December 25^th, 1914. France.

It’s nighttime as we’re inside the German trenches during the Great War. On the screen we can see two German soldiers. One of them picks up a Christmas tree and hoists it above the wooden walls of the trench. As he does, we can see there’s some garland hanging off one of the wooden beams in the trench.

The tree he’s putting up isn’t a huge tree. It’s small enough that he can carry it with one hand, causing the small ornaments on it to jingle as he places it at the top of the trench. Then, the other soldier steps up. He has another tree. Again, the ornaments jingle as he places it above the trench. This time we can see a little better that there are some sort of lights on the tree, too.

Now we’re in the middle of No Man’s Land—that’s the space between trenches—as a soldier is crawling along the snowy ground. While we can’t see them, we can hear there are some bagpipes playing. That’s not German, which indicates there are probably some Scottish soldiers somewhere nearby passing the time with sounds of home.

The soldier looks up to see a row of Christmas trees being placed above the German trenches. One, two, three…there are at least seven trees we can see with lights on them. He must think something is up, because immediately he rolls over and down into a nearby trench.

A soldier in the trench notices him and, in French, identifies him as a Lieutenant. We can see there are a number of other soldiers sitting around. It looks like they’re eating, but it’s interrupted by the new soldier’s arrival. The French Lieutenant says to come quickly, something odd is afoot.

One of the soldiers makes his way to the top of the trench where he carefully peers over. The sight he can see is surely something odd. All along the German trenches are scores of Christmas trees. It’d be hard to see them if not for the dots of Christmas lights on the trees. The soldier tells the Lieutenant that he doesn’t like it. This has to be a diversion or some sort of trick.

Now, the movie cuts to a different scene. The bagpipes we could hear in the distance before are being played right in front of us now for a bunch of soldiers around the man playing them. As his song comes to an end, everyone cheers his playing.

While the movie doesn’t say it here, we can tell from the actor playing the guy playing the bagpipes, it’s a character named Father Palmer. He’s played by Ben Chaplin in the movie.

The movie cuts again, this time we’re back in the German trenches. Someone is playing the harmonica and, along with him, a German officer starts singing in a clear, beautiful voice. We can tell from the actor that this is Nikolaus Sprink. He’s played by Benno Fürmann in the movie.

I won’t even attempt at singing it, but we can clearly tell the words he’s singing are, “Stille Nacht.”

Translated to English: “Silent Night.”

With an overhead shot of the German trenches, we can see the row of Christmas trees on the right side. In the center of the frame are a bunch of German soldiers all gathered around to hear their talented comrade sing to them.

As they do, the movie cuts back to Father Palmer with the Scottish soldiers. He smiles as he obviously recognizes the tune.

In the distance we can hear the singing, “All is calm, all is bright.”

Well, it’s in German, of course, but that’s the translation for where he is in the song.

Back in the German trenches, the song continues as we can see the two main characters in the movie: Daniel Brühl’s character, German officer Lieutenant Horstmayer, as well as Diane Kruger’s character, Anna Sörensen. They’re both enjoying the sounds of the song in what is truly a silent night in the middle of a terrible war.

The movie cuts to soldiers in other trenches, including the Scottish bagpipe player. They’re silent as well, also enjoying Sprink’s spectacular singing.

“Sleep in heavenly peace.”

When the movie cuts back to the German trenches, Sprink starts the second verse, “Sile—” He stops short, and everyone looks toward the direction of the camera.

The Germans stopped their music, but we can still hear the tune of the second verse continue.

Now we can see why. Father Palmer has picked up his bagpipes and started playing exactly where they were in a seamless transition. Sprink pauses for only a brief moment as he hears the bagpipe, then he continues on singing to the bagpipes right where it’s at in the song.

“…at the sight. Glories stream from heaven afar,” he belts out.

As Sprink continues singing, “Heavenly hosts sing Alleluia,” he starts moving, climbing to the steps of the trench near the Christmas trees. From across No Man’s Land, the French soldiers can still see the line of trees along with Sprink. Of course, they don’t know his name. They just know there’s a lone German soldier who is singing.

“Christ our Savior is born.”

One of the French soldiers takes aim with his rifle, but the French Lieutenant from earlier puts his hand on the rifle, stopping him.

Horstmayer calls to the Sprink to get down just as the verse comes to an end. Then, something Sprink’s attention changes to a different direction as the French soldiers start cheering and applauding the song. He looks over in their direction and he can see all the French soldiers sitting at the top of their trench watching him. They’re not huddled in the safety of their trenches, they’re all out in the open, cheering and clapping.

Sprink simply nods his approval.

Now the camera shifts to Father Palmer. He stands up. Taking a deep breath, he starts playing the opening notes to, “O Come All Ye Faithful.”

The true story behind this week’s event depicted in the movie Joyeux Noel

That sequence comes from the 2005 movie called Joyeux Noel. The event it’s depicting is what we now know as the Christmas Truce, which happened this week in history on December 25^th, 1914.

Now, the way things happen in the movie isn’t what really happened…and to be fair, the movie is one of those films that tries to capture the essence of a historical event instead of being entirely accurate to the details of history.

A big reason for that is because, well, the Christmas Truce is something that didn’t happen in just one location. There are reports of it happening all over the Western Front and even some on the Eastern Front, too.

Oh, and this is all unofficial—there were no orders for a peace at Christmastime. It was simply that the soldiers recognized what day it was and essentially decided that Christmas was not a day for war. Because it wasn’t official, that’s why we have to rely on the reports of soldiers who were there instead of any sort of officially documented orders or anything like that.

With that said, the way the movie shows it happening certainly could be how some of it really went down because we do have reports of soldiers singing as being the way the truce started.

In the movie, we see the German soldiers start singing first, and there certainly are reports of the Germans being the ones who started it. This is a letter that a British rifleman named J. Reading wrote to his wife at home where he referenced the truce:

I hope you all had a merry Christmas; let me tell you how I spent mine. My company happened to be in the firing line on Christmas eve, and it was my turn – with a non-commissioned officer and four others – to go into a ruined house and remain there until 6.30 on Christmas morning. During the early part of the morning the Germans started singing and shouting, all in good English. They shouted out: “Are you the Rifle Brigade; have you a spare bottle; if so we will come half way and you come the other half.” At 4 a.m part of their Band played some Christmas carols and “God save the King”, and “Home Sweet Home.” You could guess our feelings. Later on in the day they came towards us, and our chaps went out to meet them. Of course neither of us had any rifles. I shook hands with some of them, and they gave us cigarettes and cigars. We did not fire that day, and everything was so quiet that it seemed like a dream. We took advantage of the quiet day and brought our dead in.

Another private reported on the truce from a different location:

Christmas in the trenches! What a time? “Peace on earth, goodwill toward men.” It is hardly to be believed, but nevertheless it is quite true that such was the case this Christmas. Who can realise it? It will astound everyone who hears about it, which everyone will do in good time. Of course I am speaking about the part of the firing line we are situated in. On Christmas Eve at four p.m. we had orders that unless the “enemy” advanced we were not to fire, and the same applied to Christmas Day. Whether the Germans had the same order or not I don’t know but no shot was fired on either side. In Christmas Eve we shouted “Compliments of the Season” to each other, and passed pleasant remarks. We sang the “Austrian Anthem” and they replied with “God save the King.” On Christmas Day after service in the trenches, we went halfway and we shook hands, and had a fine crack with them. Quite a number of them speak English. I got one’s autograph and he got mine, and I exchanged a button with another, and exchanged cigs and got cigars galore. Altogether we spent a very pleasant two hours with them, and found them a nice lot of fellows.

These are the sort of reports that soldiers started sharing about what happened that Christmas. A lot like what we see happening in the movie, the Christmas Truce happened between collections of French, German, Belgian, and British troops all up and down the line.

Some have estimated the number of soldiers who participated in some form of Christmas Truce at about 100,000. As amazing a number as that is, that’s not the entirety of the troops stationed in the trenches. It was still in the middle of the war, and there was still fighting in a lot of areas.

But it was also a lot more than just one location. In some areas, the British and German troops crossed into No Man’s Land to shake hands, exchange trinkets, sing songs together and, for all intents and purposes, have a little holiday party.

At one location, the British and German soldiers even played a game of football in No Man’s Land. That’s soccer for those of us in the United States.

If you want to watch the Christmas Truce as it’s portrayed in the movies, that is the point of the 2012 Joyeux Noel movie, so I’d recommend watching the whole thing! But, the truce itself that we started our segment with today is at 46 minutes into the movie.

And if you want to hear more about the true story, scroll back to episode #31 of Based on a True Story.

December 29^th, 1890. Wounded Knee Creek, South Dakota.

We’re outside in the middle of the night. There’s a small, log cabin in the center of the frame. It’s a quiet scene until we see movement in front of the house. It’s a dog that was sleeping, but has obviously been alerted by something. The dog starts to bark at something we can’t see yet.

Inside the cabin, a sleeping man and woman are in bed. The barking dog wakes them up, though, just in time for the front door to be kicked in by a group of armed officers. In a stern voice, one of the officers tells the man in bed to get dressed. We can tell from the actor this soldier is a character named Bullhead. He’s played by Sean Wei Mah in the movie.

In the next shot, it’s daytime now and we can see Adam Beach’s character, a doctor by the name of Charles Eastman helping an older man’s eyesight. Charles notices a commotion outside. Looking through the front window, he sees a bunch of people running through the streets of town, screaming, and in a panic.

The camera focuses on Anna Paquin’s character, Elaine Goodale, as she rushes to help a young woman who appears to be injured. She tells someone to get Dr. Eastman, but even before we see that happening, we can see Charles grabbing his bag and rushing out the door.

Back in the city streets, there’s a scene of chaos as townspeople are gathering around a bunch of people who are bleeding. It’s not just the young girl we saw a moment ago.

But, that’s the one the movie focuses on for the moment, as some townspeople help her onto a stretcher and carry her into a nearby building. In the building, which we can see some remaining Christmas decorations still hanging, there are also a lot of other injured people are already gathered. Immediately, Charles starts working on the young woman’s injury: A gunshot wound to the neck. He manages to get the bullet out of her neck and asks her what happened.

She’s crying, covered in blood, but she manages to tell Charles what happened. As she does, we see a flashback of the event.

She says they came to arrest Sitting Bull, and we see a repeat of the scene we just heard described of the armed officers kicking in the door of the cabin, waking up the sleeping man and woman.

“We tried to stop them,” she says, and in the flashback, we see a bunch of armed men blocking the officer’s path just outside the cabin’s front door. An argument ensues as they try to stop the officers from dragging Sitting Bull away. Before long, one of the officers pulls out his pistol and waves it at the crowd of people.

“Stay back!” he orders.

For a moment, everyone’s attention is distracted by a white horse in the distance. Even the officers are watching the horse. Then, one of the men in the crowd aims at a soldier and shoots. One of the officers shoots Sitting Bull point blank in the head, and all hell breaks loose.

The true story behind this week’s event depicted in the movie Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee

That sequence comes from the 2007 movie called Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. The event it’s depicting is what we now know as the Wounded Knee Massacre, which happened this week in history on December 29^th, 1890, near Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota.

It was the deadliest mass shooting in American history when the U.S. 7^th Cavalry Regiment shot and killed almost 300 Lakota people—most of them civilians. There are some varying accounts on the exact number of people.

To understand the true story, we’ll need to start with a crash course on the Ghost Dance.

As the name implies, it was a dance used in a spiritual ceremony. First reports of it were in 1899, but by the time 1890 rolled around it had turned into more of a spiritual movement as it spread through tribal Nations from Nevada, California, Oklahoma, and, of course, South Dakota.

