Hi there. I'm Washington Post reporter Lillian Cunningham. Stay tuned after the show to hear about my latest podcast, Moonrise. It's the dark but true story of why we went to the moon and what we found there. The full series is available now.

Hey, history lovers. I'm Mike Rosenwald with Retropod.

A show about the past.

Rediscovered.

There's this New York Times article from January 25th, 1942, and it reads like the beginning

of a crime novel.

The city's mayor, Fiorillo, LaGuardia, makes a surprise visit to the New York

Police Commissioner. He's come there on the basis of some very interesting information.

The mayor is afraid that the police aren't working fast enough to seize a certain contraband,

and he's worried that the powerful

financial backers of the illicit items will seek a federal injunction against police raids

to get them off the street. The mayor won't say the nature of the information that led

him to make the visit, but soon after he leaves, the police commissioner issues a special order.

Then every available patrolman is assigned to the job of seizing the contraband.

Pinball machines.

The police seized almost 3,000 pinball machines and served more than 1,500 summonses.

And in a show of force, real force, Mayor LaGuardia then proceeded to smash the machines with sledgehammers while photographers took pictures.

He'd been fighting against the machines for his entire time in office, about eight years at that point.

He was convinced that the pinball industry was operated by criminals and the

shady underworld. He described it in an affidavit as a $20 million a year racket.

Other major cities followed in targeting the machines.

Washington, D.C. issued an order making pinball machines illegal

...