History Fix

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. 
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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”

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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. 
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Join the Patreon (patreon.com/historyfixpodcast)
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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”
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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. 
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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”
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Of course we’re going to El Dorado! Or, at least, we’re going to meet him? Because, when you take a look at the primary sources, where this myth of El Dorado, the city of gold, really came from, it becomes immediately apparent that El Dorado was never a city at all… he was a person. El Dorado, the gilded one, was first described as a wealthy leader who covered his body in gold dust and then washed it off in a sacred lake. The Spanish simply took that and ran with it. If this king had enough gold that he could wash it away, discard it, every single night, he must be extraordinarily wealthy. In fact, he must live in an entire city made of gold. But that, of course, was a stretch based entirely on cultural misunderstandings and downright greed. Nevertheless, it didn’t stop man after man - Spanish, German, English - from trying, and failing, to find this imaginary city of gold.  
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Sources:
BBC “El Dorado: The truth behind the myth”
National Geographic “The real history behind El Dorado, the legendary city of gold”
Wikipedia “El Dorado”
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I have wanted to talk about Sir Walter Raleigh for so very long. He had a lot of power and influence during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I and impacted the world we know today more than people realize. He's even the one who came up with the name Virginia! And yet, most don't know the first thing about Raleigh. Who was he really? And how did he go from the queen’s favorite golden boy to beheaded at Westminster in the span of just a few decades? Let's fix that. 
Episodes about the Roanoke expeditions: 
Roanoke Parts 1 and 2
The Found Colony of Roanoke?
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Join the Patreon (patreon.com/historyfixpodcast)
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Venmo @Shea-LaFountaine
Sources: 
Historic Royal Palaces “Sir Walter Raleigh”
History.com “Walter Raleigh”
North Carolina Museum of History “The Demise of Sir Walter Raleigh”
BBC “Walter Raleigh”
Sir Walter Raleigh’s letter to his wife (Matthew Lyons)
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