186-The Children's Blizzard
Futility Closet
Greg Ross
4.8 • 748 Ratings
🗓️ 22 January 2018
⏱️ 32 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In January 1888, after a disarming warm spell, a violent storm of blinding snow and bitter cold suddenly struck the American Midwest, trapping farmers in fields, travelers on roads, and hundreds of children in schoolhouses with limited fuel. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll describe the Children's Blizzard, one of the most harrowing winter storms in American history.
We'll also play 20 Questions with a computer and puzzle over some vanishing vultures.
Intro:
In 1835 an assassin shot two good pistols at Andrew Jackson and both misfired.
In 1958 Brooklyn College chemistry professor Homer Jacobson built a self-replicating model train.
Sources for our feature on the Children's Blizzard:
David Laskin, The Children's Blizzard, 2004.
Mitchell Newton-Matza, ed., Disasters and Tragic Events, 2014.
Steven L. Horstmeyer, The Weather Almanac, 2011.
"The Pitiless Blizzard," Aurora Daily Express, Jan. 16, 1888.
"Victims of the Storm," Bridgeport Morning News, Jan. 19, 1888.
"In the Neighborhood," Deseret News, Jan. 24, 1888.
"A Brave Girl," Gettysburg [Pa.] Compiler, Jan. 31, 1888.
Edythe H. Dunn, "Not Even an Act of God," Phi Delta Kappan 30:7 (March 1949), 245-249.
Jill Callison, "The Children's Blizzard," Argus Leader, Dec. 26, 2004.
Maria Houser Conzemius, "That's Why They Call It the Children's Blizzard," Iowa City Press-Citizen, March 13, 2007.
Steve Tracton, "Freak, Deadly Storm: Children's Blizzard of 1888," Washington Post, Jan. 14, 2011.
Jeanie Mebane, "Blizzard!" Cobblestone 33:3 (March 2012).
"One-Room Schoolhouse Lives," Argus Leader, Sept. 4, 2012.
Beccy Tanner, "213 Schoolchildren Perished in the Great Plains Blizzard of 1888," Wichita Eagle, Dec. 31, 2012.
Alyssa Ford, "125 Years Ago, Deadly 'Children's Blizzard' Blasted Minnesota," MinnPost, Jan. 11, 2013.
Tom Lawrence, "Children's Blizzard Struck Great Plains 125 Years Ago," McClatchy-Tribune Business News, Jan. 12, 2013.
Paula Quam, "Warm Weather Like This Week's Preceded 1888 Deadly Blizzard," Saint Paul Pioneer Press, Dec. 19, 2015.
Sean Potter, "Retrospect: January 12, 1888: The Children's Blizzard," Weatherwise (accessed Jan. 6, 2018).
Amber Pariona, "The Ten Deadliest Blizzards In History," World Atlas, April 25, 2017.
Listener mail:
"Hitler's Sunken Secret," NOVA, pbs.org.
Karen Schrock, "Twenty Questions, Ten Million Synapses," ScienceLine, July 28, 2006.
"A Heroic Commando, A Deadly Mission to Sabotage Nazi Bomb -- and the Pregnant Widow He Left Behind," Cork Evening Echo Holly Bough, Christmas 2017.
This week's lateral thinking puzzle was contributed by listener Eugene Grabowski. Here are three corroborating links (warning -- these spoil the puzzle).
You can listen using the player above, download this episode directly, or subscribe on iTunes or Google Play Music or via the RSS feed at http://feedpress.me/futilitycloset.
Please consider becoming a patron of Futility Closet -- on our Patreon page you can pledge any amount per episode, and we've set up some rewards to help thank you for your support. You can also make a one-time donation on the Support Us page of the Futility Closet website.
Many thanks to Doug Ross for the music in this episode.
If you have any questions or comments you can reach us at [email protected]. Thanks for listening!
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Futility Closet Podcast, forgotten stories from the pages of history. |
| 0:13.9 | Visit us online to sample more than 10,000 quirky curiosities from a double misfire to a replicating train. |
| 0:20.7 | This is episode 186. I'm Greg Ross. |
| 0:23.6 | And I'm Sharon Ross. In January 1888, after a disarming warm spell, a violent storm of |
| 0:30.2 | blinding snow and bitter cold struck the American Midwest. It trapped farmers in fields, |
| 0:35.7 | travelers on roads, and hundreds of children in schoolhouses with limited fuel. |
| 0:40.4 | In today's show, we'll describe the children's blizzard, one of the most harrowing winter storms in American history. |
| 0:46.9 | We'll also play 20 questions with a computer and puzzle over some vanishing vultures. |
| 0:56.3 | Futility Closet is a full-time commitment for us |
| 0:59.0 | and is supported primarily by our amazing listeners. |
| 1:02.2 | We want to thank everyone who helps us be able to keep making the show. |
| 1:05.5 | And this week we're sending out an extra special Futility Closet thank you to Nicodemus |
| 1:10.6 | and Kit, our newest |
| 1:11.7 | super patrons. If you would like to join them and all the other wonderful supporters of our show, |
| 1:17.4 | to help us keep bringing you your weekly dose of the quirky and the curious, please check out |
| 1:22.1 | our Patreon campaign at patreon.com slash futility closet, or see the supportist section of the website. |
| 1:29.4 | The winter of 1888 was unusually bad in the American Midwest as a flow of Arctic air settled |
| 1:35.0 | over the region. In late December, some weather observers in Minnesota couldn't record a low |
| 1:39.2 | temperature because the mercury and their thermometers had frozen solid, and in January, temperatures |
| 1:43.9 | fell even |
| 1:44.4 | lower than that. The winter of 1880, a few years earlier, had been one of the most severe |
| 1:49.2 | on record in the Dakota Territory. The pioneers there spent hours in their snowed-in houses |
... |
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