Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio.
Elizabeth Dutton.
Nothing, you know it's ridiculous.
Yes, I've been waiting, waiting, waiting to tell you this. Yes, Sweden, you know the country.
Yeah, that's not ridiculous.
No, I know, just give you a second. I'm warming up for this one because it's my brain. I'm still trying to rack my like how I had looked this up to see I thought it was a joke, a scam, a hoague something. I mean, this can't be real. But apparently from what I found, there is a website it seems to be legit. Sweden became the first country to decide that sex is a sport, so there's now the Sweetest Sex Federation and they're organizing the first European Sex Championship.
So apparently this will last for several weeks. Just like the Olympics, participants are allowed to compete six hours a day. They have forty five minutes to an hour for each match. There's all sorts of things they'll be judged on, like a penetration, endurance, post performance or sorry, pose performance. I thought it was post anyway, so I looked up the website right and it's this place, the Sweetest Sex Federation dot.
Com and this is real.
You checked.
As much as I can tell, they have a very like, seemingly legit website.
I had.
Most of the press has been because it's it just got announced, so I've not seen The New York Times is not writing about it, nor is even the Daily News, which makes me a little worried.
I'm like, wow, one of them should be writing the.
Daily Mail and the Daily So they apparently they say sex is a sport, and they are really big on making sure that it's Ah, this is not about men dominating women's this is this is like teamwork sex. So yeah, they want to actively change the view of sex. This
is a very sex positive thing. I don't know how Sex Olympics are going to change the view of sex because yeah, they let's see, like, for instance, whereas there's one point I wanted to show you here there was Oh yeah, they said quote and I thought you'd like this with tears in their eyes. S SF can stay that none of the one hundred and ninety five countries in the world have any educational center that would use tax money to educate people in love and sex, which
is the most peaceful thing in human history. So they've taken it upon themselves educated people about human sex through sex games championships.
Sir, Sir, sex is.
Getting known more and more every day, Elizabeth.
It's totally legal, cool. Oh, ridiculous, totally cool, totfully ridiculous, totally uncool. Uh. Do you know what else is ridiculous? Airport though, losing it, going absolutely berzonkers berserker over a hot air balloon.
Oh? I like it.
This is Ridiculous Crime a podcast about absurd and outrageous capers, heists, and cons. It's always ninety nine percent murder free and one ridiculous. I've spoken of riots here before.
Yeah, have you seem to like them?
Do straw hat riot? The clown on firefighter.
Right at the Yeah, the circuit riot.
That was really good. Have you ever been in a riot?
Oh? Girl, you know me. I've been some riots.
Yes, have you liked that.
I've been in riots, but mostly they were political things that turned into what would be termed riots. And then I've been in things that started out intentionally, as I guess, riotous behavior, and the best way to describe it would be, oh, they're rioting, and if you're rioting. I think you call that a riot. So I've been in both, you know, amateur riots and politically professional riots, I guess so, like yeah.
Like damaged destructions, yeah.
Breaking windows stuff. Like I was very young, I didn't really know the value of things. Like when you're nineteen and you're going out to make a statement, you think that this is direct action and you kick the like, you know, the rear the side mirror off a car. Right, you're not thinking that, like, that's not really direct action. That's just you breaking stuff under the proviso of I'm doing politics.
Right, I've been in a riot.
You've been Wait a minute, now, that's surprising. What was the riot? Was this like you and pets? It was a bunch of dogs running the streets.
It was right o Colosseum, Metallica.
Oh yes, guns and Roses, this is good day on the green, Oh my goodness.
And body count opens and then Metallica play, and then Guns N' Roses. It was two hours before they came on and everyone lost it and started ripping up the field and throwing the whole colisseum.
Right, you guys, they had to repair the whole field, you guys. The fight was epic.
From what I know, people went to this and it was like it was crazy.
An actual like medieval battle of grass and metal heads.
It's awesome. And there I was that I was.
Who did you take scalps? Do you get anybody?
I just I grabbed turf and I just shoved it right in people's mouths and put their teeth out.
It was violent. Look what you made doing.
And I did a dime for it. Yeah, in Susanville, I have riot for you today, Zarren. It's going to be a laugh riot.
Oh get ready, We're going.
To take a stroll through histories more ridiculous riots. So I have a couple for you. Let's start in London, all right, seventeen forty nine London time. Well, I know it was a great year. John Montague, the second Duke of Montague. He was a lot of things, so.
It was a new dukedom at that time.
He was he was the owner of a coal mine, He was a doctor. He was governor, making patients and saving patient exactly. He was governor of the islands of Saint Lucia and Saint Vincent. Oh, and he was a supporter of orphanages. He financed the education of two black Brits, Ignacious Sancho and Francis Williams or Sancho, I should probably say, and Francis williams Ignatius Sancho is a really fascinating fellow.
By the way. He was born on a slave ship in the Atlantic, sold to slavery and New Granada, sent to Britain, ran away from where he was sold to the Montague House and they took him in. They taught him to read and write. He had his portrait painted there by Thomas Gainsborough, Oh wow, and was just like taken under their wing. Eventually he wound up owning his own business, a grocery shop. He wrote essays and plays and books and music, and worked as a staunch abolitionist.