Meanwhile, the U.S. government had passed the Dawes Act in 1887 which had the purpose of assimilating Native Americans into the United States. It was eventually repealed in 1934, but by that time about two-thirds of Native American land was lost as they were forced to sell or swindled out of their lands or worse.

Part of the Ghost Dance movement taught that spirits would bring peace and prosperity to indigenous peoples. The part the U.S. didn’t like about that was that the way Ghost Dance adherents thought the spirits would bring about that peace was by stopping the American expansion from taking their lands.

Now, one of the most prominent believers in the Ghost Dance movement was the Chief of the Sioux Nation, Sitting Bull. He was the one who led warriors in a victory over Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer at Little Big Horn in 1876.

Before long, the U.S. prohibited Ghost Dance ceremonies because they thought it was a threat to whites. Basically, the U.S. was afraid of the religious beliefs and sought to find a way to end it. That’s a story for another day, but as you can tell, between the Dawes Act and the Ghost Dance—tensions were high between the U.S. government and the tribal Nations who were on the lands before the U.S. existed.

In a now infamous message from November 18^th, 1890, an agent named Daniel F. Royer sent this telegram to the commissioner of Indian Affairs:

Indians are dancing in the snow and are wild and crazy. I have fully informed you that employees and government property at this agency have no protection and are at the mercy of these dancers. Why delay by further investigation? We need protection, and we need it now. The leaders should be arrested and confined in some military post until the matter is quieted, and this should be done at once.

So, they needed protection from…dancers?

That brings us to the movie’s timeline because the scene that we see in the movie starts with Sitting Bull being arrested.

At the beginning of segment today I gave the date of December 29^th, 1890. We’ll find out why that is here in a moment, but it was a couple weeks earlier when the U.S. Army decided to arrest Chief Sitting Bull as an attempt to stop the Ghost Dance ceremonies.

So, at about 5:30 AM on December 15^th, 1890, Sitting Bull’s house was surrounded by about 40 officers. According to some reports, 39 officers from the Bureau of Indian Affairs and four volunteers. They were led by a man named Lieutenant Henry Bullhead, which is the man we see telling Sitting Bull to get dressed in the movie.

Some say the officers knocked before entering, so a little different than just bursting in like we see in the movie, but then again, we can probably take that with a grain of salt since those reports come from the officers—the aggressors. But, the concept the movie shows gives the gist of what happened.

The officers were there to arrest Sitting Bull. He didn’t want to go, and others in the village tried to stop the officers from arresting their Chief. Things turned violent when someone in the village shot Bullhead who, in turn, shot Sitting Bull in the chest. Then, it was another officer named Red Tomahawk who shot Sitting Bull in the head. In the aftermath of Sitting Bull’s death, many Sioux fled the area fearing for their own lives.

But, as I mentioned before, that was on December 15^th. It also didn’t happen at Wounded Knee. Sitting Bull was assassinated in Standing Rock Reservation, roughly 270 miles, or 434 kilometers, away from Wounded Knee.

So, that brings us to the events of the Wounded Knee Massacre itself.

It’s only natural that the fleeing Sioux, my research indicates most of them were Lakota, would look to Sitting Bull’s half-brother. That’s Chief Spotted Elk, and he was convinced he and other chiefs would be targeted as Sitting Bull was. They were heading toward Pine Ridge, which was an Indian reservation established in 1889 in the southwest corner of South Dakota.

On December 28^th, U.S. Army troops caught up with them as they neared their destination and told Spotted Elk and the others to camp at the nearby Wounded Knee Creek. The next morning, the commanding officer in the U.S. Army, Col. James Forsyth, entered the Lakota camp with the 7^th Cavalry and ordered them to lay down their weapons. Once they’d done that, Forsyth said he’d take them to a new camp.

The Lakota feared this meant they’d be taken away from South Dakota and their territories altogether, so some of them started doing the Ghost Dance. Remember, it was essentially a religious belief that this would help the spirits protect them.

If they were Christians, they probably would start praying. For Lakota, they turned to the Ghost Dance. While that’s not a 1-to-1 equivalency since obviously Christianity is very different than the religious beliefs of the Lakota, I only mention that to help you understand how it’s perfectly normal for people to turn to spiritual and religious beliefs when they’re afraid.

However, many of the soldiers in the U.S. 7^th Cavalry had been taught the Ghost Dance was a prelude to war. They thought it meant they were going to be attacked. On edge, it only took for one of the dancers to grab dirt from the ground and throw it into the air—which was merely part of the ceremony—for the soldiers to assume this meant something more than it actually did.

A massacre ensued.

While the Lakota fought back, they were outnumbered and outgunned.

Men, women, and children—including many babies—were shot and killed at close range. Some were killed at distance, as well, if they tried to flee.

It took hours, but when the shooting finally stopped, the Army gathered their own dead and left the dead and injured Lakota to freeze in a blizzard that hit. When they returned a few days later, the Army stripped many of the Lakota naked and took souvenirs from the dead before throwing them into a mass grave.

In the massacre, about 25 U.S. Army soldiers lost their lives. Most historians think a majority of those deaths came as a result of friendly fire due to the chaos of it all. And, as I mentioned at the beginning of this, estimates are that at least 300 Lakota were killed.

Now, I know it’s Christmastime and it’s supposed to full of warmth and happiness. I hope this doesn’t damper your holiday, but I believe it’s important to remember even these sad moments in history, so we can both ensure we don’t repeat such horrific events as well as ensuring those who died unnecessarily aren’t forgotten.

If you want to watch how the 2007 movie Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee portrays this event…as you can tell, it’s not a happy story. I’d highly recommend viewer discretion, because the scenes are tough to watch, but it starts around an hour and 46 minutes into the movie.

December 31^st, 1967. Las Vegas, Nevada.

It’s a beautiful day with white clouds against a blue sky. In the foreground we can see Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. In fact, the movie gives us the date and location: January 1, 1968. Caesars Palace, Las Vegas.

There are huge crowds of people all gathered outside for the show. In the center, though, are the huge fountains for the hotel and casino. No one is around those. All the crowds are blocked off from being able to get there. We see what we can presume are journalists setting up a camera to film the event.

The movie cuts to a shirtless man wearing white pants in what looks to be the inside of a trailer. We can tell from the actor that this is George Eads’ character, Evel Knievel. He has an nearly empty bottle of liquor in his hand. After taking one last swig, it’s completely empty now and he searches the cupboards for a replacement.

From inside the casino, we can see a couple guys overlooking the crowds below. One of them is Fred Thompson’s character, Jay Sarno. They seem happy with the attendance.

Back in the trailer, in walks Eric Gordon’s character. He’s cast as…well, no one. His character doesn’t seem to have a name. He tells Knievel he hid the other bottle of Turkey so it couldn’t get into trouble. But, he’s also not good at hiding, because Evel finds it anyway. He takes another swig from the fresh bottle, then looks outside at the crowd before putting on a white jacket with red and blue stars and stripes that matches his pants.

Outside, Evel has a helmet on as he gets ready on his motorcycle. The helmet is also red, white, and blue, with his name written on the front.

A brief moment later, and Evel revs the engine. The crowd cheers louder as his motorcycle races off down the ramp. Right at the top of the ramp, he stops. The crowd continues cheering. Up in the casino office, Jay Sarno says even if Evel doesn’t make the jump, it’ll keep ‘em happy at the tables whichever way it goes.

Back on the ground, Evel returns his motorcycle to the start of the ramp. He revs the engine a few times, looking out at everyone. He waves to the crowd. Then, staring down the ramp, the tires squeal as the motorcycle races forward. Faster, faster. He hits the end of the ramp and goes airborne—over the fountains, over everything. It’s an amazing sight to see him and the motorcycle flying through the air.

On the other side, there’s another ramp. He hits it…and everything goes wrong.

The true story behind this week’s event depicted in the movie Evel Knievel

That sequence comes from the 2004 movie called Evel Knievel. The event it’s depicting is when the daredevil Evel Knievel jumped over the fountains at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, which happened this week in history on December 31^st, 1967.

Quick side note, Evel was not his real first name. That was a stage name. His real name was Robert. But, everyone knows him as Evel Knievel so that’s what we’ll call him.

Right away, let me address something because just a moment ago I said the movie gave us the date of January 1^st, 1968. That’s the text on screen in the movie as it sets up the event.

The movie got that text wrong.

It was not a New Year’s Day jump, but rather a New Year’s Eve jump on December 31^st, 1967. So, if the filmmakers didn’t even get the text on the screen correct, that probably gives you a good indication of how accurate the movie is overall.

With that said, though, the movie was correct to show that the jump didn’t go well. But, there’s more to the story that we don’t see in the movie.

At the time, the jump was the longest attempt for Evel Knievel at a massive 141 feet going over the fountains at the Caesars Palace hotel and casino. That’s about 43 meters. Something else we don’t see happening in the movie, at least it’s not obvious to me when I was watching it, is the reason for why Knievel didn’t make the jump.

Basically, as he was on the takeoff ramp, something caused the motorcycle to lose power right at the last moment. It decelerated just enough to give him power for a jump, but not enough power to make a 141-foot jump. Fortunately, they had a safety ramp set up on the other side in case of emergencies. Unfortunately, when Knievel’s motorcycle hit the safety ramp, the handlebars were ripped out of his hands and a lot like we see happening in the movie, he tumbled over the handlebars to the pavement below.

His hip, wrist, and both ankles were fractured. He had a concussion, and his femur and pelvis were crushed. It was a terrible accident that landed him in the hospital for the better part of a month.

But, in the end, it ended up being a great thing for Evel Knievel because the crash made him more popular than ever. Before this event, while he’d done a number of stunts, most people still didn’t know who Evel Knievel was. In fact, he had make up interest through phone calls to Caesars’ casino CEO Jay Sarno, that’s Fred Thompson’s character we see in the movie. He pretended to be from Sports Illustrated or ABC to call Sarno and make him think people were interested in seeing Evel Knievel’s jump.

It worked. Evel Knievel got the gig.

In the movie, we see a woman filming it all. And in the true story, Knievel had his wife at the time, Linda Evans, film it all with the intention of producing a film about it to garner some semblance of fame for Knievel. When Evans’ camera captured Knievel’s disastrous crash, the footage made Knievel more famous than he could’ve hoped.

If you want to watch the event that happened this week in history as it’s shown in the movie, it starts at about 28 minutes into the 2004 movie called Evel Knievel.

Dan LeFebvre: Christmas today is filled with festive family gatherings, great food, gift giving, decorations. And I’d like to start by focusing on one of those decorations, the nativity. Now the reason I’d like to start there is because for a long time, the nativity scenes shaped how I used to imagine that first Christmas might have been.

And. I don’t think I’m alone there. After all, in the Christian tradition of the nativity scene, it’s supposed to depict that first Christmas as told from Luke 2 verse 7. Now, not all nativity scenes are the same, but generally speaking, it looks pretty similar. You have Mary and Joseph, they’re looking over a baby in a manger that looks kind bassinet, very uncomfortable looking.

And then sometimes you have three wise men in there and there’s almost always hay. animals and all of it’s set in a standalone building by itself. It looks like a barn because the inn was overbooked as the Bible says. Of course, I don’t expect anyone to assume that the inn is a holiday inn or motel six, like we think of the word today, but it doesn’t stop there because when you explain the manger in your book, my, in my mind, that’s a very different picture from the wooden bassinet looking thing.

That I see in a lot of nativity scenes and I think a lot of people today might have a mental image of what that first Christmas might have looked at and have it be driven by A nativity scene that they see, but that might be wrong. Could you paint a picture of what that first Christmas might’ve actually looked like?

[00:03:39] Heather LeFebvre: Sure. So what scholars right now think that first Christmas probably looked like was a bustling household in Bethlehem. Just a regular house that a regular everyday family would live in. And that house would have been divided into two parts. There would have been the part for the family to actually live in, eat, have their food, sleep.

