00:00:02:01 – 00:00:32:21
Dan LeFebvre
Hello and welcome to Based on a True Story, the podcast that compares your favorite Hollywood movies and TV shows with history. With spooky season upon us. Today we’re pulling another classic episode from the vault. Actually, more than that, we’re going to do three episodes all about the same TV series History Channel’s Project Blue Book. In case the title alone doesn’t tell you what it’s about, Project Blue Book was the codename for the United States Air Force’s systematic study of UFOs.

00:00:32:23 – 00:00:56:27
Dan LeFebvre
Perhaps the best way to summarize it is from this fact sheet from the Air Force themselves, and I want to link to the whole thing in the show notes. If you want to read it all. But it starts like this. From 1947 to 1969, the Air Force investigated unidentified flying objects under Project Blue Book. The project, headquartered at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, was terminated December 17th, 1969.

00:00:57:00 – 00:01:28:06
Dan LeFebvre
Of a total of 12,618 sightings reported to Project Blue Book, 701 remained unidentified. Now, if you’re watching the video version of this, you might notice some of my little corrections to that document, because technically, Project Blue Book itself didn’t start in 1947. The truth is a little more complex than that, as we’ll hear throughout this episode. But as you might imagine, the TV show that shares the name of the Air Force’s Project Blue Book covers some of those reports created by David O’Leary.

00:01:28:07 – 00:01:51:00
Dan LeFebvre
Project blue Book ran for two seasons of ten episodes each. The first season was in 2019 and the second in 2020. So that means we have a lot to cover today. And to kick this off, we’ll get to hear from the host of one of my all time favorite UFO related podcasts, Rob Christofferson. He’ll help us separate fact from fiction in each episode of the entire series, both seasons.

00:01:51:04 – 00:02:10:08
Dan LeFebvre
So that’s two episodes, one for each season. And then for the third episode, we’ll get to go behind the TV show itself as we hear from the creator, David O’Leary and the showrunner, Sean Blonsky. Before we kick this off with Rob Christofferson, though, let’s set up our game Two Truths and a lie for the first season of Project Blue Book.

00:02:10:10 – 00:02:28:10
Dan LeFebvre
Now, if you’re new to the show, since based on a true story is all about separating fact from fiction in the movies and TV, you’ll get to practice your skills at separating fact from fiction. In this podcast episode, with the game of two Truths and lie. So I’m about to give you three things that we’ll talk about during the first season of Project Blue Book.

00:02:28:13 – 00:03:01:03
Dan LeFebvre
Two of those things are true, and one of them is just an all out lie. Are you ready? Okay. Here, there. Number one, Project Blue Book was the first time the government investigated UFOs. Number two, former Nazi Wernher von Braun teamed up with Walt Disney to promote the U.S. space program after World War two. Number three, the term Foo Fighters was used by World War Two pilots who saw unexplained phenomena.

00:03:01:06 – 00:03:20:25
Dan LeFebvre
Got them. Okay, now, as you’re listening to our story today, see if you can figure out which one of those. It’s a lie. And I’ve got the answer in the envelope right here. And we’ll open that at the end of season one of Project Bluebook to see how well you did. Oh, and speaking of the video version here, just so you know, these episodes are from the vault.

00:03:20:25 – 00:03:47:18
Dan LeFebvre
They were recorded in 2020 and 2021, respectively. And that was before I did video episodes. So these are remastered audio only episodes. But with that, now it’s time to playback my chat with Rob Christopherson from 2020 about the historical accuracy of Project Bluebook Season one.

00:03:47:21 – 00:04:24:15
Dan LeFebvre
I’d like to start by setting the stage for Doctor J. Allen Hynek and his work on Project Bluebook. Now, according to the TV show Doctor, Hynek was an astrophysics teacher at Ohio State before he he’s recruited by the US Air Force to investigate flying saucers, what they called Project Bluebook. Now, there’s one little bit of dialog in the show where they give a very vague reason as to why they picked Doctor Hynek, and it’s when General James Harding tells Captain Michael Quinn that Hynek, quote, did some things for us in the war, end quote.

00:04:24:18 – 00:04:45:24
Dan LeFebvre
So not a lot of details there about that. But they do give some details about why they started Project Blue Book itself. Now, the reason that the show gives for that was because there are Hollywood movies about aliens coming out, and the public know something’s going on, but no one knows exactly what, including the government. According to the show.

00:04:45:25 – 00:05:08:00
Dan LeFebvre
So they want to find out, but they also want to cover it up. We get the sense from the show that the military picked Hynek because of his scientific background, because he’s not in the military, they’re hoping that they can give a little bit of some scientific proof to the public for flying saucers. That’s outside of the military.

00:05:08:03 – 00:05:30:12
Dan LeFebvre
Now, in the show, Doctor Hynek agrees to join Project Bluebook on three conditions. One is that he stays on staff at Ohio State. Two is he gets a paycheck from the government, some extra money for his family. And the three is that he gets recognition for whatever he finds. So that is, according to this TV show, a kind of setting all of this up.

00:05:30:14 – 00:05:36:19
Dan LeFebvre
How well do you think the show did depicting the way that Doctor Hynek got involved in Project Bluebook?

00:05:36:21 – 00:06:08:19
Rob Kristoffersen
So Doctor Hynek, joining Project Bluebook was kind of a matter of convenience for most. So, when Project Bluebook comes into being in late 1951, this is essentially the government’s third attempt to study the UFO phenomenon. And doctor J.L. and Harnick was part of the government’s first UFO study, which is called Project Sign, signed commenced in January of 1948 and was shuttered later that year.

00:06:08:21 – 00:06:40:11
Rob Kristoffersen
He joined the project in the spring of 48, for a few different reasons. He was at the time the director of the observatory at Ohio State University. All of the government’s UFO projects were run out of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, which was about 60 miles away from him. And Hynek already had a high security clearance from his work on the proximity fuze during World War two, which is what they kind of allude to him doing things for us during the war.

00:06:40:14 – 00:07:06:05
Rob Kristoffersen
And when you factor in all of these things, Hynek was kind of the guy they needed an astronomer to rule out any kind of astronomical explanation that there could be for the sightings. And, he was a perfect guy to do it. So, as our good friend Sam stated on the Not Alone podcast, right place, right time, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.

00:07:06:08 – 00:07:10:27
Dan LeFebvre
I love that. So,

00:07:10:29 – 00:07:46:27
Rob Kristoffersen
When Hynek took the job, he believed that this would be a quick one. He was pretty sure that what the UFO phenomenon was at the time was just Cold War nerves, world War two, latent nerves, you know, stuff left over. So, one of the most important cases that Hynek worked on, and that will come full circle for his involvement in Project Blue Book is a case involving a pilot by the name of Thomas F Mantell, who died while in pursuit of a UFO in January of 1948.

00:07:47:00 – 00:08:25:29
Rob Kristoffersen
Mantell and a few other pilots were taxiing planes from Marietta, Georgia, to Stanford Field in Kentucky. And while they were doing that, Godman Air Force Base, which was located near Fort Knox, had received a few unidentified blips on their radar and asked Mantell and his crew of a few other pilots to go investigate it. Well, Mantell pursued the object, but, unfortunately, he didn’t have oxygen on board, so when his plane climbed too high, he suffered from epoxy, which basically caused him to crash his plane.

00:08:26:02 – 00:08:50:15
Rob Kristoffersen
And Hynek was the one that kind of made his determination on this case. And he claimed that he was chasing the planet Venus. So really just kind of debunking mentality. And that was at the start of Project Sine. That was the mentality that, and Hynek had. So.

00:08:50:18 – 00:09:17:06
Rob Kristoffersen
Project sine was basically shuttered largely because of a document called The Estimate of the situation, which basically said that these crafts were extraterrestrial in origin. No surviving copy of this document exists, though, like, the generals that this report went to basically said, you have to destroy every single one of these, documents. There’s no way that we’re going to the president or anybody with this kind of information.

00:09:17:06 – 00:09:54:02
Rob Kristoffersen
So no surviving copy has ever been found, but there have been people who have attested to it, including Doctor Hynek himself. So signed was shuttered and was reactivated as Project Grudge. Now, grudge was strictly a debunking campaign. They downplayed reports and at times just threw them out. Didn’t even bother to investigate them. Grudge officially lasted for about a year, but they kind of kept somebody on staff so that if somebody did want to report UFO sightings to there, there would be somebody there.

00:09:54:02 – 00:10:25:14
Rob Kristoffersen
And that guy’s name was Lieutenant Jerry Cummings. And in 1951, there was a sighting at Fort Monroe, Monmouth, new Jersey, and Air Force personnel witnessed a disc shaped object. And a report was, filed, but was ultimately dismissed by Cummings under the directive that he had been working with. And this report made its name to a general by the name of CP Campbell, who requested to see the report and didn’t really like the looks of it.

00:10:25:15 – 00:10:55:04
Rob Kristoffersen
He didn’t feel like people were being honest with him, and Cummings basically told him how the project had been handled up to this point, that it was there just to debunk reports. And, at that point, Cummings got or sorry, Campbell got pretty angry and, he ordered that, Project Grudge be reactivated in full force. Unfortunately, Cummings was on his way out, back to a civilian life.

00:10:55:04 – 00:11:08:09
Rob Kristoffersen
So he got a gentleman by the name of Captain Edward Rupert, who was the first Project Bluebook head to, spearhead this project. So.

00:11:08:12 – 00:11:32:16
Rob Kristoffersen
Captain Rupert was essentially the backup pilot, for the crew of the Enola Gay. So if any, of the pilots that were involved in that flight couldn’t, somehow make it, for whatever reason, he was the guy that was going to fly that plane, and he had worked with Doctor Hynek before on Project Sign, and he quickly got in there.

00:11:32:16 – 00:11:52:15
Rob Kristoffersen
He whipped this project into shape, and it soon it would be relabeled Project Blue Book. But one of the things that he did was he went back into the old reports just to see what was there, to see how things were ruled. And Rupert was the kind of guy who was going to give you his objective opinion.

00:11:52:15 – 00:12:14:20
Rob Kristoffersen
He wanted this to be as objective study as possible. So if you leaned one way, either one way to one side or the other, you were kicked off the team. So, one case report that he looked at was the Thomas F Mantell case, and he saw that Hynek was the one that made the determination on that one.

00:12:14:22 – 00:12:47:00
Rob Kristoffersen
So he basically called him up and said, I need you to come back in here. We need to reexamine this case. They determined that what Mantell was chasing was a Project Mogul balloon. This was a newly declassified project. As of 1951, that essentially set up weather balloons to, with audio equipment attached to them. And they were basically there to detect Soviet atomic bomb tests.

00:12:47:03 – 00:12:56:29
Rob Kristoffersen
And that’s basically how Hynek made his way onto Project Bluebook. He stayed, after that, through the entirety of the project.

00:12:57:01 – 00:13:14:26
Dan LeFebvre
So just to make sure I’m understanding there was a captain, because in the show, there’s Captain Quinn, and we also meet a couple generals. General Harding and General Valentine are the character names. Were they also were they based on those, those generals and the captain that you were referring to, or they just completely fictional?

00:13:14:29 – 00:13:55:22
Rob Kristoffersen
They’re inspired. They’re not, totally those people. For instance, Captain Quinn is kind of based on to Project Blue book heads, Edward Powell, like I mentioned. And, another one by the name of Colonel Robert Friend, who was a Tuskegee Airman, and he served, I think, for about a year. But he was he had had that Edward Pelt mentality, which was he they were skeptical, but they wouldn’t let their, skeptical beliefs really shatter any kind of, reports or anything like that or, you know, lead them down a road.

00:13:55:22 – 00:14:24:12
Rob Kristoffersen
They didn’t think they should be going. In general, Valentine, I do believe, is based on General Nathan Twining, who was the general that actually created Project Sign, and he was kind of a figure in the background during the government UFO research project. So he was always kind of there in the background, always kind of got Intel and he’s, you know, made some interesting statements on UFOs and such.

00:14:24:14 – 00:14:36:05
Rob Kristoffersen
The there’s some funny interviews with him. There’s one in which he alludes to UFOs kind of thwarting U.S. forces in Vietnam and stuff like that. It’s, there’s a lot of fun stuff out there.

00:14:36:08 – 00:14:49:19
Dan LeFebvre
Well, yeah. Okay. I was just curious because obviously Doctor Hynek being real. I was just curious who on the military side of it would have been real. But it sounds like they’re more just composite characters, which is very common that we get for movies and TV shows.

00:14:49:22 – 00:14:59:18
Rob Kristoffersen
Yeah, for the most part, the only, real to life characters on the show are Doctor Allen Hynek and his wife, Mimi. Mimi Hynek.

00:14:59:21 – 00:15:25:25
Dan LeFebvre
You mentioned the pilot there, and that leads right into the next question that I have, because in episode one, it kicks off with something that they call the Fuller Incident. Now, I’m going to assume that’s not necessarily the the same incident that you were referring to, because this in the show at least happens in Fargo, North Dakota, and it’s named after Lieutenant Henry Fuller, who is the pilot who gets into this dogfight with a flying saucer.

00:15:25:27 – 00:15:48:18
Dan LeFebvre
And according to the show, that was essentially the reason why they started Project Blue Book. But then after the investigation of the incident, Doctor Hynek concludes that the object the lieutenant was chasing was nothing more than a weather balloon. And you mentioned something similar to that. So was the fuller incident that we see in the show. That event that you were referring to, is that something else?

00:15:48:20 – 00:16:20:04
Rob Kristoffersen
No, that’s a little bit different. It has some of the hallmarks of the Thomas F Mantell case, but the Fuller incident is based directly on an incident called the Gorman dogfight. And, this involved a man by the name of George F Gorman, who was an Air National Guard pilot out of Fargo, North Dakota. And on October 1st, 1948, his squadron was returning from a flight at night, and Gorman decided he wanted to stay up in the air for a little bit, longer for some night flying practice.

00:16:20:04 – 00:16:42:06
Rob Kristoffersen
And after circling around a football stadium, this was around 9 p.m. that night. He was approaching Hector Airport and was notified by the tower that there was a Piper Cub plane below him. And, he was forced to circle the airport for a short period of time. And on one pass, he saw what he believed to be the tail light of another craft.

00:16:42:06 – 00:17:10:26
Rob Kristoffersen
Pass the cape, the Piper Cub plane on his right. It was white and color, blinking in intervals and approximately 6 to 8in in diameter. So this object was not registering on radar in any way. But, he went into an investigate it. And when Gorman made his approach, the light stopped blinking and basically just took off. And Gorman engage with the object.

00:17:10:26 – 00:17:40:28
Rob Kristoffersen
He pursued it. He found himself out, maneuvered basically at every turn, but was able to get behind it at one point. But when he did, the object basically turned around and flew straight in his direction. It passed right over his canopy and turned around to do it again. But before it seemingly was supposed to make impact, the light abruptly turned upward and shot straight up into the air.

00:17:41:01 – 00:18:04:22
Rob Kristoffersen
Now, Gorman attempted to pursue the object, but it was such a steep climb that his plane stalled out at 14,000ft. He was able to restart it, though, and landed. So, it’s not like it is. It’s depicted in the show. It’s the. He doesn’t crash the plane or anything, but, what makes this sighting so powerful is that there were numerous eyewitnesses to it.

00:18:04:29 – 00:18:28:05
Rob Kristoffersen
The two men manning the tower that night, Lloyd de Jensen and H. Johnson attested to the object’s fast speed, maneuverability, and the Piper Cub plane. The pilot of it, doctor A.E. cannon, also saw the light and testified to basically the same thing. And here’s a here’s a fun quote from, Mr. Gorman, quote.

00:18:28:05 – 00:19:08:18
Rob Kristoffersen
I am convinced that there was definite thought behind its maneuvering. I am further convinced that the object was governed by the laws of inertia, because its acceleration was rapid but not immediate, and although it was able to turn fairly tight at considerable speed, it still followed a natural curve. End quote. So this case was one of the Landmark Project’s nine cases, the other being The Test, the death of Thomas F Mantell, and another account known as the Child’s Weighted Account, which involved two civilian pilots that witness basically a long cigar shaped object fly alongside their plane at night.

00:19:08:21 – 00:19:18:01
Rob Kristoffersen
So that’s really what, that incident and, what that, episode was based on.

00:19:18:03 – 00:19:22:08
Dan LeFebvre
Sounds like movements that you would expect from a weather balloon. Right.

00:19:22:10 – 00:19:32:18
Rob Kristoffersen
Kind of. It kind of reminded me of, like, if you think about it, like, maybe like an alien playing with a laser pointer, you know, it’s it’s got those hallmarks there, I like that.

00:19:32:19 – 00:19:33:21
Sean Jablonski
Yeah.

00:19:33:23 – 00:19:36:03
Dan LeFebvre
There you go. And we’re just the cats following along, right.

00:19:36:05 – 00:19:37:13
Rob Kristoffersen
Absolutely.

00:19:37:15 – 00:19:57:13
Dan LeFebvre
Well, something that happened after this in the show was when Doctor Hynek used the term UFO for the first time. And, it was I thought this was funny because when he used it, the Captain Green character, you kind of looks at him as like a what? And then he goes on to explain, well, I’m kind of trying to coin this term to explain what we’re investigating.

00:19:57:16 – 00:20:02:13
Dan LeFebvre
Was he the one that actually coined the term UFO? And was it after that incident?

00:20:02:15 – 00:20:28:26
Rob Kristoffersen
No. Actually, the person that coined the term is it’s one of the people that coined is based on, Edward Rupert. He actually coined the term and early 52, he was looking for a different term because, flying saucer had such, negative, connotation associated with it. So he wanted a fresh term to go in with an unidentified flying object, is what he came up with.

00:20:28:28 – 00:20:36:25
Dan LeFebvre
I guess. Makes sense, too, because it’s not. You mentioned earlier a cigar shaped craft. They’re not always saucer shaped.

00:20:36:27 – 00:20:37:29
Rob Kristoffersen
No.

00:20:38:02 – 00:21:05:05
Dan LeFebvre
Now, in episode two of the show, Doctor Hynek and Captain Queen go to investigate a case in West Virginia where a mother and her children see something strange. And this is the case, according to the show called The Flatwoods Monster, because it’s not a flying saucer. This time or a UFO use that term, but it’s also involving a creature of some sort.

00:21:05:07 – 00:21:25:11
Dan LeFebvre
Maybe an alien creature. Well, that’s what Doctor Hynek and Captain Queen are there to find out. Ultimately, Doctor Hynek once again gives a rational explanation for the strange things that were seen. He stands up in front of the town and gives this speech. Captain Quinn and Doctor Hynek explained that the spaceship they saw was just a meteor.

00:21:25:14 – 00:21:47:00
Dan LeFebvre
The creature that they saw was a great horned owl. And Doctor Hynek goes on to give a scientific explanation about hot air and cold air, causing light to refract in different directions. It’s why stars twinkle and mirages are formed in the desert, according to his explanation. And it’s also how you can see an owl in a burning forest and think it’s a monster.

00:21:47:03 – 00:22:00:28
Dan LeFebvre
So that’s how the the movie or I’m sorry in the movie, the TV show sets up the flatwoods monster case. Was that a real investigation and how well did the show do explaining those events that happened?

00:22:01:00 – 00:22:30:04
Rob Kristoffersen
The flatwoods monster case was a real case that, took place in September of 1952. And it really is almost something out of a horror movie, especially when you look online at the images that were created once the eyewitnesses described what they were seeing. So, a group of kids, Eddie and Fred Mae and Tommy Heyer, witnessed this fireball in the sky in September of 1952.

00:22:30:07 – 00:22:55:29
Rob Kristoffersen
And they saw it go down in the forest. So they gathered a small group that included, the Mae’s mother and Gene Lemmon, who was a 17 year old National Guard member. And Lemmon led the charge into the into the forest. And they had first see what they believe was just two lights. But the more that they stare at them, the more that they realized that they look more like eyes.

00:22:56:02 – 00:23:23:29
Rob Kristoffersen
And then they see this large metallic looking creature that had, they described it like a spade behind its head, but it was completely red and apparently everyone in this group, which consisted of seven the seven people witnessed this creature. The town was kind of on edge a little bit, but not as bad as they depict it in the show.

00:23:24:01 – 00:23:54:09
Rob Kristoffersen
But, Project Blue Book really didn’t play much of a part in this case. This was really more investigated by civilian, UFO groups and, independent investigators. One of the most prominent was a an investigator named Gray Barker, who, did and investigated a number of cases, including the, famed Mothman flap in, West Virginia in 1966 and 1967.

00:23:54:11 – 00:24:32:06
Rob Kristoffersen
But basically all Project Blue Book did was looked at the, sighting of the object in the sky and just basically determined that it was a meteor. But they didn’t seem to acknowledge the creature at all in their, in their files. So, yeah, they didn’t really play much of a part, but, I did enjoy the depiction, of the way that they did things the skeptics have pointed to, an owl in a tree as being the culprit of this, but, I don’t necessarily pi that.

00:24:32:09 – 00:24:35:19
Dan LeFebvre
But it’s but it’s just, you know, the hot air and the cold air and.

00:24:35:21 – 00:24:36:02
Sean Jablonski
Well, the.

00:24:36:02 – 00:24:48:27
Rob Kristoffersen
Cool thing is the, when he’s talking about how stars twinkle, he was the astronomer that discovered how stars twinkle. So. Oh, it’s kind of fitting for him, you know?

00:24:48:29 – 00:24:58:00
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah, well, that’s cool. I didn’t realize that. That they. I’m sure they they pulled that in as a as a little, little nugget there too, for somebody to find that cool.

00:24:58:03 – 00:25:25:22
Rob Kristoffersen
Or the, the cool thing about this show is that his children, Paul and I think another one of his children actually consult for the show. So it’s a lot more it’s it has its, you know, dramatic elements, but it’s, pretty accurate, as best as they have been able to contribute, there are some mannerisms that Aidan Gillen will do that, apparently are the same ones that Doctor Hynek would do.

00:25:25:22 – 00:25:54:04
Rob Kristoffersen
And, and, they’ve actually used like, personal items that, Jalen Hynek and maybe Hynek had for their characters in the show. So, you know, it’s a cool it’s a cool nod. And, the show is very respectful of his legacy. So I, I appreciate it for that because he is this really monumental figure in UFO research.

00:25:54:07 – 00:26:20:04
Dan LeFebvre
Well, let’s, continue on because there’s more episodes that we need to cover. After the flatwoods monster case, we see that Doctor Hynek is he’s taking his role very seriously, and he’s he’s really trying his best to come up with some scientific rationale behind both the faller incident and the flatwoods monster. But then the next case is the Lubbock Lights.

00:26:20:04 – 00:26:40:11
Dan LeFebvre
And that’s when things start to change as far as the show is concerned. And this is episode number three in the series. It’s the first time that both Captain Quinn and Doctor Hynek experienced something themselves. They’re out in the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere, and Captain Quinn is inside the car and Doctor Hynek is outside of the car.

00:26:40:11 – 00:27:13:16
Dan LeFebvre
When the car just starts going crazy, lights are flashing, the radios tuning frequencies, the entire car is shaking, and then a massive V-shaped crack with blue lights fly over, and they both see it now in the show. General Harding and General Valentine in the military give Quinn and Hynek the explanation that what they saw was a top secret experimental craft that has a V shape wing, and they show some photos that look like they could be real from that time period.

00:27:13:18 – 00:27:38:12
Dan LeFebvre
But despite this explanation, Doctor Hynek doesn’t believe that this is true. Doesn’t really believe what the military is telling him. And so he’s starting to get the sense that perhaps he’s not getting the full story. At the very end of episode three, we see him writing in his notebook. He writes possible government cover up. So was the series correct?

00:27:38:12 – 00:27:49:27
Dan LeFebvre
And showing that Doctor Hynek started to have experiences of his own that he couldn’t explain around the time of the Lubbock Lights? And did he start to suspect that he wasn’t being fed the full story from the Air Force?

00:27:49:29 – 00:28:15:20
Rob Kristoffersen
Hynek, as far as I know, never witnessed a UFO while investigating any cases during Project Blue Book. There’s a really great biography of him called The Close Encounters Man by Mark O’Connell, and in it he talks about a sighting that he may have had while looking, through a telescope. He claimed he saw, like a strange object, fly over the face of the moon or something like that.

00:28:15:20 – 00:28:56:17
Rob Kristoffersen
But, he never had an overt UFO experience during his time. In regards to what the Air Force was letting him in on, Hynek was the one of the people that was on the inside. So it they never really kept anything from him. If anything, he knew things that he couldn’t really talk about. And, in 1953, there was a CIA led panel called the Robertson Panel, which basically came in, and the reason why they came in, we’ll, it’ll be coming up later in, in the line of questioning.

00:28:56:17 – 00:29:32:19
Rob Kristoffersen
And then it pertains to an episode like the last episode in the season. But they came in, they assessed the work of, Project Bluebook, and they basically determined that, like Project Grudge, they had to now downplay reports in order to keep the public calm. So, in order to prevent mass hysteria, they were going to have to misidentify things and, essentially Project Blue Book from 1953 onwards became Project Grudge all over again.

00:29:32:21 – 00:30:17:15
Rob Kristoffersen
But Hynek was there. He was he was doing the best that he could. He couldn’t really come forward and say what he wanted and not. Or he would be losing access to the Project Blue Book Files, which at the time were the best place to get UFO files from. There weren’t civilian organizations as of yet. They would pop up not long after, but, essentially in 53, that was a turning point for Hynek, where he had started to change from this total skeptic there to debunk reports to, okay, now I’m being told that I can’t do my job properly.

00:30:17:20 – 00:30:41:23
Rob Kristoffersen
I don’t like this, so I don’t really trust the CIA at this point. And, he would essentially go through this metamorphosis over time where he would become a believer in the phenomenon. So the way that they kind of depict it in the show, his turn doesn’t happen that quickly, but, it does it does happen over time.

00:30:41:25 – 00:30:57:08
Dan LeFebvre
Okay. Yeah. It sounds like they, again, we see this a lot in movies and TV shows where they simplified it. It sounds like they just gave him an experience. Instead of trying to explain the CIA panel and all of these other, aspects, perhaps.

00:30:57:10 – 00:31:26:11
Rob Kristoffersen
Yeah. Absolutely. And, the Lubbock Lights photographs are real photographs. I do believe the ones they show in the actual episode are the real Lubbock Light photographs. And, that case took place in early 51. That was during the transitionary period from when Rupert was coming in. But, that was a case that stumped a lot of people.

00:31:26:13 – 00:31:50:18
Rob Kristoffersen
There were scientists that studied it, and, the the individual that actually took the photographs. He was a student, I do believe, at one of the universities. They took these photographs over a couple different nights, but they essentially show a group of lights in an arrow type shape, in passing over the skies of Lubbock, Texas.

00:31:50:18 – 00:31:55:19
Rob Kristoffersen
It’s, it’s really fascinating case. Then, go look up those photos online.

00:31:55:19 – 00:31:56:20
Sean Jablonski
They’re fun.

00:31:56:22 – 00:32:14:26
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah. And in, in the show, don’t they kind of pass it off as possibly a flock of birds or something like that, reflecting off lights. Was that a, an excuse or a, natural reason that was kind of thrown around there as one of the possibilities.

00:32:14:29 – 00:32:42:22
Rob Kristoffersen
Yeah, that was an actual reason that, investigators pinned, and they did end up doing a test and taking photographs. And what happened was you could see one speck of light from one bird. There wasn’t enough, reflection to actually pick it up. So it’s not clear exactly what the Lubbock lights were. They actually traveled quite fast.

00:32:42:25 – 00:32:51:11
Rob Kristoffersen
They determined, when they flew over them, that they were traveling at somewhere near 1800 miles an hour or so. Pretty sure birds can’t do that.

00:32:51:18 – 00:32:55:04
Sean Jablonski
Not many birds that they come across. Okay.

00:32:55:06 – 00:32:58:21
Dan LeFebvre
I hope not. At least that would be, the fast flying birds.

00:32:58:24 – 00:32:59:08
Rob Kristoffersen
That is a.

00:32:59:08 – 00:33:02:14
Sean Jablonski
Flat like work.

00:33:02:16 – 00:33:33:02
Dan LeFebvre
Well, the the next episode, episode number four, brings in Operation Paperclip. And this is when we’re introduced to Verner von Braun. He is a former Nazi who built the V-2 rocket and post-World War II two. He’s heading up America’s space program. So Doctor Quinn and or. I’m sorry, doctor Hynek and Captain Quinn get a firsthand look at von Braun’s work, as they think that maybe one of the UFOs that they’re investigating is just one of his rockets, and it’s a top secret rocket.

00:33:33:04 – 00:34:00:17
Dan LeFebvre
So during this on the show, von Braun pulls Doctor Hynek aside and offers him a job to work with him. But Doctor Hynek doesn’t trust the former Nazi. I wonder why. But then, regardless, von Braun tells Doctor Hynek that he can’t explain the sightings. He knows about anybody. He can’t explain them. And then at the end of the episode, we see von Braun overseeing a test with an American pilot being forced into a giant flying saucer.

00:34:00:19 – 00:34:23:12
Dan LeFebvre
And as the saucer starts to take off, there’s some massive rings rotating around it. Obviously, you know, we have some effects going on there and then, you know, poof, it just disappears. And then von Braun simply says it worked like he’s not. The IT show is implying that he’s working on a lot more than just rockets. Can you give us an overview of Operation Paperclip?

00:34:23:12 – 00:34:31:26
Dan LeFebvre
And did Project Bluebook cross with paperclip and take Doctor Hynek to meet up with, Verner von Braun?

00:34:31:28 – 00:34:33:12
Sean Jablonski
So.

00:34:33:15 – 00:35:02:21
Rob Kristoffersen
For Operation Paperclip? Basically, as World War Two was winding down, American, British and Russian forces were racing to scour Germany for military resources, technological advances and anything that they could get their hands on that the Germans may have created, the Germans at the time were known for, really high technological advances, especially in, in rocketry.

00:35:02:23 – 00:35:30:17
Rob Kristoffersen
And, the allies actually discovered a list called the Ozen Berg List that contain the names of every single scientist, that had worked for the Third Reich. Funny enough, they found it in a toilet. So let’s take that for what you will. Okay. The allies, essentially tracked down 1600 scientists and brought them to America. The OSS, the sponge, expunge their records.

00:35:30:19 – 00:36:04:29
Rob Kristoffersen
So they were basically given a slate clean slate to work for the government. And the most infamous individual was, Wernher von Braun. And he is basically the father of modern rocketry. He designed the V-2 rocket, and he was instrumental for us, in the space race. He pretty much got us to the moon. So, I got to say, Dan, I didn’t really expect to find anything because I didn’t think that Hynek had done anything with V-2 rockets or had met Wernher von Braun.

00:36:04:29 – 00:36:21:15
Rob Kristoffersen
But, you brought out the best to me, Dan. So I got to thank you for that. Now, I discovered this blog post on, I think it was Ohio Moo Funds website. And let me tell you, this website looks like it’s from the 90s. I love it.

00:36:21:18 – 00:36:23:13
Sean Jablonski
Hey, nice.

00:36:23:15 – 00:36:55:16
Rob Kristoffersen
And it was written by John Hynek secretary, a woman named Jenny Zeeman, and apparently Hynek worked on V-2 rockets while at White Sands Missile Range after the war. Now, he had imagined he had allegedly met Wernher von Braun at that time. But nothing. Nobody has ever come forward with this information like it’s not even in his biography. And even Heinrich’s closest friends do not know anything about this.

00:36:55:18 – 00:37:07:18
Rob Kristoffersen
So, yeah, apparently he may have worked on, V-2 rockets at one point. So, Yeah, that that’s new information to me, man. So good job.

00:37:07:21 – 00:37:18:07
Dan LeFebvre
Wow. Yeah. No, I mean, there are two high profile characters. I mean, I’m I’m not intimately familiar with Von Braun, but he’s kind of the the face.

00:37:18:07 – 00:37:19:19
Rob Kristoffersen
Of.

00:37:19:22 – 00:37:42:03
Dan LeFebvre
The US after the war, getting a lot of of Nazi scientists to to work on American technology. And for me, he was always kind of the face of that. So when I saw them together on the show, I knew that was something I had to ask, like, did they actually meet each other? Or is this just a show, having two names that people might recognize and using it as an excuse to put those two together?

00:37:42:06 – 00:37:47:15
Rob Kristoffersen
Right. Yeah. And, apparently they did cross cross paths at one point.

00:37:47:18 – 00:38:05:29
Dan LeFebvre
Well, speaking of crossing paths with names, I’m going to ask you another one here, because in the show there’s one point where Doctor Hynek tells Captain Quinn, as you know, he doesn’t trust Von Braun. And he’s like, you know, how do you make a Nazi look legitimate? You have Walt Disney give him his own special and Beemer right into your living room.

00:38:06:01 – 00:38:13:13
Dan LeFebvre
And we see this happen on the show. Did Von Braun and Walt Disney actually team up for a TV special?

00:38:13:15 – 00:38:37:24
Rob Kristoffersen
Oh, yeah, a number of times. The first time was on an episode, what they called Disneyland back at that time. Today, you would know it as the wonderful world of Disney and he appeared on screen to talk about plans for the American government to go to the moon. So, he would also appear in a number of Disney specials after that.

00:38:37:24 – 00:38:51:01
Rob Kristoffersen
So Wernher von Braun was the face, early on of the for the space race. So, yeah, he definitely did team up with, Walt Disney a time or two.

00:38:51:03 – 00:39:17:05
Dan LeFebvre
Wow. That’s that’s fascinating. Wow. Okay, so moving on to the next episode. This is episode number five, and it’s entitled Foo Fighters. And in this episode, we see that Lieutenant Fuller from the very first episode, he’s back. And this time he’s in a group of people who have experienced something similar to him. You know, lights in the sky, maybe not the exact same thing as him, but they’re all similar experiences.

00:39:17:07 – 00:39:46:02
Dan LeFebvre
And Captain Quinn explains the title of the show. He explains that during World War Two, pilots would see lights that they couldn’t explain, and they called them Foo Fighters. That’s why they named the episode that. But in the episode, Lieutenant Fuller and his group of experiencers show Doctor Hynek and Captain Quinn the lights themselves. They bring out this contraption that they’ve built, and they seem to be able to call the lights, to them.

00:39:46:05 – 00:40:12:11
Dan LeFebvre
But Doctor Hynek is quick to dismiss these as just car truck headlights bouncing off the fog in the distance. They’re not really calling them to them. And then at the end of the episode, Doctor Hynek runs across Fuller at a secret hospital in Cedar Rapids, Iowa that’s now abandoned. And Doctor Hynek shows Fuller something and almost immediately, Fuller douses himself in gasoline and sets himself on fire.

00:40:12:13 – 00:40:37:24
Dan LeFebvre
Now, after this, the show cuts to General Harding and General Valentine. This is very stereotypical, secret government. They’re just kind of sitting around this table in, you know, very dark room and just kind of what you would expect for a secret military government, I guess. But, but they talk about how somebody or something must have flipped Fuller’s off switch, whatever that means.

00:40:37:25 – 00:41:01:03
Dan LeFebvre
It doesn’t really explain a lot right there. It just says, oh, it must have flipped him off, which sounds like something else, but that’s. But, in the show, they said, flip the off switch. Now, when I was watching this episode, it was one of the first episodes that I was thinking, am maybe this really wasn’t based on something real.

00:41:01:06 – 00:41:24:27
Dan LeFebvre
After all, the episode itself was claiming that Foo Fighters were was a term used in World War Two, and this is, after all, after World War Two. And so I just assumed that maybe this was the show stretching things, and I got the implication just watching the show, that Doctor Hynek probably never actually investigated Foo Fighters because those were during World War Two.

00:41:24:27 – 00:41:32:03
Dan LeFebvre
And this is supposed to be happening after World War two. Or am I wrong there? Did he actually investigate Foo Fighters like we see in the show?

00:41:32:05 – 00:42:04:25
Rob Kristoffersen
He did not investigate Foo Fighters. He was really busy working on the proximity fuze by that time. But, Foo Fighters were a real phenomenon during the war. And it was experienced by both Allied pilots and axis pilots, and they both believed that this was, technology from both sides being thrown at planes. But, that’s kind of confusing because like, clearly it’s not none of them, you know, claimed responsibility for it.

00:42:04:27 – 00:42:33:17
Rob Kristoffersen
And, if we’re talking about, like, the Germans, the Germans would totally take responsibility for that back in the day. There’s no way that they wouldn’t. But yeah, the Hynek never investigated the Foo Fighters. There wasn’t really a lot of, resources to investigate the Foo Fighters at the time. They there was a brief investigation done by American forces, but they couldn’t come to any definitive conclusion.

00:42:33:17 – 00:42:49:11
Rob Kristoffersen
But, yeah. Doctor Hynek, he was working on that proximity fuze, which I do believe time magazine ranked it as the third best innovation to come from the Second World War.

00:42:49:14 – 00:42:51:04
Dan LeFebvre
What is the proximity fuze?

00:42:51:07 – 00:43:14:08
Rob Kristoffersen
Basically, it’s a fuze that sends out radio waves. And when the radio waves bounce off something and come back and that signal gets shorter and shorter, the bomb basically explodes and realistically, you see that same technology in, like, noise cancellation headphones. Now.

00:43:14:11 – 00:43:16:00
Dan LeFebvre
We have Doctor Hynek to thank for that.

00:43:16:02 – 00:43:17:18
Rob Kristoffersen
Yeah.

00:43:17:21 – 00:43:42:25
Dan LeFebvre
So I’m curious though, because in the in the show, when we see Lieutenant Fuller, his off switch flipped or whatever happens there and he it’s a very tragic death. It you know, he sets himself on fire. But if his experience was based on, a pilot named Gorman, I believe you said, was that what essentially what happened to Gorman?

00:43:42:27 – 00:43:57:28
Rob Kristoffersen
No. There’s not a lot known about Gorman, but he seemingly lived a normal life after the Gorman dogfight. He served in the, forces for a little bit longer, and then, went off and did his own thing.

00:43:58:00 – 00:44:26:24
Dan LeFebvre
Okay, well, the next investigation in the show covers green fireballs. They’re sighted over a nuclear testing ground. And Project Bluebook is called in to verify that these are, in fact, meteors, a perfectly natural explanation. But something happens during the investigation, and Doctor Hynek sees the fireballs in the sky himself. And they are very clearly not meteors. Now, with another super secretive character on screen.

00:44:26:27 – 00:44:47:00
Dan LeFebvre
Man, that is simply cast. I had to look them up afterwards, he just to see if he had an actual name. But they just call him the Fixer. He shows up and, Doctor Hynek theorizes out loud that perhaps the green fireballs are some sort of craft monitoring our nuclear testing sites, because that’s where they were seen.

00:44:47:03 – 00:44:53:23
Dan LeFebvre
Can you give us an overview of the the real event that this episode had based on and what Doctor Heinrich’s reaction was to it?

00:44:53:25 – 00:45:23:04
Rob Kristoffersen
Sure. In November of 1948, reports started to trickle in, out in the west of of the phenomenon known as green fireballs. They were at first quickly dismissed as green military flares, but on the night of December 5th, 1948, two separate plane crews, one military and one civilian, in New Mexico, each attested to seeing a green fireball while in the air.

00:45:23:06 – 00:45:41:29
Rob Kristoffersen
Each of them described the object resembling a green meteor, but ruled out meteors when the object basically abruptly turned, turned up, and then leveled off, which I’ve never heard of a meteor doing. But, you know, the those fancy meteors, they just do what they want these days.

00:45:42:00 – 00:45:44:10
Dan LeFebvre
Well, you’ve never heard of birds that fly that fast either, so.

00:45:44:10 – 00:45:46:10
Sean Jablonski
No meaning.

00:45:46:13 – 00:46:17:04
Rob Kristoffersen
So, three days after that sighting on the eighth to Air Force Office of Special Investigations, pilots witnessed similar phenomena while they were in the air. And they described it as resembling a military flare. But it was too big and it was a lot brighter. And then four days after that, a man by the name of Doctor Lincoln LaPaz, he was an astronomer with the University of New Mexico, had his own sighting of the green fireballs.

00:46:17:04 – 00:46:40:29
Rob Kristoffersen
A lot of people were seeing them in and around military bases in New Mexico, mostly. And, he basically was able to triangulate their position over Los Alamos National Laboratory. And in a letter to the Air Force, he stated that they could not be a meteor because it was traveling too slow at the time, and it didn’t have a tail coming off of it.

00:46:41:02 – 00:47:14:19
Rob Kristoffersen
So those sightings would continue from, yeah, November of 1948 until April of 1949, and most of them were centered in New Mexico. Now, Doctor LaPaz was tasked by the government to study the phenomenon. So it wasn’t carried out by this would have been, Project Grudge at this point. Went from project sign to Project Grudge. But the military was growing concerned that this was, foreign weapon, which could, you know, would make sense for them.

00:47:14:21 – 00:47:39:28
Rob Kristoffersen
It seems weapon like. So, a lot of their top secret projects were also conducted in New Mexico. So it makes sense that they would be, interested in it. And there were also similar objects sited over nuclear storage areas in Fort Hood, Texas. So, Doctor LaPaz determined that whatever these objects were, they were not natural.

00:47:39:29 – 00:48:16:00
Rob Kristoffersen
Most, or. Yeah, they were not natural. Most of the sightings were centered. Yeah, really in Los Alamos National Laboratory and many of the staff there, he interviewed and many of them claimed to see these green fireballs. Now, the sightings would become more sporadic after April of 49, but, they still continued on to the point where, in December of 1950, the government decided to set up an instrument observation station at Holloman Air Force Base, and it was only manned by two officers.

00:48:16:00 – 00:48:22:23
Rob Kristoffersen
But they, classified this project as Project Twinkle.

00:48:22:25 – 00:48:57:09
Rob Kristoffersen
So, LaPaz, you know, had other ideas. He felt like this deserved a more rigorous study. And ultimately, when the government was done in 1950, they would downplay the sightings in their final report. But the sightings still continued on after that for a little while. Every witness that saw them claimed that it could not have been a natural phenomenon, which is, you know, rare because you’re talking about trained observers, scientists and the such.

00:48:57:11 – 00:49:20:17
Rob Kristoffersen
Another fun fact about Doctor LaPaz. He had an earlier UFO sighting in 1947. And it was in Roswell, New Mexico. So he may have witnessed the actual Roswell craft crash, maybe, I don’t know, but, it’s just an interesting little tidbit there, but, Hynek, we’re not really sure of what Hynek thought about these.

00:49:20:17 – 00:49:37:27
Rob Kristoffersen
We’ve never gotten any comments from him about it. And the investigation wasn’t carried out by Project Sign or Grudge. It was something that the government was trying to keep under wraps. So, yeah, not really sure what happened and what Hynek thought there.

00:49:38:00 – 00:50:03:26
Dan LeFebvre
Do we know if there were many other, cases like that that were outside of Project Sign or garage or Bluebook? I guess I’m assuming that those projects were the kind of the official official government investigation. And it sounds like this one was kind of, and off the books. Not really. I mean official, but not really official, if that makes sense.

00:50:03:26 – 00:50:10:22
Dan LeFebvre
You know, in that way, to kind of not throw it in with all the others where there are a lot of other cases like that that we know of.

00:50:10:24 – 00:50:42:11
Rob Kristoffersen
Not really. There isn’t a lot of declassified information that I’ve ever come across that really points to additional, government studies. Though Hynek later in his career, after really Project Bluebook was shuttered, he would make these comments that he was like the public face of like the UFO investigations, but he always made it seem like there was something else going on behind the scenes that the public didn’t know.

00:50:42:11 – 00:50:46:21
Rob Kristoffersen
So there’s a possibility that there are projects that we don’t even know about.

00:50:46:24 – 00:50:47:15
Dan LeFebvre
Of course.

00:50:47:17 – 00:50:49:14
Sean Jablonski
Yeah. Okay.

00:50:49:16 – 00:51:11:29
Dan LeFebvre
Well, moving on to the next episode. We’re up to episode number seven, and we come across the first hoax in this series. And according to the show, it’s with a Boy Scout troop leader who claims to see a UFO and even claims to shoot at it and hit the alien that comes out of the craft. And for some time, the Scoutmaster disappears.

00:51:12:03 – 00:51:35:03
Dan LeFebvre
But then he staggers back into town, just as Doctor Hynek is explaining that the lights that they saw were caused by swamp gas. And before long, though, Doctor Hynek and Captain Quinn are able to figure out that the town’s sheriff sent a telegram to Hollywood about having proof about the flying saucer story. And that happened before the scoutmaster came back into town with that proof.

00:51:35:03 – 00:51:49:00
Dan LeFebvre
So it would seem that the sheriff and the Scoutmaster were in on this, trying to make a bunch of money on, what clearly was a hoax, trying to sell the movie rights. Did this hoax really happen the way that we see in the show?

00:51:49:03 – 00:52:17:24
Rob Kristoffersen
Man, this is one of my all time favorite cases. This is a really fun one. This is the case of a Florida scoutmaster by the name of Sunny divergence uncorked on August 19th, 1952. Divergence was, driving a group of Boy Scouts home, when he saw a bright light flash over. It’s a trail called Military Trail near West Palm Beach, Florida.

00:52:17:27 – 00:52:42:19
Rob Kristoffersen
He thought it could have been a stranded motorist or a plane that had gone down. So he pulled over onto the shoulder and basically went in to investigate. He told the three boys that, he was driving home to remain in the car, and he basically took a machete and a, flashlight with him, and he instructed the boys to run to the farmhouse that was nearby.

00:52:42:19 – 00:53:09:21
Rob Kristoffersen
If he didn’t come back in 15 minutes or so from the car, the boys claimed that they could see like a ring of lights, descending into a grove of trees. And they could also see, the flashlight as well. And when they saw that his flashlight had gone out, the boys ran to the farmhouse, and soon an officer arrived on scene and they were, about to commence a search.

00:53:09:24 – 00:53:38:23
Rob Kristoffersen
And it had been an hour or so, but divergence emerged from the, palmettos and was frantically waving his machete in the air and just, like, raving like a mad man. But, according to his testimony, he had been searching for about four minutes when he started to smell this nauseating odor. He also said that you felt like he was being watched, and he next claimed to feel this really intense heat that was coming down from above him.

00:53:38:23 – 00:54:03:12
Rob Kristoffersen
And when he looked up, he could not see the stars above him. There was this object that was just hovering over him, and it was, he described it as a dull black object in the shape of a saucer approximately 30ft in diameter. Divergence moved back from the object. And when he did, he claimed to hear this metallic scraping sound.

00:54:03:14 – 00:54:31:07
Rob Kristoffersen
And when he looked up again, there was this hatch that was opened on the side of the object. He noticed a red light coming from the inside it, and it soon developed into a mist that engulfed his body. And, the divergence lost consciousness not long after that, and he woke up a short time later and he was propped up against a tree, but he couldn’t really remember propping himself up against a tree.

00:54:31:09 – 00:54:57:17
Rob Kristoffersen
And his eyes were apparently so burned that he couldn’t see out of them. But, divergence underwent questioning with the local police, and they had noticed that the hairs on his arms were actually singed. So, they also went back to the area of where it where it occurred, and they discovered burnt patches of grass on the ground.

00:54:57:19 – 00:55:27:02
Rob Kristoffersen
Now, when Project Bluebook was notified, Edward Ruppel went to investigate and he took samples and then had them tested. They found that the soil had only been burnt at the top. So whatever had happened to them, it wasn’t some kind of natural rot from underneath that or anything like that. But Rupert would come to call this entire case a hoax, and in fact, he would call divergence the best hoax or that he had ever seen.

00:55:27:04 – 00:55:47:22
Rob Kristoffersen
He was painted as media hungry and also an opportunist willing to sell his story. But the problem was, is that they were never able to explain how he did it. They were never able to explain the burnt patches of grass, or like they couldn’t explain anything that this guy did. They just did hoax.

00:55:47:24 – 00:55:57:29
Dan LeFebvre
Oh, wow. Okay, so even after the investigation, they’re just like, we’re not going to even bother to try to figure out exactly what happened here. Just assume that he’s he’s hosting it.

00:55:58:01 – 00:56:24:06
Rob Kristoffersen
It those kind of cases. And they were very rare at the time like case cases, something very extreme. It’s on the level of like, a flatwoods monster kind of incident. And the government didn’t really want to get involved with cases like that. And you would see, from time to time that, if they were reported, they would downplay them almost immediately.

00:56:24:06 – 00:56:30:12
Rob Kristoffersen
So, yeah, the government really didn’t want to talk about weird cases like that.

00:56:30:15 – 00:56:52:25
Dan LeFebvre
I’m curious, though, because one of the things that we see in the show, I mentioned very briefly, but, is when Doctor Hynek is when he’s explaining lights, he uses that says it was, caused by swamp gas. And that’s I have to ask about that because it’s something that I’m familiar with from, that movie Men in Black, of course, because they use that an explanation of, you know, swamp gas.

00:56:52:25 – 00:57:05:19
Dan LeFebvre
You know, that’s pretty much the explanation for UFOs. And so I think it’s something that’s kind of caught on in popular culture as a common explanation for UFOs. Was that really an explanation that started with Project Bluebook?

00:57:05:21 – 00:57:32:15
Rob Kristoffersen
It mostly started with Hynek. One of the most infamous investigations that he did occurred in Michigan in 1966, in the Dexter Hillsdale area, for approximately a week, sightings had been taking place in that area. It began on, March 14th, of 66. The police and Washtenaw County first witness strange lights in the sky over, Lima Township.

00:57:32:17 – 00:57:56:10
Rob Kristoffersen
And they chased these lights for a period of time. But, they were outmaneuvered every single time they tried. And throughout the week, people in Washtenaw County reported seeing similar objects in the sky. Some went on to report them as resembling like a spinning top. But the culmination of these sightings occurred two nights, later that week, on March 20th.

00:57:56:12 – 00:58:20:06
Rob Kristoffersen
Frank Manor of Dexter Township reportedly saw a strange object in the swamp behind his home. He described it resembling a pyramid with a porthole on it, from which this bluish green light was emitting. And then the next night, at nearby Hillsdale College, over 80 female students witnessed a strange light rising and falling in a swamp near their dorm.

00:58:20:09 – 00:58:49:28
Rob Kristoffersen
Hynek was sent to investigate that case and was basically forced to conduct a rushed investigation. He didn’t have a lot of time and, was forced to give a press conference. One of the witnesses in that case had mentioned that at first, because they ended up witnessing what the girls did at the college dorm room in Hillsdale believed it to be at first swamp gas, which is a real phenomenon.

00:58:49:28 – 00:59:45:07
Rob Kristoffersen
Basically, what happens in a swamp is when vegetation is dying, it will release methane into the air. And sometimes, you’ll basically see like a, short flash of light that it creates. So Hynek basically was forced to say that what happened in Dexter Hillsdale was swamp gas, and he was ridiculed heavily for it. And in fact, it was his determination on that case that really shuttered Project Bluebook toward the end, because what happened was, I believe he was governor at the time, Gerald Ford, he was not happy with the determination that Hynek came to and basically ordered for a panel and an independent panel of people to investigate UFO sightings.

