LANE: Welcome back to Touring History, the podcast where we discover that every single day in the past was somehow both completely inevitable and totally bananas. I'm Lane.
DAVE: And I'm Dave, and before we dive into today's emotional rollercoaster of human achievement and catastrophe, we need to talk about something that's been consistently inconsistent throughout all of recorded history—TimeFlakes cereal, now with 47% more temporal confusion!
LANE: You know, Dave and I have been doing this show long enough to realize that no matter what's happening in the world—wars, elections, pandemics, the rise and fall of empires—people have always struggled to understand what time it actually is.
DAVE: TimeFlakes represents that kind of temporal bewilderment. Each bowl contains cereal pieces from different eras of human history. Medieval oats, Renaissance wheat, and Industrial Revolution corn syrup, all mixed together in a way that makes absolutely no chronological sense.
LANE: Which is perfect for today, because June 12th includes everything from medieval battles to civil rights milestones to one of the most heartbreaking stories of the 20th century. So grab your favorite historically confused breakfast—preferably TimeFlakes, available nowhere because we just made it up—and let's see what humanity accomplished on this particular day.
DAVE: Let's start with birthdays, because June 12th decided to give us one of the most emotionally complex birthday lists in history.
LANE: Anne Frank, born 1929. And this is where we need to pause, because Anne Frank's story is probably one of the most important stories of the 20th century, and it starts with a birthday present.
DAVE: June 12th, 1942, Anne Frank receives a diary for her 13th birthday. Just a regular diary, the kind any teenager might get. But within a month, her family would be in hiding, and that diary would become one of the most important historical documents ever written.
LANE: Anne Frank wrote about being a normal teenager—crushes, arguments with her parents, dreams about her future—while hiding in a secret annex during the Holocaust. It's like if your diary became a window into one of the darkest periods in human history.
DAVE: What gets me about Anne Frank's diary is how ordinary it is in some ways. She's worried about typical teenage things, she's frustrated with her family, she's figuring out who she is. But she's doing all of this while literally hiding for her life.
LANE: And the fact that we're talking about her today, 80 years later, means her diary accomplished what she hoped it would—it made sure people remembered.
DAVE: On a much lighter note, we've got Adriana Lima, born 1976, one of the most successful supermodels in history.
LANE: Lima was a Victoria's Secret Angel for almost 20 years, which is like being a professional beautiful person for two decades. That's a career that requires both genetic luck and serious business skills.
DAVE: And then we've got Dave Franco, born 1985, who's basically living proof that being James Franco's little brother doesn't automatically ruin your life.
LANE: Dave Franco managed to carve out his own career in Hollywood, which is impressive when your older brother is... well, James Franco is a lot.
DAVE: It's like if your older sibling was really famous but also really weird, and you had to figure out how to be successful without people constantly asking you to explain your sibling's life choices.
LANE: Alright, let's go chronological, starting with 910 AD and the Battle of Augsburg, where the Hungarians defeat the East Franks using a feigned retreat.
DAVE: A feigned retreat is basically the medieval version of "I'm going home now" and then hiding behind a tree until your enemies get careless.
LANE: The Hungarians were masters of this tactic. They'd charge into battle, engage the enemy, then suddenly turn around and run away. The East Franks would think, "Great! We won!" and start chasing them in a disorganized mob.
DAVE: And then the Hungarians would turn around and destroy the pursuing army, because a pursuing mob is not the same thing as an organized military formation.
LANE: It's like if you were playing tag and you convinced all the other kids to chase you into a dead end, except instead of tag, it's medieval warfare and the stakes are slightly higher.
DAVE: The feigned retreat is one of those tactics that works because it exploits basic human psychology. When you see someone running away, your instinct is to chase them, especially if you think you're winning.
LANE: Although, you'd think after the first few times this happened, armies would be like, "Wait, this feels familiar. Are we sure they're actually retreating?"
DAVE: But that's the beauty of it—even if you know it might be a trap, you still have to pursue, because what if they really are retreating and you miss your chance to win?
DAVE: Moving forward to 1939, the Baseball Hall of Fame is inaugurated in Cooperstown, New York.
LANE: Cooperstown, which is supposedly where baseball was invented, even though that's probably not true. But sometimes the myth is more important than the facts.
DAVE: The first class of inductees included Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Honus Wagner, Christy Mathewson, and Walter Johnson. Basically, if you played baseball before 1920 and people still remembered your name, you probably got in.
LANE: The Hall of Fame is interesting because it's this attempt to create immortality through sports. Like, your body will die, but your plaque will live forever in a building in upstate New York.
DAVE: And it works! People make pilgrimages to Cooperstown just to see plaques of people who were really good at hitting a ball with a stick.
LANE: Speaking of athletic immortality, 1920, Man o' War sets a record in the Belmont Stakes.
DAVE: Man o' War is basically the greatest racehorse in American history. He won 20 of 21 races, and the one race he lost was because of a terrible start where he was facing the wrong direction when the race began.
