This episode is another portrait of Hailey and Dennis' view of history and of the world around them. Hailey is unable to disassociate from the people she encounters. Her driving force is compassion, so she wouldn't have been able to leave Fred and Amelia to die on that island. Dennis, contrariwise, is driven by rules and the pursuit of knowledge. He was happy to discover the final resting place of Ms. Earhart and then just leave it at that. He had no moral obligation to save her life and he thought Hailey was "breaking the rules" by even considering it.
What went wrong:
From what I've found there wasn't any farewell gala for Earhart before she left Miami. She was getting pretty famous by the time of her fateful flight — she had become friends with Eleanor Roosevelt and she had met Albert Einstein at a grand opening of a museum — so it's conceivable that she would have a star-studded party to see her off. But the guest list was entirely fabricated.
Amelia Earhart in 1936.
There have been countless theories about the ultimate fate of Earhart and Noonan. From the idea that she was taken prisoner by the Japanese and died in captivity, to the creatively named "crash-and sink" theory, there are about as many scenarios as there were miles covered in her fateful trek. The Nikumaroro theory has one of the biggest followings and to this day expeditions are being sent to the area in search of more clues — a recent trip was even supported by Hillary Clinton. The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) is the main organisation today actively searching for Amelia; their website was a big help in the writing of this episode.
As for the King Arthur section of the story, there have been numerous contenders for the title of true King Arthur. Artorius, from what I've read seems the most interesting, if not the most likely.
If you have any questions or input you can fill in the comment box below.
A Christmas special? Are you serious? I was never a huge fan of the TV Christmas special. It inevitably ends up cheesing up the series (Dr. Who is a notable exception – for the most part) but I figured it'd be a fun challenge to try to write one and, since this series takes place through the school year, it was only logical that the Christmas season would make an appearance. The previous episode, "Marooned", took place almost entirely in the students' investigation, so I wanted to do a reverse of that and show the investigation as marginally as possible. I unintentionally stole some ideas from one of my favourite Christmas movies Mixed Nuts so I thought I would give credit here: a disgruntled, painfully human character in a Santa costume, and the overall depressive side of the holidays, are some of my favourite elements in a holiday story.
What went wrong:
The Great Chicago Fire
The cause of the Great Chicago fire has been speculated extensively. One theory pins it on a falling meteorite. One man confessed to having been gambling – and winning – in the barn when someone knocked over a lantern. I'm not sure why his confession hasn't been taken seriously. In 1997 a Chicago lawyer looked into the testimony of 'Peg Leg' Sullivan and found some serious problems with it. Based on his evidence Mrs. O'Leary was actually exonerated for the crime in 1997.
The Santa story was a lot more multi-faceted. There are literally hundred of stories contributing to the tradition. There are at least half a dozen historical or legendary figures wrapped up in the character of Santa Claus. St. Nicholas seems to have been a real bishop in fourth century Anatolia. it's impossible to know what stories about him are true – the maiden's dowries anecdote does appear in some form in texts from as early as the ninth century – but it seems like he was at least a famously generous and inspirational person. To this day there is a St. Nicholas' Church/shrine in Bari, Italy; the pirates, or sailors, are supposed to have stolen Nicholas' bones from Myra and reinterred them in Italy.
Haddon Sundblom
A Coca-Cola Santa
The modern image of Santa Claus was indeed largely a product of the work of Haddon Sundblom. He didn't, as many believe, singlehandedly invent Santa Claus as we know him. As Sundblom says in the story, he had been used in advertising before (notably for White Rock Beverages). And before that he had appeared in books and magazines. He was drawn by the famous political cartoonist Thomas Nast (the man who first associated Elephants and Donkeys with American politics) in 1872. Haddon Sundblom is also famous for his drawings of Aunt Jemima and the Quaker Oats Man.
If you have any questions or input you can fill in the comment box below.
Sources:
Clark, Josh. "Did Nero Really Play the Fiddle While Rome Burned?" HowStuffWorks. Discovery Network. Web. 25 Feb. 2012. <http://www.howstuffworks.com/ancient-rome/nero.htm>.
Edmonds, Molly. "Did the Great Chicago Fire Really Start with Mrs. O'Leary's Cow?"HowStuffWorks. Discovery Network. Web. 24 Feb. 2012. <http://www.howstuffworks.com/chicago-fire-cow.htm>.