00:59:45:07 – 01:00:17:04
Rob Kristoffersen
And this led to the Condon Committee, a, group of scientists out of the University of Colorado that studied UFOs for a couple of years and ultimately determined that, UFOs were not a threat to national security. In fact, they couldn’t determine what they were at all. And, that was the end of Project Blue Book. So the swamp gas thing is essentially Doctor Hynek probably most fumbling move during his time at Project Blue Book.

01:00:17:06 – 01:00:48:07
Dan LeFebvre
Going back to the TV show, the Nixon investigation that we see when I was when I was watching this, it really started to turn the entire series a little more sinister in my mind. It gave the idea that the military is trying to cover up some psychological tests that they’re doing on their own soldiers. We see a group of Army soldiers who got a UFO attack on the platoon on film, and we’re watching this.

01:00:48:09 – 01:01:11:20
Dan LeFebvre
Doctor Hynek is watching this, and the and the military is watching this. And that’s kind of the what kicks off the investigation. But then in the end, we find out that the soldiers were shell shocked from experiences in World War Two. And at the end of the episode, there’s a scene where the two generals, Harding and Valentine, are upset that the Secretary of Defense has been testing chemical weapons on their own.

01:01:11:20 – 01:01:15:15
Dan LeFebvre
Soldiers. How much of that actually happened?

01:01:15:18 – 01:01:52:09
Rob Kristoffersen
This incident is based on testimony from a private first class named Francis P wall during the Korean War. This is like one of the most harrowing tales that, you will ever hear. And there’s some really messed up stories from, soldiers during a war about UFOs and such. And, while was stationed near shore, one which, is was roughly 60 miles from Seoul, and his regiment was prepared to bombard a nearby village with artillery.

01:01:52:09 – 01:02:22:22
Rob Kristoffersen
And right before the attack was set to take place, this UFO appeared in the sky right above the village, and, they just started firing off. Artillery burst after artillery burst and, there were shells that exploded right next to this object, but it didn’t seem to take a hit. And, at the time, the object was emitting an orange light and it just was hovering over the village.

01:02:22:24 – 01:02:51:24
Rob Kristoffersen
That’s when wall basically asked his commander for permission to fire at this thing. And when permission was granted, everybody opened fire. The object changed to a blue green color. And it started to make these eerie arcs in the sky. And then it started to shoot beams at these people. They all reported feeling a burning and tingling sensation as the beams of light were shown at them, and were all forced into underground bunkers at the time.

01:02:51:24 – 01:03:24:28
Rob Kristoffersen
They had to take refuge from what this whatever this thing was, most of the men were trucked out by ambulance. They were actually too weak to walk. And doctors, once they got back to a hospital, noted how all of their white blood cell counts were really high. So, they never explained what happened to these men. Some have pointed to, like, a Soviet weapons test, but even that’s kind of out of the realm of possibility, even for me.

01:03:25:00 – 01:03:46:06
Rob Kristoffersen
As far as we know, it wasn’t a government chemical weapons test, but I wouldn’t put it past the government to have done that at any point in history. Like the the government has done some shady stuff in the past. If you want a, a good example of that, there’s a, book that came out, last year.

01:03:46:06 – 01:04:17:11
Rob Kristoffersen
It’s called Poisoner in Chief, and it’s all about a, one scientist’s work during, a project called MK ultra. He was basically tasked with, seeing what if they could use LSD? To basically as a form of mind control. It was a very is a very dark project for the government. So, I really wouldn’t put it past it at any point for the government to have done tests like that.

01:04:17:18 – 01:04:28:04
Rob Kristoffersen
There was the Tuskegee experiment, which I really don’t want to get into, because it was some pretty sick stuff. But yeah, I, I really wouldn’t put it past the government to have done tests like that at some point.

01:04:28:06 – 01:04:29:12
Sean Jablonski
Wow, wow.

01:04:29:14 – 01:04:52:07
Dan LeFebvre
Well, let’s get back to the show then, instead of getting even darker. But, yeah. So in episode nine, Doctor Hynek and Captain Quinn come across their first abduction case. And this is the case of someone named Thomas Mann, who claims that he was abducted by aliens. And there’s a few key things from that episode of the show that I want to get your insight on.

01:04:52:09 – 01:05:25:20
Dan LeFebvre
First is during this episode is when we see Doctor Hynek hypnotize Thomas to help him remember more about the abduction experience. Now, through hypnosis, Thomas is able to remember things that he couldn’t remember otherwise. When I saw this, it hit me that this is similar to what we talked about when we covered the movie communion. When you were a guest on the show to talk about what these strippers experience, there, and I, I wasn’t sure if Doctor Hynek kind of started that idea.

01:05:25:20 – 01:05:46:17
Dan LeFebvre
We get the when I was watching, Project Blue Book, I got the idea that nobody was really familiar with using hypnosis in that way. When he’s using this on on Thomas Mann. So was Doctor Hynek using hypnosis in his investigations? And was he one of the first to do that for abductees?

01:05:46:19 – 01:06:12:22
Rob Kristoffersen
So this episode is loosely based on the Betty and Barney Hill incident, which is, an incident that we recently covered on, a two part episode. And, essentially this New Hampshire couple reported having a close encounter with a strange object within the White Mountains. At one point, Barney had this dramatic sighting in a field, of this object through a pair of binoculars.

01:06:12:25 – 01:06:47:27
Rob Kristoffersen
He claimed to have telepathic communication with the occupants of this UFO. And they also claimed to have, suffered from missing time during this encounter, too. There was, period of time that they just couldn’t account for. They started to conduct their own investigation almost immediately after coming home. And, they read books voraciously, talked to experts, you know, from scientists to UFO investigators, until they ultimately decided that they wanted to explore their experiences through hypnosis.

01:06:48:00 – 01:07:12:24
Rob Kristoffersen
And they ultimately found this individual named Doctor Benjamin Simon. He was a Boston based hypnotherapist and through their work with him, uncovered an abduction narrative that involved the hills being taken on board a UFO, subjected to medical tests, and then returned to their car. Now, Doctor Benjamin Simon, was, pretty heavy hitter when it came to hypnosis.

01:07:12:24 – 01:07:41:01
Rob Kristoffersen
He set up a hospital, and I believe it was Long Island to treat soldiers coming home. From the war, from World War two with, with, all sorts of, mental problems, basically treating soldiers with PTSD before PTSD was known as anything. And he would use hypnosis to do that. Doctor Simon was the first to hypnotize an abduction witness.

01:07:41:06 – 01:08:07:09
Rob Kristoffersen
Hynek didn’t really do that. He did advocate for it in a couple of cases, but, he was, not a trained hypnotist in any way. The, probably the most infamous person to start doing this within the UFO community was a gentleman by the name of Doctor Leo Sprinkle. And, he used hypnosis on a number of, witnesses.

01:08:07:11 – 01:08:33:04
Rob Kristoffersen
And then later on in the 80s, man by the name of Doctor or not? Doctor, just, Bud Hopkins, he was a, New York based artist. He kind of put abduction cases on the map in the 80s by conducting hypnosis sessions and, working with, experiencers. So, yeah, Doctor Hynek never practiced, hypnosis in.

01:08:33:04 – 01:08:33:29
Rob Kristoffersen
Anyway.

01:08:34:01 – 01:08:54:15
Dan LeFebvre
Something else I want to ask you about with that, episode was when we see Doctor Hynek talk about this, a scale that he’s been working on. How’s it, close encounter. The first kind of close encounter. The second kind. Well, that’s what happened to Thomas. Their abduction, and then close Encounters of the Third Kind being even beyond that.

01:08:54:18 – 01:09:03:23
Dan LeFebvre
And that’s a term that I think we’re familiar with it from nothing else. The movie, was was that a scale that Doctor Hynek invented?

01:09:03:26 – 01:09:28:08
Rob Kristoffersen
Yeah. Doctor Hynek did invent, that scale. It’s what we call the, Hynek scale these days. There were actually six classifications. The first was a nocturnal light, which is basically your mundane sighting of a UFO at night. And then there is what he called the daylight disc, which is a sighting of an object during the day from more than 1000ft away.

01:09:28:10 – 01:09:56:13
Rob Kristoffersen
Then there is a radar visual sighting, which, is primarily, you know, witnessed by civilians and military pilots. It’s basically when a pilot sees something and it’s confirmed by radar data. And then, we get to the heavy hitters, close encounter, the first kind of the sighting of an object from approximately 1000ft away or less, close encounters of the second kind is a sighting, where an object leaves a physical trace of some kind.

01:09:56:13 – 01:10:24:27
Rob Kristoffersen
So in the Florida scoutmaster case, there was the burnt grass. And even in the Betty and Barney Hill case, there was, really strange readings that they got from their car on the back trunk. They noticed these semicircle, these circles, about a half dollar size that they don’t know where they where it came from. And, they ended up testing the trunk with a compass, and they found that it was magnetized.

01:10:24:27 – 01:10:56:22
Rob Kristoffersen
So that was a physical trace case. And then a close encounter of the third kind is when an object is an object is seen in an occupant of that object to scene. So some kind of humanoid being is seen at the same time. And the interesting thing about, the film Close Encounters of the Third Kind is that, when Steven Spielberg was working on that and he wanted to use that title, he actually had to go through J.L. and Hynek because that was his copyrighted title.

01:10:56:22 – 01:11:04:09
Rob Kristoffersen
So JL and Hynek ended up consulting on, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and he even has a cameo at the end.

01:11:04:12 – 01:11:11:20
Dan LeFebvre
Oh, nice. Nice. I’ll have to watch that again and and look for him. I don’t remember, because I don’t know that I would be able to pick him out without finding a photo, but.

01:11:11:22 – 01:11:18:00
Rob Kristoffersen
Here’s, here’s the, hint that I’ll give you look for the man with the healthy Van Dike. You will notice him.

01:11:18:02 – 01:11:20:23
Sean Jablonski
Okay.

01:11:20:25 – 01:11:21:28
Sean Jablonski
Nice.

01:11:22:00 – 01:11:43:04
Dan LeFebvre
Okay. Well, at the very end of episode nine, in the TV show Doctor Hynek gives, he’s he’s given a head up by that mysterious fixer guy that something’s going to happen in Washington, DC. So he flies there just in time to see a show of lights over DC. Now, in the show, this happens in the middle of the day.

01:11:43:06 – 01:12:05:24
Dan LeFebvre
And then later, Defense Secretary Fairchild, he was the one who was, doing the chemical testing on the soldiers, that we saw in an earlier episode. He’s killed as his car burst into flame just before he’s about to reveal the truth to the world. And then meanwhile, we see that lights come back and the military scrambles some Sf90 force to respond.

01:12:05:26 – 01:12:31:22
Dan LeFebvre
They have trouble keeping up with the objects as they’re flying around Washington, DC. And at the very end of the episode, which is the end of the season, Doctor Hynek tells Captain Quinn that he’s come to the realization that the only way they’ll be able to find the truth is to keep the jobs that give them access to information in more cases, but to convince the government that they don’t believe because that’s clearly what the higher UPS wants.

01:12:31:22 – 01:12:50:27
Dan LeFebvre
They’re given this cover up. So we get the sense that Doctor Hynek is pretty much just going to play the game and keep trying to find the truth. So how well did the TV show explain the lights over Washington, DC and what happened to Doctor Hynek and Project Bluebook after this?

01:12:51:00 – 01:13:19:09
Rob Kristoffersen
So 1952 was a big year for UFO sightings in the United States. Three incidents covered in the first season of the show happened in 1952 the flatwoods monster case, the Florida Scoutmaster case, and the most significant of them, which was a pair of incidents that came to be known as the Washington merry go round, as, Edward Pelt would call it.

01:13:19:12 – 01:13:48:03
Rob Kristoffersen
In July of that year. And over the course of two weekends, objects were seen by numerous eyewitnesses over and kind of outside Washington, DC. The first major incident took place on July 21st, just outside the city. Pilots and radar personnel, reported objects nearby. A pilot by the name of Casey Spearman of Flight 807 described the object resembling a falling star without a tail on it.

01:13:48:05 – 01:14:13:26
Rob Kristoffersen
And then on the 28th, objects were sighted again over Washington, D.C. this time, the Air Force scrambled jets to chase them down, but the objects outmaneuvered them very easily, and Rupert was summoned at the time by president Harry Truman for an explanation, but hadn’t been able to conduct an investigation at that point, and he didn’t have answers for them.

01:14:13:26 – 01:14:42:19
Rob Kristoffersen
So, ultimately, they rushed to call a press conference and quickly quelled all the excitement. The government blamed it on, weather. Yep. That’s right. Weather. But it’s basically because of this incident that the Robertson panel, which I mentioned previously, led by the CIA, was convened and then ultimately decided that UFO reports had to be downplayed.

01:14:42:21 – 01:15:11:00
Rob Kristoffersen
Edward Bruce Pelt would leave a Project Blue Book by the end of 1953 because of it. And, he ended up retiring. He wrote the first, really landmark book about his time, on Project Sign and Project Blue Book. It was called The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects. He actually died very young, at the age of, I believe, 37 of a heart attack.

01:15:11:00 – 01:15:39:17
Rob Kristoffersen
So, yeah, it’s, I think they did a good job of playing up the hysteria aspect. That’s the government was generally operating under the nature of cover ups when it comes to this phenomenon. And when it comes to the UFO history, it’s this question of, you know, you’re tackling this question of whether they downplayed reports to keep the public calm or because the government was hiding something that they had.

01:15:39:19 – 01:16:01:08
Rob Kristoffersen
And it’s never really ever been cleared up. But I’ve always leaned towards the government was just trying to keep the public calm. I don’t think the government really has any, definitive information about this stuff, but you never know. It could be wrong. The government could come out and say, you know, we got aliens hanging out at area 51.

01:16:01:08 – 01:16:02:24
Rob Kristoffersen
I don’t know, you never know.

01:16:02:26 – 01:16:04:18
Sean Jablonski
You never know. Yeah. Yeah.

01:16:04:20 – 01:16:30:04
Dan LeFebvre
Well, in that episode, which is episode ten, when we see in the show his name is Secretary Fairchild, the defense secretary, when he dies of very suspicious circumstances. That led me to think that maybe there was it was based on somebody that might have died in similar circumstances that they showed that. So, so plainly, there was that based on something that actually happened.

01:16:30:07 – 01:16:59:00
Rob Kristoffersen
Secretary Fairchild is based on the first Secretary of Defense, James V Forrestal. Forrestal died in 1949, well before the Washington merry go round. But he died under very mysterious circumstances. He was receiving treatment at the Bethesda military Hospital in Maryland for a mental breakdown, and his body was found having fallen from a great height from his hospital room.

01:16:59:03 – 01:17:42:02
Rob Kristoffersen
It’s unclear if he committed suicide or if he was actually just thrown from the window, but his death has been lumped into, conspiracies involving a group that most likely didn’t investigate UFOs, but was an actual group within the government. And, they were called majestic 12. Most point to majestic 12 as a group that essentially were studying the effects of radiation after bomb tests, but many have lumped them into this government conspiracy where, they were essentially trying to keep, the proof of extraterrestrial life from the public.

01:17:42:02 – 01:17:56:12
Rob Kristoffersen
And many believe that Forrestal was killed, because he wanted to come forward until the public about, extraterrestrial life being real and having visited us. So.

01:17:56:14 – 01:17:58:03
Sean Jablonski
Kind of darker.

01:17:58:03 – 01:18:03:11
Rob Kristoffersen
A little darker in the, in the real sense of, what happened to Forrestal here?

01:18:03:13 – 01:18:24:12
Dan LeFebvre
Well, one thing that we didn’t get to cover that I just want to ask you about real quick, is a storyline that goes throughout the entire show, and that’s the character of Susie Miller. And, in the show, while Doctor Hynek is off on his investigations, it cuts back to home life with with Mimi, his wife, a lot.

01:18:24:15 – 01:18:44:25
Dan LeFebvre
And we get this sense that the character of Susie is a Russian spy of some sort. We hear some, her speaking in Russian over the radio to someone with her quote unquote husband, which we know is not really her husband. We get the feeling that it’s not really her husband, but that’s what she introduces him as.

01:18:44:28 – 01:18:59:16
Dan LeFebvre
And we get the overall idea that they’re probably Russian spies trying to infiltrate Project Blue Book through Doctor Heinrich’s wife. Was there any truth to that side of the whole show?

01:18:59:19 – 01:19:39:14
Rob Kristoffersen
Not really. There was no real, indications that the Russians were trying to infiltrate Project Blue Book. But interestingly enough, Andy Jacobson, who wrote a book about area 51, has this theory that the Roswell crash was a Russian craft designed to basically cause mass hysteria. And what she points to is that, her source claims that, Joseph Stalin really got a kick out of, the Orson Welles War of the worlds broadcast.

01:19:39:14 – 01:20:14:16
Rob Kristoffersen
And so he, he has said, her theory is that he essentially wanted to cause mass hysteria in that kind of way. Of course it didn’t pan out that way. Roswell was the case that was shuttered for over 30 years. So before anybody really started to know, that anything had crashed in Roswell, New Mexico. So, yeah, not not really there there was no real, attempt by the Russians to infiltrate this program.

01:20:14:19 – 01:20:18:18
Dan LeFebvre
Interesting. I never heard that, that possible theory about Stalin there.

01:20:18:20 – 01:20:20:00
Rob Kristoffersen
It’s a wild one, man. It’s a.

01:20:20:00 – 01:20:21:26
Sean Jablonski
Wild one.

01:20:21:28 – 01:20:32:14
Dan LeFebvre
Nice. Well, is there anything from the show that, as you were watching this, first season that you just wish that they had put in their.

01:20:32:16 – 01:20:37:06
Rob Kristoffersen
Listen, Hynek needs a van. Dike. Somebody get a van dike on Aidan Gillen.

01:20:37:06 – 01:20:38:04
Dan LeFebvre
We need it. There you go.

01:20:38:08 – 01:20:41:13
Sean Jablonski
Okay. Awesome.

01:20:41:15 – 01:20:57:03
Dan LeFebvre
Well, thank you so much for coming on to chat about Project Bluebook. I know we didn’t cover season two that much on this episode as we’re recording this, the season is still ongoing, but you’ll have to come back on once that season is over and chat about whatever the events are that we see there.

01:20:57:05 – 01:21:00:00
Rob Kristoffersen
Oh, absolutely man, I’d love to.

01:21:00:02 – 01:21:20:11
Dan LeFebvre
In the meantime, if you’re listening to this, Rob has an awesome podcast that covers a lot of UFO related events in history. Go open up the app that you’re listening to this on and subscribe to Rob’s podcast called Our Strange Skies. Can you give us a little bit of an overview of your podcast and some of the great stories that you cover over there?

01:21:20:13 – 01:21:41:18
Rob Kristoffersen
Sure. So, for a long time I had the impetus to cover, singular UFO stories, and I had seen that nobody really did it. And a lot of podcasters just kept coming to me for, like, content. They just were like, hey, what’s a good UFO case to cover? And I’m like, I’d usually give them something, but I’m like, why don’t I just make a.

01:21:41:18 – 01:21:42:16
Sean Jablonski
Podcast of my own?

01:21:42:16 – 01:22:18:09
Rob Kristoffersen
So I, I created the Strange Skies podcast and we’ve been through a couple of transformations, but right now what we do is, we devote singular episodes or if, some require multi-part episodes to, UFO stories throughout history, from the United States, we’ve covered stories from Brazil and, a few other places, but, we just covered the Betty and Barney Hill incident, the Leilani Suborn incident, which is, another famous, New Mexico UFO sighting.

01:22:18:11 – 01:22:38:19
Rob Kristoffersen
We covered the first abduction case, which was occurred in 1957, in Brazil. And, there’s a lot of great episodes over there. So, yeah, if you want to know more about UFOs, come on over to the, our Strange Skies podcast. We got plenty for you.

01:22:38:21 – 01:22:42:00
Dan LeFebvre
Awesome. And you started a new show recently, too, right?

01:22:42:02 – 01:23:11:02
Rob Kristoffersen
Yes. It’s called the Coda, a music podcast. And every other week I’m joined by my buddy Brian Hastie of the Double Density podcast, and we discuss music news. And, we generally have a main feature or main topic where we discuss something from music. We’ve talked about our favorite opening tracks to an album. We’ve talked about our best albums of 2019, and we recently had a couple of guests on to talk about, a new album that they dropped.

01:23:11:02 – 01:23:17:11
Rob Kristoffersen
So, if you’re interested in music, talk, check out the The Coda, a music podcast.

01:23:17:13 – 01:23:19:22
Dan LeFebvre
Awesome. Thanks again so much for your time, Rob.

01:23:19:24 – 01:23:29:20
Rob Kristoffersen
Well, thank you.

01:23:29:22 – 01:23:47:06
Dan LeFebvre
We have a lot more to go. But I do want to point out that even though Rob was talking about his podcast are Strange Guys that’s not actively in production. Remember that chat with Rob was in 2020? You might still be able to find it online now if you want to go through the archives. If it is available, I’ll be sure to add a link to it in the show notes so you can check there.

01:23:47:08 – 01:24:13:20
Dan LeFebvre
Before we move on to season two of Project Blue Book, let’s find out the answer to our Two Truths and a lie game for season one. And as a quick refresher, here are the two truths and one lie again. Number one, Project Blue Book was the first time the government investigated UFOs. Number two, former Nazi Verner von Braun teamed up with Walt Disney to promote the U.S. space program after World War two.

01:24:13:23 – 01:24:26:23
Dan LeFebvre
Number three, the term Foo Fighters was used by World War II two pilots who saw unexplained phenomena. Did you figure out which one is a lie? I’ve got the answer in the envelope, so let’s open that up.

01:24:26:25 – 01:24:52:24
Dan LeFebvre
And the lie is number one. While Project Blue Book is typically the most popular investigation, the US government had into UFOs, as we learned from Robert, was actually a follow up to Project Sign and Project Grudge. So even though there were a lot of the same people involved in these different government projects, Project Blue Book was not the first time the US government investigated UFOs or what people these days called UAP.

01:24:52:29 – 01:25:21:25
Dan LeFebvre
Unidentified aerial phenomena instead of unidentified flying objects. Okay, now let’s set up another game of Tetris in line for season two of Project Blue Book. Are you ready? Okay, here they are. Number one. In the 1950s, the U.S government illegally experimented with LSD on unwitting U.S. citizens. Number two, the phrase little green men comes from a close encounter in Kentucky.

01:25:21:27 – 01:25:48:02
Dan LeFebvre
Number three, Project Blue Book was commissioned by JFK. All right, I’ll be back after the season two discussion with Rob to see if you got it right. And now here is the remastered version of my 2020 chat with Rob Kristofferson about season two of Project Blue Book.

01:25:48:04 – 01:26:17:15
Dan LeFebvre
All right, well, then, let’s dive into the second season and the first episode of the second season. We’re introduced to the Roswell incident. If there’s one name that just about everyone knows it’s connected to UFOs, it’s Roswell. But that doesn’t mean everyone knows the details of what happened there. According to the show on July 5th, 1947, there was a major storm around Roswell, New Mexico, and then the next morning, a rancher by the name of Mike Connors found a field covered in strange metal.

01:26:17:18 – 01:26:44:19
Dan LeFebvre
By the end of the day, his neighbors were collecting pieces of the debris, and he wasn’t really convinced that it was manmade. So he contacted authorities. They swooped in, but someone leak the story out, it hit the wire. And then it started to run worldwide. Newspapers in Europe even ran with this story. The show doesn’t really say how the authorities shut the story down, but it does say that once Harding got involved two days later, Connors bought himself a brand new car and the town stopped talking.

01:26:44:23 – 01:27:08:11
Dan LeFebvre
So I’m going to assume that they were paid off. The wreckage was flown to Texas, where Harding held a press conference explaining the saucer was nothing more than a weather balloon. Now, I know we could have an entire episode, entire podcast just dedicated to the Roswell incident, but in a nutshell, how? What did the show do depicting the events of the Roswell incident?

01:27:08:13 – 01:27:37:14
Rob Kristoffersen
Well, with this particular episode, the bare bones are there. You know, some details have been changed, but, the storm in question, that starts the episode occurred on the night of July 2nd, 1947. And the man in question, they call him Mike Connors in the show. Well, his real name was Mac Brazel. And on that night, Brazel claimed to hear a strange sound that didn’t quite sound like, thunder and lightning.

01:27:37:14 – 01:27:59:13
Rob Kristoffersen
So, he was the foreman of a sheep ranch owned by a man named JB foster. And the next morning, when he woke up to get started, he discovered a debris field outside. It was about, three quarters of a mile long by about, I think, like 20ft wide or so. So this was a really remote area.

01:27:59:13 – 01:28:20:11
Rob Kristoffersen
The closest town to the Foster Ranch is, a town called Corona, which is about 30 miles away. But, he showed the debris to his closest neighbors, which were Floyd, and were at a proctor who owned the ranch themselves. And, they tried to cut it, and they tried to burn it, but they were not successful in doing so.

01:28:20:13 – 01:28:55:09
Rob Kristoffersen
So, the doctors urged Mac Brazel to report the debris to the authorities. And Brazel ultimately did four days later. It’s not exactly clear why he waited as long as he did. It could have been a combination of the July 4th holiday and the hesitation on Brazil’s part to do anything with it. But, on Monday, July 7th, he brought the debris to the Chaves County Sheriff Department, who in turn notified the Roswell Army Airfield, which is, known today as the Walker Air Force Base.

01:28:55:12 – 01:29:18:10
Rob Kristoffersen
The base dispatch two officers, Major Jesse Marcel Senior and Captain Sheridan Cavett, to actually retrieve the material. They Brazel escorted them to the ranch, and, they actually ended up spending the night there before they headed back into town. They gathered up as much as they could, and they also tried to cut it. They tried to burn it.

01:29:18:12 – 01:29:49:09
Rob Kristoffersen
They also tried to hit it with a sledge hammer, and they found that they couldn’t make a dent with it. So it wasn’t until long after they brought it back that the military swarmed the place. And before Jesse Marcel junior there. Jesse Marcel senior. Sorry, actually brought it. To the, airfield. He brought it home. Where, his son, Jesse Marcel Jr and a few of his other family members claimed to have actually seen the wreckage.

01:29:49:12 – 01:30:18:00
Rob Kristoffersen
Some of them, some of the pieces, Jesse Marcel Jr claimed had, these, like, weird hieroglyphic writings on them that were in, like, this purple kind of script. But he said that it was more closely resembling metal. It’s kind of one of those things that gets debated a lot. But, the, military just swarmed the place and, they actually sent out a lot of this wreckage.

01:30:18:00 – 01:30:44:05
Rob Kristoffersen
It was ultimately going to be flown to, Wright Field, which, later became, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, which is where Project Blue Book was, stationed out of. But, in the meantime, while they were collecting all this stuff, the military decided to send out a press release. And, and the man that made that decision, was a man named Colonel William Blanchard.

01:30:44:07 – 01:31:07:22
Rob Kristoffersen
And he informed the base’s information officer, Lieutenant Walter Hot, to, send a press release into town. And like, he, hot physically brought these press releases to, like, the Roswell Daily Record and a few other places in town, which, seemed kind of odd for the times, considering that they could just send it, you know, via wire.

01:31:07:24 – 01:31:35:04
Rob Kristoffersen
But that’s, like one of the weird parts about this case, one of the tiny, weird things, but, they you that, ends up making the paper, the date, like, later that day saying, you know, Roswell Army Airfield recovers flying saucer. So, yeah, while this was all happening, Major Jesse Marcel, junior, he made a stop at Carswell Field in Denton, Texas.

01:31:35:04 – 01:32:04:20
Rob Kristoffersen
As he was accompanying this wreckage to right field and a gentleman by the name of, Roger Ramey, who was general. He, had Jesse Marcel senior pose with pictures of what, they were claiming was a down weather balloon. And ultimately, the next day, they would, retract their initial headline saying that they recovered a flying saucer and saying, no, it was all just a weather balloon.

01:32:04:23 – 01:32:27:13
Rob Kristoffersen
Now, Jesse Marcel Senior attested to the to the effect that it wasn’t the same stuff. He was saying that, they kind of made up this, mock weather balloon, had them pose with it, but it was not the actual wreckage that made its way to right field. And he went to his grave saying the same thing.

01:32:27:13 – 01:33:15:16
Rob Kristoffersen
Same with, Jesse Marcel senior. What’s interesting about this case is after it was retracted in 47 people, in the UFO community, by and large, forgot about this case for about 30 years. Wasn’t until 1978, when, independent researcher named Stanton Friedman was actually told, while he was conducting an in radio interview that he should talk to Jesse Marcel senior and from there, Roswell has become this big household name when it comes to UFOs and, you know, not trusting the government because the government has changed their mind as to what was recovered on multiple occasions.

01:33:15:16 – 01:33:19:14
Rob Kristoffersen
And, yeah, it’s just this big cultural touchstone now.

01:33:19:16 – 01:33:37:04
Dan LeFebvre
Wow, wow. So the I mean, I’ve seen the, the picture of him kind of, I’m assuming Marcel at on the front page of the paper he’s got holding something in his hand that would then be what they kind of staged as the weather balloon, not the necessarily the material that was actually recovered.

01:33:37:06 – 01:34:04:23
Rob Kristoffersen
Right? Yeah. That’s, that’s what Jesse Marcel both Jesse Marcel claimed is that it was not the same stuff. It was, swapped out. You know, they were trying to keep this thing, you know, on the down low, covered up. And that’s really why Roswell is as big a thing as it is. Because given that the, Air Force has changed their mind as to what it was on multiple occasions, now, nobody really trusts their explanation.

01:34:04:23 – 01:34:39:28
Rob Kristoffersen
So you have a ton of explanations out there. Now, there’s, a book called, area 51. It was written by a woman named Andy Jacobson. And she proposed at one point through one of her sources that what the Roswell wreckage was was a Russian craft that, had been sent over into American territory to cause hysteria because apparently Joseph Stalin was a big fan of, George Orwell’s or, sorry, not George Orwell.

01:34:40:00 – 01:34:40:29
Dan LeFebvre
Orson Welles, the,

01:34:41:03 – 01:35:01:09
Rob Kristoffersen
Orson Welles, for the War of the worlds broadcasts. Apparently, he was a huge fan, according to her source, and that this was a mock thing, dreamed up by the Russian government. That’s probably like the low end of believability on this. But, there are a lot of interesting theories when it comes to Roswell, I think.

01:35:01:09 – 01:35:23:21
Dan LeFebvre
I don’t remember if it was in episode one, but I do remember the the show actually mentioning that very, very briefly. I think that the two generals are talking to each other, and one of them talks about how, the things that Doctor Mengele did to those children and, you know, and the saucer was Soviet propaganda or whatever.

01:35:23:21 – 01:35:46:18
Dan LeFebvre
Like they just kind of imply that that’s what it was was it was Soviet. And then, of course, Doctor Mengele, the, the Nazi, doctor doing something to the bodies to kind of make them look like aliens or whatever it was. I just remember that very, very briefly in, in the TV show. So it sounds like maybe that that’s where that comes from.

01:35:46:20 – 01:35:59:18
Rob Kristoffersen
There are, you know, other theories like that out there. There’s, there’s some that get really, really dark, but, yeah, yeah, it seems like everybody has a theory on Roswell these days.

01:35:59:21 – 01:36:38:14
Dan LeFebvre
Well, heading back to the show in episode number two, it’s the part two of the Roswell incident. And during this episode, we find out about a resident in town named Duncan Booker. And he crashes a massive UFO into the center of town to try to draw attention to what he says is the real story. General Harding agrees to go on TV with Booker to tell the world that this was nothing more than a hoax, but once they go live, Booker’s friend at the TV station starts playing footage of an alien autopsy, and then Doctor Hynek comes to the rescue and he realizes that, oh, you look the studio lighting in the footage is the

01:36:38:14 – 01:36:59:15
Dan LeFebvre
same. This is this footage is a hoax. But then Booker insists that, yeah, they recreated the footage, but it was actually from something that they actually saw. And I thought I remembered something about some alien autopsy footage that showed up quite some time ago, but I don’t remember if it was supposed to be from Roswell or related to that or not.

01:36:59:18 – 01:37:04:23
Dan LeFebvre
Is that real footage, and was it tied to the Roswell incident like the show implies?

01:37:04:25 – 01:37:45:28
Rob Kristoffersen
So the, alien autopsy video was huge. It was a real video that, came out in the, mid 90s. During that time, that’s where UFOs were kind of hitting their cultural balloon. This was when Roswell had really blown up in popular culture, and it was actually all thanks to Unsolved Mysteries. Unsolved mysteries was the first show to really give that case its do so by by this time, aliens and and UFOs are big and they’re appearing on a lot more television shows.

01:37:45:28 – 01:38:20:23
Rob Kristoffersen
And, one of the networks that really ran with it was Fox in the, in the 90s. And, they ran a program in 1995 called Alien Autopsy Fact or Fiction, and it was hosted by, Jonathan Frakes of Star Trek The Next Generation fame. And, a man by the name of race until he came forward saying that he found footage of an alien autopsy and he had at the time been looking through a retired military cameraman’s footage searching for, actually, footage of Elvis for, like, some documentary.

01:38:20:23 – 01:38:57:23
Rob Kristoffersen
And, he claims that he stumbled upon this autopsy of an alien being that he says was one of the bodies at Roswell. So the Fox airs this special, and it is huge. So much so that they re-air it a couple months later and, it kind of just dies down for about a decade. When in 2006 recently claimed that the footage was a recreation of footage that he had seen in 1992, it a degraded so bad that he couldn’t actually save it.

01:38:57:23 – 01:39:35:03
Rob Kristoffersen
So instead he he has this convoluted explanation that, in fact, he actually reshot the footage, recreated everything, in order to like, you know, bolster his claims. But, you know, it’s it definitely didn’t help his case. But, in 2018, a filmmaker named, Spiro Smulders revealed that he was actually the creator of the film, and he claimed that he created the alien sculpture using foam and stuffing the insides with, basically animal parts.

01:39:35:03 – 01:40:02:00
Rob Kristoffersen
So, this video footage kind of keeps, like, reappearing every now and then. There was a, leaked government document, about, I want to say maybe, late last year in which two guys, one of them was a, a high ranking military member. The other had been a consultant with the government saying that this footage was real.

01:40:02:00 – 01:40:06:09
Rob Kristoffersen
But, nobody at this point buys that. It’s actually really.

01:40:06:11 – 01:40:23:03
Dan LeFebvre
Well, it sounds like the show is is taking that concept, but there I mean, this is happening in the. Well, I remember Roswell being in 47, but then, you know, this happening after the fact in the 50s and stuff like that. With the as far as the TV show timeline, it kind of bounces back and forth. But none of that.

01:40:23:03 – 01:40:33:13
Dan LeFebvre
It sounds like if it surfaced in the 90s, it sounds like they’re taking something from decades later and kind of throwing that in there just to add to the narrative.

01:40:33:16 – 01:41:02:13
Rob Kristoffersen
Yeah, pretty much, you know, there’s always been like UFO hoaxes. They’ve always been prevalent. The first UFO hoax goes back to 1947, in these kids, and I forget exactly what town they lived in. I think it was called Woodworth, and they ended up at, this is when, Kenneth Arnold had his famous sighting. It was shortly after that, and sometime in July.

01:41:02:15 – 01:41:21:19
Rob Kristoffersen
And these kids mocked up this UFO, and they put it on this one lady’s lawn. And the reason that they put it on that one lady’s lawn is because she was known as the town gossip. And she knew and they knew that, word would get around really quickly. And to the point where the, National Guard actually ended up coming to town and these kids got in trouble.

01:41:21:19 – 01:41:30:10
Rob Kristoffersen
So, I mean, there’s always been hoaxers and there’s always been people trying to make a buck. And, I mean, recently probably made a killing selling video tapes.

01:41:30:14 – 01:41:50:13
Dan LeFebvre
So I wanted to ask you about something that the show has. And when they’re investigating on the show, Hynek and Quinn, they come across a soldier who was at Roswell, and soldiers name is Stuart Terry. He tells them that there wasn’t just one crash site, but there was a second one. And at that second site, Terry talks about how he shot something.

01:41:50:15 – 01:42:08:02
Dan LeFebvre
Later, he recovered the remains buried in his land. And then Hynek and Quinn go to where it was buried, and they find some skeletal remains. But then I think there was a mention as well, where someone mentions how the authorities asked for five child sized coffins. So maybe there was more than just the one being that we see, shown on the actual TV show.

01:42:08:02 – 01:42:16:29
Dan LeFebvre
But what about this concept of two crash sites at Roswell where there were there actually two crash sites with multiple being supposedly found?

01:42:17:02 – 01:42:46:16
Rob Kristoffersen
There have been a few different narratives concerning, you know, the crash saucers at Roswell, one being that the craft in question was hit by lightning over the Foster Ranch, and it created this debris field, and that the actual saucer crashed 150 miles away in a place called the Plains of Saint Augustine in the late 70s, early 80s. As Stanton Friedman was researching this case, he learned of a story through a second hand and third hand sources.

01:42:46:16 – 01:43:18:27
Rob Kristoffersen
A lot of people came forward saying that this guy named Barney Barnett discovered the crash saucer and alien bodies at this place called the Planes of Saint Augustine. And Friedman was never actually able to talk to him directly. He had died, about a decade before he started researching it. But a lot of people came forward, I want to say like maybe 5 or 6 people came forward and said, oh, yeah, Barney Barnett, he told me the story about how he saw these, alien beings in this crash saucer all the way in this at the site.

01:43:18:27 – 01:43:42:27
Rob Kristoffersen
And there was also, allegedly an archeology class that had walked up upon it at the same time that he did. Now, there’s also speculation that what had happened was that there were two saucers that crashed, and one ended up at the planes of Saint Augustine, and the other allegedly crashed 2 to 3 miles away from the Foster Ranch.

01:43:42:27 – 01:44:18:18
Rob Kristoffersen
But nobody’s ever really been able to like and, you know, pin it down to one. And again, that’s what makes Roswell this like narrative that has been built on, over and over again upon time. The child sized coffin portion of this comes from a man named Glenn Dennis. He was a part time assistant at the local funeral home, the Ballard Funeral Home, and he claims to have received a call from the Army Air Force, inquiring about the availability of child sized coffins.

01:44:18:18 – 01:44:42:23
Rob Kristoffersen
He claims to have delivered 3 or 4 of them to the base, and, he also claimed to have ran into a nurse on the base who had witnessed the alien bodies, and even drew a sketch of them on a napkin, of which, Dennis actually recreated. I don’t think like there are photos if you Google Glenn Dennis, you know, alien sketch, you’ll see.

01:44:42:23 – 01:45:03:08
Rob Kristoffersen
You’ll come upon like this. There’s like, four small images on what looks like, you know, a piece of, like, white stationery. I think he ended up recreating it, but his testimony has been called into question, simply by the fact that they’ve never been able to confirm who this nurse was. At the Roswell Army airfield.

01:45:03:08 – 01:45:17:14
Rob Kristoffersen
So, Yeah, these, these are, this just attests to the reason why, Roswell is this, like, ambiguous mound of, testimony at this point, while.

01:45:17:14 – 01:45:38:17
Dan LeFebvre
Moving right along. We’re in episode number three now, and Project Blue Book has a case at area 51. It involves two soldiers, Willingham and Miller. And they were doing a routine patrol when Miller was abducted by a UFO. When Hynek and Quinn get to the site of where it happened, you can see the sand there was turned to glass.

01:45:38:20 – 01:45:52:24
Dan LeFebvre
Other than Roswell, of course, everyone knows about area 51 and how it relates to UFOs and top secret cover ups and things like that. But was Doctor Hynek ever there to investigate an abduction like we see in the show?

01:45:52:26 – 01:46:19:00
Rob Kristoffersen
Abductions were something that Project Blue Book tried to distance themselves from. And we really didn’t get, our first abduction account until 1961, when Betty and Barney Hill had their experience, you know, which we briefly talked about in episode 153. It was the inspiration for one of those episodes, and they tried to, explain away certain portions of their sighting.

01:46:19:02 – 01:46:42:19
Rob Kristoffersen
So, for instance, the only parts that they investigated were the sighting and the actual craft in the sky, which they claimed was, I believe, like an advertising search later, an advertising like plane or something like that flying at like midnight or whatever, which was a really ridiculous explanation. It’s a great time to realize.

01:46:42:22 – 01:46:45:03
Sean Jablonski
Yeah.

01:46:45:06 – 01:46:52:06
Rob Kristoffersen
It’s a great, great time. Let’s advertise to that. That single folk, you know, the single couple that are just driving on the highway, they.

01:46:52:06 – 01:46:54:01
Dan LeFebvre
Call that targeted advertising. That’s that.

01:46:54:01 – 01:46:57:03
Sean Jablonski
One. Yeah.

01:46:57:06 – 01:47:51:14
Rob Kristoffersen
Absolutely, absolutely. But, the only abduction investigated through, like, the guise of Project Bluebook was the abduction of a police officer named Herbert Schirmer in 1967. And it wasn’t exactly investigated by Project Blue Book, personnel, but by an independent body that had been brought in to study the phenomenon called the Condon Committee. And, this arose this committee arose in 1966 after a series of sightings in Michigan to which, Doctor Hynek, probably made the biggest, what many would consider career suicide at that point by, labeling a UFO sighting as the, product of swamp gas, which is where that that term came from.

01:47:51:17 – 01:48:03:05
Rob Kristoffersen
These, sightings occurred in, Dexter Hillsdale in the Dexter Hillsdale region of, Michigan. But this,

01:48:03:08 – 01:48:33:19
Rob Kristoffersen
Shurmur’s case is, is kind of fascinating because he’s a, he’s a police officer with the a, Ashland, Nebraska police Department. He was fluent in multiple language. He was a very intelligent man. And, in this on December 3rd, 1967, he was on a routine patrol. He was, on a rural road when he saw a light, which he assumed to be, a vehicle having trouble.

01:48:33:21 – 01:49:04:06
Rob Kristoffersen
And when he drove up on it, it was a UFO. And he stopped his car. And in the next moment, he appeared to be missing time. But, through the Condon Committee, he was subjected to hypnosis. It was later revealed that he had, been taken on board this UFO been shown around by some really interesting looking aliens, and he was ultimately returned.

01:49:04:06 – 01:49:31:09
Rob Kristoffersen
But, this case, like, caused such an uproar to the point where, Sherman was driving to Colorado, the University of Colorado, where this project was being handled. And during one trip, a group of people actually ended up destroying his car for, no real reason. I still don’t understand it. To this day. It was, it caused it seemed to cause some kind of uproar.

01:49:31:09 – 01:50:03:16
Rob Kristoffersen
But, Shermer ended up serving for a little while longer in Ashland, Nebraska. And then he ultimately moved to the Pacific Northwest, where he, died in 2017. But, there’s actually a really cool graphic novel created about his sighting. It’s called December 3rd, 1967, an alien counter by a guy named Mike. Jessica, and Shermer claimed that, yeah, he he eventually read it before he died.

01:50:03:16 – 01:50:32:13
Rob Kristoffersen
And he claimed that, he had come to see his see his sighting in kind of a religious sense. So, that’s really the only abduction case that Project Blue Book ever gave the light of day. Most of them really went unreported, until the 80s, when, you know, more and more people started to come forward. Before then, you had scattered incidents.

01:50:32:13 – 01:51:02:19
Rob Kristoffersen
Most of them would be, you know, relegated to the, UFO journals and such. But, abductions just weren’t something that Project Blue Book wanted to handle. And really, any incidents involving sightings of alien beings, they would downplay, they would, only investigate certain portions of it, especially when it came to like the UFO sightings itself.

01:51:02:19 – 01:51:09:28
Rob Kristoffersen
But when it comes to animate beings, Project Blue Book said, no, we’re out. We’re done with this.

01:51:10:00 – 01:51:31:24
Dan LeFebvre
Well, it sounds like they’re almost the TV show is almost doing something similar to what they did with the autopsy footage, where they’re finding an excuse to, in this case, bring in area 51, because everybody knows what area 51 is. So we need to have a reason for Doctor Hynek and Captain Quinn to to be there to basically have area 51 on the show because it’s a show about UFOs.

01:51:31:24 – 01:51:33:24
Dan LeFebvre
And so you have to have area 51, right?

01:51:33:27 – 01:52:00:22
Rob Kristoffersen
Area 51 is just kind of the hot gossip around town. And it wasn’t until a, journalist named George Knapp, he started talking to a guy named Bob Lazar and Bob Lazar. He his credentials have never fully been proven, but that has not stopped him from speaking on the record many times, saying that, he had, worked briefly for the government.

01:52:00:28 – 01:52:15:18
Rob Kristoffersen
He had worked like, maybe less than two months, 2 to 3 weeks or so. Reverse engineering. This, UFO, which he, affectionately called the sport model, which, it’s always been kind of funny.

01:52:15:18 – 01:52:19:24
Dan LeFebvre
Oh, cool. They have, like, SUVs and the sport coupe versions and.

01:52:19:24 – 01:52:20:23
Sean Jablonski
Yeah.

01:52:20:25 – 01:52:27:23
Rob Kristoffersen
Yeah, I would assume so. You know, like, there’s got to be a caravan somewhere in there. And area 51, I was. Yes.

01:52:27:25 – 01:52:51:01
Dan LeFebvre
Of course you travel in style. I wanted to ask you about something with area 51, because the show kind of gives the indication that, there’s more than just the base there. I think there’s, there’s a scene where we see Doctor Hynek and Captain Quinn. There’s like this massive, complex, massive doors opening in the side of a mountain.

01:52:51:01 – 01:53:06:01
Dan LeFebvre
And Quinn says something to the effect of what we saw back there at the base with just the cover. This is the real area 51. Is there any evidence to suggest that the base that everyone knows is at Cream Lake is just a cover for some sort of massive hidden base nearby?

01:53:06:03 – 01:53:45:15
Rob Kristoffersen
Bob Lazar claimed that he didn’t exactly work at area 51. He worked at a portion of Groom Lake nearby that they called S-4, and S-4 was supposedly this huge underground complex went down for miles, and that’s where they were storing all of these, UFOs that had crashed and that the government was trying to reverse engineer. And they also housed apparently aliens that worked with the US government in the evening, like there are many places, many bases that, people claim aliens work with the government on technology and stuff like that.

01:53:45:22 – 01:54:15:06
Rob Kristoffersen
So, really that extends from Bob Lazar and his claim to work at, S-4. And the interesting thing is, is that George Knapp, in the introduction to, Bob Lazar’s autobiography, which came out late last year, he claims that he called up Nellis Air Force Base and said, is there a nest for, anywhere out there? And the guy’s like, yeah, there is.

01:54:15:06 – 01:54:21:17
Rob Kristoffersen
So it’s like, well, if if George Knapp can call up and ask if there’s an S-4 out there, why can’t anybody do it?

01:54:21:18 – 01:54:23:24
Sean Jablonski
Like, come on.

01:54:23:26 – 01:54:27:02
Dan LeFebvre
I was going to say, is that all it took somebody just picking up the phone and making a.

01:54:27:02 – 01:54:29:19
Sean Jablonski
Call. So it just.

01:54:29:19 – 01:54:41:10
Rob Kristoffersen
Seems to be. That seems to be it like, all you need is a phone and, you know, some in some, you know, liquid courage. And they’ll tell you that S-4 does.

01:54:41:10 – 01:54:43:02
Sean Jablonski
Exist.

01:54:43:05 – 01:55:08:03
Dan LeFebvre
If we head back into the TV show. Episode number four covers an event in Hopkinsville, Kentucky. According to the show, Jimmy J. Shoemaker is in the woods near his house when he sees a UFO fly over and at the house, his entire family sees creatures in the woods. We can see a shot where, his family’s all lined up with rifles, and they’re shooting through through the walls of the house at the creatures outside.

01:55:08:05 – 01:55:30:18
Dan LeFebvre
Shoemaker tells Hynek and Quinn when they get there, that aliens landed there and tried to kill them all. And then later, we find that Shoemaker happens to run a circus. He has monkeys, he has costumes for them, and a green glaze to make it look like alien handprints on the trees we saw. So Project Bluebook determined that this was all a hoax, even though again, we have the same sort of theme.

01:55:30:18 – 01:55:44:06
Dan LeFebvre
Shoemaker is claiming that he was just recreating the things that actually happened. It’s similar to what we saw with Duncan Booker in the Alien Autopsy a couple episodes earlier. So how well did the show do depicting this event in Hopkinsville?

01:55:44:08 – 01:56:10:03
Rob Kristoffersen
The Kelly Hopkinsville incident is one of the most fascinating UFO related incidents. Since the 50s. It’s, kind of one of those cultural touchstones to the point where it inspired a, a character, a Pokemon. So I mean, it’s, it’s one of those cases that, you know, it perks up a lot of people’s ears.

01:56:10:03 – 01:56:36:01
Rob Kristoffersen
So, you know, they got, there’s there’s the bare bones there. It occurred in the hamlet of Kelly in Kentucky on August 21st, 1955, and it occurred on the farmstead of the Sutton family at 7 p.m. that evening. A friend of the family, the the guy’s real name was Billy Ray Taylor, claimed to see a UFO with this colorful exhaust.

01:56:36:03 – 01:57:01:11
Rob Kristoffersen
It passed over him. It hovered near some trees nearby and it came down. And this was as he was going outside to collect some water. Now, these folks, they did not have electricity. They didn’t have running water. They had an outhouse. You know, this is rural life to the fullest. So Billy Ray, he comes inside and he tells everybody, oh, I saw this UFO.

01:57:01:14 – 01:57:27:21
Rob Kristoffersen
You know, it came down, it’s out back. And, nobody believed him. But an hour later, he and, his friend, the one lady was there to visit Lucky Sutton. He lived in the house. They went outside when, their dogs just started to bark uncontrollably. And at first they saw what they believed to be a strange glow coming from behind their property.

01:57:27:24 – 01:57:53:22
Rob Kristoffersen
And as it moved closer, they were able to make out small humanoid creatures about 3.5ft tall. They claimed that its head was, it was oversize, it was round in it, and it had really large ears, which was one of the more curious features of this creature, because you don’t often see ears reported on aliens. But, in this case, we do.

01:57:53:24 – 01:58:21:09
Rob Kristoffersen
And their arms were almost as long as its entire body. They they hung really low and, its hands had talons on them, of all things. So this thing is scary as hell. They had eyes that glowed, pale yellow color. And the, the two men immediately went inside, grabbed firearms, and pointed it toward the this creature that was coming toward them.

01:58:21:11 – 01:58:53:08
Rob Kristoffersen
And this creature had its hands raised as if it’s saying, don’t shoot at me. But they fired anyway. This creature did a flip. It fled under the cover of darkness and disappeared. Now, mind you, there are 11 people living on this farmstead at this time, and it’s really in a small three room shack. So you have eight adults and three children, and many of them saw creatures appearing at the window after this.

01:58:53:08 – 01:59:18:03
Rob Kristoffersen
So it was about maybe a half hour to 45 minutes later that one of these creatures appeared at the window. They fired again and again. This creature just flipped and fled into the trees. So it fully escalated. After Billy Ray Taylor stepped out the front door and had his hair pulled by one of the creatures who had climbed up on top of the roof.

01:59:18:05 – 01:59:43:22
Rob Kristoffersen
So the family, they all packed inside their house. They holed up for a few hours, listening to the footsteps on the roof, until they eventually fled to their cars and drove to the police station. Now, the officer that accompanied them back, he claimed that these are not the kind of people that would go to the police to solve their problems.

