0:01

Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History

0:03

Class from how Stuff Works dot com.

0:11

Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly

0:14

Fry and I'm Tracy Vie Wilson. Uh.

0:16

This episode is a little bit of a history mystery.

0:19

It's also got a good bit of scientific

0:21

work to counter that mystery. But there's

0:24

still that little slip her that remains

0:26

of uncertainty that keeps people guessing

0:29

Slash. I think interested and

0:31

also just hopeful that it will turn out to be

0:33

something crazy. Right. Yeah,

0:35

we are talking today about something that I think

0:37

a lot of people know a little bit about. Uh.

0:40

We'll talk about why at the end. In terms of popular

0:42

culture, which is the Tunguska

0:45

event. It's a strange phenomenon

0:47

that happened in and

0:50

there is good news because while this was I

0:52

think you could categorize it as a catastrophic

0:55

event, it is not really a sad

0:57

topic. Fortunately, as we'll

0:59

discuss the moment. It happened in a place where people

1:01

did not really get hurt. There's one maybe

1:03

unsubstantiated animals were harmed,

1:06

but probably not people. Yes,

1:09

Uh, and I think probably what happened to the animals

1:11

happened so quickly there was not really suffering.

1:14

Uh. It is a fascinating look at the ways

1:16

in which our planet can surprise and

1:19

mystify us and offer up questions that

1:21

we still can't answer, even after

1:23

more than a hundred years of trying to figure them

1:25

out. Yeah. I think this is

1:27

one that somebody recently was like, I'm surprised you haven't

1:30

talked about this. I am surprised

1:32

we haven't either, Like, I think I had it in

1:34

my head for a while, because it's always something I'm like, oh, yeah,

1:36

that is interesting. Surely the previous

1:38

hosts have done it, and even though we have

1:40

been here for a while, I would

1:42

not put any bets on my ability

1:45

to conjure what has and hasn't been covered

1:47

by previous hosts. I also am never

1:49

surprised because it's the world

1:51

is just so huge, yes, yea.

1:55

So on n at

1:57

approximately seven am, the

1:59

guy over Siberia lit up

2:01

with what was described by witnesses

2:03

as a massive fireball or

2:06

the sky engulfed in fire.

2:08

And then there was a bang and a crash and a

2:10

series of smaller thunking noises

2:12

like objects falling from the sky.

2:15

Yeah. But I want to make clear that while it's described

2:17

that way. We'll we'll get

2:19

to the lack of those objects as

2:22

we discuss UH. The area

2:24

around what is known as the Middle Tunguska

2:26

River in Siberia is not densely

2:29

populated, and it was even less so in

2:31

nineteen o eight, which was a good thing. Had

2:33

there been more people in the area when the largest

2:36

explosion known to man and it still

2:38

holds that title took place, it

2:40

would likely have resulted in a massive loss

2:43

of human life. I read

2:45

one thing last night that said something like,

2:47

if this had happened over London, like the

2:49

whole world would have really felt like a

2:51

much bigger impact because it's

2:54

almost impossible to calculate how devastating

2:57

it would have been. Um.

2:59

There were some deaths, which was primarily

3:01

herds of reindeer. Uh.

3:04

There was one human who was

3:06

allegedly flung against a tree and died.

3:09

That account is not substantiated.

3:11

When this blast, which came as a complete

3:13

surprise, happened, it was

3:15

felt across long distances. Windows

3:18

broke in homes that were as far away as thirty

3:20

five miles or sixty kilometers from the explosion,

3:23

and estimated two thousand square kilometers

3:26

of forest were destroyed. Places as

3:28

far away as Great Britain felt the earth

3:30

shaking, and in places where people didn't

3:33

perceive a rumbling seismographs

3:35

still picked up a wave of activity

3:37

that actually circled the globe. It registered

3:40

a second time in Germany YEA. Some

3:42

accounts will say it circled the globe multiple

3:44

times, but uh the second

3:46

time specifically is mentioned in one of the researchers

3:50

the early researchers report. So the

3:53

estimated power of this mystery explosion

3:56

is really hard to comprehend, and apparently

3:59

it is just as hard to estimate. It

4:01

is often compared to the power of atomic

4:03

bombs, but with sources claiming it

4:05

as anywhere from a hundred and eighty five

4:07

times more powerful than the bomb

4:10

that fell on Hiroshima to one thousand

4:12

times more powerful. I witness

4:15

accounts are almost difficult to believe. They

4:17

sound were like the sorts of things that you would read about

4:19

in an apocalyptic novel. There

4:21

were claims that a low to the earth

4:24

flying star flew across the sky

4:26

and that a pillar of fire trailed

4:28

it. One witness said quote the sky

4:30

split into and fire appeared high

4:32

and wide over the forest. The split

4:35

in the sky grew larger and the entire

4:37

northern side was covered with fire.

