Pod Insights Stuff You Missed in History Class Unearthed! in July 2025, Part 2 About this episode This edition of Unearthed! continues, this time covering the mixed items we call potpourri, shipwrecks, edibles and potables, books and letters, and exhumations.
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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1:48 Speaker 02 Attention Chicken Nugget fans. Burger King heard that a lot of you didn't like the old Chicken Nuggets, so they got to work and reinvented them. These new Chicken Nuggets are their tastiest, crispiest, juiciest nuggets ever. And because better Chicken Nuggets deserve better sauces, they've reinvented several of their sauces, and they created a brand new one. The new special savory sauce, which is only available for a limited time at participating US restaurants, don't wait around. You gotta try the new Burger King Chicken Nuggets today.
2:18 Holly Frey? Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeart Radio.
2:28 Tracy V. Wilson? Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson.
2:32 Holly Frey? And I'm Holly Frey.
2:34 Tracy V. Wilson? This is part two of our most recent quarterly installment of Unearthed. This part has shipwrecks and edibles and potables and books and letters. For the first time in a while, enough historically relevant exhumations to actually have an exhumation category.
2:55 Holly Frey? Woo.
2:56 Tracy V. Wilson? I feel like that hasn't happened in a long time. Also, as always, we're starting off with just some stuff that I thought was cool, but I always throw together and call it potpourri.
3:08 Holly Frey? First, DNA research done at the request of Pecurus Pueblo has confirmed that nation's ancestral ties to sites in and near Chaco Canyon in New Mexico. This research involved comparison of DNA from 16 people who lived between the years 1300 and 1500, and 13 members of Pecurus Pueblo living today, as well as oral history.
3:33 Tracy V. Wilson? So DNA research can be really controversial among Indigenous communities and for a lot of reasons. This includes a longstanding practice of DNA research being conducted on ancestral remains without the consent of the appropriate Indigenous nations living today. And also the use of DNA testing for people to basically claim indigeneity when they don't have an actual cultural connection to an Indigenous tribe or nation. In this case, though, Pueblo members and leaders wanted to use this as a tool to hopefully have a greater say in what happens in Chaco Canyon, including decisions around things like oil and gas drilling.
4:18 Tracy V. Wilson? And also to try to bridge some gaps in their oral histories. This was a collaborative study and to be clear, its results do not invalidate any other Pueblo nations connections to Chaco Canyon.
4:33 Holly Frey? That DNA research was published in the journal Nature and so was our next piece of potpourri. Researchers working at a cave in Malta have found stone tools, food waste and hearths, including evidence of cooking and eating marine animals and now extinct mammals. This site dates back about 8,500 years, meaning that people crossed about 100 kilometers or about 62 miles of open water. This would be the oldest known long-distance seafaring, a lot longer ago than people were believed to have taken these kinds of ocean voyages. And especially remarkable, considering that they were probably doing this in dugout canoes.
5:16 Tracy V. Wilson? Next, researchers have been studying a rock that was found in a rock shelter in central Spain in 2022, and that rock has a distinctive red dot roughly in the middle of one surface of it. The rock is about eight inches long by four inches wide, or 20 by 10 centimeters, and this red dot is made from ochre. It turns out that the red ochre dot is a fingerprint and it was probably made by an adult male Neanderthal more than 42,000 years ago.
5:48 Holly Frey? The question is why? And one possible answer is that the rock looks kind of like a face with indentations at one end that look like eyes and a ridge leading down from between them that kind of resembles a nose and another indentation for a mouth. So maybe that Neanderthal put the dot there to add to that effect, marking the end of the rock's nose.
6:12 Tracy V. Wilson? If that's the case, this fingerprint is the most complete Neanderthal fingerprints who have been discovered so far. And if it's really like that, if that dot really is supposed to be the nose, then it's one of the oldest known abstract representations of a face. This also ties into questions about whether Neanderthals could think abstractly and symbolically. Like, we know modern humans are primed to see patterns in things and primed to see things like faces in the clouds, and we don't really know if the same was true of Neanderthals. If this person thought that this rock was a face, maybe so.
6:55 Holly Frey? Moving on, archaeologists in the Czech Republic have found part of a Roman soldier's wrist purse made of bronze, which is about 1,800 years old. It's like a little money box that soldiers used, sliding it onto their forearm like a bangle. Only about a third of that purse was found, and no coins, but when intact, it could have held about 50 silver dinari. That was almost a full year of pay for a common soldier, so this might have belonged to an officer or to someone whose duties required that they carry larger amounts of money for some reason. This area was not Roman territory at the time this purse would have been worn, but it was an area Marcus Aurelius was hoping to take over.
7:40 Tracy V. Wilson? He did not take it over. He later died, and his successor pulled all the troops out of there. Uh, our last little bit of potpourri. Archaeologists believe they have figured out what an ornate Byzantine-era bucket discovered at Sutton Who was for. Sutton Who, of course, is the early English burial site in Suffolk, England, but this bucket predates Sutton Who's use as a burial site. It was probably made in what's now Turkey about 100 years before making its way to Sutton Who.
