🔥 Scorched Omnibus is here! 🔥 In this epic four-part series, we dive into the stories of some of history's most devastating fires: 🌆 The Great Fire of London (1666) 🏙️ The Great Chicago Fire (1871) 🌉 The San Francisco Earthquake & Fire (1906) Discover the chaos, resilience, and lessons learned from these fiery disasters. 🎧 Tune in now to hear how these blazes shaped cities and history. #Podcast #History #GreatFireOfLondon #ChicagoFire #SanFranciscoEarthquake #HistoricalDisasters
🔥 Scorched Omnibus is here! 🔥
In this epic four-part series, we dive into the stories of some of history's most devastating fires:
🌆 The Great Fire of London (1666)
🏙️ The Great Chicago Fire (1871)
🌉 The San Francisco Earthquake & Fire (1906)
Discover the chaos, resilience, and lessons learned from these fiery disasters.
🎧 Tune in now to hear how these blazes shaped cities and history.
#Podcast #History #GreatFireOfLondon #ChicagoFire #SanFranciscoEarthquake #HistoricalDisasters
Hi Friends! Our transcripts aren't perfect, but I wanted to make sure you had something - if you'd like an edited transcript, I'd be happy to prioritize one for you - please email doomedtofailpod@gmail.com - Thanks! - Taylor
From Doomed to Fail brings you history's most notorious disasters twice a week
>> Taylor: From Doomed to Fail, we are the podcast that brings you history's most notorious disasters and epic failures twice a week. And this week we are going to do a large re release and tell you about three times that major cities burned down. We'll talk about the fire, Great Fire of London, the Great Chicago Fire and the Great San Francisco fire which actually was caused by the earthquake. So here's four episodes for you if you haven't heard them. let us know what you think and thank you for.
It is going to be a presidential year which is always fun
In the matter of the people of the State of California vs Orthal James Simpson, case number BA09.
>> Farz: And so my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you.
>> Taylor: Ask what you can do for your.
>> Farz: And we are back and firmly in 2024.
>> Taylor: Hello.
>> Farz: Has it been the best 24 for you?
>> Taylor: Been the best, Just the best.
>> Farz: I am very excited about this year. It is going to be a presidential year which is always fun.
>> Taylor: Yeah.
>> Farz: Because politics is entertainment and we like that. I know, we like that. Serious topics are now subject to sound bites and TikTok clips. That's actually pretty good.
>> Taylor: I know. Cool.
Doom to Fail is a podcast about the ever evolving topic of what to cover
>> Farz: welcome to Doom to Fail. I'm Forrest, joined here by Taylor and we are a podcast about the ever evolving topic of what to cover on a day to day basis. Although it generally has a tragic concept to it or a forlorn element to it or something along those lines. So you know, as we iterate, just let us know if anything is resonating at all. Anything at all. We'll take it. Whatever you got.
>> Taylor: Sounds good. Sounds good.
>> Farz: I covered the lovely and toxic Salton Sea earlier this week. We are moving on to a topic that Taylor has chosen which I do not know at all. So I'll kick it over to you, Taylor.
>> Taylor: Awesome. So I said water is our, is our through line and I'm definitely going to be drinking water as my, my themed drink during this one.
Taylor: I want to talk about fire and a historical fire
because I want to talk about fire and a historical fire. there's a bunch of big ones but this one I'm not going to make you guess because I just feel like there's a lot of historical fires and I don't know. Do you know any Chicago and San Francisco? M Neither of those. It's in Europe. it is the Great Fire of London in 1666.
>> Farz: Taylor, can I give you another through line?
>> Taylor: Yeah.
>> Farz: So with a Salton Sea episode, if the San Francisco fire hadn't happened then they probably would have blocked it up in the Salton Sea. Never would have existed because there was A dredge. They needed to dig out the canal and they couldn't get it because the whole city was burning down.
>> Taylor: Oh my God, I can't wait for the water wars. It's going to be real great, real fun. Real mad maxi around here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. fun. So have you ever watched me? Have you watched Tacoma fd? It's on. It's on HBO and it's going to be on Netflix soon. No, it's great. It is by the Broken Lizard guys who do like Beer Fest and Super Troopers. Yeah. And they're amazing. And I just wanted to shout that out because I really love it. So I've been learning a lot about. I've been watching this fireman show. Watched it. We've watched the whole thing twice. It's just really, really funny. So, shout out to that show.
Today we talk about firefighting and fire dependent societies
But today I'm going to talk about the great fire of London. It destroyed 5 6th of London. So most about most of it.
>> Farz: It's a big, big swath.
>> Taylor: Big swath. so first let's talk about firefighting and fire dependent societies. So we're so lucky that we don't have to have an open flame constantly in our homes, like most of the world for history. Like you had candles and you had fire and it was just so dangerous and there was so much fire around. Like I have a gas stove and matches just in case there's an emergency. But like I don't have a fire constantly. As soon as it gets dark outside, I don't need to like light 100 candles.
>> Farz: You know, I've been lighting candles this week because I like them.
>> Taylor: That's different than like needing them, you know?
>> Farz: True.
>> Taylor: But also remember the Zappos guy died in that like shed lighting candles and drinking vodka.
>> Farz: Wait, the Zappos guy's dead?
>> Taylor: Yeah. Like the guy who had like started Zappos, he died. And like, because he loved, he loved expensive candles and vodka and he was like in someone's shed. And like fire is dangerous is part of my point. Still is. But we're not dependent.
>> Farz: Oh my God, you're right. He did die.
>> Taylor: Yeah. Isn't horrible.
>> Farz: We died in the shed.
>> Taylor: Yeah, it was like in like the Hamptons.
>> Farz: He was in a house fire in New London, Connecticut. Nobody knew who he was because he was burned to a crisp. But he became trapped in a pool shed during the fire. Oh my God, my table stand is moving.
>> Taylor: It looks like your chair is going down. isn't that awful? So yeah, fires continues to be very dangerous. If you're not careful.
>> Farz: He was 47 years old. Can you imagine being like billionaire 47 years old?
>> Taylor: Like, yeah, absolutely horrible. So, yeah, so fire's still super, super dangerous. also it's really dark. And so there is like another book, a book that I have called the Invention of Murder that I've read part of. And it starts off talking about like Victorian England. But like as soon as it got dark, it was dark. People would like get lost in the streets all the time. You know, like you couldn't see anything in a lot of these places. Like as soon as it was dark. So you had to have candles constantly and like the street lamps were fires. All those things.
>> Farz: Yeah.
>> Taylor: so even now my, my mom was talking about it, we're all getting this Instagram ad for a fire blanket to like put over your stove. If it catches on fire, like kick it go out. Because like, we don't even know how to use our fire extinguishers. Like we should remember how to use those. But for most of history, everything could have caught on fire and people, as cities began to build, obviously people have been closer and closer and there's way more chance that everything's going to go up in flames. and then also water. This is like our through line. Water is really heavy. It's hard to get water places, like even when they have those big forest fires, you can't just like douse it with water. It just like doesn't happen. And I did look up because I wasn't sure what it was. That you know how planes drop that like pink stuff on forest fires? That's actually a chemical called F O S post check. It's a fertilizer based liquid and it coats the vegetation in a fire resistant layer. That's not to put out the fire, that's to stop the fire from going any further. And there's also like. Yeah, and there's also like a ton of stuff that like, you know, some things are controlled burns and some things need to be, you know, set on fire to be able to like have the land grow and all those things. But it's really hard to put out like a huge fire is part of the point. And they can just put a wildly small amount of water on it at a time.
>> Farz: Yeah, you don't put a, you don't put a fire out. You exhaust its ability to keep firing.
>> Taylor: Exactly, exactly.
Taylor: In ancient Rome, volunteers would watch out for fires
So let's talk about how we've done that like around history. So I have a little bit of like a history of firefighting in ancient Rome, there were volunteers who would use, they would watch out for fires. So like in all these stories, like before communication systems, you know, someone would like ring a bell and be like, there's a fire over here. And people would like come and try to help. So they started doing that in ancient Rome. Obviously they did it before. in medieval Europe, there was fire, brigades, which are also mostly volunteers, and they used buckets of water. There was some like spraying devices that they had, but they had to like fill carts with water and like get it to the fire, you know? do you know? And then also this is when around the medieval times is they started to do hook and ladders. Have you heard like a hook and ladder company for like a fire thing?
>> Farz: No, but I can assume it's a ladder that has a hook on it that you can like settle on things.
>> Taylor: Right, that's what I thought it was, but it's actually not. So like a ladder, obviously the ladder, but the hooks are for pulling buildings down around the fire. So as soon as like a house catches on fire, the hook is made to pull the houses around it down so the fire cannot spread. Like you were saying.
>> Farz: Oh, interesting. Wait, so if, my neighbor's house caught fire, they would destroy my house?
>> Taylor: Yes.
>> Farz: That seems a little harsh.
>> Taylor: It sucks. But like, you'd have to because your house is so close together, you know.
>> Farz: That'S why you gotta move to Texas where no, nothing is close to anything.
>> Taylor: Yeah, yeah. I mean, especially like, I'll tell you a little bit about how the houses looked like in 1666, but they were just like unbelievably close together. there were also like bucket brigades. I'm sure you've heard of that, where you like pass a bucket down and do that. I mean, it takes forever, but it's still like it happens. formal fire departments started to come in like the late, late 1600s because of this. The first fire department in the United States was founded in Boston in 1678. In, the 19th century, you know, the steam powered fire engines were really helpful. And then obviously now you have like your gigantic fire truck and can carry. Can hook up to the sewer system and do all those things. Right.
>> Farz: I, don't think that's sewer water. That they.
>> Taylor: Not the sewer system, but like, you know, like the, it's the same thing. Like the, that's what it's called. It's called the sewer system. The water, the sewers.
>> Farz: The sewer's full of. They're not Taking water out of hydrants and then pouring it.
>> Taylor: When you're connected to like the city water, it's like the city water, but it's the same company.
>> Farz: Taylor, are you under the impression that when you turn on like a faucet in your house that is also connected to your septic tank?
>> Taylor: No, it's just that I think it's all the kind of the same thing.
>> Farz: Taylor's Googling.
>> Taylor: It's in fire hydrants. I think it's like the same thing.
>> Farz: At the very worst, it's like gray water.
>> Taylor: It's just, it's regular drinking water, but it comes from the whole system of water. Like the sewer system isn't separate from the water system. It's the same group that does it.
>> Farz: Let's, let's carry on.
>> Taylor: Okay, I don't care. anyway, we're gonna be stuck on.
>> Farz: This topic for like, way too long.