01:59:43:24 – 02:00:14:10
Rob Kristoffersen
So they were really, scared. They were shook up, and they accompanied them back to their house, but all they found were some spent shell casings. There were holes in the, screen windows. But after the police left, the creatures actually came back, and it was so dead. Approximately 2:30 a.m., the matriarch of the household, miss, Glennie Lankford, saw one of the creatures near her bedside window, and it put a hand on the window screen.

02:00:14:10 – 02:00:18:05
Rob Kristoffersen
And I would be scarred for life if I saw it.

02:00:18:08 – 02:00:20:12
Dan LeFebvre
I mean, I’ve seen horror movies that start this way.

02:00:20:12 – 02:00:22:10
Sean Jablonski
This is.

02:00:22:13 – 02:00:46:08
Rob Kristoffersen
Yeah, exactly. This. This is a horror movie movie in the making. It’s happening in real time. So it was about 530 when these creatures backed off and they were never seen again. And, the family’s ordeal made national news headlines. And because of the way this case was portrayed in the news, there were a lot of details that were blown out of proportion.

02:00:46:08 – 02:01:14:04
Rob Kristoffersen
Like they, a lot of papers said that there were like, up to 11 of these aliens when, the family claimed that they only saw three of them. But, it’s from this case that, the term little green men is something that, entered the vernacular. And it’s something that kind of exists still today because, if you look at many of the popular images of, alien heads, they’re usually green.

02:01:14:04 – 02:01:39:27
Rob Kristoffersen
And it’s, because of this case, according to documents, Project Blue Book never took an official interest in this case, though Hynek did later write about it in one of his books. But, this, this is definitely, I would say the, the real true to life case is a little more interesting than the way it, was displayed in Project Blue Book.

02:01:39:27 – 02:02:00:00
Rob Kristoffersen
I think the the problem that, they have with Project Blue Book is, there really isn’t a lot of mystery left over when you start to explain everything away. And, you know, I think that’s, one of the fatal missteps of the second season is they just start to explain things more and more.

02:02:00:02 – 02:02:13:18
Dan LeFebvre
One thing they did mention in this episode was, program in the CIA called MK ultra, and they’re supposedly doing some work with precognition. Is there anything about MKUltra, like, was that an actual program?

02:02:13:20 – 02:02:51:28
Rob Kristoffersen
Oh, yeah. Project MKUltra was a real project. It was a CIA funded study pertaining to mind control through the use of LSD and other psychological measures. MKUltra is a whole other can of worms, and like, you could probably do, I could go on for ever talking about it, but, I want to direct people to a few different resources because it is one of the more, it’s one of the darkest, kind of portions to the work the CIA has ever done.

02:02:51:28 – 02:03:22:29
Rob Kristoffersen
But our friends at the Not Alone podcast did a three part series back in 2019 on, MKUltra and just the, the, extent that, that project went to. There is another great podcast that just, made a five part series, on, a Canadian physicians part in that program. It’s called, madness. And that’s from the, the podcast Endless Thread.

02:03:22:29 – 02:03:39:24
Rob Kristoffersen
And it’s a really great series. And, one book I’ll recommend to that just came out last year because more and more people are starting to take an interest in this case. And it’s, a lot of it has to do with the death of a man named Frank Olson, which was the subject of a Netflix series called Wormwood.

02:03:39:27 – 02:03:57:13
Rob Kristoffersen
But, there’s a book that came out last year called Poisoner in Chief by, Stephen Kinzer, which is a really fascinating book. So, yeah, if you really want to see, like, the dark end of some of the, CIA’s research, go check out those things.

02:03:57:16 – 02:04:20:17
Dan LeFebvre
We’ll we’ll leave those for there. And, after the show, if we head back to the TV show and episode number five happens at a place called Maury Island. And according to the show, it happened on June 21st, 1947, two weeks before the Roswell incident. A man, a fisherman by the name of Ernest Reed, was out on Puget Sound checking his traps.

02:04:20:20 – 02:04:41:29
Dan LeFebvre
After about an hour, something appeared overhead. He described it as round. There’s, silver craft with holes in the middle and there were bigger than his boat. There were multiples of them. We see kind of a recreation of it and on the show, and they’re hovering less than 100ft over his boat. But there’s no noise. And then something seemed to go wrong.

02:04:41:29 – 02:05:01:18
Dan LeFebvre
We couldn’t tell if one of the ships was breaking apart or if it was trying to bomb him on purpose. But there’s pieces falling all over hitting his boat. And that’s when he called in a mayday, claiming that he was under attack from alien ships. But then, soon after the event, Reed recanted his story and said he was just trying to get some insurance money for fire damage on his boat.

02:05:01:20 – 02:05:18:13
Dan LeFebvre
And then the show says that this was the first time that, quote unquote, men in black hats were reported. When they showed up to silence the town. How much of that happened? And was this the first time that anyone saw the Men in Black?

02:05:18:16 – 02:05:49:28
Rob Kristoffersen
So this is, the the Maury Island incident is, one of the more controversial UFO cases. But as the story goes, that the gentleman’s name was, Harold Dahl. He was recovering logs in the Puget Sound on June 21st, 1947. That’s when he noticed, six donut shaped objects that were heading in his direction. And one of the objects appeared to struggle maintaining altitude.

02:05:50:01 – 02:06:15:11
Rob Kristoffersen
It dropped to about 1500 feet, and it floated directly over Dahl’s boat. And it started to drop what he claimed was slag like metal down into the sound. And some of it ended up hitting his boat. The debris ended up hitting his son Charles, breaking his arm, and some of the slag actually killed their dog too. Dahl claimed to take a photo of the craft, though.

02:06:15:11 – 02:06:55:06
Rob Kristoffersen
No, it’s never surfaced. Nobody’s ever seen this thing. So, you know, that’s, sketchy, sketchy as hell. But, he showed it to his supervisor, which was a man named Fred Christman. Christman didn’t believe him, though, and he went to investigate it for himself and claimed to have seen a UFO while he was out there investigating. So the next morning, a man wearing a black suit showed up at doll’s house and escorted him to a diner, and he proceeded to recount Dahl’s experience the day before as proof that he knew all about his experience.

02:06:55:08 – 02:07:24:06
Rob Kristoffersen
So Dahl was told by this man, don’t ever speak of it. Don’t ever tell anybody. Otherwise bad things are going to happen to you. So eventually, I mean, Dahl ended up telling his story to to a lot of people, but he eventually recanted his story. But it was investigated by two people. Kenneth Arnold, who I, you know, previously mentioned he was kind of the first, like, independent UFO investigator.

02:07:24:06 – 02:08:01:14
Rob Kristoffersen
And I think people looked to him just because he had a sighting and he was accompanied by a number, another man named captain EJ Smith, who had witnessed a UFO while piloting a passenger plane, sometime in July. They didn’t believe Dahl or Christman, though. The alleged debris that they had, they they had, I believe it was Kenneth Arnold had talked to a couple of, Army intelligence officers who ended up coming down.

02:08:01:14 – 02:08:32:04
Rob Kristoffersen
They were going to escort some of this, debris back to have it analyzed. And shortly after takeoff, their plane actually did go down in the Pacific Northwest. And, there’s been a lot of conspiracies that have come up, because of that. But, the reason this story and the Men in Black Angle itself was popularized was because of a book written by a man named Gray Barker called They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers.

02:08:32:06 – 02:08:59:07
Rob Kristoffersen
The book featured the Murray Island case and a handful of and a handful of others in which individuals had contact with shady men wearing black suits, telling UFO witnesses not to talk about what they saw. And I think the interesting thing here is that after Dul kind of talked about his experience, he, his work, which was on the Puget Sound, kind of started to dry up.

02:08:59:07 – 02:09:45:22
Rob Kristoffersen
And his son went missing for a period of two weeks and was discovered working in a diner in Montana. And he had no clue how he got it, how he got there. And we know that portion of the story is true because there was an FBI file, opened on it. So there are some elements of this story, which are true, but, I think they’re used to fuel, like the more sensational aspects of this case because, I do believe at one point, Harold Dahl’s wife also attempted to stab him, because of all of the, controversy revolving around the case, you kind of just wanted to cut it out,

02:09:45:22 – 02:10:13:17
Rob Kristoffersen
but, yeah, almost stabbed him. But, this is like, one of the more controversial cases in that not a lot has been proven. And if I recall correctly, Fred Crispin was one of it was actually one of the people subpoenaed by the, Warren Commission when they were investigating, the assassination of JFK. And he has had ties to, the military and I think maybe the CIA.

02:10:13:17 – 02:10:23:23
Rob Kristoffersen
But, don’t don’t quote me on that. Exactly. But, yeah, it’s, it’s a kind of a whole can of worms. The the Maria Island incident.

02:10:23:25 – 02:10:42:13
Dan LeFebvre
Speaking of can of worms, I want to ask you about something else. About the the men in Black, because during this episode, we learn more about someone from season one. And in that season, he was simply known as The Fixer. In this episode in particular, we find out that his name is William and he used to be part of a remote viewing program for the CIA.

02:10:42:18 – 02:11:10:02
Dan LeFebvre
But then he left that program and joined a group simply known as the Men in Black. The idea that I got from this show was that the Men in Black isn’t a part of the CIA or the military, but they still seem to have powerful resources. And after I watched the, the show, this episode and kind of how they explained it, I still really, really wasn’t sure if William left the CIA to start The Men in Black on his own, or if he just joined the already existing group.

02:11:10:02 – 02:11:23:18
Dan LeFebvre
Somehow. I’m sure Men in Black can be, again, entire series by itself, but how well do you think the show did? Just explaining kind of the men in black themselves and who they’re supposed to be.

02:11:23:21 – 02:11:53:00
Rob Kristoffersen
There are a lot of different theories when it comes to The Men in Black. That’s definitely one that these are kind of government agents. Some believe that they are, independent agents that work of their own accord. Some believe that they are actually aliens as, when, during the, Mothman, series of sightings which you’ve covered with, our good friend Sam Fredrickson.

02:11:53:03 – 02:12:18:18
Rob Kristoffersen
They the people had encounters with men in black, and they would act as if they didn’t know what random mundane items were like. Pens. Like, there was one, case in which, the, maid reporter of the town, her name was Mary Hier. She was kind of the woman who led the charge on, reporting the Mothman sightings in the paper, printing the the reports.

02:12:18:18 – 02:12:44:01
Rob Kristoffersen
And she ended up having an encounter with, the strange man who, when he came into her office, he started asking strange questions like, what do you think John Keel would do if I. If, they told him to stop talking about the Mothman and stuff like that. And, at one point he reached for a pen and he was holding it as if he didn’t know what it was.

02:12:44:03 – 02:12:51:27
Rob Kristoffersen
And, Mary Higher said that, you know, he could have the pen, at which point he turned around and laughed and ran out.

02:12:52:02 – 02:12:54:15
Sean Jablonski
So like that. Yeah.

02:12:54:15 – 02:13:21:23
Rob Kristoffersen
There’s a lot of weird stuff around the Men in Black. There is even one theory that, guy named Paul Cornell who wrote this, this comic series called Saucer Country. And in it, his, take on the Men in Black was that, they were actually Air Force agents that would, as part of a hazing ritual, go and harass UFO witnesses that, their reports ended up in the news.

02:13:21:26 – 02:13:45:08
Rob Kristoffersen
So they’d show up on their door, you know, pretending to act like government agents and stuff like that. It’s, you know, there’s a lot of takes on, the, Men in Black and, they never cease to amaze me. Here’s another interesting account from this woman who claimed to be a remote viewer who said, at one point she was going to review remote view.

02:13:45:10 – 02:14:21:18
Rob Kristoffersen
The, Men in Black. So, like, remote viewing is kind of like, it’s sending your, like, body or out into the world to like, kind of like, see things from a distance, you know? So, this woman claimed that, these beings were, extradimensional beings from a different dimension. They, they kind of kept balance, you know, making sure that, evil, aliens didn’t interfere in human affairs.

02:14:21:20 – 02:14:24:00
Rob Kristoffersen
And they also had a ton of paperwork to do.

02:14:24:00 – 02:14:30:18
Dan LeFebvre
Well, it sounds like at least the at least the show is going off one of those theories, even though there’s a lot of them.

02:14:30:20 – 02:14:58:16
Rob Kristoffersen
Yeah, there’s so many there’s so many angles that they, had to, work with on this and, they could, you know, go a million different places. And, you know, I’d say I’d say Project Blue Book went to the more mundane route. Now, I had a I had a conversation with, with my buddy Rich Hatem, the guy who wrote, the screenplay for The Mothman Prophecies.

02:14:58:23 – 02:15:21:13
Rob Kristoffersen
And he said that, when they were first, pitching this idea for Project Blue Book, he actually went in, and he was trying to, pitch himself as a showrunner for Project Blue Book. He didn’t get it, obviously, but, you know, it would have been it would have been fitting, seeing as how, you know, he’s, he’s well versed in this stuff.

02:15:21:16 – 02:15:46:25
Dan LeFebvre
Speaking of the show, if we head back, we’re in episode six now, and this is where we learn about the Robertson pal, as well as someone named David Dabrowski. The storyline in the show suggests that there’s a battle between control over UFO investigations between the U.S. Air Force and the CIA. The CIA puts the Air Force on trial with the Robertson Panel, which looks into the validity of Project Blue Book’s work and the hearing.

02:15:46:25 – 02:16:15:18
Dan LeFebvre
It seems no one is interested in really diving into the reports from Blue Book. They pretty much just skim them and then close them as if they already have the answer that they want. And this is just a formality. But that’s when David Dabrowski comes to the story. He convinces Hynek and Queen to let him talk to the panel, where he says that he was directed to be there by beings from another planet, planet Ventus, which is two galaxies beyond ours, and he leaves the room.

02:16:15:18 – 02:16:29:22
Dan LeFebvre
And then Quinn says, we’re doing our part by stopping people like Dabrowski from inciting panic around the nation, from people who might actually believe that they’re telling the truth. How well did the show do depicting this? Did any of that happen?

02:16:29:24 – 02:17:02:09
Rob Kristoffersen
So, the Robertson panel was a real panel. It was led by the CIA. And that did, in fact change Project Blue Book’s mission from, like, an open minded investigation to skeptical debunking. But it didn’t really happen. It didn’t really go down like this. Robertson panel was led, by the head of the CIA’s Office of Scientific Intelligence, and they saw the potential hysteria that these sightings could cause.

02:17:02:09 – 02:17:46:27
Rob Kristoffersen
Life magazine at the time was claiming that, the evidence of alien life was around the corner. They were, you know, pretty, they they believe that alien life was going to show up at any second. And, and in the last episode that I was on, there was a pair of, dramatic sightings, during two consecutive weeks over Washington, DC, that I talked about, that, really got the government a little worried, to the point where they, the CIA felt like they needed to step in and kind of gauge Project Blue Book and dictate its mission.

02:17:47:00 – 02:18:17:01
Rob Kristoffersen
The, number of UFO reports in 1952, right before the Robertson panel came in, went up dramatically. Most years after 1947, they would get like maybe 30 reports a year, 30 to 50. That year they got over 130. So they saw this as a huge concern. And they thought it could be used as, kind of like psychological warfare tactics.

02:18:17:03 – 02:18:45:09
Rob Kristoffersen
So they recommended educating the public on debunking sightings. And, and, you know, this isn’t to say that Dabrowski s character didn’t exist in the UFO, world. In the UFO culture, there were a number of people that were dubbed the contacts who claimed to have contact with Venusian aliens, who wanted mankind to basically get rid of its nuclear weapons to protect the environment.

02:18:45:11 – 02:19:01:24
Rob Kristoffersen
So, yeah, it’s, didn’t really go down the way it did on the show, but it’s, it’s close. I mean, the Robertson panel’s there, but, I as far as I know, there were no contacts that were led in front of the Robertson panel to testify at any one point.

02:19:01:26 – 02:19:28:11
Dan LeFebvre
Okay, well, that was I want to ask you about that, because in the show, the Borowski character, he is claiming that aliens directed him to go help prove the validity of Project Bluebook. But if aliens wanted to prove the validity, couldn’t they just like, show up to the hearings themselves? I think there is even a line in an earlier episode where Captain Quinn says something like, why are all these sightings happening way out in the woods?

02:19:28:11 – 02:19:39:20
Dan LeFebvre
Couldn’t they just come to like, Times Square? Why? Why do they have to be so cloak and dagger about everything? Are there any examples of stories where the the logic like that just kind of doesn’t make sense?

02:19:39:22 – 02:20:10:01
Rob Kristoffersen
So many contacts, especially in the 1950s, had stories like this, and they would also use that kind of similar logic to, in fact, pretty much all of them did. When it comes to these stories, like they’re never truly about going to the government with, this information, it’s usually about like, proving the validity of their own sightings.

02:20:10:01 – 02:20:45:03
Rob Kristoffersen
But I pretty much every single one of them, the Georgia Dembski, who was one of the most well known, contacts of the 1950s, basically, you know, reported the same things. There was George Van Tassel or Lucci, even during the the the Mothman stuff. Woodrow Darren Burger was that type of individual. And, despite the fact that Woodrow wasn’t coming to the government to say, you know, to kind of with the nuclear stuff.

02:20:45:06 – 02:21:07:04
Rob Kristoffersen
A lot of them did, a lot of them did, and a lot of them faked evidence to bolster their claims. And a lot of them made money doing it. So, in the 50s, that seemed to be the contact kind of thing, you know, make money claiming that you had contact with the aliens, that they’re peaceful, but they just want us to cut it with the nuclear crap.

02:21:07:06 – 02:21:28:29
Dan LeFebvre
Back in the show where it episode number seven now, and it is the Curse of the skinwalker. This case takes place at a ranch in Utah owned by the Chapman family. One night, their son, Billy is sleepwalking outside when three orbs of light fly over. And then they fly into the ground, forming a creepy sort of shadow monster or something of some sort.

02:21:29:02 – 02:21:48:18
Dan LeFebvre
The family runs away, of course, because that’s creepy. And, Bluebook is called to investigate. Our heroes are looking at the case. Hynek and coin are told the story of the skinwalker. As legend goes, the Ute nation used to abduct Navajo and sell them on the New Mexico slave market. So the Navajo put a curse on them.

02:21:48:18 – 02:22:14:04
Dan LeFebvre
And the land. And that land happens to be where the Chapman’s ranch is now. Skinwalker is the name of the that the Navajo gave to a medicine man who’s chosen to take the form of an animal in order to inflict pain and suffering on others. The explanation that the show gives for all of this is that the scientists at an Air Force base some ten miles east of the Chapman Ranch, are drilling down in the caverns under their ranch.

02:22:14:06 – 02:22:39:15
Dan LeFebvre
They’re using a high powered water mixture into the fault line, and these release pockets of ethylene gas that can give people oral and visual hallucinations. So it’s quite a connection from the skinwalker to just being a hallucination. But was Bluebook involved in Skinwalkers and this idea that they’re just a hallucination like the show indicates?

02:22:39:18 – 02:23:15:08
Rob Kristoffersen
The basis for this episode is an actual ranch in the Ute Valley of Utah. And, it’s it’s called Skinwalker Ranch. It was owned by a couple named Terry and Glenn Sherman, and they claim to have experienced rather large wolves, strange UFOs, portals, poltergeist like phenomenon, and a variety of other phenomenon on their property. The skinwalker, has kind of become this concept appropriated by from like Native American culture.

02:23:15:08 – 02:23:41:28
Rob Kristoffersen
And it’s largely because of a book called hunt for the skinwalker, which was, chronicled the Sherman’s time on the ranch. It’s safe to say that Project Bluebook never investigated this case and never really would have, either. It wouldn’t be in their wheelhouse at all. They were really more concerned with investigating, like single sightings as opposed to like long term areas and stuff like that.

02:23:41:28 – 02:24:13:16
Rob Kristoffersen
But, yeah, in many ways, this episode seems like a plug for the new show that they had started that was airing after Project Blue Book. The season finale. It was called, The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch. It’s a Brandon Fugal show. It’s, it’s definitely a moment to cash in. That sighting didn’t come. Well, the property didn’t really come to the forefront until, the mid 90s.

02:24:13:16 – 02:24:28:19
Rob Kristoffersen
And really, it didn’t come to the public conscious until about 2006, ten years later. But, yeah, it definitely seemed like more of a money grab. And, Project Blue Book wouldn’t be, investigating a place like this.

02:24:28:19 – 02:24:29:21
Sean Jablonski
Yeah, yeah.

02:24:29:23 – 02:24:52:09
Dan LeFebvre
Well, if we head back to the show, we’re on episode number eight, and it introduces another concept that is familiar with, UFOs. And that would be hangar 18. Hynek and Quinn are told about it by a mechanical engineer named John. He explains that hangar 18 looks more like a storage building than a hangar, but the real lab is six floors deep.

02:24:52:12 – 02:25:09:03
Dan LeFebvre
That’s where they reverse engineer Soviet technology. But this time, John says they have something that’s not Soviet. The suggestion they’re being that it’s extraterrestrial. What is hangar 18? And are there reports of reverse engineering UFOs there?

02:25:09:06 – 02:25:41:02
Rob Kristoffersen
The idea of hangar 18 is actually connected to the Roswell crash, and in particular to a few pilots who claim to have flown wreckage and alien bodies to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. One of them is a man named, Oliver Henderson, who, told his story to a number of, Roswell investigators, claimed that, he actually flew the, the child sized coffins, all the way to, Wright-Patterson.

02:25:41:04 – 02:26:08:05
Rob Kristoffersen
And there’s a World War two flying ace named Marion Black. Mack Magruder, who, also claimed to actually see living alien beings walking around in this, fictional hangar. There is really no hangar 18. It’s just kind of been this myth that has been propagated ever since, like the Roswell investigation. But, I mean, it did inspire a megadeth song, so I that’s that’s got to be worth something.

02:26:08:05 – 02:26:11:01
Dan LeFebvre
It’s gotta be worth something. Yeah.

02:26:11:03 – 02:26:11:12
Sean Jablonski
There you.

02:26:11:12 – 02:26:26:11
Dan LeFebvre
Go. What about the idea that Hynek was there? Because we see in the show that Hynek actually gets there. Is there anything to suggest that Hynek himself was at any place like that?

02:26:26:13 – 02:26:47:03
Rob Kristoffersen
No, no, there’s, Yeah. There’s nothing. It’s, Hynek was really close with his secretary, and he seemed to tell his secretary pretty much everything. There might have been some secrets that Hynek, you know, kept to himself, but, Yeah, I don’t think Hynek visited any kind of facility like that.

02:26:47:05 – 02:27:07:20
Dan LeFebvre
Well, back in the show now we’re at episode number nine, and this case is a Soviet bomber carrying a nuclear bomb that gets cut into by a UFO over Canadian airspace. And Bluebook is called in because the Canadian Air Force doesn’t have a UFO program. So Hynek and Quinn make their way to a small logging community in a place called Hartley Bay.

02:27:07:23 – 02:27:25:26
Dan LeFebvre
Way out in the middle of nowhere, they find the plane along with the two pilots that survived. One is just called Alex, but the other pilots given a full name, Lieutenant Colonel Yuri Alinsky. And that makes me think that maybe Alex is made up, but maybe Yuri is real. How much of this case really happened?

02:27:25:28 – 02:27:55:24
Rob Kristoffersen
So the the actual case that this episode is based on is, it’s a little, it’s honestly a little more terrifying than, than the one on, this, this particular episode. So, on the night of November 23rd, 1953, the U.S Air Defense Command near the US Canadian border detected a blip on radar over Ristic and over restricted airspace above Lake Superior.

02:27:55:26 – 02:28:26:26
Rob Kristoffersen
The Air Force scrambled an F 89 C Scorpion jet from Kinross Air Force Base, piloted by First Lieutenant Felix Moncler and Second Lieutenant Robert Wilson, and from the start, Robert Wilson had trouble tracking this thing once he got in the air and it kept changing course, like, really quick. But with the aid of, ground control, they were eventually able to kind of get a lock on this object, and they pursued it for over 30 minutes, getting closer and closer.

02:28:26:29 – 02:29:03:21
Rob Kristoffersen
Eventually, Michael and Wilson were guided down from 25,000ft to about 7000ft. They watched, the radar operators watched as the, you know, one radar blip chased the other, and a short while later they lost radio contact with Montclair and Wilson, and the witnesses there claimed to see on radar. These two objects merge into one and fly off. Now, Monreal and Wilson have never been seen again.

02:29:03:24 – 02:29:28:27
Rob Kristoffersen
Nobody knows what happened to them. Wreckage from their plane has never been found. They just disappeared. And, you know, there have been some like hoaxers coming forward. There was 1 in 2006. He claimed to be from a company called the Great Lakes Diving Company. They claim that, they walked up, they found something like, you know, a plane in Lake Superior.

02:29:28:27 – 02:29:48:03
Rob Kristoffersen
There was never it was ruled a hoax. But like Moncler and Wilson have never been seen since. And if you look at, McCullough’s, tombstone, his memorial, it’s, it’s explicitly states that he died while in pursuit of a UFO.

02:29:48:06 – 02:29:54:29
Dan LeFebvre
What about the idea? In this episode, we see Doctor Hynek actually neutralize an atomic bomb. Did he ever actually do anything like that?

02:29:55:01 – 02:29:57:10
Sean Jablonski
Probably not.

02:29:57:12 – 02:30:18:06
Rob Kristoffersen
You know, he was, he had worked with rocketry, but I don’t think he had worked with the atomic bomb specifically. And, you know, maybe in a situation, he’d be able to know how to disarm it. But I don’t know. What I love about this show is like, they they kind of treat JL and Hynek as if he’s like a jack of all trades.

02:30:18:09 – 02:30:22:18
Dan LeFebvre
He’s the hero of the show. So of course he’s going to save the day no matter what.

02:30:22:21 – 02:30:23:06
Sean Jablonski
Yeah.

02:30:23:06 – 02:30:25:14
Rob Kristoffersen
Yeah, absolutely.

02:30:25:16 – 02:30:56:07
Dan LeFebvre
Well at the end of that episode, episode nine, Doctor Hynek and Captain Quinn get to meet Senator John F Kennedy when he stops by the Project Bluebook office. And the case from Kennedy takes place during Operation Main Breaks. This goes into episode number ten. There’s, massive multinational military exercise. It involves some 200 ships, 80,000 men. And if anything happens during a war exercise that size near Russian territory, it could spark World War three.

02:30:56:10 – 02:31:23:13
Dan LeFebvre
So Heineken, Quinn, investigate aboard USS Wisconsin in the North Atlantic near Norway. They find out that this UFO experience that this, sighting that’s happened, it’s not coming from the sky like all the others, but it’s actually coming from under water. But there’s something else about this. There’s a fishing trawler that was there. It left Shanghai some 11,000 miles away just two days ago, and the fuel tank is still almost full.

02:31:23:15 – 02:31:44:02
Dan LeFebvre
Needless to say, that’s impossible. And at the end of the episode, Quinn takes a mini sub underwater to where the flying crafts are coming from. But the admiral orders depth charges dropped anyway, and the last we see of him is a massive explosion outside his sub. We assume he’s dead, except Doctor Hynek believes maybe he’s not. Maybe he was transported somehow.

02:31:44:02 – 02:31:49:21
Dan LeFebvre
Like that boat from Shanghai. Did any of that happen?

02:31:49:24 – 02:32:18:06
Rob Kristoffersen
Operation Main Brace itself was a real operation. Like the sensational part, you know, definitely didn’t didn’t happen. But, Operation Main Brace at the time, was composed of dozens of NATO organizations that, had sent ships to participate. At the time, it was the largest peacetime military exercise since World War two. And it was meant to, simulate a mock attack on Europe.

02:32:18:09 – 02:32:57:12
Rob Kristoffersen
It was involved, 200 ships, a thousand planes and over 80,000 men. And during this exercise, UFOs were spotted. The first sighting came on September 13th, 1952. The crew of a Danish destroyer spotted a triangular shaped object with blue lights on it, moving through the night sky at high rates of speed. Seven days later, aboard the USS Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a reporter named Wallace Litwin claimed that several pilots and flight crew members saw a silver colored sphere in the sky.

02:32:57:14 – 02:33:23:11
Rob Kristoffersen
Following behind the fleet. There is an actual photo of this object as well, though. Many have tried to debunk it as a weather balloon. It doesn’t appear to be a weather balloon. And, the only, places that it could have been launched from have, denied launching weather balloons around this time. It was also moving way, way too fast to be a weather balloon.

02:33:23:13 – 02:34:03:08
Rob Kristoffersen
An object had been seen the day before of that sighting, on September 19th, as a British meteor jet was returning to an airfield after conducting exercises in the North Sea. And, the pilot of that flight claimed to see a strange silver circular craft following the meteor. They described its movements as that of a falling leaf from a tree, which, is a common, thing reported in a lot of UFO sightings, is that some of these objects appear to be like, doing this slow, the slow falling pattern at times.

02:34:03:10 – 02:34:24:19
Rob Kristoffersen
The objects stopped in mid-air, rotated, and then took off fast away from everybody else. But, yeah, maybe this was a real exercise. They saw some UFOs. I don’t know that Kennedy really played a part in it, but, it is, pretty fascinating. Set of sightings.

02:34:24:21 – 02:34:28:15
Dan LeFebvre
Was Kennedy associated with Project Blue Book at all?

02:34:28:17 – 02:34:54:21
Rob Kristoffersen
No, he was not. There have been, theories that people have suggested, claiming that Kennedy knew alien secrets that he had told them to Marilyn Monroe and that that’s why the both of them were assassinated. But there’s really no, truth behind those statements at all. It’s just, conspiracy theory.

02:34:54:24 – 02:35:16:18
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah, I think the this show kind of alludes that it was, I think at the end of episode number eight, there was a brief line of dialog with Daniel Baker in the CIA talking to General Harding, saying, when it comes to the CIA, no one is untouchable, right? It kind of tie in my mind ties. Okay. It’s something with the JFK assassination as a CIA plot somehow tied to Blue Book.

02:35:16:20 – 02:35:51:05
Rob Kristoffersen
Right? Right. And that’s the thing. And that’s also like the ambiguity that the, assassination of John, John F Kennedy is kind of, lended itself to the Warren Commission, really didn’t do a good job explaining themselves and explaining, everything that happened. But, yeah, it’s just it seems like with some conspiracy theories, and the longer that they are around, the more they get added to and the more people come out of the woodwork saying, well, you know, this happened or that happened.

02:35:51:07 – 02:35:59:10
Rob Kristoffersen
Yeah. It’s always it’s always interesting to read them sometimes, but, yeah. So I don’t put a lot of stuck.

02:35:59:12 – 02:36:17:10
Dan LeFebvre
Well, that makes sense. I did want to ask about, I think was in episode three, there was a scene where we saw Heinecke and Queen in a Jeep and a big UFO flies over light, shine down. And then by the time the camera focuses on the Jeep again, Heinicke and Queen are gone, giving the impression that they were both abducted.

02:36:17:12 – 02:36:20:13
Dan LeFebvre
Was Doctor Hynek ever abducted himself?

02:36:20:15 – 02:36:54:18
Rob Kristoffersen
No. You. He was never abducted. He, He. When he came to, present his theories and stuff like that, he was very guarded. He was always very, skeptical. He was never rash to point to one thing. He had his theories and and he had his leanings. But when it came to a case by case basis, he, he would never he would never go there, per se and say, you know, that this is true or that is true.

02:36:54:18 – 02:37:11:19
Rob Kristoffersen
And, given that, Hynek even disputed the one UFO sighting that he claimed to have while looking through a telescope. So, yeah, he’s always been that skeptical kind of guy. But, as far as I could tell, and through all the research, he has never been abducted.

02:37:11:23 – 02:37:34:14
Dan LeFebvre
But we have talked about a lot of different concepts and things that they put into the show, things like area 51 and, and Skinwalker Ranch and these other elements. If you were in charge of this season of Project Bluebook, was there anything that you wish would have made it onto the show that they left out? I think there.

02:37:34:14 – 02:38:03:28
Rob Kristoffersen
Are a lot of other interesting sightings that they could have really gone to. And and like I say with, especially with the Skinwalker Ranch episode, you look at that and you see that it’s, you know, just, kind of a walking advertisement for another show that’s, that’s coming out. But, I’m glad that they included things like the the Kelly Hopkinsville incident.

02:38:03:28 – 02:38:07:18
Rob Kristoffersen
If I could,

02:38:07:21 – 02:38:52:05
Rob Kristoffersen
Trying to think, what would I have them include? I think the Herbert Shermer sighting is fascinating in the fact that we’re talking about a police officer that, claims to have been abducted by aliens. I think that would have been a more interesting case to present. In. That means there’s a case known as the, RV 47 case, and it’s kind of a the one case that many have put up as, like, the best scientific evidence for a UFO because it it literally involved a UFO following a, radar plane in the sky over, like, hundreds of miles.

02:38:52:06 – 02:39:11:25
Rob Kristoffersen
It’s, it’s a pretty fascinating case. Really, I think they did the best that they could with the season, but, Yeah, the. I can’t think of any other cases off the top of my head right now, but, those two are, I think would have made for interesting episodes.

02:39:11:28 – 02:39:18:18
Dan LeFebvre
Well, thank you so much for your time to come on to chat about Project Blue Book season two. I’ve learned a lot. It’s been it’s been a fun chat. Yeah.

02:39:18:18 – 02:39:29:26
Rob Kristoffersen
Thank you again for having me on this. Been so fun.

02:39:29:29 – 02:39:48:19
Dan LeFebvre
And that brings us to an end of the two seasons of the History Channel’s Project Blue Book. But stick around because we still have the chat with Project Blue Book’s creator, David O’Leary and showrunner Sean John Belinski to get another angle of the whole show that’s coming up right on the other side of our Two Truths and a lie game for season two.

02:39:48:23 – 02:40:16:08
Dan LeFebvre
And as a quick refresher, here are they two truths and a lie for season two of Project Blue Book number one. In the 1950s, the U.S. government illegally experimented with LSD, an unwitting U.S. citizens. Number two, the phrase little green men comes from a close encounter in Kentucky. Number three, Project Blue Book was commissioned by JFK. Did you figure out which one is a lie?

02:40:16:10 – 02:40:38:00
Dan LeFebvre
Again, I’ve got the answer in the envelope, so let’s open that up. And the lie this time is number three. As rat pointed out, President Kennedy was not associated with Project Blue Book at all. There has been some speculation that maybe he knew about alien secrets, but there really hasn’t been any proof of that. Okay, now I’ve got one more remastered episode for you today about Project Blue Book.

02:40:38:00 – 02:41:00:04
Dan LeFebvre
Coming up soon will be my chat from 2021 with the creator of Project Blue Book, David O’Leary, along with the showrunner, a Project Blue Book, Sean Job Lynskey. But first, let’s set up one final game of Two Truths and a lie for that episode. Number one, they wrote a season three, a Project Blue Book telling stories beyond the United States.

02:41:00:07 – 02:41:26:11
Dan LeFebvre
Number two, the Roswell Incident was made famous by Project Blue Book number three. David and Sean have both had unexplained experiences. Okay, now let’s hear from David O’Leary and Sandra Belinsky about creating Project Blue Book.

02:41:26:13 – 02:41:49:03
Dan LeFebvre
Or UFO mention either they just won’t believe what you say, or they’ll simply watch it to find a way to tell you that you’re wrong. I can only imagine how difficult that is when you layer that on to the normal difficulties of trying to pitch and create a show that’s based on UFOs. So my first question is simply why Project Blue Book?

02:41:49:09 – 02:41:59:13
Dan LeFebvre
Why did you decide to create a show around UFOs when you could create a show that doesn’t have nearly as much controversy surrounding it? David, as the creator, want to start with you?

02:41:59:15 – 02:42:23:25
David O’Leary
Yeah. Sure thing. And, hey, everybody’s there. And, Dan, thanks for having us. Thanks for having us on. Yeah. You know, I mean, listen, for me, and for Sean as well, I, I, we like UFOs have been sort of a life long obsession interest. I’ve always, always had a deep interest in the subject matter going all the way back to when I was a kid.

02:42:23:28 – 02:42:45:15
David O’Leary
I’m not sure why, but I just, like, was always. You know, fascinated with the unknown. And it always rang true to me. I would watch, you know, Unsolved Mysteries in the 1980s or scare the hell you know, scare the crap out of myself and read Whitley Strivers Communion when I was like 9 or 10 years old. And it just it always felt authentic and true.

02:42:45:15 – 02:43:08:24
David O’Leary
So like especially, you know, some of the more famous cases in terms of, in terms of bluebook, you know, I, I, you know, as I became an adult and moved out to LA and pursued a career in writing and all that kind of stuff, I wanted, you know, this was sort of right before I, you know, to enter 2017 and, like, UFOs kind of really hit the news again.

02:43:09:01 – 02:43:48:01
David O’Leary
And there wasn’t actually, frankly, a lot of UFO stuff on TV. X-Files had sort of come to its end and I become a bit of, of, of a UFO history buff. And Project Blue Book always just felt like such an interesting, ripe sort of world for TV in that it was period. You know, it had all these other interesting elements in the 1950s in terms of the Cold War and the rise of the atomic age and all that kind of stuff, and then just a plethora of like incredible pieces and then really just a focus on the characters who who sort of led that effort with doctor J and Hynek and, Captain

02:43:48:01 – 02:44:10:10
David O’Leary
Ed Peltz, sort of the first director of Project Bluebook boat who basically shifted sides and, and, and became these, you know, adamant believers that there was something worthy of rigorous scientific study here. So, I think it began with that idea of, of could retell, could we tell a story, you know, sort of historical drama through the lens of these characters?

02:44:10:13 – 02:44:34:22
David O’Leary
And, I was fortunate that, like, I guess there wasn’t a lot of UFO stuff at the time. And, I think Project Bluebook presented a certain, certain natural engine with sort of a, a kind of a different case every week with a really interesting sort of backdrop of getting to kind of tell it in this sort of noir 1950s, sort of shadowy sort of way.

02:44:34:22 – 02:44:46:21
David O’Leary
And, and we were just very, very fortunate that, you know, it took some time, but that eventually, it found a home, with eight studios and, and and history.

02:44:46:24 – 02:44:48:04
Dan LeFebvre
How about you? How did you.

02:44:48:09 – 02:45:16:28
David O’Leary
Kind of get involved in this? So I came a little later. You know, once David had, you know, sort of researched and written the script and had connected with, Robert Zemeckis, and I think they had had a series order by that point. And, you know, I’ve been in the television business for it’s like 25 years plus at this point, I think, and so I’ve, you know, every TV show needs to have a showrunner at some point.

02:45:16:28 – 02:45:38:11
David O’Leary
And David is talented as he is. Had not been in that position before. And so if you’re going to start any business, you’re generally going to want somebody who has that experience to sort of be in there and help help guide the process and understand what’s coming up in front of you and how to run a writer’s room and just, just all of the things you’re not going to know if you haven’t done it.

02:45:38:12 – 02:45:59:02
David O’Leary
So, I essentially interviewed for the job, which began with, meeting with David at a diner. And we realized very quickly that, like him, I, I’ve kind of been obsessed with UFOs my whole life. It’s been something that since I was a kid, I remember seeing one when I was ten years old that. Swear to God.

02:45:59:04 – 02:46:17:04
David O’Leary
And so it’s just something I’ve always been fascinated with. So we were trading stories to the point where we stayed so long. I got a parking ticket. And then, of course, you got to go. You got to go through the gantlet of meeting the studio and the producers and the network and all that stuff, and it just felt like such a very sort of natural, match.

02:46:17:06 – 02:46:47:15
David O’Leary
And then we just sort of move forward from there that, you know, we really connected on having the same passion, you know, in terms of that. But, so I’m just happy to have had the opportunity, to meet, you know, someone who shares that, and, you know, in terms of how I look at just even the phenomenon and want to tell those stories, I feel like, I mean, it’s very much in vogue right now for, for people to be talking about UFOs in a very serious way.

02:46:47:18 – 02:47:11:21
David O’Leary
And I think, like any new science and it is a bit of a science now because we’re just starting to discover it, because we have sort of the minds that are being applied to it and the science and the technology, and the, credibility of the people who’ve come forward. But for people to go back to your earlier point, for people who can, you know, when you talk about is there controversy around UFOs or why stir that up?

02:47:11:21 – 02:47:28:19
David O’Leary
Or when people say that, you know, my first question is like, well, what do you know about UFOs? I would ask, like, what do you know about the history of UFOs? Because a lot of people want to throw it off as something, you know, tinfoil hat wearing silly. Like, if they were here, they’d be landing on the front lawn of the white House and blah, blah, blah.

02:47:28:20 – 02:47:52:01
David O’Leary
But when you really understand the history, and the amount of cases and the amount of credible people that have come forward, physical evidence, you know, visual evidence, all of this, it is without a doubt something that exists. And I count myself as a true believer. And the second question I would ask somebody is, what do you believe about it?

02:47:52:08 – 02:48:11:16
David O’Leary
What do you have to believe to believe that it doesn’t exist? You know, and oftentimes people will sort of stumble and go, well, I just think that this would happen if there would be this, that the aliens would have said something by now. And then when you dig into that, you realize it’s just sort of a, a belief people have that sort of based on an like on a feeling.

02:48:11:19 – 02:48:28:23
David O’Leary
Right? Which is just like, oh, I don’t know. I just feel like it wouldn’t happen this way, blah, blah, blah. And it’s like when you sort of dig into that, it’s, I would imagine the way people would have felt before, I don’t know. We discovered bacteria when we didn’t have a microscope. You know, it’s demons inside your body.

02:48:28:24 – 02:48:45:29
David O’Leary
You know, that’s what it’s got to be. And then when the science caught up and we were able to see what was actually going on, there’s still a bridge that has to happen where people have to get on board and understand that the facts that are there and the people that are studying it are not crazy, and then all of this stuff gets borne out.

02:48:45:29 – 02:49:13:22
David O’Leary
So I feel like that’s a very important, pursuit right now, especially in a world where truth is such a, malleable concept. And so I love the idea that David and I, you know, again, I think found, a path and the passion towards wanting to get those ideas out there that it’s, it’s it’s be part of that notion of getting the truth out to an audience.

02:49:13:24 – 02:49:22:10
Dan LeFebvre
What was your interest kind of starting with that? You said you had an experience that at ten, it was that kind of when your interest in UFO started?

02:49:22:12 – 02:49:43:05
David O’Leary
100%, I, I was in, I was in New York City, which, where I grew up and saw lights in the sky moving, you know, silently information. There were these long sort of hexagonal type lights. And I remember very clearly, I can still see it very clearly. The moment where you look up and I’m like, am I seeing what I’m seeing?

02:49:43:07 – 02:49:58:28
David O’Leary
Could it be what I think it is? It has to be something like just this. You go through this whole range of emotions and, and of course, I was a kid, you know, but I still remember it very clearly to this day. So. Yeah, I mean, that’s where it had to start for sure.

02:49:59:01 – 02:50:01:27
Dan LeFebvre
David, have you ever had an experience?

02:50:01:29 – 02:50:25:21
David O’Leary
So I so I had something weird happened to me much later. And it was actually after I sold the, the show, but before the show got picked up to series and I actually, like, didn’t share it for a while, except with like, my wife and like basically I was walking home. It was I was walking home, I lived, I lived, then I lived, kind of near the grove for people living in Los Angeles.

02:50:25:24 – 02:50:40:28
David O’Leary
I was walking home through my neighborhood, and I was weirdly, I had a park a couple blocks away because of street parking, which was sort of a rare thing, and it was a quiet night. It was kind of late. And then the other strange thing was I was actually on the phone at the time, late with a friend of mine, which was also kind of just not use it.

02:50:40:28 – 02:51:04:11
David O’Leary
But I’m so glad I was that I wasn’t by myself, because I think I would have freaked out even more. And I saw what looked like a teardrop shaped sort of self luminescent, almost like a green kind of Chinese lantern emerge from out of the trees, like 25, 30ft above me. And I stopped and I did exactly what Sean does.

02:51:04:11 – 02:51:29:27
David O’Leary
And with so many UFO witnesses do and sort of be like, is that a drone? What is that? I’m not hearing anything like worrying, then I don’t know if this happened or not, but it felt like it started. It sort of stopped and it was kind of flickering and it sort of started to move towards me. And, I panicked and I, I’m on the phone with a friend of mine, and he sort of black, and he doesn’t understand what’s going on.

02:51:29:27 – 02:51:49:05
David O’Leary
I’m like, dude, I’m like. And I duck under it. And then it just sort of like continued on, kind of floating over the, sort of the, like the air I lived in in a sort of two storey house. So it’s just like, you know, like 30, 40ft in the air just over the houses and continued behind, behind, you know, some line of trees and stuff.

02:51:49:07 – 02:52:09:18
David O’Leary
Other than, like, talking to my wife about it, I didn’t share it for like a year. Because I, I don’t know, like, I, I, I like, didn’t want to be the guy with, like, a UFO show who, like, suddenly had this weird UFO variant, but, I eventually, did sort of talk about it because I also realized served to Sean’s point, too.

02:52:09:18 – 02:52:27:13
David O’Leary
And just like in terms of getting the truth out, like, I don’t know exactly what it was. And hey, maybe it was a drone and I was just like, I freaked myself out or something, but it was very oddly shaped, and it was very weird and sort of how it moved. It was sort of like a balloon, like a lit up balloon.

02:52:27:16 – 02:52:49:22
David O’Leary
But, you know, so that that was sort of the, that’s the only time I think I’ve seen something where I really couldn’t identify it, you know? And then I think so much about UFOs is sort of how it makes you feel. It definitely felt strange. Like it felt. It felt like something as opposed to just like, oh, that’s, you know, I just I couldn’t place what that would be.

02:52:49:24 – 02:53:06:23
David O’Leary
Especially because it was like, in the branches of trees and sort of like, you know, and then later on, like, actually when we were doing the show, like we found out there are like, you know, these cases of green fireballs, we even did an episode on them. And that’s a little bit of what it I didn’t actually know that at the time.

02:53:06:23 – 02:53:13:29
David O’Leary
And that’s sort of like what it came out like to me. So I don’t know. I don’t know what that was. Yeah.

02:53:14:00 – 02:53:17:06
Dan LeFebvre
You don’t usually don’t try to fly a drone through the trees.

02:53:17:10 – 02:53:27:27
David O’Leary
Yeah. Right. Yeah. It was very weird. It almost looks like it came out of the tree. Like it was very like I saw it in the branches and kind of emerged from, like. It was very sad. Wow.

02:53:28:01 – 02:53:44:23
Dan LeFebvre
That’s weird. Well, go back to the show. You’ve both worked on shows that are not based on true events as well as, of course, Project Bluebook, which is what are some of the differences in the ways that you approach a show when it’s based on true events compared to a completely fictional story? Sean, me let’s start with you this time.

02:53:45:00 – 02:54:03:29
David O’Leary
Sure. I, I’m going to steal a quote, and I don’t know who to credit it to, but, I you know what I think it was? Mark Twain is like, never let the truth get in the way of a good story. And I think you find that out right away. Now, I’ve had the the the. I tend to love historical pieces.

02:54:03:29 – 02:54:27:03
David O’Leary
I’ve done a few development wise, you know, over the years, Tesla and Edison, the Bonaparte’s. There’s been a couple other in there, and it’s been a bit of a learning curve trying to apply storytelling to what actually happened. And, whether it is the network exec saying, I don’t care, we need better television. And what exactly happened in that moment?

02:54:27:05 – 02:54:31:28
David O’Leary
Or just an instinct from a storytelling point of view? You know, look.

02:54:32:01 – 02:54:33:18
Sean Jablonski
It.

02:54:33:20 – 02:54:56:11
David O’Leary
Taking history and making a story of it. You can do a documentary right there. That’s why they exist. Because and a lot of times there’s great history that you couldn’t write this stuff. But when you’re trying to make a television show and you need to sort of hit your brakes and you need to engage an audience and you want to give your characters an emotional arc, you kind of have to.

02:54:56:11 – 02:55:16:24
David O’Leary
And it sounds like simple, but it’s actually kind of hard. You have to sort of really give yourself permission to, expand on it. Because otherwise you’re sort of I, I remember feeling almost, you know, I definitely had a lot of deference to the history and the people, and you never want to mess with that.

02:55:16:24 – 02:55:38:09
David O’Leary
But at the same time, you have to again, do your job and and sell it to an audience. So, I feel like I’m rambling a little bit, but I just think you have to have the courage to kind of get out there and really tell the story that you’re wanting to tell and have respect for the people in the material.

02:55:38:12 – 02:55:57:28
David O’Leary
But be a little fearless in how you do it. Otherwise, you know, you’re never going to you never going to cross the boundary and just say, nobody’s ever going to say what? What a really wonderfully factually accurate television show. Do you know what I mean? And get you get yourself ratings and an audience. And I even know, like, something like the Queen.

02:55:57:28 – 02:56:21:23
David O’Leary
I mean, how much can they have been in those rooms where those people were talking and understand what was said? And, lastly, I had a really good mentor. I grew up under basically Tom Fontana, who was sort of my mentor into the business, and he said, if you’re going to do something historical, look for those, look at the history, and then find the moments in between that might not necessarily even be written about.

02:56:21:26 – 02:56:45:00
David O’Leary
Get in there and use your writing ability to figure out what could have happened, what could have connected those dots, how could have, though? How could those characters have moved from point A to point B? That’s not being written about, you know? And thankfully, audiences are very forgiving these days. And I, I have to say like, Quentin Tarantino was a big inspiration in a weird way.

02:56:45:00 – 02:57:03:05
David O’Leary
When I saw Inglorious Bastards, I went, wait, you can’t kill Hitler in a theater? That never happened. And yet at the same time, I remember as an audience thinking, this is the most exhilarating thing I’ve seen because it felt like he was having the courage to go. I want to tell the story that’s going to get people excited.

02:57:03:05 – 02:57:27:05
David O’Leary
And I think if you set the table for your audience that way and say, look, this is inspired by true events, we are not telling that, you know, accurately. We’re inspired. You know, we’re inspired by it and doing it. I think you’re okay. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I think we, we we quickly realized is exactly what Sean said, that we needed to put entertainment and emotion first.

02:57:27:12 – 02:57:46:02
David O’Leary
You know what I mean? Like, people are going to tune. Otherwise you’re you’re just going to watch a documentary on Project Blue Book. If you just want to know the facts, you know it’s all there. You can read. There’s wonderful books we have. We’ve read them. What? You know who we need to tell a story that about about people, about human beings going through these events.

02:57:46:05 – 02:58:04:22
David O’Leary
You know, we kind of quickly realize the heart and this, you know, the heart and soul of the show was Hynek and Quinn. That relationship, along with all of our other, you know, sort of six primary leads, the generals, you know, Susie and Mimi, all that stuff. Mimi and Hynek. So, but you know what?

02:58:04:22 – 02:58:33:09
David O’Leary
You what we found a way to do, I think rather hopefully rather well, was take those kernels of truth and, you know, and and put them into and then and then weed them into a narrative yarn that was hopefully enjoyable, entertaining, emotionally evocative, while while having but but also encouraging people to be like, hey, like that. Like every week was a case that really happened, within within an episode, we we’d have little Easter eggs of things that were really going on at the time.

