[Episode alt. title: Thank You Sky Daddy.] Val tells the incomplete story of “Allentown’s prettiest widow” who was accused of poisoning her husband with strychnine in 1912. Leah asks hard-hitting questions like, “Has historical rat poison ever killed a single rat?” Old-timey snack johnnie cakes and modern food-adjacent items Diet Coke, Lean Cuisine, and Hemotogen candy also get mentions. ~SHOW NOTES: Jim Thorpe (full name James Francis Thorpe) was the first Native American to win a gold medal for the United States. He won two--in classic pentathlon and decathlon. In addition to his Olympic stardom, he was also a major-league baseball player, co-founder of the National Football League and even pro basketball player, a stunt performer, and Hollywood character actor.Jim was a Sac and Fox Indian, and when he died in 1953, his funeral was held where he was born in Shawnee, Oklahoma. Then his third wife Patricia made a deal with Mauch Chunk to have his body interred there. Jim’s son Jack filed a lawsuit in 2010, but it was unsuccessful. Jim Thorpe’s body remains in a Pennsylvania town he never visited. (Sources: Smithsonian Magazine, Wikipedia)You can find a short summary of the execution of the Molly Maguires on ExplorePAHistory.com, but there is plenty of in-depth reading about that period in history. A thing I meant to mention about the Molly Maguires that I didn’t actually get to was that it was entirely run by the private sector. The corporation that hired the detective agency was private, and a private police force arrested the defenders, and they were prosecuted by private attorneys for the coal companies. The wikipedia page is really detailed if you’d like to read more. You can find a picture of the creepy handprint in the old Jim Thorpe jail in a Philadelphia Inquirer article titled “For sale: Historic NE Pennsylvania jail haunted by the ghosts of hanged coal miners.” Apparently the Molly Maguire who imprinted his hand said, “This handprint will remain as proof of my innocence.”Check out The Reno Gazette Journal article "Experts weigh in on use of paralytic drug in executions" to learn more about that. Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined by Steven Pinker is the book Leah referenced. It’s true that crime rates have gone down over very long periods of time. In the U.S., the homicide rate went down each century since the 1700s. However, there was a peak in homicides in the 1960s - 1900s, with a steady decrease afterward. So it isn’t a simple, continual downward trend. (Source: Wikipedia) Here is a piece on Generation Jones or “Jonesers”: https://timeline.com/generation-jones-baby-boom-923270cb2010(Turns out “keeping up with the Joneses doesn’t refer to a tv show but is a long-ago expression referring to generic neighbors, originating from an old cartoon.)You can find links to all these articles as well as photos on our website, researchholepodcast.com.
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