Gibson, Candace and Josh Clark "Re: Did the Great Chicago Fire Really Start With Mrs. O'Leary's Cow?" Audio blog comment. HowStuffWorks. Discovery Network, 8 Aug. 2008. Web. 24 Feb. 2012.
Gibson, Candace and Josh Clark "Re: Did Nero Really Play the Fiddle While Rome Burned?" Audio blog comment. HowStuffWorks. Discovery Network, 8 Aug. 2008. Web. 24 Feb. 2012.
Gyles, Mary Francis. "Nero Fiddled while Rome Burned" The Classical Journal , Vol. 42, No. 4 (Jan., 1947), pp. 211-217, Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3291751.
Parker, Sam. "Haddon Sundblom: The Man Who Painted Christmas." Weblog post.The Huffington Post. 12 Dec. 2011. Web. 25 Apr. 2012. <http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2011/11/28/haddon-sundblom-santa-claus_n_1116557.html>.
One explanation for the dancing plague is ergotism. Ergot, a mould that grows on flour can cause hallucinations and spasms, so one theory is that they were all poisoned by it. It is unlikely, however, that so many people could be affected by it for so long a time. Also, it's unlikely that they would all have the same reaction to the mould. Unfortunately modern scholarship has been unable to explain this crazy phenomenon and, you might have noticed, Hailey and Dennis didn't either.
What went wrong:
A wood carving of the Dancing Plague
Nostradamus did leave the University of Avignon after it was closed down because of the plague, but he didn't go straight to Montpellier. According to himself, he wandered the French countryside experimenting with herbal remedies. He actually didn't start prophesying until around the 1550s. That poem was made up, hence its lousiness.
"...a beard that rivalled Plato's."
That da Vinci chronometer sketch doesn't exist either. Obviously. As far as I can tell it's true that Anne Boleyn might have met Leonardo da Vinci. She was Queen Claude's maid of honour before she returned to England and seduced Henry VIII into abandoning Catholicism (or something like that). The royal family frequented Amboise where da Vinci was living thanks to King Francis I's patronage. Pretty cool.
If you have any questions or input you can fill in the comment box below. Sources:
Donaldson, L J, J Cavanagh, and J Rankin. "Leading article: The Dancing Plague: a public health conundrum." Public Health (Nature) 111, no. 4 (July 1997): 201. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed December 27, 2011).
Waller, John. "Dancing Death." BBC http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_7608000/7608874.stm
Before you pooh-pooh the universal translator plot device, try writing a time travel/history story without it. My best advice is to just come to terms with it now and we can all get on with our lives.
Now that we've got that out of the way, this was a bit more low key as far as episodes have gone so far. More of a look into Dennis and Hailey's personalities and their relationship with eachother. It was the first episode where they actually stayed together the whole trip, and it gave them the opportunity to discuss the things they've been thinking about since day one.
What went wrong:
The Culprit
It's impossible to know if Atlantis ever existed so I did the best I could. The Santorini (AKA Thera, AKA Minoan) eruption is a real historical event. Dating has been attempted via dendrochronology (tree-ring dating), Egyptian written accounts and various other methods but there hasn't been a conclusion as to when exactly it took place. Some believe the event brought on a volcanic winter, the effects of which were felt as far away as China. It's quite likely that such a cataclysmic event would be remembered through oral tradition and would be an inspiration for Plato's famous tale of Atlantis. It is a leading theory in the real-life Atlantis debate but of course it is impossible to know for sure. It doesn't match up with the figures Plato mentioned for size (bigger than Asia Minor and Lybia combined), year of destruction (about 9600BC) or even location; he said it was past the Pillars of Hercules, or the Straight of Gibraltar, which Santorini isn't. Some have suggested that the Americas were the inspiration for the "Lost Continent." There have been about as many theories as there are landmasses to which to pin them.
Plato wrote about Atlantis in two of his dialogues: Timaeus and Critias. He started to go in greater detail in Critias but the project seems to have been abandoned. There was no mention of Atlantis in Greek literature before Plato. He claimed that it was kept in his family and originally told to them by Solon, the famous Athenian statesman, who heard it on a trip to Egypt.
Ignatius L. Donnelly
Ignatius Donnelly is quite an interesting historical figure. His theories about Atlantis were explained in the story, but if you want to see for yourself you can read his bookAtlantis: The Antediluvian World here. He lays out his point quite clearly at the start.
You can also read a translation of Plato's Timaeushere.