LANE: Can you imagine being so good at something that losing once because of a technical error becomes a famous story? It's like if Michael Jordan had a bad game because he tied his shoes wrong, and people still talked about it 100 years later.
DAVE: Man o' War was so dominant that after he retired, they had to create a new weight system for handicap races because no horse could compete with him carrying normal weight.
LANE: They basically had to invent new rules to make horse racing fair again after Man o' War stopped racing. That's not just being good at sports—that's breaking sports.
LANE: Now we're getting into the civil rights era, and June 12th has both heartbreak and hope. 1963, civil rights leader Medgar Evers is assassinated in Mississippi.
DAVE: Evers was the NAACP field secretary for Mississippi, working to desegregate schools and register Black voters. He was shot in his driveway by a white supremacist named Byron De La Beckwith.
LANE: What's particularly tragic about Evers' assassination is that he'd been receiving death threats for years. He knew the danger he was in, but he kept doing the work anyway.
DAVE: Evers was 37 years old, married with three children. He was just trying to make Mississippi a place where his kids could grow up with equal opportunities.
LANE: And here's what's infuriating—Beckwith wasn't convicted until 1994, thirty-one years after the murder. The Mississippi justice system basically ignored a clear-cut assassination for three decades.
DAVE: But then, four years later, June 12th, 1967, we get Loving v. Virginia, where the Supreme Court strikes down bans on interracial marriage.
LANE: Richard and Mildred Loving—and yes, that was actually their last name, which is either the most perfect coincidence or the universe has a sense of humor.
DAVE: The Lovings were arrested in Virginia for being married, because she was Black and he was white, and Virginia had laws against interracial marriage.
LANE: They had to leave Virginia and live in Washington, D.C., just to be legally married. Imagine having to move to a different state because your marriage was illegal.
DAVE: The Supreme Court ruled unanimously that marriage is a fundamental civil right, and states can't restrict it based on racial classifications.
LANE: It's one of those decisions that seems obvious now, but at the time, 16 states still had anti-miscegenation laws on the books.
DAVE: And the Loving decision became the legal foundation for same-sex marriage rights decades later. Civil rights victories build on each other.
LANE: On a much lighter note, 1972, Popeyes is founded in Louisiana, which might seem trivial, but it's actually part of this interesting trend in fast food branding.
DAVE: Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen—the full name is important because it's all about that Louisiana identity. They're not just selling fried chicken; they're selling a regional food culture.
LANE: And it worked! Popeyes became famous for having a distinctive Louisiana flavor profile that was different from KFC or Church's Chicken.
DAVE: What's interesting is that Popeyes was founded during this period when fast food chains were starting to realize that having a unique brand identity was as important as having good food.
LANE: McDonald's had the golden arches and Ronald McDonald. Burger King had "Have it your way." Popeyes had Louisiana culture and really good biscuits.
DAVE: And now, 50 years later, people will drive across town for Popeyes chicken sandwich and get into actual arguments about whether it's better than Chick-fil-A.
LANE: The fact that we're having cultural debates about fast food chicken sandwiches is either a sign of American prosperity or American decline, and I'm not sure which.
DAVE: You know what, Lane? Speaking of food confusion that's worth getting confused about, let's talk about TimeFlakes cereal.
LANE: Oh no, Dave's about to explain why eating breakfast from multiple time periods simultaneously makes sense.
DAVE: Look, we just talked about the rise of fast food branding, and that's fine, but there's something to be said for cereal that actively makes you question the nature of time itself.
LANE: TimeFlakes represents the ultimate breakfast confusion. Each bowl contains cereal pieces that exist in different temporal states. You might get a flake from 1347, a cluster from the Mesozoic Era, and milk that's somehow from next Tuesday.
DAVE: When you're researching historical events that range from medieval battles to civil rights assassinations, you need breakfast that makes you feel like you're eating history itself. TimeFlakes contains real historical confusion, artificial chronology stabilizers, and the kind of temporal paradoxes that would make Einstein weep.
LANE: Plus, and this is important for people who spend their time thinking about tragic historical events, TimeFlakes may or may not exist depending on what timeline you're in. No preservatives necessary when your cereal exists outside of linear time.
DAVE: It's like eating a connection to all of time, but in the most confusing possible way. Not like regular cereal that exists in only one temporal dimension like some kind of amateur breakfast food.
LANE: So if you want to support the show and also eat something that represents the complete impossibility of understanding when anything actually happened, try TimeFlakes. Available yesterday, today, and possibly next century, depending on quantum fluctuations.
DAVE: Now back to our regularly scheduled historical chaos, which is starting to make more sense than our sponsors.
LANE: Speaking of chaos, June 12th, 1991, Boris Yeltsin is elected the first president of post-Soviet Russia.
DAVE: Yeltsin was this larger-than-life character who basically stood on a tank during a coup attempt and became the face of Russian democracy.