He was friends with the famous Shakespearean actor David Garrick, and who was like the first like theater idol, like the first time. David Garrick was like at the time you didn't go. If you go to see a play, it was because it was that play. But then they started putting his name above the title of the play. He had top.
He was like the first star, the first star.
Yeah, he was like before Sarah Burnandra Bullock Boetheart he was London sweetheart.
Yes. And then Ignatius he could vote because he was a male property owner, and so he was the first British African to do so. So this guy that I'm talking about, John Montague, he supported this guy so interesting, really really fascinating guy. So he was all these things, but he was also a practical joker. Okay, and this is what his mother in law said about him. Quote, all his talents lie in things only natural in boys of fifteen years old, and he is about two and fifty.
To get people into his garden and wet them with squirts, and to invite people to his country houses and put things in bed to make them itch, and twenty such pretty fancies as these I erort.
Live.
He's spraying people with garden hoses and putting itching powder in their sets. Oh yeah, yeah, so this is like it is like everyday suburban dad stuff, but like in his position, it was unheard of.
Yeah, everybody's to be arrest.
One time he dunked the political philosopher Montesque in a tub of cold water as a joke. Zing, Okay, I'll show you one day.
John.
He's hanging out with some other wealthy nobles, including the Duke of Portland and the Earl of Chesterfield. And he had an idea. He wanted to make a wager. He bet that if he put an ad in the paper that publicized a stage show where a guy climbed into a court bottle, the place would sell out like a grown man, like basically like a wine bobble.
Yeah, I get it.
He thought he could get a room full of people to come in and pay to see a guy climb into a bottle.
Yeah, okay.
And they all laughed and then like, oh he's look, he's in the bottle. And then these pleaves will surely go nuts for this.
Okay.
So they agreed, let's do it. And so they took out an ad. All right, Actually they took out a bunch of ads.
Let me read you one of itne No, here's the ad at the new Theater in the Haymarket on Monday next the sixteenth instant to be seen a person who performs the several most surprising things following viz.
First, he takes a common walking cane from any of the spectators, and thereon plays the music of every instrument now in use, and likewise sings to surprising perfection. Secondly, he presents you with a common wine bottle, which any of the spectators may first examine. This bottle is placed on a table in the middle of the stage, and he, without any equivocation, goes into it in sight of all the spectators and sings in it. During his stay in the bottle, any person may handle it and see plainly
that it does not exceed a common tavern bottle. Those on stage or in the boxes may come in masked habits if agreeable to them, and the performer, if desired, will inform them who they are.
Okay, all right, I have so recap.
To recap, Doodle, make a cane into any instrument on the planet. He'll then climb into a bottle in front of everyone.
Okay at first first one that's on a present.
You can see somebody do that in Harlem, Right, I'm like, Okay, the guy took a staking turned in instrument.
I've seen that.
But like climent, keep they keep stressing that it's a normal bottle, Like I get hold this with my hand. How is a person like you couldn't fit a cat?
Not only once he's in the bottle, he's gonna sing all the inspections continue whatever, and then people can come on stage in masks and bottle Man's gonna be like, I know who you are.
I'm not getting past the man in the bottle. You can't get a man in.
The bottle. So they're not bold or ridiculous.
Would you buy a ticket to go see it? No?
I would think that person's a liar.
I think I would would you for what you're promising me?
This show? Me?
Okay? So wait, wait a minute.
More people were like me than you do you go.
To a lot of circus side shows?
No?
Have you ever pay to go to a side show? See?
I pay to go to a side show. So out of the two of us, I'm the real soccer. I'm a socker I can speak with. This is not good, sucker bet.
I just I'm so curious. What are they trying to anyway?
Go on?
Yes, a lot of people bought tickets.
I want lizard.
It sold out. Magic shows were really popular back then. Oh so that was like so they're thinking maybe it's this illusion, but like complete talk of the town, everybody's all about this. So the show was a bottle guy singing bottle guy. The show was that what was what is now the Theater Royal Haymarket, although the building was relocated down the street in eighteen twenty one, but it was built in seventeen twenty It's currently the third oldest
London theater still in use. It originally showcased French plays. The theater tradition between England and France's there's a lot of back and forth to accommodate the various restrictions set up by the English government over the years. When the Brits would crack down on theater, the English actors would head over to France to perform. Then when things eased up,
they'd come back. But they brought with them these incredible advances in stagecraft, and around this time when they were coming back, they brought back i'll talk about it, like melodrama and stuff. So seventeen thirty seven, a little like more than a decade before bottle Man, the Licensing Act was introduced and it restricted the content of plays and so you had to have any script had to be approved by the Lord Chamberlain before it could be presented.
And so it was done to crack down on political satire. It all came from one play called The Golden Rump and so in it and it was like an anonymous play. There was no you know, playwright name.
So this is post shakes. We're making fun of King James.
