Hello everyone I'm your host James Rogers and this is the History Hit

Wargas. This is a special episode taken from the Dan Snow's History Hit

Archives. Dan was joined by award-winning journalist Ravi Somaya to discuss a mysterious death in 1961 of UN Secretary General

Dag Hamushko. Although Dag Hamishol was called the greatest statement of our century

by John F Kennedy, his plane was shot down as he flew over

the Congo. He was found dead with an ace of spades placed on the body.

Ravi took Dan into the depths of this event and the remarkable

consequences across the globe. Ravi, great to have you on the podcast, man.

Lovely to meet you too, Dan.

This is exciting stuff, isn't it? Historical sloothing.

Why do you set out on this adventure?

I just happened across this story. I was working at the New York Times, I was

working nights, and it sounds very exciting because you're in the middle of a big busy metropolis,

but it's incredibly boring, so you end up reading lots of stuff and I stumbled across this story and I couldn't get out of my head so I just started making calls and sending emails and before I knew it I was waking up in the middle of the night thinking about flight paths and white

supremacists and Cold War spies and thwarted idealists and all sorts of things.

Thwart idealists out there is always playing those around.

Now tell me who was this man?

JFK described him as the greatest statesman of our century.

Tell me about it.

Well, I think he's one of the unique characters of the last century.

And one of the reasons I was really drawn to this story is if you look around the world now,

you don't find many leaders who speak five languages, you know, compose poetry, are accomplished photographers, you know,

...