When Johann Rahl received the letter on Christmas Day 1776, he put it away to read later.

Maybe he thought it was a season's greeting and wanted to save it for the fireside.

But what it actually was, was a warning, delivered to the Hesian colonel, letting him know that General George Washington was crossing the Delaware and would soon attack his forces.

The next day, when Rawl lost the Battle of Trenton and died from two colonial Boxing Day musket balls, the letter was found, unopened in his vest pocket.

As someone with 15,000 unread emails in his inbox, I feel like there's a lesson there.

Oh well, this is the constant, a history of getting things wrong. I'm Mark Chrysler. Every episode, we look at the bad

ideas, mistakes, and accidents that misshaped our world. Find us at Constantpodcast.com

or wherever you get your podcasts.

You're listening to an Airwave Media podcast.

Oh, oh, hello.

You frightened me when you came in.

What are you doing here? You wanna... You know what?

I'm gonna tell you a story.

First off, you probably know that I'm Mick Sullivan if you are here.

If you don't, I am Mick Sullivan.

And this is the past and the curious.

And I have been fascinated by this story from the moment I heard of it in 2019 was when I first

heard of it.

And then I made all these connections to places around my town that, and then it carried

me all the way to Boston. and I got to spend time with

and meet someone who I admire very, very much. And believe me, all of the people that I work with

are sick and tired of me talking about the story. They're like, there he goes again. Okay, sure,

...