8:16 Holly Frey? Pieces of this bucket, which is known as the Bromswell Bucket, have been found since 1986, adorned with a hunting scene. Once enough of those pieces were assembled, it was clear that there was also an inscription in Greek, reading, "Use this in good health, master count, for many happy years." It was believed that this bucket may have been a diplomatic gift to whatever count was being referenced there, and it's possible that the bucket was brought back to England as a spoil of war.
8:47 Tracy V. Wilson? There have been ongoing questions about what this bucket was doing at Sutton Hoo. The base of the bucket was unearthed more recently, and that made it possible for researchers to examine what the bucket had actually contained. And it turns out that it contained cremated human and animal remains. So it appears that this vessel was used as a cremation vessel, probably for somebody who was important in the Sutton Hoo community. It's not yet known what kind of animal they were cremated along with, but it is possible that it was a horse.
9:25 Holly Frey? Was there any mention of the possibility that this could have been brought to England and then used as a cremation vessel, maybe not as its initial intent?
9:38 Tracy V. Wilson? That is what I think they are saying, yes.
9:40 Holly Frey? Like that someone else just repurposed it?
9:43 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah, that is the impression that I am getting from it.
9:48 Tracy V. Wilson? It's sort of more than has been concluded about the bucket than before.
9:53 Holly Frey? Gotcha. Time for shipwrecks, starting off with one with a car on it. In April, scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration were using a remotely operated vehicle to explore the USS Yorktown when they spotted a car in the aft hangar deck. The Yorktown was sunk during the Battle of Midway during World War II, and the wreck was discovered in 1998.
10:19 Tracy V. Wilson? It's not clear why there was a car on board. Based on what researchers have seen of this car, it seems to be a 1940 or 41 Ford Super Deluxe Woody, and its front plate contains the words "ship service" and "navy," as well as some other word that's illegible. It's possible that this was a car that officers of the ship would use while the ship was in port. It's also possible that maybe the car was taken on board the ship for some kind of repair. It does appear to have been a civilian model car, though, not one that was made for the military. After the Yorktown was torpedoed during the Battle of Midway,
11:02 Tracy V. Wilson? Captain Elliot Buckmaster ordered the crew to jettison as much heavy equipment as possible to try to keep the ship afloat. It is not clear why they did not drive or throw that car into the ocean.
11:16 Holly Frey? Mysteries. Archaeologists in Barcelona have been working at a site that's going to be home to a new scientific research complex, and they have found the hull of a medieval ship believed to date back to the 15th or 16th centuries. What remains of the ship consists of about 30 wooden ribs, held together by wooden pegs and iron nails. The plan is to eventually remove and conserve this ship, but for now, it's been recovered to preserve the moisture in the wood. Because it's been waterlogged for years, it would fall apart almost instantly if it were simply dug up and allowed to dry out. It's been dubbed Chuta de la One because the site where this excavation is going on is near Barcelona's Chuta de la Park.
12:02 Tracy V. Wilson? I went to that park when we were in Barcelona.
12:04 Holly Frey? I think I did as well. There was one day with a lot of walking about.
12:07 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
12:08 Holly Frey? That was not part of our regular schedule stuff.
12:11 Tracy V. Wilson? I went there on the early day that we arrived so that I can, one can hope not be terribly jet lagged while everyone else was around. Uh, next, researchers working off the coast of South Australia believe they have found the wreck of the Conning Willem de Tweed, a Dutch merchant ship that sank in a storm in 1857. 16 of the 25 crew aboard died when the ship sank, but that death toll could have been a whole lot worse. Just days before this, the ship had dropped off about 400 Chinese miners. Uh, this was during a gold rush.
12:49 Holly Frey? It took a while for teams to become confident that this is the Conning Willem de Tweed. Earlier dives had spotted some wreckage back in 2022, but the sand in this part of the ocean is extremely fine and it hampers visibility when it's disturbed at all. Divers compared it to being in a blizzard. This time, searchers used a marine magnetometer to look for signs of iron underwater, and they found some iron components that they believe came from the ship. They have found a concentrated area of iron that approximately matches the dimensions of the Conning Willem de Tweed, and no other large concentrations of iron that might be some kind of ship. They are, of course, hoping to follow up on this with future dives.
13:34 Tracy V. Wilson? I like that they basically looked for this with a big old magnet.
13:39 Tracy V. Wilson? Next, an autonomous underwater vehicle has been used to find and photograph the USS F-1, which is a submarine that sank during a training exercise in 1917, killing all 19 people aboard. This search effort was also partly a training mission, allowing the trainees to get some experience operating remote vehicles and carrying out underwater archaeological projects. This submarine is being described as remarkably intact, considering how long ago it sank. And the imagery that was captured during this mission has been used to create a 3D digital model of it.
