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The Extra History Suggestion Survey is OPEN until 4/12
🕑 Added 2023-04-05 19:45:22 +0000 UTCHello, You Amazing Patreon Members!
Our next Extra History theme is Industrialists!
Ah, the Gilded Age. A time when titans of industry shaped the world, untouchable by any mortal or government. Andrew Carnegie was building skyscrapers into the sky (and accidentally drowning a town with his private lake). Edison was electrifying America (and occasionally elephants). And of course, how could we forget the unconventional car magnate who bought a popular media outlet to flood it with conspiracy theories (no, not that one), Henry Ford?
We're looking at the people who shaped the modern industrial world, from the paper wars of Pullitzer and Hearst to the bullets of the Homestead Strike. This series could be about a specific person like rail and shipping magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt, or an early Hollywood studio head like Warner Brothers founder Jack Warner. It could also be about an incident surrounding industrialists, such as the failure of the South Fork Dam (built to create a private fishing reserve for Carnegie and other magnates) killing 2,200 people in the Johnstown Flood. Labor actions like the 1909 Shirtwaist Strike or 1899 Newsboy Strike. And of course, there's the failed company town of Fordlandia, which Henry Ford set up in the Amazon to harvest rubber and still sits there empty and rusting today...
We're looking forward to checking out what you come up with!
You can enter YOUR suggestions for the topic HERE in this form.
Some notes about suggestions:
- If a suggestion we encounter only has enough research material/production scope for a one-off episode instead of a full series, we file it in a separate list to reference later when we are planning to schedule a one-off episode between series (this is true for every survey we do).
- Only one suggestion per person, please! Multiple suggestions from the same person during any given survey period will be manually removed. Extra History Suggestion Survey is OPEN until 4/12.
We can't wait to read all your suggested topics!
Comments
Joshua Evans-Lowell
This is an tricky topic to me because I kind of dislike it - or rather, I dislike the implied Great Man-ism that the Captains of Industry themselves championed, the idea that the industrial revolution was the work of a few genius buisnessowners rather than much larger economic and technological forces. It's also a tricky topic because you've already done so many of my favorite topics from this era (Trustbusting, Labor History, the rise of modern medicine...) One interesting theme in both the prompt and the comments is that every person mentioned is either British or (more often) American.
Joshua Evans-Lowell
My suggestion is the history of refrigeration / air conditioning (not quite a Great Man topic but the closest I can get. One of the most impressive feats of science of the era was the defeat of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. From the bizarre world of the Ice Trade to the first refrigerators to the rise AC, the summer blockbuster to the massive population shift this cause, IMHO this is an incredibly important but underdiscussed topic of the 19th and 20th century industrial age. And no I'm NOT biased just because it combines my two favorite topics: thermodynamics and weird historical trends!
The Rogue Chief
I wonder how this one will float 😏…
Extra History
Ohhhh that would be a really interesting one to do!
Extra History
This was 100% the first thing that came to mind for me!
The Rogue Chief
AC/DC… no not the band, the rivalry between electrical pioneers Tesla and Edison (and their respective backers Westinghouse and JP Morgan), which sparked (wink wink) a fierce feud over which would be the predominant brand, leading to a string of new innovations that would literally power the world, as well as some of the darker smear campaign stunts (ie the electric chair), some of which is still reminiscent in the modern brand wars we’re bombarded with in commercial advertising to this day
Andrew Schneider
Anything involving the Grant Cabinet’s corruption scandals, particularly if William Evarts has a bit part!
Moin Asmi
Glenn Curtiss and his contribution to aviation industry.
Gretchen Sand
John D Rockefeller
Extra History
OOOOooooo... that would be a hole to go down!
David Walker
P. T. Barnum
The FoE Three
A series about the life of Ullysses S. Grant.
Vivian Griffith
Isambard Kingdom Brunel: The man who built London
RedWizzrobe
I’ve been suffering from Newsies Brain-rot™️ recently, so a series about the 1899 Newsboy Strike is just what the doctor ordered.
David Chase
The "Fur War" between the Hudson Bay Company and the Northwest company
David Chase
John Jacob Astor
