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POLL: Pick the Next Extra History Series! "Adventure & Achievement!"
🕑 Added 2020-02-27 17:00:04 +0000 UTCThere were so many great suggestions for this one! We'll definitely have to revisit the theme in the future. But for now, here are the topic options!
What series would you like us to air on Extra History? Cast your vote(s) below and let us know!
Friendly reminder: You can vote for as many choices as you want! This style of voting helps us see what people are most interested in without having to make tough decisions between a couple of close favorites. The poll will end at 11:59 PM PT on Saturday, February 29th.
Current Schedule: Ibn Battuta --> Making the Middle East --> Your vote!
Destination, North!: Arctic Exploration
By the 19th century, Arctic exploration became a vital component of Europe's national security and trade policy. Whoever could discover a navigable route to the Pacific through the Northwest Passage (and the lesser-known Northeast Passage, going the other way via Russia) could avoid the taxing routes around Africa and South America. For a century, the great nations of Europe would send expedition after expedition to map and explore the northern regions—expeditions that did not always return. It's a story of hardship, politics, and a race to the pole for national pride. And it's a contest where a small handful of Scandinavian nations, well used to polar navigation and survival, will gain unusual prominence. From Ross to the doomed Franklin Expedition, from Nantucket whaleships to the incredible Roald Amundsen, we'll set course for adventure.
The Pacific Islands: Settlement and Discovery
The greatest voyage of discovery in Pacific history is one we know very little about. Over a period of centuries, the Austronesians came out of east Asia, through present-day Malaysia and Indonesia, then hooked up into the heart of the Pacific. We'll look at theories of Pacific settlement and examine the tools these mariners used, while exploring how modern historians know that inter-island trade existed between islands as distant as Tahiti and Hawai'i. Next, we'll move on to voyages by later European explorders—Magellan, Tasman, and Cook—that would bring the islands to the attention of the world and irrevocably change the environment, culture, and religion of their inhabitants.
Victorian Mountaineers: Champagne and Ice Axes
On July 14th, 1865, the Whymper Expedition achieve the first ascent of the Matterhorn. On the way down, a rope snaps, dropping four of the seven team members off a precipice. This triumphant tragedy capped the Golden Age of Alpinism, a time when multinational teams competed to be the first up Europe's greatest peaks. But this is not mountaineering as we know it today—these climbers wear wool jackets and ties, with handmade tools and frail ropes. They carry crates of champagne to drink on mountain summits. And the disaster on the Matterhorn will not stop them, but take the craze worldwide. British climber Lucy Walker and American Meta Brevoort—the former climbing in skirts, the other, scandalously, in men's attire—will race to be the first woman up the Matterhorn. Teams will rush up the slopes of Kilimanjaro and into the next frontier: the Himalayas. With a cast of characters that includes the American climber-surveyor Fanny Bullock Workman, occultist Aleister Crowley, and Gurkha soldiers, we'll explore the phenomenon of mountain climbing from early days to the doomed Mallory expedition on Everest—and look at forensic data from Mallory's body, discovered in 1999, to see whether he might've been the first to summit Everest.
P.T. Barnum: American Innovator, Questionable Human
Throw away any lingering image of Hugh Jackman. The Barnum you've been sold is via popular culture is, perhaps fittingly, not the real thing. In reality, P.T. Barnum's massively successful career in show business began by purchasing an elderly enslaved woman, claiming she was George Washington's 161-year-old nurse, working her to death then selling tickets to her autopsy. Though Barnum would later repent his participation in slavery and become an avid abolitionist, this dance of exploitation and entertainment would be an ongoing theme in his life and business. He would go on to build a museum of spectacle and education, one that showed Shakespeare plays while displaying whales in tiny tanks. Exhibit human beings (some who could consent, some who could not) as novelty acts, and campaign against Spiritualism. In doing so he would shape America's growing popular culture and pioneer use of mass media in advertising—and eventually turn these tools into a career in politics. A fascinating, contradictory, often repellant individual, Barnum would become a self-made icon and have a massive impact on entertainment. With a story that intersects with race, class, gender, colonialism, disability and education, to examine Barnum is to take a survey of how America, growing into its power, saw itself and the world.
Comments
Robert Rath
Hmmm... that’s a pretty good idea for a one-off.
Thomas Alfred Weaver
AUE AUE!!!!!
Curtis
No discussion of Arctic Exploration can be complete without a nod to Stan Rogers
Alex MacLeod
Having just recently watched The Terror, Arctic Exploration has my vote for sure!
Martin Verran
Here's hoping the Mutiny on The Bouny may be covered in the Pacific Islands Series, though mind you I also would love the Victorian Mountaineers as well.
Florian Schneider
Let's go arctic exploration! There's no adventure like a (frozen) ocean odyssey