14:18 Holly Frey? We talked about the discovery of the wreck of the Spanish galleon San Jose in 2015, and it has made several appearances on Unearth since then. And none of that reporting really made it sound like there was any doubt regarding the ship's identity. Turns out, this was more of a hypothesis, and headlines that came out in mid-June of this year are describing the wreck as just now confirmed, thanks to analysis of the coins onboard. This research was published in the journal Antiquity, and notes that there have been four non-invasive investigations of the wreck since 2015, and that the coins and Chinese porcelain aboard the vessel suggests that it sank in the early 18th century.
15:01 Holly Frey? This includes irregularly shaped coins, known as cobs, which were minted in 1707. The San Jose sinking was documented, and it happened in 1708, so all of this backs up this identification.
15:14 Tracy V. Wilson? When I got into this part of the research, I was like, what do you mean confirmed? We've been talking about this shipwreck for a decade. Earlier this year, the French Navy was conducting some routine underwater surveying and monitoring. When they spotted something unusually large on the sonar, and it turned out to be a shipwreck, this is the deepest one ever discovered in French waters. An underwater vehicle sent down to the wreck captured pictures of hundreds of ceramic pots onboard. France's Department of Underwater and Submarine Archaeological Research sent another vehicle to follow up. And it reported that this wreck appears to be about 500 years old.
15:58 Holly Frey? Authorities have noted that this wreck was protected thanks to its depth. If it were in shallower water, it might have been looted or salvaged by now. But it didn't fully protect it from litter because one of the images of the site contains what very much looks like a modern day beer can.
16:17 Tracy V. Wilson? It might not be beer, but it it looks like beer to me.
16:22 Tracy V. Wilson? We'll take a sponsor break and then segue into some edibles and potables.
16:30 Speaker 03 First thought is like, wow, how are we going to do all this?
16:33 Tracy V. Wilson? Hey everybody, it's Tracy from Stuff You Missed in History Class. That's Alan Goya, a planning engineer at AT&T. He's talking about Intuit Dome, home of the Los Angeles Clippers, where every seat, screen, phone, and transaction is connected with AT&T fiber and 5G, defining the fan's experience. And Alan's master plan made it all possible.
16:53 Speaker 03 It was going to rival anything that was already built. And that takes quite a bit of people and different teams to all be on the same page.
17:01 Tracy V. Wilson? That includes field services manager, Drexel Jones. His team made sure it all came together and held up on game day.
17:08 Speaker 04 Through what Alan's whole crew designed, we connected the event visitors to the world.
17:13 Tracy V. Wilson? And after years of hard work and collaboration, it was opening night.
17:17 Speaker 04 To actually see the whole stadium light up and data is flowing is a beautiful thing.
17:21 Speaker 03 What the fans experience is incredible. It gave me a lot of pride.
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18:08 Tracy V. Wilson? things like extra cameras or motion sensors. Some life decisions are hard, but thanks to ADT Blue, you can DIY trusted ADT home security in a snap. Head to ADT.com/BLU to build your system today. And to hear more about home protection and other grown up topics, check out new episodes of Grown Up Stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
18:37 Holly Frey? We've all done it. Tumble down an internet rabbit hole trying to self diagnose. And sometimes doing our own research can leave us more anxious than informed. Your feed is packed with wellness trends telling you to cold plunge, protein max, detox, track your sleep. But what's actually real? What's exaggerated? What's just wrong? That's exactly what Health vs. Hype from the American Medical Association and iHeartMedia's Ruby Studio is here to find out. Each episode, Emmy nominated science communicator Trace Dominguez, who's racked up billions of views across PBS, Discovery Channel, and YouTube, talks to doctors, influencers, and real people trying these trends. Not to cancel them,
19:21 Holly Frey? not to hype them more, but to actually understand them. Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters. Start asking better questions and listen to Health vs. Hype on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
19:40 Speaker 05 Okay, chicken nugget fans. I've got huge news. The new Burger King Chicken Nuggets just dropped, and they are the crispiest, the juiciest, and the tastiest chicken nuggets ever at Burger King. Burger King heard that a lot of you didn't like the old chicken nuggets, so they got to work and reinvented them. To go along with the new chicken nuggets, a lot of the sauces were reinvented too, because better chicken nuggets deserve better sauces. We're talking new buffalo sauce, honey mustard, sweet and sour, and even a whole new option, too, the new special savory sauce, which is only available for a limited time at participating U.S. restaurants. I mean, you need to taste it all for yourself.
20:22 Speaker 05 This new chicken nugget, reinvented based on real feedback, is made with 100% white meat chicken and is now better than ever. You gotta try the new Burger King chicken nuggets and sauces today.
