Hey, history lovers. I'm Mike Rosenwald with Retropod, a show about the past, Rediscovered.

Prince Harry's upcoming nuptials to American divorcee, Megan Markle, has certainly excited the British tabloids.

There is nothing like a royal wedding to really get the gossip juices flowing.

But their wedding is nothing compared to the last time a royal decided to marry an American

woman who had been divorced.

In 1936, King Edward VIII decided to wed Wallace Simpson.

The decision triggered a full-blown crisis inside Windsor Castle and ultimately an abdication. Why? For one thing, Simpson was about

to be divorced for the second time. Also, she was from Baltimore, a lovely place, but not all

that royal. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Simpson was born in Pennsylvania as Bessie Wallace Warfield.

Her father was a wealthy flower merchant who died of tuberculosis a few months after she was born.

Simpson and her mother moved to a Baltimore row house, living on meager monthly payments from her late father's brother.

Simpson was always jealous of friends who had more money.

And after her uncle declined to host her coming out ball, she ran away to Florida.

There, in the early 1900s, she met husband number one, Wyn Spencer, a Navy pilot.

He drank a lot.

They fought a lot. They fought a lot.

They divorced a decade later.

Next up, Ernest Simpson, a Harvard grad who renounced his U.S. citizenship and worked with

his father in the British shipping industry, giving Wallace access to High Society, London.

Then, Edward the 8th.

Edward was just a prince when he first met Simpson at a party in 1931. He already had two other

girlfriends at the time. Edward's courtship of Simpson took place over a series of

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