Sources:
Donnelly, Ignatius. Atlantis, the antediluvian world. London: S. Low, Marston, Searle and Rivington, 1882.
Plato. "Timaeus" and "Critias."
Watts, Edward. "Creating the Academy: Historical Discourse and the Shape of Community in the Old Academy." The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Vol. 127, (2007), pp. 106-122
Special thanks to Marta Pavia for help with the Ancient Greek translation.
The best part about this episode, what makes it unique from most time travel fiction, is showing the effects of time travel on a person's physiology. Time-travel-lag is a serious condition that affects all of us. Especially around the beginning and end of daylight savings time.
Another theme is the mini-paradoxes that start cropping up everywhere. Hailey hears Simon and Garfunkel's "Scarborough Fair" then she travels back in time and teaches it to some minstrels in 1215, then they pass the song down through the generations until Simon and Garfunkel hear it in the 1960s and record their own version, which Hailey hears in the 1990s, and so on. That, as well as Dennis being awoken by himself are examples of how time travel works in Chronodyssey. The next episode has a good one too. You should read it.
What went wrong:
King John
King John probably mostly spoke a French dialect, as his father was a Norman and his mother was from Anjou, both regions of what would become France. The peasants would have spoken old English which would have resembled German or maybe Frisian. Hang on one more episode and I'll clear up some of this language nonsense/ability only to visit people in history who spoke (or might possibly have spoken) English.
As for the Robin Hood mystery. It is impossible to know if he was a real guy. There are probably as many theories about the origin of the Robin Hood legend as there are portrayals of it – literally hundreds. It does seem to be true that at least by the late 13th Century people began taking on the name Robin Hood, Robehod, or some variation to distinguish themselves as outlaws.
Some possible real life contributors to the myth are, as mentioned, William Wallace, as well as Fulk FitzWarin, a Marcher Lord who rebelled against King John, and Eustace the Monk, who was a vicious pirate around the same time.
A depiction of Hood and Guy of Gisborne
The balladeers definitely had a hand in Robin Hoods fame. The song that the minstrels sang is called "Robin Hood's Death and Burial" and can been read in full here.
The Sheriff of Nottingham is another elusive figure. One possible contestant is a William de Wendenhal who was sheriff in 1194.
Sources:
Cawthorne, Nigel. A Brief History of Robin Hood. London: Robinson, 2010.
Hilton, R.H. "The Origins of Robin Hood." in Past & Present no. 14 (November 1958): 30-44. JSTOR.
Holt, J. C.. “Hood, Robin.” In Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, edited by H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004. Online ed., edited by Lawrence Goldman, January 2007.
Simeone, William E.. "The Historic Robin Hood." in The Jornal of American Folklore 66, no. 262 (Oct. - Dec., 1953): 303-308.
Toothman, Jessika. "Was There a Real Robin Hood?" How Stuff Works.
This episode deals with historical inaccuracies that cropped up while the players were still alive. Most sources seem to agree, or at least acknowledge the possibility, that John Smith embellished the story of his rescue by Pocahontas, especially once he was the only surviving witness. He apparently didn't tell the story of Pocahontas saving his life until his letter to Queen Anne in 1616, and didn't publish the story until 1624 when Pocahontas and her father were both dead. Some believe it was because when she saved him, he didn't want to admit that he, the rugged adventurer, was saved by an eleven year old savage. But he grew fond of her over the years, and by the time he told the story she was something of a legend in Britain. Maybe he also just mellowed out a bit; no longer as concerned with his own image he told a story that would cement his friend Pocahontas as a heroic figure. Some sources also say that he may have thought she saved his life, but it was actually a part of a dramatic ritual symbolizing his death and rebirth as a part of the Powhatan society. All in all it's very confusing so I opted to work around the dramatic rescue and show that she did in fact rescue Jamestown first by providing them with food, and later by warning them of Powhatan's impending attack.
What went wrong?