4:40

A man who had been sitting on his porch

4:43

forty miles away from the epicenter of the event described

4:45

the sensation that his shirt had caught

4:47

fire. Yes, so there's

4:50

a lot of heat, noise, visual

4:52

fire. Fortunately, So just for clarity,

4:55

because we mentioned earlier that this did not really claim

4:58

a lot of human lives, and it was in a

5:00

fairly sparsely populated

5:02

area. The major primary

5:04

part of it, we'll talk about this in a moment, happened

5:06

over a forest that was completely undeveloped,

5:09

and so these eyewitnesses were

5:11

in homes and areas that were

5:13

outside of that forest. So that is why there are

5:15

eyewitness accounts, but not a

5:17

lot of death and destruction

5:19

in terms of human life. There

5:22

was a massive and I mean massive blast

5:25

wave of wind that followed the explosion

5:27

that resulted in reports that horses,

5:30

even hundreds of kilometers away were unable

5:32

to remain standing. Humans

5:34

and fences were simply blown around.

5:37

But this blast wave is also credited

5:39

with extinguishing the fire that came with the

5:41

explosion. And maybe the most

5:44

odd were the accounts of things that happened in

5:46

far distant places following the blast

5:49

and Great Britain, it was reported that the sky

5:51

remained bright into the night, so much

5:53

so that people could easily read outdoors

5:55

and play cricket in the dead of night. That

5:58

same illumination covered the rest of Europe

6:00

in parts of Asia as well. Yeah,

6:02

and it went on for several days, which

6:05

seems like a completely strange and weird

6:08

apocalyptic event. But even

6:10

though this startling thing had happened

6:12

in the Tunguska area, no one

6:14

from the scientific community really went to

6:16

check it out. One would think that curious

6:19

scientists and researchers would flock

6:21

to a location where such an unusual event

6:23

had taken place, But again, this took place

6:26

in central Siberia, an area notorious

6:29

for having a harsh climate, making travel

6:31

challenging. The Middle Tunguska

6:33

River area has impassively difficult

6:36

winters, and it can get really swampy

6:38

in its warmer season, which offers a whole separate

6:40

set of challenges. In the early nineteen

6:43

twenties, mineralogist Leonid

6:45

Kulik, who was the St. Petersburg

6:48

Museum's chief curator of their meteorite

6:50

collection, had become deeply interested

6:53

in this strange event, and he spent

6:55

the next several years trying to get the government

6:57

to agree to a research trip. Finally,

7:00

in ninety seven, nearly

7:02

two decades after this strange explosion

7:05

at Tunguska, while the Soviet Union

7:07

was in power at this point, because you remember, there

7:09

had been a big power shift in the area,

7:12

Kulick and his team finally traveled

7:14

into the area to investigate, and even

7:16

after two decades, the damage was

7:18

both extensive and very obvious.

7:21

As Kulik and his men approached the

7:24

location where this explosion was reported

7:26

to have taken place, they saw that the trees had

7:28

been completely flattened. Leaning

7:30

outward from the center of the blast, the

7:33

section of flattened forest was thirty

7:35

one miles or fifty kilometers wide, although

7:37

it was not a perfect circle, but more of an elongated

7:40

shape that Kulik would later describe

7:42

as eccentric radial. Yes, sometimes

7:45

you'll see it described as almost like a kind

7:47

of a deformed butterfly shape as well.

7:49

But Kulik did not find the crater

7:52

that he expected at the center of all of that destruction.

7:55

Instead, the trees there in what

7:57

would be the epicenter or stripped bare

7:59

of foliage and arc. But they stood upright.