The first insurance company in London was established in 1680
>> Taylor: so another thing that came out of this was actually the invention of fire insurance. the first insurance company in London was the fire office that was established in 1680. And it is the, origin of moderate insurance because they didn't really have that before this. But, then they started to like, do that. And they would do things obviously that like, is super up. Like houses that were insured would have like a little mark on them so that firefighters would prioritize those houses over other houses.
>> Farz: It's still fucked up. Like, insurance is like such a scam. Like if something goes wrong, they will never pay or take forever to pay. But yeah, God forbid you don't make it. I mean, not that I've ever missed a payment, but like, still, I would assume if I missed a payment, it would raise hell about it.
>> Taylor: Yeah, totally, totally. I mean, we had a guy come when we had a leak in our roof and he gave us a good quote, but, you know, it was a pain in the ass.
>> Farz: Wait, with your insurance company?
>> Farz: So you called the insurance company and then they, they sent somebody?
>> Farz: Yeah. Get your own quote. They're gonna send someone cheap.
>> Taylor: No, no, no, no, no. They sent a guy to look at it and then they sent us money to pay for it however we wanted to.
>> Farz: No fun. Okay, well.
>> Taylor: Which I do.
In 1666 in London, King Charles II has just been crowned
so anyway, so we're in London, so that's kind of like the history of firefighting. It's obviously hard. And as cities are being built, it's getting harder. In 1666 in London, it is the restoration period. King Charles II has just been crowned. He's a new king. And Right before this, Oliver Cromwell had been, in charge of England, but he wasn't a king. And he had been in charge of killing Charles. Not in charge. One of the people who had signed the death order over Charles I. So all this stuff that I don't know, but it's tense. And people think that, like, the Cromwellians are going to come back and, like, fight for power. So it's still, like, tense politically. They're also just out of the plague because the plague killed a shit ton of people and it's still around. Some people claim that the fire is the thing that stopped it for good because it burned down and it killed a bunch of rats, obviously. but people. It was already kind of waning down and people were starting to recover from it. But that had been, like, obviously super traumatic. A ton of people had died. You know, England was in the middle of two wars. They were fighting the French, because they were always fighting the French and also the Dutch. So there was, like, that going on. and London itself was growing so fast. It was one. It was like, the fastest growing city in the world. there were different parts. Like, Westminster wasn't officially a part of London, but it, like, became a part of London. It was a lot of sprawl going out. There was still the Roman wall around, a lot of it. Because the romans left in 400, but the wall was still there.
>> Farz: It's crazy.
>> Taylor: Yeah. And, like, remember how. Remember how they left and then the English didn't know how to fix anything, so everything just kind of collapsed because they, like, didn't know how to do. How to fix aqueducts, they didn't know how to maintain the wall. They didn't know how to do anything else. So they just kind of, like, collapsed into the Middle Ages.
>> Farz: Geez.
>> Taylor: Because Romans left. So, But London is huge. So there's anywhere between, like, 250 and 450,000 people in the city, which is pretty major. and there's also a ton of people that are in and out of the city during the day to, like, trade and do things. So it's very, very busy. There are pipes that run water through the city, but, it is not like a modern, like, pipe system. the houses have a lot of. They're made out of wood, have a lot of thatched roofs. And this is when, like, they rebuild it, a lot in stone. But it started off being, you know, made of wood. And they're also growing in a way that, like. Have you ever seen a picture of an old house that has, like, a smaller first floor than the second or third floors.
>> Farz: Oh, yeah. Yeah.
>> Taylor: You know what I mean? Yeah.
>> Farz: Did we, like, just talk about that? About. There was a house. You showed me, like an old house, and it'd been in someone's family for like a thousand years. And the bottom was like this narrow little thing, and the top was like this big, old.
>> Taylor: I don't remember, but I guess looked.
>> Farz: At houses for myself. I don't know.
>> Taylor: Yeah, but like, you know, but you can picture it. And so, like, what that meant was so they were trying to, like, get more space, obviously. So they would build up and they would build out. So in the middle of the roads, the houses were getting closer and closer where you could, like, shake your neighbor's hand through your bedroom window over this.
>> Farz: That's kind of fun. I would like to live there.
>> Taylor: but it's not fun because gross and really dark.
>> Farz: Why is it gross?
>> Taylor: You know, like, because there's poop everywhere. Because it's 1666 and there's like, you know, because there's poop everywhere. And there's also, like, ah. So there's no, you know, there's no sewer system. There's no way to get the poop out. The poop everywhere. It smells bad, obviously. History smells terrible. And, it's really, really crowded. And there's no fresh air, you know, because there's no fresh air. You can barely see the sky when you're on the street in the middle of the day.
>> Farz: Yeah, it's not great. I always wonder how people back then were intimate because, like, it sounds disgusting. Like, it is like, you have a.
>> Taylor: UTI constantly to be so gross.
>> Farz: Yeah. Yeah. I don't like. Yeah, it's all bad.
>> Taylor: Yeah, no, totally. No one was taking showers. I mean, that's not part of the story, but. Yeah, but it was like, very crowded in most of the city. so the houses are getting closer and closer. They're all made of wood.
Sam: The great fire of London started in September 1666
It's also the summer of 1666 was very, very dry. it was like the driest summer on record. So everything is dry in this whole city. And then also it's really windy. So this is the beginning of September 1666. On, September 1st, the king's brother is in the Anglo Dutch war off at sea. And he's going to get into a battle, like, with the Dutch. And it's so windy. They both. Both sides just leave. They can't even fight. Like, they're just like. It was just so windy. Like, the boats Were going crazy, like, all this huge storm on the sea. So that wind from September 1st is moving towards London, and it gets there around 1am on September 2nd, 1666.
>> Farz: Got it.
>> Taylor: Got it. So the fire began in the beginning of. In the middle of the night. And it ravaged the city for like four to five days. It started in a bakery owned by a man named Thomas Farriner on Pudding Lane, which is adorable. It's where all the bakers were.
>> Farz: Oh, my God, that's so cute.
>> Taylor: I know. And it was probably someone forgetting to put up the fire, which happened all the time. So this is like the Swiss cheese model that we talk about of, like, things that have to go wrong. So, like, it's really fucking dry. This wind is like a huge wind that they haven't seen in a really long time. And someone in the bakery forgets to turn off the oven.
>> Farz: Yeah.
>> Taylor: And so there starts to be. The fire starts in the bakery of, Thomas's house. And so he obviously lives on the top floor. And so him and his family go to the top floor and they escape to their neighbor's house via that top window. That's really close to each other.
>> Farz: Aw.
>> Taylor: But their maid is afraid of heights, and she won't go. And she's the first person to die in the great fire of London, which is very.
>> Farz: Sam.
>> Taylor: Yeah. so right now, the thing to do would have been to grab the hooks and pull down the houses around the bakery. You know, like, that would be the answer. And then it would stop burning. And they do that all the time in London. There's fires all the time, you know.
>> Farz: Are houses that flimsily belt built that you could just poke it with a stick?
>> Taylor: Well, they're like. I think so. It's like wood. I don't think they're putting it stick. I think you're like hooking onto the top and like pulling it down. The group of people, I think.
>> Farz: Okay. Because when I was in Ireland, I was like, amazed at like, the build quality of things. Everything there was like 7,000 years old. And you look at it and it's like still standing, and it is. It looks impenetrable. So I guess you have to like, weaken it and like, structurally before you could do any of that stuff.
>> Taylor: Yeah. I'm sure there's like, other things that they did, but, like. Yeah, the hook was to pull it down. And that was like. Like you said earlier, that's like the way to stop the fire is stop. Give it nowhere to go.
>> Farz: Yeah.
>> Taylor: And that way you can. That way you can stop it. I mean that all the time. But the problem is that in this part of London, and in most of London, most of the houses were rentals. So the person who owned the house didn't live in it, they rented it to someone else. So when, the Lord Mayor, Sir Thomas Bloodworth, who was the guy in charge of London, he was called to make a decision and he said, it's not that bad. Just let it burn out. Don't tear down any of the houses because we can't find the owners, because the owners aren't physically there. It's just people who are renting the houses. So to save the properties, allegedly, he's like, let's just leave it. And he goes back to bed. It's like one in the morning. He leaves. And everybody else is just like, watching this fire happen. And they can't do anything about it because they're not allowed to tear down the houses that they would usually do. So the city did have some fire breaks, which were like, places where there was that space between it, but they weren't enough to contain. Contain this fire. There was also a shit ton of flammable stuff in the city. They had just, They're coming in and out of wars all the time. So there's like storehouses of gunpowder all over, you know, and things that are like, prime to explode in different places.
>> Farz: Not good.
>> Taylor: No. so there's also a lot of, like, books and papers and things that are, like, really highly flammable. Everything's made out of, out of. Out of wood.
The official death toll of the great Fire London is six, which I do not believe
We, know a lot about this from a man named Samuel Pepys. He was a nobleman who knew the king and he wrote a journal. And so his journals you can, like, read now. It goes like his day to day. And he watched it happen from across the Thames. And he was like, why aren't they pulling things down? Like, this is getting bigger and bigger. I can see this happening. So he went to the king because he knew the king, and he told the king, you have to start tearing these buildings down. And the king said yes, and, like, over overrode the mayor, so they were finally able to start pulling things down. your question.
>> Farz: Are we just gonna, like, gloss over the fact that the mayor of London's name was Bloodworth?
>> Taylor: Pretty, pretty cool name.
>> Farz: Like, it sounds like he brushes his teeth with battle axes.
>> Taylor: I know. I think actually he's kind of lame, unfortunately. So he doesn't live up to his name because he could have like, been a hero. He definitely is not the hero in this story.
>> Farz: You're looking out for, like, a few landowners instead of, like, the entire city, which is his job.
>> Taylor: Yeah, 100%. So people start fleeing because, like, this part of the city is very obviously on fire. The official death toll of the great Fire London is six, which I do not believe. There's no way that only six people died.
>> Farz: Yeah, because they're not counting orphans, maids.
