker 1: The inspiration for a certain group in the US.
Speaker 2: Of young lads, the Boy Scouts, the Boy Scouts. Oh wow,
he was head Scout dude. No, Burnham was the mentor
and commander of the British soldier and eventual founder of
the Boy Scouts, Robert Baden Powell, and Powell is like adamant, like,
this is the guy, this is all of my work
is based on him.
Speaker 1: So the Boy Scouts wasn't even founded by an American.
M M, it's just based on an American.
Speaker 2: It's based on an America. I think that's better. The
dude did all the hard work, yeah, yeah, all the ground.
Speaker 1: I feel like Burnham did quite a bit of hard work.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, I mean so far let's just kind of
we're not even close to being done. O Jesus, I
mean we are, we are.
Speaker 1: But by the way, I will say, the Boy Scouts
is very British coded in a lot of ways. Neckerchiefs,
the socks, it makes sense.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's either you know, British coded or Wes Anderson code.
Speaker 1: And by the way, actually the Boy Scout colors themselves
are kind of like British Army at that time colors.
You've got the olive so the socks for example, olive
green and red tipped type of shit. Yeah, it's very
brit code.
Speaker 2: Inspiration for the Boys Scouts. He's assassinated an African drib leader. Yeah,
he fought in the Boer War.
Speaker 1: Was a Wild West gun slinger.
Speaker 2: Got into a family one of the biggest family feuds
in US Western history.
Speaker 1: And I guess it. Had a cup of coffee on
a gold rush.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, was Bros with Bros with Cecil Rhodes.
Speaker 2: Was a riding horseback and delivering telegrams.
Speaker 1: And at ten pay to pay off his like whatever
the opposite of Actually, I already know the hitler of
this week, but I'll.
Speaker 2: Save it for the for the end. Yeah, Okay, Baden
Powell considered Burnham to be the greatest scout alive. Burnham
later became close friends with others involved in the scouting
movement in the United States, such as one Teddy Roosevelt. Okay,
so him and Teddy become boys, or I guess there's
big of boys. As you can be with Teddy Roosevelt.
Speaker 1: He's kind of like mildly friends with everyone, like if
you've done anything, he's just like bully.
Speaker 2: He might be a starfucker.
Speaker 1: He's a starfucker.
Speaker 2: Between nineteen oh two in nineteen oh four, he was
employed by the East Africa Syndicate, for which he led
a vast mineral prospect and expedition in Kenya. Wasn't called
Kenya then. I don't know what it was called, but
it's Kenya now. Burnham returned to North America and for
the next few years became associated with the Jaque River
irrigation project in Mexico.
Speaker 1: So doing what is more like running security shit.
Speaker 2: Or security, but he's also he's invested in this land
and he wants them to damn this river for both
power reasons and water like across these different states. Yeah,
so he's actually pretty ground floor on that on electricity,
not electricity, but like damning this one river that ends
up providing a lot of power and okay, water too
that area. Yeah yeah. Burnham, together with Charles Frederick Hole,
made important archaeology discoveries of Mayan civilizations while they were there,
including the Esperanza Stone.
Speaker 1: What I don't know what that is.
Speaker 2: I don't either. They just found some Mayan was it like,
was it like the Rosetta Stone Esperanza Stone?
Speaker 1: I know I'm saying it was like the Mayan Rosetta zone.
Like what is the Esperanza What is the significance? Yeah,
I don't know. It's softcore history, dude, Yeah, fair enough.
Speaker 2: This was just kind of a passage.
Speaker 1: Oh, it's just a stone with some inscriptions on it.
Speaker 2: In nineteen oh nine, this was I think this is
his brightest moment. Okay, so William Howard Taft.
Speaker 1: Oh it should be noted by the way the Esperanza
zone has a swastika on.
Speaker 2: It makes you think about the mines, now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe the Spanish worth a good guys.
Speaker 2: The minds in Aztecs were ground floor Nazi.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Nineteen oh nine, Howard Taft and Porphyrio Diaz planned a
summit in El Paso, Texas and Warres, Mexico, a historic
first meant in between a US president and the Mexican president,
and also the first time an American president would cross
the border into Mexico.