8:01

They're broken trunks, still rising straight

8:04

into the air. He also anticipated

8:06

finding remnants of a meteorite, but none

8:08

were recovered by his team. Theorized

8:11

the lack of a crater and meteoric

8:14

rock can be attributed to the soft,

8:17

mucky earth in the area, and that whatever

8:19

had hit it had sunk into the mucky

8:21

ground. He wrote about this theory

8:23

and a report published

8:25

by the Astronomical Society of the Pacific.

8:28

In addition to the explosion itself,

8:30

there was an aftermath of particular

8:33

debris, which Kulik described in the

8:35

paper quote huge masses

8:37

of the finest substance sprayed by

8:39

the meteorite in its flight through the atmosphere

8:42

and raised by the explosion in the Earth's

8:44

crust. Due to the cosmic speed of

8:46

the impact of the meteorite caused

8:48

a heavy blanket of dust in the upper layers

8:50

of the atmosphere, and the formation

8:52

at a height from eighty three to eight five kilometers

8:55

of silvery clouds, light clouds

8:58

and dust screens on the sea ling and

9:00

in the lower layers of the stratosphere. Thus

9:03

were produced those remarkable phenomena

9:05

called night dawns, which were of incomparable

9:08

beauty. These were observed on

9:10

the day of the fall, from the place of its occurrence

9:12

as far as Spain and from Fenno, Scandia

9:15

to the Black Sea. We're going to rewind

9:17

a little bit to talk about some work that Kulik actually

9:20

did to try to get information before

9:22

that trip, but first we

9:24

will pause for a sponsor break.

9:34

Right before the break, we read a little bit from

9:36

Kulik's report on all of this, and some

9:38

of what he wrote about actually

9:40

had been published before. He

9:42

had mounted an expedition in nineteen twenty

9:45

one that gathered accounts of the event, but

9:47

it didn't actually make it to the site. Uh.

9:49

That was how Leon and Kulik had first really

9:52

gotten a sense of what had happened at Tunguska.

9:55

He kind of again, it's very impassable,

9:57

difficult to get to and I will point out when

9:59

more time and undeveloped forests,

10:01

so it's not take a place where there are roads

10:04

and it's just hard to get over them. There wasn't

10:06

any way to get to places. It's not

10:08

going to have people passing by and seeing

10:10

what happened. Right. Uh. And certainly

10:13

there's no infrastructure there for him to just put

10:16

it all on the jeep and go. But most scientists

10:19

just did not take those accounts seriously.

10:22

We talked about all the time how eyewitness accounts

10:24

aren't always trustworthy. These were gathered

10:26

some years after the event, so there's already

10:28

that passage of time that that makes

10:30

already potentially fallible memory

10:33

even more fuzzy. Uh.

10:35

And it just it wasn't coming from scientists, it was

10:38

coming from locals. But because

10:40

Kulik was also able to get ahold

10:42

of seismic wave data that confirmed that

10:45

something certainly had happened in Siberia

10:47

in nineteen o eight, this event started

10:49

to garner more serious scientific interest.

10:52

Culick's writing on the subject of the

10:55

event was not the result of just one

10:57

visit. He went again in eight

11:00

with an assistant he refers to as a cinema

11:02

operator, meaning a cameraman. The

11:05

images captured on the trip

11:07

were so stark and startling that they led

11:09

to another expedition in Yeah,

11:13

if you we will use one of those

11:15

images as our show art. But if you just look

11:18

around on the internet for like a tiny amount

11:20

of time, you will see them they're astonishing.

11:22

They really do look just completely

11:24

alien and bizarre. On the trip,

11:28

Kulik was joined by a geobotanist named

11:30

Lvi Shumiliva and another scientist

11:33

named E. L. Crin Off, and they also

11:35

had a group of workmen that traveled with them over

11:37

the course of a year and a half. The numbers of

11:39

of work when they had at any given time varied a little

11:41

bit um, but their mission

11:44

was basically to thoroughly study the

11:46

area and its climate and document

11:48

everything was really detailed notes.