02:58:33:09 – 02:58:59:08
David O’Leary
We’d explore other things that were sort of in the social fabric of the 1950s, bomb shelters and, and, you know, paranoia. And, and you know, this. Yeah. You know, like, people tapping your phones and all that stuff. Russia’s interest, interest in UFOs, all that stuff. So, Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry. One other quick thing to we also had Paul Hynek, who was, you know, Jalen Hynek son, as a consulting, producer on the show.

02:58:59:08 – 02:59:18:21
David O’Leary
And, you know, that felt like any time we were, you know, doing something that made us a little squeamish or whatever he was, he would always say, which is wonderful. He’d say, I think my dad would love this, you know? And so that really gave us a lot of, you know, permission. It felt like to kind of run with it and get a blessing.

02:59:18:24 – 02:59:19:05
David O’Leary
Yeah.

02:59:19:12 – 02:59:22:21
Dan LeFebvre
Just for that, that topic. Are you talking about UFO? Was it, you know.

02:59:22:24 – 02:59:23:09
Sean Jablonski

02:59:23:12 – 02:59:31:17
Dan LeFebvre
Unexplained. Right. And then government cover ups where obviously we don’t know a lot of stuff that’s going on there. Did you find.

02:59:31:19 – 02:59:32:03
David O’Leary
Bluebook.

02:59:32:03 – 02:59:40:13
Dan LeFebvre
To be more challenging to fill in some of those gaps, then completely fictional? Because there is just a lot of it that we don’t know.

02:59:40:15 – 03:00:01:28
David O’Leary
Did SAR de. I’ll jump in. Yeah. The thing we talked about very early on was that it’s we’re riding a line between we can never say they exist or the show goes away because the whole idea is they’re searching for the truth. Right. So that was always a hard line to kind of kind of deal with. And something we were very aware of every episode.

03:00:02:01 – 03:00:25:11
David O’Leary
And one of the challenges too, is like, you realize it’s not a, it’s not a cop show where you show up and there’s a body, our guys show up and somebody’s saying, no, no, no, I saw it in the sky. You know what it’s like. So how do you how do you tell those stories? In, in, in give it all of that sort of energy and interest and, and, you know, a revelation, every act kind of thing.

03:00:25:11 – 03:00:48:20
David O’Leary
So that’s right. And, and the thing we realized was that we had to thrust our leads and our audience into the case, you know, we had to thrust them into these events to some degree. So things would happen to Clinic and Quinn as they would investigate a case that would often not start with, you know, a civilian witness or a military witness or multiple witnesses seeing something they couldn’t explain.

03:00:48:20 – 03:01:10:11
David O’Leary
It wouldn’t the case wouldn’t be over. It would lead down a rabbit hole of of more revelations. But as Sean said, it’s exactly right. We would always want to walk that line like we’d always have, like a plausible other, answer, no matter how deep. And we went. I mean, there’s an episode early on where we go to, you know, Operation Paperclip.

03:01:10:11 – 03:01:44:12
David O’Leary
We go into, like, the sin base and there looks that it’s like they’re staring at what looks like an alien. An alien in a tank, you know, but there’s an alternate explanation there that’s given as well, so that there was always this sense of like, you know, am I am I seeing you know, which you know, which truth are you going to are you going to believe, you know, because I think one of our goals, too, was obviously we wanted to attract audience members who were interested in this subject matter, but we also wanted to, you know, we were also very cognizant that, like, half the population, you know, you know, doesn’t

03:01:44:12 – 03:02:06:25
David O’Leary
think there is much to UFOs. And we wanted to make sure that we we presented an interesting sort of like dilemma where both sides could be like, oh, maybe, maybe it was maybe, maybe the, you know, the Lubbock lights were plovers, you know, or like, or maybe it was temperature over inversions. In episode 2 in 110, you know, at the in the season one finale or things of that nature.

03:02:06:25 – 03:02:19:18
David O’Leary
So, so that there was always this balance because like, yeah, as soon as you just say it’s, it’s real definitively it’s the mystery is gone. The truth is, you know, that the quest is, is is Oak.

03:02:19:21 – 03:02:20:27
Dan LeFebvre
Park part of.

03:02:21:00 – 03:02:21:21
David O’Leary
Blue Book like.

03:02:21:27 – 03:02:35:18
Dan LeFebvre
From from history was to come up with some of those stories, some of, some of the plausible explanations for that. Was it can you give an example, maybe of a plot point in there where you, you did depart from the history that they.

03:02:35:21 – 03:02:36:04
Sean Jablonski
That.

03:02:36:07 – 03:02:41:06
Dan LeFebvre
Maybe the example that Blue Book gave and had to kind of come up with your own?

03:02:41:09 – 03:03:15:18
David O’Leary
Oh, God. I mean, listen, you know, I mean, well, there were certain threads that we, you know, as far as we know, the high necks were never infiltrated by a Russian. A Russian email a Russian spy, as Claude would say, I don’t know. I don’t think that ever happened. But, you know, you know, so certainly we were adding certain narrative drama, but but like, what is well documented was that Russia was very interested in, in not only their own UFO programs at that time, but in what America knew about UFOs at that time because they were like, is this top secret, you know, technology, things of that nature, that, you know, that

03:03:15:18 – 03:03:45:13
David O’Leary
we have yet to release and we, we always were excited by the idea that, like, oh, the Hynek family could be a soft target into sort of an intelligence gathering mission from Russia about that. And then things obviously complicated from there because even our, even our sort of Russian spy character is sort of become sort of morally torn about like which side she should be fighting for and all those, all those wonderful things, I think from a case standpoint, though, I think we always tried to reverse engineer what became the official explanation.

03:03:45:13 – 03:04:12:27
David O’Leary
You know, like the plovers, like temperature inversions with the stuff over DC. Even, you know, Hopkinsville where, you know, as crazy as it scene with the there was like a monkey that was dressed up in the space outfit that that’s all based on fact. Actually, they’re one of the got one of the guys in the family worked at a circus, and there was, like, monkey trained monkeys there, like, because in a way that’s almost too absurd to make up.

03:04:12:29 – 03:04:46:12
David O’Leary
I would be embarrassed to like bits that in a room. So I think we always started with something, you know, that, you know, we’d kind of reverse engineer it. And again, to go back to your very first question and try to sort of honor what was the initial, you know, truth of the actual story. Yeah. One of the joys of the, of the show for me was like, when we would air, I would like live tweet the show, and I would beforehand kind of put together the list of all the things, all the cool little, like, you know, truth nuggets that we had, we had sort of pulled from here and there and

03:04:46:12 – 03:05:06:28
David O’Leary
maybe turn them in a bit of a blender to tell a cohesive, compelling drama. But so that but really to invite audience audiences to go like, research this, like, hey, this really was a real thing, or like you wanted this case based off this event, so that there was always these sort of like footings that audiences could had and like, oh, okay, great.

03:05:06:28 – 03:05:26:11
David O’Leary
And then they can go off, they can go off and see the case. And then even at the end of every episode, if you watched it on history, there was like a 2 or 3 minute documentary piece about the case that inspired this week’s episode of Bluebook, and that was sort of conceived from the very beginning. Once we landed at history, to draw a line in the sand so that we could clearly be like, listen, we’re not trying to deceive.

03:05:26:18 – 03:05:46:03
David O’Leary
We want to like, tell a cool story, compelling, compelling narrative. But here’s here and then here’s the route of of where this comes from. Now go off and like, you know, do your own research and come to your own your own conclusions. So it was nice to have that other sort of piece that would help plant it in historical context.

03:05:46:06 – 03:05:48:18
Dan LeFebvre
I like what you said, John, about the, the monkeys.

03:05:48:18 – 03:05:50:20
Sean Jablonski
Being that I mean.

03:05:50:22 – 03:06:03:02
Dan LeFebvre
There and that’s one of the things I love about the, the show that I do, being able to dig into some of that, because knowing that that’s based on fact, like that’s, that’s something that somebody could easily look at and be like, oh, what?

03:06:03:07 – 03:06:05:21
David O’Leary
I mean, that’s that’s kind of happened, but well, yeah.

03:06:05:21 – 03:06:07:23
Dan LeFebvre
Actually some of the crazy stuff does.

03:06:07:23 – 03:06:09:03
Sean Jablonski
Happen.

03:06:09:05 – 03:06:34:25
David O’Leary
Yeah. It’s it’s a yeah. And it’s, it’s you know, I think Chernobyl is probably what like the gold standard in terms of trying to sort of tell like an accurate story based on a historical event. And, you know, we again, had to sort of decide early on that we, you know, there’s there is, there’s got to be a slightly different version of the show and, and also just we knew too, that, you know, and David had put it in there.

03:06:34:25 – 03:06:39:09
David O’Leary
There’s so much family. And so going on to that, we could also sort of lean on that.

03:06:39:11 – 03:06:54:28
Dan LeFebvre
Well, you mentioned a couple of them earlier, some of the, stories that you got to cover, like the Lubbock Lights and Operation Paperclip, area 51 even got, high involvement in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. What was your favorite episode in the series?

03:06:55:00 – 03:07:17:14
David O’Leary
Oh, gosh. I mean, I would say, I would say I’m torn between three. I think both Sean and I share deep, deep love of the Close Encounters upset, which in many ways, in some ways feels almost like the culmination of the show. Like you could almost like, like end it there because like, we end we, you know, we end obviously in a very different way.

03:07:17:16 – 03:07:36:13
David O’Leary
But and I was thinking about that actually this morning. Why that that episode registers so much, I think, for all of us. I mean, some of it was just, you know, the magic of it all coming together, intercutting between two different time periods. But I think one of the things for us, too, is it was one of the one of the clearest departures in tone for us.

03:07:36:13 – 03:08:03:09
David O’Leary
We were a rather conspiratorial, dark, noir tone, which is like, I love that tone, like most of the things I write are like sci fi mysteries, supernatural mysteries, like, I, I can’t get enough of that. But this episode, the case is ultimately has this wonderful sort of positive spin, you know what I mean? Like, it’s so much captures a sense of wonder instead of a sense of of fear.

03:08:03:11 – 03:08:20:22
David O’Leary
It sort of it stands out because that’s the other side of this thing. Like, we don’t want to forget that it’s not just about conspiracies and being deceived and and public denial and disinformation, misinformation, all that stuff. But it is about the wonder of what’s out there. And I think that that episode in some ways encapsulated that, that wonder.

03:08:20:24 – 03:08:41:19
David O’Leary
And then and then the other two episodes, I’m really, I really love I love our like, big finale episode. So like, like one town into town for me also stand out as just like cinematic, like movies. You know what I mean? Like, I think I think Sean and I are both really proud of how those episodes turned out as well.

03:08:41:21 – 03:08:59:05
David O’Leary
But I don’t know. I mean, like, I could go on like, we did two quote unquote bottle episodes. I think Sean wrote them both, which are also some of my favorites. That was abduction in season one. And, I forget where we oh, what lies beneath in in season two, in season two, sort of the revelation of who Susie really is and all that kind of stuff.

03:08:59:07 – 03:09:19:00
David O’Leary
And that’s like, that’s we put all our characters just in a room, essentially, and had to tell it, tell an amazing story there. So, I don’t know, it’s hard. I yeah, I love all of them. I definitely the bottle episodes are fun because it’s so character based and, you know, the challenge of we’re a show that has to go out and look at UFOs.

03:09:19:00 – 03:09:47:22
David O’Leary
How do you actually how do you keep people in the house in order to tell the same show? So yeah, those bottle episodes are great close encounters. Yeah, I mean that and and do exactly what David said. The finale’s just there’s so much fun and and and happened you know, that’s the other thing everyone yet like the the Close Encounters based on George Adamski, who was a guy who was just like that character, who we sort of had in the show, which was so much fun.

03:09:47:22 – 03:10:11:02
David O’Leary
And then, you know, Paul Hynek makes a little cameo as a camera operator in the Close Encounters scene, which was so nice as a way, you know, to sort of in homage to his father. And he was saying just even being on that set was meant so much to him. And and yeah, as David put it perfectly with it, it took a break from the usual town and showed the wonder of it, which was wonderful.

03:10:11:04 – 03:10:31:18
David O’Leary
Paul Heinrich’s cameo in an episode about his father serving as a like. There are so many meta parallels because Paul was a consultant for us on the show, and then we did an episode about his father being a consultant for Steven Spielberg, who’s like, Zemeckis’s close friend. It was just like that for me. I’m just like, oh, wow.

03:10:31:18 – 03:10:42:06
David O’Leary
Like, that’s just like some incredible, incredible miracle that that that we were, like, somehow able to, like, pay that, pay that all off and then do it, do its injustice.

03:10:42:09 – 03:10:45:01
Dan LeFebvre
And I’ll just fits perfectly together. Just.

03:10:45:03 – 03:10:45:13
Sean Jablonski
Yeah.

03:10:45:14 – 03:10:46:15
Dan LeFebvre
Almost right itself there. Yeah.

03:10:46:15 – 03:10:47:28
Sean Jablonski
Wow. Okay.

03:10:48:00 – 03:11:10:03
Dan LeFebvre
Well, if there is one UFO related incident and pretty much everyone is heard of, it is the Roswell incident, and that’s the case. You started season two with with, two episodes covering it. Did you feel it? Because that is so popular. Roswell is so popular that it was more difficult to cover than some of the others on the show, like you had to be more accurate to the story.

03:11:10:03 – 03:11:16:09
David O’Leary
And in a way, it was it was hard to do because Bluebook didn’t investigate Roswell.

03:11:16:11 – 03:11:16:26
Sean Jablonski
Yeah.

03:11:16:28 – 03:11:57:12
David O’Leary
That was our biggest challenge at first. You know, was having to go back and you go, well, how can we tell Roswell when it happened, you know, five years before the book was even born? And so we kind of had to have a Roswell 2.0, but you had to take all the facts from the original, and sort of make it feel current, you know, and so that probably more ironically, more than any other episode had the most kind of, I guess, would you say fiction to it because they never investigated it going back and sort of interviewing those witnesses well, after the fact and then sort of making it feel current.

03:11:57:15 – 03:12:18:15
David O’Leary
You know, it was it was intimidating. But, you know, because we’re such research fans and loved the story so much, we knew right away it was a two parter just because there’s so much information in there and, you know, you’ve added with it’s opening season two, you want to be, you know, a big sort of, you know, a way to sort of come back in which, you know, interesting story.

03:12:18:15 – 03:12:39:04
David O’Leary
We, you know, wasn’t our initial impulse to put Roswell as a season opener and that, you know, gradually true, you know, breaking of story and then input from the network, we got to, a place where it was like, nope, we’re doing Roswell to open season two, which was ultimately the smartest choice. Yeah, as a way to sort of bring the show back.

03:12:39:07 – 03:12:55:07
David O’Leary
Yeah. That’s right. At one point and for a while, actually, we would we really wanted to do more island as, as as our, as our opener. I remember that which we eventually, you know, but it all sort of works out like it sort of reveals itself as you break it. Like we found a much better way to do it.

03:12:55:07 – 03:13:19:14
David O’Leary
You know, ultimately down the line, you know, I think that episode was like, I it’s six or something like that. I think 2 or 5. Yeah. Or 205. Yeah. And, but yeah, I think for us, I cracking the case on Roswell just became about, well, you know, we, we done a bunch of research on Roswell and it just became, well, okay, if a town was really, you know, silenced.

03:13:19:16 – 03:13:42:02
David O’Leary
Yeah. And traumatized in this way, what would be the symptoms of that six years later? And once we saw a real. Well, what if somebody was trying to get the truth out of Roswell and staged, like, you know, like this crazy event in the desert where this where, where a saucer allegedly went down and sort of, you know, held the held the US government kind of hostage, like, I’m going to unleash the truth.

03:13:42:04 – 03:14:06:01
David O’Leary
It created a way for like, our guys to go back in there and then, and then the other thing we sort of had the revelation of it was like, oh, what a great character. A journey we can take with no on his character. And as a general returning to a scene of a crime, something that he’s never fully been able to square, and also delineating, you know, for those who watched the episode between Valentine and.

03:14:06:07 – 03:14:07:29
Rob Kristoffersen

03:14:08:02 – 03:14:32:03
David O’Leary
Oh, I’m like, yeah, thank you. Hardy. In terms of like, who knows what and who might really be in control because for season one we play, you know, we we need to sort of be, you know, the face of it a little bit more. But but then we sort of flipped the script a little bit like, oh, perhaps Valentine, who’s more the veteran, more of the senior is actually sort of hiding some things from, from, from Harding as well.

03:14:32:03 – 03:14:43:14
David O’Leary
So is, you know, it just it gradually reveals itself to us as we find, as we found a way to do it, you know, of like, oh, here’s a way to do it that really is interesting.

03:14:43:16 – 03:14:49:23
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah. It was really interesting that, I because I think a lot of people, when they think of the government cover up, it’s like.

03:14:49:25 – 03:14:51:07
David O’Leary
The government and they’re.

03:14:51:07 – 03:14:52:10
Sean Jablonski
All in it.

03:14:52:16 – 03:14:58:21
Dan LeFebvre
In it together. And as I was watching it, yeah, I definitely got the sense that even these two generals, they don’t even.

03:14:58:25 – 03:15:02:06
Sean Jablonski
They don’t know everything that the other one knows.

03:15:02:09 – 03:15:08:07
Dan LeFebvre
And so you start to get that sense in there as well. Just really, really, really well done to put that together.

03:15:08:10 – 03:15:32:29
David O’Leary
And so what’s not you know, the general that wound up going into Roswell from outside was Twining, who Harding is based on and was credited a lot with, you know, some of those strong arm tactics that were used in and the idea of when Brazel gets brought onto the base, you know, the idea of somebody who had been in charge of terrorizing an entire town.

03:15:32:29 – 03:15:58:07
David O’Leary
And there’s, again, I’d encourage anybody who has even an inkling of curiosity to go to look at it. There are plenty of firsthand accounts of people who were there. And then you know, are you going to choose to believe somebody saying, I was there? My life was threatened by a military official, and I was told if I spoke, I would be killed and go, okay, there’s dozens and dozens and dozens of those witnesses who came forward and said the exact same thing.

03:15:58:07 – 03:16:22:15
David O’Leary
So you have to ask yourself, am I going to choose to believe they’re all crazy? You know, they’re all making this up for the sake of, you know, a story? You know, it’s fascinating. And also with, you know, Valentine, who was based on Hoyt Vandenberg, you know, ultimately, he went on to be part of the Atomic Energy Commission, which was like an ultra super secret, you know, in charge of our nuclear program.

03:16:22:15 – 03:16:39:13
David O’Leary
And I think he was that did he become head of CIA or was brought into the CIA or something? So it again, it felt like we were fortunate enough to find this truth in the history and really try to bring it out in the in the storytelling. Yeah.

03:16:39:19 – 03:16:57:16
Dan LeFebvre
There is a petition going now to bring the show back for a third season. I’ll make sure to add a link to it in the show notes. If anybody wants to sign it. But let’s say that petition is successful and you’re able to make a third season of Project Blue Book. Have you thought about some other stories that you might like to cover that you didn’t get to in the first two?

03:16:57:18 – 03:17:00:04
Sean Jablonski
David, go.

03:17:00:07 – 03:17:28:17
David O’Leary
Okay, only a little bit right here. Well, some of the fans been murdered, but other listeners may not. We actually had a third season writers room that, ended where we basically broke, all of season three. So for us, it’s been particularly hard, I think, to, you know, and then and then basically Covid hit and I mean, literally like the last day of our writers room was like the day like kind of the world world shut down like it was lockdown.

03:17:28:19 – 03:17:50:20
David O’Leary
In 20th March or 2020, mid-March of 2020. So, yes, I mean, we have, you know, listen, we, we, we would love nothing more than to then to continue that journey. So especially because for us it we for in a weird way, the show lives in our heads. Like a season at the end of season, like we kind of knew where we were going.

03:17:50:23 – 03:18:19:00
David O’Leary
We we mapped out a whole past, and that makes it hard to because I know how, excited we, Sean and I are about that season. I mean, that season, that season is like some of our favorite stuff. And like, we the guys to do it like, so. And I mean, we can tease it a little bit too, because it’s, you know, it felt that, it felt like such a natural progression again.

03:18:19:00 – 03:18:48:02
David O’Leary
Also history on our side. There was the great UFO wave of 1953 54 in Europe. Yeah. And so we decided to go, you know, as you know, to sort of make it bigger and, you know, it a lot of it takes place over in Europe. Because that’s where, that’s that’s where the sightings were. It was it went from like, you know, a handful of sightings in Europe to thousands a day.

03:18:48:02 – 03:19:07:24
David O’Leary
All of a sudden it was like off the charts. And when you dig into the history of Europe and the history of some of those cases, again, it for us it felt like this is what the show is. It is about the phenomenon. And it’s not just an American phenomenon, it’s a worldwide phenomenon. And so we we got to explore some seminal cases.

03:19:07:24 – 03:19:31:02
David O’Leary
And, it really I mean, like anything, it felt like we were hitting our stride and we we broke every single episode. So. Yeah, but there’s some wonderful. Yeah, England, France, Italy, Italy, Russia. Roswell. Yeah. Like it was just like we. Yeah, we it was, it was, you know, heartbreaking. Yeah. It was heartbreaking. Utterly heartbreaking. I don’t really.

03:19:31:02 – 03:19:31:25
Sean Jablonski
Heartbreaking.

03:19:31:27 – 03:19:55:19
Dan LeFebvre
Well I hope hopefully we’ll get to see some of that in the future. But, I wanted to ask you about, Doctor Heinrichs perspective on UFOs, because in the real Project Blue Book, he kind of started pretty skeptical. And then his position changed as he was investigating these. So as you were researching and writing and putting together this, did your opinions change at all?

03:19:55:19 – 03:20:01:22
Dan LeFebvre
I know you were both big into UFOs beforehand, but did it change at all as you were creating the show?

03:20:01:24 – 03:20:41:03
David O’Leary
What changed for me was doing research on Hynek and realizing how smart he was in terms of hypothesizing the multitude of answers that might exist. Right? Even in like, his book, you know, I think, like, you know, the UFO experience or, you know, his numerous books, he, he would hypothesize, you know, like, especially with some of these cases that delve into, like, you know, Close Encounters of the Third kind or, you know, seeing, seeing actual occupants or entities or whatever you want to call them, you know, I mean, he he Hynek entertained every theory under the sun from the day, you know, interdimensional in some way, like the planet is also theirs.

03:20:41:03 – 03:21:21:09
David O’Leary
Somehow today, our interplanetary spacecraft do. They are us in the future today are like I. I remember like you spoke a little bit about sort of the robotic nature of that of the how these creatures are described. Like, are we dealing with artificial extraterrestrial artificial intelligence, right. Like, on and on. And I think that that, that, I mean, I, you know, you know, just I always love that the notion that, like, maybe, you know, the answers could be as complicated, complicated as the questions we could be dealing with a multitude of, sort of phenomena happening simultaneously.

03:21:21:09 – 03:21:43:17
David O’Leary
We’re just not we’re just not sure, you know, what what sort of the answers are. But, that was the shift for me. Was like, you know, don’t hang your hat on. Really? Any one theory, because it could be. It could be something else. It could appear one way, but actually, I actually did something else. I always love that, you know, I would say of anything to that.

03:21:43:19 – 03:22:04:29
David O’Leary
To that end, there’s like it only expanded. I mean, I was already having had knowledge of it sort of, you know, believed in the phenomenon. And, you know, I, I couldn’t profess to have the answers, but had certainly done the research. But if anything, it just expanded it expanded the scope of what was possible, like, especially with interdimensional beings.

03:22:04:29 – 03:22:33:25
David O’Leary
AI from alien civilizations. Are they even here? You know, old that stuff. The biggest thing for me that I found doing this was the, sort of how the sightings ticked up right after an around the time of our, you know, us basically getting nuclear capabilities. There are so many incidents of UFOs in and around nuclear missile sites turning the missiles on and off.

03:22:33:27 – 03:22:57:20
David O’Leary
And, you know, in and around Los Alamos at once. We got the bomb. This. That’s when everything shut up. That’s really when that’s what really when Roswell happened. And that is one of the most fascinating stories to me, because to me, it’s the clearest evidence yet. And this is coming from high ranking military officials who’ve testified in front of Congress about this.

03:22:57:20 – 03:23:21:20
David O’Leary
Again, this this stuff is all available to go. You can watch it, you know, and decide for yourself. Yeah, yeah, decide for yourself if like the, you know, the high ranking colonel who said I was in the missile bunker when the this, you know, object came and basically cut the power then turned it back on said our missiles to launch and we couldn’t do anything, then took it away.

03:23:21:22 – 03:23:48:14
David O’Leary
Yeah. And you can decide if this guy just decided to make it up and ruined his entire career. But to me, that’s the clearest evidence. It’s one thing for a civilian to see something dark across the sky and go, I saw something I can’t explain. It’s another thing for military personnel who are overseeing our nuclear weapons to have these objects come in and around and and basically control them, because to me, that’s communication, right?

03:23:48:14 – 03:24:06:18
David O’Leary
I know what that is like. It’s it’s them saying, we can do this to you. And now it’s up to us to go. Are they benevolent? Are they they or are they saying they can destroy us or they trying to start a war? Like what is happening? It’s not just like, oh, I saw something. I don’t understand it.

03:24:06:18 – 03:24:30:02
David O’Leary
They’re communicating in a way and have the ability to affect our world. That phenomenon blew my mind. And if you go down that rabbit hole and look at all the instances not just in America, but in Russia at the same time, it’s it’s fascinating. It’s really fascinating. And it goes all the way back, all the way back to the beginning of this, of this phenomena.

03:24:30:05 – 03:24:53:04
David O’Leary
I mean, Ed repels in his book, talks about it, how they would expect to see UFO sightings over like, like, atomic detonations in the South Pacific on top secret military, sort of weapons testing programs in the 40s and then late 40s and the 50. So it’s it’s it’s it’s it’s a fascinating, sort of aspects of this.

03:24:53:12 – 03:25:02:16
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah. That’s a really interesting point to bring up, because if you put it kind of in a historical context, World War Two had just happened. So there was a lot of.

03:25:02:19 – 03:25:03:18
Sean Jablonski
Explosions.

03:25:03:21 – 03:25:06:09
Dan LeFebvre
Going on, you know, and that didn’t.

03:25:06:09 – 03:25:08:07
David O’Leary
Bring anything out.

03:25:08:10 – 03:25:14:23
Dan LeFebvre
But it but the nuclear side of it does it just interesting that World War Two didn’t seem to really.

03:25:14:25 – 03:25:40:18
David O’Leary
You had the Foo Fighters in World War Two really that, that, that that, that was a very a sort of a big thing back then. All the pilots describing what these objects were. And we touched on that, I think a little bit in the first season. And historically, it’s not like UFOs began right then they you Columbus talked about UFOs, you know, so but there was a clear, like explosion of sightings, you know.

03:25:40:21 – 03:26:05:14
David O’Leary
Well, maybe pun intended. Right around the time we got the bomb, that is when the wave just took off. And it’s also where the military, you know, had really, you know, gotten involved. And again, you know, the really it began with, you know, why am I forgetting his name? The sort of, you know, first thing, flying saucers in Oregon.

03:26:05:16 – 03:26:06:16
Sean Jablonski
Yeah.

03:26:06:18 – 03:26:28:06
David O’Leary
And the army. Arnold. Yeah. In 1947, which happened literally three weeks before Roswell. And one of the things in Roswell that that, is interesting. They did nuclear tests in and around there, but that was also the Roswell was the home of the final ninth Bomb Squadron, which was the squadron that dropped the Enola Gay was in Roswell.

03:26:28:08 – 03:26:46:06
David O’Leary
That’s what dropped the bomb on, you know, Hiroshima and all those all in and around their the White Sands missile base, the Allen Knoll, I can’t remember the other one, but all those nuclear testing things were around there, and the the amount and saucer sightings were just off the charts.

03:26:46:08 – 03:26:52:09
Dan LeFebvre
Wow. That’s fascinating. I, I guess I never had put it together that the Enola Gay was there in Roswell.

03:26:52:11 – 03:27:13:24
David O’Leary
When people think of Roswell, they always think of it as a kind of a sleepy desert town, kind of random, small thing. It’s got it had huge Roswell Army Air Force airfield had huge, huge sort of, military significance at that time. It was very important. And in that whole area, that was it was a massive testing ground for for top secret weaponry and stuff like that.

03:27:13:24 – 03:27:22:12
David O’Leary
So it’s not a I don’t think it’s at all, you know, for shrines to transport in any way a coincidence that this was a hub of sort of UFO activity at the time?

03:27:22:15 – 03:27:30:25
Dan LeFebvre
Well, I know I asked you about your your favorite episode. It’s hard to pick a favorite, but do you do you have a favorite story from the set as you are creating the show?

03:27:30:27 – 03:27:46:28
David O’Leary
I have to, and I’ll tell I’m really briefly. One is in abduction, which Shawn wrote, but he unfortunately was, for whatever reason, not able to be on set for. But I got, I got to be up for like nine and ten or maybe he, he was up for a little bit, but I don’t think he was up there for this part.

03:27:47:01 – 03:28:07:27
David O’Leary
When the character is recalling his sort of abduction experience, because it was what’s called a bottle episode, we had to do it. We couldn’t rely fully on VFX as we were trying to keep the but the budget down. That’s what a bottle episode is. And our director, Alex Graves, had this brilliant idea of like, he’s supposed to be levitating in a ship, right?

03:28:07:27 – 03:28:31:01
David O’Leary
And like, sort of finds himself in this alien environment. So they really strung up, the actor’s name, I think, is Malcolm. Good, good, win or good will forgive me if I. It’s. Yeah. And they strong him up and they shined all these shimmery lights on on him in the background on a screen and they, they blasted the entire sort of soundstage with, with, with smoke.

03:28:31:04 – 03:28:50:03
David O’Leary
And it was this magical alien kind of like experience come to life. But you could not see in front of you. The camera guys are like, you know, all the crew was so quiet and it was it just it looked incredible. You’re like it felt like you’re watching a VFX shot happen in front of your eyes. You know, it was like a portal open to another dimension.

03:28:50:07 – 03:29:16:12
David O’Leary
If you are looking at what we were actually filming. So that was incredible. And then I, you know, I mean, obviously all the like, fun kind of anecdotal moments with the cast are amazing too. But the other thing was in 110 we blew up a car and that was that was up just like we we all sat around and like literally had popcorn and like blew it up on our wound up in a, in a sort of an outside in an amphitheater, kind of an environment against a green screen.

03:29:16:15 – 03:29:42:21
David O’Leary
And, that was that. It blew up a nice 1950s car to boot. And that was just a fun, a fun, a fun day to see all that happened to. I have a zillion photographs that I’ll just say briefly. I think it was literally day one of episode 101. We showed up on set and it was the, you know, it was, the farm that what played for the farm house in the, in the first episode.

03:29:42:21 – 03:30:08:12
David O’Leary
And it was early morning cold Canada, and there was this fog that had just blanketed the entire area. And with this sun piercing through, it was some of the most dramatic looking landscape I’d ever seen. And it was the arrival of our characters through this fog. You know, up to this farmhouse, I it’s like, I don’t think we could have gotten we couldn’t have wished for anything better.

03:30:08:12 – 03:30:24:13
David O’Leary
And it was day one. So it’s just basically everybody’s connecting, everybody’s, you know, come in with their A-game. And so excited to be there. And it felt like, you know, felt like the gods were smiling on us saying this is the right way to begin. So we talked a.

03:30:24:13 – 03:30:35:16
Dan LeFebvre
Little bit about, potential season three. But in the first two seasons, was there anything that you wanted to add in there but you couldn’t for one reason or another?

03:30:35:19 – 03:31:12:10
David O’Leary
Oh, gosh. Well, we had like whole episode ideas that for one reason or another, we had we had to scrap, you know, I mean, there was all all kinds of like, you know, periods where I mean, there were sort of like UFO cold spots popping up in there in the early 1950s. And like, we thought about doing an episode that sort of explored that idea about sort of like how people how people might sort of use this arrival of this sort of new phenomena into the public consciousness, towards their own sort of self-serving ends and how people could get kind of roped into that to that kind of thing with, you know, gosh,

03:31:12:10 – 03:31:43:05
David O’Leary
I mean, there was all, you know, there’s always things there’s even within episodes, there’s scenes we had to kind of course, or little moments like for what timing purposes? We’re like, we just can’t. We can’t. We got to pick and choose. I’d say to David, you know, you’re his very first, his early draft of the script, you know, and it was always described as, you know, X-Files meets madmen because he had a really wonderful touch with the soap that was in there and is in it again, it was as much about personal life.

03:31:43:05 – 03:32:01:06
David O’Leary
And Joel, who was the kid, there was even a storyline with him. And, you know, it’s through the natural process of any TV show creation, development, you know, where the rubber meets the road. You got to start leaving, pushing things aside in favor of, you know, the engine of the series, which is our two guys in the cases.

03:32:01:06 – 03:32:17:21
David O’Leary
And I think we tried hard to make sure that we, you know, with like Susie and, and, Mimi and all of that to kind of create, you know, another world that we could go into that reflected the Cold War era times. But, I mean, for me, you know, I, I, I loved as much the character stuff as anything.

03:32:17:21 – 03:32:37:02
David O’Leary
And I thought there was certainly more stories to tell with, you know, me, me and Susie, and to have a female perspective as well as a home perspective, and to see what’s really going on, you know, during the Cold War, back home, you know, we tried a little of that with the bomb shelter early on in season one, you know, which was a real thing.

03:32:37:05 – 03:33:03:02
David O’Leary
You know, they would put ads in the newspapers for that stuff and how the kids would feel at school and bomb shelter. Yeah. Buy your own bomb shelter. Reminded me of we. Yeah, we had it. We came up with this whole storyline with Joel as, like, this 1950s boy kind of stand by me as sort of storyline with, like, he had a crush on his, like, neighbor, either on the radio or and then like, but then they and you get to sort of explore the fear of Russia and the Cold War through the lens of children.

03:33:03:04 – 03:33:23:24
David O’Leary
The irony being, of course, that they’re like while they’re like sitting while Joel’s at his neighbor’s, there really is a Russian spy next door having dinner at his house like all this, like wonderful stuff that like a just, you know, you got to pick and choose or a UFO show. So it was like, you got gotta, you know, but it would have been nice to, you know, to do some of those things as well, you know.

03:33:23:25 – 03:33:27:26
Sean Jablonski
Yeah, I forgot about all that.

03:33:27:28 – 03:33:37:25
Dan LeFebvre
Thank you guys so much for coming on to chat about Project Bluebook. I know until there’s a season three, hopefully there’ll be a season three, but until then, can you share a little bit about what you guys are working on?

03:33:37:27 – 03:34:04:27
David O’Leary
Sure. Well, I mean, you know, again, it’s it’s a you know, the world is such a passion for us. David and I are working on something right now that we’re we’re, you know, don’t want to say too much because we’re, in the early stages of, let’s say, negotiations. But, it’s back in the UFO worlds, and, we look forward to bringing, you know, those stories back to television, hopefully in the, in the coming, in the coming year, I should say.

03:34:04:27 – 03:34:23:10
David O’Leary
So, you know, if Blue book. What? Our appetite. We’re excited to serve it. Another meal coming up soon. Yeah. We just wanted to also give, you know, in regards to the safe Blue Book campaign, you know, a huge shout out to Carson who has led that effort. I know we created a website called Save Blue Book Comm, which is amazing.

03:34:23:17 – 03:34:46:08
David O’Leary
And just a wonderful way that he’s collected so many, you know, artifacts from the show and imagery from the show and, and all of our fans who, you know, remind us that the show mattered to them because that that is the most important thing. And that’s why we that’s why we did it. So we’re forever grateful we we never give up hope.

03:34:46:10 – 03:34:56:19
David O’Leary
You just never know. You just never know what’s going to happen. So we have a season three ready when, When? When? As soon as someone’s ready to take it on, so, you know. Thank you to all the fans.

03:34:56:21 – 03:34:59:21
Dan LeFebvre
And thanks again so much for your time, guys.

03:34:59:23 – 03:35:20:10
David O’Leary
Yeah. Thanks. You’re wonderful. Thanks so much, Dan. Thanks, everybody.

03:35:20:12 – 03:35:41:24
Dan LeFebvre
This episode of based On a True Story was produced by me, Dan Lafayette. What did you think of this huge mega episode about the History Channel’s Project Blue Book? Let me know if you’d like to see more of these style longer episodes in the future. We’ve got one more answer for teachers and allies to uncover. And as a quick refresher, here are the two truths and one life from my chat with David and Sean.

03:35:41:27 – 03:36:08:28
Dan LeFebvre
Number one, they wrote a season three of Project Blue Book, telling stories beyond the United States. Number two, the Roswell Incident was made famous by Project Blue Book number three. David and Sean have both had unexplained experiences. Did you figure out which one is a lie? Here’s the answer in the envelope. So let’s open that up. And the lie this time is number two.

03:36:09:03 – 03:36:30:01
Dan LeFebvre
Even though the History Channel’s Project Blue Book starts off season two with the Roswell incident in The True Story, the US government’s Project Blue Book did not investigate the Roswell incident like we see in the TV series, and that’s mostly because of the timeline. The Roswell incident occurred in 1947, but it wasn’t until the 1950s that Project Blue Book itself became a thing.

03:36:30:01 – 03:36:58:27
Dan LeFebvre
Remember, there was Project Sign and Project Grudge, and then really, it wasn’t until the 1970s, I believe it was 1978, that Roswell started to get popular after an interview with ufologist Stanton Friedman, and he interviewed a then retired U.S. Air Force officer named Jesse Marcel. Marcel was one of the soldiers who helped take the debris from the ranch in Roswell, and then he stated that the official explanation that it was a weather balloon was a cover story, and he actually believed it was extraterrestrial.

03:36:58:29 – 03:37:21:02
Dan LeFebvre
From there, the stories and theories started to swirl. So throughout the three episodes today, we played three separate games of two tours in A lie and the lies were one, three, and two respectively. How’d you do? Did you get all three correct? Head on over to based on a True Story podcast.com/discord and let me know how you did.

03:37:21:04 – 03:37:40:09
Dan LeFebvre
As always, you’ll find that link in the show notes with all of the other links for this episode, as well as on the show. Is home on the web over at. Based on a True Story podcast.com/376. Until next time, thanks so much for spending your time with Rob and David and Sean and me today, and I’ll chat with you again really soon.

Dan LeFebvre  03:46

We have a lot to cover today with five different Indiana Jones movies, but before we get started digging into some of the more historical details, something I like to do here is to take a step back and get an overall letter grade for the historical accuracy of a movie. Now we have multiple movies today, so I’d love to ask you, kind of a letter grade for each one. Let’s start with the first movie released in the franchise, what letter grade would you give Raiders of the Lost Ark based on its historical accuracy? Yeah,

Neil Laird  04:14

Let’s clarify that, because obviously not talking about the quality, the fun of the film, like a historical which is obviously two different things, just, you know, tricky, but sometimes I do go in concert. I would say, with Indiana Jones, I would give it a solid B, the first one.

Dan LeFebvre  04:28

And then how about the next film, Temple of Doom.

Neil Laird  04:30

Tempo of doom would have to be a D, D,

Dan LeFebvre  04:33

okay, so a bit of a drop there. And then the Last Crusade is the next that would be a, b, b, okay, so tune back.

Neil Laird  04:40

We’ll talk about C plus or B. It’s on the on the fridge. Okay,

Dan LeFebvre  04:43

okay. And then almost 20 years later, we got another Indiana Jones with 2000 eights Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. What grade does that one get?

Neil Laird  04:51

20 years to to work on that, and they come back with an F.

Dan LeFebvre  04:56

I had a feeling that would be another drop. Yeah. And then last, but certainly not least, the final film in the franchise. At least as of this recording, we’ll see if they change that to is 2023, style of destiny. What historical letter grade does that one get?

Neil Laird  05:10

I would say that’s a, probably c plus as well. Maybe, if I’m generous, I’ll give it a B. It’s up there with sort of Last Crusade and that one both have some interesting concepts. They sort of fudge a bit. So we get a details. We’ll talk about that dividing run. Okay,

Dan LeFebvre  05:24

okay, yeah. So we have a little bit of a roller coaster there. The whole franchise. Nice. All right, let’s start digging into each of the movies now, starting with 1980 ones, Raiders of the Lost Ark. It’s the first one that’s not the Indiana Jones and and then the rest are but according to the movie, The Lost Ark, and the title is the Ark of the Ark of the Covenant, and Indiana Jones explains the basic concept in a scene at the beginning of the film. In a nutshell, the Ark is where the Israelites held the 10 Commandments that were given to Moses on Mount Sinai from the book of Exodus. In the Christian Bible, it’s not just a historical artifact, though, according to the movie, because the story that they tell suggests that the Israelites used the power of God associated with the Ark to defeat their enemies. And since the movie is set in 1936 when the Nazis are rising to power, Hitler wants to find the Ark to basically make his armies invincible. And that’s how the movie kind of sets up the whole concept for why Indiana Jones is trying to find the ark for the United States government before the Nazis do, do we know if the Ark of the Covenant was a real historical artifact, and was it really something that Hitler looked for as the Nazis were rising to power?

Neil Laird  06:26

Well, it’s interesting that the reason I gave this one a B, is why there was no arc today. And of course, no one in contemporary times has seen it. It’s one of the most well documented of all the artifacts we talk about in this series, because it was in the Bible. It actually goes back to biblical days, unlike the rest of them, and they’re quite descriptive in what they talk about, how big it is, the cubits and where it was housed. And you know, the book of Exodus gets very, very particular on all the sordid engineering details. Doesn’t mean that it was a real thing, but it certainly means they believed in it. And if you follow the story through the other chapters of the Bible, they do talk about, once they get to the Holy Land, how it becomes this scourge and it’s stolen by the Philistines, and they’ll they all get attacked by plague and rats, so much that they give it back. And then the Israeli Israelites, when they take it home, someone dares to look at it, and they die. They get struck down by lightning, very close to melting. So clearly, I think the writers of raiders read their Bible and know the lore, and I think that’s why it’s so strong in terms of, if not historical, at least the history of the telling of the ark, you know, take away the fact that it existed or not, they did their research, and they really are writing to what the writers of the Bible, in the New Testament, and some of the other apocryphal authors wrote at the time. Now, what the other question whether Nazis looked for it. They were looking for everything at that point. You know, the Nazi who just chasing everything down, and a lot of it was because they do believe in the spirit, the supernatural, but they also wanted to get anything that gave them the up on on religion and obviously telling people they have something a lot of us propaganda. It wasn’t as they believe that they were going to carnage the force of Yahweh. It was to get the local population to say, look what we have. You know, it was, it was, it was as much telling you we’re giving you something as valuable as it was, trying to use it for nefarious purposes. But like, like, like, the other ones we talk about later, there’s no specific information saying they were looking for the ark. Particularly, they were looking for anything that they could exploit in the occult or in the biblical or in the spiritual in the Christian world to prop themselves up.

Dan LeFebvre  08:38

So make sure I’m understanding, it’s not as much that they were looking for it to lead their armies, necessarily, but almost like, as long as their armies, or whoever their followers were, believed that that had the power, it didn’t even matter if they actually had the power itself, like you see the lightning in the movie, right? The idea of that concept, as long as people believe then it sounds like that’s what the Nazis were going for. Yeah, they

Neil Laird  09:02

get part of it. Maybe not. Unlike the people wrote the Bible, whether those people wrote that believe that the Ark had these supernatural things. But if the you know, if, if to people who think that we are the ones who are housing it have those power, then where you’re going to listen to us as well. So it’s both ways. It may have been people already believed in, in the supernatural, in the occult aspect of it. But just as many were cynical people trying to manipulate the populace.

Dan LeFebvre  09:25

Another huge parks in Indiana Jones search for the arc in Raiders revolves around the lost city of Tanis. In the movie’s version of history, Tannis was buried by a huge Sandstorm back in like 980 BC, until Renee Belloc discovers Tannis, presumably just before the movie’s timeline, because the Nazis financed Bell excavation to find the Ark there at Tanis. Is there really a historical connection between the city of Tannis and the ark in a word, no,

Neil Laird  09:58

I admire the big Tannis now. Again, we talked about this up top. I’m an archeologist, or I am. I’m not an archeologist, but I do all these shows about them. So I’ve done tons of shows in Egypt. That’s my happy place. I probably shot maybe 2030, films there. I’ve been there a lot. I’ve been to Tannis a couple of times as well, but mostly not about, never about the arc. The Tannis is a real place. It’s up in the delta, which is north east of Alexandria, and it from the late period of Egypt. So it’s 19/20 dynasty on which mean anything to the layman, but it was, it was post King David in the holy period. But it wasn’t a place that was wiped off the face of the earth by a sandstorm. It basically just crumbled. When the Egyptian empire crumbled the late period. Late period was got ransacked by 600 BC by the Persians, and it kind of disappeared from history, mostly like lots of these ancient cities, not because it got lost, because it got dismantled, it got abused. People took the temples and reused them to make a donkey shed. You know, it just basically, it basically got repurposed. And it’s a fascinating city, because they did find one more quick aside, besides the King Tut tomb, which is the only known unleaded tomb in ancient Egypt. The other one was found in Tanis, but much later, a pharaoh co shoshank The second, and you find out the gold and all the all the mummies and all the trappings there, just like King Tut, but it’s a much poorer time in history. So it’s very interesting. People don’t know about it. You can see all this stuff when you go to the Cairo Museum. But it lost its luster because, because King Tut looms bigger, and also, ironically, it was found just before the rise of World War Two. So as soon as it was found, the Nazis swept in, and it never really got the press, and people couldn’t excavate it again, all that kind of stuff. So it just sort of slunk off into into oblivion. So it’s a long answer to say no, there’s, there’s no connection at all to the ark. There. It is a real town, and interesting enough too. Even before I went to Egypt, when I was watching this film as a kid, it never quite felt right. It feels like, you know, if you go to Egypt as a tourist or as a filmmaker, an archeologist, one thing you’ll quickly learn is it’s not the sand dunes. It’s not the soft sand that we think of in the Sahara. It’s a harder, darker, more well trodden land. So you don’t have you look at the Tannis in Raiders, it feels like it’s the rolling hills and up there, and there’s very few artifacts. You go to the modern tennis it’s big and flat and brown, and there’s no sands. There’s no dunes at all, because it doesn’t get that. It’s too close to the delta, little too marshy, so it doesn’t even feel like they’re real. They’re real. Tannis, again, does it matter to people who are watching on a Saturday afternoon with popcorn? No. And conversely, that’s a terrible representation of Cairo in that film. Cairo looks nothing like that. Cairo that had like a small town in Algeria or something. Really, that’s that question. I have to throw that in there. That is a poor representation of 1930s Cairo. No, I think that’s, I

Dan LeFebvre  13:04

mean, that’s a great point. That was something you already kind of mentioned with Tanis. But, you know, we see a lot of, a lot of archeology in the movie, and you just kind of get the sense that this is what Egyptian archeology looked like there. I know, granted, you know, in the 1930s but still, I think a lot of people are influenced by what you see in Raiders as This must be what it looks like there.

Neil Laird  13:27

And again, it’s more towards the more trained eye, having been to the site so often, I can feel when it’s, you know, it’s more romantic and more dramatic in the film than it does. Again, it’s flatter and more well trodden and not quite as pretty, not quite as exotic. Doesn’t look as well on film. There’s a lot of modern concrete tower blocks just out of view, you know, gas stations and stuff.

Dan LeFebvre  13:51

Now almost every movie is going to have some plot holes. I think one of the most popular ones that I know of from Raiders of Lost Ark has to do with just the idea that Indiana Jones himself really had no impact on the outcome of the film. The Nazis would have found the Ark and all died at the end from God’s power, from the Ark anyway. But since this is more kind of focusing on the history side of things, I have to ask, does Raiders have a major plot hole that really stood out to you from a historical perspective?

Neil Laird  14:18

I mean, that’s historical, I wouldn’t say not beyond them playing so fast and loose with the facts. I think to me, even as a kid, I remember this again, I’m in my today’s my 58th birthday, so I saw all these movies in the theater. So I remember seeing raiders and Temple of Doom, which we’ll talk to in a few minutes in the theater. And I remember thinking as a kid, a huge plot point then was, well, if Temple Of Doom is a prequel, and he discovers all this magic and all the supernatural stuff a year before Raider, why did he believe any of it when he’s in Raiders? Why isn’t such a bloody skeptic just last year, you watched a guy have his art ripped out and a bunch of gods and zombies attacking you and. You know, you forgot about all that. It’s a very plot point

Dan LeFebvre  15:03

that is a very good point that I didn’t even think about that, you know, because it is a prequel. And, yeah, no, that’s he forgot. You know, we just all had that happening to us all the time with

Neil Laird  15:17

the Ark and a couple birthdays and the taxes you forget about Yeah, he slept since

Dan LeFebvre  15:21

then, since you mentioned Temple of Doom. That is the next one. It came out in 1984 but it is a prequel. It happens the year prior to what we saw in Raiders. And so we’re not seeing Nazis anymore. This one is Indiana Jones looking for the Sankara stones, which, according to the movie, are powerful and sacred artifacts tied to the Hindu legend. Now, when they’re stolen from a village that triggers Indiana Jones to go searching for them, is there any truth to the legend of the Sakara stones that we see in movie? No,

Neil Laird  15:49

it’s totally fictional. I mean, in all of them, I think this is the the one that is the most sexualized. It’s not really based on anything. And even when we get to the crystal skulls and we talk about how dubious some of the facts are, there a lack thereof. At least it was based on something we could hold there were lingam stone Shiva. Lingam stones were very common. You see them any if you go to any Hindu temple, and they’re just sort of like, and I’m not a Hindu scholar, but I think they represent the sort of shapelessness of Earth and God and creation, the co creation stones, so that that was all totally fictionalized in terms of the diamond and all that totally fictionalized for the film, which I think is one of his biggest flaws, because it also doesn’t really have that gravitas. It doesn’t really make much sense. You don’t know what it does. It somehow it helps people control kids and enslave them, and then when you get them bad, they’re no longer slaves. It’s pretty murky in terms of what his power is as well. But no, it is totally fictional, and there’s nothing in terms of five stoves that have to be put together.