Speaker 1: American presidents did not really go anywhere for a very
long time. Wilson was the first one to go to Europe.
Speaker 2: I know, it's weird. Yeah. Tensions were use on both
sides of the border, including threats of assassination.
Speaker 1: You know what is this O nine, nineteen oh nine,
nineteen oh nine, I mean they're losing. The Mexican War
is within living memory of nineteen oh nine.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, there's the older generations just like fuck them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like truly, like there are people alive, probably not
more than a handful that served, but certainly like ten
year olds who remember the war. The type of thing
like of the where World War two is right now,
basically because it's seventy years later, sixty no, sixty years later,
nineteen oh nine, eighteen forty eight. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So the Texas Rangers, four thousand US and Mexican troops,
US Secret Service agents, FBI agents, and US marshalls were
all called in to provide security. Burnham was put in
charge of a private security detail with two hundred and
fifty men, who, in addition to owning large investments in
Mexico with him and his boy Hammon, were close personal
friends with Taft. Okay, So Taft and his boy Hammon
went to Yell together. And he was also I guess
a vice presidential candidate in nineteen oh eight. Did he
not with Hammon? Guy? Yeah? Okay? Was he hot? Probably?
Speaker 1: I'm just wondering if Taff was the duff so.
Speaker 2: I mean compared to Taft and everyone's hot. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Half was the designated ugly fat friend at Yale and
they were just like crushing and Taft was really funny
or he was just rich, yeah, rich smart. He was
a president and a Supreme Court justice.
Speaker 2: On October sixteenth, the day of the summit, Burnham in
private C. R. Moore, a Texas ranger, discovered a man
holding a concealed palm pistol standing at the El Paso
Chamber of Commerce building along the procession route. Burnham and
Moore captured and disarmed the assassin, just a few feet
away from Taft In Diaz.
Speaker 1: Was as asshole, an anarchist or was this actually for
a reason.
Speaker 2: So my man stopped Taft from getting assassinated.
Speaker 1: Damn, dude, that time period, if you were a world leader,
you were just on a platter. I mean, my god,
it was just you just get in a car that
barely moves and you're like, hope no one walks up
to me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, hope. I didn't pass anyone off to him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean this is five years before Ferdinand gets it,
what probably ten years after McKinley got it.
Speaker 2: It's just it was open season.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: After the taf DA summit, Burnham led a team of
five hundred men guarding mining properties owned by Hammond, JP Morgan,
and the Gugenheims in the Mexican state of Sonora. So
if you want to ruam with some conspiracies there, maybe
he's tied up into some of this stuff. He's a freemason.
He's working for JP Morgan, the gugen Heims. Look, this
is just a useful guy. This guy is very useful.
Speaker 1: Who rich, powerful people pay to do things. No, you
don't need a conspiracy for it.
Speaker 2: His irrigation and mining projects were wrapped up nearly in
nineteen twelve, but a series of Mexican revolutions began. The
final blow to these efforts for his projects in Mexico
came in nineteen seventeen when Mexico passed laws prohibiting the
sale of land two foreigners. Burnham and Hammon carried their
properties until nineteen thirty and would eventually sell them to
the Mexican government.
Speaker 1: Yeah, still can't do that today, I believe.
Speaker 2: Burnham was also one of the eighteen officers selected by
former US President Teddy Roosevelt to raise a volunteer infantry
division for service in France in nineteen seventeen, shortly after
the US entered World War One.
Speaker 1: Goy Roosevelt was so thirsty.
Speaker 2: Congress gave Roosevelt the authority to raise up four divisions
similar to the rough Riders. However, Woodrow Wilson refused to
make use of Roosevelt's volunteers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I you know, say, knowing about Woodrow Wilson plenty,
But like at some point you gotta just be like Teddy,
it's the goddamn twentieth century.
Speaker 2: We're not doing this any Take a seat. Yeah, Like, relax,
go retire.