>> Taylor: Exactly. Like, yeah, yeah. They're not counting the poor people. They couldn't count the poor people. They didn't have a list. You know what I mean? Like, I feel like they probably had, like, a rudimentary list of people for tax purposes, but, like, there's no way only six people died. Because people also start to, like, they could potentially have been cremated because this fire in the center was so hot. And there's, like, a piece of pottery that, was found, like, in the center of it. Like, you're, like, you know, later by, like, archaeologists. And, like, that piece is. Was heated up to, like, 2,000 degrees. Like, crazy. People could have just disappeared, you know, And I'm sure they did, because. So, And people would do things. Like, they would move their things a mile away. So I'd be like, I'm gonna bring my stuff over to your house, Fars, and then the fire would get to your house, and we'd be like, shit. And we, like, move our stuff again. People were, like, moving their things, and they were really focused on, like, saving their property and their, like, their physical things rather than putting out the fire. Like, a lot of people were. So there were also then carts and boats that were upping their prices to bring people out of the city. So, like, being like, you know, where usually would cost, like, you know, 30. Like, 30. 30 bucks for an, Uber. Now it's $6,000 adjusted to our. Our. Our time. So, like, people are really taking advantage of. Of other people. And there's a big jam at all the gates of the city because some carts are trying to get in to get in on this good deal, and everyone else is trying. So there's a lot of, like, that. Where. I'm sure people died in that, like, melee, you know, like, and then getting out. so. And of course, also there was looting. You know, people were like, you know, stealing stuff from houses, like, as they burned down. There were also. There's also, I'm sure, a ton of human stuff, like, assaults and panic and, like, things that, you know, no one wrote down because they died. So I'm sure there's, like, a lot more people that died. at one point, all of the booksellers moved their books to the crypt in St. Paul's Cathedral. Cause it was made of stone. And they were like, we'll move all of our books into the script so that they'll. They'll be safe. But the ceiling, the roof was wood. And the wooden roof caught on fire, collapsed into the cathedral, into the crypt, and all the books went on fire. So it was just like a fireball of all the paper.
>> Farz: Yeah.
>> Taylor: So all that's happening, the Royal Exchange is gone. That's like the bank. and then, of course, people start to be like, what happened? How did this happen? Whose fault is this? And of course, they start blaming Bloodworth. Yes. no, immigrants.
>> Farz: Oh, of course you're not going to blame Bloodworth. They're going to name Giuseppe.
>> Taylor: so they are, like, in the middle of it, which I totally understand, because I have been in the middle of a terrorist attack, and you don't know what's going on, you know, And. But people were like, is this a terrorist attack? They had actually just burned some Dutch cities. So they're like, is this revenge for the cities that we just burned during this war that we're in? it, like, sparked a huge. Obviously, like, fear of the other. They were saying that, like, the baker, where it started, he was Dutch, he wasn't, you know, but that rumor started, like, immediately they were blaming other people. And then another thing that would happen is, like, obviously it's still super, super windy, so sparks and ash and stuff would fly different parts of the city. So you see fires starting all over the city in different places. And it looks like potentially there could be, like, an arsonist, you know, like someone bombing different parts of the city. And that's really fucking scary that people start thinking that that's happening.
>> Farz: I love that. Back then, it was.
The fire in London left 70,000 people homeless and displaced
The, terrorist angle was just like, they're a slightly different version of, like, of white. White than we are. Like, like, what is the actual difference that you guys are fighting over? Dutch and the British both have terrible food, terrible climates. What is it?
>> Taylor: And also, like, also Catholics. It could have been Catholics who are doing it at this point. They hate Catholics, but that goes back and forth over and over again. But all of that is happening, and this is, like, a huge thing. also, everyone is really tired. It's been, like, three days. You can't take a nap in the middle of this, you know? So, like, they're not making good Decisions, they're not prioritizing. Getting rid of the fire, eventually, Bloodworth is like, you know what, I'm going to go take a nap. I'll be back. And he just leaves. And they don't see him until after it's over.
>> Farz: Yeah, good. So would I. I'd be like, fuck this, I'm out.
>> Taylor: He just, like, he fucked out of there.
>> Farz: You can have this city, which is now basically just a Nash pile.
>> Taylor: Exactly. The king, actually, he rode around on his horse giving people money to get people out, which is noble, right? I feel like that's pretty cool. That's pretty cool. So he was like, you know those people who were like, jacking up their prices? He was like, fine, I'll pay you. Just get these people out of here. You know? So they were trying to get people out. But eventually the fire did stop. And it stopped because the wind dropped. The wind dropped. And they used gunpowder that was stored in the Tower of London to create those huge fire breaks. They had to demolish a lot of, like, the out outside of it so that it would stop. So eventually, after, like, five days, it did stop. after it was over, it destroyed, like I said, 5, 6 of the city. Approximately 87 churches, 13,200 houses, a bunch of other buildings. And, so London had had, you know, like 400,000 people potentially kind of going in and out of it and around the whole city. but in. It ended up with being 70,000 people left homeless and having to go into, like, refugee camps around the city, which is way too many houses to burn down for only six people to have died.
>> Farz: Yeah, I agree with that. And they probably. There's a bunch of people that probably killed each other in the refugee camps, as you would do.
>> Taylor: There's so much of that going on that we just, like, don't know about. so that people really, like, wanted to blame something, you know, they were like, whose fault is this? You know, there's all of the things that, you know, it was. It was chance, but it, like, it being chance is really scary. And that's, I think, again, what we talk about with the Swiss cheese model. Like, it's just fucking chance that all these things went wrong.
>> Farz: Yeah.
>> Taylor: So they were like, is this the apocalypse? You know, we just had a plague. We're all. We're in these wars, you know, we had a drought. Like, what is this? Is this. Are, we being punished for something? So people were trying to find, like, if. If is God punishing us? Is it something I did? Is it something we did as a people? Should we stop being in these wars? Should we stop doing all these things? So people really, like, obviously everyone was really, really, really traumatized, and they didn't do anything about it. There's no, like, mental health care, but, like, Samuel Peeps, the guy who wrote the, the journal about it, him and his wife, like, they didn't sleep for years. They would wake up with, like, terrifying nightmares. And I'm sure he just wrote it down. I'm sure so many people have that, you know, because they never talk about ptsd.
>> Farz: I mean, it is. It is terrifying. I accidentally set fire to my house. Like, I didn't know what was. I basically put something on the stove and forgot about it. And then I caught the reflection of, like, flames. Like, not just like a. Like a. It's so different. Like a candle wicked versus, like, a fire is just.
>> Taylor: Yeah.
>> Farz: So, I mean, your body goes into. I gotta do something. Anything. It has to be. It is terrifying. I mean, again, I was in that experience. I literally picked up hot oil with my bare, like, flaming oil with my bare hands to get rid of the fire because I was, like, that scared. And, like, my hands were burned to a crisp for, like, weeks and weeks after that. But.
>> Taylor: Oh, my God, that's so scary. Yeah. And then, like, that times a million. Like, imagine just, like, watching Austin burn down. You're like, what am I supposed to.
>> Farz: Yeah, I would also leave town.
After the London fire, people rebuilt on top of what had been destroyed
>> Taylor: Like, yeah, totally.
>> Farz: Don't be people. Do not be a hero. Take it from me. I'm telling you, never try to be the hero. Always escape.
>> Taylor: Oh, we've talked about that so many times.
>> Farz: Yeah, just run, like, curl into a.
>> Taylor: Ball out of there.
>> Farz: Throw. Throw the vulnerable at the problem and then get out of the situation.
>> Taylor: Well, don't do that, but you should run. there's a man named Robert Hubert who is. You know how we also talked about how people always confess to crimes that they didn't do?
>> Farz: Yeah.
>> Taylor: Like, just to, like, for attention. So Robert Hubert was a man. He was Dutch. He said that he did it, that he started it. And he, like, went to the bakers, like, where the baker's bakery was, and he was like, I did it here. And the baker signed off on that guy's execution, and he was executed for it. But he didn't do it. It was an accident.
>> Farz: If he just wants peace, let me go to hell.
>> Taylor: He wanted it. He's. You know, he's in the history book. So, you know, after the fire, they wanted to rebuild Obviously, as fast as possible. There's an architect, Sir Christopher Wren. He oversaw the rebuilding. he wanted a lot of things to be built out of stone instead of wood. Obviously that helped prevent future large scale fires. He actually had a new plan and like immediately people had new plans. Like even while it was burning down, people were going to the king with like a new plan for the city. You know, like, they were like they were already. People wanted to be the architect of the new London even as it was still burning. Christopher Wren had a plan to, rebuild it like a little bit more. Like have more wider, wider streets, like boulevards, things like that. but people just wanted to get back to their life. So they just rebuilt on their old plots. And a lot of the way London is now is the way that it was. Them, like, they like kept the small lanes and all of that. Wren did redo St. Paul's Cathedral, which is beautiful and that is still there. and then in, when they were building Washington D.C. they used Wren's plans. So Washington D.C. is what he had thought London should be like, like those, like big boulevards and like, streets and stuff. Cool. also, London gets destroyed again during World War II. So it's not.
>> Farz: It's a pretty big target.
>> Taylor: Yeah. it's always, it's always getting destroyed. today there is a monument, it is a big, pillar in the middle of London, to. As a monument to the fire. It used to say on it, burning of this Protestant city began and carried out by the treachery and the malice of the Popish faction. Meaning the Catholics did it. That used to say that on the monument. But they chiseled it out in the 1800s because then England went back to.
>> Farz: Catholic because they had no proof.
>> Taylor: Yeah. And they obviously had. Obviously was not the Catholics who did it.
>> Farz: It's probably the part. The bigger thing is there was no proof that that happened.
>> Taylor: Yeah. So that's been chiseled out. But the monument is still there. and London is basically, you know, built on the same roads and alleys and plan that it was before. Then they just rebuilt on top of it and they rebuilt it pretty fast. Within like four years, it was like up and running again. but it was obviously a devastating, A devastating fire. And I'm sure a lot more people than six died. And most of London was completely flattened.
Your story reminded me of something I read about the Fukushima nuclear plant
>> Farz: So I have two thoughts.
>> Taylor: Okay.
>> Farz: I forgot the first one already.
>> Taylor: Perfect.
>> Farz: So I have one thought. Let me get to it before I forget. So your story reminded me when you kept talking about chance, how that's kind of how every major thing happens is this convergence of issues, it reminded me of something I was reading about the, Fukushima nuclear plant. Because as part of designing these things and part of figuring out how to mitigation against disaster, they look at actuaries who put together probability tables and like in Fukushima's example, like basically for that to have happened, it would have to have a convergence of events that would not be projected to happen over 10,000 years or whatever it was, because it would have to have a, this magnitude earthquake that would trigger this kind of a tsunami at this depth, to trigger this large of a wave at this speed. All that had to kind of come together and they're like, guys, this is 10,000 year problem. This is not a today problem. Let's just move on with building this nuclear power plant. And the same story here. It's like it had all these things that were kind of improbable to happen and kind of come together, ended up coming together. And I remember the second thing, the second thing was I was reading while you were talking that Bloodworth, if he were to tell them to tear those houses down, he would have been personally liable to the owners for repaying to rebuild those houses unless he got the instruction from the king to tear them down. So he might not have been a villain.
>> Taylor: but he didn't go to the king and ask. He went back to sleep. Samuel Peeps had to go to the king and ask. So someone else had to go to the king tell the king has to be taken down. And then he took them down. But also then like, what is his job if he can't do it?