20:41 Tracy V. Wilson? Now we have some edibles and potables. First, excavations at a waste deposit at Prague Castle have unearthed the oldest vanilla pod in Europe, which dates to somewhere between the early 16th and mid 17th centuries. Obviously, that's not the oldest vanilla pod in the world, since vanilla is native to Mesoamerica and not to Europe. But this vanilla pod dates back to a time when trade between Europe and the Americas was largely dominated by Spain and Portugal, and there just wasn't a large commercial network established for the sale and distribution of vanilla. So it's not completely clear exactly what route these
21:23 Tracy V. Wilson? pods would have taken to get from the Americas to Prague, other than generally saying spice trade.
21:30 Holly Frey? The timing of this on this edition of Unearth is uncanny because I just got a book about the history of vanilla.
21:38 Tracy V. Wilson? Oh, I love this.
21:39 Holly Frey? Listen, we love vanilla here at this house. Regardless, though, a vanilla pod would have been extremely rare and probably seen as exotic and quite valuable. While it was probably acquired through spice merchants, it may have been used for something like alchemical experiments rather than delicious cuisine. The reign of Rudolph II took place during the time the vanilla pod dates to, and he had an interest in science and alchemy. We covered Rudolph on the show on November 13, 2013.
22:09 Tracy V. Wilson? Next, according to research published in the journal Plus One, it took thousands of years to domesticate grapevines in Italy, with that process taking place between about 1,000 BCE and about 600 CE.
22:26 Tracy V. Wilson? The domestication of grapes in Asia and some other parts of Europe has already been pretty extensively studied, but there has not been as much attention on the Western Mediterranean.
22:37 Holly Frey? This research involved analyzing more than 1,700 grape seeds from 25 archaeological sites. The seeds that were from before 1,000 BCE all had the hallmarks of wild grape seeds. Then, over the centuries, there were more and more seeds that were more similar to modern domesticated grapes, although still with a lot of variety among them. Sites dating from the year 700 and later had lots of grape seeds, with virtually all of those seeds closely resembling modern seeds. In addition to suggesting that this was a very gradual process, it also suggests that growers continued to mix wild and cultivated vines for centuries, experimenting with different combinations and varieties.
23:21 Tracy V. Wilson? Archaeologists working at Kuluba Mound in Turkey found a loaf of bread at a 5,300-year-old house. This is the first time a nearly intact loaf of bread has been found at this site where archaeological work has been going on for about 30 years. Usually when they find some kind of baked goods, it's crumbs, or maybe some amounts of unbaked dough rather than a mostly intact baked loaf. This bread was made from wild emmer wheat as well as lentils, and the dough was fermented before it was baked.
23:59 Holly Frey? This loaf has been put on display at the Eskesehir Archaeological Museum, and the museum also commissioned bread made from the same recipe from that municipality's public bakery. The bakery uses a grain that's similar to emmer wheat, as well as lentil flour, lentils, and bulgur. This bread comes in packaging that has information about the Kuluba Mound, and it's been very popular, with the bakery selling out of its stock every day. I don't think I could love this story more.
24:30 Tracy V. Wilson? I would buy this bread in a second.
24:33 Holly Frey? Yeah.
24:34 Tracy V. Wilson? Instantly. Next, research in the Roman city of Palencia on the island of Mallorca suggests that fried thrushes, which have long been established as a delicacy that was served in fancy banquets, were also a favorite of working class people. This comes from a study of animal bones in a cesspit that was connected with a taberna, which was kind of like a Roman fast food restaurant or food kiosk. There were pig bones and seashells in the cesspit, as well as lots and lots of thrush bones. Most likely, thrushes that were served at lavish banquets were fattened up and prepared very elaborately, while the ones that were sold out of this taberna were probably just
25:18 Tracy V. Wilson? caught in nets during their migration and then spatchcocked and fried.
25:22 Holly Frey? Speaking of birds, according to research published in the journal IBIS, International Journal of Avian Science, people living in northern Morocco about 15,000 years ago feasted on a large bird known as the great bustard during funerary rituals, as well as burying these birds with the dead. This was part of research into today's great bustards, which are critically endangered. There are only about 70 of them living in two small areas in Morocco, and they're genetically distinct from great bustards living in Spain. Dr. Joanne H. Cooper, lead author on this paper, has expressed hope that confirmation of the great bustard's presence in Morocco and their clear cultural importance historically will help spur action
26:07 Holly Frey? to preserve the tiny population that's still living today.
26:10 Tracy V. Wilson? Next, archaeologists from Dartmouth College, at the request of Menominee tribal authorities, have been studying indigenous farming methods in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. This is a forested area with a cold climate and a short growing season. Using drones and remote sensing technologies, they have found evidence of one of the most complete ancient agricultural sites in the eastern United States with a lot of that site still intact. This field system was in use by about the 10th century, and it continued to be used for about 600 years. It has raised ringed garden beds, and one of the foods that was grown here was maize.
26:54 Tracy V. Wilson? That's a plant that was native to a much warmer climate, so it probably would have been tricky to grow here, as well as beans and squash. And of course, those are often described as the three sisters.