Right, and so in the play The Golden Rump, the Queen gives the king an enema and then so they're like, okay, that's enough.
One across the line. Across the burnet line.
They are banning obscene and scandalous material. And so anything you know, criticizing or mocking the crown is going to be scandalous. They ban it. Theaters got around this licensing act by putting on dramatic scenes that would be like separated by musical interludes. So they're not putting on a full play. They just do it. And it turns it's basically becomes burlesque and melodrama.
It's like a vaudeville for them in a sense. You're just getting bits of this, bits of that, maybe a scene from a very famous pot.
And that was brought over from the continent. It was very like the influences of French and Italian theater on English theater at this time. You had, you know, because of like Comedia d Larte in illianol just making it very.
Over the top stock characters. Yeah, exactly known things you're charging and playing with.
And so the serious actors they all decamped for France once more. And it was during the time of the Licensing Act that the Bottle Show was staged. And the Licensing Act was dropped in eighteen forty three.
Wow.
And it wasn't until nineteen sixty eight that the Lord Chamberlain's censorship of plays was ended.
Wait a minute, every play that I know before sixty eight had to be approved by some chamberlain.
Wow.
So melodrama and burlesque and then this bottle spectacle. They're generally like entertainment for the masses. But it wasn't just the hoy PELOI who tickets to see the court bottle trick. The king's second son, the Duke of Cumberland, was up in there. I mean it was just like everybody's there. Theaters sold out, every single seat, every box standing room was overextended.
To see a man climb into a bottle man climb into a I'm just going to keep repeating and getting back to the essential idea that everyone thinks that a man's going to climb into a wine bottle and sing a song to them.
We've talked about this before. There wasn't a whole lot to do.
Apparently, not even like anything to do. They're like, look, you want to see this dust land.
So at seven o'clock the house lights are brought up. Okay, so exciting. Everyone just couldn't wait to see the man shove himself inside a bottle hom telling you, And so everyone sat there, no music, no opening act, no insult comic to warm up the crowd. They grow restless. People murmured to each other, wondering what the hold up could be, and then they started like shouting, bring out the bottle guy. Yeah, we don't have to do who makes himself inexplicably tiny?
When people shouted insults, others like stomp their feet and smash their canes into the ground, so it was like a we will rock you. Suddenly a man appeared from behind.
The curtain, regular size man.
A regular size man, and he no bottle in sight, and he was deeply apologetic.
So it's terrible for conning all of you suckers.
He told the crowd that if court bottle guy didn't show up in fifteen minutes, that the theater would refund everyone's money.
Yeah, I've heard this.
Yeah, and so now like people are really jeering and cat calling after he says I'll give him refund.
Like the box office post ten minutes ago.
I got dulled up in my best option for this.
Oh yeah, all my frills and my ruffles.
Someone in the pit yelled that if everyone paid double, he'd crawl into a pint bottle like levity. So fifteen minutes goes by, no bottle guy. Suddenly someone in one of the boxes grabbed a lit candle and threw it on the stage. Oh, they're just irritated.
That's bad, and everything's made of wood.
With that chaos, Yeah, the audience is now a mob. They ripped out the seats and the benches. They wrecked shop. People were shouting and screaming for like no reason. Ladies are shrieking as their partners dragged him towards the exit and the scramble. People lost their wigs. Yeahs snatched. They were snatched. They lost their hats, their jackets, their dresses. They were denoted Zarah. The building was basically gutted right rye.
Everything that could be removed was removed and tossed into the street and then like seating scenery, costumes, flyers, disgruntled patrons, and I imagine like excitable bystanders, they created a giant bonfire out of the materials. So everything is dragged outside and set on fire. Someone ripped down the curtain and flew it like a giant flag. Doing their own indie
theater production of Limz climbed up there. Almost immediately, everyone turned their anger towards Samuel Foot, the manager of the theater. They were sure that he did this. No, he cried, he didn't know anything about it. He knew nothing about nothing in fact. In fact, he said, he warned the theater's owner, John Potter, that the whole thing seemed fishy, you think, and it just didn't feel right. So everyone's
looking at Potter. No, he cries, He said that a strange man had handled all the details.
A man with a mustache.
I'm sure that with enough money and no threats of censorship from the crowd, Potter would have approved anything.
You know.
So the man in the bottle, or the bottle conjuror as he was called, was all people were talking about. The newspapers wrote breathlessly about the bottle Guy's absence and what that meant. Satirical prints were produced. Among them two caricatures published within the month. One was called the Bottle Conjuror from Head to Foot without Equivocation, and the other one was called English Credulity or You're all bottled. Yeah,
I like the Head and Foot. One depicts the bonfire in the crowd and has amazing speech bubble captions for the people watching. No I have lost my head, yelled someone with no head. This is the best. Oh ah, bitch, what's all this? Screams? What screams? It looks like a little boy in fancy clothes. Soon it someone's tossing a cat on the fire. Oh wow, that's great. And then up in the balcony there's three members of the aristocracy sipping from a bottle and watching the whole thing with.
