Rewind: Strange Hoaxes of the 19th Century

The Bowery Boys: New York City History

Tom Meyers

Places & Travel, History, Documentary, Society & Culture

4.7 • 3.9K Ratings

🗓️ 22 January 2021

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

PODCAST REWIND Stories of outrageous hoaxes perpetrated upon New Yorkers in the early 19th century. In the 1820s, the Erie Canal would completely change the fortunes of the young United States, turning the port city of New York into one of the most important in the world. But an even greater engineering challenge was necessary to prevent the entire southern part of Manhattan from sinking into the harbor! That is, if you believed a certain charlatan hanging out at the market….. One decade later, the burgeoning penny press would give birth to another tremendous fabrication and kick off an uneasy association between the media and the truth. In the summer of 1835 the New York Sun reported on startling discoveries from one of the world’s most famous astronomers. Life on the moon! Indeed, vivid moon forests populated with a menagerie of bizarre creatures and winged men with behaviors similar those of men on Earth. boweryboyshistory.com A version of this show was originally released on July 8, 2016. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/boweryboys

Transcript

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0:00.0	The following is a replay of our show on the strange hoaxes of Old New York, episode 128.
0:07.6	Since we recorded this show in the summer of 2016,
0:11.6	hoaxes and conspiracies have regrettably become a more prevalent and dangerous force in American life.
0:18.0	Plus, with Elon Musk headed to the moon,
0:21.3	maybe he can do something about those pesky manbats.
0:24.8	Enjoy!
0:25.6	Hey, it's the Bowry Boys!
0:27.2	Hey!
0:28.4	Support for the Bowry Boys is provided by our listeners.
0:31.9	Join us for as little as a dollar a month by visiting patreon.com slash Bowry Boys.
0:40.9	Hi there, welcome to the Bowry Boys, this is Greg Young.
0:43.4	And this is Tom Myers.
0:44.7	With an anthology show of sorts, although it's really just two main stories, but...
0:49.9	Right, a duo.
0:50.9	A duo, a tale of two hoaxes,
0:53.1	a couple stories of mischief and jocainery from the early 19th century.
0:58.2	Now Greg, we like a good hoax, right?
1:00.2	We like a good, practical joke.
1:02.5	I love the wool pulled over my eyes on occasion.
1:06.1	And what could be funnier than wool from the 1820s and 30s?
1:10.1	For we're going back to a very specific period in the early 19th century,
1:15.8	to tell of two hoaxes pulled off on the populace of New York at the time.
	...

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