11:51

Over the course of the journey, the research team

11:53

investigated points of interests that might have

11:55

proven pertinent to the nineteen o eight event. There

11:57

are a lot of side trips to look at intensions

12:00

in the earth and see if those might be where debris fell,

12:03

and they also carefully tracked the shifting

12:05

seasons to analyze if climate conditions

12:08

may have contributed. Kula wrote

12:10

his conclusion as to what exactly had taken

12:12

place, quote, we know that on June

12:15

behind the Podkamanya Tung, an

12:18

enormous iron meteorite fell. We

12:20

may imagine that this body broke into

12:22

pieces, first in the air and then into the earth

12:24

crust, which it penetrated in a

12:26

number of discrete fragments, and

12:28

that they're in the crust. These fragments burst

12:31

into still smaller pieces under the action

12:33

of the escaping incandescent gases

12:36

which were produced at the time. Yes, so

12:38

he believed that this meteorite

12:40

had exploded in midair, which is why there were no

12:42

there was no crater, and that the

12:45

pieces that then slammed

12:47

into the earth and went underground

12:49

also exploded some more, and

12:52

that that basically broke them up to the point

12:54

that it was difficult. But he did believe

12:56

that you could potentially find

12:58

large pieces of nicolae is iron

13:01

down in the earth under the central point

13:03

of the explosion, and he thought those would be buried

13:05

less than eighty two ft that's about twenty five down.

13:08

So kulis trips to central Siberia

13:11

provided previously unknown details about

13:13

the Tangoska event to the world outside

13:15

of the immediate area, but also opened

13:17

up this whole Pandora's box of questions

13:20

about what really happened there and why there

13:22

was no impact crater. Series

13:25

about Tunguska range from scientifically

13:27

supported and plausible to downright

13:29

kukie. So we're going to start off with some of

13:31

the more outlandish ones and work our

13:34

way up to the harder science explanations.

13:36

I like how every history mystery ranges

13:39

from

13:42

right too. Oh

13:45

it was mold. How you

13:47

started on like the most bananas

13:50

one and I started on the most straightforward one.

13:55

So uranium was discovered in seventeen

13:58

eighty nine, and at the end of the nineteenth century,

14:00

experiments and nuclear energy were

14:02

really beginning in Earnest Ressus

14:04

St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences

14:07

started Earnest work in radioactive

14:09

materials the year after the Tangusca

14:12

explosion. But there have been conspiracy

14:14

theories that have suggested that nuclear

14:17

energy and specifically weapons

14:19

further along in the globe than the global

14:21

public new in night, and that some

14:23

sort of nuclear explosion caused

14:26

this craterless Tangusca event.

14:28

Yeah, that's one of those great uh perfect

14:30

storm theories of like, of course

14:32

there's no evidence it was all covered up and

14:36

uh they didn't know what they were doing yet because

14:38

it was all done in secret. Uh, there's

14:40

really no there was no radioactive

14:43

uh material or

14:45

measurement taken that would suggest that that was

14:47

the case. What again,

14:49

is a history mystery without the involvement

14:51

of aliens as an explanation for

14:53

strange events. There have been a number

14:56

of hoaxes where people claim to have

14:58

evidence of aliens landing to Aungusca,

15:01

and sometimes the alien explanation and

15:03

the nuclear explosion explanation are

15:05

conflated. They formed sort of a fun ven diagram,

15:08

uh and it becomes about a spaceship's nuclear

15:10

power source malfunctioning and exploding.

15:13

But again, no radioactivity was measured

15:15

to support any of these, so probably

15:17

both. Our favorite theory, even

15:19

if we don't believe it at all, is

15:21

that this whole thing was the result of Nicola

15:24

Tesla losing control of a wireless

15:26

power transmitter he had been working on, which

15:29

could also serve as a death ray.

15:31

This theory is based on the idea that Tesla

15:34

may have been attempting to contact explore

15:36

Robert Peary as he camped on Ellesmere

15:39

Island preparing to attempt to reach

15:41

the North Pole. Also, there's just a

15:43

lot of talk about Tesla developing a death

15:45

ray. Also. Yeah, and even

15:47

some of Tesla's writing is a little

15:51

uh nutty enough that people can

15:53

kind of pick and cherry pick it a little bit

15:55

to support these kinds of ideas.