And then in the same structure under the same roof would be a part of the house that would be for keeping their animals, especially overnight. So yes, there might be some hay there and probably a manger. Although a manger would have most likely been made out of stone, a stone trough that was chiseled out and that manger probably functioned as the separation between the animal side of the home and the people side of the home.

So what most likely was happening in the first Christmas was Joseph and Mary arrived in Bethlehem during a very crowded time because of the Roman census, when everyone was returning to their home. Their hometown. So it was like we do at Christmas where we all travel back to see our relatives and our houses are filled to bursting with people sleeping on the floor and all the spare bedrooms.

So Joseph went to his relative’s house. And their guest room was full. There was no place for them to stay. All the guest rooms were probably full in Bethlehem. And the only place for them to rest for Mary to have this baby was in the animal side of this house. The manger would have provided maybe the only safe place to place a baby so that it wouldn’t be trampled on the floor by either the animals or the visiting relatives.

I Think we got the idea of an inn from medieval interpretations of the Greek word kataluma, which can better be translated as a guest room. So when Joseph knocked on the door, there was no room in the guest room. Or Mary and Joseph. So they had to be put in the animal side of the house. So probably the first Christmas was loud, hot, smelly, okay.

Yes. Bustling with people. And, maybe they took the animals out, so Mary and Joseph could have a little privacy to have the baby, but maybe the animals were there, too. Yeah, quite a different picture than we all grew up with, but scholarship changes over time, and thanks to archaeology and Greek scholars, this is probably closer to what really happened.

[00:06:21] Dan LeFebvre: Yeah, that, that’s a very different picture than than I think of when I see that, the nativity scenes and things, it seems quiet and by itself and, it is its own building. And so you don’t expect a lot of people there. And a lot of the animals are all well behaved and they’re all smiling and everything.

Yeah.

[00:06:40] Heather LeFebvre: wE like this romantic idea of quiet and peaceful and everyone wants. It’s one side in their mind at Christmas, but I think it was a lot more like our real lives in general, crazy and chaotic and

[00:06:52] Dan LeFebvre: bustling. In your book, you mention how no one kept track of birthdays back then, which makes sense from a historical perspective, but then to contradict that, we still know when Christmas is.

And so they had to have tracked something if that was, if that was the celebration of Jesus’s birth. But. that kind of contradicts not tracking birthdays. Can you give an explanation of how we began celebrating Christmas on December 25th?

[00:07:23] Heather LeFebvre: This really puzzles scholars about exactly when and how it came about, but the best sort of way we can explain it is, yeah, no birthdays were being kept written down around Jesus time.

However, as Christians moved into the Roman Empire, we went through the first few centuries of church history Roman persecution came on hard, and in fact, many Christians were put to death. And the early church was in hiding. They wanted to remember these Christians that died and they started recording death dates.

The death date started to be written down and remembered by the early church, and there was a list was compiled that was passed around many Christians knew about. Over time, this list began to include the a remembrance for Christ’s baptism. And of course, a remembrance for his death and resurrection, which that date was easy to come up with because it always fell with the Jewish celebration of Passover.

So there’s no trouble on finding a date for that. There wasn’t any record of Christ’s birth. PeOple had to come up with an explanation of when that could be, and there’s all sorts of lines of it would be nine months from his conception, and we’ll set his conception in March 25th, so you count nine months, and that’s December 25th.

Everyone had their own ideas for this. However, there was something else going on in the culture, and that was the fact that the Roman culture was celebrating already, Of a huge festival in December for a week called the festival of Saturnalia. And it was accompanied by feasting people being off of work.

A lot of merriment drinking going on. They also had another separate festival specifically on December 25th. Which was their winter solstice date, and that was the festival of the unconquered sun. And so there’s a lot of speculation that as Christianity was growing and spreading in Rome, this December 25th date, which was already a holiday, to a son gone could easily assimilate and be converted into a Christian holiday to the Son of God.

And official records from at least 345 A. D. show that Christians were now celebrating the birthday of Christ. On December 25th.

[00:09:55] Dan LeFebvre: Almost sounds like a little bit of convenience in there. There was already a celebration going on. And so this is as good a time as any, almost. We don’t really know when it is.

[00:10:08] Heather LeFebvre: So it seemed very convenient and when the Roman Empire converted to Christianity in 313, suddenly Christians could be celebrating out in the open. And this gave that something to focus around when all their neighbors were focusing on pagan festivities. Now

[00:10:26] Dan LeFebvre: how about the name Christmas because I’m sure the first Christmas wasn’t in their minds the first Christmas But when did the name Christmas come into the picture?

[00:10:36] Heather LeFebvre: So that took a really long time and It’s funny to think that the word Christmas was not in use until a thousand years after Christ was born. So the first record of the actual word, it would be an old English word for Christmas comes into the records in 1038. And it’s two words put together Christ’s mass being the word that the Roman Catholic Church, which was pretty much the only church in the West at this time, used for a worship service.

So this was Christ’s worship service as opposed to a worship service to remember a different saint. There were masses named after various saints throughout the year in celebration of their death dates.

[00:11:28] Dan LeFebvre: So like a Peter Mass almost? That would be to celebrate him specific for him, and then this one is Christ’s Mass?

Is that, am I getting that right?

[00:11:36] Heather LeFebvre: Yes. Martin Mass would be to celebrate St. Martin’s death day. And Christ’s Mass was not his death, but for his nativity.

[00:11:46] Dan LeFebvre: Interesting. Okay, yeah, a thousand years later. What, do you know, what do, or do we know what they called it before that?

[00:11:56] Heather LeFebvre: I think just a nativity.

They just called it because in the early medieval years they were preaching nativity sermons.

[00:12:06] Dan LeFebvre: Okay, keep it simple. . Yeah. Today you think of Christmas and one of the, one of the key things as I mentioned in the beginning was gifts and giving gifts, and that’s one of the most popular traditions around Christmas today is giving gifts.

When did the, that tradition of giving gifts start to take shape? So

[00:12:28] Heather LeFebvre: for the Christians, as they were beginning to celebrate the, this anniversary of Christ’s birth, gift giving really wasn’t a part of that. They were focused more on the religious aspect. So it would have been more of going to church, having a church service, maybe having a meal in their homes to celebrate, but gifts were not really a part of it.

gIfts were somewhat of a part of the Roman Saturnalia festivals and other winter pagan festivals in Europe. But also the gift giving seems to have taken place more around New Year’s celebrations, not so much for Christmas. So there was some gift giving going on, mostly it was gift giving from the rich to the poor.

So the nobles might provide gifts. or the peasants. A master might provide gifts for the servants. It wasn’t really focused on children. These were adult festivities and celebrations. definitely not child focused yet. The whole gift giving for everyone really came into its own during the Victorian era, especially handmade gifts were popular at that time.

And the Victorian era is also when a child centered holiday came into its own and gifts became very important. Gifts for children in the sort of late Middle Ages to 15, 1600s would have been given on December 6th, the Feast of St. Nicholas. January 1st, so really it’s the last 200 years where the gift giving at Christmas has become a major focus of the holiday.

[00:14:10] Dan LeFebvre: Okay. So relatively recent overall, as far as the overall celebration is concerned. You mentioned the dates that gifts were given, but in your book you mentioned Martin Luther. gave his gifts on Christmas Eve, even though in the 1500s it was popular to give gifts on the celebration of St.

Nicholas that you mentioned earlier. Now I know a lot of people today even carry on that tradition, probably without even realizing that it may have been Martin Luther who started that. Was he actually the one who started that tradition of giving gifts on Christmas Eve instead of Christmas?

[00:14:46] Heather LeFebvre: It’s always hard to say who starts what.

Martin Luther had a lot of popularity and whatever he did spread around the whole Western world. So he is attributed in Germany with switching the gift giving from December six, the feast of St. Nicholas to Christmas Eve. So we can definitely attribute his influence to that. Martin Luther was one of the foremost leaders of the Protestant reformation.

He was concerned with correcting abuses in the Roman Catholic Church. Something he was concerned about was that there was so much focus on venerating the saints, and he felt that some of that focus should be returned to Christ. And one way he could do this with children was switching the gift giving for children from the Feast of Saint Nicholas.

to Christmas and switch up this gift giving figure from St. Nicholas to the Christ child. So yes, he was a forerunner in switching the gift giving and making it focused. On Christmas Eve,

[00:15:54] Dan LeFebvre: you mentioned St. Nicholas in there. Cause that’s something I want to talk about because that is of course an alternative name for Santa Claus, jolly old St.

Nick, right? So what does St. Nicholas have to do with Christmas? And when does that Christmas tradition, cause you were saying St. Nicholas the celebration was earlier in December. When did that start to merge into the Christmas tradition and start mixing Saint Nicholas and Santa Claus and, becomes a hot mess of different characters merged into what we know today?

tHat’s

[00:16:30] Heather LeFebvre: exactly what it is. It’s all a hot mess. We could fill a whole book with this. We have Saint Nicholas and Santa Claus, so let me try to pull out a few key points of this history and how it all fits in. So we do know that there most likely was an actual man named Nicholas, who was a Christian bishop of Smyrna.

That would be in Turkey. He lived around the time of 270 AD to 343. Now the tricky part is that we don’t have any written records from his actual living time period. The first records we have of his life come 400 years later. So that means it’s hard to prove what’s right. And what’s been made up.

The other thing that adds to this, there was another Nicholas of Scion. Who in these two lives became confused and no one knows which information goes with which Nicholas and then in the middle ages that became popular to compile lives. And these were embellished stories of important figures and they were written with good intentions that the lives were written to be moral lessons.

For the people alive then, so they took people that maybe had done something good and they really added extra good stories to their lives, hoping that this would motivate current people to do good things. So a lot of legends grew up around this name of Nicholas. Especially the legend that we hear in various forms of him wanting to help a poor man who had three daughters.

These three daughters couldn’t marry because they didn’t have money for dowries. So Nicholas decides to use some of his wealth and he puts some gold in a sack and one night throws it in the window. And the next morning, one of these daughters discovers it and lo and behold, she has enough money to marry.

tHen the same thing happens two more times so that each of the three daughters are able to marry. So there’s all kinds of versions of the story. The gold maybe lands in someone’s shoe or the gold comes through in a different way than the window. Lots of different details. The gist of the story is that Nicholas was a kind and good man.

He cared for young people and we should emulate what he’s doing. So he became a, uh, someone to emulate. His fame spread and he was well known from Russia all the way to to the Western part of Europe. And eventually December 6th became the legendary date of his, so no one really knew the date of his death, but December 6th was somehow decided upon, and so he eventually became Saint Nicholas, and he was remembered every year on December 6th.

And then somehow the gifts got started. He was also known as the patron saint of sailors, and he was the patron saint of a few other things too. So his scope of influence was very wide and varied. But he somehow he came to also be the saint who gave gifts to children. So he was well known as a saint when the Reformation hit and the Protestants really wanted to back off on the remembrances of saints and the veneration that was happening.

Of course, in Germany, Martin Luther switched the focus from December 6th to Christmas Eve at the Christ Child. in England, They just gave up on St. Nicholas altogether and introduced their own gift giving figure by the name of Father Christmas. The Netherlands stopped having a St. Nicholas during the Reformation and somewhere afterward they came up with their own version whom they called Sinterklaas.

So you can be getting here. the progression from Saint Nicholas to what we know as Santa Claus with this middle name of Sinterklaas. So in the 1800s, it was, these figures were becoming popular again in Europe as the the original effects of the Reformation were it happens that Washington Irving, a famous American writer, was living in New York in the early 1800s, and he decided to write a comical history of New York.

So you have to catch that word comical. This was not to be a true history of New York. This was to be a joke. And in his book, he described the importance of St. Nicholas. To their first residents of New York City uh, those residents being from the Netherlands. Sinterklaas was mentioned, St.

