LANE: Welcome back to Touring History, the podcast where we dig through the dusty archives of human civilization so you don't have to. I'm Lane.
DAVE: And I'm Dave, still wondering why we thought becoming history podcasters was a good career move when TikTok exists.
LANE: Today we're exploring June 1st throughout history, a date that's seen everything from state formations to Beatles albums to... well, some truly spectacular crashes, both corporate and literal.
DAVE: Speaking of not crashing, today's episode is brought to you by Death Wish Coffee. Because unlike my attempts at understanding cryptocurrency, Death Wish actually delivers on their promises of quality and performance.
LANE: That's right - Death Wish Coffee combines bold flavor, smooth finish, and enough caffeine to power small nations in ways that frankly make the rest of us look bad at basic functioning. But more on that later.
DAVE: But first, let's celebrate some June 1st birthdays, because nothing says "comprehensive historical analysis" like arbitrarily celebrating people based on their emergence from wombs on specific calendar dates.
LANE: Today we're honoring Darryl Miner, SVP of CTV for iHeartMedia, who's probably the only person alive who truly understands what CTV stands for and why we should care.
DAVE: Also born today: Marilyn Monroe in 1926, proving that even in the Coolidge administration, star power was being manufactured. Morgan Freeman in 1937, whose voice has convinced more people of things than all of human rhetoric combined.
LANE: Alanis Morissette arrived in 1974, later to gift us the philosophical question of whether anything in her most famous song is actually ironic. Spoiler alert: it's mostly just unfortunate coincidences, but we love her anyway.
DAVE: Heidi Klum was born in 1973, eventually becoming so successful at judging things that she made careers out of telling people their dreams weren't good enough. And Amy Schumer entered the world in 1981, proving that comedy timing starts from birth.
LANE: Now that we've properly acknowledged the arbitrary nature of birthday celebrations, let's dive into the actual history, arranged chronologically because we're nothing if not obsessively organized about the past.
DAVE: We begin in 1792, when Kentucky became the 15th U.S. state. Yes, Kentucky - the place that would eventually give us both bourbon and KFC, proving that every state finds its own path to cultural significance.
LANE: This was actually a pretty big deal. Kentucky was carved out of Virginia, which at the time was roughly the size of Montana and about as easy to govern effectively.
DAVE: The admission of Kentucky also meant the United States now had an odd number of states, which as any middle school student can tell you, makes group projects awkward and Senate arithmetic interesting.
LANE: Just four years later, in 1796, Tennessee decided it also wanted in on this whole "statehood" thing and became the 16th state. Because apparently the 1790s were the decade of western expansion and optimistic governance.
DAVE: Tennessee's path to statehood was slightly more complicated than Kentucky's, involving disputed territories, political maneuvering, and the kind of bureaucratic drama that would make modern congressional proceedings look like a peaceful book club.
LANE: Fun fact: Tennessee was originally going to be called "Franklin," after Ben Franklin, but apparently someone realized that naming a state after a guy whose face was already on money might be laying it on a bit thick.
DAVE: Moving ahead to 1812, President James Madison asked Congress to declare war on Britain, kicking off what historians creatively dubbed "The War of 1812."
LANE: This was basically America's awkward teenage rebellion phase - we'd been independent for a few decades but were still figuring out how to assert ourselves on the international stage without looking completely ridiculous.
DAVE: Madison's war message to Congress was essentially: "Britain keeps messing with our ships and impressing our sailors, and frankly, we're tired of it." Which, to be fair, is a reasonable position when your maritime workforce keeps getting kidnapped.
LANE: The war would eventually give us the national anthem, the burning of Washington D.C., and Andrew Jackson's reputation as someone you definitely didn't want to mess with in New Orleans.
LANE: Jumping ahead to 1957, Don Bowden became the first American to break the four-minute mile, which at the time was considered roughly equivalent to landing on the moon in terms of human achievement.
DAVE: The four-minute mile had been this mythical barrier that everyone thought was basically impossible until Roger Bannister did it in 1954, at which point suddenly everyone realized it was just really, really hard rather than physically impossible.
LANE: Bowden ran it in 3:58.7, which doesn't sound impressive until you consider that most of us get winded walking up a flight of stairs while checking our phones.
DAVE: This was during the era when American athletics were still figuring out that maybe we should take international competition seriously, rather than just assuming we'd win because of our inherent awesomeness.
DAVE: 1967 brought us one of the most significant moments in music history when The Beatles released "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." This wasn't just an album; it was basically the moment popular music realized it could be art without apologizing for it.
LANE: Sgt. Pepper's was revolutionary not just musically, but conceptually. It was one of the first albums designed to be experienced as a complete work rather than just a collection of singles, which seems obvious now but was radical at the time.
DAVE: The album cover alone required hiring a wax museum, getting permissions from dozens of famous people, and arranging flowers in ways that would make Martha Stewart weep with envy. It was basically the most expensive photo shoot in history up to that point.
LANE: Plus, it gave us "A Day in the Life," which remains one of the few songs that can make you simultaneously existential and euphoric, often within the same measure.
LANE: 1968 saw the death of Helen Keller at age 87, marking the end of one of the most remarkable lives in American history.
DAVE: Keller's story is one of those that's so extraordinary it almost sounds fictional - overcoming deafness and blindness to become an author, political activist, and lecturer who traveled the world advocating for people with disabilities.
LANE: What's often overlooked is that Keller was also a socialist, a suffragette, and a founding member of the ACLU. She wasn't just inspirational; she was actively trying to change the world's systems, not just individual attitudes.