Speaker 1: We're not raising our own military units.
Speaker 2: Pick up a golfer.
Speaker 1: We're gonna govern It'll handle it, God damn it.
Speaker 2: So instead, Burnham spent the war doing counter intelligence for Britain,
not against US, but against like some German assets that
were in the country.
Speaker 1: Fritz were definitely doing intelligence every every single way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, certainly, as we.
Speaker 1: Saw with the Zimmerman Telegram episode.
Speaker 2: Much of it involved a famous Boer spy, Captain Fritz Duquane,
who became a German spy in both World Wars and
claimed to have killed Field Marshal Kitchener while en route
to meet with the Russians during the Second Boer War,
Burnham and Dukane were actually ordered to assassinate one another.
Hell yeah, But it was not until nineteen ten that
the two men actually met for the first time in Washington, DC.
Speaker 1: That's gnarly, like you each order to murder the other
one at one point.
Speaker 2: And they were there for the same cause in nineteen ten,
lobbying in favor for the importation of African game animals
into the US.
Speaker 1: Like, look, we wanted to murder each other, but I'm
telling you, if you can get us in a room,
it's pretty good proof you should bring some goddamn giraffes
over here.
Speaker 2: That's crazy. Spy and spy, yeah, and they're just we've
got to ride in together, got.
Speaker 1: To come together to get more gazelle in America.
Speaker 2: Dukan was twice arrested by the FBI, and in nineteen
forty two, he and thirty two other Nazi agents were
jailed for espionage in the largest spy ring conviction in
the US history.
Speaker 1: We kind of like, this is the thing people don't
remember about, I don't think about. I guess it. The
Germans really get a lot of shine from the Blitzkrieg.
I know you hate college football analogies on the show,
but I'll do it anyway to just imagine, like somebody
absolutely bought focks their non conference schedule, right, and there's
one P five team, and then we beat them by fifty.
I think they're pretty good. And then they go like,
I don't know, one game over five hundred the rest
of the year, but you still think they're good somehow.
That's kind of Nazi Germany, Like they really got a
lot of shine off thirty nine and forty, but like
we and the British just completely fucked them in the
spy game, I mean, and pulled their pants down like
it was bad. They were not good at it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the Germans just hired a random Spanish dude. Yeah
that just was like, I'm down for it, yeah, and
then immediately turned on it.
Speaker 1: I mean it was they were getting clowned everywhere, and
they really stopped winning battles after forty two. Certainly by
forty three, forty four to forty five, they weren't winning anything.
Forty two was probably a pretty mixed bag, to be honest,
like it as essentially as soon as the meat of
their schedule showed up. Yeah, it got bad.
Speaker 2: Up until the nineteen twenties, Burnham had lived all over
the world, but never really had a great deal of
wealth to show for his efforts. That's wild. I know.
Speaker 1: He was too busy working to get rich, and that's
that's a profound sentence.
Speaker 2: That wasn't until he returned to California, where in November
of nineteen twenty three he struck oil. Hell yeah, on
his land.
Speaker 1: He's just like good for him in La. Where was
he Pasadena.
Speaker 2: Dominguez Hills near Carson, California.
Speaker 1: Okay, so my uncle, my my far wealthiest uncle. He's
an oil man out in California up in Bakersfield.
Speaker 2: So I don't know where Carson Hills is. It's Domingez Hills, Domingez, Carson, California, Carson, California.
Speaker 1: Sorry, I wonder if that's near Baker's Field.
Speaker 2: Just look up a map Car.
Speaker 1: I am no, dude, that is like the middle of LA.
Speaker 2: There you go. No, no, look at this.
Speaker 1: Look at this.
Speaker 2: See where it says the Queen Mary Carson is right
above that. There you go.
Speaker 1: That is the middle of LA.
Speaker 2: There's ail on those fields. God damn, do we need
to demolish La and suck it dry? Man? You were
asking if that was the reason for all the fires.
Speaker 1: There's oil in them hills.
Speaker 2: There's oil on them hill real risky gambit to light
it on fire, I know, because then you could have
a Centralia, Pennsylvania situation on your hands.