>> Farz: Anyway, by Bloodworth, I was trying to stick up for you, but you kind of it up there.
>> Taylor: Yeah, I don't know. That's nice of you, but I don't think, I don't think so. I think you still.
>> Farz: Yeah, yeah.
>> Farz: Wild times.
>> Taylor: Cool. Yeah.
>> Farz: Wild times in old Mary London, which I've actually, I've been to. I've flown through Gatwick and Heathrow, but I've actually never explored London.
>> Taylor: That's great. I went there for two weeks in grad school. I lived there. I lived in a hotel and I took some classes and it was really fun. Oh my God, we had such a good time. and I, my sister, my brother and I went there one time as well. It's great. It's very lovely.
>> Farz: Yeah, that'll go on the list. sweet. Taylor. Well, thank you for sharing.
Agnes says she remembers from seventh grade science about the ozone layer
Is there anything we want to talk through?
>> Taylor: I have one more listener mail from my friend Agnes and she said she what she remembers from seventh grade science about the ozone layer. Because we talked about that, remember?
>> Farz: Yeah.
>> Taylor: it was the cfcs, the chlorofluorocarbons. Chlorofluorocarbons that were in aerosols and in Styrofoam plates and things like. Do you, are you old enough to remember when like McDonald's was. Everything was wrapped in Styrofoam? Yes, it was like particularly bad Styrofoam and then that was in the aerosols. So once they took that out and made the aerosols work differently, the ozone layer kind of fixed itself and it's almost back to normal.
>> Farz: Good. So Styrofoam was the problem. Mostly.
>> Taylor: Mostly the aerosols, which is so funny because you're like, is people like making their hair really big in the 80s, right? Right. Which I love. That could potentially be the thing that ends us. Why the fuck not?
>> Farz: Why not? interesting. Okay, well, thanks for writing in.
>> Taylor: Yeah, thanks Agnes. And anyone else, any thoughts or ideas that you have, any alternate theories on what caused the Great Fire of London, any great fires you want to hear about, let me know. I'm going to a bunch of disasters this year I'm super excited about. I have two weeks off of work at the moment, so I'm going to be painting my house and reading books in my ears and hopefully getting a couple, a couple of weeks prepped. So I'm excited to do that.
>> Farz: That is fun. That is fun. I'm excited for you. awesome.
Taylor: So much crazy stuff happened this year
Well, we are kicking off 2024 with a bang or a fire and we'll see where the rest of the year takes us. I'm. You know what I was thinking, Taylor? I was like, I was just reflecting on the fact like so much crazy stuff happened this year. Or I guess Last year, 2023, I was thinking about the Titan sub and I was like, you know, at, ah, the start of the year, nobody even knew what this was. Or I remember thinking myself like, wait, you can, you can just pay money to go down. It was, it was, it was. The whole thing was so new and now it's just like accepted fact. I'm like, what is going to happen next year?
>> Taylor: Like what is, what crazy shit are we in for? Yeah, that was. You're right. Fingers crossed that it's not the end of the world. Hopefully Yellowstone doesn't erupt, but shit, who Knows what? Kind of.
More waves are expected to hit California coasts this week
Have you seen the videos this week of all the waves in California going, like, over the piers? No, I've seen, like, a bunch of videos. I don't know how, like, how prevalent it is, but of, like, people standing on the, like, different piers, like, next to the ocean, and the waves are just, like, coming up and they have to, like, run from them.
>> Farz: That's shocking because the piers, like, I'm thinking about, like, the Santa Monica or Malibu or Santa Barbara, like, those peers are huge. Like, they're like.
>> Taylor: Yeah, it's not those. It's like the smaller. I don't know, but let me up. California weaves. So, you know, something's coming, probably. Yeah. What crazy thing is it going to be when it's like, you know. Yeah. We could never have predicted that, more monster waves will collide with California coasts. Yeah. Massive, dangerous waves hit California coast this week.
>> Farz: 20 foot tall, some as high as 25ft, with expectations being some as high as 40 are going to impact the area. As high as a telephone pole, which. Yeah, I mean, that's as tall as those piers are in Malibu.
>> Taylor: Yeah. That's real scary. I was nervous about those beautiful beach houses. I'm like, I don't know. You're so close to the ocean. It's. It can kill you in a minute.
>> Farz: It's worth it.
>> Taylor: Yeah.
>> Farz: Doing a heartbeat. sweet.
Riley: It happens every year. Hurricane, fires
Well, if you have any predictions for next year, what the crazy news is, I'm gonna play a bit of bingo and say, I don't know, it's all. It's so. It's so predictable. Riley. Hurricane, fires. Like, it's all. It's. It happens every year. Like, I don't know, there's no big.
>> Taylor: This also reminded me of, like, one of the saddest things is listening to podcasts from early, like, the end of October, 20. What was it, 2016 when Trump was first elected? Because everyone's, like, really excited. And then, like, the next one, they're, like, sad. It was like, some of the ones I listened to, you know, that they're like, woohoo. And then they're like, so, how's it going?
>> Farz: Yeah, it's going to be. It's going to be a wild one.
Taylor: Gypsy Rose released from prison today. Thank God. I'm happy for her. Like, I was. The abuse she suffered is
I, do want to shout out. I, do want to shout out Hero of the Week. I'm going to do this. I'm going to add this segment, Hero the week Gypsy Rose released from prison. Thank God. I have no idea why she was ever even sent to prison. Like, we should all just give her, like, a, GoFundMe account and just every month, deposit money into her GoFundMe, because I can't. Like, I was. I was just reading about how one of the surgeries I totally forgot about was her having her salvation glands removed so she literally can't salivate like crazy. The abuse she suffered is, like, unbelievable. And we threw her in prison, for it.
>> Taylor: No, I'm happy. I'm happy for her. And she. I think she's on social media now. Like, good for her. Yeah.
>> Farz: If you want to talk to us, Gypsy, give us a shout. We'll do an interview.
>> Taylor: Changed our lives.
>> Farz: Awesome. Cool. Anything else, Taylor?
>> Taylor: That's it. Follow us on Instagram. So every week I email you what we welcome back out. You can sign up for that and send us a, note if you. It's true. No, we shouldn't beat you back.
>> Farz: Perfect. Thanks. Wait, so how long are you there for? A day.
>> Taylor: Just today? Yeah. Yeah, it's on my. On my list of things of. Like, I have my. I have, like, so many cities on my weather app. I'm looking at it now because, like, everywhere everyone I know lives. Oh, my God. my brother listens to cocaine at 7. Right now we've got Baltimore snowing, Austin 25, windchill advisory, and three more advisories.
>> Farz: Yeah, yeah.
>> Taylor: Hard freeze Thursday is going to be 67 60.
>> Farz: Wait, where in Austin? Wait, when?
>> Taylor: Thursday.
>> Farz: Oh, that's awesome.
>> Taylor: Okay.
>> Farz: Yeah, yeah.
>> Taylor: So you're gonna. You're gonna get through it.
>> Farz: All right, so it's only a few days. We got a bunker down.
>> Taylor: Yeah, good. Great.
Taylor: We are going to talk about the Great Chicago Fire today
>> Farz: So we are on to your story today, and per usual, I'm gonna go ahead and do an introduction. We're doomed to fail. We are going to have a fun podcast today about a topic that I'm going to guess that Taylor's giving me clues for which I don't know because we don't share each other's details before we record the podcast. I'll stop talking like that. can you give me a clue?
>> Taylor: it's a continuation of a series that I guess I started earlier this year.
>> Farz: Volcanoes.
>> Taylor: No, we finished Volcanoes. We're done. We printed out that diploma.
>> Farz: Oh, yeah, that's right. And we released the omnibus.
>> Taylor: Yeah, yeah.
>> Farz: The continuation of something you started. I don't know.
>> Taylor: The fire.
>> Farz: Oh, wait, the fire.
>> Taylor: Yeah, it's a fire.
>> Farz: Okay, sweet. Which fire?
>> Taylor: The one in Chicago.
>> Farz: The Great Chicago Fire.
>> Taylor: The Great Chicago Fire. Yes. I also want to say. So we're gonna talk about The Great Chicago fire of 1871. And I also wanted to say Chicago. Like that. Like Chicago. And Lindsay, My cousin Lindsay. That's what your mom sounds like. Lindsay's mom is like, I'm from Chicago. It's great. She's the best.
>> Farz: I love that. I love Midwestern accent.
>> Taylor: Me too. They're so cute. so, yeah, the, the Great Chicago Fire. We talked about the Great Fire of London in 10. In 1666. So let's talk about the Great Chicago Fire. My friend Agnes emailed and was like, you're going to do that, right? And I'm like, yes, Obviously, I grew up in Chicago, so, my Chicago friends were like, let's do it. So. Okay, you ready?
>> Farz: I'm in. Let's do it.
Do you remember where the Great Chicago Fire started? In a bakery
>> Taylor: Did you ever read the Jungle when you were in school? Fars by Upton's and Claire, you're going.
>> Farz: To be shocked to know that I did not, but I am very, very familiar with it.
>> Taylor: What are you familiar about it?
>> Farz: the horrid meet.
>> Taylor: Yeah. But you know what it is actually was supposed to be about the Shadow fire? No, about the people. Like, it wasn't written to be a think piece about how gross the, you know, the meat packing industry was. But that just happened to be something that they brought up, and people took that. But it was really about the people. And I read it and I, you know, I know, I know that it was about, you know, he mentions how disgusting all of the meat. Meat plants were. It actually led to the US Pure Food and Drug act of 1906. So it actually had, like, impact across the country, which is great. You know, that should be safe and clean. But it's also a story about people, and it's so devastating. So it's all these immigrants coming to Chicago, and they're having, like, such a hard time finding a place to live, finding a place to work. They're getting screwed over everywhere. Like, their houses is. Gets mortgaged. If they miss a payment, or even if they don't miss a payment, someone else can move in. They just, like, have terrible employment. there's one time where a terrible thing happens where a baby falls into a puddle and dies. So sad. There's, like, so many human stories in it, too. One of them about, like, the guy meets a rich person in Chicago, and the rich person gives him $100 bill, but he can't get anyone to make change on it. And he's afraid he, like, ends up losing it. It's just, like, so devastating. It's such a Devastating human story. But I would. I had that in my mind when I was thinking about this, because Chicago is such a rapidly growing city in this time, and it is one of the biggest cities in America, you know, even a couple years later. So the Chicago Fire is also the name of their soccer team. Isn't that funny?
>> Farz: It's bad. Bad, yeah.