Dan LeFebvre  16:47

Okay, okay, yeah, that’s, I guess maybe it doesn’t have all that, like you were saying, building off the biblical lore and things that people already know as they’re watching this. And they might not know the details of it, but they know enough of it to know that, oh, Tannis, that’s a real place. I know that that’s a real place. I know the arc covenant is a was a thing. I don’t know what it does, but you know that that kind of thing, you can get that with this in cornerstones. Okay,

Neil Laird  17:11

yeah, it’s like, you know, again, I do archeology programs, like over 1000 hours of TV under shows. And I’ve done all the other stories multiple times. I’ve never done a lingam show. So it also shows you there’s really nothing there. There’s no rule there there, other than if you want to do a story about religion and about spirituality, but the idea of that having some sort of magical property, even people looking for it, he doesn’t, doesn’t really even have that, that holy grail quest where people are trying to find some classic stone. It’s just a total McMuffin. Okay,

Dan LeFebvre  17:44

okay. Well, speaking of searching, I have to ask Indiana Jones discovers the thuggee cult is behind all of this, and according to the movie, they’re a secret society who worship the Goddess Kali, which is where the Temple of Doom comes in, because that’s a temple for sacrificing humans to Kali. But the movie suggests that the thuggee cult was eradicated by the British in the 19th century when they colonized India. Is there a true story behind the thuggee cult that we see in the

Neil Laird  18:12

movie? There was a Thuggy called it’s really fascinating. It’s then I had not done a film on that, but I have read about it. And the thuggies were a real group of people that. But they were bandits. They were not so much a cult. That kind of came later, but basically between, I think, the 1800s and up until the British sort of came in and rough shot everyone. They were highway bandits, and they were known for strangling their victims, and they became quite notorious. And I do think there’s some there’s some truth to the fact that they were actually two serial killers, there’s one, I forget his name, who claimed to have killed 900 people before he was caught, which would make him the most notorious serial killer ever. And traditionally, they always did it through strangulation. And one of the theories is that there was some Hindu what’s the word prophecy? And a prophecy some sort of, some sort of law they wanted to follow where we never shed blood. You can kill, but never shed blood. You strangle somebody. There’s no blood. It’s one theory. But the British, when they did come in, the Raj they came in, they did eradicate them. And that’s when things get murky, because when it’s being written by the winners. You don’t know exactly how much they added. The British might have exaggerated. They may have made a religious cult and leaned into the Kali thing because they wanted to dismiss and denigrate the local religions. So while there might have been people who did follow those cults, some of them are also Muslim as well. So you can say they were all devotees of some cult at the end of the day, they were just really nasty highway bandits who would kill, would kill for anything. Okay,

Dan LeFebvre  19:49

okay, yeah, sounds like a lot of fictionalization in there, but maybe that’s where the filmmakers were hoping that that was the the nugget of truth that people would latch on to and recognize and. And

Neil Laird  20:00

then I’m glad they brought them up, because they’re pretty obscure. I don’t know if people listening to this in India would know more, but it’s not something you hear too much about here in the west. So I do admire that film, at least for going to India, which isn’t something we normally do in the West, and for talking about things like the sad years, because we don’t usually, you know, we usually do in the West. We usually stick in the West. So it’s great actually, they went a bit far afield. You know, biggest problem with that film is it’s of all of all the films. It’s the great white savior film. You know, it’s like poor town that has to bring the white guy over from Yale or ever to solve a problem they couldn’t possibly solve on their own. And if you look at it today, the racism and the way they dismiss the Indians, and wait, this one white guy and his shrill sidekicks, you know, save an entire nation, is really kind of hard to stomach. It makes it, it makes it a tough watch for me.

Dan LeFebvre  20:51

Yeah, no, that’s fair, yeah. And that’s something that I wonder how much of that is them going into the, well, of course, movies released in the 80s, so you’re going to have some of that too. But then also, going back to, they’re talking about British colonialism, and that whole element of it too, which has its own element, I’m sure, again, history written by the winners. But I’m sure there is a lot of that whole, uh, Savior, white savior coming in,

Neil Laird  21:19

yeah, when you’re talking about India and you’re a white man, you hit a minefield already. I mean, Islam as well. And, yeah, you know him shooting a bunch of, you know, sword dashing, you know, Muslims too, is just as much of that. But yet you have to go with that. You recognize that it’s obviously, it’s, you know, had to put that aside both of the time, and also that it’s an exotic, foreign adventure. So you have to create bad guys wherever you go. That one just seems the most egregious. However, I would say is a real quick side note. It’s the only one of the four films, the five films where he leaves the artifacts with the locals. Point of Western Museum. He doesn’t steal it and take it to, you know, New York or London. So that’s of that going for it. He saves the day, and he goes home,

Dan LeFebvre  22:04

yeah, yeah. And then he leaves the stones with the villagers to Yeah,

Neil Laird  22:07

he didn’t get them, you know, like you didn’t get the Holy Grail, because he can’t leave the cave or whatever. But the intention was to take it out of the country, right, in places, somewhere where, you know, you can make money for it. You know,

Dan LeFebvre  22:19

the famous line, this belongs in a museum like everything, and that’s

Neil Laird  22:23

the whole authority. You know, my archeology friends, they both are probably archeologists because of Indiana Jones, because he’s so exotic and sexy and fun. And they also recognize the great conflict there, where it’s like, he’s about going around the world and stealing and bringing it back. Yeah. Yeah,

Dan LeFebvre  22:41

that’s fair. Before we leave a temple of doom. Was there anything about the movies historical depictions that might surprise someone who has only seen movie and hasn’t dug into the true

Neil Laird  22:50

story? I think it’s less a cultural than its historical. I think there’s so little history in there that it’s really just, I think that the how the culture is sort of dismissed and marginalized, is the thing that that resonates with me today. You know, it’s all creative. It’s all totally fantasy. So in a way, it’s kind of hard to badmouth for taking something and beyond making the Lingams, you know, something else. They didn’t, they didn’t recreate history, because it was really little history there to

Dan LeFebvre  23:19

recreate fair point. All creative license.

Neil Laird  23:23

Hey, no one flew me over this there’s another thing here, right?

Dan LeFebvre  23:27

Well, if we go back to the movies, were to what is my personal favorite in the franchise 1989 Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. And the artifact that India is searching for this time is the holy grail, the cup said to have been used by Jesus at the Last Supper and then caught his blood at the crucifixion. The Last Crusade is set in 1938 and so the Nazis are back as the main villains, and they’re also searching for the Holy Grail and the eternal life that it provides for anyone who drinks from the cup. Is it true that the Nazis searched for the Holy Grail. It’s

Neil Laird  24:01

the same with the ark. They didn’t specifically said, let’s go find the Grail, but it was all part and parcel of them trying to harness the occult and the and the minds and spirits of the people in Germany and elsewhere. So it wouldn’t surprise me, because the ark and the Grail probably one of the reasons why they’re the two strongest one in the franchise is there. They are real artifacts. I’ve done more arc and Grail shows than any other. I just did one. I’m working on a History Channel show right now about both of them. They’re both of them. You know, this is the same story over and over again. You never get tired of those stories. But the Holy Grail is interesting. Unlike, I think that’s why it’s a c plus is that so much was added. The Grail itself a little more mundane. It never had any spiritual it never had any other dimension. The Holy Grail. It doesn’t even come from the Bible. There’s no mention in the Bible. It comes from the 12th century, the Arthurian legend and parcel and all that kind of stuff. And. And it was clearly created after the fact, and it was all about trying to find this magical cup. And the idea of eternal youth, internal life was something that was added much later. If you look at stuff from the time period, it would usually regenerate you, would give you almost absolution, but it wouldn’t keep you young forever. I think probably Wagner. Wagner did a an opera on parcel, which was world famous back in the day. And even in that one, which is all about the all about the fantastical, it was all about parcel basically becoming free of all his guilt and all you know that you’re basically the best confession ever. All sins are eradicated. That’s what the Grail did when you had it then. So the even the idea of the eternal life and all that, it was added by the screenwriters just for this film,

Dan LeFebvre  25:46

interest. Oh, it was added for this film. Or was that something that was like, maybe

Neil Laird  25:50

came before that? Maybe there might have been other lore that came later, but that was not the typical if you talk about like, we know the arc, everyone agrees York will melt you or kill you, or you wake up in boils. We just play with the facts a bit. If you look at the tradition of the Holy Grail, where and when that came up, just not a big thing, and it’s you might want to, you know, double check your facts afterwards. But as far as I know, that was the first time I ever heard of it being giving you eternal youth. I was

Dan LeFebvre  26:21

wondering if maybe it was like a translation thing, because over time, there’s so many different ways that people could translate regeneration, you know, maybe some might think it’s more spiritual or physical, or, you know, all of these things, and just using all of it

Neil Laird  26:34

very well beyond that, exactly. Yeah. And it kind of took elements of the fountain of youth and all that in there too, all the classic tropes we have of looking for something magical. So I think it kind of becomes literally a repository for whatever you want it to be. Well, you already

Dan LeFebvre  26:48

mentioned them earlier, and I want to talk about a little bit from from this one Indian Jones is searching for clues left by the Knights Templar, to eventually find it leads into the canyon of the crescent moon, and that’s where it turns out this one of the surviving members of the Knights, Templar, used the grill himself to gain eternal life, and he’s there guarding it. And at the end of the movie, the grill gets lost again as the cave collapses, because, as the knight explains, Andy, you can’t take it past the Great Seal. Now correct me, if I’m wrong, I believe they use the real life location of Petra in the country of Jordan for that part of the movie. But can you fill in some historical context around the connection of the Knights Templar and the Holy Grail?

Neil Laird  27:27

I’ve got so many Templar shows. People love the Templar. They are the ultimate Rorschach test of, you know, weird, MIDI, medieval, you know, magic. First of all, Petra is one of my most I love Petra some of my favorite sites in the world. I’ve been to 70 some countries, and I would say Petra is my top five places everyone should have on their bucket list. Now it’s funny, when you come down you see patches, that’s called the Treasury, and you come down a wadi, which is an empty riverbed, a dry riverbed, the first thing you see me turn a corner is the Treasury, where they shot the exterior. Now if you go in the interior, you’re greatly disappointed, because it was just a tune for a first century AD king, but at the same time as like Augustus in that period, and it’s just an unfinished room, the Sarcophagus is even gone. So you go in, looks like a parking garage, just nothing like the set. There’s no booby traps and all this kind of stuff that, yeah, yeah. Once you walk it’s like, oh, you know the old night and you know, where’s all the soaring temples and stuff? Nope, the outside is where you take your photos. But, but Petra is an amazing, amazing site. Now, the nice tempers faci because I’ve done so many shows, and every one of them is about what they found, what they didn’t find. The Grail was one of them. And the reason that they kind of become this sort of like go to for any lost artifact from the Holy Land is because there was a pilgrims that let people get from Jaffa, from the boat, from the shores of Israel, to the Holy Land, to Jerusalem, which is about an hour or two today by car. It’s probably a couple days there. They were pilgrims to do back and forth. It became very, very rich because of that, because of all the taxes, and they were given the prime real estate in Jerusalem, which is the Temple Mount, where the temple Solomon was, where the great rock is today, the Dome of the Rock, all that stuff. And the theory was they were sitting on all the stuff that was hidden during the temple days, including including the ark, which was sacked several times the Babylonians and sacked by the Romans. I think was a Babylonian one where they hit it disappeared in history back then. So one of the theories is, they took it, they spired it out. But again, none of this has any basis. In fact, I did a show, probably one of the worst shows I ever did, on the Knights Templar about saying they didn’t find the the Holy Grail, but they found the head of Christ. And a guy actually wrote a book and published it and said the head of Christ was spirited out by the Knights Templar into a chapel in Scotland called Rosslyn Chapel. There’s a wonderful, little weird temple outside of Edinburgh. Da Vinci Code takes place there. If you go there, it’s super, super weird. And he couldn’t even have all. These facts about where exactly it was hidden, in a secret chamber underneath the altar in Rosslyn Chapel. And that’s where you would find the head of Christ. And he sold this book on it. And so I was there years later. I mean, it was just one of my first shows I did back in the 90s, and I was there shooting one time, and I was very expensive. I remember to to get permits, so I pretend like I was a tourist. Rather than pay like, 10,000 pounds, I went in there just I got some really, really good, slow pans, far better than a tourist would get, you know, and find a custodian, the guy raking the Lees came out to me and says, What the hell are you really here for? You’re not just some holiday and and no one was around. It was late. I went inside, but I couldn’t shoot inside. It was illegal to shoot inside if you have a permit. And I told him, I said, Well, actually, I hear the head of Christ this year. He goes, Oh, is that what it is this week? Is that what that’s

Dan LeFebvre  30:51

what it is this week? Oh, yes.

Neil Laird  30:53

Oh, last week it was the ground. Okay. He goes, Okay, you turn your camera off. I will show you the head of Christ, but you can’t, and you cannot videotape it. And your sound guy was like, hiding out behind that tree trying to get good audio of me, actually shut it off. So the custodians into the place was closing. He took me in. He goes, Okay, your camera’s off, right? And he walked in. And it’s a weird looking chapel. It’s always festooned with all these strange carvings. And it’s really odd. And it was, it was made by descendants of the Templars. Some did actually escape to Edinburgh the 1300s 1400s so there is some cause that they there was some connection, however tenuous. But he took me behind the altar, and lo and behold, there was a door that went down there. It was stairs that went down there. And it was very dark. And okay, keep saying, okay, no camera, right? No camera. This is when I first filmed that kid in a candy store. I can’t believe I’m going to score so big on my third film for television or whatever. So he gets down there, and he gets his keys out, and there’s a big oak door and with a big, you know, brass knob, and he opens it up, because, like, you ready to see the head of Christ? Yes, sir, I am. And he opens it up, and there is a sink and a bucket and a mop. And he takes his rake and he sets it in the genital closet, and he closes it, he goes, there’s your head of Christ. That’s what the Knights Templar are. That’s a long way to say the nice tapper, everything you want them to be, and they’re nothing.

Dan LeFebvre  32:22

Okay, yeah, so you just don’t, just don’t look behind the door, exactly.

Neil Laird  32:25

Don’t look behind the door. Man behind the curtain. Wow. Very, very early on to question everything you know, as a TV producer, it’s easy. People are selling a book and someone says one stuff has a great idea in avariably, we’re always chasing. You don’t want to do the boring story that’s all registered. In fact, you want to do something as a sense of mystery, like Indiana Jones or whatever. And that’s what History Channel, geographic, BBC, other people I work for, that’s what they chase. But it’s up to the we producers to, kind of like, not get caught up in that, because the end of the day, you’ll be sort of disappointed in most cases. I mean, there’s night, but they’re the I mean, they, they, there’s somewhere else in Roslyn chapel, there’s a bunch of strange carvings that someone claimed is a map of the New World, and that’s where, that’s where the Templars took the Holy Grail. So it’s somewhere in Mexico or something. So again, you know, people are always looking for that answer. The Knights Templar is the first is a perfect it’s a perfect people to do that because they were mysterious. They’re on the Temple Mount, and they were totally massacred. They were wiped out. So, so they so the thinking was they had some hidden story that the King of France was trying to get, which is why it massacred them on Friday the 13th, by the way, which is why we have Friday the 13th. And I

Dan LeFebvre  33:36

know I’ve heard some conspiracies of like, were they actually all taken out, or did this go underground? Right? Throws up even more questions Scotland,

Neil Laird  33:44

because there are some, there are some Templar graves up in Edinburgh. So they did all the radical I mean, they didn’t happen to all be in Paris on that night to whatever, but it’s a big story. I love the nice stuff. They’re going to keep giving and giving and giving. But their their connection to the Holy Grail is as tenuous as the head of Christ,

Dan LeFebvre  34:01

yeah, well, at least, I mean, I’m curious then, because used to be, you know, the Knights Templar being just a popular thing that people love to hear about. Even today, you have the Knights Templar in the holy grail tied in Indiana Jones. What is the current train of thought? Are there still people that are searching for the Holy Grail today?

Neil Laird  34:18

Yeah, I think, I think if the Holy Grail is kind of come to by word for it. You know, you talk to a physicist, or you talk to a paleontologist, or use a holy grail as a thing you’re trying to find. So of course, if people looking for the real deal, again, it doesn’t exist. And if it existed, it was melted down or disappeared. It was just a cup. Oh, idea it’s only mentioned in passing in the Old Testament, or the New Testament is, you know, they drank there and then none of you and Joseph and marathon and all these kind of things that come after the fact. But the fact that a regular cup could survive this long is even less likely than the ark, because it probably wasn’t even venerated until much, much later. Yeah, no, that makes sense. I’m sure that somebody wasted their money looking for. And then probably said they found a cup somewhere, and like, you know, some church in Krakow, and they claim that one, but they’ll sell a book, but chances are, could be another janitor closet.

Dan LeFebvre  35:12

But as we finish up the last Crusader, is there any other historical aspects from the film that we haven’t talked about that you think would be a surprise to viewers? Well, one

Neil Laird  35:20

thing I learned, because I’ve shot there so many times, and I think it’s so ridiculous when I watched that film today, is you’d be going to the catacombs under Venice, and that’s where they find it. Venice is a friggin Island, two feet down, and you flood everything. There are no catacombs in Venice. It is sinking. Last thing you want to do is build a basement in Venice. That’s

Dan LeFebvre  35:42

a very good point that they just don’t seem to address in the movies. Move

Neil Laird  35:46

1. There’s some water down there. Is a bit leaky, but you know what the last thing you’re gonna do is build a basement in Venice.

Dan LeFebvre  35:54

So good point. It’s a very good point. Well, let’s fast forward about 19 years between the Last Crusade and the next movie the franchise 2008 Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. And there’s a scene in the beginning of the movie where we’re introduced to shy le, both character mutt, and he tells Indy that one of his old colleagues who helped raise mud, Professor Oxley, is down in Peru, and that’s where he found the Crystal Skull, to quote, mutt in the movie, it’s like that one guy that Mitchell has had his head kiss. He has mispronunciation trying to find it. That skull, the one that he found. And then Indy corrects him on the name goes on. Gives us a little bit more background on the Mitchell hedges skull. It’s Mesoamerican. There are multiple skulls in the world, according to Indiana Jones. And it’s interesting craftsmanship, but that’s about it. And then we find out, you know, mutts off to says, oxley’s off to akator, which is, kind of reminds me of the the throwback to Tanis, you know, that kind of like, oh, this is the location that we have to go to start. You know, according to this one, it’s a guitar is where the skull was found. And that sparks Andy’s interest. Akator goes by another name in the movie El Dorado, the City of Gold. So that’s kind of how the movie sets up. The reason for the storyline is them heading down to Peru to find Oxley to Crystal Skull and akator. Can you help us separate fact from fiction in the movies? Narrative?

Neil Laird  37:09

Well, there’s a lot more fiction. In fact here there was a Mitchell hedges, and he’s very interesting, and they say he might have been one of the prototypes for Indiana Jones, among others. He was a charlatan slash adventurer in the 30s, and he claimed to have found one of the crystal skulls in Belize. Actually, I forget the name of it. It’s an archeological site I’ve been to. It’s a Mayan site, a classic era Mayan site, which is down south, almost along the Guatemalan border, where it’s a small site, but it’s, but as you know, it’s, it’s got some really cool pyramids and things. But he claimed to have found it there and then with his daughter or something. And they just didn’t talk about it for a long time. But then later on, there was, there was some reveal. They actually bought it at Sotheby’s in like 1948 or something, somebody else. And there was no record whatsoever of crystal and there wouldn’t be, because the Mayans didn’t have crystal skulls. And all 13 of these skulls. I think there’s 13 of them in existence. They think they were all made by a French guy, and like the the just before the war, to sell, you know, crap, to Taurus, big artifacts and get them on Sotheby’s. And if you look at them now, and I’ve only seen one behind glass, I’ve never touched it, but you actually, actually see modern rotary modern machinery was it could for the Mayans and like the 1200s to build this out of corpse, it would have taken them, you know, 100 years or something, to polish it this way. There are actual traces of modern machinery, like diamond cutting devices. That’s

Dan LeFebvre  38:34

because the aliens gave it to them. Yeah, exactly, yeah. So, I

Neil Laird  38:38

mean, it’s, you know, exactly. I mean, this one above all of them. Not only I think it’s the worst film in terms of the story and the characters and all that stuff, but it’s the most ancient alias. Is the stuff that I’ve been trying to run away with all my career on television, the people I skewer in my books. I run writing books about a cheesy time traveling TV crew, there’s very much based on that kind of crew, whether everything’s a conspiracy and everything rubbish, you know, so there’s nothing there and and except for basing that on some snippets like El Dorado, you know, there were there wasn’t there. Obviously, people were looking for El Dorado. And a lot of Spanish conquistadors looking for El Dorado, of course, I never found it. Most of those were down south as well, in South South America, not in Mayan area. So they’re blending all that stuff together for some sort of like booga. Booga show, as we would call it, okay,

Dan LeFebvre  39:29

yeah, that was gonna be my next question, because we do the movie, does mention the Spanish conquistador Francisco, do Orlando, I think, who disappeared looking for El Dorado in 1546 so I’m assuming, was he a real person, or was it just kind of the concept of Spanish conquista. He

Neil Laird  39:45

was real. And actually, he’s known more famously for finding he sailed the beginning of the end of the Amazon. See, charted. Wow, okay, and this was a 15, mid 15, so forget the dates. And then he went back. Back, and then under a Portuguese flag, for some reason, he went back to start a colony. I think the Portuguese wanted to settle there on the mounts of the Amazon. And he was looking for El dorados. He went, anyone who went over to the New World was looking for El Dorado among other things as well. But mostly was about a benchmark, you know, a toehold for one of the governments who paid for the expedition. So they could what they ultimately did, so they could split the locals and get the land. Is exactly what happened. And he did not disappear. He died, and exactly what happened to him. Do you ever seen one of my favorite movies of all time? A year, Wrath of God. Do you know this film by Werner Herzog,

Dan LeFebvre  40:35

yes. I mean, I haven’t seen it in a long time, to get fantastic questions.

Neil Laird  40:39

It’s very much based on him among other people, but they took a lot of what happened to him, and he basically went. They got lost a second time. They lost ships. There was infighting. They got sick. He went off to find help and died along the way. His wife was left behind, kind of like in a geara. And some people did survive, but he just died. They say he went mad again agira, but there’s all well documented the time, and people did survive. And his idea then was not to look for the City of Gold, but to again, to create, you know, to put a Portuguese flag in the earth so they could exploit it.

Dan LeFebvre  41:23

Well, we’ve already talked about the Nazis search for artifacts in some of the other movies, but in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, that’s set in 1957 so at this time, the villains are the Soviets, and they’re looking for powers provided by the secrets of the Crystal Skull, which again, very similar to what we saw with the Nazis looking for artifacts before. But is it true that the Soviets were searching for supernatural artifacts, too? Not

Neil Laird  41:44

that I’m aware of. No, I think, I think they just, they swapped out Nazis the end of the time, you know, yeah, the Cold War next. But in the Iraqis or the Vietnamese, you know, it depends on when they made the film. I mean, as far as I know, they were not looking for that. I think, you know, the Soviets are just more interested in just real world domination, as opposed to, you know, finding some sort of magical stone somewhere. And they certainly probably wanted to ride roughshod over the locals as well and get those things done for themselves. They certainly got a lot of missiles over there. But as far as that, that’s all, that’s all, Bs, okay, okay. Well,

Dan LeFebvre  42:19

we talked very briefly about it, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask about the elephant in the room with the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. And that is the way it ends, because that’s when we find out the crystal skulls are the skeletons of interdimensional beings that we see this huge UFO taking a portal to some other dimension after they return the skull. And the movie makes the point that say that they’re not aliens from space, but they look a lot like the stereotypical aliens that we would expect to see. And that leads me into something I’m sure a lot of people watching right now are thinking a lot of the stuff in the movie that we see, from the crystal skulls to the Nazca Lines in Peru, are also talked about on the History Channel show Ancient Aliens, of course, which started, actually about a year after Kingdom of the Crystal Skull came out in 2008 I don’t know if there’s any connection between those two things, necessarily, but I have a two part question about this. First, based on your experience, do you believe there’s any truth to the concepts proposed in the movie that tie these ancient artifacts to UFOs? And secondly, from a kind of a more overall perspective, what’s the general consensus for people that you’ve interacted with over the course of your career on whether or not there’s a connection between these ancient artifacts like the Crystal Skull and even the Nazca Lines, things like that, and UFOs, the

Neil Laird  43:35

message there certainly is, yeah, it’s a lot you can talk about and active decode. There’s certainly so much of what I’ve done is sort of disputing a lot of that stuff. And, you know, Asian aliens did not invent the idea of the aliens. That goes back to chariot of the gods in the seven even before, I think, you know, it was, was this guy’s name, I forget his name, but German guy who carries the god, Oh, danikin, I think, yeah. Well, yeah. I mean, and all that stuff goes back to the idea that it couldn’t possibly have been humans that had did this. We had to have some help. The very first show that I made is my thesis film in school. So I was young and naive, but I was able to pull it off. Was about the restoration of the Great Sphinx, and I was and through a friend’s father, who was on the antiquities board in Egypt, I was able to go over there and actually climb the Sphinx and watch them restore it is amazing for a 23 year old kid. And one of the amazing, the reasons I got the access is because at the same time that I made that film as again, as a eventually, sort of Discovery Channel, but it just could be my thesis film at the time was because there’s a big, popular show that had just aired 1994 with Charlton Heston claimed the Sphinx was 10,000 years old. Guy named Robert shock and some other geologists claim that by water erosion on the Sphinx, they proved that it was not made by it was 10,000 years old, so that the pyramids were four and a half 1000 years of things. So therefore, they quickly jumped to saying it wasn’t the it wasn’t built by the Pharaonic people. It was built by an ancient alien race. Who Came down 6000 years before, built this thing, totally disappeared, and then a culture arose 3000 years later and totally mimicked it all based on one study of water erosion. And by looking at saying the water erosion proves that, you know, it would take 10 and a half 1000 years to do this. Yeah, they got Charlton Heston Moses himself to do a two hour NBC documenting on this became a big thing. And here I am a kid going over there, and these archeologists, Zahi awas and some of the people that run it, they were so incensed by this that even had a young kid like me come over and talk about us, they could have a voice. Why not? And in 20 minutes, they disputed it there by looking at the way this Sphinx is built as multiple layers of stone. The head is much stronger than the body of this thing, so it arose at a different rate. So the water erosion could have happened, but it happened when there was, you know, channels and things and wind and all these things. So basically, took one stud, one simple study, and they and they allow them to totally dispute and throw out hundreds of years of scholarly research by basically creating a question that he simply could not answer directly. Is the old adage, the lack of evidence is evidence, and that’s what all these bogus alien shows are based on. It’s kind of like you find one thing that we don’t have bedrock proof of, and therefore you can create a completely new narrative that totally dismisses the ingenuity the people who built it. It’s insulting. A lot of colonialism there too early on. Well, you know, the Egyptians, they couldn’t possibly do it. They need to have help, you know. So there’s so many, so much stuff going on there that is frustrating. And if people actually just broke down and looked at the bedrock reality, they can answer that stuff or find out there’s more stuff to disprove this then this one little idea that you have that totally rewrites it. Now that said, I don’t know if there’s aliens. I would think there are. It’s hard to imagine. We’re alone in the universe. That’s a different thing. This is the best we got. You know, surely someone’s done it better than us, hopefully. But again, to bring it down to why all these things had or been created by a foreign or a fight by aliens. It’s just it’s reductive, and it’s too easy, and it’s just it’s frustratingly simple. And you know, if you look, if you look at the archeology, our village don’t all have it, all right, archeologists are always chasing themselves around. And I’ve gone and archeologists have, you know, they’re they need to get thesis and get their doctorate too, and use other people with strime. And I’m not saying they have all the answers, but it’s very, very easy, like it’s, you know, it’s very convenient to use them as the villains, you know, if you look at the people like Graham Hancock and those people who are doing all those ooga booga shows now the new Nazis and the Soviets are archeologists. They are hiding facts from us. They are coveting information, and they’re not telling us. What we really know is this old Kennedy conspiracy all the way down, the conspiracy thing, the government is holding stuff from us, and the archeologists are part of the government. They’re funded by the universities, the elite towers, and so a lot of this going after the elites. And there’s great appeal for that. We see that in politics, and we see that in history and education. And, you know, the sinks being 10,000 years old or being built by aliens fits right into that narrative.

Dan LeFebvre  48:14

Yeah, and like you what you’re saying before about, you know, it’s very difficult to prove that, when you were saying that. It reminded me of, even, like, what you were talking about with, with the Holy Grail, it would be a cup. So how would we prove, and I mean, in the movie, course, and go back to Last Crusade in that one with the Holy Grail, it is a very simple cup. But the only way that they’re able to know that that’s the Grail is because it’s in this Grand Place. And you know that old Knight Templar there and stuff. And how, if we were to find it today, or if we were to find proof of that today, how would we even know that that is actually proof? Nobody’s ever going to open up that that closet for you, right, right? The aliens are going to open up that closet

Neil Laird  48:57

for you, to give you that No, exactly. Yeah. Who opened up clause and says, here’s your answer. And yeah, if you find a cup, you find the ark. There’s no There’s no telling. You know, the cup could be from anywhere, unless you have DNA of Jesus, Christ, and we have DNA that we can compare it to where his lips touched it, which we do not, never will, and we can’t prove that it was ever there. You can’t date that kind of stuff. You can do carbon dating on some stuff, but you can’t do it on petroglyphs and rock and things that are no longer have any carbon in it. So it’s very, very difficult to say. So that’s why the crystal skulls, for example, why they fooled people for so long? Because it’s the physical quartz and you can’t dig. Course, it’s only when people start looking at and seeing modern trappings. So because it’s easier to dispute that stuff. You know, there are always people looking for an ark I did an arc show years ago. Or some guy claims it a it’s in a cave in the Judean desert, and he has a video of him, but he, but he wasn’t allowed to go in there because the Israeli government wouldn’t let him. Very conveniently, there’s videotape that he shot through a little old, was all over. You can Google it afterwards. You. It was BS. I mean, they probably just built this out of cotton candy or something and put it in the dark. But since we couldn’t get there to break it down and see that, he bought this at it last year, then it always remains mystical evening stuff. I mean, I would love to know if there’s aliens. I would love to know how the pyramids and the Sphinx and all the places were built and what existed, but it’s just too easy to basically say that. You know this, this is the one Jesus wore these glasses. But you know, I can’t give them to you to prove it right now, because they have to go back to the shop. But trust me on

Dan LeFebvre  50:32

this. But trust me, yes, don’t look behind the door, but trust me, yes, exactly. Yeah, yeah. Well, the final movie in the franchise is 2023 Indiana Jones and the dial destiny. And again, in this one, the villains are the Nazis. But the movie is set in 1969 so it ties in Operation Paperclip, when the US government recruited former Nazi scientists. And in the movie, this Nazi scientist is led by Mads Mikkelsen character, Dr voller. His plan is to use an ancient Greek device that they call the antithetical to turn back time, because just like all the ancient artifacts that we see in Indiana Jones movies, this one has special powers, and this time, those powers are time. It’s the power to alter time. So Dr voller has this plan to use the antithekara to turn back time, to change history and restore the Nazi regime. Which parts of the movie storyline there are based on real history? Well,

Neil Laird  51:30

there is an anti get their device, so beginning and end of what’s true there? Okay, Athens Museum, and it’s, it doesn’t look quite as spectator day, because it’s flattened and it’s all made out of it’s all carbonized. So it’s all very kind of greenest in the bottom of sea. And it is a strange device, because it came from third century BC, and it is a machine, you know, it’s got gears and wheels, it’s all flattened like a pancake. But that is a real thing. And people, there have been many shows on that too, because people always been trying to suss out what it is. But you But in that, in that regard, we do have a janitor, janitor who’s opened the door, and it’s pretty clear now that what it was was a geared and Rose device that tracked the stars, that was solar, and each one was kind of able to tell the days and time to start the constellation. And it was probably in a wooden box that was carried around, and it went down on a ship that they found off the coast of roads, I think. But don’t quote me on that. So they do know that it was they can kind of see that they were charting certain days and certain festivals, and it kind of makes sense. But the fact that they made it is really amazing, because we did not think they had this technology. You know, three centuries before Christ. So it really is a very, very strange thing. But what I love about that one is, like the pyramids or anything else, it proves the ingenuity the people, not that they needed help from extraterrestrials. Greeks were a lot friggin smarter than we thought they were, and they created this thing long before we ever did. You know? So to me, that’s what I love about history. It’s like, Who are these people? What I love about ancient histories, my God, they did all this long before we came. We’re standing on the shoulders of giants. So you look at the device, and you think, Oh, my God. You know, these people were more clever than we give them credit for. Now, in terms of it wasn’t a time travel device. I wish it was my books that I read travel. And I love time travel. I love to go back there and see what it was like. But it was more simply about simply. It was about charting the stars in a very defined aspect. Name is charting them, and I’m probably dismissing it. It’s really more about looking at again all the religious aspects, and say, the festivals and all those kind of things and a lot of complexities are lost through time because we understand the nuances of what they were using these charts for, probably very accurate and why we only found one was a special. Was a prototype that was coming from roads to the mainland or wherever in sank. We don’t know, but it’s really hard to find in the Athens even got to go way in the back. It’s not nearly as impressive as like the frescoes that are that are on the Parthenon. It’s tucked way in the back, and it’s about this big, and it’s mobilissa small. So you really miss it, unless you’re looking for it, but it’s really what it represents more than it’s sheer beauty.

Dan LeFebvre  54:14

I like what you mentioned about how people then weren’t had this ingenuity that we often just don’t associate with people of ancient times, you know, like we’re the smartest the human race has ever been, and there’s never been anybody smarter than us. So therefore, they had to have had help in some way, because there’s no way that they could have done this. And I think

Neil Laird  54:35

it’d be more clever than us, you know, right? Primitive people living in Africa, of all places, you know, wherever it is, it’s kind of, yeah. I mean, there’s a lot of a lot of, a lot of ignorance there, and a lot of think that we are the best, and we’ve come across stuff the history that that we got to think that history is always, you know, increasing. We’re smarter now, but it’s cyclical, you know, smarter than that guy who, who, you know, brought up, got a paintbrush and Atlas, calcium. Even put his hand on the wall. We just learned a lot more things along the way, but, you know, they had it all sussed out as well. Yeah, yeah,

Dan LeFebvre  55:07

yeah. One thing in the dial destiny, mention of Operation Paperclip. I know that that was a real thing and but then obviously the time travel aspect isn’t necessarily true. But did we know if Nazi scientists who were recruited by the US government with Operation Paperclip, actually tried to restore the Nazi regime like we see happening in that movie?

Neil Laird  55:30

No, why would they? I mean, the Nazi regime was dead and dusted by that point. Why you want to bring back the most evil empire ever? You were lucky to get the hell out of Germany. Thank God you were smart and understood physics, or you would be in prison over there, you know, in Nuremberg as well. So I can’t imagine anybody want to go back to those

Dan LeFebvre  55:46

days, no real Dr voller, then, I

Neil Laird  55:48

guess it’s a good thing if you don’t want that bad settle down in suburban Ohio and disappear and not talk about their past they don’t want to relive.

Dan LeFebvre  55:56

It makes sense. It makes sense at the very end of dial destiny, the Nazis take Indy and his team hostage, and they use the Antikythera to go back in time using a world war two era bomber along with the fighter. But instead of going back to World War Two where they think they’re going to go, they’re actually taken all the way back to the year 212, BCE during the siege of Syracuse during the Second Punic War, the bomber gets hit by this large ballistic ball. It’s kind of cool to see, you know, the World War Two airplane. And then this ancient battle going on. The ancient Romans are fighting there, the other ones attacking Syracuse in the movie, and they immediately try to attack these, what they call them flying dragons, because they don’t know what they are as planes, right? The bomber crashes. We get to meet Archimedes, who tells Indy that he built the in ticket, Thera as a way of getting help for the siege. No matter what, it would always take people back to that time and place. And then Indy wants to stay there, because it’s something he studied his whole life. But his partner throughout the movie, Helena, knocks him out, and then we see him waking up back in present day. Didn’t get to stay there. I’m sure we could have an entire episode, just like all of these. We could have entire thing just about each one, this one being about the siege of Syracuse. But do you think the movie did a good job with this storyline of the battle Archimedes siege of Syracuse and all of that?

Neil Laird  57:13

I mean, I love the fact that they did it. I love that period, the Greco Roman period in ancient history. I just applaud them for doing that. They know it’s a fun ending. I was totally sucked into it. And again, it’s not something that we know well today. So it was fun to go back to, you know, the Punic Wars and see it. So again, you know, a plus for doing that, you know, did it look like that? It’s really kind of hard to know. I mean, there was a battle Syracuse in 1212, 12. Archimedes was there. He died there because they missed. They thought he was somebody else. They said, don’t kill Archimedes. The Romans wanted to use them. I love paper clip for their own devices. But someone didn’t recognize him, I guess, because he’d never YouTube channel, whatever, and he stabbed in the head. So I think, you know for what it was, yeah, it transported me back there. You know, these things are always, always, you know, you always want to see more of it. When you see all we saw is just that we didn’t we just see, like, maybe one room in the shore. I want to go English and Syracuse. Give me a two hour tour. You can’t get that, but for the little 10 minutes at the end, or whatever. Yeah, I thought I did a brilliant job of doing that. And I, you know, I love time travel, knowing it doesn’t exist. I think it’s great fun to seeing when worlds collide. So I had a lot of fun with that, and I didn’t roll my eyes. Okay,

Dan LeFebvre  58:22

okay, yeah, you mentioned wanting to go back and time yourself. And as I was watching this movie for the first time in theaters, I almost thought that the entire franchise would end with Indiana Jones living out the rest of his days in ancient history. I do like how they ended it, though, because he does end up back home with Marion and Salah and Helena there as well. But as we wrap up our discussion today, if you had to live out the rest of your days at any time and place in history, when and where would you choose? Oh, I

Neil Laird  58:49

mean, first of all, I would, I would love to add that device and go back there and save, you know, save the Library of Alexandria. There’s so many things that we could go back Pompeii before was destroying all the, all the, all the manuscripts there, I would take that device and just, you know, on the next series should be, you time traveling back there and getting artifacts when they’re still new and fresh. Yes, they’re not artifacts as much as objects. Again, stealing, because you’re taking something you’re screwing with time, you know, the ripples of them. You know, again, I write time travel, fiction. And they always realize, well, if I save somebody in Pompeii, what happens to their bloodline? Does it get wiped out? Or if I save this manuscript, it should have disappeared the ripple effect you’d ever know. But in terms of my own, I mean, there’s, I’ve been so many countries, and I’ve fallen in love with so many, but Egypt always had a special place for me. Egypt was a place I would go back to. I would go back to the pyramid age, or go back to the New Kingdom and see Rameses and what that was like, and King tus funeral walk through Thebes at his height. That’s that’s how I like to spend my Autumn here. So if you can work on that for me, if you know anybody, see what I

Dan LeFebvre  59:59

can do. Or no guarantees, but I’ll see, see what I can do. You mentioned wanting, wanting the device. If you were to oversee an Indiana Jones movie, what ancient artifact would indie be searching for in your movie?

Neil Laird  1:00:13

It’s a good question. I thought about, I mean, all the big ones, it’s hard to know. I mean, I again, if it wasn’t time travel, I it’s harder I got yet for me, I like to go back. I mean, one of the shows I did a show years ago on the copper scroll, which is fascinating, which exists. We know what the copper scroll is, but it’s a great story. It’s the only scroll found among the Dead Sea Scrolls. Is made of copper. It’s a treasure map, and it was written by somebody in a hurry and built and buried in one of the kumrun caves, and it has all this kind of worlds. So we know oldest treasure map, and it goes to all this lost gold from the from the temple where they all took it, maybe including the ark. Now be fun to follow that we have the ark, but be kind of fun to actually see where those places are. I did a show where I went to them. And you know what used to be like a long tunnel into the ground is not like a car park in Tel Aviv. I got there a bit late.

Dan LeFebvre  1:01:09

That’s okay. Like, like the tunnels under Venice and in the Indiana Jones. Like, I mean,

Neil Laird  1:01:13

budgeted post. Love it your question, because it’s more again, more again, more time traveling, because we do have the artifact. But there’s something about that story I always love, because it’s a journey. And it’d be kind of fun to tell that story if you could somehow go to some places along the trail and introduce different places and different time periods.

Dan LeFebvre  1:01:35

Oh yeah, for sure. And also just the mere fact that it’s the only one made out of copper, it sets itself as being different, like, why is this one different? And then you start to get the easily, the supernatural or ancient alien aspect in there, or whatever,

Neil Laird  1:01:48

something somebody has to melt Exactly. Well,

Dan LeFebvre  1:01:54

we talked a lot about the real world influencing Indiana Jones movies, but throughout your career, have you seen it go the other way, where Indiana Jones movies have impacted people working in cities, in archeology. I

Neil Laird  1:02:05

don’t know how many people I see on my shoots that have, you know, fedoras on, and made them claim I had it before Indiana Jones. I was the original Indiana Jones, all right. And I talked to archeologists and Egyptologists and paleontologists the world over, and those films impacted and amazing. And if you see him as a kid, he can understand why, because they’re fun. They make it sexy and adventurous. Dude doesn’t want to be an adventurer going off, but they also, but it’s also one of those things you they also get killed at because the end of the day, he is a plunderer. The very opening scene of raiders, which is a brilliant I still think Raiders are the best film because it’s the freshest. It surprised me the most. And even going back and looking at it again, it still holds up. There’s not a bad frame in it, as long as you don’t look at the questionable archeology, because very far keen season where Peru and he’s stealing this golden idol, and he destroys all of his artifacts to do it. Here is this tomb no one has been to just because he wants to Nick this thing so he can take it back of the states that entire temple is destroyed. Same thing later on, when he and Marian are down there in the Well of Souls or whatever, and everything is destroyed because they had to go look around, you know, so archeologists recognize in all the films what was when I just watched last week, and it was probably Last Crusade. You know that the Petra place is all destroyed at the very end because it’d go poking around and being archeologists. So every time you destroy, that doesn’t come back, it doesn’t heal itself. Well, my archeologist friends recognize there’s an old adage in archeology anyway, that all archeology is destruction. You bring something up that’s been hidden for 3000 years in the sand, and it starts to rot. There was a one of the shows I was at, mainly the Sphinx shows, my earlier shows, and it was one of the most exciting moments, and also one of the most troubling moments, I reckon, what archeology does and doesn’t do. We were at the Sphinx. And there’s, there’s a series of tombs done. There was a sphinx. It was a pyramid show I did. And there’s a bunch of tombs they found that were the workers, the people that built the pyramids, and people in and they always assumed they were slaves, all out 10 commandments that they had no either, just dumped in the river, whatever. And here are these tombs, very modest tombs, beehive like tombs that were found. And they’re amazing. I don’t know if you can go to them today, because they’re so fragile, but I was there when archeologists was finding these tombs, and we were videotaping it for the show. And they opened up one of the tombs, again, just mud brick, and it’s a very modest tomb with a guy. He wasn’t mummified. He was in the fetal position. He was all skeleton, and to the very modest clay jars on either side of him that he went off into the next world with. Maybe it held his organs. They call him canopic jars. Or maybe was just taking his few modest possessions he had to the duo at the next world. But as we’re videotaping it, we get a cool shots, and then we pull back because we want to look. Some and talk about something. And we came back and got our camera in there again, both the jars had cracked the modern air, mixing with that bubble of air that hadn’t been touched in four and a half 1000 years. 10 minutes of modern air destroyed those two clay things just like that. Now these are, you know, we have so many of those. The Arc yacht, that upset because it wasn’t like King Tut’s gold or whatever. They were just pots and things like that. But it just shows you, archeology is destruction. So Indiana Jones is in there going through entire temples and watching them collapse. So we can get one little artifact at the end. That’s bad archeology. You would not get your PhD.

Dan LeFebvre  1:05:44

You just roll the stone away at the beginner Raiders. It’s fine. It’s perfectly fine, right?

Neil Laird  1:05:49

Yeah. Well,

Dan LeFebvre  1:05:50

you mentioned Raiders was your favorite film. Is it because of that opening sequence? Or is there a particular

Neil Laird  1:05:55

reason why unico openings? I just think that film every second is fresh, and it left to my mind and never quite captured. I do agree the Last Crusade came the closest, and it helped because of that great characters that had, particularly Henri, and it was fresh, and, you know, it was a great adventure, but they all sort of feel a bit samey. I enjoyed doubt Destiny more than I thought I would. I thought skull and Temple of Doom are terrible. I just can’t rewatch them again. They’re just, they just, you know, they’re just kind of ugly and stupid, and they didn’t the second one was kind of CO opted by 84 more enough to remember, that’s when the age of the franchise and the big budget for kids came out. And, you know, so that film was geared toward 12 year olds, and it just felt, you know, so just didn’t have this sense of wonder. Indiana Jones was just laugh out loud funny that even we did something outrageous, like the great chase scene underneath the car, he just laughed out loud by the time he was doing it, you know, jumping out of a plane on a raft in India. It’s just, I start to feel like you’re doing it just for the sake. So I like the films, not to say, I mean, then I think three of them I’d watch anytime, one three and the last one, I think they’re great fun. The other two, I just never warmed to. I keep trying to, but I could just never warm to them. And I think it’s because the sense of joy was somehow Doom is a dark film. It’s very grisly and ugly, and crystal. Skull is just trash, trash, it’s just in, like, an old episode of, I don’t know, I’m gonna remember a show from the 70s, probably four year time, I don’t know, called Cold chat. The nights. Remember this. You’re

Dan LeFebvre  1:07:29

not familiar with that one? No, it? They

Neil Laird  1:07:32

say that it, um, they only ran for a season, but it’s called classic. They say that it inspired The X Files, and it Darren McGavin, who was a middle the guy from father’s story, the father from A Christmas Story, and he’s in seersucking suit. He goes around Chicago, and every week he finds vampires and zombies and UFOs, and he dispatches them all in an hour, you know, because no one believes him, and he has to get on the wire. And he’s a reporter that never gets he was a lot of fun. It was a fun show because he was a lot of fun. And as a little kid, this is the mid 70s, you know, they were wonderfully fun to watch because they were scary and moss monsters in the sewer chasing around Chicago. He has to get a special thing to kill it, or whatever twig. But the special effects were so ropey. They had like, $6.50 you know. So they had a headless, headless motorcycle. Guy was 30. Was the the sleepy, hollow story, and all it was was a guy, you know, doing this, and it was just so you could tell they were desperate for ideas and desperate for cash, and they want to have fun, but they didn’t know what to do with it. That’s what Crystal Skull felt like. It felt like a cold check the nightstop episode, which is too much money thrown at it, but without the sense of humor, without the sense of at least cold check, knew what it was, you know, this just felt like something that was just sort of like, let’s just take the most outrageous thing we can, because we have to, and let’s, you know, throw some cash at it. And it didn’t work at the end of the day. I’m not sure exactly what he found at the end and why they left and what he learned. I mean, it was scratching my head at the end of that film, thinking, This isn’t archeology anymore. This is yeah, just Luca Bucha, yeah,

Dan LeFebvre  1:09:02

yeah. Well, yeah, it, it very It seemed different too, because it does well. For, for one, those are the only two that are really the Nazis. Are not villains. But also, in in Crystal Skull, it was almost like an X Files type ending like where you you’re left with more questions than answers, whereas, with the others, at least, you get a sense for Okay, they’re being stored in some museum or whatever. But the story is kind of wrapped up like you okay, he, he got it, or we found out that you can’t. You know the power of God through the Ark of the Covenant is you know something that you can’t control, right? But you still figured out what was happening, whereas, with

Neil Laird  1:09:45

all kind of a good wrap up, I mean, the ending, that last shot of raiders, is brilliant. There’s a cynical ending is so wonderful all of this, and it gets tucked away somewhere in DC and even, and then last kingdom is satisfying too, because, you know, you see the cup disappear and they. Can’t get it, but they know it exists. There’s something it feels conclusive about it, but you’re right, that one just feels like it’s just a it’s just a mess of just, you know, trying to dazzle us with, with, with, you know, oddities, and I don’t know, guys, what’s, you know, doing this?

Dan LeFebvre  1:10:19

Yes, for sure, for sure. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show to chat about the true story behind the Indiana Jones movies. It’s fitting that the franchise there kind of fits with a time traveling story, because, as we’ve talked about, kind of throughout, on top of all your experiences working on historical films yourself, you’ve also published your first novel recently called Prime Time Travelers, and I know you have a new one out that’s about Pompeii. So can you give listeners a peek into your book and where they can get a copy? Yeah,

Neil Laird  1:10:46

and they pretty much came out of exactly what we’re talking about. I’ve done 25 years of doing non fiction television where it’s all about buttoning it up and footnoting it. You work for National Geographic. Make sure you have six sources, you know, for everything. So after a while, I kind of got tired of looking at ancient, least ruins in the desert. I wanted to have some fun with the past, and their way to do that is section so I took a TV crew, very much like the ones I work with, and I have them time travel in the past. And the first one, they go back to the ancient Egyptian underworld, looking for a lost mummy and to win an Emmy. And that’s prime time travelers. And the second one, that’s in November is they go back with extra money, because it’s a big hit on TV at Pompeii, to go back to Pompeii and and it capture it in all its glory before it’s destroyed. And it gives me a chance to kind of play with my day job and my love of history, but also in a very playful kind of way, taking history and questioning what’s true it’s not going back in the past, even though it wasn’t like that at all. So it’s been a great fun to kind of dip into both wells and take the fiction and the non fiction and kind of blur them into escapist and they’re both on Amazon. Gillip and Neil Laird are prime time travelers or prime time Pompeii. You can find them on Amazon, Kindle, fantastic.

Dan LeFebvre  1:11:54

I’ll make sure to include links to those in the show notes. Thank you again. So much for your time. Neil,

Neil Laird  1:11:58

that was my pleasure. Thanks for having me, it was good fun.

August 27th, 1964. Los Angeles, California.

We’re starting this week with a movie that shows the premiere of a different movie. And we’ll be looking at a premiere of a “based on a true story” movie later, but this is a based on a true story showing the premiere of a very fictional movie from this week in history.

About an hour and 51 minutes into the 2013 movie called Saving Mr. Banks, we see how Disney’s Mary Poppins premiered on August 27^th, 1964.

As the camera pans down from the night sky, we can see we’re at the famous Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles. There’s a massive crowd of people gathered outside, red carpets, fancy cars, and a lot of press photographers snapping photos.

There’s also a small band playing a song, and on either side of the theater the marquee boldly states the movie that’s premiering tonight: Mary Poppins, starring Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke.

The camera cuts down to ground level now, and we can see everyone is dressed in their finest tuxedos and dresses. Walking among the nicely dressed people in attendance is a costumed version of Mickey Mouse’s beloved dog, Pluto. We can also see Goofy, too. They’re both among the crowd that’s now watching as a car pulls up to the red carpet.

A man in a red suit opens up the back door. Stepping out is a woman in a yellow dress. She’s all smiles as she steps out, then looks back at the car just as Tom Hanks’ character, Walt Disney, steps out of the car to join her on the red carpet.

He waves to the crowd.

There are cuts among the crowd. More memorable Disney characters. There’s Victoria Summer’s version of Julie Andrews in the crowd, greeting the guests.

Then, another car pulls up to the red carpet. Inside is Emma Thompson’s character, P.L. Travers. Her driver, Paul Giamatti’s character, Ralph, rushes around the car to get the door for her. She steps out onto the red carpet, and looks up at the huge theater in front of her.

Ralph looks at her and says, “This is your night. None of this would be possible without you.”

The true story behind this week’s event depicted in the movie Saving Mr. Banks

Pamela Lyndon Travers, who went by the pen name P.L. Travers and is played by Emma Thompson in the movie, and it is true that she was the woman who wrote the Mary Poppins books. And I say books because there were eight books in the series. Her first one was published in 1934, and it was an immediate hit.