Nicholas, it’s all in one, and Washington Irving described this Sinterklaas as coming down chimneys. And flying above people’s heads. So this idea is moving from a saint of the Christian church to a mythical character who can work magic. And then around the same time an anonymous poem was published, The Night Before Christmas, and that described further details of This emerging figure there was a sleigh reindeers.

It was christmas eve. There were no saintly robes that saint nicholas would have been in the middle ages instead. He now had first

and center class suddenly translated into American English as Santa Claus. So throughout the 1800s, this whole Santa Claus thing began to develop. I think that the newspapers every year at Christmas would print more details of this. There’ll be drawings. And every year the drawings added something more, maybe a belt.

Different details of maybe the names of the reindeer. Finally, in the 1930s, Coca Cola decided to use Santa Claus as part of their advertising campaigns. And that really helped to consolidate everything that was going on as to who Santa Claus was, what he looked like, and what he did. Yes, it’s really been less than a hundred years to have this modern idea of a Santa Claus in the red clothing with his…

Flying reindeer. Wow.

[00:22:54] Dan LeFebvre: It sounds like everybody throughout history, so it’s not like a collective effort, but it just seems like almost, the entire world had something to say. They add a little bit of a tradition here and a tradition there and a little bit there and a little bit here in order to create this overall character.

Actually, yeah,

[00:23:13] Heather LeFebvre: that’s a good way to describe it. It was like a 1700 year in the making project that everyone participated in

[00:23:24] Dan LeFebvre: tHere were two things that kind of stood out that you mentioned there and one of them was when St. Nicholas when the story of him putting the gold in the window as for dowry and then the story of the comical, Story in, in New York of being one of the first mentions of coming down the chimney.

And those two things, I don’t know if they’re tied together at all. If he may have written about coming down the chimney is that way. But when you’re talking about St. Nicholas, putting the money in the window, the first thing that comes to mind is, oh, that could easily translate into he’s coming into the house some way in an unconventional form.

And, in order to give gifts. It, in that case, it was dowry, not necessarily the gifts that we get today. But yeah, it was, it’s interesting that even little bits like that could be used, changed over the years and pull into the story that we know today.

[00:24:23] Heather LeFebvre: Oh, absolutely. And I think probably Irving was pulling off of that story because that story has been told in every country in a different way.

There probably was a chimney version back then. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:24:35] Dan LeFebvre: Depending on the. The. architectural of the different regions and houses in that time and such. Now talking about gifts for Christmas and regardless of where Santa comes in, if he comes in the window or he comes down the chimney, regardless of how the gifts get there, we know during Christmas, they all end up in one place and that is under the tree.

How did The tree or the pine tree, I should say, because it seems like it’s always a pine tree and I have yet to celebrate Christmas with a dogwood or an apple tree or anything. How did this become a part of the Christmas tradition? This is

[00:25:18] Heather LeFebvre: also something that is shrouded in obscurity and really hard to pick out exactly how did this all.

Some people attribute it to Martin Luther, but I think we can be safe in saying he probably didn’t start that. We do know that pagan winter holidays often involved decorating homes outside of homes with greenery. Mistletoe, Holly, these were all symbols of. Fertility of the spring coming around again.

And as Christians adopted a lot of these pagan traditions into their religious ceremonies, they changed the meanings so that Holly could be seen to represent the red berries as the blood of Christ the thorns on the Holly as the crown of Christ on the cross, these types of things.

The whole decorating with greenery stayed alive in the Christmas celebration, even as it was taken over by the Christians, where it went from decorating with greenery outside to actually bringing the tree inside the house. We’re not quite sure. Probably the late middle ages, 14, 1500s, 1600s. We do know Germany seemed to be the area where it came from.

And then during Victorian times. It was famously made more popular by Prince Albert importing his growing up years experience into that there with Queen Victoria and their nine children. There was a picture of their family standing around their Christmas tree in the palace that was published in the newspapers and went viral as we would say now.

And from then on, everyone wanted to have a Christmas tree, just like the royal family. So it’s definitely something that started in Northern Europe, where we have pine trees. It’s not something that other parts of the world really had in mind. But then again, Christmas really was started and celebrated more in the European.

Area of the world and not so much in other cultures as I talk about later on in the book. I think that the first winter celebrations were an antidote against the depressing weather of December and January, and that’s not something that the rest of the world that had a more moderate climate really needed.

And that’s probably why I Christmas really concentrated in Europe.

[00:27:50] Dan LeFebvre: So that makes sense why there would be so many European traditions heavily influencing what we know today as just traditional Christmas celebrations. Now, speaking of that, there’s a lot of stuff that, that you’ve mentioned. Up until now, that seems to all come together into the Christmas celebration that we have today.

Is there an era of history that if we could pinpoint to, when, if you go back through history, a lot of these, I would imagine if we go to a Christmas celebration in the 1500s, we wouldn’t really recognize it as a Christmas celebration. If we go to a Christmas celebration in the.

yeAr 1000, it wouldn’t necessarily recognize it as a Christmas celebration. And I know that where you go is going to make a difference too, where in the world that celebration is, but is there an era of history where if we went back in time, it would start to resemble the holiday that we have today and start to this is an era that we can point to as the holiday celebration and traditions that we have today.

So

[00:29:01] Heather LeFebvre: I think it has to be the Victorian era. This is really when we see a lot of the elements that we enjoy today coming into their own commercialization of the whole holiday. Carol singing, card sending was invented, gift giving exploded. The whole child focused holiday came into being Santa Claus was gaining popularity really, when it comes down to it, people were moving away from a more religious focus to the secular commercialization, which is often what we see today.

There were a lot of writers in the 1800s who were writing about Christmas. And in fact, I was disappointed to discover that some of these writers, like Washington Irving, Almost invented a late medieval type Christmas and wrote about it in their books as if this was actually how Christmas was being celebrated to convince their readers of all these wonderful traditions that needed to take place and reading that I was like, what we were not carrying on these traditions that have been in place for hundreds and hundreds of years were just trying to have what Washington Irving invented in his mind for us.

Yeah. But yeah the books available to people to read about Christmas celebrations and then to want what they read as part of their own celebration, it’s all happened in the Victorian era.

[00:30:24] Dan LeFebvre: Can you give an example of what one of those might have been that was not really a tradition that he made up?

[00:30:30] Heather LeFebvre: It’s not fresh on my mind exactly right now But the idea that Christmas was a huge deal and that involved so much presents, feasting days, and days of feasting, and the whole idea of going Going to a little village where there’s tons of snow and everything’s jolly and happy. I don’t think it was really quite such a big deal as Irving made it out to be.

I think the celebrations at that point were quieter, not so

[00:31:00] Dan LeFebvre: big. Okay, and then so yeah, he made it into, this is this is just what people have done all along. Even if not necessarily the case. Yeah. As you were researching this book and maybe that, maybe you already gave the answer there, but I was curious, was there anything about the overall history of Christmas that really just shocked you and surprised you that you didn’t expect?

I

[00:31:23] Heather LeFebvre: think definitely the setting of the first Christmas kind of has surprised me. I’ve been thinking about that for a number of years as I’ve been researching that. I think I was surprised. I didn’t hadn’t quite realized that Christmas had been outlawed in the original colonies here in America.

I think I knew that it had been outlawed in England during the 1600s, but for quite some time in America it was illegal to celebrate Christmas. Yeah, so that the whole controversy about Christmas being illegal in England and America, it was a real. Fun and interesting thing to explore and find out.

[00:32:01] Dan LeFebvre: Why was it illegal?

[00:32:03] Heather LeFebvre: So hard to get your head around, but when the ref, the Protestant reformation came in, they were concerned to, to remedy some of what they perceived to be. Abuses in the Catholic Church or things that had strayed maybe away from Scripture in their mind. So they did not see a mandate in Scripture for this celebration of Christ’s birth.

And they felt that was adding to Scripture to require people to come for special services when the Bible did not require that. So they felt that. This was not necessary and was maybe putting an unnecessary burden on people. They were also concerned about the drunkenness and crazy things happening with the non religious celebrations of Christmas and they thought it’s better for our children if they don’t even have access to that so so let’s just get rid of it all.

[00:33:00] Dan LeFebvre: It probably didn’t help thinking of The, the history between the Protestant and Catholic and the fact that the name Christmas is, has mass, right? So it’s very on the Catholic side, whereas on the Protestant side, they probably weren’t a big fan of that. Exactly. Yeah. Now at the end of each chapter in your book, I love that you have some discussion questions, suggestions for how to celebrate Christmas the way that they did in different points in history.

And I really thought that those were a great addition. It’s a perfect way to learn about the history of Christmas as a family together and experience it as if it, we were going back in time, but then I love that you did. You didn’t stop there. The stories. throughout history in your book are accompanied by recipes to go along with it.

There’s the shepherd’s meal to send your taste buds back to the time of the first Christmas, the historic German Christmas cookies, Italian soups, mince pies, know that I’ve even had a mince pie edible tree bark going along with another story. We didn’t even talk about, but it’s in your book, the story of Boniface and the Oak of Thor.

There’s so many great recipes. In your book, when I was reading, the history of Christmas, I wasn’t expecting to get recipes there. Can you explain a bit about why you decided to include recipes in your book?

[00:34:31] Heather LeFebvre: I love history, and I love teaching history, and I’ve been teaching history to kids for at least 15 years.

And one thing that I have noticed when teaching kids, and adults for that matter, The more ways that you can experience history with all of your senses the longer the information is going to stick with you and so I Really purposed in this book that I wanted people to think about what it sounded like at the, these different Christmas celebrations, what it felt like, the temperature the weather what it what it would taste like to actually be at these celebrations and eat these foods.

And so I have an active imagination and I like to think that when I’m. I’m eating these recipes. I could close my eyes and just taste what I’m tasting and imagine myself right back there in that time period. And so I think recipes can be a really fun way to experience history and almost pretend we’re back there.

[00:35:35] Dan LeFebvre: That’s great. Wrapping yourself in the immersion of history. What a better way. And to throw a little bit in this, I happen to know from experience that you are an amazing cook. And so I can only imagine what your house smelled as you tested some of these recipes. Do you have a favorite from the book that you made?

It would

[00:35:52] Heather LeFebvre: have to be the candy cane cookies, which would be from the 1950s chapter. I think candy canes have always been my personal symbol of Christmas since I was a little child, and a good friend of mine introduced those cookies to me about 15 years ago, and ever since I have to make them every year.

They look like candy canes. They taste like peppermint and yeah, they say christmas to me

[00:36:18] Dan LeFebvre: But thank you so much for coming on to chat about the history of christmas And I think i’ve mentioned this to you off air, but I will say it again I love the approach that you took in this book. It’s not you know A lot of history books are like text books and very dry.

This is very story driven It’s, I have a lot of fond memories of my own mother reading stories to us as kids, we’d gather around and she would read stories, especially around Christmastime. And as I was reading your book, I could easily imagine this being one of those books that you gather the kids around, chow down on some of that edible tree bark or candy cane cookies or whatever it is.

And just learn about the history of Christmas. And before I let you go, can I. Get you to let us know where we can get a copy of your book. Yes.

[00:37:06] Heather LeFebvre: The copy You can get a copy of the history of christmas from amazon. Barnes and noble. com target. com So pretty much anywhere books are sold and you can find me at heatherwinslowlovefeb.

com

[00:37:21] Dan LeFebvre: Thanks again so much for your time.

[00:37:23] Heather LeFebvre: Thanks for having me.

December 19^th, 1843. England.

Walking up stone steps, a man’s left hand is carrying a rectangle-shaped package in gold wrapping paper with a red ribbon tied around it in a bow. At the top of the steps, he enters a door. Inside, we can see he’s carrying the package in the other hand now as he’s walking through a dimly lit room. After a moment, he stops and hands the present off.