>> Taylor: And a TV show, obviously. Chicago Fire. You know, the, Like a drama show. Do you. Okay, I know I mentioned Tacoma FD a bunch on our socials because I just love that show so much and I'm thinking about fires. But they have. They always make fun of other shows, and at one point they, like, they're watching a show that it's like, Pittsburgh FD is an or pick. Yeah, Pittsburgh FD is the name of the show. But then they're filming it in Seattle, and it's Pittsburgh FD Seattle, which, like, makes you laugh so hard. Like, it's not like Seattle fd, it's Pittsburgh FD Seattle. You know what I mean? So Chicago is a huge city now. It was a huge city then. So it's 1871, and Chicago has been growing like crazy. In 1840, the population of Chicago was 4,470 in 1870. So just 30 years later, it's almost 300,000. So it's gone from like 5,000 people to 300,000 people in 30 years. So it's huge by 1880. So after the fire, it's still going to grow. It's going to be 500,000 people. So it's still going to grow kind of forever. It's obviously a great connector city. There's tons of trains now and then, and, it's cold as shit, but it's beautiful and a lot of people live there. So. Do you remember where the Great Chicago Fire started?
>> Farz: In a bakery?
>> Taylor: Nope. That was the other one. it started in Mrs. O'Leary's barn. That's like the myth that, like, the cow kicked over the lantern, and that started the great Chicago Fire. So there's a song that was, released in 1896 called There'll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight. And it goes, late one night when we were all in bed Old Mother Leary left a lantern in the shed and when the cow kicked it over, she winked her eye and said there'll be a hot time in the old town tonight. But she wasn't old. She's only 44. But still, it did start. Yeah, it did start in and around their barn. in Chicago, they live like, A little bit. They live on the, like the southern side of the city. so Catherine and Patrick O'Leary were immigrants from Ireland. They moved to Chicago and they had a couple of side hustles. So when they talk about Patrick O'Leary in the book I read, I read a book called the Great Chicago Fire and listened to some podcasts that I'll share. But they always call Patrick O'Leary an unskilled laborer, like an unskilled worker. Those are the jobs that he had. And I'm like, learn a skill. How can he be unskilled forever? But whatever that, he just had, like, shit jobs the whole time. And Mrs. O'Leary had a cow and some other animals, and she would deliver milk to her neighbors. So she had a barn where she had some animals, and she was like, a milk lady. They owned their home, the barn and a house on their property that they rented out to other Irish immigrants. So they, you know, they weren't. They were like, working. Working poor. So here are the facts. It's Sunday, October 7, 1871. The O'Learys live at 137 W. Decoven St. It was dry as fuck. It was the hottest October on record and the driest summer they'd ever had, which is exactly what happened in London, if you remember. Super dry. And it was still warm. Everything was made of wood, obviously, because everything was still made of wood.
The O'Leary barn caught fire early Sunday morning in Chicago
Then there was a strong wind, exactly what happened in. In London. And Mrs. O'Leary had just gotten two tons of hay delivered to her barn. So she. The barn's a dry. Full of dry. Yeah, exactly. The people in the back house are having a party. They're probably soaking cigarettes, you know, whatever. They have candles. Like all that's happening kind of on the property. the week has been very, very fiery. So it is, you know, 200 years after the great fire of London. But fire trucks are, you know, still very similar. You know, they don't have, like. There's still kind of the same way that they're going to try to fight this. Try to fight this fire. And, there's so many fire still because people still rely on fire so much. So like I said before, we're super lucky that we don't have to rely on fire constantly. But the firefighters are exhausted. So the day before, there was a fire at a lumberyard that caught on fire. And it was. Guess what it was next to that.
>> Farz: Caught on fire after a cotton, factory.
>> Taylor: It's like, it's so ridiculous. You couldn't make it up. It's a cardboard box factory.
>> Farz: Not good.
>> Taylor: It sounds like it happened in a cartoon, you know, like, oh, my cobra box factory is on fire now.
>> Farz: You know, that was literally a Simpsons episode.
>> Taylor: Yeah. So sometime in the evening, around 8:00, the O'Leary barn caught fire. A neighbor, his name was Daniel O'Sullivan. He was 26, he only had one leg. He had a wooden leg, which would make me even more afraid of fire than I think. I don't know. That seems scary. But he, like, kind of like, hobbled over, started yelling. everybody's like, holy shit, there's a fire. They try to get it out. They try to get the animals out. They get one calf out, but the cow dies and the horses die and the. And the carriage that they have is destroyed. The Olys were in bed when it happened. So one of the myths is like, the cow kicked over the lantern while she was milking the cow, but she was like, why would I ever be milking my cow in the middle of the night? That doesn't make any sense. She was asleep. She had to wake up really early to do milk the cow. So however it happened, fire got into the barn and the barn, like, it was engulfed in flames really, really quickly. It could have been the people at the fire or, at the party, or people from, you know, an ember from the wind just like, blowing around and like, catching the barn on fire. What is kind of fun is that their house did not burn down. So, like, the whole city of Chicago pretty much burnt down, but in the other direction. That was very. House was still there. Yeah. So now the fire starting to get crazy, and they're like, okay, we need to tell someone. We need to alert someone. And so we talked about last time that there were like, bucket brigade brigades and volunteers and watchmen. So this time there's a little bit more technology. So there's watchmen in towers around the city watching for fires. And also local businessmen and business owners have keys to a call box that, they can call the fire station. So, like, if you own the store on the block, you're going to have the key to open up the box to call the fire department. Like you're the only one who has it, but, like, it exists to be able to do that. So Daniel O'Sullivan went to, like, a local store and tried to get the guy to call. The guy didn't do it. He said, no, I'm not going to call. It's not a big deal. The firemen are really Tired. So he like didn't, didn't make the call. But finally someone did see it. a, dude named Matthias Schaefer was one was on one of the towers and he saw it and he was he sent the fire trucks to the wrong place because he wasn't, he couldn't really tell where it was from where he was. So they ended up going about a mile away. So it took them a while to get to where the fire was. Makes sense.
>> Farz: Yeah. Are these these are horse drawn fire trucks?
>> Taylor: Yeah.
>> Farz: Okay.
Three alarm fire is based on literally ringing a bell three times
>> Taylor: And so have you ever heard the term like a three alarm fire?
>> Farz: Yeah, I heard it in the context of Chile.
>> Taylor: Do you know what that means? Oh, like spicy food, like three lime chili.
>> Farz: Yeah. I would assume it's based on the severity of something.
>> Taylor: It is, yeah. And it's based on literally ringing a bell. So if you saw a fire, you ring it once if it wasn't that big of a deal, twice if it was getting pretty bad, and three times if it was really bad. So a three alarm, three times.
>> Farz: Just always ring it three times.
>> Taylor: 100. I totally agree. But they but they didn't ring it three times in the beginning for this one because they didn't. I think it was like that big of a deal because there were fires all of the time. So by the time the firemen get there, it's it's about 10:00, so about two hours have gone by and it's already spreading a ton. Also obviously because of the like crazy, everything's dry and it's really windy, so it's already starting to spread.
The Chicago Fire happened only six years after Lincoln was assassinated
So a couple things that happen in Chicago that are kind of sad and I thought interesting kind of side notes is one of them is this is only six years after Lincoln was assassinated. And one thing that I know about him is that he left Springfield the day like that he was going to D.C. to become president and he was like, I love Illinois, I can't wait to come back. And he never went back. It wasn't easy to travel obviously. And like Lincoln had planned after he was done with his second term to go back to Illinois to check out the west, maybe go to Europe. He never really went anywhere. You know, he was poor and then he was president. So sad. And so, he had all those plans. He's been dead for six years. But you know who was in Chicago during the great Chicago Fire?
>> Farz: John Wilkes Booth.
>> Taylor: No, I don't know where he was, but Mary Todd Lincoln. That poor fucking woman, his wife, she had Just lost. She had. They had four sons. Three of them died. Two of them died in childhood. One died while they were in the White House. Her third son, Tad, had died just a couple days before or a couple months before. So she was, like, mourning her third son. He died when he was 18. And just, like, so sad. And of course, she's there during this, like, panic. Like, she was fine. She wasn't affected. But, like, mentally, I'm sure she's like, why? What the fuck? Why do I deserve this?
>> Farz: Yeah.
>> Taylor: Crazy. and also, a lot of people in Chicago were people who knew Lincoln really well. Like, they knew him as a person, and they were, like, lawyers with him on the circuit, and, like, he was big in Illinois, so. The fire also destroyed a lot of personal papers of Lincoln's, of letters, of, like, historical things that would have been really cool to have, but the fire destroyed them, which is a bummer.
>> Farz: That sucks.
>> Taylor: Another thing that happened on the same day is actually the deadliest, deadliest fire in American history. Happened in Wisconsin. It's the Peshtigo fire. P E S H T I G O that one killed 2,400 people. And that's the deadliest fire in American history. And, it happened the exact same day as the Chicago fire. It started with a slash and burn, kind of getting out of control because they're trying to control fire and end up destroying a city and killing a ton of people. But it's the same wind and the same dry climate. So, like, it makes sense that other fires happen this day as well, you know?
>> Farz: Wait, where is it? What state?
>> Taylor: In, Wisconsin. In Eshtigo. Hashtag Wisconsin.
>> Farz: Okay. Not good.
>> Taylor: A little bit north. Yeah. So here's what happens in Chicago. The rich people are, of course, running away with their most expensive things, so they're trying to get away. A lot of, like, paintings and books and things are destroyed. Some, of them bury things in their yard. One guy buried an entire piano in his yard, just, like, hoping for the best. They would, like, very bury their silver, bury their jewels, and then run. Hopefully that would save it. I don't know exactly what happened to all the stuff that was buried, but one person said that when he came back, it was still so hot for a really long time that he tried to dig up his stuff. And as soon as his stuff hit the oxygen, it burst into flames. That's how hot it was, you know? So, like, a lot of it is, like, they couldn't even go back into the city for, like, at least a week. Because it was just, like, so hot. So a bunch of people try to bring their things to the Chicago Historical Society, but they're like, it's too crowded in here. We have too much stuff. So they're, like, closing the doors and let people bring their things to that. The, rich people were also being saved by their friends, so they could, like, you know, walk to a different part of town and stay with friends. At, some point. There are rich neighborhoods that think that they're not gonna get the fire. They think that they're safe. And one man says, like, his family's packing. He's like, don't pack. We're safe. He's like, let's make breakfast for as many people as we can make breakfast for, because we know people are gonna be hungry in the morning. And so, like, the servants were, like, panically cooking, but they ended up getting consumed by the fire anyway. Like, they lost their house, too. It happened so fast. another thing that rich people could do is they could leave. So now I, like, I don't. I never have cash. It's my credit card all the time. I can use it all over the world. But in this time, what you would do is if I had, you know, a house in, like, a lake town in Chicago, I would have a bank account there, you know?
>> Farz: Okay.