Speaker 1: It's just the hills are the underneath the hills are
just constantly on fire, forever on fire. California's glowing hills.
Speaker 2: In a field that covered just two square miles, over
one hundred and fifty wells from Union Oil were soon
producing thirty seven thousand barrels a day, with ten thousand
barrels a day going to the Burnham Exploration Company in
the first ten years of operation, Burnham paid out ten
point two million in dividends.
Speaker 1: Good God, in what year? The twenties?
Speaker 2: Twenty three, he's pretty older.
Speaker 1: The sixties, I guess hmm, yeah, yeah, literally sixty two.
He still got so much life Like sixty three.
Speaker 2: Burnham supported the early conservation program of his friend Teddy
Roosevelt and Gifford pinch It. He and his associate John Pinchell. Yeah, okay, yeah,
they're gonna get angry if I said it wrong. I'm sorry.
I'm a moron. I mispronounced things all the time. Welcome
to the party, pal, what softcore history? All right?
Speaker 1: And it's softcore English too.
Speaker 2: It's just you know, I don't I just read it.
I've never heard it. Pinchow, Gifford Pinchew.
Speaker 1: I know, but like I don't know. That's a fairly
common last name, Pinchit, Pinchhow. It's a common last name.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I guess I should say, oh, I see hot.
I should just think some type of like soft ass
French pronunciation.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So they led novel game expeditions to Africa with the
goal of fine in large animals such as hippopotamuses, zebras,
and various bird species that might breed in the US
and become game for American sportsmen.
Speaker 1: I mean they were I don't know what the situation
was back then, but they were certainly ahead of the game.
Because I'm you can hunt that shit now in America
and here in Texas certainly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he gets a bunch of like different positions, and
he's members of like the California State Park Commission. He's
a founded member of the Save the Redwoods League. Loved
himself those redwoods.
Speaker 1: Look, you need trees, you gotta cut down trees, but
you don't need to cut down the cool ones.
Speaker 2: He was president of the Southwest Museum of Los Angeles
from nineteen thirty eight until nineteen forty and served as
both an honorary president of the Arizona Boy Scouts and
as a regional executive for the Boy Scouts of America
throughout the nineteen forties until his death in nineteen forty seven.
Speaker 1: That's like saying Jesus Christ, Sir came back to Earth
and served as an honorary bishop of the Archdiocese of Tucson.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like just hanging out like nice.
Speaker 1: Little group you got here. I'm its inspiration I'll be
in charge now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he is the Jesus figure of the boys, is
boy scout Jesus. It's a great comparison. Yeah, yeah, And
that is just kind of his wife dies. I think
we've long ago in thirty nine. So Blanche suffers a
stroke dies in forty three at the age of eighty three.
He remarries to a much younger typist.
Speaker 1: Which, hell, yeah, first off, much like him.
Speaker 2: Watch her get a bunch of money.
Speaker 1: Yeah, much like him. We all forgot Blanche.
Speaker 2: Existed, honestly, Like back then, it was just expected to
leave your wife and go wherever you want to. Yeah,
what happened to that? What happened to just do you
think of starting a family and leaving them for just adventure.
Speaker 1: She's like, you're leaving again, And he's like, I gotta work.
Speaker 2: She's like, you never bring money home until we found
oil on our property that I was here the time.
Speaker 1: You're like, well, you weren't digging. Maybe if you had
been digging on the property, you would have been making
the money. I got the shovel out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, that's just classical.
Speaker 1: She had at one point brought it up, like you
keep leaving for work? But we still don't have any money.
Can you maybe just stick around and work here.
Speaker 2: Stick somewhere honestly, Yeah, I don't even care if it's here,
Just keep a job, like.
Speaker 1: I was promoted to major. Well, they didn't give you anything.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the British British Army is not paying.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you had dinner with the Queen, Well, you paid
for the appearance.
Speaker 2: Can you, like, I don't know, take some of the
ornaments or the.