27:05 Holly Frey? This system is much larger than was previously believed, about 10 times larger, and part of it extends beyond the survey area that was part of the study. Archaeologists estimate they've mapped only about 40% of the site.
27:19 Tracy V. Wilson? Next, research published in the journal Frontiers in Nutrition presents a hypothesis that our early ancestors were smoking meats to prolong their shelf life as long as a million years ago. The author's argument is that we don't have a lot of evidence for early humans and other hominid ancestors like intentionally using fire more than about 400,000 years ago. But there are sites that are older than that where there's evidence of fire existing, but not along with the charred meat or bones or things that you would expect if that fire was being used for cooking something. So the hypothesis here is that early humans were using fire,
28:04 Tracy V. Wilson? but only sometimes, to smoke the meat of very large mammals in large quantities so that it could be preserved, not on like a more day-to-day basis to cook individual meals. In this case, the fire would have also served the dual purpose of keeping predators away from that meat as it was being smoked. An interesting hypothesis.
28:26 Holly Frey? Indeed.
28:27 Tracy V. Wilson? Not really an experiment to establish whether that hypothesis is correct.
28:32 Holly Frey? Research published in the journal Science Advances has reported the earliest evidence of rice in the Pacific Islands, found in an ancient cave site in Guam. This most likely would have been transported east from the Philippines, about 2,300 kilometers away, roughly 3,500 years ago. It's not clear whether this rice was used for food or for ritual purposes, but it would have been difficult to grow in the area. This find is also being used to support the idea that the first people to arrive in Guam and nearby islands had traveled there intentionally, that they were not simply blown off course, since they had brought culturally meaningful plants like rice with them.
29:14 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah, there is a growing body of evidence of people, especially in the Pacific, taking longer voyages than was thought by the field of archaeology. Earlier than we thought that started happening. That's come up, I feel like, in the last two or three years of Unearthed especially. Next, archaeologists working outside of Hella, Germany, have found what is described as a fat factory, a place where Neanderthals processed large quantities of bone to get at the marrow and the nutrients inside of them. This came from analysis of roughly 120,000 bone fragments and about 16,000 flint tools at this site,
29:57 Tracy V. Wilson? along with evidence of fire use there.
30:00 Holly Frey? This process involved smashing bones with stone hammers and then boiling them for several hours, then skimming the fat from the surface of the liquid. This is a time and labor-intensive process, and one that requires lots of fuel to keep those fires burning. So archaeologists speculate that Neanderthals tried to make this process more efficient by bringing animals they had hunted to a designated place to do this all at once, rather than processing every animal carcass when and where it was hunted.
30:32 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah, unlike the earlier Neanderthal and fire thing. This is more of a study to research whether a hypothesis was true, whereas the other one is just the hypothesis part, which I do find very interesting again. Lastly, researchers at El Quijote Rock Shelter in Honduras have been working to trace how humans have domesticated and used avocados over thousands of years. This rock shelter is home to an array of fossilized plants and other organic materials, and it's in a part of the world where the climate often means that plant matter is not preserved very well.
31:14 Tracy V. Wilson? There are about 11,000 years' worth of avocado seeds and rinds at this site, and that has allowed researchers to see how indigenous farmers cultivated avocados so that they would grow larger fruit with a thicker skin, a process that took centuries. So these changes improved the yield of the avocado plants, and then also made the avocados easier to transport without damaging them. I am very happy that this took place because avocados are delicious.
31:46 Holly Frey? Yeah, I'm like blessings upon these ancient farmers.
31:48 Tracy V. Wilson? We live so far away from where they are native.
31:53 Holly Frey? We are going to take one more quick sponsor break before we get into our last section of Unearthed, which is going to kick off with Books and Letters before getting to everyone's favorite exhumations.
32:07 Holly Frey? We've all done it, tumble down an internet rabbit hole trying to self-diagnose. And sometimes doing our own research can leave us more anxious than informed. Your feed is packed with wellness trends telling you to cold plunge, protein max, detox, track your sleep, but what's actually real? What's exaggerated? What's just wrong? That's exactly what Health vs. Hype from the American Medical Association and iHeartMedia's Ruby Studio is here to find out. Each episode, Emmy-nominated science communicator Trace Dominguez, who's racked up billions of views across PBS, Discovery Channel, and YouTube, talks to doctors, influencers,
32:46 Tracy V. Wilson? And real people trying these trends, not to cancel them, not to hype them more, but to actually understand them. Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters. Start asking better questions and listen to Help Versus Hype on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
33:09 Speaker 05 Okay, chicken nugget fans, I've got huge news. The new Burger King Chicken Nuggets just dropped, and they are the crispiest, the juiciest, and the tastiest chicken nuggets ever at Burger King. Burger King heard that a lot of you didn't like the old chicken nuggets, so they got to work and reinvented them. To go along with the new chicken nuggets, a lot of the sauces were reinvented too, because better chicken nuggets deserve better sauces. We're talking new buffalo sauce, honey mustard, sweet and sour, and even a whole new option, too, the new special savory sauce, which is only available for a limited time at participating US restaurants. I mean, you need to taste it all for yourself.
