Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avergan.

This day June 10, 1845, the funeral of former President Andrew Jackson.

And, you know what?

Sometimes I like to just outsource my intro to accounts at the time, so I will now read from the account of one person in attendance

the Reverend William Meniffy Normant. So Reverend Normant writes and I quote,

before the sermon and while the crowd was gathering a wicked parrot that was a household pet, got excited and commenced swearing so loud and long as to disturb the people and had to be carried from the house.

The presidential parrot was excited by the multitude and let loose perfect gusts of cuss words.

People were horrified and awed at the bird's lack of reverence."

End quote.

Intro over, let's talk about this.

Here to discuss Andrew Jackson's Cussing Parrot are, as always,

Nicole Hammer of Columbia and Kelly Carter Jackson of Wellesley.

Hello Jody. Hey there. I did kind of want to just do a string of

curses to say so but I have a list of purses. in the show but I suppose we were talking

before the taping here that this might be our first episode about Jackson

and kind of not really about him,

but let's do a little Jackson 101.

Kelly, what do we need to know about him

and I suppose his death

and sort of painting the picture of this moment when you know

President dies it's a big deal but what are we looking at here? Oh so this this is

...