![]() He’s the author of The Museum: A Short History of Crisis and Resilience. ![]() To talk with us today about museums is today’s guest, historian and professor Samuel J. ![]() Beset by challenges ranging from pandemic and war to fire and economic uncertainty, museums have sought ways to emerge from crisis periods stronger than before, occasionally carving important new paths forward in the process.īut museums ask questions about power and who gets to determine what stories are told or foregrounded, who gets to determine how those things are exhibited, framed, and talked about. The flames at the Smithsonian were not the first -and certainly would not be the last-disaster to upend a museum in the United States. Rare objects and valuable paintings were destroyed. The New York Times wrote that “the destruction of so many of its fine collections will be viewed as a national calamity.” Dazed soldiers and worried citizens could only watch as the flames engulfed the museum’s castle. On an afternoon in January 1865, a roaring fire swept through the Smithsonian Institution. In today’s episode, we explore the life and death of Mata Hari, a woman who was an excellent performer, perhaps a poor spy, but above all else, never, ever uninteresting. The only recent the French military charged her with espionage was to distract the nation from France’s poor showing in the war. She inspired books, musicals, and films.īut more recently, historians argued that she was merely a gossip who tried to steal state secrets but never discovered anything that couldn’t be found in the newspapers. Immediately after her death, biographies ran with the juicier narrative and turned her into the femme fatale archetype, who lured high-ranking officers into her boudoir and steal their documents while they were asleep. At her trial, prosecutors claimed that the world-famous exotic dancer had seduced countless men from both sides of the war (definitely true) and leaked intelligence that caused the deaths of 50,000 French soldiers (almost certainly false). Joined with us today to talk about the Oregon Trail is history professor and podcast Greg Jackson.Even before Mata Hari (née Margaretha Zelle) was executed by a French firing squad in 1917 for spying on behalf of the Germans, her life had already become legend. A mixture of financial urgency and a sense of destiny-Manifest Destiny-convinced tens of thousands of Americans to trek over 2,000 miles from Missouri’s western edge to Oregon Country.īut how can families cross the desert? Or the Rocky Mountains? Or descend the Columbia River? And what about the British HBC’s hold on Oregon Country? Many tried this dangerous path, including fur traders, missionaries, explorers, and early wagon trains that dared to blaze this trail before its heyday of the 1840s-1860s. The real Oregon Trail sprang up in the 1830s, when America was going through the worst economic slump it would see until the Great Depression. After setting out from Independence, Missouri, you led your pixelated wagon across the frontier, hunting bears, fording rivers, and more likely than not, dying of dysentery. If you were a middle schooler in the United States anytime after 1985 and had a study hall with an Apple II, there is a very high chance you played Oregon Trail.
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