33:52 Speaker 05 This new chicken nugget, reinvented, based on real feedback, is made with 100% white meat chicken and is now better than ever. You gotta try the new Burger King Chicken Nuggets and sauces today.
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35:17 Speaker 06 Live Right, publishers of John U. Bacon's New York Times bestseller, "The Gales of November: A Chronicle of the S. S. Edmund Fitzgerald's 1975 Shipwreck." "Never has it been told better than by Mr. Bacon in this colorful book," writes John J. Miller of The Wall Street Journal, while author Hampton Seitz proclaims that it's destined to be a classic. "The Gales of November, now in paperback."
35:51 Tracy V. Wilson? Now, with books and letters. It was not at all unusual for books to be bound in animal hide during the medieval period, but researchers working with a set of volumes at Clairvaux Abbey in France noticed that the hide did not look like it had come from an animal that would typically have been used for that purpose, that they would have expected to see things like boar or deer hide. But this didn't look like either of those. Using DNA studies and electrostatic zoarchaeology, mass spectrometry, or e-zooms, as well as some other technologies, they confirmed that many of these volumes were bound in seal skin, specifically harbor seals and harp seals.
36:36 Holly Frey? It's speculated that these hides were chosen for their color. These books were bound by Sister Cian monks, who were known for their use of the color white. These book bindings look brown today, but when they were originally made, they would have been white or light gray.
36:53 Tracy V. Wilson? These seals, of course, do not live anywhere near this abbey, so these monks must have traded for them. The DNA research that was part of this study suggests that the harbor seal skins came from Scandinavia and Scotland, and that the harp seals came from Iceland or Greenland. All of these places would have been connected through the Hanseatic League.
37:15 Holly Frey? It's possible that these monks did not know what kind of animal these skins came from. There aren't many references to seals in medieval literature outside of the places closer to where those animals actually lived, and the few that do exist depicted them as a four-legged animal with a head like a wolf.
37:34 Tracy V. Wilson? Honestly, kind of delights me that the pictures of these did not look anything like what the animals look like. Next, the Cultural Heritage Imaging Laboratory at Cambridge University Library has digitally unfolded a 13th-century manuscript that had been repurposed as part of the bindings of a 16th-century property record. This allowed experts to study and analyze what that manuscript contained without physically unfolding it, which probably would have damaged it and possibly could have destroyed it. Turns out, it is part of the French Suisse Volget du Merlin, or Merlin, part of the
38:18 Tracy V. Wilson? medieval Lancelot grail cycle. The text that this manuscript contains is a rare continuation of the King Arthur legend that exists in only about 40 known manuscripts today.
38:30 Holly Frey? This process involved high-resolution, multispectral imaging, CT scanning, and hundreds of images, some of them taken using mirrors, prisms, and other tools, which were then assembled into a fully openable 3D reproduction of the document.
38:47 Tracy V. Wilson? We've talked about a couple of digital unfolding projects on Unearth before, and I always love them.
38:53 Holly Frey? Yeah.
38:54 Tracy V. Wilson? I love that we are getting more and more ways to look at things that we could not have opened.
38:59 Holly Frey? Yeah.
39:00 Tracy V. Wilson? Otherwise. Speaking of digital recreations, the University of Leeds has fully digitized the oldest-known English-language book about cheese, which dates to the 16th century. This is a 12-page handwritten book called "A Pamphlet Compiled of Cheese: Containing the Differences, Nature, Qualities, and Goodness of the Same." Pamphlet in that title is spelled P-A-M-F-L-Y-T, which is delightful.
39:36 Tracy V. Wilson? Scans of this book and a transcript of the contents are both available at the University of Leeds library on the website. You can go look them up if you want. Food historian Peter Biers has described this as probably the first comprehensive academic study of a single food stuff to be written in the English language.
39:55 Holly Frey? According to research published in the journal Shakespeare, William Shakespeare may have had more of a relationship with his wife Anne Hathaway than is commonly believed. He's often portrayed as basically abandoning her at Stratford-upon-Avon to go become an actor and a playwright in London. But this research suggests that a letter first unearthed in 1978, addressed to a "good Mrs. Shakespeare," may have been a letter to Anne. This letter notes the death of a man named Mr. Butts, who had previously asked Mr. Shakespeare for money to cover the care of Mr. Butts's son, John. This letter asks if Mrs. Shakespeare might pay her husband's debts.
40:39 Tracy V. Wilson? So it is not conclusively proven that the Shakespeare's connected to this letter are William and Anne. But there were only four married couples named Shakespeare in London at the time. This letter was also found in a book that was printed by Shakespeare's neighbor, Richard Field. Field also published some of Shakespeare's work. There was a connection there. So all of this is kind of circumstantial. But if this really was a letter to Anne Hathaway, it does suggest that she had ongoing contact with her husband and even that she lived with him in London at some points and that she was part of his social and financial circle. People would think that if they wrote to her about something relating to her husband, they might get a favorable response.