As the story goes, it was Walt Disney’s kids who loved the book so much that they convinced their dad to make a movie out of it. He tried to do that in 1938, but Travers refused his offer because she didn’t think it’d be a good movie. She simply didn’t believe a film version of Mary Poppins would do her creation justice.

It took Walt Disney over 20 years to finally convince Travers to let him turn her book into a movie. When she finally gave him permission to do so in 1961, she still required final approvals on the script. As you can imagine, she was very picky and wanted a lot of changes…but, according to the contract, while Travers had script approval rights, Disney had the final cut approval, so he was able to overrule her on things like the songs for the movie.

I mentioned the cars coming to the premiere, with Walt Disney’s car arriving first. And the idea of P.L. Travers arriving later than Disney has some basis in truth because it really is true that Travers wasn’t given an invitation to the premiere of her own film. Knowing how picky she was about everything, it wouldn’t surprise me if that was on purpose by Disney to try to not spoil the evening…but, of course, that’s my speculation.

She did manage to get one anyway, so she showed up to the premiere and after the movie, she walked up to Walt Disney and told him that the animated sequence in the film had to be cut out. I’m paraphrasing, of course, but basically Walt Disney simply told her it was too late for that.

And the rest, as they say, is history. Disney’s film version of Mary Poppins was a massive success and as the film debut of Julie Andrews helped launch her into stardom as well.

If you want to watch the scene that happened this week in history, check out the 2013 movie called Saving Mr. Banks. It’s all about the making of the Mary Poppins film, and we can see how it depicts the premiere of the classic film at about an hour and 51 minutes into the movie.

August 28th, 1883. Indonesia.

For our next event, we’re going back to a movie from the 1960s that you’ve probably never seen called Krakatoa, East of Java. About an hour and a half into the movie, there’s a ship moving along the ocean when off in the distance is a massive glow. The noise sounds like an explosion of some sort. When the camera cuts to inside the ship, one of the crew—maybe that’s the captain—tells someone else to blow the whistle before we take the wave.

Then, he looks back out the window as we can hear the wind picking up. Someone else helps him put on a coat, as if that’ll somehow help against what’s to come. Outside, the waves are getting choppier.

The camera cuts to somewhere on land and we can see people running and screaming. The sky is hazy, so it’s hard to tell what they’re running from.

A moment later and the camera cuts again back to the ocean.

Slowly, the horizon starts moving up.

Except…wait…the camera isn’t moving at all. That’s a massive wave covering the entire frame now, and it still seems to be growing larger.

There’s a shot of a lighthouse that gets completely engulfed in crashing waves. Another cut to houses, some of them looking like they’re on fire, and the waves knock them all down. The entire houses are washed away before the whole screen is filled with nothing more than ravaging water.

Trees, homes, buildings, any ships that happen to be in the harbor…there are scenes of chaos and destruction as the massive waves take out anything in their path.

The camera cuts back to the people running and screaming from earlier, and now we know what they’re running from. Another massive wave towers above the houses behind the running people before it comes crashing down and everything disappears for a moment before all we see is debris and pieces of things being carried on.

And that’s how the movie goes for the next few minutes.

But, the focus of the film shifts back to the ship we started our segment with. There’s a massive wave in front of it now. The captain and the others on the ship don’t have much choice—they’ll have to try to go through it. When the wave hits, it smashes through the windows and right into the men. But…amazingly, they make it through. They cheer the fact they survived. Back outside, after the wave passes, things seem to calm down as if to say the storm is over.

The true story behind this week’s event depicted in the movie Krakatoa, East of Java

Transitioning into our look into the true story, and the event we’re seeing in the movie here is one that happened this week in history—and also, last few months in history—but the event itself we’re talking about today is the massive 1883 eruption of the volcano on the island of Krakatoa. Technically, that eruption spanned months, from May to October of 1883. Most historians point to the date of May 20^th, 1883 as the beginning since that’s when steam started venting from the volcano.

There would be eruptions of ash every so often. Some estimates say the ash reached heights of almost four miles into the sky—that’s about six kilometers.

Throughout the month of June, the eruptions started getting more violent. More ash filled the sky, with a second column being visible. Around this time, earthquakes started to shake the region. A third column of ash could be seen in early August.

As you can imagine, at this point with ash being thrown into the sky for literally months, the sky in the entire world was affected by this eruption. In fact, it even affected a lot of art around the time. A lot of paintings from that time period depict very colorful skies. Some have even speculated the sky in the famous painting by Edvard Munch called The Scream was influenced by the Krakatoa eruption and the hazy skies that the artist had seen over his home country of Norway just ten years before the painting.

Going back to our story, though, we’re in the August timeframe of 1883: Not quite to this week in history.

Remember how high the ash was before at an estimated four miles, or six kilometers? By August 25^th, estimates for the ash were at about 17 miles, or over 27 kilometers. That’s almost 90,000 feet and over 27,000 meters.

Krakatoa had entered its climactic phase of the eruption.

People reported hearing eruptions every few minutes at this point. It wasn’t just ash being thrown into the sky. Burning hot pieces of rock and glassy lava substances known as pumice were seen falling from the sky—some of them hitting ships nearby.

Four huge explosions were heard in the early morning hours of August 27^th. The largest of these explosions was so loud that it could be heard well over 3,000 miles away. That’s over 4,800 kilometers. People reported hearing what they thought was a cannon being shot.

Some believe this blast was the loudest sound in human history.

Others estimated there was about 200 megatons of energy released.

By comparison, the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima was about 15 kilotons of energy. That means the Krakatoa eruption was over 10,000 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, making it not only the loudest sound in human history but also being the most powerful explosion ever recorded.

Of course, those are best estimates based on the recorded data. It was 1883, after all, and the science of the time couldn’t quite track things as well as we can now.

Then, after the massive explosions on August 27^th, Krakatoa stopped eruptions almost immediately on August 28^th. I say “almost” because there were still smaller eruptions that carried into October, but for the most part it was done on August 28^th.

So, that’s the part we’re commemorating this week, the end of the climactic phase of the eruptions that happened by the morning of August 28^th.

At that point, though, historic damage had been done.

And while the things we see in the movie surely can’t do the real thing justice, the movie is correct to show the tsunamis following the eruption. The massive explosions on August 27^th were followed by waves almost 100 feet high, or about 30 meters.

Some tsunamis hit as far away as South Africa.

As you can imagine, the results were devastating.

Almost 70% of the island of Krakatoa itself was destroyed by the blast, and the entire region around the island was laid to waste. Towns were swallowed by the water. The entire island of Sebesi that was nearby had no survivors. There had been 3,000 people living there.

For months and even up to a year afterward, there were reports of victims’ bodies being found all around—even as far as Africa.

The official death toll was 36,417 people.

As a little side note, if you listened to last week’s episode of BOATS This Week you’ll know that for centuries people believed the eruption of Mount Vesuvius to have culminated on August 24^th and August 25^th, so that means for a long time people thought those two massive eruptions happened during the same historical week. I mean, different years, with Vesuvius’ eruption being in 79 AD and Krakatoa being in 1883, but the same historical week.

Except, of course, if you listened to last week’s episode you’ll know why the date changed for Vesuvius in 2018 after almost two thousand years of believing it was in August.

But, if you want to see the eruption of Krakatoa as it’s shown on screen check out the 1968 movie called Krakatoa: East of Java.

Oh—and to give you an idea of how historically accurate that movie is, even the title is wrong. The island of Krakatoa is not east of the island of Java. It’s west of Java, but the filmmakers wanted the whole movie to have the feel of being off in the “Far East” so they wanted the word “East” in the title.

But the eruption we looked at today happens an hour and 35 minutes into the film.

August 31st, 1888. London.

Our third event from this week in history can be found at 22 minutes into the 2001 movie called From Hell.

The first thing that stands out from that time in the movie is a lamp post illuminating the street corner in what is otherwise a very dark night. We can see the cobblestone streets, some buildings, and a sidewalk that…oh wait, what’s that? There seems to be someone lying on the sidewalk.

It’s really dark and hard to see, though.

As the movie plays, they’re lying completely motionless.

Are they okay?

Just then, around the corner from behind one of the buildings by the lamp post comes another light. This one seems to be a flashlight, though, because we can see it is held in the hand of a man. The man is also wearing a helmet of some sort and wearing a long cloak.

As he continues to walk toward the camera, his flashlight casts a bright light onto the sidewalk beneath him. When he reaches the person lying on the sidewalk, he stops to investigate. They still haven’t moved at all. Since the man with the flashlight is closer to the camera, we can see a little better now that he’s wearing a uniform.

This must be a policeman.

He shines his light on the person lying on the sidewalk. Then, he puts a whistle to his mouth and starts blowing.

The camera doesn’t change the angle or cut to anything new, but we see a slow fade with more policemen standing around the body lying on the sidewalk. There are four of them, now. Then, we see time passing by as more and more people start coming to investigate the scene. More police. More of a crowd starts to gather, too, as the darkness of night makes way for the morning’s light.

The true story behind this week’s event depicted in the movie From Hell

That’s a brief scene because the movie goes on to dig into the investigation behind the murders…yes, murders, not just the one we saw in that segment of the movie because the murders continued beyond this week in history.

But it was in the early morning hours of August 31^st, 1888 that the body of Mary Ann Nichols was found in the Whitechapel district of London. Mary, who also went by the nickname Polly, was believed to be the first victim of Jack the Ripper.

Although, I’ll admit that there has been some debate about whether she was the first Ripper victim as some people at the time tied Mary’s murder to some previous murders. For example, in the movie From Hell we see a woman named Martha Tabram being murdered by the Ripper before Polly is…but, in the 135 years since the murders took place, most people have landed on Mary Ann Nichols as the first canonical Jack the Ripper victim.

And that is a good example of just how much mystery surrounds the case of Jack the Ripper because technically, as of this day, Jack the Ripper has never been officially identified.

What we do know, though, is that Mary Ann Nichols had gone to a local pub at about 11 PM on August 30^th, 1888. She hung out there for about an hour and a half before leaving and going home.

But, she didn’t go to bed. You see, she was renting a bed at a lodging house. A little past 2 AM, the housekeeper came to demand her rent of fourpence for the bed.

Mary didn’t have the money, so she was kicked out.

So, Mary went back to work as a prostitute to try and earn money for her bed.

In the movie, we see Mary being murdered by someone in a carriage. The presumption here is that it was someone paying Mary to sleep with them and they ended up murdering her instead. To be honest, we don’t know that part. Of course, it’s plausible.

What we do know is that at about 2:30 AM on August 31^st, another lodging housekeeper named Emily Holland saw Mary walking down the street. Emily was Mary’s friend, so she recognized her. That was the last time anyone saw Mary alive.

At 3:30 AM, her body was found.

It wasn’t found by a policeman like the movie shows, though, but by a man named Charles Cross. He was a carman, so essentially a driver of horse-drawn carriages or carts.

While Charles was passing by, he noticed something unusual on the sidewalk. Initially he thought it was a tarp. When he got closer, he saw it was a body. Another carman passed by and Charles called him over, too. That guy’s name was Robert Paul, and together they investigated the body. They weren’t sure if she was dead or simply unconscious, so they pulled down her skirt—it was raised above her knee—and went to find a policeman. When they did, they told the officer—a man named Jonas Mizen—that she looked to be either dead or drunk.

Charles and Robert went back to work while the policeman investigated the woman’s body which was later identified to be Mary Ann Nichols.

Oh, and something we never see in the movie is that Mary Ann Nichols was born on August 26^th, meaning she was murdered just five days after her 43^rd birthday.

If you want to watch the morbid murder that happened this week in history, check out the 2001 movie called From Hell, named after the “From Hell” letter that Jack the Ripper sent to the authorities.

Mary Ann Nichols’ body is found around 22 minutes into the film.

And if you want to learn more about the true story, we covered that in episode #93 of Based on a True Story over at basedonatruestorypodcast.com/93.

July 22nd, 1991. Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Our first story this week comes from a Netflix series with a simple and yet so confusing name. Some people call it Monster. Others call it Dahmer. Officially, it’s titled, “DAHMER – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story.”

We’re starting today at the beginning of the first episode, just past the opening scene, about five minutes in.

We’re on a dimly lit street, the night obscured by the glow of distant streetlights, casting a somber mood over the scene. In the foreground, taped to one of the light poles is a weathered and tattered missing person flyer.

The flyer features a faded, grainy photo of a young man named Oliver Lacy. Above his photo, bold letters urgently ask, “MISSING PERSON – Have you seen me?” The wear and tear on the flyer suggest it has been there for some time, battling the elements and a desperate search.

As we hit play on the show, the camera pans up slightly to reveal another “Missing” paper on the same pole. There’s no cut as the camera shifts focus to behind the telephone pole and we can see a man walking along the sidewalk. In red neon is a sign that says, “Club 219.”

The man, who we can see is a white man with blond hair and wearing glasses, slowly walks inside.

Once inside the club, we can hear the sound of music. The man walks to the bar and asks a couple other guys already there if he can buy them a drink. The two Black guys at the bar mock the man in glasses when he orders two PBRs for them. PBRs? Must be a real player, one of the guys laughs.

The man in glasses doesn’t reply, but he slowly takes a drink from his glass. We can see a cigarette is in his hand.

One of the guys speaks to the man in glasses again. “You bought me a drink before, you know that right?”

The man seems to be in a bit of a daze as he replies, “Have I?”

One of the two Black guys at the bar points out that there aren’t a lot of white queens in there with blond hair. The white guy in glasses doesn’t say anything, just takes another drink.

Then, a third Black guy walks to the bar from where he was in the restroom. He says that the guy in glasses bought him a drink last week, too. But he didn’t even make a move, did he? He sits down at the bar as he says this, taking a drink from the pint glass. The man in glasses slurs his words as he orders one more for the new arrival at the bar.

The true story behind this week’s event depicted in the TV series Dahmer

That’s a pretty good depiction of what really happened at Club 219 in Milwaukee, on July 22^nd, 1991. The obvious exception, here, is that we don’t know the exact things that were said in the conversation between Dahmer and the other man.

We know this because the third man that we see sitting down at the bar after Dahmer had already ordered two beers was named Tracy Edwards. But just getting beers at a bar isn’t enough to shock the world. What we see happen in the series next back at Dahmer’s apartment is. While there, we see Dahmer try to kill him, but Edwards manages to get away.

All that is accurate.

It’s also true that Edwards flagged down some cops who took him back to Dahmer’s apartment to try and get the key for the handcuffs Edwards had on his wrist. While looking for the key, the cops found photographs of dismembered bodies. Looking closer at the photos, they recognized the background in the photos as the apartment they were standing in.

And so, Jeffrey Dahmer was arrested and taken to the police station while they searched his apartment—it was a gruesome scene filled with body parts, including evidence of Dahmer eating them leading to his nickname “The Milwaukee Cannibal.”

And just like we see happen in the series, Detective Patrick Kennedy led the interrogation to discover the true story of Dahmer’s crimes. They found more body parts in Dahmer’s apartment, so Dahmer knew he was caught. He confessed right away, and it was up to Kennedy to unravel the evil.

If you want to see the event that happened this week in history, we started our segment at about five minutes into the first episode of the Netflix series Dahmer.

Oh, and the brief piece of paper for a missing person named Oliver Lacy on the telephone pole that we mentioned is also accurate. Well, I don’t know if the paper looked exactly like the one we see in the series, but Oliver Lacy really was one of Dahmer’s victims.

And Club 219 that we see in the first episode really was a gay bar in Milwaukee that Dahmer frequented and lure people back to his apartment where he’d kill them.

That first episode goes on to recount more things that happened this week in history that led up to Jeffrey Dahmer’s confession, but do you remember how I mentioned it was Detective Patrick Kennedy who led the interrogation? Well, he was the one to talk to Dahmer as he explained his actions…but, unfortunately, Detective Kennedy is no longer with us.

So, I had a chat with Robyn Maharaj, who the co-author of Detective Kennedy’s memoir Grilling Dahmer: The Interrogation of the Milwaukee Cannibal. You can hear that at https://www.basedonatruestorypodcast.com/217

Apollo 11 Minisode Series Update

Did you listen to Based on a True Story last week?

Our next event will make a lot more sense if you listened, but I didn’t mean to call you out if you didn’t listen haha! Let’s just do a quick catchup in case you didn’t hear it, so you know what’s going on today. Basically, last week was the anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission starting. Well, this week is the anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission’s completion.

The Apollo 11 launch was historical background for the big climax at the end of the movie Men in Black 3, while we see the mission come to an end in the movie First Man—which technically shows the launch, too, but it was a much bigger part of Men in Black 3, and since I knew we were talking about First Man anyway that’s why I brought the MIB into this series haha!

So, last week we heard about Men in Black 3’s version of the Apollo 11 launch at the exact same time as it launched in history: July 16^th, 1969, at 9:32 AM Eastern (EDT), and it ran for 195 hours, 18 minutes, and 35 seconds, until on July 24^th, 1969, at 12:50 PM Eastern Time, 9:50 AM Pacific.

And I’m guessing you can figure out where I’m going with this.

That’s right, we’ll learn about the end of Apollo 11’s mission from the movie First Man at the end of Apollo 11’s actual mission at 12:50 PM Eastern Time, 9:50 AM Pacific. Except, obviously, in 2024 instead of 1969, so not the actual mission, but as close as we can get now!

So, look for that coming out Wednesday.

But, we’re not done with Apollo 11 today, because I thought it’d be fun to check in on what the Apollo astronauts are doing right now. Of course, I don’t know when you’re listening to this, so I’ll have to go off my side’s day and time: July 22^nd, at 6:00 AM Eastern, 3:00 AM Pacific. So, that is about 140 hours, 28 minutes from GET, or Ground Elapsed Time, since Apollo 11’s launch which means right now back in 1969, Michael Collins, Buzz Aldrin, and Neil Armstrong are probably sleeping right now.

After doing a controlled burn for about three minutes this morning from 135:23:42.28 to 135:26:13.69 GET—in layman’s time zones, that’s 12:55 AM until 12:58 AM EDT early this morning, after which they were about to enter a period of radio silence as they rested in anticipation of the next phase of the mission: Returning to Earth.

While they’re sleeping, let’s do what I’m sure a lot of people were doing on this day in 1969, and recapping the amazing success of the mission’s key event as it was shown in the 2018 movie First Man.

Because, the whole point of Apollo 11 was to put a man on the moon…and, that’s exactly what they did a couple days ago on July 20^th. But, we learned about the launch last week, so we didn’t get to cover the landing itself. So, let’s catch up a bit with Apollo 11’s mission as it was shown in the movies.

We’ll start at about an hour and 50 minutes into First Man, and you’ll know you found the right spot when you see the text on screen telling us it’s “Mission Day Four” with the numbers 76:43:37. The numbers are, of course, the mission clock, or Ground Elapsed Time, that I talked about earlier.

So, 76 hours, 43 minutes, and 37 seconds since launch or, in other words, July 19^th, 1969, at 2:15:37 PM EDT.

For a bit of historical context, the movie doesn’t show us here…speaking of, did you find the spot in the movie with “Mission Day Four”? Let’s and hit play on the movie as I continue. There we go, it’s playing as the camera focuses on a circular window in the center of the frame. It looks like a ship’s porthole, but knowing the movie and topic, this must be a window on the Apollo 11 spacecraft.

Back to some extra context, so this scene starts at almost 77 hours on the mission clock, and just before 76 hours on the mission clock, the lunar orbit insertion cutoff had just taken place after almost six minutes of engine burn in preparation for their Moon landing.

At 77:13:00, the first time humans ever saw an unusual light while in space. Officially logged as a “lunar transient event”, or LTE, it happened near a region of the moon known as the Aristarchus region and, of course, has been talked about by Ufologists and conspiracy theorists for the decades since.

Okay, with that context, the movie is still playing so let’s go back to that. I’m at the point where Corey Stoll’s version of Buzz Aldrin comes up to Ryan Gosling’s Neil Armstrong while he’s holding the papers. When the camera angle shifts, we can see the papers look almost like a folded map of the moon’s surface. Maybe Neil is trying to figure out where the Aristarchus region is for that weird light sighting that just happened.

In the movie’s timeline, though, he’s probably focusing on the upcoming landing—which, okay, maybe he was doing that in the true story at this time, too. Haha!

Now, all three astronauts are looking out the windows as the scene fades to black for a brief moment before fading back up. Other than Aldrin and Armstrong, the third astronaut is Michael Collins. He’s played by Lukas Haas in the movie. Together with the three astronauts, we’re looking out one of the windows to see the gray of the moon on the other side.

The movie dramatizes a lot of the lead into the moon simply because we don’t have actual footage of most of that. I can’t imagine what it must’ve been like to be one of the three astronauts looking out the window, but as we’re watching them look out the window in the movie it had to be breathtaking.

Except you can’t just enjoy the view, because there’s a lot of work to do.

In the movie, we can see the astronauts moving from the windows to another area. Well, not all the astronauts, it looks like just two of them: Armstrong and Aldrin. We can hear radio communications that refer to where they are now as the LM, or Lunar Module.

Lukas Haas’ version of Michael Collins stays behind in the Command Module.

Ryan Gosling’s version of Neil Armstrong looks at the map again. It’s pinned up against the LM ‘s wall. The radio beeps on, letting him know continuous burn time is limited to 910 seconds. Then, confirmation that Apollo 11 is “go” for undocking. Armstrong looks so determined as he’s looking out the window at the moon beyond.

It’s time.

What follows next in the movie is a montage of shots showing what it must’ve looked like for Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to navigate to the moon in the LM.

And the movie’s sequence is well done. It’s also the kind of sequence in a movie that’s impossible to compare to the true story because we just don’t know all those little details. Purely from a visual perspective, though, I think the filmmakers did a great job bringing all of us as close as is humanly possible to bringing what it must’ve looked like to our TV screens.

After a few tense moments in the movie that leaves us wondering each time an alarm goes off if it’s something that’ll be a disaster, finally, the camera cuts to a scene from the moon. The rocky landscape is all gray, making the camera view of the moon a monotone image against the inky black of a starless space beyond.

With triumphant music playing, the movie cuts between the astronauts in the LM as it shakes and rattles on the descent and a view from the calm, surface of the moon.

It’s another chance for us to remember this is a movie—because this is the first time in human history that humans have landed on the moon. Did they have a camera person on the surface of the moon to capture it? Of course not!

But, it looks cool!

The big tension in this part of the movie, apart from just the difficulty of landing the LM on the moon, is the burn time. Remember earlier the movie mentioned a continuous burn time of 910 seconds? Well, during the landing, the movie keeps shifting back to the fuel gauge, which conveniently is a digital display in percentages. So, the two-digit fuel indicator that started at the max of 99% full is now at only 08%. 05%. 04%.

94 seconds to landing, and 104 seconds to a mandatory abort without enough fuel to get home.

16 seconds to landing. Inside, it’s still shaky and rough. Armstrong is still focused, looking out the window as he navigates the craft.

03% fuel. 02% fuel.

Outside the window, we can see a large crater, deep enough to not see the bottom because of the shadows inside. A camera angle from outside and if you look closely, it looks like a little dust getting kicked up. They have to be close!

Then, in the same angle, we can see the LM’s shadow start to show up on the moon. It gets bigger.

Then…stops.

They landed on the moon!

It’s a dark, desolate place.

“We copy, you’re down, Eagle,” a voice chirps over the radio.

Aldrin has a huge grin on his face when he looks at Armstrong, who replies, “Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.”

From the radio, “Roger, Tranquility. We copy on the ground.”

Aldrin congratulates Armstrong on a smooth touchdown, then the two astronauts prepare for the next step—or should I say, the first step? Haha!

A few seconds movie-time later, and both astronauts have their outdoor space suits on. They pry open the door to reveal: Silence. The movie has absolutely no sound as it shows us the vacuum of space outside the lunar module door. As commander, Neil Armstrong steps out of the door first.

As he carefully walks down the ladder, the movie shifts between its own recreation of the event and the very grainy, but very real footage from 1969. You’ve probably seen that, but I’ll include a link in the show notes in case you haven’t.

For a moment, the movie continues with the silence. The only noise is the sound of Armstrong breathing in the suit, making him sound like Darth Vader. The movie shows memories of Neil back on Earth with a little girl.

Then, almost as quickly as Neil Armstrong became the only human to walk on the surface of the moon, he became the first human to walk on the surface of the moon, because we see Buzz Aldrin in his suit with Armstrong. It looks like they’re going around gathering moon rocks and things.

We don’t get a lot of that, though, because the movie focuses more on Neil Armstrong. Makes sense, the movie is focused on his life. And here, in a silence and achromatic scene on the moon, Neil has memories of home.

Scenes of Ryan Gosling’s version of Neil Armstrong with who we can assume is his family. A woman; his wife. The little girl from a moment ago, presumably his daughter. She looks maybe 2 or 3 in the movie, if I had to guess. He’s carrying her along a ridge by the river.

She’s sleeping soundly on his shoulder; it’s just the scene of a loving father spending time with his daughter, and here along a ridge by one of the moon’s craters that is what’s on Neil Armstrong’s mind. Daddy’s little girl.

Aldrin isn’t anywhere to be seen in the movie. It’s just Neil, alone with his memories. The movie shifts to a closeup of Neil’s face and even though it’s covered by his space suit’s helmet, the sun visor is up so we can see there are tears in his eyes.

We can see something in his left hand. It’s small compared to the bulky gloves of his suit. Now, as Neil Armstrong turns his hand, the shadows adjust so we can see what it is: A small bracelet. It looks just like the kind of bracelet a two or three-year-old little girl might make for her dad.

And there, in the silence of space, with thoughts of his daughter, Ryan Gosling’s version of Neil Armstrong slowly drops the bracelet, which disappears into the darkness of the huge crater in front of him. After another moment just looking down in silence, we can see even more tears in his eyes briefly before he puts down the sun visor to shield his face from view.

Then, camera cuts to a side view as Armstrong turns around and walks off frame.

The next angle in the movie is the same we saw from just outside the LM as it landed. Now, it’s blasting off from surface of the moon.

It’s time to go home.

The true story behind this week’s event depicted in the movie First Man

Let’s kick off our fact-checking of the movie by looking at something the movie doesn’t really talk about, but it’s something that came to mind as I was watching the sequence I just described, so maybe you thought of it, too.

If you saw the movie Apollo 13, which we covered way back on episode #15 of Based on a True Story, you’ll remember they leave the Command Module, or CM, to go to the Lunar Module, or LM, which they then take to the surface of the moon. Similar concept here on Apollo 11 although it never hurts to remember the events from 1995’s movie Apollo 13 actually happened after the events in today’s movie from 2018 about Apollo 11. So, it’s a newer movie about an older event, which explains why the astronauts in the movie never mention the disaster that happened on the real Apollo 13.

Okay, with that said, probably the biggest inaccuracy from this event in the movie really boils down to something movies change a lot: The timeline.

So, we just talked about Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin going into the LM for their final descent to the moon, leaving the Command Module pilot Michael Collins behind in the, well, Command Module.

In the movie, that happens at an hour, 50 minutes, and 49 seconds.

In the true story, that was at 095:20:00 GET, or 8:52 AM on July 20^th.

So, think of that as a baseline—our own little Range Zero, so to speak, haha!

Back in the movie, it takes a minute and a half for them to get into the LM, undock it, and begin their descent.

In the true story, that took four hours and 52 minutes.

But even though the movie is compressing the timeline, the filmmakers still seemed to go to the effort of being as accurate as possible…to give an example of that, remember when the movie cuts to a camera angle outside the LM as it gets closer to the surface, and we can start seeing the dust kicking up?

In the movie, that happens six minutes and 50 seconds later, and even though dust might sound insignificant, I’m pointing it out because in the true story, NASA seemed to think it was significant enough to log: “1^st evidence of surface dust disturbed by descent engine” which really happened 2 hours, 32 minutes, and 15 seconds later.

But, I’m nitpicking.

Overall, the movie segment we talked about is 18 minutes of screen time that is showing what took 29 hours, 42 minutes.

Speaking of time, something else the movie First Man got right is that the LM in Apollo 11 had a continuous burn time of 910 seconds for LM’s descent to the moon. Those 910 seconds worth of fuel converts to about 15 minutes and 10 seconds, which means each percentage of fuel the movie shows ticking down on the digital display is about 9.1 seconds of engine thrust—assuming of course the LM was actually at 100% of that 910-seconds worth of fuel instead of 99% like the maximum amount the two-digit movie shows.

They only added enough fuel to fulfill the mission, so that meant Commander Neil Armstrong and Lunar Module Pilot Buzz Aldrin had to be extremely focused, a lot like we see Ryan Gosling’s version of him doing in the movie. And it is true that Armstrong decided to take the LM into manual mode on the way down, he did that because the automated targeting system was pre-programmed for an ellipse-shaped section NASA had decided to land. When they got close, Armstrong noticed what he described later as a, “football-field sized crater, with a large number of big boulders and rocks for about one or two crater diameters around it.”

On top of that, no one had ever landed on the moon before—so, we simply didn’t know the same things we do know about the moon’s gravity.

Thinking fast, he shifted to manual to avoid any potential collisions.

Which, by the way, that’s not what the alarms are we see in the movie. We can clearly hear them say it’s a 1201 alarm, which technically wasn’t what we’d think of when we hear the term “alarm” on a computer today.

The 1201 alarm on Apollo 11 was what they referred to as an “executive overflow.” In other words, the computer was hitting the limits on how much it could process. Think of it like the hourglass on Windows or the beachball on Mac. The computer is frozen and you need to wait. Which probably isn’t something you want to do while you’re just seconds away from crashing into the moon…

That’s why they didn’t really seem too concerned about turning it off in the movie.

It also makes me so glad they don’t have a sound like that when it happens to my computer even today!

And now it makes sense why Neil Armstrong might have made the decision to switch from automatic to manual controls, if the computer is basically freezing while he’s barreling toward the surface of the moon.

That brings us to probably two of the most popular sayings to come out of the Apollo 11 moon landing.

The first of those happens right after Armstrong and Aldrin touched down to the surface.

“Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.”

The reason why that was the first thing he said after landing wasn’t to wax poetic or anything like that. It’s simply that the LM was named Eagle, kind of like the Command Module was named Columbia.

As a little bit of trivia, yes, that’s named after the bald eagle because that’s America’s national bird and by extension something used a lot for the mission’s branding. If you look for pictures of the Apollo 11 patch online, it has a bald eagle on it.

So, it makes sense why the ranking officer, who was the Commander Neil Armstrong, confirm to the command center that the LM has landed.

Oh, and the name Tranquility Base? Most people didn’t know that name until the moment he said it. You see, it was Armstrong and Aldrin who came up with the name for wherever they landed. As we just learned, they didn’t land in the exact place they originally calculated. But, that’s how that name came about.

If my memory serves correctly, I think it was A Man on the Moon, the book from Andrew Chaikin, that mentioned the two astronauts told the Charles Duke, the CAPCOM, or Capsule Communicator, back at Mission Control, so he wouldn’t be surprised when they said it over the radio.

But probably the most popular line from the Apollo 11 mission comes after Neil Armstrong opens the LM’s door and, after stepping off the ladder, says:

“That’s one small step for man…one giant leap for mankind.”

In the true story, Neil Armstrong says he came up with that after landing and before he stepped outside. Or maybe he came up with it beforehand, because apparently his brother Dean Armstrong claimed to have seen the speech before the flight which suggests it was prepared ahead of time.

Either way would make sense because something we don’t see in the movie is that in-between that time, the TV transmission started to broadcast the first step live to the world. So, he knew it would be an important step…and surely I can’t be the only person who knows there’s something important coming up and I’m thinking about what I’ll say in that moment for a long period of time before it?

Oh, and another fun bit of trivia, in 1999, at an anniversary gathering for the mission, Armstrong claimed what he actually said was, “That’s one small step for ‘a’ man. It’s just that people didn’t hear it.”

Can you hear it?

Let me play it again.

“That’s one small step for man…one giant leap for mankind.”

Did you hear the “a”? Armstrong admitted he couldn’t hear it in the recording, but he thought he said it. So, a test was done in 2006 and computers found he did say the “a” but the transmission quality made it hard to hear.

So, after all that time and effort we got to what you and I figured out just now!

Back to the last part of our event today, when we see Ryan Gosling’s version of Neil Armstrong dropping something on the moon.

Ironically, that brings us full circle because if the timeline doesn’t count as being the most inaccurate thing about this segment of the movie, then it’d be that last scene with the bracelet.

Of course, I was bawling my eyes out as the movie beautifully ties together something from earlier in the movie. We didn’t talk about it this week because it’s not from this week in history, but the movie shows Neil’s daughter, Karen, passing away as a child.

And that really did happen. In June of 1961, at the age of one, she was diagnosed with brain cancer. The Armstrongs tried everything for their daughter, and Neil was known to keep detailed notes on her treatments from doctors as he researched the best for his daughter. Karen quickly lost the ability to walk, talk, and Neil coped with the pain by throwing himself into work. Then, in January of 1962, Karen Anne Armstrong passed away at the age of two. As a father myself, I don’t know how any father can cope with that…what Neil did, was throw himself even further into his work.

And while I’m speculating here, but again, as a father, I feel safe in saying she’ll never leave his mind. Because she shouldn’t.

Was Karen on Neil’s mind when he finally managed to achieve the lifelong dream of becoming the first human in history to walk on the moon? I don’t know. But I’d be shocked if that wasn’t the case.

Does that mean Neil Armstrong dropped Karen’s bracelet on the moon to honor her memory? I’d like to think if I were in the same situation I would do the exact same thing.

But, we don’t really know if he did that back in 1969.

There has been a lot of speculation around this, it’s definitely not something the filmmakers made up for the movie. They just leaned into it for that scene, and I think it’s a perfect way to incorporate creative license into a movie.

What did Neil Armstrong have to say about the speculation?

Well, unlike the “one small step for ‘a’ man” quote that Armstrong was happy to talk about publicly, Neil hasn’t publicly confirmed anything about the bracelet.

And so, while there may be a bit of the filmmaker’s speculation thrown into way the movie ends, maybe I can throw a bit of my own speculation into the way I’ll wrap up this segment…because, if we take the facts we know from the true story and try to fill in whether or not the bracelet thing is a fact or fiction, what do we have?

Neil Armstrong basically had two missions:

1. Become the first human to walk on the moon
2. Find a cure for his daughter’s cancer

Doing two things no one in human history has ever done before.

So, I’m just guessing those two projects he ate, slept, breathed them. Even after Karen passed, as anyone who has dealt with guilt knows, that doesn’t mean you stop thinking about your lost loved ones. And maybe, just maybe, even though Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins, and everyone else at NASA, and around the world, shared in Neil Armstrong’s mission to walk on the moon…maybe Neil kept that other mission to himself.

Maybe at the completion of the mission he’d spent his life working toward, maybe Neil decided that’s the perfect time to complete his own, personal mission. To finally tell Karen goodbye, and return home for a new chapter.

It’s just a grieving father finally finding some peace, because sometimes the public doesn’t need to know. And sometimes that makes it impossible you and I to know every little detail. Because sometimes you can’t always know everything about the true story, you just have to believe that the truth is out there…

And I don’t know about you, but I’m okay with that.

For now, I’m happy to think that for Neil Armstrong, not one, but both of his life’s missions were accomplished this week in history.

July 27th, 1890. Auvers-sur-Oise, France.

Our next movie is 2018’s At Eternity’s Gate, and we’re starting about an hour and 34 minutes to see how it shows us the depiction of Vincent van Gogh being shot this week in history.

The movie fades up from black to show us a man’s hand clutching his belly. Small amounts of red blood are seeping through his fingers. Behind the man, we can see a blurry mix of trees with different shades of greens and yellows set against a light blue sky.

As the camera pans up, we can see this is Willem Dafoe’s character, Vincent van Gogh. He’s walking through the woods with a serious look on his face.

As he walks, we can hear his voiceover explaining what’s going on. He says he has a pain in his stomach. He was dressed like Buffalo Bill.

Then, the camera cuts to the scene he was describing. Willem Dafoe’s character is sitting now. All around him are deep, lush greens. There’s a grey building on either side of the camera’s frame with the green grass in the middle where he’s sitting almost like a natural courtyard. The buildings look like they might’ve been homes at one point, but they’re covered in a huge amount of ivy—which simultaneously makes the buildings look abandoned and unkept while also adding even more greenery to the scene, as if nature is reclaiming the buildings.

Sitting in the foreground is Willem Dafoe’s character, and he’s facing the scene in front of us with an easel and canvas. He’s painting it.

Two boys come running from the direction of one of the buildings. One of them calls to him.

They’re wearing hats, jackets, and as the camera cuts closer to one of the boys we can see he also has a holster with a pistol in it. That must be why we heard him say he was dressed like Buffalo Bill just a moment ago.

Wait…does that mean?

Just as we start to figure out the connection to the boy wearing a gun in his holster and the earlier visuals of the man clutching his stomach with the blood, back in the movie, we can see the boy pulling the pistol out and cocking it. He doesn’t point it directly at Willem Dafoe’s character, but there’s no sound anymore as the two boys struggle with the man…they all fall to the ground.

Just a few seconds later, the two boys get up off the man. The gun is casually being handled as if it were a toy gun.

Then, we see Willem Dafoe’s character walking in the woods again.

A split-second cut back to the struggle and then…a gunshot.

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

Leading into our fact-check of the event from At Eternity’s Gate, I just wanted to clarify that technically Van Gogh didn’t die this week in history…he was shot on July 27^th, but didn’t succumb to his wounds until two days later—July 29^th, so next Monday.

And the way the movie depicts this event happening is…well, we don’t know if it’s entirely true. You see, the exact nature of how Van Gogh died is something that has been debated among historians ever since it happened.

Tell you what, let’s throw in a little clip from episode #193 of Based on a True Story here because in that episode I had a chat with Steven Naifeh, co-author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography called Van Gogh: The Life.

Oh, and you’ll hear Steven mention Schnabel—he’s talking about Julian Schnabel, the director of At Eternity’s Gate who also co-wrote the film. So, here is what Steven had to say about how well the movie At Eternity’s Gate did in showing the scene we’re talking about today.

So, in a nutshell, it sounds like what we saw in the movie was probably based on the bestselling book called Van Gogh: The Life from co-authors Gregory White Smith and Steven Naifeh, who you just heard from. And that’s why Steven referred to it as “our” book in the clip you just heard.

Which makes sense why Willem Dafoe would read the definitive book on Van Gogh to prepare for portraying Van Gogh in the movie.

So, if you’re in the mood for some art history this week, you’ll find a link in the show notes to find At Eternity’s Gate, and while you’re in the show notes—check out the rest of my interview with Steven Naifeh about the true story behind the movie.

Let’s move onto our next segment now, where we learn about historical figures from the movies that were born this week in history.

On July 24th, 1897, Amelia Mary Earhart was born in Atchison, Kansas. She was world famous as a record-setting aviator, including becoming the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. Or maybe you’ve seen recent news just this year about finding her long-lost plane…well, she’s also famous for disappearing in an attempt to become the first woman to circumnavigate the globe in 1937. You can see her story on screen in the 2009 movie simply called Amelia where she’s played by Hilary Swank.

On July 26th, 1875, Carl Gustav Jung was born in Switzerland. He was a psychiatrist, psychotherapist, and psychologist who is perhaps best known as the founder of analytical psychology, or as a collaborator of Sigmund Freud. Jung was played by Michael Fassbender in the 2011 film called A Dangerous Mind.

On July 27th, 1940, Bugs Bunny made his first appearance in a Warner Bros. animation called Wild Hare. He was created by animators Tex Avery and Bob Givens, and that’s about as close to a birthday as you can get for a cartoon character, so let’s move onto our segment about ‘based on a true story’ movies released this week in history.

Two years ago today, on July 22^nd, 2022, a movie called Shamshera released.

Since Shamshera is not a box office blockbuster here in the United States where I’m at,  I’m going to go out on a limb and say there’s a good chance you haven’t seen it yet—hence why it’s an option to think about this week!

So, I won’t give too many spoilers here, but in a nutshell, it’s a movie about the Khameran tribe during the late 1800s when the British ruled India. Shamshera is the main character’s name, and throughout the movie he goes from a Khameran tribesman facing discrimination from the Kaza people who, in turn, have the backing of the British.

This leads to fighting between the Khameran and the British authorities in power, so Shamshera rebels against British oppression by leading the Khameran people out from under their shadow.

So, how much of Shamshera is based on a true story?

It’s one of those movies that has fictional characters in a fictional story set during a historical time period.

In other words, the backdrop of British rule in India in the mid-to-late 1800s was true. Shamshera was not a real person, though, and the Khameran tribe was completely fictional. Their enemies, the people of Kaza, were kind of real? Not really in the way the movie portrays them at all, but a “Kaza” is a jurisdiction in the Ottoman Empire.

Even today, there are kazas in regions like Israel and Palestine…but it’s not like it was an ancient empire who sided with the British against the Khameran tribe like we see in the movie.

But, if you’re feeling like a historical action film, hop in the show notes to find where you can watch Shamshera or any of the movies from this week in history

July 1st, 1916. Northern France.

The sky is an eerie yellow-orange color. Silhouetted against the eerie light in the foreground we can see two soldiers wearing British-style helmets. While they face the left side of the camera’s frame, another soldier walks on the right side of the frame in the trenches. Also, on the right side we can see posts with barbed wire strung between them.

The camera cuts to a soldier sitting in one of the trenches. Text on the screen tells us it’s 5:30 AM. The soldier is smoking a cigarette as he writes something down, presumably a letter. When the camera angle cuts closer, we can see his face a little better. This is Daniel Craig’s character, Sgt. Telford Winter. After examining the letter one last time, Winter folds it up and puts it into an envelope. Then, he picks up his rifle and puts on his helmet.

He walks down the trench a little way and says “good morning” to some other soldiers. It’s still very dark, so it’s hard to see how many soldiers are there, but I can count at least five or six at any one time on screen. It makes for what looks like cramped quarters in the trenches.

A few minutes further into the movie, it’s brighter outside now as the sun seems to have risen further. The battle is about to begin.

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

That is how the 1999 movie called The Trench shows an event that happened this week in history…and right up front it’s helpful to know this movie is trying to capture the essence of what it was like for the British soldiers leading up to the battle. So, it’s not going to be entirely accurate to everything that happened or even the soldiers who were there. For example, I couldn’t find anything in my research to suggest Daniel Craig’s character, Sgt. Winter, was based on a specific soldier.

With that said, though, the movie is correct to show the Battle of the Somme starting this week in history on July 1^st, 1916. The name coming from the Somme River in Northern France.

By the end of July 1^st, the British Army alone suffered 57,000 casualties marking the bloodiest day in its history. The battle lasted for 140 days, from July 1^st to November 18^th, 1916, and in that time over three million soldiers fought.

The British suffered 420,000 casualties, the French around 200,000, and the Germans lost at least 450,000 men. So, with over a million men killed or wounded, the Battle of the Somme went down as one of the deadliest battles in human history.

Some people refer to the Battle of the Somme as the start of modern warfare because it was during this battle that the first tanks were used when the British sent them into action on September 15^th, 1916. It was also the first time a creeping barrage was used in battle. That’s when artillery continues to move forward to lay cover for infantry close behind it.

Well, I guess, technically that wasn’t the first time—the Bulgarians used a creeping barrage during the siege of Adrianople in March of 1913, but with the start of World War I in 1914, most of the rest of the world had already forgotten about that event and in a way it was re-invented at the Battle of the Somme.

If you want to watch the depiction on screen, check out the 1999 movie called The Trench. Most of the movie is set this week in history as it starts on June 29^th, 1916, but the beginning of July 1^st starts at an hour, eight minutes and 47 seconds into the film.

July 3rd, 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.

The true story behind this week’s event depicted in the movie 1776

That is how the movie 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 4th, 1939. New York, New York.

Our next movie is in black and white. In the foreground, a man sits in front of a microphone doing something a lot like what I’m doing right now: Describing what he sees happening in front of him.

Except he’s not describing a movie like I am. On the other side of the table with his microphone we can see some netting, and beyond that a huge baseball stadium. He’s the radio announcer for the game.

He tells us that 62,000 people have jammed into Yankee Stadium this afternoon to pay tribute to the man who gave his all to the team for the past 16 years.

The camera cuts a little closer a marching band in uniform on the field, and it’s obvious there’s not an empty seat in the house. There are shots of fans enjoying the performance on the field as the radio announcer continues to talk about the man known as Larruping Lou and the Iron Man playing 2,130 consecutive games over those 16 years.

Now, he says, everyone is here to say farewell to Lou Gehrig—the pride of the Yankees.

In the tunnel, Gary Cooper’s version of Gehrig is wearing a Yankees uniform. By his side is his wife, Eleanor Gehrig. She’s played by Teresa Wright in the film. Slowly, they walk hand-in-hand, down the stairs. Lou stops part-way down and looks back at Teresa, who smiles at her husband.

Then, he lets go of her hand and continues down the dark tunnel to the light on the other side and out onto the field. The camera cuts back to Eleanor so we can’t see Lou stepping onto the field, but we can hear the crowd erupting into cheers. We can only assume they’re cheering at the sight of Lou on the field.

Instead of seeing him, though, we can see tears in Eleanor’s eyes for a moment before bursting into a full sob. She continues crying until the camera cuts back to the field.

Now we can see two rows of uniformed baseball players. On the right side of the frame are players in Yankee pinstripes. On the left side is a row of players with a “W” on their arm. All of them have their hats off, and they’re all looking at home plate in the center of the frame.

There, on the far side of where the camera is angled, we can see more people near home plate. Some are wearing business suits. There’s a podium with a banner of stars and stripes by the plate. And then there’s Lou Gehrig, wearing #4 on the back of his Yankees uniform.

Although it’s not visible in the movie, based on how this scene is framed it looks like the camera is on the pitcher’s mound with Gehrig and the other men by home plate and both teams lining the space from the mound to home.

The radio announcer continues to describe what’s going on as he says the Yankee’s manager Joe McCarthy hands Lou Gehrig a plaque. And then, just as he describes, on the screen in the movie we can see actor Harry Harvey’s version of Yankee manager Joe McCarthy hand Gary Cooper’s version of Lou Gehrig a plaque. Most of the writing is too small to read, but the headline at the top clearly says “Don’t Quit” in all caps.

McCarthy puts the plaque down, now, and turns to be handed a trophy. He then gives the trophy to Gehrig. It’s from his teammates on the Yankees, as a token of their appreciation for him. As Gehrig holds the trophy, the camera cuts back to the angle with the rows of players and we can see all of them start clapping for Gehrig. In the stands, everyone follows the players and they give Gehrig a standing ovation.

Then, a man in a suit identified by the radio announcer as New York City Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia steps up to the podium with his back to the camera but facing toward the crowd behind home plate. We can’t hear what he’s saying, but he seems to say something briefly before turning to Gehrig and giving him a hearty handshake before making way for yet another man in a suit who steps up to the podium.

The radio announcer tells us this is the Postmaster General of the United States, Tim Farley. And again, he seems to say something to the crowd that we can’t hear. And again, only a few seconds later, he turns to shake Gehrig’s hand before leaving the podium for the next person.

Wearing a white suit, that person is identified by the announcer as none other than the Sultan of Swat: Babe Ruth. After saying something into the mic, he walks over to Gehrig to give him a handshake. This time the movie cuts up close to show Babe Ruth putting his arm around Lou Gehrig. After a moment, Ruth lets go of Gehrig and walks off.

Yankees Manager Joe McCarthy steps up to the podium now. Then, he gives Gehrig another handshake and walks with him to the podium. Finally, it’s Lou Gehrig’s turn to address the crowd.

As Gehrig steps up, the crowd goes crazy. They had sat back down, but now again everyone gives him another standing ovation. At the microphones, Gehrig takes in some deep breaths with his eyes cast down to the ground. Then he looks up as if to speak, but the crowd is still cheering, hooping, and hollering. He smiles a little bit as he looks around.

Then, he opens his mouth, and the crowd starts to quiet.

By the time Gary Cooper’s version of Lou Gehrig speaks, the crowd is hushed so they can hear what he has to say.

“I have been walking on ball fields for 16 years, and I have never received anything but kindness and encouragement from you fans. I have had the great honor to have played with these great veteran ballplayers on my left, Murderer’s Row, our championship team of 1927. I have had the further honor of living with and playing with these men on my right, the Bronx Bombers, the Yankees of today. I have been given fame and undeserved praise by the boys up there behind the wire in the press box. I have worked under the two greatest managers of all time, Miller Huggins and Joe McCarthy. I have a mother and father who fought to give me health and a solid background in my youth.”

The camera cuts to show an older man and woman, who we can assume are his mother and father. She puts a handkerchief to her face in a move that looks as if she’s dabbing away tears. Back on the field, Gehrig continues his speech. And now we can see what looks like tears starting to grow in his eyes, too.

“I have a wife, a companion for life…”

Again, the camera cuts away, this time to Eleanor who is still in the same place in the tunnel where Lou left her. She’s still crying, but a slight smile crosses her face when he talks about her.

“…who has shown me more courage than I ever knew. People all say that I have had a bad break. But today…today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.”

With that, Gehrig covers his mouth in thought for a brief moment before turning away from the microphones and the crowd goes wild. He walks past Babe Ruth, Joe McCarthy, and the rest of the Yankees. The crowd continues to cheer as he walks toward the third base dugout.

When he reaches the dugout, the movie cuts closer as he walks down the steps and back into the tunnel he came from a few minutes earlier. As Gehrig disappears out of the sunlight and into the shadows of the dark tunnel, in the background we can hear the umpire yelling, “Play ball!”

The true story behind this week’s event depicted in the movie The Pride of the Yankees

That is how the 1942 movie called The Pride of the Yankees shows an event that happened this week in history: Lou Gehrig’s final public appearance at Yankee Stadium just a few years before the movie on July 4th, 1939.

If you’re a baseball fan, you know who he was…if you’re not a baseball fan, Lou Gehrig was one of the greatest players in Major League Baseball history.

Gehrig’s final appearance at Yankee Stadium, however, wasn’t to play a baseball game. It was to say goodbye.

Let’s get some more historical context that we don’t see in the movie’s segment I just described. To do that, we’ll go back about a year earlier to the Yankee’s 1938 season.

As that season progressed, Gehrig started noticing more and more that something was off. He couldn’t figure out exactly what it was, but his hands would ache, and he just couldn’t hit as well as he used to. So, he adjusted his swing, his stance, and the weight of his bat while his manager moved him in the batting order to try to get him out of his slumps throughout the season.

Of course, his slumps didn’t change that he was still Lou Gehrig. Even with signs of an issue, he worked hard to overcome it. In the 1938 season, Lou Gehrig hit .295 with 29 homers and 113 RBIs. So, he still had a great year.

But then, during the offseason, things didn’t get better. They got worse. Much worse. Gehrig’s balance was off. He wouldn’t be able to grasp things as well.

In the movie, we see Teresa Wright’s character, Eleanor Gehrig. And that really was Lou Gehrig’s wife’s name.

And in the true story, during the offseason as her husband was more clumsy than usual by dropping items or tripping over curbs, she started to be worried it might be something more. Maybe a brain tumor?

So, she and Lou went to the doctor. The diagnosis was a bad gallbladder, and he put Lou on a diet of fruits and veggies.