15:57

It's not a death ray. I

16:00

mean, I don't want to shut anybody's dreams down,

16:02

but I feel confident saying this

16:04

was not Nicola Tesla shooting a death

16:07

ray. Now, but

16:12

even as all manner of fanciful

16:14

explanations have surfaced and even

16:16

taken on lives of their own, scientists

16:19

have been working on this puzzle as well, and

16:21

they have come up with some additional theories, some

16:23

building on the ideas of Culic and others

16:25

going in slightly different directions. Another

16:29

expedition went to the Tunguska site for

16:31

additional research, and this group found

16:33

material that seems to support Kulik's

16:35

hypothesis. They recovered nickel,

16:38

heavy silicate and magnetite

16:40

samples from the ground at the site, which backed

16:42

up this whole meteorite theory. To

16:44

create the kind of effect that happened at

16:46

Tegusca, scientists have estimated

16:48

that a meteorite would have had to be somewhere between

16:51

a hundred and fifty and three hundred feet or

16:53

between fifty and hundred meters in diameter.

16:55

Yeah, and those samples were teeny teeny tiny,

16:58

Like there's a reason just

17:00

in case it's unclear where you're like, how come they found

17:02

samples and he didn't returning less than a millimeter

17:04

in size? They are itty bitty tiny.

17:06

In a paper published Detailing and expedition

17:09

to the site in nineteen sixty one, researcher

17:11

KP. Florensky continued

17:13

the meteorite hypothesis, but also knew

17:16

that this needed still more study,

17:18

writing quote, The investigation

17:20

into the distribution of meteoric dust

17:23

in the area of the fall permits us with

17:25

a high degree of probability to speak

17:27

of physically observed fragments from the Tunguska

17:30

meteorite and the nature of their scattering.

17:33

However, to transform the probability

17:35

into full certainty, the distribution

17:38

of this material must be the subject of study

17:40

in conjunction with the general study of cosmic

17:43

dust and its propagation. In ninety

17:46

three, authors A. A. Jackson

17:48

the Fourth and MP. Ryan Jr.

17:51

Published a paper and the Periodical Nature,

17:53

putting forth the theory that the Tanuska

17:55

event may have been the result of a tiny black

17:57

hole hitting the earth writing quote.

18:00

Since the black hole would leave no creator or a material

18:02

residue, it explains the mystery of

18:04

the tongus event. The following

18:06

year, Nature published another paper written

18:09

by William H. Beasley and Brian A.

18:11

Tinsley the rather direct contradictory

18:13

title of tongus event

18:16

was not caused by a black hole. There

18:19

are a few instances of back and forth with

18:21

these theories, where the follow up written

18:24

by somebody else's like no, no

18:26

girl, that was not a thing, no

18:29

honey um And as part

18:31

of the takedown of that black hole theory, Beasley

18:33

and Tensley right quote. The

18:35

air blast could also have resulted from the

18:38

impact of a small black hole with a

18:40

diameter of the order of Angstrom's and an

18:42

asteroidal mass. The black

18:44

hole would however, have passed through the

18:46

Earth in ten to fifteen minutes and

18:48

caused a similar explosion at the

18:50

point of exit. For what it's

18:52

worth, Jackson and Ryan did point out

18:54

in their own paper that the quote exit

18:56

proves a check on the whole hypothesis,

18:59

and they suggest us said that oceanographic and

19:01

shipping records should be consulted for anything

19:04

that might suggest disturbances in

19:06

the proper exit point that would

19:08

have happened in nineteen o eight. In the late nineteen

19:10

seventies, things circle back around once

19:12

again to the idea that an object from space

19:15

had been the cause of the Tunguska event, and we're

19:17

going to talk about some of that research right after we come

19:19

back from another little sponsor break.

19:27

In November ninety l

19:29

Krazac published a paper in the Bulletin of

19:32

the Astronomical Institutes of Czechoslovakia

19:34

asserting that the cause of the Tunguska event

19:37

had been a fragment of the comet Anka.

19:40

Because comments are made primarily of ice

19:42

and not rock, this idea explained

19:44

why there would be no impact debris ever

19:46

recovered from the site. It would have just evaporated

19:49

in the atmosphere. In two thousand

19:51

seven, Italian scientists put forth another

19:53

reason why no impact creator had ever been discovered.