Speaker 1: Cups something, Yeah, steal a set of china from Queen
Victoria at that dinner. For the love of God, you
brought you haven't brought him a paycheck in a long time.
Speaker 2: And that is the story of our boy, Frederick Russell Burnham's.
Speaker 1: That's a life highly well lived.
Speaker 2: From Sue Reservation in Minnesota to California, I A, yeah,
and Africa in between.
Speaker 1: Alaska sort of World War One somewhere I don't know
where anything.
Speaker 2: He'd actually get deployed, I know.
Speaker 1: But he wasn't a spy.
Speaker 2: He was he was spying California, Okay, doing what again?
He was going after his uh okay, his main rival. Yeah,
he had since the bell Or War.
Speaker 1: Yeah, fair enough.
Speaker 2: It feels like a low stakes game and then they
just make good and the Germans become boys. They're trying
to get African game over to the US.
Speaker 1: Can you imagine getting that intelligence like that? You're just
like trying to figure out how the French are deploying
their troops, and you get a message and some guys
like they're they're they're they're building a new movie studio
in a lot of Angela.
Speaker 2: Like what the fuck?
Speaker 1: I don't care what.
Speaker 2: Oh, there's plenty of things to like look at in
the home front World War One. I guess plenty of
Germans there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I get if he's riling up Germans, I guess
that would be the espionage point of it, certainly.
Speaker 2: Otherwise it's like, well, you're not helping my dude saved
Taff's live. He did. He did stout the assassin within feet.
I've taken the shot.
Speaker 1: With his stupid little darringer. Such a bitch way to
kill someone, dude.
Speaker 2: I mean, fucking Lincoln got shot with a very tiny gown.
Speaker 1: But literally a darringer. Literally, it was.
Speaker 2: That's why he didn't die right away. Yeah, took like
twelve out.
Speaker 1: He was just sitting there unconscious, like please kill me
I think someone over his bed says he said like
he belongs to the ages now and Lincoln's still just like,
oh my god.
Speaker 2: Ah is a direct quote. That is a direct one.
I think it was Seward who said it.
Speaker 1: They were like, he belongs to the ages now his
Lincoln's just.
Speaker 3: Like oh somebody something.
Speaker 2: So yeah, life, well lived. What did you learn today?
Speaker 1: I mean, well everything, I guess. I learned that it's
a fool's errand to build a railroad from South Africa
to Cairo there's just no fucking way.
Speaker 2: But they'll still give out scholarships in your name. Yeah.
Speaker 1: As soon as you said Rhodes, I was like, oh,
this gotta be the same guy, because the Rhodes Scholarship
gets a lot of shit these days, of course, because
it's like, oh the guy who made it was racist
and blah blah blah blah blah.
Speaker 2: I learned it was a better time where you didn't
have to actually parent your kids, parent your kids. Wife.
Your wife.
Speaker 1: He was definitely cheating on her all the time.
Speaker 2: It was a man. I just don't buy that. He's
always getting overlooked. Being five four, maybe that's where the
money went, and being boyish, maybe that's where.
Speaker 1: The money went whores.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, he maybe had a couple side checks in
Africa and on his Parzona. Yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: I think that's that's why he was never rich. He
had to become so rich that the horse couldn't bankrupt him.
Speaker 2: For JP Morgan and the Googenheims.
Speaker 1: He also had to be a terrible negotiator. I'll take
what's fair. JP Morgan's like a dollar. Well, if you
say so, do you think that's fair? Yeah, if you
dig that's fair, you better. You're an honorable man. I'll
trust you. Uh yeah a dollar uh minus expenses.
Speaker 2: I mean what a life though, Like he wasn't even
supposed to stay alive. He was a silent baby in
a corn.
Speaker 1: That this is the one of the luckiest people that's
ever lived, Like to pure how many.
Speaker 2: Times just the sheer aura of him, yeah kept him alive.
Speaker 1: Yeah, riz out.
Speaker 2: The ass gets this short, his horse gets shot and
he just you know, gets knocked unconscious. They just leave him.
I guess he's dead.