>> Taylor: And that bank would have money in it. So they could go and, like, reach. Get money out of the bank in other parts of, like, around, like, Michigan. So people were able to do that. The poor people, of course, were just running with their stuff. They were. Some of them. Some people, after it was over, was that the poor were better off because they had less to lose. And you're like, no, that's not how that works. That's not how that works.
Chicago fire would have jumped two rivers, according to one historian
No. they ended up in refugee camps. People got smallpox. Like, it's very sad. It was very. If you lost everything, you lost everything. There, are reports of. You know, obviously, this is something that. Like, I was reading this right after the London fire. And in the London fire, they were like, oh, only, like, six people died. But in the Chicago fire, like, people remember hearing, like, mothers crying because they can't find their children. Like, of course that happened in London, you know? Know, of course that happened in all these ancient fires. Carts were being filled and toppled over. Of course there was looting. Like, one guy was running, and he saw a guy wearing his clothes because the guy had, like, looted his house. And he was like, fuck it. You know? Better than have it burnt, you know?
>> Farz: Yeah.
>> Taylor: So people Ran all the way to Lake Michigan. So Lake Michigan is cold even when it's hot. Have you ever been in Lake Michigan?
>> Farz: I've never been in it, but I've been around it enough to be like, that is a terrifyingly huge body of water. Like, it has the. It has the same gravitas of an ocean.
>> Taylor: Yeah, absolutely. yeah, and it's just. It's freezing. It's freezing all year long. And, But people were running to, like, Michigan, and they ran waist deep into the water. Just like. Remember this year in Hawaii when people were running into the ocean?
>> Farz: Yeah.
>> Taylor: It was just like that. Like, the. And it was loud. The fire was, like, roaring, and people were running and, like, standing in the ocean. Some standing in the ocean. Stood in the ocean for hours, and it was, like, freezing, and they were just, like, watching the city burn with, like, fire flying above them. There was a. The jail was, Everybody in jail was let go. The mayor wrote a note, and it said, release all prisoners from jail at once, keeping them in custody if possible. And, like, they let everybody go for, like, petty crimes immediately. And then they took the rest of them, like, with them, and almost all of them just got away and just in the wind. But they're not gonna let you burn to death here, you know, so just, of course, just go. And so they had hoped that the fire would be, stopped by the rivers, because there's tons of rivers in Chicago, but they weren't. And it was because of the wind. And the shoreline, of course, had all the lumber yards and things like that because they needed to have access to the boats and all the things. So the shoreline was very, very combustible.
>> Farz: So I'm looking at this map, and it looks like the fire would have jumped two rivers.
>> Taylor: Yes, it did.
>> Farz: And you're saying the reason. I was going to ask about that. You're saying the reason that happened was because they were. There were lumber boats there.
>> Taylor: Yes. Not like. Not like. Yeah, lumber yards are on the shores of the rivers. And then it's so windy. Like, the wind, like, just blew. Blows, like embers and burning things across the river. So where they thought they might be able to stop it, it was not able to. so I was actually around. Well, the first. Okay. The first river that it. That it jumped was around midnight. So around midnight, the flaming debris blew across the river and landed on the roof of the south side gasworks. So that, like, exploded, you know.
>> Farz: Yeah.
>> Taylor: And that caused it to continue to spread out to the south side. The mayor was Roswell B. Mason. It was his only term as mayor. but he did a bunch of calls for other cities to help, and they did. Other cities sent their fire trucks. they were able to, like, get the word out, but it didn't really help. They were connecting to, to the waterworks. So there was, like, a general waterworks that they could connect to. But the water, it was so hot, the water would just turn to steam when it came out of the hoses. It just, like, didn't do anything. So because of the wind, there were also firewalls, like tornadoes of fire going through the city, and that ended up hitting the roof of the waterworks. So the waterworks caught on fire and all of the pumps went dry. So at some point, a little bit after midnight, they couldn't even pretend to use their hoses for water anymore. Didn't work.
>> Farz: This map is also really interesting because it shows where the fire started. It literally just consumed everything above it.
>> Taylor: Yeah. Yeah.
>> Farz: But everything below it is, like, totally fine.
>> Taylor: It's fine. Including the O'Leary's house.
About 300 people died in Chicago during the 1890s firestorm
so after seeing the damage, the fire marshal. After the waterworks, you know, exploded and was gone, the fire marshal said, I gave up all hopes of being able to save much of anything. They really couldn't do anything. a couple people did try to do those, like, fire breaks. And one of them, a man named James Hildreth, was an alderman who had the idea to blow up buildings with gunpowder to try to stop it and create those, like, fire breaks. he did a couple. I don't think it was ever, like, super successful. he got into an argument with a Civil War hero named Philip Sheridan, and, who was. Who was chopping buildings down with axes. And so they kind of like, there's a little bit of back and forth. I want to be in charge of doing this. I want to be in charge of doing this. And so there, you know, it doesn't. No one really was able to make that fire break. it moved north across the lake. There was a big, A big, like, melee on the Randolph Street Bridge, because that's what people were trying to, like, run across and run out of the. Run out of the city. a lot of stuff was, like, happening as people tried to leave. But, luckily the wind died down, because, like we said before, these things just have to. And, you know, you can't, like, douse it with water. So on October 9, it started to rain, and the fire slowly went out. The last house that the fire claimed was owned by a Man named John A. Huck. So. Poor guy. This house was the last one to go. All in all, about $222 million in damage, which is one third of the total city's value at the time. 2,000 lampposts, 17,500 buildings, 120 miles of sidewalks, 7.3mi of road, and officially about 300 people died, but probably more.
>> Farz: Yeah, I'm sure, I'm sure there's.
>> Taylor: Yeah.
>> Farz: Because I would assume at that time, like, it's hard to keep tabs on people anyways, you know.
>> Taylor: Exactly.
>> Farz: This is not like, IDs and, whatever. Like, explain. That's probably.
>> Taylor: Yeah. If you, like, lose your family, you, like, lose your family, you don't know where they are.
>> Farz: Right.
>> Taylor: Or things are. So the mayor puts the U.S. army general in charge and put the city under martial law for two weeks to make sure that people weren't looting and weren't, like, hurting each other. They were roving police, special units, citizen volunteers, just trying to make sure there wasn't any, any lawlessness there was deadly force was allowed if someone, like, didn't comply. So it was kind of, kind of crazy there for a while afterwards. Tons of aid came from all over the world. So people were giving money from everywhere. FDR's dad gave $5,000, and a bunch of cities and individuals helped. The money was managed by a charity that, like, wasn't great. It didn't. It was one of those charities that was like, oh, we don't need to give the poor that much because they're always poor. You're like, no, you should help everyone. But, it was, you know, eventually managed and doled out. And then they started to rebuild and they rebuild, rebuilt better. Like what happened before and now that started a lot of what we see in Chicago with like the terracotta buildings, obviously skyscrapers, the first skyscrapers were there. There was someone who was like, let's make an 11 story building because we're going to make like a skeleton out of steel. And people were like, no, that's crazy. You could never do that. You know. So, they had the opportunity then to do the beginnings of these things. And then by, you know, by, you know, the 1890s, they have that World's Fair, so things are pretty much rebuilt, you know, pretty, pretty quickly there. Mrs. O'Leary was never charged with anything. They did, like, bring her to court and she was like, you know, I wasn't out in the bar, I would not have been milking my cow, you know. I didn't do it. I didn't start it. Some people have like a theory that like a meteorite hit and like, hit Chicago and that's what happened or whatever. But it was like all those conditions to have a terrible fire that we talk about. They were all there. Is it.
>> Farz: Isn't it almost like, not then for those people, but like kind of now? Wasn't it like, kind of like the best thing that could have happened in Chicago was the whole thing fucking burning to the ground and then they rebuilt it.
>> Taylor: I know it feels. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I kind of think. I guess like, for these cities especially, like the cusp of the industrial revolution where, like, you can start building things out of steel, you know, and you don't have to tear people. People's houses down because they're already down. Yeah, sure. You know, and obviously it's Chicago. It continued to continue to grow. the place where the oleary's Barn is in 1956, the Chicago Fire Academy was built on that site. And it's still there today. So Chicago firefighters are trained on the spot that the Chicago Fire started in.
>> Farz: That's so cool.
>> Taylor: Yeah. Yeah. And that's it.
>> Farz: I'm gonna look up the site of the O'Leary's farm. I mean, they should. They should have kept the barn.
>> Taylor: I know. I'm sure it's just like, I don't know, you know, melted away by now. Chicago Fire Academy. It's about soccer. Not soccer.
>> Farz: Yeah, you know, I was gonna ask about that. I was going through the Chicago Fire FC space, Wikipedia page and was like, how is. Nobody said anything about this.
>> Taylor: I totally agree. No, I totally agree.
Taylor Sweet: Yeah. There's so many, like, horrible, horrible vibes
Like, that it seems. It seems ill.
>> Farz: It's like in. It's like in m. Like, 200 years. They call like a baseball team the 9 11.
>> Taylor: Exactly.
>> Farz: Like, it's like, exactly. A little insensitive. But I guess so much time has passed, so maybe they don't care.
>> Taylor: Yeah, I know, but it. That. I know. That's funny that, like, you know, after this much time, it can be something that's like, funny and like, ubiquitous with the word Chicago. When you're like, I don't. I don't know.
>> Farz: We don't need a ubiquitous,
>> Taylor: Man.
>> Farz: M. There's so many of these. There's so many, like, horrible, horrible vibes.
>> Taylor: I know. And a lot of them, I mean, a lot of them are like the similar things. Like, you just have those, like, things are bad. And especially in these older, like older cities. So I read. I Read a Stephen King book a long time ago called Cell, but it's about cell phones. Like, well, something happened and like, cell phones happened and there's like magic in it and like, whatever also happens. But like, in his intro, he's like, I wrote this thing, the story thinking, could a modern city burn? Like, could a modern Boston burn down? The way that like these things did, you know, it has to. It has to be like tons of chaos and that people have to like, be in on it. It was like his answer. And it was, you know, magical and mystical and all those things. But, But I don't know if that could like happen these days as much as like, you can destroy it with like, bombing. Obviously we see that all the time. But like, our cities aren't really like made of wood in this way.
>> Farz: I don't know, because I remember living in Los Angeles and it was like, do you remember, Taylor, that one day we were driving to work and there's. There was that huge.
>> Taylor: Oh, yeah.
>> Farz: Building the apartment. Yeah, it was a huge apartment complex. It was mid construction and somebody torched it. And you're just driving down, you're like, what? Like, that was incredible. I.
>> Taylor: That. But also it didn't spread. You know, it's true.