19:56

It had filled with water and looked like any

19:58

other lake the I can question Like Checho

20:01

is, according to the Italian team,

20:03

unrecorded before the Tunguska

20:06

event, and it has an unusual funnel like shape

20:08

to its bed that made the team think it could actually

20:10

be an impact crater. There are a lot

20:12

of detractors to this whole theory, pointing

20:14

out that trees very near

20:17

Lake Checko are mature and old enough

20:19

that they would have been flattened

20:21

by such an event, like the other trees

20:23

in the area where Yeah, and

20:25

then there's that thing where it's like it's in the middle of

20:27

Siberia. So there's lots of stuff that

20:30

wasn't mapped before them. Um,

20:32

yeah, that is not a popular one.

20:36

In samples from a

20:38

layer of earth from Tunguska that would have been

20:40

settled there in eight revealed

20:43

microscopic rock fragments that had indeed

20:45

originated in a meteorite. Even

20:48

analysis doesn't entirely solve this mystery,

20:51

though. For one, it's not certain that all

20:53

the fragments that they found were actually

20:55

from eight and for another,

20:57

there are anybody fragments of meteorites solid

21:00

for the planet, and there's stuff from space

21:02

hitting the planet literally all the time. So

21:04

even a positive I d of meteoric origin

21:07

doesn't necessarily rule out other possibilities,

21:09

but it is still by far the most substantiated

21:12

explanation. Two more thoroughly

21:14

work through the exact steps to explain

21:17

the century old riddle of Tungusca.

21:19

Scientists Natalia A. Artemieva

21:22

and Valerie VI Shuvalov, in a paper

21:24

published in looked

21:26

at two other incidents for comparisons

21:28

to TUNGUSCA one was the collision

21:32

of comet shoemaker Levy nine with Jupiter,

21:35

and then the February

21:38

Chilly A Binsmedia which exploded

21:40

over to Chilliabinsk, Russia and blew

21:42

out windows over a two hundred square

21:44

mile area. You may have seen footage

21:47

of that on YouTube. It is terrifying.

21:49

So their paper suggests that in the Tunguska

21:52

event number one, a meteor zipped

21:54

into earth atmosphere, chugging along

21:56

somewhere between nine and ten miles per second.

21:59

Number two year the incoming object was broken

22:01

apart in the atmosphere, and number

22:03

three the rock, which had to have been very brittle,

22:05

broke into teeny tiny vapor like particles

22:08

that flash burned in the atmosphere. That

22:11

air bursts would have been like a massive

22:13

bomb going off, creating an impact

22:15

of force that slammed into the ground, leveled

22:18

trees, and left that particulate

22:20

matter in the atmosphere, which explains

22:23

that strange silver sky event

22:25

sort of reported in witness accounts, and

22:28

that account we mentioned earlier about the sky

22:30

in Britain being bright enough for a cricket match.

22:32

It is believed that that strange nighttime

22:34

light phenomenon was the result

22:36

of sunlight reflecting off of scattered

22:38

dust in the atmosphere, which could have come from

22:40

Earth kicked up from the planet's surface, and

22:43

from the meteorite breaking up into the finest

22:45

of particles. This really goes back to Kulik's

22:47

early work. So this is one of those history

22:49

mysteries that continues to capture the attention

22:52

of the scientific community as they strive to find

22:54

really conclusive data that points

22:56

with one certainty to the exact

22:58

cause of the event. It's difficult

23:01

because we have a sample set of exactly

23:03

one. There has not been another event on

23:05

this scale and in recorded time

23:07

for researchers to compare

23:09

it to. We we do know

23:12

of other massive meteorites hitting the Earth,

23:14

but like once, we're okay, there's the the obvious

23:16

craters right there, Nothing quite

23:18

like this at this massive scale

23:21

has happened. But incidentally, though, it is

23:23

estimated that Earth takes a hit from an

23:25

asteroid the size of the one that

23:27

most likely hit Tunguska about every three

23:29

hundred years, so we might have another data

23:31

point soon. In the meantime, though, if you'd

23:33

like to explore the Tunguska Event.

23:35

From a more fictional perspective, you've

23:37

got lots of options. Even though there

23:39

are as plenty of scientific work focusing

23:42

on explaining and understanding what happened in

23:44

Siberia, the remaining

23:46

mystery is enough to fuel all kinds of fictional

23:49

versions of the Tunguska Event.

