History Fix

This episode is the start of History Fix's first ever THREE parter! I initially thought I could cram it all into two episodes but pretty quickly realized it would take at least three. So, Spooktober is going to spill over a bit into November this year but I'm not hating it. In this episode, the first of three about the infamous Victorian era London serial killer known as Jack the Ripper, I'll set the scene in which the murders took place, explaining much needed context for understanding that world. I'll also walk you through what we know about the lives and final moments of the first two Jack the Ripper victims: Mary Ann "Polly" Nichols and Annie Chapman. 
Support the show! 
Join the Patreon (patreon.com/historyfixpodcast)
Buy some merch
Buy Me a Coffee
Venmo @Shea-LaFountaine
Sources:
Morbid “Jack the Ripper”
Absolute Crime “Jack the Ripper’s Killing Spree As It Happened”
Casebook.org “Jack the Ripper”
University of Michigan “Ripper Records: An Archive of Jack the Ripper and the 1888 Whitechapel Murders”
Shoot me a message!
Support the show

Spooktober continues with a strange and mysterious tale this week. But how strange and mysterious is it really? I’m talking, of course, about the infamous Bermuda Triangle, a loosely defined area off the southeastern coast of the United States where countless ships and even airplanes have experienced strange anomalies, many even vanishing without a trace. In this episode, I’ll seek to answer the question: is the Bermuda Triangle really all that dangerous? And, if not, where did its notorious reputation come from? Let’s fix that. 
Support the show! 
Join the Patreon (patreon.com/historyfixpodcast)
Buy some merch
Buy Me a Coffee
Venmo @Shea-LaFountaine
Sources: 
Encyclopedia Britannica “What is known and not known about the Bermuda Triangle”
History.com “What Is the Bermuda Triangle?
National Geographic “The mystery behind the Bermuda Triangle”
EBSCO “Bermuda Triangle” 
Encyclopedia Virginia “Sea Venture”
NOAA “What is a rogue wave?”
Boater Exam “6 Prevailing Bermuda Triangle Theories”
Shoot me a message!
Support the show

Last week's episode on the zombies of Haitian Vodou naturally led me to New Orleans. This week I'll fill you in on the gruesome acts of infamous female enslaver Delphine LaLaurie, who notoriously tortured and abused the people she enslaved at her French Quarter mansion in the 1830s. But this story has been quite twisted and sensationalized through the years as New Orleans tour guides scramble to sell historical ghost tour tickets. So how much of Delphine LaLaurie's story is true and how much was fabricated to meet the desires of an ever more desensitized audience... and at what cost? Let's fix that. 
Support the show! 
Join the Patreon (patreon.com/historyfixpodcast)
Buy some merch
Buy Me a Coffee
Venmo @Shea-LaFountaine
Sources: 
“Retrospect of Western Travel” by Harriet Martineau
“Ghost Stories of Old New Orleans” by Jeanne DeLavigne
“Journey Into Darkness: Ghosts and Vampires of New Orleans” by Kalila Katherina Smith
“Tales from the Haunted South: Dark Tourism and Memories of Slavery from the Civil War Era” by Tiya Miles
History.com “Arson uncovers torture chamber in mansion of New Orleans enslaver
New Orleans Historical “The LaLaurie Mansion”
Preservation Resource Center of New Orleans “What really happened at the LaLaurie House?”
Wikipedia “Delphine LaLaurie”
Wikipedia “Harriet Martineau”

Shoot me a message!
Support the show

It’s finally Spooktober! All October long I’ll be telling spooky, mysterious true stories from history, starting with zombies. Zombies are a big deal. They are all over pop culture in movies and TV shows, even video games. People love a good zombie apocalypse story. But the pop culture zombies of today are quite different than how zombies started out. They’re almost a different beast entirely. So where did the idea of a zombie come from? How did they get so twisted? And could zombies possibly be real? Let’s fix all that. 
Support the show! 
Join the Patreon (patreon.com/historyfixpodcast)
Buy some merch
Buy Me a Coffee
Venmo @Shea-LaFountaine
Sources: 
Harvard Magazine “The Secrets of Haiti’s Living Dead”
The Atlantic “The Tragic, Forgotten History of Zombies”
History.com “History of Zombies”
Ohio State University “The History of the Zombie in Popular Culture”
NPR “Zoinks! Tracing the History of “Zombie” From Haiti to the CDC”
New York Times “A Zombie Is a Slave Forever”
(Im)possibilities “The History of Zombies”
Encyclopedia Britannica “Vodou”
University of Delaware “The Roots of Haitian Vodou”
Shoot me a message!
Support the show

Despite the results of my recent poll, I'm making the executive decision to cover Francisco Pizarro and the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire in 1532. But, trust me, you won't be disappointed. This story is insane. We have rags to riches characters, we have mighty kings, we have brothers fighting amongst themselves, partners backstabbing each other. We have lies and deceit and secret ambushes. We have murder, lots and lots of murder, and we have the rise of a new world order, for better, or for worse. In the end, we’re left with a lot of questions here. How did such a small rag tag group of Spaniards, less than 200 men, manage to take down the largest empire in the world? And what lessons can we learn from mistakes made by the Inca? Yes the Inca. You thought I was gonna say Spanish.  Let's fix that. 
Support the show! 
Join the Patreon (patreon.com/historyfixpodcast)
Buy some merch
Buy Me a Coffee
Venmo @Shea-LaFountaine
Sources: 
History.com “Francisco Pizarro Traps Incan Emperor Atahualpa”
EBSCO “Pizarro Conquers the Incas in Peru”
World History Encyclopedia “Pizarro and the Fall of the Inca Empire”
National Geographic “Inca Civilization”
Encyclopedia Britannica “Francisco Pizarro”
Shoot me a message!
Support the show