>> Farz: It didn't spread, but it didn't spread because I think it was in the heart of downtown. but at the same time, you look at like Malibu, for example, where they'll have wildfires and yeah, it'll be like, Pepperdine is the only thing that was saved because they create all these breaks and stuff. And like they planned for wildfire to happen there, which is like. Do you remember that? Where they were like telling people that. Telling their students not to go home and not to leave because that he had condom offer and they were safer there. I so would have left.
>> Taylor: I mean, that's how you die. You die when you like, try to run away, you know, like your car. Oh, no, you're right. Because you're right. But I think I was thinking like big city like Chicago, the fall skyscrapers. I feel like. No, but you're. But a smaller city, especially in California. All of our wildfires. Definitely.
>> Farz: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Terrifying. Absolutely terrifying.
>> Taylor: lots of fun ways to die this this week.
>> Farz: Yeah. Clouds yet? Fires. Let's see what we can cover next week.
>> Taylor: Unbelievable.
>> Farz: Awesome. Well, thanks for sharing that, Taylor. I hope at some point we can get to the San Francisco fire, because I think I recall correctly, that was. That also was an earthquake. It was literally just like hell opening up on earth.
>> Taylor: And I think it was all connected. I think it was at 1904. Earthquake turned to the fire. But I do. I will get to that for sure. I did, actually. So I just am finishing up my two weeks off, but I prepped at least read books for three other episodes that I'm excited about, so I feel a little bit ahead.
>> Farz: Fun.
>> Taylor: Yeah.
>> Farz: Sweet.
>> Taylor: Cool.
We need some help. If you're, like, if you're a podcast promoter or know someone
>> Farz: Well, if there's nothing else, we can go ahead and wrap again. Per usual. Please do write to us@doomdefellpodmail.com, find us on socials. We love to hear from people and we're doing a little bit of a later release this week than usual. given some issues that have arisen.
>> Taylor: Fine. Everything's fine.
>> Farz: Nobody's bad.
>> Taylor: cool. Well, thank you. Yeah. Doom defiled podmail.com doom pod. At any. At everything. Please tell your friends. Please, please review us on Apple Podcasts. We really would love to have more people, more people listen, and we're trying our best to hustle. If you're, like, if you're a podcast promoter or know someone who is, let us know. We need help.
>> Farz: We need some help.
>> Taylor: It would be great.
>> Farz: So awesome. well, thank you, Taylor. We'll go ahead and cut things off.
The podcast with Taylor and Farz covers random topics that we find interesting
>> Taylor: M. In the matter of the people of State of California vs. Orenthal James Simpson, case number BA09. And so, my fellow Americans, ask not.
>> Farz: What your country can do for you.
>> Taylor: Ask what you can do for your country.
>> Farz: And we are off to a relatively late recording. Taylor's yawning I'm in the dark.
>> Taylor: 7:00 and I'm yawning.
>> Farz: We are mixing it up, this time, but we're here and we are doomed to fail yet again. The podcast with Taylor and Farz. Myself, I call myself Bars in a third person, covering random topics that we find interesting. And sometimes there's a common theme and most of the time there isn't. Is that a fair enough summarization?
>> Taylor: That's perfect. Tell your friends.
>> Farz: Tell your friends. and I think given the fact that we kind of went off script with who goes first two times ago or last time, I think it's you this time. Right, Taylor?
>> Taylor: Yes. I go first.
>> Farz: Sweet. Do you want to. Am I going to be able to guess or what? Are you going to do this?
>> Taylor: Oh, I haven't thought of. Well, okay, I have a. This is going to be in two parts. Okay, I'm going to have you guess. I will have you guess. This is in two parts. because it's two disasters right after each other.
>> Farz: Hiroshima Nagasaki?
>> Taylor: No, but we should do that sometime. no, it's in the same place. And one thing is because of tectonic plates shifting and the other thing is just like the aftermath.
>> Farz: San Francisco.
>> Taylor: Yes.
>> Farz: Thank you.
>> Taylor: I guess that was. I gave up. That was easy. Okay. so because this is such a long story and so much happened in the, you know, with the, the earthquake and then the fire. I, I'm gonna do it in two parts. So I'm gonna start with the earthquake and a little bit of the history of San Francisco and California. But you know what this reminded me of that I, I just think is like so freaking funny. You know that song, the song We Built the City? Yeah. On rock and roll. So there's a GQ article, called An Oral History of We Built the City. The worst song of all time. And it's so funny. I will link to it. But it's like the people who made it are like, everyone shut up. I can't believe this. It's still on the radio. Like, we're really excited because we made a lot of money, but like, oh my God, we're so embarrassed. And then like, one guy's like, that was the best song on that album. How can it be the worst song ever? And then like, it's just. Everyone's mad. Like, everyone was like, fighting when they're making it. The guy who does the DJ part, you know, where he's like, the city that never sleeps, the city that rocks. He is so embarrassed. He like, he's like. He did one take and then threw his headphones and he was like, fuck you guys. Like, everyone was just so mad. And it's a really hilarious read. So I will link to that.
>> Farz: I love, I love when bands like, hate each other. Like the Oasis Brothers, the fact that they, like, literally get into like fistfights every time they record is like the funniest thing to me.
>> Taylor: Totally. that's like, that's the only San Francisco song I know. But that was just so funny. so. And lest anyone think that I think California is perfect and has no blemishes upon her history, I'm gonna talk a little bit about how California became a state, and how it grew. And then address the historical precedent of the Supreme Court case, the United States States vs. Wong King Kim Ark. And then we'll talk about what was happening right up into the earthquake in 1906.
>> Farz: Wait, so is this a two part series?
>> Taylor: Yeah.
>> Farz: Oh, okay, cool. All right.
>> Taylor: Yeah. And then we'll do the fire next week.
>> Farz: Sweet.
>> Taylor: When.
>> Farz: When you said it's in two parts, I thought you're. I thought you meant the way I do with like, Act One. Act Two. Oh, no. Okay.
>> Taylor: Literally two times, two miniseries. Yeah. That's pretty serious.
Um, so before the arrival of the Europeans, San Francisco area was home of
so have you been to San Francisco?
>> Farz: yeah, I've been a few times. Yeah.
>> Taylor: I've never really been. I went to Oakland the other like a month ago, but I never, I've never. I don't think I've ever like, stepped foot in San Francisco. I've been to like, the airport, you know, the.
>> Farz: The only time. No, I've only had my car broken in twice. Once was in college and the other time was when we were working at our last company together and I. They told me I had to go to San Francisco for some conference and I parked across from like the major park. I forgot what it's called, but my car got broken into. It was awful.
>> Taylor: Oh, I'm sorry. You drove there? It's long drive.
>> Farz: Well, it was from la.
>> Taylor: Yeah, I know, I know, but still.
>> Farz: Yeah, yeah, it's, it's. Yeah, right, okay. Yeah, yeah.
>> Taylor: Because California is huge.
>> Farz: I know.
>> Taylor: You didn't drive from Texas. Jesus, that would take you like seven days. That'd be terrible. no, don't do that. so before the arrival of the Europeans, San Francisco area was home of the Ohlone tribe. they lived there for thousands of years. They had, you know, many different languages, different little, groups, and they were mostly hunter gatherers, but they did have some, a little bit of like, like small gardens. They didn't have like, huge fields, but they had like, a little bit of agriculture. So they lived there, you know, for thousands of years until Europeans came, in. Ah. And the people that came to that part of California were the Spanish, because that was part of, the Spanish colonies on the United states. And in 1776, the Spanish explorers established a mission called. I apologize right now to my in laws and every Hispanic person. when I say this, it's the Presidio of San Francisco. Wait. And the mission of San Francisco de Assist, known as Mission Dolores. So maybe that wasn't that too bad, but Mission Dolores is what it was called. So it was like a local mission. And it was meant to, convert the Ohlone's into Christians. Of course, that's. That was their goal.
>> Farz: yeah, let's make everybody Christian.
>> Taylor: Why not? So Mexico gained control of California, the state, like our area, in 1821, once, after it won independence from Spain, which we've Talked about. So Mexico becomes its own country. California is part of that country of Mexico. and what they would.
>> Farz: Wait, hold on. California was part of Mexico?
>> Taylor: Yeah, it was like all like California was part of Mexico and like that part Texas, like then, then enter the Mexican American War in 1846-1848 where, the United States, like took over Canada and then like later got Texas after Canada, not Canada. I'm so sorry, California.
>> Farz: Okay, people, we're not historians.
>> Taylor: M see how pink my face is. I feel like I got sunburned doing our cookie.
>> Farz: You're flush. And I felt like it was like you might be drinking something.
>> Taylor: I'm not, I'm drinking tea. But I think I got a little sunburn today, selling cookies outside the Walmart. So I just felt a little pink. Cute. It's cute. And I have. And have the zoom glow on.
>> Farz: It's like you have blush on. I think that's what women call it.
>> Taylor: Yeah, it is. Great job.
California became part of the United States because of the Mexican American War
so, okay, I'm adding to California. So California is now part of the United States. and they. We became part of the United States because of the Mexican American War. and then there was a ceasefire agreed in January 1847. So the Mexican American War ended with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848. And the treaty had Mexico seeded. Present day California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and parts of Nevada, Utah, Colorado and Wyoming. So it was a huge land.
>> Farz: Big get.
>> Taylor: after that one. Yeah, big get after that. It's like when you do like double war, playing war with cards and you get like a king and an eight. and so that's happening in. And they're trying to figure out what, like how to do it. Like you can't just like it doesn't happen overnight. They're trying to figure out the different treaties and in the meantime, so that treaty was signed in 1848. So possibly right before it was signed or possibly right after it was signed, there was gold found in a place called Sutter's Mill in the Sierra Nevada foothills near, California. That where it is, it is now. And when they found the gold and then people rushed. That's the gold rush, which I feel like we should talk about. I'm sure it has like fun stories in it. But essentially that's when the population of California really started to boom because of a prospect of gold. And the people who were digging for gold. Do you remember what they're called?
>> Farz: Gold diggers?
>> Taylor: No. 40, 9ers. That's a person digging gold. And I didn't. I was like, why is that? Like, why are they called that? and it's just because they mostly came in 1849.
>> Farz: Oh, well, there you go. That makes sense.
>> Taylor: Like, when did you come here? 49, you know, for the gold. So, by this time, you know, so it's 1849, tons of people are moving to California from the other parts of the US for gold, for opportunity, for all the things. and then California officially became a State in 1850. So on September 9, 1850, President Millard Fillmore, signed resolution to get California in. It was the 31st state in the United States. So that was also part of the 1850 Compromise, because there was still. this is pre Civil War, and they were trying to figure out how they can add new states and which states will allow enslaved people, which states won't. So California was admitted as a free state, but there was still a pretty terrible and strict fugitive slave law that if you ran away from being enslaved to California, they would send you back.