Even before the 1939 season started, during spring training, things had degraded enough to be noticeable to some of Gehrig’s teammates. They could tell he wasn’t right. But, he’s still Lou Gehrig…so, of course, when the 1939 season officially started, he was in the lineup just like he was in every game.

But he started in a bad slump. A career .340 hitter, Gehrig started the 1939 season hitting only .143. Not only that, but Gehrig could tell things hadn’t gotten better.

So, Gehrig asked to be taken out of the lineup. He did that on May 2nd, 1939, meaning his last game on April 30th was officially the end of his consecutive game streak playing in 2,130 games over 14 years. We learned more about that on episode #316 of Based on a True Story for the week that happened.

After taking himself out of the lineup, for the rest of May he still suited up and traveled with the team even though he didn’t play. In June, he tried playing again in a minor league exhibition game. He didn’t last the whole game, though, so he and Eleanor went back to the doctors to get more answers. Within a few weeks, those doctors diagnosed him with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or ALS…or, as it’s most commonly known today, “Lou Gehrig’s Disease.”

Taking a step back for how fast a lot of this happened for the public, the 1939 season started in April as it did for the past 14 years with Gehrig continuing his consecutive games streak. On June 21st, 1939, the world found out Gehrig was officially retiring from baseball.

And then, on July 4th, 1939, the Yankees were playing a double-header against the Washington Senators. Between the two games, they held a special ceremony they simply called Lou Gehrig Appreciation Day. The movie was correct to show a few people addressing the sold-out crowd, including the mayor of New York City, Fiorello LaGuardia, as well as the Postmaster General, a man named James Farley.

The movie was also correct to show bands playing as they march around the field. It was also correct to show the framed sign given to Gehrig with the headline “Don’t Quit.” I’ll include a link in the show notes for some actual footage from the event where you can see those things.

Something we don’t really see in the movie, though, is that after others expressed their appreciation for Gehrig, the man himself almost didn’t speak to the crowd. The emcee for the event, reporter Sid Mercer, announced Gehrig, but he didn’t step up to the mics. Instead, he whispered something into Mercer’s ear who, in turn, told the crowd that Gehrig was too moved to speak but he asked Mercer to thank everyone.

Imagine being in a stadium packed with people–the movie mentions 62,000 people, but in the true story it was actually 61,808. I guess we can give it to the movie, though, haha! But all those people started chanting, “We want Gehrig!”

So, Gehrig stepped up to the mics and gave what many people consider to be one of the most famous speeches in sports history. Let me set this up real quick…because you’re going to hear Lou’s voice and my voice…because, unfortunately, a recording of the whole speech doesn’t exist.

But we do have part of it; the rest of it has been filled in by historians through newspaper reports from the day. And you’ll notice in the movie they actually do the “luckiest man on the face of the earth” at the end, but in the real speech you’ll notice that’s how he starts the speech…so, let’s start with Lou’s actual audio from July 4th, 1939:

Fans, for the past two weeks, you’ve been reading about a bad break.

[pause]

Today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.

I have been in ballparks for 17 years and have never received anything but kindness and encouragement from you fans.

When you look around, wouldn’t you consider it a privilege to associate yourself with such fine-looking men as are standing in uniform in this ballpark today?

Sure, I’m lucky.

Who wouldn’t consider it an honor to have known Jacob Ruppert? Also, the builder of baseball’s greatest empire, Ed Barrow? To have spent six years with that wonderful little fellow, Miller Huggins? Then to have spent the next nine years with that outstanding leader, that smart student of psychology, the best manager in baseball today, Joe McCarthy? Sure, I’m lucky.

When the New York Giants, a team you would give your right arm to beat, and vice versa, sends you a gift—that’s something. When everybody down to the groundskeepers and those boys in white coats remember you with trophies—that’s something. When you have a wonderful mother-in-law who takes sides with you in squabbles with her own daughter—that’s something. When you have a father and a mother who work all their lives so you can have an education and build your body—it’s a blessing. When you have a wife who has been a tower of strength and shown more courage than you dreamed existed—that’s the finest I know.

So I close in saying that I might have been given a bad break, but I’ve got an awful lot to live for. — Thank you.

In the movie, we see Babe Ruth at the ceremony. And that is very true. Not only was Babe Ruth at Lou Gehrig Appreciation day in 1939, but the real Babe Ruth played himself in the 1942 movie that re-enacted the event from this week in history.

If you want to watch that, hop into the show notes to find where you can watch The Pride of the Yankees. We started our segment from this week in history about two hours into the movie.

July 6th, 1917. Aqaba, Jordan.

A bell rings, 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 passed the tents to the city behind it—pushing the defenders back toward the water just beyond the city.

The true story behind this week’s event depicted in the movie Lawrence of Arabia

That depiction 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.

STOPPED RECORDING HERE

July 7th, 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 in 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.”

The true story behind this week’s event depicted in the TV series Project Blue Book

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

Let’s start with where this scene comes from, it’s from the first episode of season two in the History Channel’s TV series called Project Blue Book.

Dr. J. Allen Hynek was a real person who really was in charge of Project Blue Book—that’s what the U.S. Air Force called their official investigation into UFOs. The character of Captain Quinn, though, is a fictional character.

And I’ll admit up front this sequence is 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.

Also, the date the TV show just mentioned is right, although you’ll notice that the series mentioned that’s when it was reported in the press…not when it actually happened.

That’s a bit of a loaded phrase, isn’t it? I mean, when it comes to the topic of a UFO crash…did it actually happen at all? Plenty of folks will disregard it simply because of the topic.

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 what supposedly happened around 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 “Mac” Brazel went into town, 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 some of 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 Forces 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’ve covered Project Blue Book multiple times from different angles, and you can find them all at basedonatruestorypodcast.com/projectbluebook.

Let’s move onto our next segment now, where we learn about historical figures from the movies that were born this week in history…and we had five events in this week’s supersize episode, so why not have five historical birthdays, too?

On July 1st, 1899, Henry Walton Jones, Jr. was born in Princeton, New Jersey. He’s best known by his nickname: Indiana Jones. Haha! Okay, so he’s obviously not a historical figure…but if you’re interested in historical movies, I’m sure you know who he is so I couldn’t help but include him. Do you have a favorite Indiana Jones movie? It’s Last Crusade for me, but I was surprisingly impressed with the latest movie that just came out last year—Dial of Destiny. Did you see that one yet? Hop into the Based on a True Story Discord and let’s chat about it!

Also on July 1st, but in 1921, Seretse Khama was born in Serowe, Botswana. He was a politician who served as the first president of Botswana and the story of his controversial marriage was told in the 2016 film A United Kingdom where Seretse was played by David Oyelowo. We covered that movie back on episode #238 of Based on a True Story.

On July 5th, 1810, Phineas Taylor Barnum was born in Bethel, Connecticut. He’s best known by his initials, P.T. Barnum, and as the man who founded the Barnum & Bailey Circus with James Anthony Bailey. Barnum was played by Hugh Jackman in the 2017 movie The Greatest Showman and we covered the true story behind that back on episode #123.

Oh, and as a fun little side note, even though Bailey from Barnum & Bailey never made it into The Greatest Showman movie, the real James Anthony Bailey was also born this week in history, on July 4th, 1847, in Detroit Michigan.

On July 6th, 1747, John Paul Jones was born in Scotland. Even though he wasn’t born in America, he emigrated to America and became probably the most well-known naval commander for the United States in the American Revolutionary War. John Paul Jones became famous throughout history for the quote, “I have not yet begun to fight!” when he was asked about surrendering. Although, there’s plenty of debate about whether or not he really said that exact line. But, he was played by Robert Stack in a 1959 biographical film simply called John Paul Jones. And yes, that Robert Stack—the same guy who hosted the popular TV show Unsolved Mysteries.

On July 7th, 1906, Leroy Robert Paige was born in Mobile, Alabama. He’s best known by his nickname, “Satchel.” Satchel Paige was a Hall of Fame baseball player whose career spanned 50 years. He debuted in Major League Baseball with the Cleveland Indians in 1948 at the age of 42. To this day, that is the oldest debut for any player in Major League Baseball. He played in the Majors until he was 59, another record that stands to this day. His story was told in the biopic from 1981 called Don’t Look Back: The Story of Leroy ‘Satchel’ Paige with Louis Gossett Jr. playing the lead role of Satchel Paige.

Onto our segment about ‘based on a true story’ movies, since we’re doing a supersize episode this week, I’ve got a couple movies: One that was released in the past, and one that is being released this week!

Let’s start by going back to 15 years ago this week when Public Enemies was released on July 1^st, 2009.

Directed by Michael Mann, Public Enemies stars Johnny Depp and Christian Bale. The storyline revolves around Depp’s character, John Dillinger, who really was a notorious bank robber in the 1930s who many have compared to a Robin Hood-type character. On the other side, though, is Melvin Purvis, an FBI agent played by Christian Bale who is leading the hunt to track down Dillinger.

According to the movie, the FBI is relatively new, so a lot of the storyline around the hunt for Dillinger shows things we might consider normal today, but at the time were state-of-the-art techniques such as fingerprinting and tapping telephone lines.

The movie was right about that, although as you might expect there’s more to the true story.

Let’s start with Dillinger’s reputation as a bank robber in the 1930s.

To be more specific, the Dillinger’s crime spree was less than a year between September 1933 and July 1934. In that time, they killed 10 people, wounded seven others, organized three jail breaks, and robbed at least a dozen different banks in that time. Some have thought perhaps as many as 24 banks, but we know of 12 for sure. And it’s said that Dillinger got away with about $11 million that he hid…and maybe it’s still out there waiting for a treasure hunter to find it. Check out the TV show Expedition Unknown, season 9, episode 1 for more about the search for Dillinger’s treasure.

For today’s movie, though, Public Enemies was correct to have an FBI agent named Melvin Purvis in charge of taking down John Dillinger and his gang. Purvis had been a field agent at FBI offices in Birmingham, Oklahoma City, and Cincinnati, before being assigned to the Chicago office and tasked with leading the takedown of Dillinger.

Although the movie mostly shows Purvis taking the lead, another FBI agent named Samuel Cowley was also assigned to leading the takedown of Dillinger. In the movie, Cowley is played by Richard Short and has a smaller role than he did in the true story.

According to the FBI’s official documentation on the case, the way it worked was Agent Cowley was sent from Washington by J. Edgar Hoover himself to head up the investigation against Dillinger. He was sent to where Dillinger’s crimes were being committed, around the Chicago area. Agent Purvis was in charge of the Chicago office, so that’s how Cowley and Purvis started working together to take down Dillinger.

Oh, and while some have romanticized Dillinger as a form of Robin Hood-type character, in the true story that’s simply not the case. In the movie we’re talking about today, Dillinger never gave of the money he stole away…and that is true.

I’ll include a link in the show notes to a list of 10 myths about Dillinger on the FBI’s website, and #10 directly addresses the idea of Dillinger being a Robin Hood-type character.

Here’s what they had to say:

Dillinger certainly had charm and charisma, but he was no champion of the poor or harmless thief—he was a hardened and vicious criminal. Dillinger stormed police stations in search of weapons and bulletproof vests. He robbed banks and stole cars. He shot at police officers (and may have killed one) and regularly used innocent bystanders as human shields to escape the law. Worse yet, he stood by as his ruthless gang members shot and killed people, including law enforcement officials. And what of his ill-gotten gains? They were used to line his own pockets and those of his partners in crime, not those of impoverished Americans in the midst of the Great Depression.

Speaking of being a bank robber, if we go back to the movie, we see Dillinger along with a couple other gangsters named Tommy Carroll and “Baby Face” Nelson rob a bank in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. When they plan the robbery, they anticipate coming away with $800,000.

If we’re to believe the movie’s version of history, during the robbery, both Dillinger and Carroll are shot. Carroll is left behind and arrested while Dillinger manages to escape, but quickly finds out they only got about $46,000—not nearly what they were expected.

And that really did happen, although I found some conflicting sources on whether or not Dillinger’s gang expected to get away with $800,000.

But there’s a lot of details we don’t see in the movie, too, here’s what we do know about that particular bank robbery.

On the corner of Ninth and Main in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, sat the Security National Bank. At about 10:00 AM on the morning of Tuesday, March 6^th, 1934, a green Packard car pulled up to the bank. There were six men in the car.

When they got to the bank, four of the men got out and went inside. Two others stayed with the car. Inside the bank, one of the men issued an order saying, “This is a holdup; lie down.” The 30 or so people in the bank did as they were told, although someone managed to hit the alarm first. In 1934, Sioux Falls had about 26,000 residents, so it didn’t take long for word to spread of a bank robbery in progress.

As a crowd gathered outside, the two guys with the car periodically shot their Thompson machine guns into the air to keep the crowd away. Of course, it no doubt also drew attention for those who hadn’t yet heard about the robbery. One of those people happened to be an off-duty cop by the name of Keith Hale. When he came to investigate the sound of gunshots, one of the robbers inside saw him and opened fire through the front window, injuring Hale.

The robbers exited the bank, forcing everyone from inside the bank outside with them to help give them cover as they got into the car. Then, to protect themselves from the police shooting at them, the robbers forced five bank employees to ride along with them on the car’s running boards as they made their escape. They released the hostages before leaving town.

While this wasn’t the only bank robbery for the Dillinger gang, it was one that really drew the attention of law enforcement because Dillinger himself had escaped from jail just three days beforehand—on March 3rd—so it was a busy week for Dillinger that really pressed on law enforcement to bring him in.

Back in the movie’s timeline, the storyline comes to an end as Dillinger is shot by Purvis and other FBI agents in an ambush, they set up for him at a brothel. One of the agents named Charles Winstead manages to hear Dillinger’s last words. Winstead is played by Stephen Lang in the movie. He goes to visit Dillinger’s love interest in the movie, Marion Cotillard’s character, a woman named Billie Frechette. She’s in prison when Dillinger is shot, and she’s moved to tears when Winstead tells her Dillinger’s last words were: “Tell Billie for me, ‘Bye, bye, Blackbird.’”

Were those really John Dillinger’s final words? To be honest, we don’t know.

Officially, no, Dillinger had no last words as far as any official reports go. That doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of theories around what his final words might’ve been.

What is true, though, is the character of Billie Frechette being Dillinger’s girlfriend. She was arrested by the FBI in April of 1934 when she visited a friend in Chicago. She was charged with harboring a fugitive.

So, it is true that she was locked up near the end of the story.

The hunt for Dillinger continued, though, and it was a lot like the movie shows, an ambush at the end. In the movie, the woman who helps law enforcement is named Anna Sage. She’s played by Branka Katic in the movie. In the true story, Anna Sage’s real name was Ana Cumpanas—although she called herself Anna Sage, probably because it’s easier to pronounce for Americans like me.

The real Ana came from Romania and was in the process of being deported thanks in no small part to her job at the brothel. She met with Agents Cowley and Purvis, who promised to put in a good word for her with the government agency in charge of the deportation—the Department of Labor at that time.

So, she agreed to help. She told the agents one of her friends, a woman named Polly Hamilton, was going to see a movie with Dillinger the next evening. The next day, she confirmed the plans with agents and the ambush was a “go” for that evening: Sunday, July 22^nd, 1934.

At about 8:30 PM, Anna Sage, Polly Hamilton, and John Dillinger showed up at the Biograph Theater on Lincoln Avenue in Chicago. After the movie, which was a Clark Gable film called “Manhattan Melodrama,” Dillinger and the two women emerged from the theater. Here is the official FBI explanation of what happened next:

At 10:30 p.m., Dillinger, with his two female companions on either side, walked out of the theater and turned to his left. As they walked past the doorway in which Purvis was standing, Purvis lit a cigar as a signal for the other men to close in.

Dillinger quickly realized what was happening and acted by instinct. He grabbed a pistol from his right trouser pocket as he ran toward the alley.

Five shots were fired from the guns of three FBI agents. Three of the shots hit Dillinger, and he fell face down on the pavement.

At 10:50 p.m. on July 22, 1934, John Dillinger was pronounced dead in a little room in the Alexian Brothers Hospital.

The agents who fired at Dillinger were Charles B. Winstead, Clarence O. Hurt, and Herman E. Hollis. Each man was commended by J. Edgar Hoover for fearlessness and courageous action. None of them ever said who actually killed Dillinger.

If you want to watch the movie released this week in history, you’ll find a link in the show notes for where to find 2009’s Public Enemies on streaming services.

Oh! And that reminds me, as a quick bit of trivia for you, the FBI labeled John Dillinger as “Public Enemy #1” in 1934, so a lot of people think that means Dillinger was #1 on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list, but that’s not true…John Dillinger was never on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted because that list didn’t even exist until 1950. Although I guess if we’re being technical, the FBI itself didn’t exist in 1934…that name came about in 1935, so during the time of John Dillinger it was simply the Bureau of Investigation or BOI.

With that said, though, if the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted existed back in when Dillinger was alive, he probably would’ve been on it.

So, that’s Public Enemies.

Now, let’s fast forward to this week, because there’s another “based on a true story” movie coming out. It’s called Boneyard, and it’s directed by Asif Akbar, starring Mel Gibson and Curtis Jackson—better known as 50 Cent. If you haven’t heard of it, that’s not too surprising, it looks to be a low budget film and according to my research, it looks like it’ll be releasing in select theaters and straight to video on demand on July 2^nd.

But as it is a new movie, I haven’t seen it yet—and I’m guessing you haven’t seen it yet. So, let’s learn a little more about the true story so you can be the one who knows how much of the movie really happened if you see it this week.

The one-sentence synopsis of Boneyard they have listed on IMDb says it is, “Inspired by the true events of a serial killer that may still be out there today.”

The movie is a true crime story that starts when they discover the remains of 11 women and girls in the New Mexico desert. Enter Mel Gibson’s character, an FBI agent named Agent Petrovick, and 50 Cent’s character, the Chief of Police in Albuquerque, New Mexico, who team up to try and identify the killer. Before long, they start to realize it’s likely the work of a single person: A serial killer.

So, what’s the true story?

The movie is based on what’s become known as the West Mesa Murders. And the movie’s IMDb synopsis is correct to say the serial killer might still be out there—as of this recording, the West Mesa Murders are still unsolved.

West Mesa is the name of the mesa—that’s the raised landmass to the west of Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Well, that’s where the true story starts back on February 2^nd, 2009, when a woman named Christine Ross was taking her dog for a walk. On that walk, her dog found a bone. As you might imagine, she was surprised by that. She thought maybe it was a human bone, but maybe not…she wasn’t sure. So, she took a photo of it and sent it to her sister, an RN, who confirmed it was a human bone.

The police were called, and in the weeks that followed, they unearthed bones from 11 women and girls, one of whom was pregnant. Their ages ranged from 15 to 32 years old. They were able to determine the identity of the women and found most of them were sex workers or runaways.

Sadly, when they disappeared, they weren’t reported missing.

Piecing together information from interviewing hundreds of people who knew or at least knew of the victims, police were able to piece together a rough timeline between 2001 and 2005 as when the murders took place. The bodies were likely dumped in the West Mesa area because it was a remote area.

And it took years for them to be found, putting law enforcement way behind on unraveling the case. But that doesn’t mean there were no suspects. In fact, there were a number of suspects over the years. From pimps who knew some of the murdered women, to men with a history of violence against women, but there are probably two top suspects…and those two start with a guy named Lorenzo Montoya. He had a history of violence against sex workers, as well as his girlfriend. Some people also pointed out that he lived just a few miles from where the bodies were found; and his co-workers even said Montoya claimed to have killed women and buried them on the West Mesa.

Remember when I mentioned the police determined the timeline was between 2001 and 2005? Well, some have suggested perhaps they stopped because Lorenzo Montoya was killed in 2006. He didn’t die of natural causes, either. He had just finished strangling a sex worker to death when her boyfriend showed up and shot and killed Montoya.

Or maybe the guy who shot Montoya was her pimp. Or maybe he was both; the sources I found vary on his relation to her.

Would she have ended up on the West Mesa? We might not ever know.

The other top suspect came more recently, about ten years ago, in 2014, when another suspect named Joseph Blea came to the police’s attention…and before I go further, let me give a trigger warning for rape and sexual assault, skip ahead 30 seconds if you want to skip past that.

Blea was a rapist who targeted teenage girls in the 1980s and ‘90s, known for stealing their underwear. He wasn’t a suspect, though, until 2010 when a rape test kit was re-tested, DNA pointed to Blea, and although he lived with his wife and daughter, the police found underwear and jewelry not belonging to either of them in the house. The police thought perhaps they were trinkets from victims.

And then while Blea was in prison, it’s alleged that he admitted a connection to the West Mesa murder victims, saying he’d hired them for sex. Finally, police suspected Blea of killing another sex worker in 2015. When they had enough evidence against him, Blea was arrested and in June of 2015 he was sentenced in the ‘80s and ‘90s rape cases and sentenced to 36 years. Assuming Blea is still alive in 2051 when that sentence ends, he’ll be 94 years old.

Neither Blea nor Montoya were charged with anything related to the West Mesa Murders. As of this recording, officially, they’re still unsolved.

But, if you want to watch the movie version of this true crime investigation, hop in the show notes for a link to where you can find Boneyard!

And if you do give it a watch, chances are you’ll watch it before me, so let me know what you think of it and maybe give me your own historical letter grade for how well it told the true story!

April 9th, 1865. Appomattox County, Virginia.

We’re at a two-story brick building. The front porch has six columns with a wide staircase in the center. Although it’s a brick building, any wood on the porch, railings for the stairs and on the balcony above the porch all adds a white trim to the building.

On the porch, we can see a bunch of men in the Union’s dark blue uniforms. At the foot of the stairs is a single man wearing a gray Confederate uniform. He’s wearing a hat, sporting a white beard. Another Confederate soldier leads an elegant white horse and the officer gets on.

The camera cuts to the front of the building now where we can see Union General Ulysses S. Grant. He’s played by Jared Harris in the movie.

Grant stands at the top of the stairs, surrounded by six other soldiers in Union blue. He looks at the man on the horse: Christopher Boyer’s character, General Robert E. Lee.

The two foes look at each other in silence for a moment.

Then, Grant steps down from the front porch and walks over to General Lee’s horse. After a moment longer just looking at each other, General Grant takes off his hat. Back on the porch, the rest of the Union officers follow Grant’s lead. They remove their hats in a gesture that I can only assume is out of respect for General Lee.

Lee looks at the men for a moment. Then, tips his hat as his horse backs away. Turning around, two other Confederate soldiers on horseback follow Lee as they walk away from the building.

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

That portrayal comes from the 2012 movie called Lincoln and it depicts an event that happened this week in history: The surrender of Confederate General Robert E. Lee.

But in the true story, there was a battle that took place before the event we saw in the movie.

The building we see in the movie is near the Appomattox Court House and before surrendering, General Lee’s army of about 28,000 soldiers fought with General Grant’s armies. While a large number, some estimate only about 10,000 of them even had rifles. So, they weren’t well-equipped.

At the Appomattox train station, Lee was expecting a train with supplies. But, on April 8th, there was a battle at the station that saw the Union cavalry burning the supply train.

On the other side, the Union army had over 60,000 soldiers with much better supplies. They were closing in on General Lee’s soldiers.

In the early morning hours of April 9th, Lee’s chances of escaping were slim. But, he held on hope. Near the Appomattox Court House, Lee’s men battled with Union troops in what Lee hoped would be a thin line that he could get through easily. He’d hoped that once his men broke through Union lines, they could escape to North Carolina where they could resupply and continue fighting.

But, that was a lot of hoping. And they didn’t escape.

General Lee sent a note to General Grant to discuss surrender.

The actual meeting itself took place in the home of a man named Wilmer McLean.

While it’s impossible to know for sure what was on General Lee’s mind, some sources suggest he let his staff know he was wearing his finest uniform that day on the chance he might be taken prisoner. If that’s going to happen, he wanted to look his best. On the other hand, General Grant rode for miles around his armies to arrive at the meeting. His uniform was muddy compared to General Lee’s uniform.

Lee arrived at McLean’s home at about 1:00 PM. Grant arrived at about 1:30.

And at first, General Grant wasn’t really sure how to approach the topic of surrender—so they talked about the Mexican-American War for about 25 to 30 minutes or so.

That topic was brought up because it was the last time Grant and Lee met face-to-face. It was before the American Civil War, but it was a time when Lee and Grant were both in the United States Army. It was before Lee turned down President Lincoln’s offer to command the U.S. Army and instead resigned to take a commission from the Confederate Army.

Finally, General Lee suggested they change topics to the matter at hand: Surrender.

The basic terms of the surrender amounted to the Confederate soldiers being allowed to go home without being pursued or prosecuted as long as they didn’t take up arms again. Officers were allowed to keep their horses and side arms, which usually amounted to their sword. That was a move that many think was to help the surrender go over smoothly by avoiding embarrassment for the Confederate officers.

So, when Grant’s terms basically meant they could go home if they laid down their arms and stopped fighting, that was acceptable. At about 3:00 PM, the meeting was over. Grant made his way to the Appomattox Station where he sent a telegram to President Lincoln letting him know about Lee’s surrender.

While it wasn’t officially the end of the war, General Lee was the overall commander of the Confederate Army so when he surrendered it triggered more surrenders. It was, in effect, the beginning of the end of the Civil War.

If you want to watch the event that happened this week in history, check out the 2012 movie simply called Lincoln and the scene with General Lee surrendering takes place at about two hours, 13 minutes and five seconds into the film.

And if you want to learn more about the true story behind that movie, we covered that with Lincoln scholar Dr. Brian Dirck over on episode #170 of Based on a True Story.

April 13th, 1970. Houston, Texas.

The room we’re in has a row of green computer systems. Of course, they’re not the kind of computers you’d expect to see today—it’s 1970, after all. Most of the computers have operators sitting behind them. The operators all have headsets on. One of the men in the room is standing up as he gives orders to someone not in the room.

He says we’d like you to roll right to 0-6-0 and null your rates.

On the other end of the radio communication, Kevin Bacon’s version of Jack Swigert confirms the order: Roger that, rolling right to 0-6-0.

Back on Earth, another command gets issued: Oh, and go ahead and give your oxygen tanks a stir. Swigert confirms this order, too, and he reaches to the control panel for switches that say “O2 Fans.”

The camera zooms along some lines and electricity crackles. There’s an explosion and alarms start buzzing. Metal banging can be heard as Swigert and the two other men inside Apollo 13 look around. Back at the command center, the computers are flashing indicators. Some of the operators sit back with their hands raised.

“Whoa! Hey. What happened?”

They look around trying to figure out what just happened. The camera cuts to Tom Hanks’ character, Jim Lovell, who says, “Houston, we have a problem.”

The true story behind this week’s event depicted in the movie Apollo 13

That scene comes from the movie named after the spacecraft they were on: Apollo 13. The event it’s depicting is when the disaster started for the astronauts on board, which happened this week in history.

The movie’s portrayal of this event is pretty accurate, although I have to point out one thing that might spoil this scene for you: Jim Lovell’s now famous quote because of the movie wasn’t really: “Houston, we have a problem.”

The actual line was: “Houston, we’ve had a problem.”

Or, in context, here is the communication that took place between the ground and Apollo 13.

055:52:58 Capsule Communicator (CAP COMM)

13, we’ve got one more item for you, when you get a chance. We’d like you to stir up your cryo tanks. In addition, I have shaft and trunnion–

055:53:06 Command Module Pilot: John L. Swigert, Jr.

Okay.

055:53:07 Capsule Communicator (CAP COMM)

– for looking at the Comet Bennett, if you need it.

055:53:12 Command Module Pilot: John L. Swigert, Jr.

Okay. Stand by.

055:55:19 Lunar Module Pilot: Fred W. Haise, Jr.

Okay, Houston – –

055:55:20 Commander James A. Lovell, Jr.

I believe we’ve had a problem here.

055:55:28 Capsule Communicator (CAP COMM)

This is Houston. Say again, please.

055:55:35 Commander James A. Lovell, Jr.

Houston, we’ve had a problem. We’ve had a MAIN B BUS UNDERVOLT.

055:55:42 Capsule Communicator (CAP COMM)

Roger. MAIN B UNDERVOLT.

055:55:58 Capsule Communicator (CAP COMM)

Okay, stand by, 13. We’re looking at it.

055:56:10 Lunar Module Pilot: Fred W. Haise, Jr.

Okay. Right now, Houston, the voltage is – is looking good. And we had a pretty large bang associated with the CAUTION AND WARNING there. And as I recall, MAIN B was the one that had had an amp spike on it once before.

055:56:40 Capsule Communicator (CAP COMM)

Roger, Fred.

Part of the reason I wanted to include some of the transcript from NASA is to point out that even though the iconic “Houston, we have a problem” line wasn’t quite what was really said, the movie does a great job of depicting the event overall. We heard them ask to stir the tanks, then a problem happened soon after.

While they couldn’t have known it at the time, after they managed to make it safely home, a review board found fault with the testing of Teflon added to the oxygen tank. In a nutshell, the switches for the tank weren’t rated for enough volts and it seems the oxygen tank that blew up had undergone tests that could’ve detected the issue.

In tests, the Teflon insulation being used was damaged. So, when they stirred the tanks there was an electrical discharge through some cabling that set the tank on fire. One of the panels blew off the tank, damaging another of the oxygen tanks.

What came after that gripped the nation in a way that led to over 40 million Americans watching when Apollo 13 splashed down.

If you want to watch the event that happened this week in history, though, it starts at about 50 minutes and 30 seconds into the 1995 Apollo 13 movie. And we covered it in more depth on episode #15 of Based on a True Story.

April 14th, 1865. Washington, D.C.

It’s nighttime. Some men are looking at a nice house from behind some bushes. One of the men sneaks inside the home. There are a lot of people in there, but we can tell from how the man inside is sneaking around that he’s not supposed to be there.

Back outside, another of the men still with the horses looks around to make sure no one is noticing them. No one seems to.

One of the men knocks on a door. From inside, we can see a man lying on a bed. A woman sits next to the bed with a man in uniform standing nearby. The man on the bed clearly isn’t feeling well.

Downstairs, someone answers the man knocking at the door. He says he has a package for Secretary Seward.

Then the camera cuts to a playhouse. On stage, two actors are putting on a performance in front of a full audience. Another cut and we can see a young couple chatting, then kissing.

Back at the theater, a man sneaks into a doorway. He ties something to the door after entering it, then looking through a little round hole we can see a couple in the foreground and in the background are the actors on stage down below.

In another cut, we’re now with a man who is drinking. He nervously looks over his shoulder and notices a man in uniform there. He takes another shot, then rushes out of the building.

Meanwhile, back at the house, the man runs up a staircase. He takes aim at the guard sitting next to a door, but the pistol only clicks when he tries to shoot. He rushes the man, knocking him out before turning to a door the man was guarding.

Inside the door, we see the man in what looks like a neck brace sitting in bed with the woman next to him. The man bursts through, immediately being met by another guard who was inside the room. He stabs the guard before pushing the woman away and jumping on the man on the bed, stabbing him numerous times.

The woman runs to the window and starts yelling for help.

Next we’re back at the playhouse. The lines being said by the man and woman on stage doesn’t even really matter to us, the viewing audience at home, but the audience in the movie seems to like them as laughter ripples through the crowd.

The camera cuts to above the stage. A man sneaks into a private booth. While everyone is focusing on the play on stage, we can see a gun extending forward.

A gunshot.

People in the audience scream and a struggle ensues in the box above the stage.

All of a sudden, a man jumps down on stage as the audience tries to understand what’s happening.

The man on stage raises one hand and yells, “Sic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged!”

Then, he hobbles off the stage. In the alley, a horse is waiting. He hops on the horse and runs into the darkness of the night.

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

That depiction comes from the 2010 movie called The Conspirator and it’s showing an event that really did happen this week in history: The assassination of President Abraham Lincoln.

And just like the movie shows, President Lincoln wasn’t the only one attacked that night.

They believed President Lincoln was a greater tyrant than Julius Caesar and thought they’d be honored after killing Lincoln. But, killing Lincoln alone wasn’t enough to throw the government into turmoil.

The plan that night was to assassinate three people: President Lincoln, Vice President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State William Henry Seward.

All three were supposed to be killed at 10:15 PM on April 14th.

The man we see in the movie who is in his bed is Secretary of State William Henry Seward. And it is true that he was bedridden in his home when the assassination attempt took place. The woman by the bed was Seward’s daughter, Fanny, who was staying with him so he wouldn’t be alone. At 11 PM, his son would take a turn by their dad’s bed.

There were a couple soldiers there, too.

Just like we see in the movie, the man arrived at the door saying he was carrying a package. The movie doesn’t get too specific with it, but we know from history it was medicine. He said he was told to deliver it to Seward himself since no one else knew how to administer the medicine. But, one of Seward’s sons stopped him and said his dad was asleep and he’d take the medicine so as to not disturb him.

That’s when the intruder stopped trying to get into the room peacefully. He drew a revolver and shot at the son. The gun misfired, a lot like we see happen in the movie, and so the attacker used it as a club instead. He burst inside the room, knocking down the soldier inside the room first.

Then, he attacked Seward in bed, stabbing him with his large knife multiple times.

While they couldn’t know it that night, but Secretary of State Seward would end up surviving the attack. His neck and face bore the scars of his attack for the rest of his life.

Meanwhile, another attack on Vice President Andrew Johnson was underway. In the movie, that’s the guy we see drinking at the bar. And in the movie, we see him end up getting scared off and abandoning the assassination plan.

That is true.

The man who was supposed to assassinate Johnson ended up getting drunk instead.

Of course, we know the third assassination did go according to plan.

John Wilkes Booth was an actor who was known by people at the theater. After all, Booth himself had performed there. So, he was able to gain entrance to the president’s box rather easily since his presence wasn’t anything abnormal.

John Wilkes Booth snuck into the box at about 10:12 PM, raised his pistol to the back of Lincoln’s head and fired.

Hearing the shot, the other man in the box, Henry Rathbone, grabbed at Booth. But Booth sliced at Rathbone with his knife and jumped to the stage. That was about 15 feet, or 4.5 meters below the box where Booth jumped from. As he did, though, one of the spurs on his boots got caught up in the flag draped over the front of the president’s box.

So, he hit the stage hard, breaking one of his legs. Still, he got up and yelled the line we see in the movie: Sic semper tyrannis!

That’s Latin for “Thus always to tyrants,” something Booth believed Lincoln to be. Although he wasn’t killed immediately, President Lincoln was taken across the street to a boarding house that was away from the theater. That’s where he died in the morning hours of April 15th.

If you want to see the event that happened this week in history, though, check out the 2010 movie called The Conspirator. The planned assassinations start at about five minutes into the movie.

And if you want to learn more about the true story, we covered that movie with Lincoln scholar Dr. Brian Dirck over on episode #175.

April 14th, 1912. North Atlantic Ocean.

We’ve already done our three events this week, but there’s another major one that I have to include.

The camera is focused on a man wearing a cap. He’s blowing on his hands and rubbing them together to keep warm. Down below, he notices a man and a woman. They’re holding each other’s hand as they run and laugh together.

Meanwhile, two sailors smile as they see the couple down below. They turn around, continuing to chuckle as they look at the ocean before them. One of the men starts to look more closely at something in the distance. The camera zooms in on his face as the smile disappears and a concerned look replaces it.

All of a sudden, he reaches for the bell and starts ringing it. Below, the sound of the bell alerts other sailors. One of the lookouts calls down below. When the man on the other end picks up, he asks what they see.

The lookout yells, “Iceberg, right ahead!”

Down below, the sailor runs to the bridge and relays the news. In a flurry of activity, they try to turn the big ship while reversing the engines in an attempt to avoid a collision. Men all over the ship are doing their part to try and get the ship to respond to their commands as fast as possible.

From above, the lookouts can see the iceberg. It’s still straight ahead, nothing seems to be changing their course. After a few more moments, the flurry of activity finally starts to take its toll on the ship’s direction. Slowly, it starts turning.

For a moment, it looks like it might work.

But, they’re not turning fast enough. The ship scrapes by the iceberg, causing a rumble and horrible-sounding metallic scraping. We can see the inside of the hull being ripped open, allowing water to start flowing inside. In the engine room, water starts pouring in, causing massive amounts of steam from the fires lit to power the engines. It’s a race against time as the rooms are being shut off to prevent water from spreading. The men try to make it out before the rooms close. Some do, some don’t.

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

I’m sure you already know what movie that comes from: 1997’s blockbuster named after the ship that sank 108 years ago this week in history: Titanic.

The movie did a pretty good job of showing the event, although the young couple—Jack and Rose—were fictional characters of course, so they weren’t there.

At 11:40 PM on April 14th, a lookout by the name of Frederick Fleet spotted the iceberg. And just like we see in the movie, after alerting the crew about the iceberg, they tried to turn hard to starboard—or, a lefthand turn.

But, there just wasn’t enough time. 37 seconds passed between the time the lookout saw the iceberg to the moment it scraped the right side of RMS Titanic.

Within ten minutes, there was about 14 feet of water and rising inside the front of the ship where it was hit. At 12:00 AM on April 15th, the captain of the ship, Captain Edward Smith, got an assessment of the damage. That’s when they realized Titanic can only stay afloat for another two hours and Captain Smith ordered the women and children into the lifeboats first.

At 12:45, the first lifeboat was lowered into the water. There has been a lot of controversy around the lifeboats on Titanic because, for one, there weren’t enough of them for all the passengers. Secondly, the lifeboats that were there were being lowered into the water before they were even full.

There are reports of lifeboats being lowered with only 28 people when it could fit 65 people.

A little after 2:00 AM, the last lifeboat was lowered into the water. There were over 1,500 people still on the boat.

At 2:18 AM, the last radio message from Titanic was sent out just before she snapped in half, sinking at 2:20 AM. The first boat to arrive on location was almost a couple hours later at 4:10 AM when Carpathia arrived to look for survivors. After they were all picked up, at about 8:50 AM they made their way to New York.

Two days later, another ship arrived at the location where Titanic sank and started searching for bodies in the water. Then, on April 18th, Carpathia arrived in New York with 705 survivors of the 2,240 passengers and crew on board Titanic when it sank.

If you want to watch the event that happened this week in history, check out the James Cameron classic film Titanic. The iceberg sequence starts at about an hour and 37 minutes into the movie, and even though it carried over into the early morning hours of the 15^th—so just barely into next week—but there were multiple things that happened this week in history: For example, Titanic left Ireland this week in history as well.

We see that at about 26 minutes into the movie, that’s when Jack got onto the ship. Of course, that didn’t happen the way we see it in the movie since Jack wasn’t a real person, but the event we see happening took place on April 10th. So, if there’s a good week to watch that whole movie, this is it!

And if you want to learn more about the true story, we covered that movie way back on episode #35 of Based on a True Story.

November 13^th, 1974. Oklahoma.

We’re in a bedroom. The walls are empty, and light is streaming through a window covered by a Confederate battle flag. A man is in the bed, sleeping, but he’s quickly woken up by an alarm going off. As he rouses, we can see it’s Kurt Russell’s character, Drew Stephens.

A woman rushes into the room from the left side of the frame. This is Meryl Streep’s character, Karen Silkwood. Karen apologizes to Drew, saying she forgot to turn off the alarm. He doesn’t seem to care about that but can tell that Karen is already dressed in a leather jacket and black jeans. It looks like she’s about to leave. He just says that he thought she wasn’t going in—it seems like he already knows that she’s going into work.

Sitting on the end of the bed to put her boots on, she tells him that she has to go in.

He rolls over, burying his face in the pillow, and tells her to call in sick.

She says no, and he tries to get her to call in sick again. Again, she says she can’t call in sick. This time she gives a reason, though, because she has to get something from work. He keeps asking her questions as she puts her purse over her right shoulder and opens the door of the small apartment.

She closes the door behind her, walking down the stairs just outside the front door in a rush. By the time she reaches the bottom of the stairs, Drew comes through the door. Shirtless, he’s buttoning his jeans as he tells her not to get anything from the plant. She asks him to do her a favor and pick up Paul Stone and the guy from the New York Times at the airport if she gets hung up at the union meeting.

“Fuck no,” he says.

She pleads, saying she doesn’t know how long the meeting will go tonight. He’s defiant, saying he doesn’t want her doing that. But, she’s doing it anyway. She smiles as she says this.

Drew reminds her that she doesn’t owe the union anything. She doesn’t owe the New York Times anything. She diffuses the situation, let’s not fight. He smiles back, agreeing, and she makes her way to her small car. He watches from the top of the stairs as she backs out of the dirt parking lot and drives away.

As her car drives off, the movie starts playing the song “Amazing Grace.”

The song continues to play as the next shot shifts to nighttime. Karen is leaving a small diner that has a sign that says Crescent Café, and “Just good food,” outlined with a red, neon light.

She’s carrying a folio of some sort in her hand, and just as she’s about to reach her car another woman catches up with her. We can hear the other woman asking Karen for her notes. She hands over some papers, and the woman asks if Karen is okay. Karen assures her that she is and the two women say goodbye to each other as Karen gets in her car.

The song keeps singing, “I once was lost, but now I’m found.”

The camera cuts to Karen driving her car. The view is through the windshield and since it’s nighttime in the Oklahoma countryside, there aren’t any streetlights. Basically, it’s pitch-black outside and all around the dim light that lets us see Karen’s face as she’s driving her car.

The song continues, “’twas grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved.”

The pitch-black outside is pierced by the headlights of a vehicle behind Karen’s car. She doesn’t pay attention to it at first, it is a road after all. But as the car gets closer the lights get brighter. It’s obviously causing her some difficulty seeing as the headlights bounce off her rear-view mirror, because now she’s holding her hand up to block out the bright light.

“Through many dangers, toils, and snares.”

The song keeps playing as the camera zooms into the headlights until the whole screen goes white before fading to black.

When the movie comes back, the song is still playing as we see the scene of Karen’s car destroyed after what looks like a terrible accident. It’s off the side of the road in a ditch with steam pouring out, and some piece—maybe a door or something—sitting off to the side. The driver’s side window is missing, and Karen is hanging partially out of the car, motionless.

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

That sequence comes from the 1983 biographical film that has Karen’s last name: Silkwood. The event it’s depicting is something that happened this week in history when Karen Silkwood died under suspicious circumstances on November 17^th, 1974.

Of course, we don’t really get what’s so suspicious about the death from the part of the movie that I just explained. That’s because what made it suspicious didn’t necessarily happen this week in history, so let’s learn a bit more about the true story.

Karen Silkwood was a lab tech who worked at a company called Kerr-McGee. They were an energy company involved in everything from oil, natural gas, as well as uranium mining. I say “were” in the past tense because even though the company was founded in 1929, Kerr-McGee was bought out by a company called Anadarko Petroleum in 2006. Then, in 2019, Anadarko was bought out by Occidental Petroleum, so as of today most of what used to be Kerr-McGee is run by Occidental.

But that’s outside the scope of our story today.

Back in 1974, Kerr-McGee had been around for about 45 years, so they had a lot of locations around the world, but headquarters were in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. About 35 miles or 55 kilometers to the north of Oklahoma City, Kerr-McGee had a plutonium plant near the tiny town of Cimarron City. It was officially called the Kerr-McGee Cimarron Fuel Fabrication Site.

That’s where Karen Silkwood worked as a lab tech.

In the movie, we see the Crescent Café and Crescent is the name of a city in Oklahoma which is only a couple miles, roughly three kilometers, north of Cimarron City. So, it’s not too far for Karen or any other workers at the Kerr-McGee plant to visit.

Something else we see in the movie is the mention of a union meeting that Karen is going to, and it is true that Karen was involved in the union.

She was hired at the plant in 1972, and she almost immediately joined the Oil, Chemical & Atomic Workers Union. As part of the union, she took part in a strike that happened at the plant. But then, once the strike was over, she was assigned to health and safety issues at the plant. In that role, she found what she thought were a number of violations.

But here’s where things start to get murky, because we don’t really know everything that happened near the end of Karen’s life.

It’s normal to be tested for radioactive contamination when you’re working at a nuclear fuel facility, but it was a surprise to many when Karen came back positive for plutonium contamination on multiple occasions. She’d testified to the Atomic Energy Commission in 1974 that her contamination was the result of safety standards slipping at the plant.

But teams at Kerr-McGee looked at the gloves that she thought was the reason she’d been contaminated, but they didn’t find a leak in the gloves.

Soon after, on November 7^th, 1974, more parts of Karen’s body were found to be contaminated. On top of that, parts of her apartment at home were also found to be contaminated. How could that happen? Some have suggested perhaps Karen took plutonium home on purpose to contaminate herself and the apartment. Why? Maybe to prove her point that the plant wasn’t safe.

I found some conflicting reports in my research about what happened on November 13^th, 1974.

Some say she was at a union meeting after a normal day at work, which would seem to suggest the movie was correct when mentioning the union meeting might run late. Others say it wasn’t a union meeting, but rather that she was planning a nighttime meeting with a reporter from the New York Times to give the proof about the safety issues at the plant. Still others say it was both; that she went to a union meeting and then was planning to meet up with the New York Times reporter afterward.

Regardless of the union meeting or not, as the story goes, she was on her way to meeting the New York Times reporter on the evening of November 13^th when she crashed her car into a concrete sewer drain crossing under the road along Highway 74 in rural Oklahoma. She died before help arrived at the scene, and no documents or evidence was found.

Did someone run her off the road and take the evidence? That’s the question.

An autopsy revealed she’d consumed a large number of drugs, some reports say they were Quaaludes, that made her fall asleep at the wheel. But others reported that the rear bumper of her car had marks on it to suggest another car had hit her and run her off the road.

The next year, in 1975, the Comptroller General of the United States released a report entitled: Federal Investigations Into Certain Health, Safety, Quality Control, and Criminal Allegations At Kerr-McGee Nuclear Corporation.

I’ll include a link to that report in the show notes for this episode if you want to read it, but here is a quote from the report:

On November 13, 1974, Karen was killed in an automobile enroute to a meeting where, Silkwood crash according to the Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers International Union, she was to provide evidence she had collected on the allegations. Regulatory Commission inspectors made radiological surveys of the automobile, personal effects, and site of the crash and found no contamination. One inspector noticed some papers in the automobile, which had been removed from the accident site, but was unable to describe their contents. The Regulatory Commission lacked the authority to retain the papers. The car and its contents were released to Karen Silkwood’s boyfriend.

According to the union, the released possessions contained papers but did not include all the documents related to health and safety hazards and falsification of quality control records. No papers were found at the accident site. Because of possible Bureau investigation into this allegation, GAO did not pursue this matter further.

For a little context to that, GAO is the General Accounting Office while the mention of Karen’s boyfriend is the guy played by Kurt Russell in the movie—Drew Stephens. In a 1983 article from newspaper, the real Drew Stephens said he was “very pleased with the movie,” although he admitted, “I’ve come to accept the fact that I may never know what really did occur.”

Also mentioned in the article, Kerr-McGee’s official reaction was that the movie is nothing more than “a highly fictionalized Hollywood dramatization.”

I’ll link that in the show notes, too, you can read that article more if you want to see what was said about the movie.

But, if you want to watch the movie that portrays the event that happened this week in history, check out the 1983 movie simply called Silkwood. We started our segment at about 2 hours and 3 minutes into the movie.

November 15^th, 1899. Natal, South Africa.

We’re riding on an armored train. Voiceover tells us that Captain Alymer Haldane invited me to go on reconnaissance with him. As we hear this voiceover, we can see the younger version of the person giving the voiceover: Winston Churchill. He’s played by Simon Ward in the movie while Captain Haldane is played by Edward Woodward.

The train arrives at a station near a sign that says “Chieveley,” and squeals to a stop. Churchill asks Haldane if they’re going back, to which Haldane replies that this is as far as our orders take us. Looking around, Haldane remarks that everything is quiet. So, yeah, they’re going back. The train whistle blows as it starts moving again, this time going back the way they came.

The camera shifts to an angle where we can see the train leaving the station and going back into the green countryside. Haldane was right, everything is quiet. Nothing to be seen but the grassy hills in the distance against a cloudy sky.

As the train picks up speed, Haldane keeps his eyes glued to his binoculars. Everything is quiet, but this is reconnaissance, after all. Churchill relaxes in the corner of the train car along with some other soldiers. Churchill strikes up a conversation with Haldane. Behind the men we can see ruins of stone buildings the train is passing by.

Just then, the sound of something whistling through the sky. Haldane looks up in alarm, “Down!” He yells. An explosion hits just by the train. Gunfire starts as the British soldiers in the train start shooting at the soldiers who are appearing over the green hills. Churchill looks over the side of the train to see that they’re rolling up more artillery, too.

In the next shot, we can see a number of artillery rounds blowing up around the armored train as it tries to escape the ambush. The soldiers inside are shooting out holes in the sides, and for a moment it seems like the train might be able to escape the attackers’ position behind.

Then, the camera cuts to the engine when the engineer driving the train notices something: Rocks on the tracks. They must have been placed there in the time it took the train to get to Chieveley and come back. He yells for the brakes, but it’s too late. The train crashes into the rocks, derailing some of the cars, scattering soldiers on the ground beside the tracks.

This fight isn’t over yet. The ambushers on the ridge appear again, continuing to shoot at the now stopped train.

Churchill yells to Haldane, letting him know they’ve been derailed. Then, with Haldane’s blessing, he runs to the front of the train to see what he can do. Assessing the situation, Churchill convinces the engineer to try and get the engine to run again. But it won’t do much good with the tracks still blocked. The rocks aren’t there anymore, but rather blocked by a train car that’s derailed and thereby blocking the tracks after the crash.

Churchill gets help from some of the other soldiers as they push the derailed car off the tracks, all the while being shot at by the soldiers from the ridge. Amazingly so, it’s a success! With the tracks cleared, the engineer can start moving the train along the tracks again.

They pile the wounded soldiers on the engine and the healthy soldiers run behind the engine as cover. Things get worse, though, when the brakes go out on the train just as there’s a downgrade in the terrain so not all the soldiers can keep up with it. By the time they’re able to stop the train, Churchill goes back on his own to get some of the soldiers left behind—only to be captured along with Haldane and the other soldiers who couldn’t keep up with the train.

The true story behind this week’s event depicted in the movie Young Winston

That sequence comes from 1972 movie called Young Winston. The event it’s depicting is when Winston Churchill was captured during the Boer War, which happened this week in history on November 15^th, 1899.

To find out how well the movie showed this, let’s go back to a previous episode of Based on a True Story when I had a chat about this event with Dr. J. Furman Daniel, author of a forthcoming book called Mud, Blood, and Oil Paint: The Remarkable Year that Made Winston Churchill. Here’s what Furman had to say about this event:

It has to simplify the shootout with the train. And what he was doing down in South Africa a little bit, and it has to simplify his capture and his transfer to the prison and his escape, but overall, it does a pretty good job. I think that the script writers and the directors do a pretty good, make a pretty good set of choices of what do we leave in?

What do we leave out and keep that narrative moving? I think it does a pretty good job and is generally consistent with the historical evidence there as well, at least in, in the case of the train shootout and his capture. We don’t have to just take Churchill’s work. There were lots of eyewitnesses that attest to Churchill’s bravery.

The fact that he went above and beyond the, he wasn’t even technically a combatant and yet he put himself in this position of. The danger when he did not have to, it does a good job of making that an interesting scene with a train shootout, almost a Wild West feel to certain parts of it.

It does a good job of that quickly moving that along while telling the story in a pretty accurate way as well.