41:25 Holly Frey? Next, researchers in China are using poetry to track the decline of the finless porpoise in the Yangtze River. The finless porpoise is the only known freshwater porpoise in the world, and today there are only about 1,800 of them remaining. But since the number and range of these porpoises has only been systematically tracked for a few decades, researchers haven't had a thorough sense of how large their population used to be or where in the river they have lived.
41:54 Tracy V. Wilson? This new research, published in the journal Current Biology, under the title "Range Contraction of the Yangtze Finless Porpoise Inferrred From Classic Chinese Poems", combed through databases of historical Chinese poetry and found more than 700 references to these porpoises. About half of those references mentioned where someone had seen them. Based on this work, researchers estimate that the range of the finless porpoise has decreased by 65% since the Tang Dynasty, which spanned from 618 to 907 C.E. The vast majority of that decline happened in the tributaries and lakes that are connected to the river.
42:38 Tracy V. Wilson? And just looking at those bodies of water, the porpoises have lost more than 90% of their range. While this decrease was gradually going on for centuries, it really plummeted over the last century, largely due to human activity, including the building of a dam.
42:56 Holly Frey? In 1946, Harvard Law School bought what it thought was an unofficial 1327 copy of the Magna Carta for $27.50. It was described as, quote, "somewhat rubbed and dampstained", but after seeing digitized images of the document, Professor David Carpenter of King's College London started analyzing it, eventually collaborating with Nicholas Vincent of the University of East Anglia, and they eventually concluded that it dates from King Edward I's reissue of the Magna Carta in 1300 and is an official copy. This conclusion comes from its similarities to the format and handwriting used on the other copies that are known from the year 1300
43:40 Holly Frey? and the fact that it adheres exactly to the 1300 text. That makes it one of only seven surviving documents from that reissue.
43:50 Tracy V. Wilson? It also makes it worth a lot more than $27.50, even adjusted for inflation.
43:57 Tracy V. Wilson? And in our last book-related find, researchers at the University of St. Andrews have developed a tool that can be used to detect poisonous substances in historical books, like arsenic, which was often used with copper to make an emerald green pigment that was also used in wallpapers. A lot of the time, it's possible to handle and examine books that have these pigments in them without having any kind of negative health effects. But for people who are doing ongoing research or just trying to maintain collections that have a lot of these pigments, there can be health risks. This has led some libraries to restrict the access to some of their collections, kind of out of an abundance
44:41 Tracy V. Wilson? of caution, but also with the reality that like they're covered in a pigment that is full of arsenic.
44:48 Holly Frey? The university collections department worked with the School of Earth Sciences to make an instrument that shines different wavelengths of light at the book and measures how much light is reflected back. Emerald green has a distinct pattern of reflection, so this can allow staff to quickly screen books for this toxic pigment.
45:08 Tracy V. Wilson? And now, we will move on to exhumations. And as we said earlier, it's been a while since there have been enough historically relevant exhumations to have a whole section of them for unearthed. First, in 1971, a train derailed near Salem, Illinois, injuring more than 150 people and killing 11. One of those 11 victims was never identified, but Henry Morton, a journalism student at the University of Missouri, has been working to change that. After Morton's research into this derailment, the Salem City Council approved the exhumation of the unidentified body, with the hope of identifying who this
45:48 Tracy V. Wilson? is. Funds for the project were donated by the DNA Doe Project and the Salem Tourism Board.
45:55 Holly Frey? The grave in question was exhumed in June, and it turned out that multiple people had been buried in it. As of the research into this episode, it was not clear how many people. Definitely at least two and possibly three. And it's also not clear whether one victim of the derailment was buried in a grave with at least one other person, or if there were really more than 11 people who were killed, and these are all victims of the crash. It will probably be several weeks at the very least before DNA test results are available to hopefully clear some of this up.
46:29 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah, maybe an update in a future unearthed. Next, back in 2018, we talked about the Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home in Tomb, Ireland, which was a home for unmarried women and their babies that was run by an order of Catholic nuns until 1961. In 2014, local historian Catherine Corliss had uncovered the fact that 796 children had died at this home. There were death certificates, but not burial records for most of them. In 2018, it had been announced that the site of a mass grave at the former home would
47:10 Tracy V. Wilson? be fully excavated with all of the bodies exhumed and, if possible, returned to surviving family members.
47:19 Holly Frey? We've had a couple of updates about that since then, but this time in June, 11 years after Corliss's report on the home and seven years after the decision to excavate, work actually began at the site. This work is expected to take at least two years.