Speaker 1: I wonder if they left him for dead, or I
wonder if they thought he was dead or honestly, like
broke his leg. And I mean a lot of times
people don't want to kill other people, like directly, so
they honestly might have known he was alive and they
were like, he's not gonna make it. I don't want
to nowhere, you really want to execute him, like execute
an unconscious man right now, Like there's a good chance
that happened to be honest. But yeah, I learned I
didn't know any any of this, including who this man was.
Speaker 2: Crazy a man that saved Taff's life.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know how different. History would have been,
probably different, but I don't know how.
Speaker 2: In some degree, Yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't know how. But yeah, I learned that. You know,
Arcsey of Arizona is older than the state of Arisota.
That is absurd, like twenty years older.
Speaker 2: Yeah, who's today's hitler?
Speaker 1: This guy's mom for making her husband move across the cove,
across the country and build a house die Honestly.
Speaker 2: When immediately goes back to her parents, it could have.
Speaker 1: Been her dad who was just like so full of himself.
He's like, We're going to move across the country and
I'll build a home, in which case he's his own hitler.
Speaker 2: That was just a part for the course back then.
Speaker 1: Stupid other Hitler. I guess if I had to pick
a secon secondary Hitler a Himmler, if you will. Oh, boy,
I don't even know, because we weren't really antagonists in
this story, just.
Speaker 2: The one guy that was ordered to assassinate.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but that's just business.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's nothing personal. No, And they came together as friends.
Speaker 1: Honestly. The next closest Hitler is this guy himself in
terms of just being.
Speaker 2: A probably nasty husband. Yeah, absent father. Although you know,
we took Roderick to Alaska with he did.
Speaker 1: He was like, you're old enough, now, boy twelve. I
was ten when I was adventuring.
Speaker 2: Take this pickaxe. Yeah, so sure.
Speaker 1: Also, this guy probably did kill a lot of Native
people who were just like, please, don't steal my land
for your metal horse.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So his daughter dies too, but it wasn't really
on him. Their town was being sieged.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's on him for moving them there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's true entirely. And then his youngest his wife,
like his youngest son also doesn't live very long. But
I feel like that's just being a kid back then.
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly.
Speaker 2: But Roderick lived a fulfilling life. Yeah, Roderick was they
got it right the first time they did. Started running
back for the University of Arizona.
Speaker 1: Back when that was a real position.
Speaker 2: A deck a deck A man started aviation in Guatemala.
Very random.
Speaker 1: That's a low bar to clear. I feel like you're
just like I want to be the foundator, like the
founder of aviation and just a country that doesn't have it.
You just like throw it dart at a map in
nineteen eighteen.
Speaker 2: You just make a paper airplane and go there yourself.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like, you know who doesn't have planes yet, the Philippines.
I'll go be the first guy to fly a plane. There.
You're God.
Speaker 2: That's today's episode, ladies and gentlemen, Thank you for tuning in.
We love you guys. Make sure to check out the
Patreon Patreon dot COM's last softcore history. We got two
additional episodes every week that drop on Wednesday and Friday,
And at this point we got like three plus going
on three and a half years of content, evergreen content,
a lot of a lot of green content. Got a
lot of different formats. We got sketches, we got game shows,
We had episodes just like this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I'm actually gonna work in earnest this week
after my wife and children leave town on the right
the next sketch this week so be gone, and I'll
have like hours and extra hours and hours and hours time.
Speaker 2: And you always complain about there not being anything to
read on the internet. Yeah, we have old blogs you
can go back and read you really want.
Speaker 1: To, actually fairly evergreen as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, I mean, but it's just old news or
news club.
Speaker 1: Let's me news blogging about news from the eighteen nineties,
which is sick.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I would love to start doing that again.
Speaker 2: But that's a lot of some good reads on the toilet.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of bandwidth. Yeah, but they are, and
they're in a special like list you don't have to
like scroll forever to find.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, there's there's a different collections I think.
Speaker 2: Collections and playlists or whatever.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, anyway, we love you guys. For Rob Fox, I'm
damn regester. You just got saucer.