LANE: Although "Russian democracy" under Yeltsin was... complicated. The 1990s in Russia were chaotic, with economic collapse, organized crime, and political instability.
DAVE: Yeltsin was dealing with the collapse of a 70-year-old political system and trying to build a new one from scratch, which is like trying to renovate your house while it's on fire.
LANE: And he was also famous for his drinking, which is not ideal in a head of state. There are stories about him being too drunk to meet with foreign leaders.
DAVE: It's like if your country's democracy depended on someone who might or might not show up to work depending on what happened the night before.
LANE: But here's what's interesting—Yeltsin voluntarily stepped down in 1999 and handed power to Vladimir Putin, which at the time looked like a peaceful democratic transition.
DAVE: In hindsight, that transition looks a lot less democratic, but at the time, people thought Russia was becoming a normal Western-style democracy.
LANE: History is full of moments that seemed hopeful at the time but turned out differently than anyone expected.
DAVE: Speaking of presidential moments, June 12th, 1982, Ronald Reagan gives his famous "tear down this wall" speech in Berlin.
LANE: Although, it's worth noting that hardly anyone paid attention to this speech at the time. It became famous retroactively after the Berlin Wall actually came down in 1989.
DAVE: Reagan was standing at the Brandenburg Gate, basically shouting at a wall, and most people thought it was just typical political theater.
LANE: But Reagan had this ability to turn political theater into memorable moments. "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" is one of those lines that sounds better every time you hear it.
DAVE: And then, seven years later, the wall actually came down, and suddenly Reagan looked like a prophet instead of just a politician making a speech.
LANE: It's like if you made a really bold prediction that everyone ignored, and then years later, it came true, and everyone remembered you as a genius.
DAVE: Although, to be fair, Reagan didn't personally tear down the Berlin Wall. That was mostly East Germans with hammers and pickaxes.
LANE: Right, but sometimes the symbolic moment is as important as the actual moment. Reagan's speech became part of the story of how the Cold War ended.
DAVE: Now we need to talk about June 12th, 2016, and the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando.
LANE: This was the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history at the time—49 people killed, 53 wounded. The shooter targeted Pulse specifically because it was a gay nightclub.
DAVE: It happened during Latin Night at the club, so most of the victims were young Latino men. It was a hate crime that targeted multiple communities at once.
LANE: What stayed with me about the Pulse shooting was the response from the community. Instead of being intimidated, people came together. The Orlando community, the LGBTQ+ community, people who had never been to Pulse—they all showed up to support each other.
DAVE: The memorial services, the blood drives, the fundraising—it was like the city of Orlando decided that love was going to be stronger than hate.
LANE: And that's important to remember, because mass shootings can make it feel like the world is getting worse, but the response to Pulse showed that people are fundamentally good.
DAVE: Although it's also a reminder that we still haven't figured out how to prevent these tragedies from happening in the first place.
LANE: And finally, June 12th, 2004, Ronald Reagan's body is entombed at his presidential library in California, ending a week of national mourning.
DAVE: Reagan died on June 5th, and there was this massive state funeral that lasted for days. He was lying in state at the Capitol, there was a funeral at Washington National Cathedral, and then he was flown to California for burial.
LANE: What's interesting is that Reagan had been out of public life for ten years because of Alzheimer's disease, but his death still felt like the end of an era.
DAVE: Reagan was president from 1981 to 1989, which means he defined the 1980s in American politics. Whether you loved him or hated him, he was impossible to ignore.
LANE: And the fact that his funeral brought together Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, showed that there was still some possibility for national unity, even in a polarized political environment.
DAVE: Although, looking back, 2004 might have been the last time we had that kind of bipartisan national mourning for a political figure.
LANE: It's like Reagan's funeral was the end of an era when Americans could disagree politically but still respect each other personally.
DAVE: So there you have it, June 12th: medieval battle tactics, baseball immortality, tragic birthdays, civil rights victories, fast food innovation, Russian democracy, presidential speeches, modern tragedy, and national mourning.
LANE: It's like someone took the entire human experience—triumph, tragedy, progress, setbacks, hope, despair—and compressed it into 24 hours.
DAVE: And through all of it, people kept trying to figure out what time it was. Which brings us back to TimeFlakes cereal, which represents the kind of temporal confusion that survives everything we just talked about.
LANE: History is chaos, but breakfast existing in multiple dimensions simultaneously is eternal. That's definitely our show's motto now.
DAVE: Next week, we're looking at June 19th, which apparently decided to be Juneteenth and a bunch of other historically significant events all at the same time.
LANE: Until then, remember that you're living through history right now, so try to make it interesting.
DAVE: But not Pulse-nightclub interesting or medieval-battle interesting. Maybe more like baseball-Hall-of-Fame interesting.
LANE: I'm Lane.
DAVE: I'm Dave.
BOTH: And this has been Touring History.
DAVE: [fade out] Seriously though, Anne Frank's diary is still one of the most important books you can read. Just saying.
[TOTAL RUNTIME: Approximately 11-12 minutes]
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