Great amusing, one of them shaving a dog.
So there was a bit in one newspaper that said that the bottle Conjuror had meant to show up, but was paid for a private show before the public one. And then he did the trick there and the patron corked the bottle and ran away with dud in it. And this story eventually goes to Europe, they find out about it, and it was a great way for the people on the continent to laugh at how dim and gullible the English were. Oh, thanks so much for the
Age of Enlightenment. So the critic Barbara Benedict, she wrote a book in two thousand and one called Currie, a Cultural History of Early Modern Inquiry. Yeah, and she stated that the Bottle Conjurer quote promised to bring literature to life, to reverse power relations, to incarnate onanism, to make monstrosity, the transgression of physical boundaries humorous. Instead, he made the audience fools of their own desire when balked furthermore, this unleashed desire to turn violent.
Now I have one question.
M Now, all these people gather and this was I imagine the debut performance for the Bottle Conjure. Yeah, so like no one has seen the show, so everyone's just hyped on their imagination. Yes, and everyone's all excited and all gonna talk about the Bottle Conjure.
Well, it's like when you see an amazing trailer for a movie and you get all jazz and nego and it's terrible.
Yeah, it's that.
It's like you go to the theater and there's no where, And then later on.
Somebody tells me that that movie has been put into a wine bottle cap and someone ran away with it.
Yes, okay, got it.
When we come back, I have more tales of spontaneous collective behavior. Hello, welcome, Hi, welcome. I think I like old timey riots because they're not only especially ridiculous to our sensibilities, but it's easier to find one with no fatalities.
Yes, but they also would do things like at Abraham Lincoln when they were showing his body, they turned band that's on the crowd. They're like, look back up, and they're like, I will gut you.
Yeah. But like these days, when I find a riot, it's usually pretty bloody.
Which is weird because they had the band's back. Then we got the rubber bullets.
Down, we're still getting blood a sports.
Yeah, No, I totally agree with you. I'm just saying it's weird that the aggressors were. We had better weapons before.
Well, I've got a ridiculous riot in eighteen sixty four for you.
Oh, good timing right.
This one's also from England, which is pure coincidence. It's not analysis of the elements that serve as inherent precursors to modern soccer.
You're not saying that it's not a thing.
Perhaps, No, not at all. There once was a man named Henry Tracy.
Coxwell, and boy did his.
He said to the world, look at me, Look at me. I'm an aeronaut, like a balloonist. He was big into ballooning. Yeah, not making balloon animals. He rode them loons. What was he famous for him? So glad you asked, I enjoy your inquisitive mind. He led two military balloon companies in Germany during the Franco Prussian War. Oh, it was a slow attack. Wait, he was very scenic. You said he was a romantic story.
Name was Coxwell? He was English.
So he was just basically a mercenary, A mercenary balloonist. Yes, okay, go on.
It's like the original draft for the A team. So he led the first aerial photography trip in England. He founded a magazine called The Balloon. He wrote a book called My Life and Balloon Experiences. That's very straightforward. He is straightforward. He doesn't like was banned as obscene pornography.
What was he taking over?
No, it wasn't and.
Matthew Brady up there getting close.
Brady he was also a dentist, and that's great fan of so he achieved record altitude and attitude in eighteen sixty two. He got to like between twenty nine thousand and thirty seven thousand feet. He was his ballpark.
He's basically competing against Pato Barnes's grandfather. Yes, he's like, I'm the balloon the planet man.
It's actually it's a pretty harrowing tale. He and a meteorologist named James Glacier but not spelled like Glacier g l A I s ah. He invented the glacier. He made the minus factory. They took off in a coal gas powered balloon and they got up to thirty seven thousand, thirty seven thousand feet.
That's like jets flo.
That's like jet. Yeah, that's way. That's ridiculous.
Like, yes, that is straight. You need cold power to get that.
The air up there, very cold and very thin, yes, very thin.
They're not breathing much.
It's negative four degrees fahrenheit, negative twenty celsius.
The cold, I don't know that.
Yeah, the cold isn't the problem for me. You can wrap enough stuff around you, you can get a heat on oxy it's just no oxygen. Yeah, that's the part I mean we have we need oxygen. Yes, we do need oxygen, but how are you managing that? You don't want your pilot passing out.
They're thrilled and they're also dying, So up they go, down, down, down go the oxygen levels. Cox Well his hands got frozen stiff, and so he used his teeth to release a gas valve and lower the pair to the earth.
Wow.
Yeah, that's like that's cold, that's stone cold.
I'm going to show you how dumb I am is. The pair of the basket.
Yeah, the two of them, the guy the pair okay, p A I R.
Well he's French, of that. Maybe they looks like a pair. He was in the gold, the two of them.
They lowered, the two of them to the earth, the two guys. They made it down safely. But Coxwell's balloon had to be retired. It was just too worn out. Don't worries eron, I'm not. Don't cry. He had a plan. He's a man with a plane. He built a new balloon, or more precisely, a balloon envelope. So like the actual balloon part of it, not the basket. The basket I suppose was the same. This one that he built could hold ten percent more gas like me. He called it the Britannia.