Pocahontas AKA Matoaka
AKA Rebecca
John Smith was actually held prisoner for over a month. In our story it seems like he's only there for an hour or so. While Pocahontas did learn English, she probably didn't speak a word of at the time of John Smith's capture, especially since he was probably the first white person she had ever seen. The romance between Smith and Pocahontas is debatable. Most sources agree that they flirted with each other but there was nothing serious between them. It was probably more of a schoolgirl crush (as was mentioned cynically by Dennis in the story). The story where Pocahontas rescues the English from her father's attack is true, though the events played out differently in the real story. I had the settlers drinking alcohol a lot more frequently than they probably did. They didn't have a lot of beer (or anything) at Jamestown in the early years, and apparently didn't start brewing their own until the 1620s. John Smith's letter to Queen Anne was much abridged. The original can be seen here. I should probably point out that Pocahontas and Smith met one more time. Not long after her soirée with the king and queen, Pocahontas met up with Smith in Brentford, near London. It seems to have been an awkward and unhappy reunion. Smith no longer the powerful man he was in Virginia, Pocahontas in her uncomfortable European outfit. She told him she thought he was dead and insisted on calling him "father" which irked Smith. Soon thereafter Pocahontas and John Rolfe set off to return to the New World but Pocahontas died of an illness as they were embarking leaving behind a son named Thomas Rolfe. Through him people today trace their ancestry back to Pocahontas. A famous example is Edith Bolling Galt Wilson, the wife of U.S. President Woodrow Wilson. The fragile peace established with the marriage of Rolfe and Pocahontas didn't last. Pocahontas' father died not long after her and the bloodshed resumed–a tragic end to a dramatic story.
Sources:
Barbour, Philip L. The Three Worlds of Captain John Smith. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1964. Print.
Chatterton, Edward Keble. Captain John Smith. London: Joh Lane, 1927. Print.
Gleach, Frederic W. "The Ritual World of Pocahontas." Natural History 115.9 (2006): 40-47. EBSCO Publishing. Web. 22 Sept. 2011.
Lambert, Katie, and Sarah Dowdy. "Pocahontas: An American Princess." Audio blog post. How Stuff Works. Discovery Network, 18 Nov. 2009. Web. 20 Aug. 2011. <howstuffworks.com>.Paine, Lauran. Captain John Smith and the Jamestown Story. New York: Hippocrene, 1973. Print.
Vaughan, Alden T. American Genesis: Captain John Smith and the Founding of Virginia. Boston: Little, Brown, 1975. Print.
I wanted to kick off the series with a story that really showed Hailey and Dennis' characters. Hailey fell right in with the political philosophers leading up to the French Revolution, and Dennis came face to face with historically significant characters, only to for once see them not as characters but as people. These themes will be expanded on through the series.
What went wrong?
The Royal Family on the balcony at
Versailles, overlooking the angry mob
The timeline in Bastille Day is completely wrong, condensed to allow for a fast moving story. Versailles wasn't attacked until October, almost three months after the storming of the Bastille. An angry mob, consisting mostly of market women enraged by the lack of bread and revolutionaries seeking political reform, infiltrated the palace. They murdered servants, looted the place, and ultimately called the king out onto a balcony where he tried to pacify them. They still revered him as a monarch, but called for the death of Antoinette who they saw as a foreign harlot. She came out onto the balcony with one of her children in her arms and the crowd somehow saw her as a kind mother and not the barbaric tyrant they expected. Still, the crowd forced the family into a carriage and took them back to Paris.
The guillotine wasn't in fact used until April 25, 1792, almost three years after the events of our story.
Marie-Thérèse, Queen of France
The "great princess" referenced by Rousseau was obviously not Denis Diderot. The truth is no one's really sure who the philosophe was talking about. Some think it was Marie-Thérèse, the wife of King Louis XIV, who lived a century before Antoinette. It definitely wasn't Antoinette who, as was stated in the story, was only a child in Austria at the time Rousseau published his Confessions (which is where the quote is found).
I guess it's pretty unbelievable that practically everyone spoke English when they needed to; Louis XVI was fluent, but Antoinette only spoke broken English, and the dauphin probably never learned it. Rousseau also never spoke English. Needless to say I bent the truth there for the sake of the story.
Sources:
Belloc, Hilaire. Marie Antoinette. Freeport, NY: for Libraries, 1972. Print.
Denton, C.S. Absolute Power (Arcturus Publishing, Ltd. 2006)
Gibson, Candice, and Josh Clark. "Did Marie Antoinette Really Tell French Peasants to Eat Cake?" Audio blog post. How Stuff Works. Discovery Network, 08 Sept. 2009. Web. 15 Aug. 2011. <www.howstuffworks.com>.
Shenkman, Richard. Legends, Lies & Cherished Myths of World History. New York, NY: HarperPerennial, 1994. Print.
