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Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of IHeart Radio.

Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Fry.

And I'm Tracy V. Wilson.

We mentioned today's subject in our recent episode on Emil Kuwait. And at the time, I said he was on my shortlist because he

was fascinating and who that's the truth. Uh, I Virgil Neal's life was such a wild ride that it sounds

fictional. I was trying to describe it to a friend of

mine last night while we were talking, and he was like, wait, is this all the same guy? And I was like,

yeah. His career had this seemingly bright start as a writer of accounting and banking textbooks

that were very well regarded and used for decades because of how good

they were. And then his life took some very wild turns into hypnotism, patent medicine,

and fraud, as well as an odd success. He is not a rags to riches story. He is a swindler and flim-flam man to Rich's story, although he was

plagued with accusations of all kinds of crimes throughout his life, including collaborating

with an enemy during wartime. So we're going to tackle E. Virgil Neal today and next episode because there's a lot

to get through. It is a lot. We'll start with how Ewing Virgil Neal was born in Georgetown, Missouri,

to Armistead, Arthur, and Ellen Neal. That was in September of 1868. His birthplace is frequently listed as Sedalia, Missouri. Georgetown is a smaller

municipality that's just a few miles north of Sedalia. While Neil would later in his life claim

that he had been born into a poor farming family, his father was actually a schoolteacher.

They did own farmland, but that was not really the source of their income.

Yeah, his dad was a really well-respected teacher.

While Neil's earliest years aren't particularly well-documented, which isn't that odd for somebody in his place in life. He did, we know,

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