Oh rule Britannia.
So the riot. How in the world is this man at the center of a riot?
That's what I'm wondering. But I'm just left over here curious.
It all went down on July eleventh, eighteen sixty four, Victoria Park in Leicester, a city in the East Midlands of England. Coxwell had to test drive the new balloon. He had to work out the kinks and small trips, so he took Old Britannia to Victoria Park. The event was sponsored by the Foresters Friendly Society, not super Owners. Basically, it's a fraternal order of foresters like woods lovers. Yes, they sold thirteen tickets to passengers to catch a ride in Britannia.
Oh they're taking up people.
Oh yeah, people. Fifty thousand people showed up in the park, I am telling you, And according to Coxwell, there were only eight cops there. Like those are Oakland ratios right there.
Dude, And the bathrooms where are these people? They didn't have porta potties.
Back then they got trees zarenes. Close your eyes, Oh yeah, I want you to picture it. You're an eight year old boy. Your parents have taken you down to Victoria Park for the summer fete put on by the forest Guys. It's mid afternoon. As you make your way to the fifteen acre park, your mother has brought a plate of her award winning scones to put out at the ladies auxiliary table. You helped her make the strawberry jam she's so proud of. As you approached the green, you hear
the sounds of that new fangled invention, the comelife. You see it on a great wagon pulled by huge white horse. You've never heard or seen anything like it before. You stand at the cake table, staring in awe at the wonderful things on the offer, including a giant hot air balloon piloted by none other than Henry Tracy Coxwell, you sneak a slice of red currant cake and shove your
way through the crowd. Everyone's gathered around the balloon, murmuring about what an incredible feat of science and engineering it is. You inch towards the flimsy wooden barricade surrounding that balloon. There it stands, in all its majesty. The balloon itself was framed in wooden scaffolding. You saw the carpenters off to the side, sipping on bottles of lagger. You settle in at the barricade, eager to see the historic show,
the inaugural flight of Coxwell's new hot air balloon. The crowd chatters along until a man loudly clears his throat. Hush falls over all of those gathered. I am an aeronaut. The man yells, I have something shocking, say a woman gas. Her friend tells her, wait, not yet, like I said, this is you see, this is not a new balloon. This is not Coxwell's newer and bigger and dubber. No, this is an old balloon, use balloon, nothing great, big whop, a real snore. The crowd grows angry. What not a
new balloon, just some bold, boring balloon? What kind of truth is Coxwell trying to play on us? This does not rule Britannia. Ha hah. The crowd is restless and irritated, and they knock down the barricade. You slip out of the way, just in time, angry adults start demanding that even though it's two o'clock and the balloon is scheduled to depart at five, Coxwell needs to get off as stuff and take it to the sky's right now. You know this is going to be a big mess, and
you are here for it. The thirteen lucky souls who had tickets for this ride shove their way into the basket of the balloon. They demanded that Coxwell take off and give them the pleasure of floating silently over the city. We demand silent pleasure. They hadn't boarded the basket properly, though, and this scaffolding was still up. Coxwell tried to signal the carpenters, but they were all three sheets under the yew tree. One of the passengers turned to address the crowd.
He won't take things up, y'all. He's a chicken, Coxwell, I'm just making up all these clokes. Cockswell no bit, and made a very rude gesture and said things unfit for virtuous ears, that I'm not making up. The crowd they did not like this. They got irrationally angry. People were jostling, Insults were heard, Threats were made five of the eight cops there made their way to the front of the crowd. I guess they got all hepped up too. They started pushing back at the people in the scrum.
One of the cops hit a woman on the head. She felt on the ground bleeding. It was on like you think you're gonna be in a nice lester lady, at a perfectly lovely summer fete, and get away with it. I might have you think the townsmok are going to take this lying down. Think again, Copper. A solitary bottle flew through the air above everyone's heads, and it was a direct hit on the balloon envelope, ripping right through it. Ooh, just projectile. The crowd irerupted and scrambled to the scoffing
where they rip the mesh down. Coxwell yelled to the crowd, that's enough, stop it. You stop this instant. If y'all don't check yourselves and take a step back, I will pass some gas. The crowd looked at him, puzzled. When I will let the gas out of this balloon and no one will go anywhere like, oh, if you don't.
Check yourself, I will wreck myself.
The crowd goes back to fighting, though, and breaking things and shouting insults at the famous balloonists. He's frustrated, he's disgusted. Coxwell, lets all the gas out.
Oh no.
When the balloon deflated to the ground, the crowd rushed it and just tore it to pieces, like cookie Monster doing a number on some chips. Ahoid More cops showed up and tried to calm the seam. As you can imagine, they were not successful.
No.
Once people have been given the promise of a balloon navigating the majesty of a summer English sky, and that promise has been broken.
Oh yeah, I forget about it. Ah, that's the covenant.
We all live here. Yeah. So basically all the cops could do is prevent Coxwell from being torn limb from limb, and the crowd went after him, and they were shouting and these are quotes.