47:36 Tracy V. Wilson? And lastly, for the exhumation news, today, Poland and Ukraine are allied against Russia, but these two neighboring nations have a history that has been, at times, incredibly contentious and violent, and that has continued to affect their relationship to one another today, even as they are allies against the common enemy. During World War II, a nationalist group called the Ukrainian Insurgent Army massacred Polish civilians in areas that are considered Western Ukraine today, but at the time were Eastern Poland. Eventually, Ukraine and Poland started cooperating on projects to exhume Polish people
48:20 Tracy V. Wilson? from what's now Ukrainian territory. But then, in 2017, the government of Ukraine issued a moratorium on these exhumations. This was after several Ukrainian Insurgent Army monuments and memorials were destroyed in Poland.
48:37 Holly Frey? Ukraine and Poland have now established a joint Polish-Ukrainian working group and have begun cooperating on issues related to this. In April, Ukrainian and Polish researchers worked together to exhume Polish victims of the 1945 Volyn massacre, which was perpetrated by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. At that time, the region was occupied by Germany. Poland's Minister of Culture and National Heritage has also announced that exhumations are expected to take place in what used to be Zboiska, Poland, later this year, where an estimated 120 Polish soldiers were killed in combat against Nazi Germany in 1939. Zboiska is now part of the city of Wiv Ukraine.
49:21 Tracy V. Wilson? And we will end this installment of Unearthed with one short PSA. If you're visiting the Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland, please do not jam coins into it. Coins degrade very quickly there because of the salty air, and as they do, they expand, which puts pressure on the basalt columns that make up the causeway. This is a thing people have been doing, and decaying coins are also leaving streaks of various metals on the rocks there.
49:52 Holly Frey? Conservation specialists have done a test project to remove the coins in one part of the causeway, which was successful, so it's hoped that a bigger project can be taken on to take care of the rest of the site. Giant's Causeway is both a national nature reserve and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
50:10 Tracy V. Wilson? And that is the end of our unearthed for this quarter. We'll talk about various things on Friday, I am sure. And I have another national park related listener mail. Fabulous. This is from Amelia and Amelia said, hi ladies. I already had a trip planned when your episode came out. My partner loves going on drives and I love national parks. So I thought a trip to Shenandoah was the perfect weekend away for his birthday. We drove the whole length of Skyline Drive and he pulled into all the overlooks that had information boards for me. My favorite overlook was at a little stand where you placed your phone and took a picture and uploaded it to chronologue to show the time lapse of
50:54 Tracy V. Wilson? the ecological changes. Uh, there is a link to, uh, this website here in the email. Uh, I'm attaching pictures of us with our four-legged child, Zella, a 10-year-old staffy mix who loves car rides just as much as we do. And my photo for the time lapse, Amelia, number one, I did not know that this existed. Um, until we got this email. Um, it is that Pass Mountain overlook. Um, this currently as of this minute on July 15th, 2025, there are
51:30 Tracy V. Wilson? 9,620 photos from 9,059 contributors. And if you hit play on it, it gives you all of these pictures from folks' phone going from September 30th of 2020 all the way until now. Um, so super, super cool. If you Google the words Pass Mountain overlook chronologue, uh, it'll take you right to it. Um, so that is super duper cool. Also, very cute dog. Uh, a white dog making a kind of simultaneously to me happy face. And I think maybe just wants to jump down and start running around. That's the impression that I get. Um, boy,
52:14 Tracy V. Wilson? do I love the idea of a drive that suits one partner and all of the historical signs that suits the other partner for a trip together. Super good. Very, uh,
52:27 Tracy V. Wilson? Lovely thing to do for a birthday. And what a great picture of the mountains from this overlook in Shenandoah National Park. Thank you again, Amelia, for this email. If you would like to send us a note about this or any other podcast, we're at historypodcast at iHeartRadio.com. And you can subscribe to our show on the iHeartRadio app and anywhere else you like to get your podcasts.
52:57 Tracy V. Wilson? Stuff You Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
53:11 Holly Frey? A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. In season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, host Martine Hackett continues the conversation with people living with MG, CIDP, and the broader rare disease community, exploring what comes after diagnosis through stories of hope, progress, and connection. Produced by Ruby Studio in partnership with Argenx. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
53:42 Tracy V. Wilson? You ever show up late to the game and your friends already saved your seat, your drink, even a plate? That's looking out. That's having your back. And that's exactly what AT&T does with the AT&T Guarantee. They know staying connected matters, so they actually guarantee a network that comes through when it counts. AT&T has connectivity you can depend on, or they'll proactively make it right, just like that friend who takes care of things before you even ask. AT&T: Connecting Changes Everything. Terms and conditions apply. Visit att.com/guarantee for details.
54:18 Speaker 06 Live Right, publishers of John U. Bacon's New York Times bestseller, The Gales of November, a chronicle of the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald's 1975 shipwreck. Never has it been told better than by Mr. Bacon in this colorful book, writes John J. Miller of the Wall Street Journal, while author Hampton Sides proclaims that it's destined to be a classic. The Gales of November, now in paperback.
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