After that, Furman went on to explain how well the movie portrayed the next part of the movie—which is Winston Churchill escaping from prison after being captured. But that happened in December of 1899, so if you want to see the event that happened this week in history as it’s depicted on screen, check out the 1972 film called Young Winston. We started our segment at about an hour and 42 minutes into the movie.

And if you can’t wait until December to hear how Churchill escaped, scroll back to episode number #259 of Based on a True Story to hear where Furman explains how well the movie depicted Churchill’s escape. Oh, and look for Furman to come back on the podcast to chat about Churchill during World War II soon!

November 19, 1863. Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

We’re outside, among a crowd of people. Maybe four or five rows into the audience as we’re all facing the stage. Behind the stage it looks like there’s trees and a few buildings off in the distance. The focus—everyone’s focus—is the stage itself. There are ten men seated on the stage; everyone is wearing black suits, ties, and tall hats. The man in the center stands up, addressing the crowd.

In a bold voice, he announces: “The President of the United States!”

Then, he turns around as the man just to his left—which looks like our right side since we’re facing him—stands up. Everyone claps and the movie gives us text on screen letting us know it’s Gettysburg, PA in the year 1863.

The two men shake hands. The President then takes off his hat, handing it to the other man. The camera cuts to the audience, a sea of faces watching as the President addresses them.

There’s some voiceover here, which explains the president has to explain why this plague of war must continue. The camera cuts back to the President on stage, and we can see his face more clearly now. It’s Abraham Lincoln, who is played by Tom Amandes in the movie.

The voiceover stops as President Lincoln begins to speak:

Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation…

The true story behind this week’s event depicted in the movie Saving Lincoln

That sequence comes from the 2013 movie called Saving Lincoln. I’m sure you’re already familiar with what it’s depicting since it’s one of the most popular speeches ever given by a U.S. President: The Gettysburg Address, which President Lincoln gave this week in history on November 19^th, 1863.

With that said, the movie’s depiction of the Gettysburg Address has to be dramatized quite a bit because the true story is that we just don’t know exactly how Lincoln delivered it. Remember this was 1863, and we don’t have footage of the speech. We certainly don’t have footage with audio.

There are a limited number of photos of the Gettysburg Address, and only one where we can see Lincoln himself. I’ll include a link in the show notes to the photo if you want to see it, but right away you can tell it looks different than what we see in the movie with the number of men to either side and behind Lincoln—although it does show Lincoln without his top hat, so the movie got that right.

How do we know what Lincoln said, then? Well, that comes from the five known manuscripts of the speech that Lincoln gave to different people. They’re now known as the Nicolay draft, the Hay draft, the Everett copy, the Bancroft copy, and the Bliss copy. They’re named after the people that Lincoln sent versions to. Of these five copies, probably the best-known is the Bliss copy, named after Colonel Alexander Bliss. It was given to Bliss to include in a book called Autograph Leaves of our Country’s Authors.

That book was published in 1864, making it the final version of the address that Lincoln gave out. But the primary reason the Bliss copy is used most is because it’s the only copy to include a title as well as being signed and dated by President Lincoln. The Bliss copy is what’s inscribed on the south wall of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.

With all that said, here is the full version of the Gettysburg Address:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives, that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate ~ we can not consecrate ~ we can not hallow, this ground. The brave men living and dead who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us ~ that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion ~ that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain ~ that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom ~ and that government of the people by the people for the people shall not perish from the earth.

If you want to watch the movie’s depiction of Lincoln giving the Gettysburg Address as it happened this week in history, check out the 2013 movie called Saving Lincoln. The Gettysburg Address starts at about 58 minutes and 31 seconds into the movie.

November 9^th, 1888. London, England.

It’s the dead of night. It’s so dark you can hardly see anything. The only thing we can see are some dim lights seeping through the windows of what I’m assuming is a house. The camera pans up and we can see some more lights from other houses until we can see the skyline of the city silhouetted against the moonlight.

After a moment looking at the city’s skyline, we can hear a commotion of people talking and shouting.

The camera then cuts and it’s brighter now, and we’re among a crowd. It looks like many of these people we’re among are police officers, but there’s also some ordinary citizens. We’re following a man in a suit with long hair as he pushes his way through the crowd toward a brick building. There’s an opening in the building guarded by two policemen on either side who are holding back the crowd.

The man we’re following isn’t wearing a police uniform, but the officers guarding the entrance let him pass by anyway. On the other side, he’s about to turn around the corner just to the right when he runs into another man who stops him. It’s Robbie Coltrane’s character, Sergeant Peter Godley. Now that we’ve stopped moving, we can see the man we were following is Johnny Depp’s character, Inspector Frederick Abberline.

That explains why the police officers let him pass by while holding back the crowd.

Sgt. Godley grabs Inspector Abberline tells him not to go in there. There’s no need.

Even though Abberline has stopped, the camera takes us past both Godley and Abberline to another entrance just behind Godley. An older man is standing by the open door looking into what I’m assuming is a house. He asks a uniformed police officer how bad it is; the reply is simply that the officer has a hand to his mouth as if he’s trying to stop himself from vomiting.

He composes himself quickly, and taking off his hat, he mutters that she’s in pieces. Then he walks out of the house and off the view of the camera. With a little better view now, we can identify the older man by the door as Ian Richardson’s character, Sir Charles Warren.

Warren turns to Godley to say that Abberline can go in now.

The camera follows Abberline as he walks through the doorway into the house and almost immediately, we can see the back wall is splattered with blood. The movie cuts to a closeup of Abberline’s face as he’s shocked to see what has to be a gruesome scene.

The true story behind this week’s event depicted in the movie From Hell

That sequence comes from the 2001 movie called From Hell. The event it’s depicting is when Mary Kelly was found murdered. She’s widely believed to be the final victim of the notorious serial killer Jack the Ripper. Mary’s body was discovered this week in history on November 9^th, 1888.

Just before the sequence that I described, the movie shows the murder taking place and that’s something the movie does a lot of: Filling in the gaps. The truth is that we still don’t know with absolute certainty who Jack the Ripper was, so even though there have been a lot of people who have dug into the story and come up with a lot of theories and hypotheses—at the end of the day, it’s a mystery we don’t have all the answers to.

What we do know, though, is that Mary Kelly was working as a prostitute at the time of her murder. Unfortunately, her profession in the 1800s meant that a lot of society looked down on her and today that means we simply don’t know a lot about her other than things the investigators uncovered after her death.

For example, we don’t know for sure when or where she was born, although the investigators talking to someone that she lived with said she was born in Ireland, probably around 1863. So, that would make her 25 at the time of her murder.

In the movie, Mary Kelly is played by a red headed Heather Graham as she and Johnny Depp’s character, Inspector Abberline, have some sort of a romantic relationship going on.

That relationship is made up for the movie, but she might have had red hair. There were reports of that. Others said she had blonde hair. Still others said she had black hair. Or maybe she changed her hair color; we don’t really know.

What’s less likely is a relationship between Mary Kelly and Inspector Abberline.

While Frederick Abberline was a real person, and he really was the inspector on the Jack the Ripper case.

But there’s nothing to suggest Abberline had a relationship with Mary Kelly.

Remember when I said just a moment ago that Mary Kelly had lived with someone? That was a man named Joseph Barnett, and he is not in the movie at all, but he was the one to recount some of the final moments of Mary’s life.

He revealed that on the evening of November 8^th he was with Mary but had left at about 7 or 8 o’clock that night. She wasn’t alone when he left; there were a couple other women with Mary—Maria Harvey and Lizzie Albrook. When investigators talked to them, one of the women named Lizzie said Mary was sober even though others had said they saw her having a drink earlier in the evening. Other witnesses said they saw Mary having a drink at a nearby pub with a couple of friends. I’m not sure if that was Maria and Lizzie or someone else. Apparently, she had enough to drink to make her drunk. By 11:45 PM, Mary was seen being drunk and returning home with a man.

Mary’s night wasn’t over, though, because she was seen again at about 2:00 in the morning by a man named George Hutchinson—that wasn’t the man she took home earlier, but George was someone who knew Mary. She asked him for some money, but he didn’t have anything to give her. He told police that he saw Mary walking away before being approached by another man. The two disappeared into the night and George didn’t think anything of it.

Others who lived around Mary said they didn’t hear anything coming from Mary’s place. Maybe someone left around 5:45 AM, but because of Mary’s occupation no one thought anything of it and nothing seemed to be amiss.

At about 10:45 in the morning, the landlord’s assistant went to collect rent—the place Mary was staying was the kind of place you rented by the day. When he knocked on her door there was no response. The door was locked, but he managed to look through the broken window and saw Mary’s mutilated body on the bed.

The assistant told his boss, the landlord, first, who went to make sure the assistant was telling the truth before the police were called. The police arrived, including Inspector Abberline, and the investigation began.

If you want to watch the event that happened this week in history as it’s shown in the movies, check out the 2001 movie called From Hell. We started our segment today at about an hour and 46 minutes into the movie.

And if you want to dig deeper into the true story, we covered that movie back on episode #93—and we also did an extra bonus episode that’s almost three hours of additional historical context from newspaper reports at the time, too!

I’ll throw a link to both of those in the show notes for this episode if you want to check them out.

November 11^th, 1620. Atlantic Ocean.

We’re under the wooden deck of a ship. There are three men in the room, two of which are sitting. Right away we can recognize the actor Anthony Hopkins as the only man who is standing. He’s cast as Captain Jones in the movie. He’s also wearing something different than the two men who are sitting; they’re wearing a black shirt with a huge white collar.

Between them on a table is a map, and all three men are looking at it as if they’re figuring out where they are on the map. Then, someone calls from above. Rushing to the deck, Captain Jones makes it there just in time to hear the lookout call, “Land Ho!”

A flurry of activity can be seen on the ship now as everyone looks, too. We hear some of them calling out, “Land! Land!”

The camera cuts to a view of the water, panning to the left we can see a thin strip of land on the horizon.

Back on the ship, everyone is cheering the sight of land. Men, women, and children are excited at the news. The women are wearing head coverings and most of the men are wearing similar outfits to the two men we talked about a moment ago—the black shirts with huge white collars.

In the next shot, we can see the ship’s sails are up as it floats in the water near a row of trees along the beach. The camera focuses on one of the young men named John Alden on the ship as he talks to a young lady named Priscilla Mullins.

Alden is played by Michael Beck in the movie while Mullins is played by Jenny Agutter.

He says she must be wondering the same as he is: What the future holds in this place. She says she knows what she wants, but that’s not always what you get. He goes on to start talking about another on the ship named Myles Standish, but she cuts him off. Putting her hand on his, she starts talking about a future of the two of them, together.

He smiles at this, saying that when she goes ashore he’ll be there—to welcome her home.

The true story behind this week’s event depicted in the movie Mayflower: The Pilgrims’ Adventure

That sequence comes from the 1979 made for TV movie called Mayflower: The Pilgrims’ Adventure. The event it’s depicting is when a group of English settlers that we now know as the Pilgrims landed on what is today the United States on November 11^th, 1620.

The movie’s depiction is very dramatized, but I suppose that’s to be expected for a movie that’s basically about a bunch of families stuck on a ship for a couple months—66 days to be precise.

Anthony Hopkins’ character, Captain Christopher Jones, really was the name of the man who was in charge of the Mayflower. The other two people the movie mentions by name in the segment we talked about, John Alden and Priscilla Mullins, were also real people. And they really were a couple, John ended up marrying Priscilla the following year in 1621.

The reason for the Pilgrims’ leaving England was entirely religious. Basically, they weren’t happy with the Church of England. They thought it had become just as corrupt as the Catholic Church was. So, they moved to Holland in an attempt to leave the religion of England behind. But they encountered a new foe: Non-religious people in Holland. Basically, some of the children decided not to follow their religion, they started learning how to speak Dutch instead of English, and this all terrified the parents. They didn’t want their children to be seduced by a non-English, secular life.

So, they decided to move again. This time they wanted to go where there would be no distractions and what better place than the New World across the Atlantic Ocean?

They went back to England to get prepared for the trip across the ocean, and in August of 1620 they set sail on two ships: The Mayflower and another ship called the Speedwell, which had launched from Holland and planned to meet up with the Mayflower for the voyage.

But, the Speedwell started leaking.

It obviously couldn’t make the trip, so they had to return to England. They repaired it, set out again, and it started leaking again. They decided to ditch the Speedwell, and everyone piled into the Mayflower for the trip. There were now 102 passengers on a ship that’s 80 feet by 20 feet; that’s about 24 meters by 6 meters.

On top of that, the delays meant they left in September instead of August and they encountered a lot more storms as the weather changed. They sighted land on November 9^th, so also this week in history, and then made landfall on November 11^th. But they didn’t land where they wanted to. They had planned on landing in Virginia, which had been colonized by the English since 1606. Well, I guess 1585 was when the Roanoake Colony was established but that didn’t last, but that’s another story.

For our story this week, though, by the time the Pilgrims were going to the New World in 1620, they had permission to go to the Virginia colony. But they missed the mark and instead landed near what is now the state of Massachusetts. That’s roughly 450 miles, or 720 kilometers, to the north.

When the Pilgrims landed there, they established a colony in Plymouth. In fact, Plymouth, Massachusetts is a town that still exists today…and although a lot of people think it was named by the Pilgrims, it received its name from English explorer John Smith, who named the area in 1614 after the town of Plymouth, England. It was a coincidence that the Pilgrims, after their fiasco dealing with the leaking ship we talked about earlier would end up leaving from Plymouth, England in 1620. But, they were the ones who founded the Plymouth Colony—John Smith mapped the region and named it, he didn’t settle a colony there.

If you want to watch the event that happened this week in history as it’s depicted in the movies, check out 1979’s Mayflower: The Pilgrims’ Adventure. We started our segment about an hour, 26 minutes and 12 seconds into the movie.

November 11^th, 1918. France.

We’re in a French village. There are three yellow buildings, one on either side of a brick plaza with one in the center blocking our view of anything beyond but the blue sky above. In the foreground of the buildings, a bunch of German soldiers are milling about. They look dirty, scuffed up, and rather defeated. A medical truck with a white flag and red cross on it sits off to the left as soldiers continue walking through the plaza. The camera cuts to a different truck as more German soldiers hop out.

Church bells are tolling throughout the town, as if to announce something.

In the next shot, we’re inside as a German officer sits at a large desk. He has a stern look on his face.

Now we’re back outside with the soldiers and with an overhead shot, we can see all the soldiers are walking the same direction, from the left side to the right side of the frame. We follow one of the soldiers from behind as we can see a big building up in the distance. All the soldiers gather beneath the building just as we can see the German officer who was behind the desk emerging from the second story window. We can identify him now as Devid Striesow’s character, General Friedrichs.

He looks out over the soldiers as they’re called to attention. A moment later, Friedrichs begins a speech to his men. In a nutshell, his speech asks them if they want to return home as soldiers and heroes, or as weaklings? He then orders them to make one last charge before it’s over.

A few soldiers refuse, and they’re dragged away by other soldiers. As the rest of the men slowly turn and walk the opposite direction, we can hear the gunfire as the soldiers refusing the order are shot.

The camera cuts now and we’re not in town anymore. We’re in a trench filled with what look like French soldiers just standing around, talking to each other. The soldier in the center of the frame hears something, though. And we can hear it in the movie, too. It’s a rumble and people shouting, although it’s not anywhere close. They’re muffled as if they’re a ways off from where we are in the trench.

It seems to have caught the soldier’s attention, though, and he turns to the camera to listen a little more intently. Then, after a brief moment, he shouts out to his colleagues, telling them to get into position. The soldiers behind him jump into action, putting on their helmets.

Then the camera cuts to where the noise is coming from. We’re following scores of German soldiers running through the muddy ground. We can’t see how many there are exactly because it’s so foggy out that the men off in the distance just disappear into the fog. But they’re shouting, and it must be enough to cause the rumble we heard a moment ago.

Back inside the trenches, the soldier is yelling to his men to open fire at the oncoming attack. A blast hits somewhere nearby, raining dirt down on the men. They grab their rifles and run down the trench toward the enemy. A siren goes off in the trench, alerting even more soldiers of the attack as we can see soldiers standing up at the top of the trench taking aim with their rifles.

The camera cuts to a machine gun placement as it opens fire.

The sprinting German soldiers start getting hit by the machine gun, and we see some of them fall. An artillery shell hits, sending dirt sky high. It’s hard to tell if there was anyone close enough to get hit by that, but the machine gun keeps shooting and more men fall.

Now the camera switches angles to be right behind the two soldiers operating the machine gun and we can see the German soldiers just off in the distance. It’s hard to see how many are close by with the fog, but they’re getting closer to the trenches.

The closer they get, the closer they are to the machine gun. Even more Germans are hit at what’s point blank range now and fall to the ground.

The camera follows one of the German soldiers as he keeps running forward. Men to the left and right fall as they’re hit by bullets, but he doesn’t even look. He seems unphased by the death and carnage around him as he just looks forward and runs. There are others like him, too, who keep running. When he gets closer to the trenches, he falls on his hands and knees and crawls the rest of the way.

Hiding behind a dead horse for cover, he grabs a grenade and tosses it in the direction of the enemy. There’s no strategy behind the toss, it’s obviously just throwing it that way because the enemy is that way.

The true story behind this week’s event depicted in the movie All Quiet on the Western Front

That sequence comes from 2022 movie called All Quiet on the Western Front. The event it’s depicting is the armistice that ended World War I, which happened this week in history on November 11^th, 1918.

While we didn’t cover the part of the movie with the armistice being signed, the timing of the segment we talked about happened after the armistice was signed at 5:45 AM and when it would go into effect at 11:00 AM. So, there was a few hours when everyone knew peace was happening and yet, in the movie, we see General Fredrichs ordering his men to make one last charge; to return home as heroes instead of weaklings.

How much of that happened?

Well, I posed that exact question to Dr. Christopher Warren back on episode #218 of Based on a True Story.

Dr. Warren is the Vice President of Collections and Senior Curator at the National World War I Museum and Memorial, and he shared a lot of great insights into the real history behind the whole movie, but here’s an excerpt from my chat with Dr. Warren about the part of the movie we talked about what happened this week in history.

Dan LeFebvre: Was the movie be correct to show this literal last minute, last second fighting that we see happening in the movie being ordered by General Friedrichs?

Dr. Christopher Warren: So well, first of all, he’s not a real character and he’s not actually even in the original novel. Oh, okay. Okay. It’s true that units on all sides were fighting right up until the last minute. Lots of units have like I said, pulled back and decided they weren’t going to attack each other.

But there were some that kept fighting, that commanders that were trying to position their units, grab some glory at the end, that type of thing. So that absolutely happened to my knowledge that there wasn’t any German or any other offenses that occurred that we’re supposed to start within that.

Close to the end of the war, 15 minutes. I think that’s a little bit dramatic. Interjection. So that’s a little bit probably not quite as accurate, but certainly they were fighting right up and inserts. It’s right up to the last minute there. I didn’t as a historian that was a little bit, historical, but I didn’t have a problem with it because I understood what the filmmaker was trying to do in terms of.

You notice that when the commander says, we’re going to keep fighting, there’s some German soldiers who protest and they dragged him off and they shoot him and get the building. Paul doesn’t even read, he, he’s being portrayed as he’s so warned, he doesn’t care. It doesn’t even influence him whether he lives or dies at that point.

So he’s not mad at anything that despair and desperation and just his soul has been crushed to that point. So I understand why they were trying to do that because that was absolutely soldiers on all sides, how they felt by the end of the war.

If you want to learn about the historical accuracy of the rest of the movie, you can find the full interview with Dr. Warren by scrolling back to episode #218 of Based on a True Story. Or if you want to watch the event as it’s shown in the 2022 movie All Quiet on the Western Front, and we started our segment today near the end of the movie at about two hours and four minutes into it.

May 19, 1536. London, England.

We’re going under archways and there are tall, stone walls are on either side of us. Walking down stone stairs behind two uniformed guards are three women. One in the middle, two on either side behind her.

They walk to a courtyard where a large crowd is gathered. Despite its size, no one in the crowd is making any noise. It’s quiet as the guards lead the three women up a wooden staircase across from the stairs they just descended.

One of the women, Natalie Portman’s version of Anne Boleyn, stands before the crowd and speaks. She says she submits to the law. As for her offenses, God knows them and she beseeches God and Jesus to have mercy on her soul.

In the crowd watching is Anne’s sister, Mary. She’s played by Scarlett Johansson. A couple other guards walk over to Mary and hand her a piece of paper. Anne notices this and gasps slightly—she’s expecting this to be a pardon from the king or something that stops what is going to happen.

Mary unfolds the note and reads it.

Tears fill her eyes as she realizes there is no pardon contained within. She looks up at Anne, who immediately seems to know what her sister does: Nothing will stop this.

Anne cries and takes off her hood, cloak, and necklace.

The executioner places his hand on her shoulder, commanding her to her knees. She continues crying as the sword is placed on her neck. In a brisk movement, he pulls the sword back and the camera cuts to Mary as she winces from the noise of the slashing sword followed by a thud.

This depiction comes from the 2008 movie called The Other Boleyn Girl and it depicts the execution of Anne Boleyn, which took place this week in history on May 19^th, 1536.

She was the second wife of King Henry VIII of England, who annulled the marriage to his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, whom he had been married to for over 20 years. She was unable to have a son—at least not one that survived. She did have three sons in their marriage, but they all died through miscarriage, stillbirth and one through some unknown reason we don’t really know.

This didn’t make Henry happy, who started becoming enamored with the idea that the Bible was telling him if he were to marry his brother’s wife, she’d be childless. And Catherine was married to Henry’s older brother, Arthur, first. But, Arthur died a year later and so Catherine was betrothed to Henry. Things seemed to be okay for a couple decades until Henry started to pressure the whole idea of having an heir.

We know Henry wasn’t faithful to Catherine at least once as he had one son with one of her ladies-in-waiting. That’s not a legitimate heir, though, and soon King Henry VIII was infatuated with another of Catherine’s ladies-in-waiting, Anne Boleyn.

Oh, and we also know Anne’s sister that we see in the movie, Mary, was also one of Henry’s mistresses.

The Catholic Church refused to allow the king to divorce Catherine because there was no cause and divorce went against God’s will according to the Pope. When Anne got pregnant by Henry, he quickly married her in a secret ceremony anyway so the child would be a legitimate heir.

When Catherine refused to divorce him so he could acknowledge his marriage to Anne, Henry went on to instead divorced the whole of England from the Catholic Church to establish the Church of England with himself as the head of the Church.

As a little side note, this ushered in what we now know as the Reformation and a conflict between Catholics and Protestants that’d mean countless killed on either side as a result.

On May 23^rd, 1533, Henry was able to get his marriage to Catherine of Aragon annulled on May 23^rd, 1533—about five months after he married Anne Boleyn.

That marriage didn’t go so well, either, as Anne also didn’t give Henry the male heir he wanted. So, Henry charged Anne with conspiracy against the king, witchcraft, adultery, and even incest with her brother George.

With that historical context in frame, it’s probably not too big of a surprise that the movie is correct to show King Henry VIII did not grant a stay of execution. After all, he was the one who orchestrated it to begin with.

The movie was also correct to show her execution being done by sword instead of the traditional axe.

Oh, and that child Anne Boleyn had that sparked Henry’s marriage to her? That would end up being the only of Anne’s children to survive childhood. It was a daughter, Elizabeth. After Henry VIII died without a male heir, his half-brother became King Edward VI until he died and she became Queen Elizabeth I in 1558.

Exactly 32 years after Elizabeth’s mother was executed, Queen Elizabeth I arrested her own sister, the woman history remembers as Mary, Queen of Scots, in a move that would ultimately end in her execution.

If you want to learn more about Anne Boleyn this week, check out the 2008 movie The Other Boleyn Girl. The execution takes place at the end at about an hour and 45 minutes into the movie.

Once you do that, we covered the historical accuracy of The Other Boleyn Girl back on episode #92 of Based on a True Story.

May 20, 1927. New York.

James Stewart’s version of Charles Lindbergh looks at the watch on his nightstand. Then, unable to sleep, he decides to turn the light on and get up. I guess if you can’t sleep anyway, might as well get some work done.

He splashes some water on his face. Benjamin Frank Mahoney, he’s played by Bartlett Robinson in the film, walks into the room. He asks Lindbergh what’s up, it’s not time yet. Lindbergh says it’s close enough. Mahoney asks if he got any sleep at all, to which Lindbergh just says he’ll be all right.

In the next shot, we see the two men checking out of their room and almost immediately they’re swarmed by reporters.

It’s too early in the morning for the sun to be up yet. It’s also raining as their car drives to the hangar. There, men are checking all the items. They can’t pack a parachute, it’s too heavy. The weight of that is about four gallons of gas and Lindbergh would rather have the gas. So, no parachute.

One of the men still doing final checks on the plane tells Lindbergh he hung up the magnetic compass in the best spot he could find so it’d swing less in the rough air. The only downside is that it’ll be right above Lindbergh’s head, so he’ll have to read it in a mirror. The only one of those he could find is a big, clunky one. Lindbergh says that’ll be too heavy, so he asks the others in the hangar if anyone has a small, pocket mirror.

From outside, one of the people in the crowd standing in the rain outside the hangar replies. Lindbergh invites the woman over to the plane where he lets her sit in the cockpit in exchange for her mirror.

She remarks how empty it is in there. He says they have the bare minimum to keep the weight down. She notices there’s no window in front, they should cut a hole to see. He explains the front is filled with gas for the trip, but he points to a little slot that he can look through to see ahead through a periscope like on a submarine.

Before she goes, he asks how long she’s been standing out there. She says she was standing out there all night. He asks if she’s from Long Island. Nope. New York? Nope. Where? She says she’s from Philadelphia.

“You came all the way from Philadelphia?” He asks.

She says she had to, you needed a mirror. Then, she rejoins the crowd watching in the rain outside. A weather report comes in and they’d recommend waiting until noon. Maybe another 24 hours, just to be safe.

Lindbergh goes outside. It’s not raining anymore, but it’s super foggy out there.

He goes back inside. “Let’s roll her out,” he says and the men in the hangar spring into action, rolling the airplane outside. Once there, the back of the plane is hooked up to a truck and it’s towed to the runway, followed by scores of other cars, trucks, motorcycles, and all the spectators on foot.

The rain has washed out the runway, so now the challenge will be whether he can get the plane off the ground before the runway runs out of room.

Getting in the plane, Lindbergh turns on the gas from inside the cockpit as a man manually spins the propeller.

“Contact!”

The engine roars to life. It’s running 30 revolutions low, but they attribute it to the weather. It’s just damp air, nothing mechanical.

Lindbergh puts some cotton in his ears and then puts on a leather cap with goggles. He checks the flaps and looks through the periscope. Things seem to be okay. He turns to Mahoney, who is just outside the cockpit and says he might as well go.

They shake hands and Lindbergh takes off without incident despite the mud and a close call with the power lines and trees at the end of the runway.

This depiction comes from the 1957 film named after the airplane we see Jimmy Stewart’s version of Charles Lindbergh piloting: The Spirit of St. Louis.

It was this week in history, on May 20^th, 1927, that Charles Lindbergh took off in New York for the flight that would make him the first human being to fly solo across the Atlantic.

Although there is more to the true story that we don’t see in the film’s sequence I just described.

For example, the “solo” bit of Lindbergh’s achievement is important because he was not the first to fly across the Atlantic nonstop. That would be two British pilots, John Alcock and Arthur Whitten Brown, who flew from Newfoundland to Ireland in June of 1919. At just under 2,000 miles, or about 3,200 kilometers, Alcock and Brown’s trip was about half the distance of Lindbergh’s flight from New York to Paris.

So, that begs another question. Why from New York to Paris? Why those cities in particular when he could’ve made history as the first solo aviator to fly nonstop across the Atlantic while also flying a much shorter distance similar to Alcock and Brown.

Well, one of Lindbergh’s reasons for making the trip was to make history, of course, but it was also because of a $25,000 reward put up by a French businessman named Raymond Orteig who owned hotels in New York City. In 1919, he set up a prize of $25,000 for whoever could achieve the first non-stop transatlantic flight from New York to Paris.

That’s about $434,000 in today’s U.S. dollars.

So, of course, Lindbergh was aware of the history he would be making, but he’d also be making a fair amount of money for himself and those who financed his trip.

The plane he used was built by Ryan Airlines in San Diego, which we see happening earlier in the film. They customized one of their M-2 planes for Lindbergh to allow for the weight of additional fuel and dubbed it the Ryan NYP for New York-Paris. It was powered by a J5-C engine from the Wright Brothers’ aircraft manufacturer.

Although Wilbur Wright wasn’t alive—he died in 1912—his brother, Orville, was alive and friendly with Charles Lindbergh. About a month after his historic flight, in June of 1927, Lindbergh went to Dayton, Ohio, to meet with Orville Wright at Wright Field. That’s where the U.S. Air Force’s headquarters are today.

As for the name of Lindbergh’s plane, that came thanks to his financiers who were in St. Louis. That was Lindbergh’s hometown at the time, where he was an airmail pilot.

That’s key to the story because it ties into something else we see in the film: The Spirit of St. Louis not having any front window.

Lindbergh’s experience as an airmail pilot meant he was used to flying with limited visibility. You see, mail planes back then used to carry the mail bags in the front with the pilot in the rear cockpit. So, Lindbergh was used to navigating by looking out the side of the cockpit.

Since Lindbergh didn’t have to look out the front of the plane, having a front window didn’t matter that much too him. What mattered more was being able to carry more fuel, so the movie was correct to show that instead of a front window there was, instead, fuel tanks in front.

Oh, and there really was a periscope in the plane, too. That was just in case Lindbergh needed to see out front, but we don’t really know if he used it at all.

The film was also correct to show the main compass in the plane being mounted in a location where Lindbergh needed to use a mirror to see it. In some of the final tests before taking off, Lindbergh noticed it was too difficult to see the compass.

So, it’s also true that they used a mirror from a woman’s makeup case mounted with chewing gum to help him see the compass.

The takeoff itself was shown fairly well in the movie too, all things considered.

It is true that the weather wasn’t great. And just like we see in the movie, Lindbergh himself had trouble sleeping the night before, so he was at the airfield by about 3:00 AM. He wasn’t the first to the field as spectators had started showing up overnight.

He’d hoped to take off sooner, but the rain delayed them some. At 7:51 AM on May 20^th, Lindbergh’s plane started down the runway to the delight of the 500 or so people who showed up to the field to watch.

After some bouncing on the wet runway, Lindbergh managed to get the plane in the air and he was off!

And while we didn’t talk about this part of the film, it was also this week in history that Lindbergh successfully landed in Paris, France at 10:22 PM on May 21^st, 1927. That was 33.5 hours and 3,610 miles, or about 5,800 kilometers, away from where he took off in New York.

If you want to watch the event that happened this week in history, check out the 1957 film called The Spirit of St. Louis. The takeoff sequence starts with James Stewart’s version of Charles Lindbergh heading to the airfield on the early morning hours of May 20^th at about 53 minutes into the film.

Oh, and as a fun little fact, James Stewart himself was also born on May 20^th in the year 1908.

May 20, 1932. Teterboro, New Jersey.

Our next event this week takes place exactly five years after Lindbergh took off for his historic flight. This is yet another historic flight, too.

There’s a woman wearing a brown, leather flight suit walks around the silver propeller of an otherwise bright, red plane. There are a few other people, all men, who are looking over the plane as well. She walks away from the plane toward a bespectacled man wearing a fedora and a suit.

He asks if she’s still tired. She smiles, saying she’ll nap on the way. That’s the good thing about flying solo, no one else is there to make any noise. She chuckles lightly at her own joke.

He gives her $20, saying he spent the rest of the money on the ship’s ticket back. It’s non-refundable, so he begs her to please do her part. She smiles and makes the promise. Then, she walks back to the red plane and hops in the cockpit.

In the next shot, we can see the plane flying above the clouds. A full moon is peaking behind the clouds in the distance as it casts light on the foreground clouds making for a beautiful scene.

In the cockpit, Hilary Swank’s version of Amelia Earhart smiles as she takes in the view. Then, a look of concern crosses over her face as she sees the flashes of lightning in the clouds. Here comes the thunder and the rain. And now her propeller plane shakes and rattles as she coaxes it through the clouds of a strong thunderstorm.

She makes it back above the clouds for a moment of peace before there’s another challenge: Ice. Her windshield starts to ice up, forcing her down below the clouds. This, too, she makes it through as she guides the plane back above the clouds into clarity.

The camera cuts to the same bespectacled man from the airstrip. This is Richard Gere’s character, George Putnam. He’s listening to the radio, which is talking about a crowd gathering in Paris in anticipation of the historic moment when Amelia Earhart touches down where Lindbergh did years ago.

Back in the cockpit, Earhart is facing a new challenge now: Exhaustion. We can see she’s starting to doze off to sleep. After a moment, she wakes up with a jolt.

The sun is coming up now and she laughs as she sees the sprawling, green landscape unfolding in front of her. She touches down in a grassy field.

Getting out of the cockpit, the first person she sees is a man with a bunch of sheep. She asks the shepherd where she is. He says she’s landed in Gallagher’s pasture. Where were you heading?

She tells him she was aiming for Paris.

He gives her the bad news—well, you missed. Then, raising his cane, he points it off to the left side of the shot: It’s over there.

Amelia laughs and greets the sheep with a look of joy on her face.

Back in the United States, the phone rings and George Putnam answers. The voice on the other end says that she’s made it. She landed in Ireland. Jumping out of his chair, George cheers the good news.

This sequence comes from the 2009 movie simply called Amelia, and it depicts an event that really did happen this week in history: Amelia Earhart becoming the first woman to fly solo and nonstop across the Atlantic.

Although there was no $25,000 prize money up for grabs since Lindbergh had already gotten that, so there was no need for Amelia Earhart to fly from New York to Paris.

As a little side note, Richard Gere’s character in the movie, George Putnam, was based on a real person. The real George Putnam was the one who published Charles Lindbergh’s autobiographical story of his 1927 flight. That was published in July of 1927, just a couple months after the trip itself, and in less than a year it had made over $250,000.

That’s over $4.3 million in today’s U.S. dollars.

That was also a big driver for Earhart’s flight, because Putnam suggested she follow in Lindbergh’s steps to make history of her own.

I’ll admit that’s a bit of an oversimplification because Putnam himself was actually contacted by a woman named Amy Phipps Guest who wanted to finance a woman to follow in Lindbergh’s path. She contacted him because of his work with Lindbergh on the book and Putnam found Amelia Earhart.

So, it’s not coincidental that Earhart was trying to get to Paris, too. The movie is correct to show that was her destination. Although she took off from Newfoundland, the original plan was for her to follow in Lindbergh’s path and land in Paris. However, icy conditions and bad weather blew her off course. So that’s why the movie was also correct to show her landing in a pasture in Ireland.

While Lindbergh’s flight took him over 33 hours, Earhart’s flight took less than half that time at about 15 hours. Of course, as we just learned, Earhart didn’t make it to Paris. So, part of the reason her flight wasn’t as long was because she landed in Ireland instead. That cut the distance to about 2,000 miles, or about 3,200 kilometers.

Nevertheless, it was a historic flight as it made Amelia Earhart the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic as well as just the second human to do so. No one else had done it in the five years since Lindbergh’s flight.

Five years after successfully becoming the first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean, Earhart tried to set another record in 1937. She was trying to become the first woman to fly around the world. Sadly, this attempt was not successful and she disappeared along with her navigator, Fred Noonan. They were presumed dead two years later, although searches for exactly what happened to her continue to this day.

If you want to watch her taking off in the 2009 movie called Amelia, that sequence starts at about 42 minutes and 37 seconds into the film.

May 8, 1945. Berchtesgaden, Germany.

An American soldier flips through a photo album filled with carefully mounted black and white photos. As the camera shows the pictures inside, it’s not super close to the album yet but we can see there are two men standing side-by-side posing for the camera. The photo next to that is of a huge crowd of people lined along a street. On the street are more people in a formation; it looks like a military parade of some sort, and massive mountains provides an impressive backdrop.

The soldier turns to the next page and we can see more photos of people. There seems to be a Nazi swastika in almost every photo. In this photograph, there are people sitting around a dinner table. In the middle is Hitler. Could this photo album belong to Hitler?

Outside, we can hear the voices of some other soldiers as the camera cuts to them.

They’re listing off names of Nazi leaders who sound similar: Hitler, Himmler, Goering, Goebbels.

A couple other soldiers make their way outside to join the three who are sitting down on the balcony. It looks like a luxurious place, with huge stone arches and on the other side we can see massive, snowcapped mountains in the background that look similar to those in the photo album. It’s the kind of natural view that no photograph can do it justice.

One of the two soldiers who just walked up is Damien Lewis’ character, Richard Winters. A soldier who was already there grabs a bottle of wine and shares it with Winters, offering him a drink. It’s obvious the men are relaxing and enjoying the beautiful scenery.

But Winters, who is the senior officer of the group, has some news to share with the other men. He unfolds a piece of paper and reads it to them:

“Effective immediately. All troops stand fast on present positions.”

He pauses and looks up at the three soldiers who are relaxing, each one with their own bottle of wine. One of them, Ron Livingston’s character, Lewis Nixon, is laying back on a chair. He puts his hands behind his head in a very relaxed manner and smiles, “Standing fast.”

A chuckle bursts out. Winters laughs, too.

Then, he asks if the men want to hear the rest of the news. “Ready for it?”

They continue laughing and nod their heads.

Winters simply says, “German army’s surrendered.”

Everyone looks up at him, including Nixon, who pulls his hands out from behind his head. Winters points at Nixon, “I’ve got a present for you.”

In the next scene, we see Winters driving an Army Jeep with Nixon in the passenger seat. They’re going through a forested area, pulling up to an elegant-looking house that has half of it blown apart. We can see the same, beautiful snowy mountains in the background, providing a stark contrast to the green trees in the foreground.

Nixon asks what the place is, to which Winters replies it’s Hermann Goering’s house. They hop out and go inside. A couple other American soldiers were there at the house and Winters leads the four men down some stairs into a massive wine cellar. Nixon is speechless as he looks around.

Winters has some voiceover explaining the contents, saying 10,000 bottles of the world’s finest liquor, wine and champagne helped “Easy Company” mark the day the war in Europe came to an end. Then, in the scene, Winters says it to the other three: “Happy VE Day.”

One of the men turns to Nixon and asks, “VE Day?”

Nixon explains, “Victory in Europe.”

This sequence comes from Band of Brothers, the 2001 HBO miniseries, and it’s depicting an event that happened this week in history: The end of war in Europe during World War II, commonly known as VE Day, on May 8^th, 1945.

At least, it’s depicting one version of how American soldiers learned of the news. It’s obviously not showing us what happened to trigger VE Day.

That would be the unconditional surrender of the German Army, which actually took place the day before on May 7^th. But, let’s back up a little more to get some historical context for the end of the war and the events that led up to the surrender.

On Sunday, June 22^nd, 1941, the Germans launched what would end up being the largest military operation in human history when they invaded the Soviet Union. It was a move that came as a complete surprise to the Soviets because prior to the attack, the two nations had signed a non-aggression pact.

This was the start of an Eastern Front of fighting for Germany.

For the next three years, the Soviets had managed to slow down, stop, and push the Germans back. Near the end of 1943 and throughout 1944, the Soviets launched offensives of their own along the Eastern Front. They drove the Germans back from Estonia and Latvia to the north all the way through Ukraine, Bulgaria and Hungary.

Meanwhile, on the western side of Europe, the Allies landed in Normandy on D-Day: June 6^th, 1944. What followed was a lot of hard fighting for months as the Allies pushed their way through France, Belgium, Holland and into the Germany.

So, essentially, Germany was being pushed back on both sides.

On March 22^nd, 1945, the Allies crossed into Germany on the Western Front. A little over a week later, on April 2^nd, 1945, the Soviets drove the Germans back through Austria on the Eastern Front. Both sides continued to push, on April 16^th, the Soviets made their way to Berlin.

That same day, the Americans started attacking the German city of Nuremberg. They captured it four days later, on April 20^th. Meanwhile, the British started attacking another major German city, Hamburg, on April 18^th.

With Soviet explosions getting closer, Adolf Hitler knew the end was near. He committed suicide in his Berlin bunker on April 30^th, 1945.

This sparked a change in leadership as well as suicides by other Nazis such as Joseph Goebbels on May 1^st. It also was the start of surrenders by German generals and armies. On May 2^nd, the Germans in Berlin surrendered to the Soviets. That same day, some other German armies surrendered to the Allies. German forces in Denmark, Netherlands, Bavaria and more surrendered in the following days.

Then, at 2:41 AM on the morning of May 7^th, 1945, General Alfred Jodl officially signed an unconditional surrender for all German forces to the Allies and they were to cease active operations the following day. On that same day, Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel also signed another document of unconditional surrender.

At 3 PM on May 8^th, Winston Churchill had a radio broadcast to announce the end of the war in Europe. Here is that speech:

[ CHURCHILL AUDIO ]

Back to Band of Brothers, though, the series is correct to show that the 101^st Airborne was at the Bavarian home of Hitler in May of 1945.

If you want to see their experiences on the screen, you can find that starting at about 13 minutes into the final episode of the miniseries.

And we did a huge deep dive into the historical accuracy of the entire series which you can find over at basedonatruestorypodcast.com/bandofbrothers. Part 3 of that is where we cover the events on and around VE Day.

May 11, 1960. Argentina.

The sun is almost gone now as darkness fills the sky. There’s just enough light left in the day to show a simple building silhouetted against the sky. The building is completely dark, though, because there’s no lights outside. The only artificial light in the shot is the yellow glow of lights coming from inside the house, but it’s not powerful enough to spill into the outdoors.

The camera pans over to show a couple other artificial lights. We don’t have to see the vehicle to know these are car headlights. The car slowly makes its way down the road before stopping underneath a dim streetlight. Inside the car, we can see a man and a woman.

Then, the camera cuts to another car. This one has people inside, but at the front of the car a man is raising the hood and propping it up. Maybe something is wrong with their car. We can see better inside the car now, and there are what looks like three people inside the car, one in the passenger seat and two in the backseat.

The fourth man who raised the hood is tinkering with the engine.

Another man on a bike rides by. In Spanish, he asks if they need help. The man working on the engine politely declines the offer for aid.

There’s no light left in the sky anymore as the camera cuts to a scene just ahead of a bus pulling up to a bus stop. There are a few scattered streetlights, but overall the scene is still very dark and hard to see as the bus stops near a sign and one of the streetlights.

At the same time, one of the men gets out of the car and starts walking toward the bus. He pauses. The bus has continued driving now, and it doesn’t look like anyone got out when it stopped.

The four men are starting to get panicked. Does he know? He must know. But his wife and kids are still home, he wouldn’t leave without them would he? He’s done it before—we should leave. Now!

They all look at each other, clearly trying to figure out what to do. From a distance, the man and woman in another car look on. They, too, seem to be wondering why no one got off the bus, although there’s absolutely no dialogue from them.

Just then, another bus rumbles down the same street the other one just left. Like the bus before it, this one stops at the same place, its brakes screeching slightly as it does. From the dim light inside the bus, we can see some movement. The bus pauses for a moment, then continues on. After it passes, we can see a solo man standing there. He’s reaching for something in his pocket. A flashlight. Makes sense, it’s still very dark.

In fact, we can’t see his face at all, it’s way too dark for that, but we can see the outline of him thanks to a couple of the dim streetlights near the bus stop.

The men in the car notice this. The camera zooms in on one of them who makes a positive identification, “Him.”

We can see the flashlight bouncing slowly as the man carries it while he walks. The men in and around the car contemplate what just happened. Why was there a second bus? And the man on the bike? Something feels off.

Making a decision, one of the men near the car with the hood up starts walking toward the flashlight man. With the rest of the men staying in the car, now we have two men walking toward each other. One, the guy who just got off the bus, is carrying a flashlight. The other is not.

They pass each other silently, then a moment afterward the man from the car turns around to say something. That makes the flashlight man turn around, but it’s only for a moment as flashlight man doesn’t seem to care who the other guy is. But he doesn’t get far. The man from the car jumps into action, putting his gloved hand over flashlight man’s mouth. That muffles his screams.

In the dark shot, his flashlight starts waving around wildly as he’s being abducted. The two men continue to wrestle each other, falling into the ditch by the side of the road. As the struggle continues, flashlight man manages to get a scream out—part of it is muffled, though, as the other man continues to try to keep his hand over his mouth. Another of the men from the car jumps out, rushing to the aid of his colleague.

The camera cuts to inside the building we saw at the beginning of this sequence. Inside is a woman. This must be her home. Even though there’s no dialogue, after the scream outside it’s obvious that maybe she heard something. Right? Maybe. And maybe the guy outside being abducted is her husband. Of course, she doesn’t know that’s happening. But maybe she did hear something, so she starts to investigate.

Back in the ditch, it’s two against one now. The car with the man and woman that we saw at the beginning of this sequence appears, backing up right alongside the spot where the struggle is taking place. The woman gets out, opening the back door as the two men carry the flashlight man and put him in the back.

She gets in alongside the flashlight man, who is still being held by the first guy from the car. He tells her to get the sedative. Then, to flashlight man, the man from the front seat of the car says, “Make a noise and I’ll kill you.”

The car kicks into gear and they drive away, followed shortly by the other car.

This comes from the 2018 movie called Operation Finale and it depicts an event that happened this week in history when Israeli spies managed to find and capture Adolf Eichmann—the Nazi war criminal who was one of the twisted minds behind the Holocaust.

With help from a Catholic bishop, Eichmann escaped to Argentina after World War II ended. That’s where he was in 1960, which is why we see people speaking Spanish in the movie.

Of course, no one really knew the path he took from Europe to Argentina at the time.

We only know that now because while other Allies started the post-war process, one of the things the newly formed country of Israel did was to try and find the Nazis behind the Holocaust.

The movie is correct to show the Israeli Mossad agents capturing Eichmann in secret. Although I only described the sequence in the movie from this week in history, for some more context, after thinking perhaps they knew where Eichmann was, they had to make a positive identification first. That happened in March of 1960.

Once they knew where he was, the next step was to decide what to do. Normally, a criminal would be extradited—we hear about this kind of thing happening all the time. But one reason why so many Nazis like Eichmann went to Argentina was that they tended not to extradite Nazis. That’s a big reason why the decision was made to capture him in secret.

So, in April of 1960, Israel sent spies with the task of capturing him and returning him to Israel for trial.

After some more observations to establish what Eichmann’s routine was, they determined the best time to capture him would be after he took his normal bus in the evening. Just like we see in the movie, though, on the night of May 11^th, 1960, he wasn’t on his normal bus. They were about to give up for the day when Eichmann showed up on a bus that came by about 30 minutes or so later.

The movie correctly showed Oscar Isaac’s version of the Mossad agent Peter Malkin as the first to walk up to Eichmann. Malkin asked Eichmann a question, the latter of whom didn’t want to interact with this stranger and continued on. That’s when the struggle ensued.

The agents tackled Eichmann and put him in a waiting car before driving to a nearby safe house they’d set up beforehand.

If you want to watch this week’s event in the movie, check out 2018’s Operation Finale and the actual capture of Adolf Eichmann starts at about an hour and 14 minutes into the movie.

And if you want to learn even more about before and after the capture of the notorious Nazi—including what happened after they brought him back to Israel—we covered the true story behind that movie over on episode #162 of Based on a True Story.

May 12, 1789. London, England.

We can hear his words before we see who is talking.

“It is with a heavy heart,” he begins. The camera pans around into a large chamber where many stately men in suits and wigs befitting the 1700s are either standing or sitting, listening to the man speaking. He continues, “…that I bring to the attention of this House, a trade which degrades men to the level of brutes.”

Now we can see the person talking. It’s Ioan Gruffudd’s character, William Wilberforce.

Wilberforce explains that, “I am speaking of the slave trade.”

All the men in the room start to make noise, seemingly disagreeing with the mention. The commotion continues as Wilberforce recognizes the elephant in the room: Namely that people in the room have interests in the Indies, or investments in plantations, or they’re ship owners. In other words, they’re profiting from the slave trade.

While the movie doesn’t mention this outright, it doesn’t really have to because we can see it visually, but it’s probably no surprise that everyone in the room is white.

The commotion is getting louder as Wilberforce continues his speech, trying to appeal to their humanity. People are talking loudly, banging, calling out…none of it really seems to be saying anything, but the closed captioning in the movie describes this as “clamoring.”

The first thing that came to my mind was trying to talk over a busy restaurant.

Basically, it’s not any single person who is stopping Wilberforce from talking, but collectively it’s the hundreds of people in the room who are all making enough noise that Wilberforce has to raise his voice to be heard. Even then, it doesn’t seem to be working. His voice is being drowned out as he tries to plead his position.

Finally, someone in the room calls out for order.

Lord Tarleton, who is played by Ciarán Hinds in the movie, stands up to speak out. He says he can’t believe his ears. Someone from the other side bounces back, “We can hardly believe your mouth!”

There’s scattered laughter among the men.

Tarleton continues, saying that his young friend, Wilberforce, seems to have a long-term strategy to destroy the nation that spawned him. Everyone in the room seems to agree with Tarleton as Wilberforce sits down.

This scene comes from the 2006 movie called Amazing Grace and it depicts an event that happened this week in history: William Wilberforce’s first major speech on abolition to the House of Commons. That was this week in history on May 12^th, 1789. Or maybe it was May 13^th, in my research there were both dates given by different sources.

Although the movie doesn’t mention this, the speech we hear comes from accounts of the speech because at that time they didn’t transcribe every speech in the House of Commons. With that said, though, the movie’s version of the speech is pretty accurate—albeit much shorter than the actual speech which lasted for about three hours.

But here is the generally accepted version of how William Wilberforce started his speech:

When I consider the magnitude of the subject which I am to bring before the House, a subject, in which the interests, not of this country, nor of Europe alone, but of the whole world, and of posterity, are involved: and when I think, at the same time, on the weakness of the advocate who has undertaken this great cause, when these reflections press upon my mind, it is impossible for me not to feel both terrified and concerned at my own inadequacy to such a task.

But when I reflect, however, on the encouragement which I have had, through the whole course of a long and laborious examination of this question, and how much candour I have experienced, and how conviction has increased within my own mind, in proportion as I have advanced in my labours; when I reflect, especially, that however averse any gentleman may now be, yet we shall all be of one opinion in the end; when I turn myself to these thoughts, I take courage I determine to forget all my other fears, and I march forward with a firmer step in the full assurance that my cause will bear me out, and that I shall be able to justify upon the clearest principles, every resolution in my hand, the avowed end of which is, the total abolition of the slave trade.

The movie was also correct show that Wilberforce’s speech in 1789 wasn’t necessarily received very well. After all, as the movie also correctly depicts, there were many in the British government who profited greatly from the slave trade. It also wasn’t the last of his speeches against the slave trade. But, it was a moment in history that many consider the beginning of the end for slavery in Britain, something that wasn’t fully abolished until August 28^th, 1833.

If you want to watch the speech as it is depicted in the 2006 movie called Amazing Grace, you’ll find it starting at about 47 minutes and 17 seconds.

And we did a deep dive into the true story behind that film way back on episode #22 of Based on a True Story.

Kee-ran Hinds