Welcome to another bonus episode of Calm History, an extra treat for my Silk Plus members.

Now, sometimes I bring you serious and meaningful history,

and sometimes I bring you light and silly history.

Well, today is the latter situation.

I'm basically going to pour rainbow-colored sugar into your ears.

What you're about to hear is not, and probably will never be in a history textbook. This is a curious and campy true crime

story about a bunch of college pranks. I'll walk you through the history of a rivalry

between two universities that's resulted in a bunch of curious pranks.

Now, the pranks themselves aren't that inventive. For example, one prank involves the stealing

of an axe, and another one involves the stealing of a mascot costume.

Yeah, pretty mundane stuff.

But the backstory, the planning, execution, and fallout from these pranks is the juicy juice of joy.

These are not simple thefts, but rather they are complicated heists.

Or a better description is that they are crazy capers. These pranks involve a fake body made

out of straw, a bank vault, an armored car, smoke bombs, ransoms, the police, the world's

ugliest mascot, and Sports Illustrated.

What you are about to hear will sound like an article in The Onion, or a mockumentary,

or a fake story written as an April Fool's Day joke,

but the backstory and the details of these pranks are real.

The backstory even involves a shady story about the NFL and some fun facts about the Super Bowl.

Yeah, I like this stuff.

I enjoy digging into the history of pranks, hoaxes,

...