The recipient of the gift is a young man with shoulder-length hair who is sitting in a chair. He gasps at the gift, and then frantically rips into the wrapping to get it open. You can tell he’s excited to see what’s inside. After the ribbon is off, the paper is all but removed, he pauses.

He closes his eyes for a moment and takes a breath, as if savoring the moment. Then, from a camera angle over his shoulder, we see him peel back the final layer of wrapping to reveal what’s inside. Setting the paper aside, we can see an elegant book, bound in red. It’s hard to read the gold inlay on the cover, but if we pause the movie, we can see that it has a wreath of leaves around text saying: A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.

The true story behind this week’s event depicted in the movie The Man Who Invented Christmas

That sequence comes from the 2017 film called The Man Who Invented Christmas. The event it’s depicting is when Charles Dickens’ book A Christmas Carol first published, which happened this week in history on December 19^th, 1843.

The cover of the book we see in the movie is a lot like what the real first edition looked like, too. It had a red cover with a gold inlay lettering with leaves in the wreath-type shape, open at the top, with the text A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens designed on it.

A book publisher by the name of Chapman and Hall were behind the first edition, and each book cost five schillings. For a bit of historical context, in 1843 the average income in London was about 260 shillings a year, or a little over $11,000 in today’s US dollars. Of course, there was a huge disparity between those who were incredibly wealthy and those who had next to nothing, but that’s a different story for a different day.

Despite the cost of each book, due to the production costs that he put into it, Charles Dickens came away from the first edition with about £137. That’s equivalent to about $7,915 today.

Not bad, but he could’ve made more money off it had he not been so insistent on the way the book looked; how it was bound and the quality that went into it. Did that help make it an immediate hit? Maybe. After all, even though they say not to judge a book by its cover—the truth is when it comes to a physical book, we’re all guilty of judging it by its cover design. At least, I know I’ve picked up some leatherbound books because of how elegant they look, haha!

We’ll never know that “what if” scenario had the first edition of A Christmas Carol been bound differently. What we do know, though, is the book was an immediate hit.

In fact, since this week ends on Christmas Eve, it took merely this week for that first edition to sell out. The book was first published on December 19^th and by December 24^th, all 6,000 copies had sold out.

If you want to watch how the movie depicts the event from this week in history, you’ll find it about an hour and 32 minutes into the 2017 movie called The Man Who Invented Christmas.

Although, I’ll admit that maybe the sequence of the movie we talked about today isn’t really trying to portray the mass publishing of the book—obviously we don’t see all 6,000 copies being published; we only see the very first copy published to Dickens.

But, then again, the entirety of the movie is a highly dramatized version of Charles Dickens’ story. It uses the story inside of A Christmas Carol to tell the story of Charles Dickens, himself, which obviously wasn’t really what happened.

So, what really happened?

Well, we covered that movie many years ago, but just last year around this time we published a remastered version, so either scroll back to episode #220 of Based on a True Story or look in the show notes for a link to our look into the historical accuracy of The Man Who Invented Christmas.

December 20^th, 1944. Bastogne, Belgium.

The ground is covered with a blanket of snow. From the soldier’s footsteps that enter the frame, it looks to be about three or four inches—maybe eight or nine centimeters.

When he bends down to pick up a plant poking through the snow, it pricks him and causes the tip of his finger to bleed. We can see the white armband with a red cross on his left arm, indicating he’s a medic and with his uniform we can tell he’s in the U.S. Army. We can also see his fingers look to be frozen cold—he’s been outside in the cold winter for a while.

An explosion in the distance catches his attention, and we follow his gaze into a landscape filled with white. There are some trees, and other trees are broken—but they’re all covered in snow. Even the sky is a hazy whiteout, making visibility in the distance difficult.

As the scene continues, he’s walking through the woods alone with the sound of gunfire and explosions continuing in the distance. With his hands tucked in his jacket to try and keep warm, he keeps walking until…he stops. Just ahead, the ground is littered with dead bodies of German soldiers. They’re all frozen solid, covered in snow and clearly have been there for a little while to let the winter get to them. Slowly, he backs up and shuffles his way back the direction he came.

In the next shot, we see another American soldier trying to shave in the cold. A twig snaps just as the medic arrives, and the two soldiers cautiously advance toward the sound of the noise. In the distance, they can see a soldier bending over to relieve himself. With his rifle raised, the American gives an order in German for the soldier to come toward them and the German soldier does as he’s told.

Going through the papers he has on him; the Americans take a few things they think might be important before a couple other soldiers who are there take him back to regiment as a prisoner.

Just then, a Jeep pulls up and two officers get out. One of them introduces the ranking officer, General McAuliffe as the acting division commander. Without wasting time, General McAuliffe asks them to give it to him straight.

Well, they’re gaining ground in one area and losing it in another. Now it’s a stand-off without any progress being made. There’s sporadic artillery fire, and there’s no aid station. They have no food, no winter clothes, and practically no ammo. We’re spread so thin the enemy makes it into our position to use the slit trenches—no doubt referencing what just happened with the German soldier about to relieve himself right next to them.

Right about then, Ron Livingstone’s character, Captain Nixon, wakes up. He tells McAuliffe that he went for a walk on the line at about 0300 last night and couldn’t find the 501^st on their right flank. He says there are some considerable gaps in our perimeter.

After hearing all this, McAuliffe acts like he didn’t hear any of it by telling the men to close the gaps and hold the line. Basically, they’re being asked to do the impossible.

The true story behind this week’s event depicted in the TV series Band of Brothers

That sequence comes from the 2001 HBO miniseries called Band of Brothers. The event it’s depicting is the Battle of Bastogne, which started this week in history on December 20^th, 1944.

The series does a good job of showing the bitter cold and lack of equipment they had, although there is more to the true story that we don’t see in the series.

A big reason for that is because the series focuses on the 101^st Airborne in Bastogne, but to understand some of the bigger historical context we have to back up a few days as well as take a step back to understand the geographical context.

Let’s start there, with the geography.

The importance of Bastogne was due in large part to what lay about 100 miles as the crow flies, or 166 kilometers, beyond Bastogne: Antwerp.

Antwerp was a small shipping village along the coast that was incredibly important for the Allies who were supplying the fight against the Germans. And the Germans knew this, so they decided to launch an offensive that would get to Antwerp and effectively cut off the Allied supply route. That, in effect, would end any hope of the Allies to continue their offensive against the Germans in the area.

With that goal, the Germans amassed a force including over 400,000 troops and 1,000 tanks for what would ultimately end up being their final major offensive along the Western Front in World War II. That offensive is now known as the either Battle of the Ardennes or the Battle of the Bulge, and it started on December 16^th.

The Allies were outnumbered with about 230,000 troops and about 500 tanks in the area when the German offensive started on December 16^th.

In case you’re not aware, the Ardennes is an extensive forest filled with rolling hills and rough terrain. That plays a big part into the story because at that time, the VIII Corps was headquartered in Bastogne. That was due in large part to Bastogne being a crossroads town; that made it an important strategic place to hold in a region filled with tough terrain.

After the German offensive started, though, the Allies reacted by moving their divisions. By December 18^th, the VIII Corps HQ was moved less than 20 miles, or about 30 kilometers, to the southwest to Neufchateau, Luxembourg. Meanwhile, the 82^nd Airborne Division had moved north to confront the German advance there and the 101^st Airborne stayed in and around Bastogne to defend it.

Both the 82^nd Airborne and the 101^st Airborne are divisions in the VIII Corps.

So, that’s why in Band of Brothers we see the 101^st Airborne positioned in the forest around Bastogne as well as having access to the town.

As the German offensive pressed onward, they reached Bastogne on December 20th, starting the Battle of Bastogne. But, the 101^st Airborne wasn’t going to give up Bastogne so easily, and they managed to fight back against the German attacks in and around the town. The terrain around the town, though, wasn’t defended as well and the German offensive continued to advance in those areas.

On top of the constant attacks, remember this was the dead of winter. Not just any winter, but one of the worst winters in the history of the region. I saw some reports of temperatures dropping as low as -20 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s -29 degrees Celsius. That coupled with heavy snowfall is why, in Band of Brothers, we see the bitter cold being a factor for the men at Bastogne—because it really was.

It’s almost like the 101^st was fighting a battle on multiple fronts. On one hand, they were fighting the Germans who were getting closer to surrounding them with every passing hour. On the other hand, because they lacked cold-weather gear to combat the bitter cold and dwindling food and medical supplies, every passing hour was a whole other battle to fight against the weather.

And just like we see in Band of Brothers, that bad weather also meant the Allies couldn’t airdrop the much-needed supplies to the troops in Bastogne because of poor visibility.

The Germans decided use these factors to their advantage and cut off the men in Bastogne instead of launching an immediate attack against the men who were fortified in and around the town. What this meant was any ground connections the Allies had to the 101^st in Bastogne was slowly being cut off.

Do you remember the name of General McAuliffe from earlier in today’s segment? He’s the guy who shows up in the Jeep and asks the troops in the 101^st to give it to him straight. Then, after hearing how bad things are, he tells them to close the gap and hold the line.

Well, General McAuliffe was a real person who was the acting commander of the 101^st Airborne as they were defending Bastogne. On December 22^nd, the German General von Lüttwitz sent a message to McAuliffe demanding he and his men surrender.

Here is that message:

To the U.S.A. Commander of the encircled town of Bastogne.

The fortune of war is changing. This time the U.S.A. forces in and near Bastogne have been encircled by strong German armored units. More German armored units have crossed the river Our near Ortheuville, have taken Marche and reached St. Hubert by passing through Hompre-Sibret-Tillet. Libramont is in German hands.

There is only one possibility to save the encircled U.S.A. troops from total annihilation: that is the honorable surrender of the encircled town. In order to think it over a term of two hours will be granted beginning with the presentation of this note.

If this proposal should be rejected one German Artillery Corps and six heavy A. A. Battalions are ready to annihilate the U.S.A. troops in and near Bastogne. The order for firing will be given immediately after this two hours term.

All the serious civilian losses caused by this artillery fire would not correspond with the well-known American humanity.

The German Commander.

When he received this message, General McAuliffe knew he’d have to reply. Here’s what he sent back:

To the German Commander.

NUTS!

The American Commander

Ever since, General McAuliffe has been given the nickname “Nuts!”

But the message was clear. The 101^st was not going to surrender Bastogne.

Things got worse for the 101^st pretty quickly.

By the next day, December 23^rd, the Germans main advance widened and the 101^st was on the brink of being completely surrounded in Bastogne. By Christmas Day, December 25^th, they were completely cut off. The German bombardments and attacks on Bastogne continued. The bitter cold endured.

So, too, did the 101^st.

Finally, late in the afternoon of December 26^h, the 4^th Armored Division of Patton’s Third Army broke through the German forces from the south. The 101^st was no longer completely encircled, but it was only a small passageway.

It was enough to offer some relief to the 101^st, though. The next day, they were able to restore communication with the rest of the Allied forces nearby and evacuate their wounded.

While most consider the Battle of Bastogne to have ended when the 4^th Armored Division broke through, the fighting in the greater Battle of the Bulge was far from over.

But, if you want to watch how the 2001 miniseries Band of Brothers depicts the events that happened this week in history, we started our segment today at the beginning of episode six. That episode is entitled Bastogne, so this is a great week to watch that whole episode and remember the events that happened this week in history.

And if you do want to take a deeper dive into the true story, we did our own miniseries on Band of Brothers which you can find over at basedonatruestorypodcast.com/bandofbrothers

December 23^rd, 1888. Arles, France.

