Hello and

Welcome to this day in Esotect political history from Radiotopia. My name is Jody Avergan.

Today another installment in our mini series this day and esoteric times bombs have been dropped from plains on American soil

I can't believe this is an actual ongoing topic of ours, but look we talked about the Tulsa Massacre we talked about Blair Mountain in

West Virginia the move bombing in Philadelphia in the 80s which technically was a

helicopter not an airplane but whenever we come across a story like this, a bomb being dropped

on American soil, we will do it and we will talk about it. And there are a few others still

out there for us. But this one is wild. This is 1926 in southern Illinois, fairly rural area, but also pretty close to Peoria and St. Louis.

And this is the site of one of the most bloody and raucous feuds in American crime history.

This is a feud between basically two families and two gangs, the Shelton's and the burgers,

and they are feuding over control of bootlegging and more in the region.

And on this day, November 12th is when things went to an entirely other level as members of

the Shelton gang commandeered a plane, flying it over a suspected

burger hideout, and dropping homemade bombs onto this encampment. Now no one was killed except for maybe a dog and a pet eagle will get into that but this is nevertheless on the list of aerial bombings on American soil and we will now get into the many crazy twist and turns of the Shelton aerial bombing on the Berger hideout.

Here to do that as always are Nicole Hammer of Columbia and Kelly Carter Jackson of

Wellesley hello there I feel like we're flapping a red flag in front of our

listeners to tell us all of the aerial bombing stories they've got no way for us.

They keep popping up and moreover there is

this question of like what was the first a bombing on American soldiers because

very contested yes because and I think this is the first one that's like very clearly this happened I mean you know because even with Tulsa as we discussed there were rumors and there was cover up and there were these questions like there were schemes to grab a plane and drop them on

on Black Wall Street and Tulsa but no one's really sure whether it actually happened.

Same thing sort of with Blair Mountain which was which was both of those happened a little

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