Rip them up, you gotta rip them up. Knock him on the head, you gotta.
Knock oh my favorite, finish him and I got.
Bad lights between like metal lyrics and video video games, back and forth.
They ripped up his clothes and.
Also he's the I am a famous.
As they ripped up his clothes, they exposed his fleshy white buttocks. Oh no, he made a run for it. A man ran beside him guiding him. It was a man named Stone, the town.
There's a person running next to him. Yeah, run next, I.
Am Stone, the town clerk. Come with me if you want to live. And so they hid out at Stone's house while the riot just like raged outside. The Britannia was no more. Everything that wasn't shredded was burned. So of course, like you have the wreckage, don't on fire everything The interior metal skeleton of the balloon was carried down the streets of Leicester by the crowd like spoils of.
War, totally trophy for the crowd.
So cox Well said it was all the cops fault, that they didn't have enough officers on duty, and he also said the foresters were to blame for The London Review of Politics, Society, Literature, Art and Science said the crowd was quote a horde of savages, as fierce and untamed as south Sea Islanders, and differing very little from them except for in their habitat, which was at Lester.
Why you got to drag the islands there, You gotta do savage on your own.
He had tossed some racism in there out of note.
Yeah, I mean I think y'all are savage on your own. You're going to be laying savage out.
Here, exactly. It's just unnecessary. That was unnecessary l R P S l A s. The people of Lester. They blamed aggressors from Nottingham, why not locals. Locals were referred to as balloonatics for a while amazing and then, obviously, with the Britannia out of commission, Coxwell's floating dreams had to be put on hold. Eventually, he did build an even bigger balloon than Britannia, but it cost him a
pretty penny. He applied for a grant from wait for it, the Foresters Society, but they said they couldn't pay it out for some time.
Yeah, you remember that whole thing last time.
So the city of Leicester held a fundraiser and came up with five hundred pounds for Coxwell. However, a lot of Coxwell's peers like thought he kind of shook the city down for it, and either way he did live to sail through the air again. Let's take a break and we come back. I have one more riot for you.
Darren, Elizabeth, Elizabeth.
I've talked about English, right, Elizabeth, but now it's time say it again, Elizabeth for some down home Yankee act of crowds. Yeah, do you like eggnog?
I mean whatever, I'm not going to drink it into a lie, but you'll drink it. I mean, if it's Christmas time or the holiday season and it's been made by somebody, it's not like out of the eggnog.
Has come from the sky.
Well I'm not like, oh, I'm an eggnog purist.
But if someone's like, oh, I got homemade eggnog, I will take a cut.
Right drinking out of it.
But everyone's like, oh, hey, you want this car to eggnog. I'm like, I don't drink dairy creamer, thank you.
I do. I won't drink it. I'm not into it at all. Yeah, because I don't get with thick drinks other than like milkshakes. I like, I cut my juice in half with water. I water everything down.
I thicken everything.
Yeah.
I put in corns, corn stars, whatever I got flower eggnog.
I'm gonna tell you about eggnog, go on, please, But first I want to talk about United States military Academy aka West Point.
Oh, I know this place. So.
West Point founded in eighteen oh two. It was an unruly place from the get go. It was basically just like a few dilapidated buildings with only ten cadets and three teachers. When it first started, it.
Always just had a small cluster of the nineteenth century.
Yeah. There were no real admission standards and the students could show up anytime they want throughout the year, so there wasn't like a semester structure or anything. And then in eighteen seventeen, Colonel Sylvanus Thayer, also known as the father of West Point, was brought in as superintendent.
His name is Forrest Thayer.
I like it, yeahs Sylvanus. In eighteen sixty two, West Point had thirty six faculty members and staff. There were also four established departments engineering, Mathematics, Military Tactics, and natural Philosophy, which included like physics, chemistry, life sciences. After the War of eighteen twelve, Congress just dumped money into the place. You know, we hadn't done so hot. They wanted to military.
We have our own officer training corps, if you will. They had to hire mercenaries and Prussians.
Also like, let's set up like a home camp. And that's when Thayer got, you know, put in. He was strict. He didn't let the cadets leave campus. They couldn't participate in duels and Virginia. Yeah, no cooking in the dorm rooms. A lot of these cats came from Virginia too. No smoking or dipping, no playing cards, no reading novels. A yeah, they're just like take all the fun out of life. Cadets were also banned from buying, storing, or drinking alcohol
on campus. Okay, and so drinking off grounds was allowed, but cadets weren't allowed to leave the academy while enrolled, So you couldn't. Yeah, so Sayer he was serious about his liquor band, and so serious that he bought North Tavern, which was the tavern closest to West Point, and converted it into a hospital. Who he's just like, I'm going
to take that one out of the equation. They refused to bend the rules even for the annual tradition of drinking alcoholic eggnog during the Christmas holiday.
Yes, which is how I started drinking as a kid at West Point.
And that's why I'm talking about eggnog. So when the cadets learned of this, the group got together and smuggled liquor from nearby taverns. One of those cadets Jefferson Davis, the future and only President of the Confederacy.