The screen is black. All we can hear is Willem Dafoe’s voiceover. He says there’s something strange about me. Sometimes I don’t know what I’ve done, or what I’ve said.

There’s still no image.

It’s just voiceover as he goes on to say there’s something that happened right before Gauguin left. We fought. A few times. Did I hurt him? I don’t know how. But I do know that I took a razor and cut off one of my own ears. Yes, it was me. No one else.

There was blood all over the place. I thought maybe I could give it to Gauguin with an apology.

Now we can see something. A man’s face. He’s looking right at the camera with a less-than-impressed look on his face. He’s not the one who is talking, but from his white coat we know this is a doctor.

The camera cuts to Willem Dafoe’s character now, Vincent Van Gogh, and we can see his left ear is wrapped in bandages. He continues to tell his story, saying that he gave his ear to the girl at the bar, Gaby, because he thought she’d know where Gauguin was. It scared her because of all the blood. So, she called the police, and they put me here.

The true story behind this week’s event depicted in the movie At Eternity’s Gate

That sequence comes from the 2018 movie called At Eternity’s Gate. The event it’s describing is when Vincent van Gogh cut off his own ear, which happened this week in history on December 23^rd, 1888.

Of course, the movie doesn’t show what had to have been a gruesome visual.

And to this day there is some debate about whether or not Vincent did it to himself—if you notice, in the movie, Vincent said that he did it, no one else. That seems like an odd thing to bring up without being asked about it.

I mean, if you do something and you’re asked to describe the event, do you jump to saying, “I did that, no one else did it, it was only me.”

That sounds like you’re covering for someone else, doesn’t it?

But, that’s just my own speculation. And it’s not like the movie’s dialogue is exactly what the real Vincent van Gogh would’ve said, either, so we have to take that with a grain of salt.

Something that’s important to keep in mind whenever it comes to Van Gogh’s life is that he was not popular during his life. He was the epitome of a starving artist. The one constant that everyone agrees on is that Vincent van Gogh suffered from depression and anxiety throughout his life. Some suggest perhaps he may have been bipolar.

That’s important because most of what we know about Van Gogh comes from people researching his life after he died.

So, when it comes to things like whether or not Vincent cut off his own ear we’re relying on people’s statements after he died in 1890. If you try recalling a conversation about someone you met a couple years ago and you’ll start to understand why it’s important to keep in mind how difficult it is to piece together the true story behind a lot of things that happened in Van Gogh’s life.

On the other hand, though, Van Gogh is one of the most-researched artists in history, so there have been a lot people working on coming up with answers.

The reason I wanted to give that little bit of explanation is because, like many things in Vincent’s life, there is more than one version of what happened on the night of December 23^rd, 1888.

The movie’s description of what happened is definitely one of those versions: Vincent van Gogh had a fight with Paul Gauguin that drove him to cut off his own ear in a manic state.

Another version is that perhaps there was an argument that led to Gauguin cutting off Van Gogh’s ear—whether on purpose or by accident.

Yet another version suggests that Vincent found out that his brother, Theo, was getting married and was afraid that’d mean Theo would stop supporting him. Theo supported Vincent not only financially, but he also provided a source of emotional support through constant letters—one of the big reasons we know a lot about Vincent today is because of those letters between Vincent and Theo. It was also Theo who paid Paul Gauguin to live with Vincent, essentially to keep him from being alone when Theo himself couldn’t be there due to his work as an art dealer in Paris.

What is the true story? Well, that depends on whose version of events you believe.

That brings us to the movie’s mention of Vincent giving his ear to a girl named Gaby at the bar.

As you can probably guess, we don’t really know for sure.

But, that definitely is part of the story that most historians believe happened. Although the name changes. Maybe it was someone named Gabrielle—or Gaby, like the movie mentions—or maybe it was someone named Rachel. Maybe she was a prostitute, maybe she was a maid.

We don’t know.

One little historical detail that the movie includes that we didn’t really talk about in the segment because it was through visuals is when we see the doctor drawing the damage done to the ear. In the movie, when he does this if you pause the movie you can see he’s drawing on paper with a letterhead saying his name is Dr. Felix Rey.

That really was the doctor’s name who treated him, and that drawing is a piece of evidence that has helped historians realize just how much of Vincent’s ear was cut off—it was likely the entire left ear instead of just the earlobe like a lot of people have thought.

Or, maybe that’s just another version of Vincent van Gogh’s story.

If you want to see how the 2018 movie At Eternity’s Gate describes the event that happened this week in history, you’ll find it at about 55 minutes into the movie.

And if you want to dig deeper into the true story, we had a chat about the historical accuracy of the movie At Eternity’s Gate with Vincent van Gogh’s Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Steven Naifeh back on episode #193 of Based on a True Story.

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LINK IN SHOW NOTES

basedonatruestorypodcast.com/bandofbrothers

July 10, 1940. England.

The light sand is littered with military equipment. There’s an ammo can, a couple artillery guns and the legs of someone who we can assume is diseased. On top there is barbed wire, but the only thing that’s moving in the scene is the sporadic tufts of green grass sprouting out of the sand as it blows in the wind.

It’s a scene of abandonment.

As the camera pans slowly, we can see more abandoned vehicles. A burned-out car, a broken wagon, maybe what looks like a motorcycle lying on its side. Off in the distance, huge plumes of black smoke are rising as if the battle has left this deserted beach. It’s moved on.

While we see this on the screen, there’s voiceover in the movie that gives us a news report.

This is the BBC Home Service. Here is the news. In the House of Commons this afternoon, the Prime Minister, Mr. Churchill, said, ‘What General Weygand called the Battle of France is over. The Battle of Britain is about to begin.’”

This segment comes from the 1969 film called The Battle of Britain.

And while the movie doesn’t come right out to tell us when or where we are, it’s pretty clear the deserted beach we’re seeing is the beach at Dunkirk. The Miracle of Dunkirk was an evacuation that took place between May 26^th and June 4^th, 1940. Of course, what we’re seeing in the film is after that.

So, I’ll admit that I’m speculating a little bit about the timing of when this might be. This is another example of a movie that doesn’t really show the event that started the conflict, but we do know from history that it was this week in the year 1940 when the Battle of Britain officially began.

Well, at least, that’s when the British officially recognize the dates. Other historians might not agree with those dates.

The event that we don’t see in the movie to kick off the battle was when over a hundred German bombers and fighters attacked a British shipping convoy in the English Channel while about 70 other bombers attacked dockyards in South Wales. Those attacks were the start of what would end up being a series of bombing raids, and that’s why the date of July 10^th, 1940, is commonly referred to as the start of the Battle of Britain.

Just from the name of it, you might think this is a little different than the battles that take place in a specific city, near a river, or by some other geographical landmark. And you’d be right.

The Battle of Britain took place in the skies primarily over Great Britain’s airspace between the Royal Air Force and the German Luftwaffe.

We see the aftermath of the empty beaches at Dunkirk in the film, and after the Miracle at Dunkirk, France had fallen to Nazi Germany. That happened officially on June 22^nd, 1940 with an armistice between France and Germany. Then, the Nazis set their sights on Great Britain.

The English Channel posed a problem, though, because up until this point in the war the Nazis had massive success rolling through most of Western Europe with the blitzkrieg. Basically, that was swift attack using tanks on the ground supported by the Luftwaffe in the air.

So, for Germany to be able to defeat Great Britain, they’d have to get rid of the RAF first. If they could achieve air superiority, the Luftwaffe would be able to support an invasion of Great Britain.

It’s also important to point out that Hitler wanted to focus on the Soviet Union on the Eastern Front. So, he was really hoping by defeating the RAF that would force Great Britain to sue for peace and he wouldn’t have to pull away his tanks and ground forces that could be used on the Eastern Front.

Of course, that’s not the kind of information the Nazi leaders were going to tell their enemies, so we mostly know this sort of thing by looking at it through a historical lens.

What happened next was just under four months of hard fighting that ended up seeing both Britain and Germany suffering massive losses. Thousands of aircraft were lost, tens of thousands of lives lost…but, Britain held on long enough to hand Nazi Germany their first major defeat of World War II.

If you want to watch the event depicted on screen, check out the 1969 film simply called The Battle of Britain. The news report we started this segment with starts right at the beginning at about eight and a half minutes into the film.

July 11, 1804. Weehawken, New Jersey.

Our next movie is of a Broadway musical on a dark stage. A man and a woman are the only ones visible as the song begins. The woman is Phillipa Soo’s version of Eliza Hamilton while the man is Lin-Manuel Miranda’s version of her husband, Alexander Hamilton. She sings to him, asking him to come back to sleep. He replies he has an early meeting out of town. He assures her that he’ll be back before she knows he’s gone.

As the song continues, a host of backup singers join the stage to tell the story of what happens next. They share the information about what’s happening at the meeting he mentioned earlier.

The song is being sung by Leslie Odom Jr.’s version of Aaron Burr. And conveniently for us, Burr’s song shares the information of ten bulleted items. I’m not going to repeat the exact lyrics since they’re copyrighted, of course, but here’s a summary of the ten things we learn in the song.

1. They rode across the Hudson at dawn, along with his friend William P. Van Ness.
2. Hamilton arrived with his crew. There’s a mention of Nathaniel Pendleton and a doctor.
3. Hamilton examined the terrain, but most disputes ended with no one shooting.
4. Hamilton drew the first position and the doctor turned around so he could deny seeing anything.
5. This is all happening near the same place where Hamilton’s son died.
6. Hamilton examined the trigger on his gun.
7. Aaron Burr was not a good marksman.
8. Hamilton wore his glasses that morning, and Burr had a daughter.
9. Aim no higher than the eyes.
10. There’s not really anything for number ten other than there are ten paces before turning to shoot.

Here is where the show goes into a sort of slow motion. The bullet travels from one gun to the other. Life flashing before their eyes.

A few moments later, we find out the result of the duel: Alexander Hamilton shot into the sky. Aaron Burr did not. Alexander Hamilton is hit by the bullet from Burr’s gun.

This comes from the movie version on Disney+ of the popular Broadway musical Hamilton. Now, I know we haven’t really covered musicals here on Based on a True Story before…and if you do want to dig into the historical accuracy of the musical Hamilton in the future then let me know!

But for today, I thought we could cover at least this one scene in Hamilton.

Of course, in the true story, life is not a musical. We all know that.

But it is true that Alexander Hamilton was shot during a duel this week in history by the Vice President of the United States, Aaron Burr. Yes, he really was the Vice President at the time he killed Hamilton. The duel took place on July 11^th, 1804.

So, what of those ten things the musical mentions?

Let’s recap each of those. Before we do, though, just as a quick reminder, I’m not listing the actual lyrics for copyright purposes, but we’ll get the gist of what it’s saying so we can dig into their historical accuracy a little better.

Also, it’s worth pointing out that this duel wasn’t something officially documented. So, what we know of it comes from those who were there. With that said, let’s get to the list.

1. They rode across the Hudson at dawn, along with his friend William P. Van Ness.

It is true that at about 5:00 AM on July 11^th, 1804, Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton each left separate docks in Manhattan to travel across the Hudson River to Weehawken, New Jersey. Although the song kind of makes it sound like they traveled together, they actually took separate boats in an attempt to keep the duel a secret. They went to New Jersey because it was a little more lenient on prosecuting duels than New York was at the time.

The song is also correct to mention Van Ness. Mr. Willian Peter Van Ness was a federal judge and Aaron Burr’s second. In a duel, the second is a friend of one of the parties to help make sure the duel is done in an honorable way and to the rules of the duel.

2. Hamilton arrived with his crew. There’s a mention of Nathaniel Pendleton and a doctor.

The implication here is that Burr arrived first, followed by Hamilton and someone named Nathaniel Pendleton and an unnamed doctor. That is true, as well.