DAVE: Her relationship with teacher Anne Sullivan is one of those partnerships that redefined what was possible in education and human connection. Sullivan didn't just teach Keller language; she opened up entire worlds of communication and thought.
LANE: Let's take a moment to talk about today's sponsor, Death Wish Coffee, because honestly, they're doing everything right that most coffee companies get spectacularly wrong.
DAVE: Here's what I love about Death Wish - they make coffee that doesn't require you to pretend it's good while secretly wondering if you're drinking caffeinated water. It's coffee designed for people who actually need to be awake and functional.
LANE: The quality is outstanding. I've been drinking their stuff for months now, and I still get excited when I smell it brewing, despite my best efforts to develop tolerance through excessive consumption and questionable brewing practices.
DAVE: Plus, their approach actually makes sense. No pretentious origin stories about beans picked by enlightened monks, no packaging that costs more than the coffee. Just seriously strong, seriously good coffee that does its job without requiring a philosophy degree to understand.
LANE: Whether you're actually productive or just aspiring to look like you might accomplish something today, Death Wish has you covered. Check them out at deathwishcoffee.com.
DAVE: Death Wish Coffee - making the rest of us more functional since they figured out how to make coffee that actually works as advertised.
DAVE: 1980 brought us CNN, the first 24-hour news network, which seemed like a great idea until we realized that having 24 hours to fill with news leads to some very creative definitions of what constitutes "news."
LANE: CNN's launch was revolutionary - the idea that people might want news information at any time of day rather than just during designated evening broadcasts was considered either brilliant or insane, depending on who you asked.
DAVE: The network's first words were "Good evening, I'm David Walker and I'm Lois Hart. Now here's the news." Which, in hindsight, was probably the last time CNN news anchors got to be that straightforward about anything.
LANE: CNN proved that there was an appetite for constant information, though they probably didn't anticipate that this would eventually lead to people getting their news from social media posts written by their cousin's neighbor's dog walker.
LANE: 1994 saw South Africa rejoin the Commonwealth of Nations, marking another step in the country's transition from apartheid to democracy.
DAVE: This was huge symbolically - South Africa had been kicked out of the Commonwealth in 1961 over its apartheid policies, so rejoining represented international recognition of the country's transformation.
LANE: The timing was perfect, coming just months after Nelson Mandela's election as president. It was one of those rare moments when international diplomacy actually reflected positive change rather than just political convenience.
DAVE: Of course, rejoining the Commonwealth meant South Africa was once again part of an organization that includes countries like Britain, Canada, and Australia, which is either a testament to post-colonial healing or proof that some relationships are too complicated to stay broken.
DAVE: 2009 brought us General Motors filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, which was roughly equivalent to America admitting that maybe our car industry hadn't been paying attention for the past few decades.
LANE: GM's bankruptcy was shocking not because it was unexpected - the company had been struggling for years - but because General Motors was supposed to be too big to fail, too American to fail, too important to fail.
DAVE: The bankruptcy filing was the largest in U.S. history at the time, involving $82 billion in assets and proving that even companies that were once synonymous with American industrial might could spectacularly misread the market.
LANE: The government bailout and restructuring that followed were controversial, but they worked. GM emerged from bankruptcy as a leaner, more focused company, though it took them a while to convince people that "new GM" was actually different from "old GM."
LANE: Also in 2009, we experienced one of aviation's most puzzling tragedies when Air France Flight 447 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean, killing all 228 people aboard.
DAVE: This wasn't just a crash; it was a mystery that took two years to solve. The plane disappeared over the Atlantic with minimal communication, leaving investigators to piece together what happened from scattered debris and conflicting theories.
LANE: When they finally recovered the black boxes in 2011, the investigation revealed a perfect storm of equipment failure, pilot confusion, and communication breakdown that led to a completely preventable tragedy.
DAVE: The crash led to significant changes in pilot training and aircraft design, proving that sometimes the most important lessons come from the most devastating failures.
DAVE: Our final event takes us to 2020, when President Trump held up a Bible in front of St. John's Church after Lafayette Park was cleared of protesters.
LANE: This moment perfectly encapsulated everything surreal about 2020 - peaceful protesters were dispersed with tear gas so the president could walk across the street for what was essentially a photo opportunity with religious symbolism.
DAVE: The image of Trump holding the Bible upside down (or right-side up, depending on who you ask and how you define "up" when it comes to book orientation) became one of those moments that meant completely different things to different people.
LANE: Religious leaders across the spectrum criticized the stunt, the protesters criticized the use of force, and political commentators criticized pretty much everything about the situation, proving that some moments unite us all in collective bewilderment.
DAVE: And that's June 1st throughout history - a date that's given us new states, great music, technological innovations, and moments that remind us that human beings are capable of both extraordinary achievement and spectacular miscalculation.
LANE: From Kentucky's statehood to Trump's Bible photo-op, June 1st proves that history is just one long series of people making decisions that seemed reasonable at the time and hoping future podcasters won't judge them too harshly.
DAVE: Thanks again to Death Wish Coffee for sponsoring today's episode. Unlike most historical figures, Death Wish actually delivers on their promises and makes products that stand the test of time.
LANE: Join us next time when we'll explore another arbitrary date and pretend that historical patterns are more meaningful than they probably are. Until then, remember that we're all just making it up as we go along, and somehow that's gotten us this far.
DAVE: I'm Dave.
LANE: I'm Lane.
BOTH: And this has been Touring History, where we take the past seriously so you don't have to take us seriously.
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