Yeah, because this would be about the time league, you.
Know, yeah Davis Well, and Jefferson Davis was already known as a heavy drinker. Yeah, yeah, he was deep.
Bennett a bunch of the That's what I learned from this time. That's how I knew that West Point was so wild. It is from that era of generals. When you read their stories. This was a small class, like forty thirty students, and they'd be like, oh, you're number thirty one in a class.
I was like, oh, you're number thirty one in a class of forty.
Oh exactly, exactly. So Jefferson Davis was the first student ever to be arrested for being a patron at a nearby tavern. He was caught drinking there by Captain Ethan Allen Hitchcock. Wow, and Davis was court martialed, but seeing as how his record was clean otherwise, he was not expelled. Edgar Allan Poe reportedly spent the majority of his time is a West Point cadet. At a local tavern, he said Davis was the sole congenial soul in the entire god forsaken place.
Didn't you get kicked out of west I think he did?
I think he did. In August eighteen twenty six, Davis was yucking it up at a tavern when he told he was told that a superior officer was on his way there looking for him, Looking for Jefferson Davis. He sprinted back to campus, but he fell down a sixty foot ravine on the way, put him in the hospital.
For a while. Ronk falling down a revine.
Fronk falling down a ravine.
The Jefferson Davis story.
Christmas eighteen twenty six was approaching and the cadets wanted to celebrate, and celebrating meant booze. William R. Burnley of Alabama, Alexander J. Center of New York, and Samuel Alexander Roberts of Alabama went to Martin's tavern to pick up some liquor. Once the three cadets were back at West Point, they hid four barrels of whiskey among their personal possessions.
Barrels barrels.
So the meanwhile, Cadet TM Lewis of Kentucky managed to obtain a gallon of rum from Benny's, another tavern, and still even more cadets were rounding up gallons of brandy, rum, whiskey and wine.
Those are like the local barrels, right.
Yeah, it's not like a barrel where they're.
Just say they're not rolling it in. Oh that's a table exactly.
Cadets had been caught before attempting to smuggle alcohol into West Point, so Thayer held a meeting with fellow officers to be on alert during the evening Christmas Eve. He assigned the same officers who always did this job, Captain Ethan Allen Hitchcock old ch obviously mentioned and Lieutenant William A. Thornton,
and positioned them at the North Barracks Around midnight. Hitchcock and Thornton decided all was well and went to bed Chumps midnight four am, Christmas Day, eighteen twenty six, Hitchcock woke up to loud noises coming from a few floors above him. When he went to quote ascertain if there was any disorder in the barrack, he found thirteen drunken cadets still drinking in room number five. Just as he
showed up, so did a drunk Jefferson Davis. Davis like ran in like the kool aid man, shouting, put away the growd, Captain Hitchcock is coming, But like Captain Kitchock, Hitchcock arrested Davis and ordered him to return to his room. Davis complied, which saved himself a court martial later. He then reminded the remaining twelve cadets that any group of twelve or more was an illegal assembly. So they're just like getting remarks against.
You got twelve people that disciple.
The disciple doesn't. While this was going on, Hitchcock noticed like that he heard even more noises coming from somewhere else. He cruised over to a neighboring room and discovered three more drunk cadets, two of whom attempted to hide in their beds under blankets like sorry sleeping, what did you sat?
So they were both Jefferson Davis.
The third one covered his face with his hat as a makeshift mass. But you'll never know who I am.
I'm a coat wreck.
Kitchcock was like, take off the mask, and then he headed out to find more drunks. However, the cadets he had already caught and reprimanded, decided to take his intrusion as an offense. Like this was like, this was brazen. How dare he? So they said to each other, get your your dirks and bayonets and pistols if you have them, because the night is over and Hitchcock will be dead.
We're getting harmed up.
Oh yeah, they kill this man and I'm like, so they they go to his room and they like into where he's living. They start throwing sticks and rocks at his door and window, like get out here. Meanwhile, Hitchcock's buddy Thornton, he was hit on the head with a wooden post and threatened by another cadet with a sword. Wow,
this is what we call toxic masculine. One cadet actually did fire his pistol at Hitchcock as he tried to break down a door, but he missed because another cadet saw what was about to happen and jostled the would be shooter, so he missed his show. Someone knocks, someone knocked his hand, like he's kicking down a door. He's like proto dea. At this point, Hitchcock needed backup right, so he asked a cadet to bring the calm here,
meaning the commandant, the commandant of cadets. The drunk could dets misheard that and thought that he was calling for artillery men, and the cadets, for whatever reason, hated the artillery men also called the bomb of deers, So they took this, Yeah, they took this summoning as an insult. The cadets gathered to take up arms to defend themselves and the North Barracks from the imagined impending attack from
the artillery men. Instead, it's just bring the commandant. The destruction escalated because like, cadets started destroying everything they could get their hands on.
They're making a fort.
They would just know. They just started smashing dishes. They're like, I know.
They did that.