Aaron Burr and the men with him arrived to the dueling grounds at about 6:30 AM and started clearing some underbrush in preparation for the duel. Alexander Hamilton and the men with him made it there about half an hour later.

Nathaniel Pendleton was a district judge and served as Hamilton’s second in the duel. The doctor was Dr. David Hosack, a friend of Hamilton’s who, as his title suggests, was a medical doctor.

3. Hamilton examined the terrain, but most disputes ended with no one shooting.

This mostly seems like a throwaway line in the song, but I suppose it would make sense for both Hamilton and Burr to examine the terrain when they get there. Since we learned Hamilton got there after Burr and the men with Burr had started clearing underbrush, perhaps that’s what this is referring to.

While it might be a stretch to suggest that most duels end up with no one shooting, it is true that many duels end up without anyone being killed. By that, I’m referring to something the musical does touch on elsewhere: Deloping. That’s the practice of purposely missing or shooting into the ground to end the duel.

For example, Alexander Hamilton had been involved in more than a dozen duels, or “affairs of honor” as they were called. That includes at least one other with Aaron Burr. Burr himself said he dueled Hamilton twice before this one, so there are some conflicting stories there. But the point is that not every duel comes away with someone dying.

4. Hamilton drew the first position and the doctor turned around so he could deny seeing anything.

From here on out, the accounts of what happened get even more blurry and conflicted. With that said, though, as the story goes, the Burr and Hamilton’s seconds cast lots to determine who would get to pick their positions.

As a little side note, casting lots is kind of like flipping a coin or rolling dice. Hamilton’s second, Nathaniel Pendleton, won that so Hamilton got to pick first position. So, the song is correct there.

Did the doctor turn around so he could deny anything? That’s an oversimplification.

It’s very likely that the two seconds were the only others present other than Burr and Hamilton themselves, and both seconds turned their backs for the actual shots. That was another form of plausible deniability so no one could say they saw any shots being fired.

What we do know is that about a month later, Dr. David Hosack, wrote down that he didn’t only turn his back, but he wasn’t even right there for the duel. He was nearby, but he said he saw Hamilton and the two seconds disappear into the woods. A short while later, he heard two shots and came rushing to find Hamilton wounded.

So, if that’s all true, then that also helps us understand why there are so many conflicting accounts of exactly what happened.

5. This is all happening near the same place where Hamilton’s son died.

This is true. While we didn’t talk about this in the segment, earlier in the musical we see Alexander Hamilton’s son, Philip, get killed in a duel. That really did happen on November 23^rd, 1801, Philip challenged a lawyer named George Eacker to a duel after Eacker had given a speech opposing Alexander Hamilton. That duel took place not at the exact same dueling grounds, but it was also in New Jersey a few miles away.  

6. Hamilton examined the trigger on his gun.

We don’t really know this for sure. Alexander Hamilton was in the Continental Army and, as we saw earlier in the musical, he had been General Washingon’s aide. But, even though he was in the army, that didn’t mean he had a lot of experience with weapons himself. Sure, he’d shot them, but was he good with them?

On top of that, if we consider that after the Revolutionary War came to an end in 1783, Hamilton’s career took a similar path as Washington’s as it went from the military into politics. So, it’s not likely that he had shot a gun since the War—over two decades before the duel.

The last little bit of evidence here that’s worth mentioning is that some sources have said the guns used in the duel were hidden until they arrived at the grounds. This was part of giving people plausible deniability.

Putting these two clues together, if they didn’t see the guns on the way there and Hamilton hadn’t shot a gun in decades—sure, it makes sense that he’d examine the gun when it was handed to him.

7. Aaron Burr was not a good marksman.

Like the last point, we just don’t know for sure. Like Hamilton, Aaron Burr had been in the Continental Army. Just like Hamilton, after the Revolutionary War ended, Burr went into politics.

With that said, though, there have been some historians who have said Aaron Burr had been practicing shooting at his home in New York City leading up to the duel. Does that mean he was a good shot? We don’t know for sure. But it is likely that he had shot a gun more recently than Hamilton.

8. Hamilton wore his glasses that morning, and Burr had a daughter.

Let’s start with the part we know for sure is true: Aaron Burr did have a daughter. In fact, Aaron Burr had at least eight children. The reason I say “at least” is because, well, to put it bluntly, Burr had two wives over the course of his life, but he was known to have children outside of marriage.

For example, it was just a few years ago, in 2018, that John Pierre Burr was officially recognized as Aaron Burr’s son for the first time by the Aaron Burr Association. He was one of two children Aaron Burr had with a servant from India who worked in his household.

What of the other part of this line, though, about Hamilton wearing his glasses?

That is most likely true, although as I mentioned earlier, the accounts we have from those who were there don’t always line up.

If he did have them on, though, it wasn’t necessarily the entire time. As the story goes, even though Hamilton had already told his second that he planned on deloping, when Hamilton and Burr stood facing each other, Hamilton asked for a moment to put his glasses on.

Why did he want to put his glasses on if he had planned on deloping, or purposely missing Aaron Burr? Well, as you already know, Hamilton was killed soon after this, so we’ll never really know for sure.

Let’s do the last couple lines together:

9. Aim no higher than the eyes.
10. There’s not really anything for number ten other than there are ten paces before turning to shoot.

These last few lines work well for the song, but they don’t add much to the true story.

And, in a way, that actually works for the true story because the least accurate thing we know about is what happened right at the end.

The reason for that is because the account told by Burr’s second and Hamilton’s second at the duel don’t line up—probably because of what we talked about before with them having their backs turned.

According to one version of the story, Hamilton fired first and just as he had said he would do, he deliberately missed Aaron Burr. When Burr heard the shot hit a tree behind him, he fired back. He didn’t know Hamilton had said he was going to deliberately miss, after all. His shot did not miss.

According to another version of the story, it was Aaron Burr who shot first and hit Hamilton. The shot hit Hamilton just above his right hip. He collapsed almost immediately and involuntarily dropped his gun, which caused it to fire.

Hamilton didn’t die right away, and according to his own version, he told the doctor later that his gun was still loaded. But there was a second shot, so that would seem to back up the idea that Hamilton didn’t purposely shoot and instead didn’t realize the gun had gone off as he collapsed.

No matter what actually happened, what we do know is the outcome.

Alexander Hamilton succumbed to his wound, passing away at about 2:00 PM the next day, July 12^th, 1804.

If you want to see how the duel that happened this week in history is depicted in the movie version of the musical, you can find the song in our segment starting at about two hours, 21 minutes and 12 seconds of Hamilton.

July 14, 1789. France.

Something is being dipped into a molten hot furnace. It reminds me of the times when I learned about glass blowing as a child, but that was a long time ago. This looks like something very hot, though. The camera pans to a man who is controlling the stick in the furnace.

Then, the camera cuts to a castle. Someone yells, “Murderer!” and we can hear the sound of a crowd yelling.

Another cut and we seem to be in some sort of a makeshift hospital. An injured person is carried on a stretcher. Others saying, “May he rest in peace,” as if someone has passed away.

This initial chaos in the scenes are coming together a little bit more as we see some people talking about what’s going on.

One man says it’s not a crime to fight to defend yourselves.

A woman says they took 300 barrels of powder for their rifles.

Another man says that they’ll resist the King’s troops because Paris has stormed the Bastille and everyone around him cheers.

This depiction comes from the 2018 movie called One Nation, One King.

As you can probably guess, this depiction isn’t great…but as it turns out there really are not very many good depictions of the storming of the Bastille that started the French Revolution.

But that is what happened this week in history on July 14^th, 1789 when revolutionary insurgents seized control of a fortress called the Bastille.

The movie doesn’t really mention any of this, but if we take a step back to get some historical context, a financial crisis in France resulted in a lot of conflicts. In May, unrest started to bubble up. In June, a group known as the National Assembly came to the forefront. Meanwhile, the French king, Louis XVI, had reorganized the people in charge of the finances and dismissed Jacques Necker, the finance minister. That was on July 11^th, 1789. When that happened, people were afraid that Louis would arrest members of the National Assembly.

While this unrest wasn’t new and it had been brewing for a while, when people overcame the Bastille—a political prison and fortress—that gave people the confidence they needed to continue to revolt against the monarchy that had ruled France for centuries.

If you want to watch the event as it’s depicted in the 2018 movie One Nation, One King, the day of July 14^th, 1789 starts at about three minutes into the film.

July 3, 1776. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

A piece of paper reading July 2 is torn off to reveal the new date underneath. July 3.

We’re inside a large room with tall ceilings. And we’re not alone; there are a number of well-dressed men sitting at desks scattered throughout the room.

David Ford’s version of John Hancock bangs a gavel on his desk and stands up. He addresses the room, asking if there are any objections to the declaration as it stands now. William Daniels’ character, John Adams, stands up and says he has one. He points out that the correct word is “unalienable” and not “inalienable.”

Ken Howard’s version of Thomas Jefferson replies by saying that, no, “inalienable” is the correct word. Adams disagrees. The men in the room murmur. Calling the room to order by banging the gavel again, Hancock asks if Jefferson will yield to Mr. Adams’ request. Jefferson refuses.

After a moment, Adams withdraws his objection and sits back down.

Then, John Hancock puts a large piece of paper on the desk. The camera cuts to a closeup as we see him signing his name beneath all the writing. Someone comments how large his signature is and Hancock replies it’s so “Fat George” in London can read it without his glasses. Everyone laughs at this.

Hancock tells everyone to step up. “Don’t miss your chance to commit treason,” he says.

Just then, a messenger enters the room and hands a piece of paper off. Standing in front of everyone, it’s read aloud. The message is a report. It says the eve of battle is near. It also says the forces consist entirely of Haslet’s Delaware Militia and Smallwood’s Marylanders—5,000 troops to stand against 25,000 of the enemy.

The laughing from just a moment ago turns to a somber note as everyone realizes this is serious. The report continues to say the enemy is in plain sight beyond the river. We do not know how this will end, but there will be brave men lost before it does. The report is signed, “G. Washington.”

As the reading of the report is finished, William Duell’s version of Andrew McNair gets up from his chair. He steps up to the piece of paper that reads July 3. Tearing off the top piece, now it is July 4.

Hancock instructs McNair to ring the bell.

This is how the movie simply called 1776 tells the story of an event that happened this week in history when the Continental Congress approved the Declaration of Independence on July 4^th, 1776.

The true story? Well, it’s not really what we see in the movie. But that’s not too surprising because even though it’s not so obvious from the segment we’re talking about today, the movie 1776 is a musical interpretation of the events.

With that said, though, it is true that John Hancock was the first person to sign the Declaration of Independence. And his signature was the largest and horizontally centered on the Declaration—that’s why the saying of leaving one’s “John Hancock” is a term people use for signing a document today.

The other people in the movie are based on real people in history, too. Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and the custodian in Continental Congress, Andrew McNair, was known as the official ringer of the Liberty Bell.

Although the movie’s timeline is simplifying things quite a bit, too.

What really happened on July 4^th, 1776 was that after the final wording was approved on the Fourth, a handwritten copy of the Declaration of Independence was sent to a nearby print shop owned by a man named John Dunlap. That night, Dunlap got to work on printing a couple hundred copies of it for distribution.

On July 6^th, the first newspaper printed a copy of the Declaration.

And while it is likely that Andrew McNair was the one to ring the Liberty Bell to announce independence, that didn’t happen until July 8^th. They had delayed it by four days to allow for printing the document for the first public readings of the document. That reading happened on July 8^th.

From there, the word started to spread like wildfire. On July 9^th, John Hancock sent a copy to George Washington who read it to his troops in New York City. Crowds of people started to tear down statues and anything representing British or royal authority.

As a quick side note, the movie’s joke about “Fat George” isn’t referencing George Washington—you probably already guessed that. It’s referring to King George III, who was the monarch on the British throne at the time.