23:51

Yeah, that's probably how many people

23:53

have heard of it. When I mentioned it to my

23:55

husband, he brought

23:57

up immediately, Oh, they talked about that

24:00

on the X Files, and they did. It

24:03

has also been mentioned on Dr Who, on Star

24:05

Trek, It's mentioned in the movie Hellboy. I

24:07

mean, there is a list a mile long of

24:09

things that have used the Tunguska Event

24:12

as a part

24:14

of fiction. It even shows up in Buffy the Vampire

24:16

Slayer at one point, although they get the details of it wrong,

24:19

Like Willow mentions it and I think she says it happened

24:21

in nineteen seventeen, which would have been the Bolshevik

24:23

Revolution and not this um.

24:26

But so it really is kind of pervasive.

24:29

I think in in nerd circles

24:31

it's almost like shorthand of like a fun

24:33

kind of paranormally thing, but not

24:35

really like most people recognize the science. But

24:39

if you read the comic that told the prequel

24:41

story of Transformers, Dark of the Mood,

24:43

you know the real story of Tungusca, which

24:45

is that it was caused by the Decepticon shockwave.

24:51

That's what I'm gonna stick to. I've

24:53

not seen that so, but I do know what

24:55

a Transformer is and a Decepticon yeah,

24:58

uh yeah, and again it you'd

25:01

have to read the comic that like the supplemental

25:03

material, it's not in the movie.

25:05

The movie doesn't. I don't think the movie touches on

25:07

it. I honestly don't know. I'm not having the hugest

25:10

fan of the Transformers movies. Um,

25:12

but I did see that comic because someone

25:15

mentioned that it had this event in it. The

25:17

abesome listener mail for us, I do,

25:20

uh. And it is another one that is sort

25:22

of about our windsor McKay episodes, but

25:25

it mentions the thing I didn't mention and probably

25:27

should have. Uh. It is our listener Courtney,

25:29

and Courtney writes, Hi, I just started

25:32

listening to part two of the windsor McKay episode

25:34

and had to pause to write you this note. When I

25:36

heard you mentioned little Nemo, I had

25:38

a vague but very fond memory of an

25:40

animated movie from my childhood called

25:42

Little Nemo Adventures in Slumberland

25:45

that was a big non Disney favorite of my brothers

25:47

and I for a few years. The movie

25:49

came out in nine, but I remember

25:52

watching it on repeat when I was probably in

25:54

the six to eight age range. It

25:56

turns out it was based on Windsor McKay's comic

25:58

strip. Uh says, maybe you're about

26:00

to talk about it in the episode, so I'm sorry if by

26:02

being repetitive, but I was so struck at hearing

26:05

this blast from the past UH

26:07

that she wanted to go ahead and write in I

26:09

did not talk about it on that episode because

26:12

it is based on it, but it's

26:14

not. It's made by completely different

26:16

people. I also will confess I have never

26:18

watched it, which is no shade

26:21

to it. It's just never been one of those things that hit

26:23

my television screen. But

26:25

it does exist. So I'm glad she mentioned it because

26:28

that could be a point of confusion if people are

26:30

looking for windsor McKay things that

26:32

is made by other people that were Uh

26:35

inspired by windsor McKay, including I think

26:37

Chris Columbus worked on it, which has gone who's gone

26:39

on to work on everything, including he's

26:42

one of the producers on the earliest Harry

26:44

Potter movies and basically, if

26:46

you look at his IMDb page, he's touched a lot of things

26:48

you've probably watched. But yeah, that is not related

26:51

to windsor McKay directly, but inspired

26:53

by him. So thank you for mentioning

26:55

that, Courtney, because that would have been a good thing to

26:57

mention in the episode. If you would like to email

26:59

us, you can do so at History Podcast at house

27:02

to works dot com. You can also find us

27:04

across the spectrum of social media as

27:06

Missed in History and Missed in History

27:08

dot com is our website address where

27:10

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27:12

of the show that has ever existed. We

27:15

also have show notes for any of the shows that Tracy

27:17

and I have worked on together. So come and visit

27:19

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27:21

and we can all jaunt through

27:24

history together. For

27:30

more on this and thousands of other topics, visit

27:32

housetop works dot com.