They broke chairs, they smashed cabinets, they ripped the banisters from the stairs, Like why. Then Commandant William Worth showed up and the cadets started to sober up and calm down. Realizing no artillery men were coming, The Eggnog Riot was over. It was known as the Eggnog Riot. Point revely Is sounded cadets from South Barracks, they rise promptly and assemble a neat discipline. Rose early Christmas morning, so this is
like two hours after the end of the riot. The North Barracks cadets, however, came barefoot, cursing, disheveled, still completely drunk.
Oh yeah, it's just loose. I've been drunk.
The officer of the day took one look at the group of hungover, still drunk cadets and then just dismissed everybody.
Yeah, he's like, I don't even want to look at you.
So nearly a third of the two hundred and sixty cadets at West Point participated in the Eggnog Riot.
And three decades later half almost said whatever, half to a third of the country said, you know what, we should take the guy who led the Eggnog riot and try to start a new country. He seems like a winner, that boy.
So you've got a third of two sixty right. West Point was still in its infancy, and if they had kicked everyone out, they're gonna really cripple the place. And it also would have heard the image it was trying to build is that's a place of order, not anarchy. So instead they decided to place the worst offenders twenty two in total on house arrest.
So now you can't go anywhere.
Which was kind of the rule.
Yeah, that was before it was like, what, you can't leave the room.
So January twenty sixth, you know, eighteen twenty seven, now court martial proceedings began. Nineteen cadets and one soldier, Jefferson Davis, avoided being court martialed due to his being immediately compliant upon being caught, where he went back to his room and said he was put on house arrest for six weeks. For over a month, a tribunal of professors and soldiers heard the testimony of one hundred and sixty seven witnesses, which included Robert E. Lee.
Yeah, he would be there.
Yeah, he spoke on the behalf of some of the cadets. The court martials also mentioned in this I not mentioned. The court martials lasted until mid March, and the nineteen cadets were found guilty and sentenced to be dismissed from West Point. However, eight of those were granted clemency and then five more ended up graduating.
Anyway, I wonder what Grant was doing, because he's in the same class with Lee, and it's like, you got it was a young drunk, you know, he's like but anyways, the fact that they were all together, it's like something.
Fifty three cadets received less severe punishment. So there was just huge numbers nuts. But you know, like as you were saying, there were a there's a pretty good bunch of future traders.
Totally crazy number.
Jefferson Davis graduated from West Point in eighteen twenty eight, and then when the Southern States tried to secede, he became the president of the Confederate Stats.
Imagine Stonewall Jackson might have been in this class too.
Could be. Benjamin Humphries was expelled from West Point and he later became the governor of Mississippi and a Confederate Army general. And then Hugh Mercer was expelled, but the sentence was later remitted. He would graduate from West Point become a general for the Confederate Army.
So this is just hey, you also.
Got that General Granger in the class. He's the one who does the emancipation proclamation for the election, not the mancipator population, but certifying the mancipation proclamation for the juneteenth When he goes down a Order three in Galveston. He's there's this area the eighteen late eighteen twenties in West Point is like a lot of American history is coming through those boys.
Well, I think a lot of them boys fell down ravines and hit their head.
They all work together and knew each other. It doesn't really come out in the stories about them. Well here's the thing to make a crazy movie about west Point AH twenty five.
Well, here's what happened. It's bizarre, it's wild, but it's also one that's not well known today. Among West Point cadets. A lot of them don't know about that.
They don't know they Riot. No, how do they know?
This is Sherman Fleek, the West Point Command historian. He said, quote hardly anyone knows about it. If pooled among forty four hundred cadets, three thousand federal employees, fifteen hundred military staff and faculty, I doubt thirty people would know a thing about it. What I'm just doing the Lord's work. Here's the Aaron trying to tell everyone.
I'm telling you.
So none of the buildings of the Eggnog Riot days remain today.
Yeah, imagine they're all Stone or sorry, would not Stone.
Yeah, the riot did result in a change with the academy's architecture. When new barracks were constructed in the eighteen forties, they included short halways that required cadets to completely exit the building before being able to access any other level. Only one of those buildings still remains. And then this is what Fleek said quote when they built those, they put in a measure of crowd control. It would make it difficult for cadets to get out of hand and gather in large number.
Yeah.
Interesting, so so much for all of like the discipline. Another important and lasting change. West Point no longer has big holiday celebrations, but a party does take the lase. Yeah, they really limit alcohol access. But those are my three shorty ridiculous riots for you.
That last one was crazy.
What's your ridiculous takeaway?
It's not that ridiculous, but I think it qualifies at a certain level. Jefferson Davis been a punk, always going to be a punk. But you know, once upon ben a punk going to be a punk.
That's why ridiculous take care or degree that. I agree, And that's it for today. You can find us online at Ridiculous crime dot com. We have t shirts if you're into that sort of thing. Mug and apparently coffee tastes better out of that mug. I've been told. We're also at Ridiculous Crime on both Twitter and Instagram. Email us at Ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com, Leave it talk back on the iHeart app just reach Out. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and Zaren Burnett, produced
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