While British officials sent copies back to Great Britain, it wasn’t until mid-August that the Declaration was printed in British newspapers.

 If you want to see this week in history as it’s shown in the movie, check out the 1972 film called 1776. Andrew McNair tearing off the paper to mention it’s July 3^rd started at about two hours, 39 minutes into the movie while July 4^th starts a little later at two hours, 43 minutes and 38 seconds.

And as a little bit of extra trivia knowledge for you to share with your friends and family this July 4^th, it was actually 20 years later that Independence Day was celebrated for the first time: July 4^th, 1796.

And in a bizarre twist of fate, it was exactly 50 years after America’s birthday that two of the Founding Fathers mentioned in this segment died when Thomas Jefferson and John Adams both passed away on July 4^th, 1826. They died within five hours of each other. Exactly five years after that, another Founding Father died when James Monroe passed away on July 4^th, 1831.

Jefferson, Adams, and Monroe were not only Founding Fathers but they were the second, third, and fifth President of the United States, respectively.

July 6, 1917. Aqaba, Jordan.

A bell rings. Not the Liberty Bell like our last segment, but this bell is alerting everyone to the attack.

The lookout ringing the bell is in a square-shaped defensive position lined with sandbags. On the sandy desert below, we can see rows of white tents. Tiny people in the distance are moving around the tents, mostly running in the opposite direction as the oncoming attackers.

From an angle behind the lookout, we can see the attackers charging in the distance. After he’s done ringing the bell, the lookout raises his rifle and shoots.

The camera cuts to a closer shot on the attackers. They’re all riding on either horses or camels, huge plumes of sand getting kicked up by what must be hundreds of horses charging the enemy ahead. One of the soldiers gets hit, presumably by the lookout’s shot. But it doesn’t slow anyone down as they gallop ahead.

All the men on horseback start ululating as they charge forward. Some of them are on camels, and the camera focuses on one of the men wearing all white as he urges his camel onward. The camera cuts to a further away shot and we can see the attackers on horses and camels rushing the encampment. They reach the white tents to be greeted by the sound of gunshots. Some of them fall, but others continue forward with the attack.

Defenders are cut down and before long, it seems obvious the attackers have the upper hand. The cinematic music swells as we see the attackers rushing beyond the tents to the city beyond—pushing the defenders back toward the water just past the city.

This scene comes from the 1962 film Lawrence of Arabia and it’s showing an event that happened this week in history on July 6^th, 1917, when Arab forces led by Sherif Nasir and Auda abu Tayi along with the British officer T.E. Lawrence defeated the Ottoman Empire at the important coastal city of Aqaba.

For a little more historical context, this whole conflict was part of the Middle Eastern theater of World War I, and the British were assisting the Arabs revolt against the Ottoman Empire.

This specific battle is referred to as the Battle of Aqaba, and in the movie, we see it being almost as if the attackers overrun the defenders. There seems to be hardly any slowing them down, and for the most part that’s true.

There were about 5,000 men in the Arab force that attacked about 1,100 defenders. The attack mostly came from the desert, although the British Navy assisted as well. Coming from the desert was a complete surprise to the Turks, though, because they assumed no one could make the 600-mile desert journey.

But, that’s exactly what they did.

And the result was a lopsided victory for the Arabs, with only two Arabs killed while the defending Turks suffered about 300 casualties.

As T.E. Lawrence wrote in his book:

The Arabs needed Akaba: firstly, to extend their front, which was their tactical principle; and, secondly, to link up with the British.

Or, in other words, because Aqaba was a port city, it allowed the British Royal Navy to help supply them from the water.

If you want to watch the event that happened this week in history, check out 1962’s Lawrence of Arabia and the day of the battle starts at about an hour and 47 minutes into the movie. And if you want to dig deeper into the true story, we covered that back on episode #49 of Based on a True Story.

July 7, 1947. New Mexico.

A line of military vehicles are driving along a dirt road. It seems to be a mixture of larger transport trucks and some smaller Jeeps. The terrain around the dirt road is desolate with little more than rocks, sagebrush, and dirt.

One of the men in one of the Jeeps points ahead, “There it is!”

We can catch a glimpse of some smoke rising up from something ahead.

In the next shot, it’s a little easier to see what’s happening. There’s a depression in the terrain. Along the ridge, men in military uniforms walk up to look at the smoke billowing out from below. Not everyone is in military uniforms, though, a couple of the men are in plainclothes.

Now we can see what’s causing the fire. A huge pile of tires are burning. Orange flames and black smoke are flying into the sky.

One of the military men, who seems to be an officer, barks out orders to other soldiers to put the fire out. There’s a flag in the middle of the flames.

“Get that flag out of there!” the officer yells.

As the soldiers spring to action, one of the plainclothes men wearing a white hat notices one of the soldiers carrying a box. The soldier says it’s locked. It’s a little easier to identify the men now, and the man in a white hat is Aidan Gillen’s character, Dr. J. Allen Hynek. He turns to the other plainclothes man, Michael Malarkey’s character, Captain Michael Quinn, and asks him when the original crash was reported to the press.

Quinn says it was July 8^th, 1947. Hynek uses that code to unlock the combination lock on the box. It works. Inside is a single piece of paper. Quinn reads it:

“In 1947, alien spacecraft crashed in this desert. Before you stands the man who covered it all up, General Harding. Tomorrow at 9 am I will show the world proof of what really happened in Roswell, New Mexico.”

Okay, so there’s a few things to separate here with the true story.

For one, this scene comes from the History Channel’s TV series called Project Blue Book and it’s not showing something that happened in 1947. The reason for that is because the TV series is set much later, so this is a fictional scene to try and backtrack and talk about one of the world’s most popular conspiracy theories: The UFO crash at Roswell, New Mexico.

That really did happen this week in history on July 7^th, 1947.

At least, that’s what many people believe.

Did it really happen?

Well, if we could say without a shadow of a doubt then it wouldn’t really be a conspiracy theory, would it? But, regardless of whether or not you believe the Roswell crash was a real event, no one can deny that the story of July 7^th in Roswell has had an impact on countless people around the world.

As the story goes, a rancher named W.W. Brazel, who goes by the nickname “Mac”, found some debris scattered in a field. That happened in June of 1947. But his ranch didn’t have a phone or a radio, so he didn’t think much of it until he was driving to town on July 5^th. There, he heard stories of flying disks being seen. For example, a pilot named Kenneth Arnold had seen what the press quickly referred to as flying saucers on June 24^th, 1947. Just the day before, on July 4^th, United Airlines Flight #105 also talked about seeing some flying disks.

Countless other copycat sightings started popping up fast as word spread about the flying disks.

So, hearing some of these stories, Brazel was reminded of the debris he saw in the field. So, a couple of days later, on July 7^th, he took the debris into the sheriff’s office in Roswell. The sheriff called the Roswell Army Air Field nearby, and one of the officers, a man named Major Jesse Marcel, went out to the field with Brazel where he found the debris. Marcel didn’t take the debris right to the airfield. Instead, he simply took it home for the night and delivered it the next morning when he went to work.

The next day, on July 8^th, the public information officer at Roswell Army Air Field released a statement that a “flying disk” had been recovered from a ranch near Roswell. It hit the papers and news reports soon after. The Roswell Daily Record newspaper ran a story on July 8^th, 1947 with the headline: “RAAF Captures Flying Saucer On Ranch in Roswell Region.”

RAAF standing for Roswell Army Air Field.

Now, I’ll play a clip from a radio broadcast on July 8^th, 1947 that talks about the flying disk at Roswell. But before I play it, just so you know there are some other new items mentioned as well. I thought about cutting that out, but I decided to leave it unedited so you can hear the report as it was broadcast.

So, here it is:

Note: This transcript is automatically generated.

On July 8, 1947, the Army Air Forcs has announced that a flying disk has been found and is now in the possession of the Army. Army officers say the missile found sometime last week has been inspected at Roswell, New Mexico, and sent to right field, Ohio, for further inspection. Russia has demanded U.N. action to get all foreign military personnel out of Greece. Southern Cross collaborators have not yet reached agreement with John Lewis, but the rest of the soft coal industry has resumed production. The House of Representatives has passed the tax reduction bill by more than the two thirds, which would be required to override a veto. Headline of this new special report and set of views in a moment. The American Broadcasting Company had a period in session for that headline edition received a grant from all over the world forever. The day’s headlines were made headline figures and brings you accurate, timely reports on the news behind both headlines, plus informative and personal interviews with the men and women who made the headlines today. Today’s edition presents a roundup of the latest developments in the finding of a flying and eye witness report of the day’s significant actions at the UN Security Council. Ohio Congressman Thomas Duncan commenting on today’s House action on tax legislation. A special report on the status of so-called negotiations and the details of today’s All-Star Baseball game, reportedly because they ended up with history in the making. Stay tuned to headline Now is telegraphed late this afternoon, a bulletin from New Mexico suggested that the widely publicized mystery of the flying saucers may soon be solved. Army Air Force officers reported that one of the flames had been found and inspected sometime last week. Our correspondents in Los Angeles and Chicago have been in contact with Army officials endeavoring to obtain all possible late information. Joe Wilson reports to us now from Chicago that he may be getting to the bottom of all this talk about the so-called flying saucers. As a matter of fact, the 509th Atomic Bomb Group headquarters at Roswell, New Mexico. Reports that it has received one of the deaths which landed on a ranch outside Roswell. This landed at a ranch at Corona, New Mexico, and the rancher turned it over to the Air Force. Roger W w Rozelle was the man who discovered this office. William Blanford of the Roswell Air Base refuses to get details of what the plane this looked like in Fort Worth, Texas, where the object was first sent. Brigadier General Roger Ramey says that it is being shipped by air to the ADF Research Center at Wright Field, Ohio, moments ago. I talked to officials at Right Field and they declared that they expect the so-called flame supper to be delivered there, but that it hasn’t arrived as yet. In the meantime, General Ramey describes the object as being a flimsy construction, almost like a bus. So he says that it was so bad, but he was unable to determine whether it had a disc form, and it does not indicate its size. Rainey says that so far as can be determined, no one saw the object in the air, and he described it as being made of some sort of tin foil. Other Army officials say that further information indicates that the object had a diameter of about 20 to 25 feet and that nothing in the operation section indicated any capacity for speed and that there was no evidence of a power plant. This also appeared to flimsy the carrier man. Now back to photograph in New York. There was important activity within the U.N. Security Council today.

The next day, the Army said it wasn’t a flying disk at all. As the story goes, Major Marcel reported to the commanding officer at RAAF, Colonel William Blanchard. Colonel Blanchard, in turn, reported to General Roger Ramey at the Fort Worth Army Air Field in Texas. General Ramey ordered them to fly the debris to him, so Major Marcel did that. As soon as Marcel arrived, he showed the debris to General Ramey who recognized it as pieces of a high-altitude weather balloon.

So, the story of the flying disk was retracted and, for the most part, forgotten. That changed in the 1970s when Major Marcel was interviewed by a man named Stanton Friedman. In that interview, Marcel said the story of the weather balloon was a cover-up and the debris he saw was extraterrestrial. In 1991, a retired USAF General named Thomas DuBose who was one of the men posing for press photographs of the debris in 1947 also said Marcel was correct in saying the weather balloon story was a cover-up.

And so, the story has been talked about ever since.

If you want to watch the way story is shown on screen, check out the History Channel’s TV series called Project Blue Book. Because of the timeline of the series, it doesn’t really show the event itself but the first two episodes of the second season are dedicated to it. And if you want to go deeper down the rabbit hole, so to speak, I spoke with a ufologist about Project Blue Book back on episode #168, and I also spoke to the Creator and Show Runner behind the series on episode #194 of Based on a True Story.

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