>> Farz: California would send you back.
>> Taylor: Yeah. Like, it wasn't a safe place. Like, I think. I think.
>> Farz: And who was it free for?
>> Taylor: you couldn't, like, start new. Oh, you know, you couldn't, like, have slaves there, but you also, like, it also wasn't a safe place for them. Like, I think, like, New York might have been, or like, some of the other, like, northern places were, like, a safe place that you could essentially, like, run away to, but you couldn't run away to California. You could. so that's where we are. We are in California. And, there's, like, tension over. Over that. But we are our own state. and there is going to be, like, some pretty big, like, racial tension things happening in California, in the United States then and now and always. but in California, there was specifically a ton of racism towards Chinese people. obviously, like, this sounds really stupid when I say it out loud, but I feel like it's much easier to get to it. This is not dumb. Like, it's easy to get to the west coast from China. Like, it's harder to get to New York, you know, like, so people were coming from China. Right. Like, if you have a boat, I feel like that's why there's more people.
>> Farz: If you have a boat, you think that it's easier to get across the Pacific Ocean.
>> Taylor: Yeah. Then get to New York, because you'd have to go down the Cape, the bottom.
>> Farz: Okay, okay, okay, fine.
>> Taylor: And then around.
>> Farz: In that context, it is easier to get there than it Is. Yeah. Okay.
>> Taylor: Yeah. I'm not saying, like, now, but I'm saying, like, then, like, that's why there was, like, immigration from Asia and more on the West Coast. I don't know if that's true. I'm sorry. Okay, but. But there's a huge increase of, of Chinese immigration in the 1850s and 1860s. So there was a guy who was the mayor of San Francisco until 1902. He was also a U.S. senator named J. Named James D. Phelan. And, he campaigned under the slogan Keep California White because he wanted to stop immigration. He has some, real bad posters that show, like, a hand from the east trying to grab California. So it's not great. so that there's a lot of tension kind of happening there.
>> Farz: meanwhile, literally, like, all technology was invented, like, right there in San Francisco.
>> Taylor: So, the Chinese immigrants were, you know, a ton of them worked on, like, the transcontinental railroad. they did a bunch of, a lot of manual labor. They had their own, like, community in San Francisco. And in other places, like now they're the Chinatown in, like, most big cities, you know, and a lot of that was because they were, like, isolated. They were the other. It's an easy to see other.
Until 1943, you couldn't immigrate from China without special circumstances
You know, like, you can. People would, you know, you know, obviously treat them differently. And it got real bad. In 1882 was the first Chinese Exclusion act, so you could no longer immigrate to the United States from China. They blocked, people coming from China at all. And, then there was an act that. There were a couple more acts that kept renewing the Exclusion act, so that it was actually, law until, like, the 19. Until 1943, you couldn't immigrate to the United States from China, without, like, special circumstances or whatever. and. Oh, my gosh. Did you take a citizenship law class when you were in law school?
>> Farz: No, I took. I mean, I'm a naturalized. I was naturalized, so I've done the process.
>> Taylor: It's confusing as reading this Wikipedia page about it, so. Please.
>> Farz: Wait. Which. What. What's confusing about it?
>> Taylor: Well, like, there's just, like, a lot. No, no, no. Not the test. But, like, the law around citizenship is, like, very complicated. but one of the things that came up, especially specifically in San Francisco during this time is the 14th amendment. Do you know what that one is? Also, amendments are just like a sentence. They're like, very long, complicated. But the. The 13th Amendment was, for. To. To repeal slavery, and then the 14th was about citizenship because this is simplifying it, but, like, all of a sudden you have freed a huge, huge population of people. And before they had no rights, and they, like, were not even considered American. So you have to be like, they are now U.S. citizens. And they had to figure out, like, why and how they would be able to, like, do that, you know. So that's what I never thought about that.
>> Farz: But, yeah, makes sense.
>> Taylor: Yeah. So, one of the things in the 14th Amendment is that if you are born on American soil, you are a, U.S. citizen. So I think we've heard that, like, a bunch always. So, there is a man named Wong Kim Ark, and he is, born around 1873 in San Francisco. His. His parents are Wong C. Ping and Li Wei. They immigrated from China, but they weren't U.S. citizens, but they lived in San Francisco. They had a business, and they were like, it was before the Chinese Exclusion act, so they were able to live in California and, and have their business and like, you know, contribute to the community, all the things that they lived there. But, then they decided to move back to China. So his parents moved back to China, and Wong would visit them, and he visited them a couple times. He actually got married to a woman in China, and they had a couple kids, but he couldn't bring them to the United States because of the Chinese Exclusion Act. So he would, like, visit, like, visit them and was trying to figure out how to get them into the United states. so November 1894, Wong goes, to China to visit his family, and he stays there for about a year, and he comes back in August 1895. And he's a US citizen and he has a US passport. He's, you know, was born here, all the things. and they were like, nah, they decided that they didn't want to let him back in, and they kept him. This is like, sounds fucking terrible. On a boat in, like, the San Francisco port for five months, like, while they were trying to figure out what to do with him, was that.
>> Farz: That would have been federal court. Federal, right? Like, I think so.
>> Taylor: Well, it ended up. It was like a state thing first and ended up going to the Supreme Court, the U.S. supreme Court, to. To figure out, like, what to do. And he was. Ended up being allowed, to stay. And it is the law of Jew SOLI J U S S O L I which means right of the soil, which is like the what. How. What they ended up putting in the, ended up with clarifying in the 14th amendment meant if you're born on U.S. soil, you are a U.S. citizen. they were asked to the question that the Supreme Court was essentially asked is this is a quote, kind of long but whether a child born in the United States of parents of Chinese descent who at time of his birth are subjects to the Emperor of China, would have a permanent domicile and residents of the United States and are there carrying on business and are not employed in a diplomatic or official capacity under the Emperor of China becomes at the time of his birth a citizen of the United States. and so they voted that that was yes and he was allowed to stay. And eventually he did get his family, involved. His son, fought in World War II. so they ended up, you know, staying in America. But that was like a big case to kind of clarify. one of the points of the.
>> Farz: 14Th Amendment, it was interesting is when I took my American citizenship, they told me to like renounce, quote unquote, my Iranian citizenship. But I had no Iranian, like there was no legal document to that. Because in Iran it's it's not like that concept you just articulated which is like, you're born here because I wasn't born in Iran because to them like my blood is Iranians, my parents are Iranians. Like yes, they don't give a what, what citizenship paper I have. It's like you are blood Iranian. So like they don't. I mean that's, that's literally why I don't go back. And while I'll never go back is because they could like, like, oh, this is your American passport. Go fuck yourself. Like, doesn't really matter.
>> Taylor: Totally. And I think I was trying to understand it like very quickly. But there are like other things that are like that. Like you know, some countries are like, you are the citizenship of like your parents blood. You know, if you're not, it's not because you're here.
>> Farz: Yeah, America's actually like weirdly lax about that compared to like other places.
>> Taylor: Yeah, I never, I didn't never thought about it like what it means other places. The only thing I ever thought about is like if you're born somewhere else, you can't be president. I don't know.
>> Farz: Yeah, yeah, that was drilled into me when I was younger. I was like, I'm the president. One day I was just like a bushy tailed little fars and yeah, it's not going to happen.
When one of my kids becomes president, either one could do it
>> Taylor: Well when one of my kids becomes president, either one I think could do it. I'm going to give Ghost Tours of the White House. So you're welcome to join me if you'd like. they're going to be at night and it's going to be really fun and the Secret Service is going to hate. Hate it.
>> Farz: They have my vote, whichever one runs.
>> Taylor: Thank you. Thank you. They'll be great. so, But yeah, so that's. So that's what's happening. There's like a lot of racial tension in California in San Francisco. The city is very divided on like, different, like, class areas.
A lot of San Francisco was built on piles of trash during 1906 earthquakes
But let's talk a little bit about San Francisco, which is where we know the earthquakes are. Obviously. Of course, everyone knows that. what I didn't know is that a lot of San Francisco, at least, like the Mission area and like some other areas are built like on piles of trash. Because people would like, literally get so excited to come to California for gold that they would like, drive their boat into the beach and just leave it, you know, and then they'd go. And then they were. So there was like, trash and like buildings and stuff and they were just kind of like piled up over, you know, many years. And then they built a lot of the city on top of that trash pile, which, like, they do like, there's like fill land in like New York City, like where they extend the, the shoreline to be able to build on top of it. But like, a lot of San Francisco, like, wasn't even built on bedrock. So it was definitely like not a super safe thing to do in a place that earthquakes.
>> Farz: When we were living in la, didn't they have. Was there a story in San Francisco about this like, luxury condo, high rise, like multimillion dollar condos? And it was like leaning and so like everybody had to like evacuate or something. Do you remember this?
>> Taylor: I don't remember, but I believe that.
>> Farz: Yeah, yeah, it was, it was something about how like it was there was not built on bedrock because of that. And it went into the. Okay. Anyways, it was.
>> Taylor: Yeah, it all sounds familiar. Yeah. So like, that's not safe. You should, you should get a stick and put it in your yard and make sure that you hit bedrock before you go to sleep tonight. Just so you know that you're safe.
>> Farz: Yes, listeners in San Francisco, just get out of your condo.
>> Taylor: Everybody should, But San Francisco, because of the Gold rush, because of all these things, it is now 1906. It is the biggest city west of St. Louis. There are 400,000 people living in San Francisco in 1906. it is April, specifically 1906. And it has been very dry, of course. Like, that's kind of what you need to have a disaster like a fire. And, a lot of the buildings are made of wood. San Francisco really hadn't had, like, a huge, devastating fire. So places like Chicago, when that was in the 1870s, like, they've already rebuilt, and rebuilt better, but San Francisco didn't really have that. And when they did have things, like, there were many earthquakes and, like, fires and all the things that happened. But when those things happened, they would pass new laws that were like, now we have to build buildings better. But they never retroactively went back and changed the older buildings. Yeah, you know, I mean, because, I mean, that's fair. It sounds like a lot of work. Like, no one wants to do it, but, it made it, you know, the tinder box that it ended up being during this time. It's also. And this is also another thing that I feel is stupid that I didn't think about, but, like, duh, San Francisco has a bunch of hills because of the tectonic plates. Like, I get it now. Like, that. I don't know. I never thought, like, the hilliness of it is because of, like, the earthquakes that have been in San Francisco for.
>> Farz: But is it. What is it. What is it the fact that there's several that converge there? Like, what.
>> Taylor: It's just the biggest one. So the San Andreas Fault is the one that, like, goes up California, as we know, and it is the Pacific and the North American plates and the way that they are next to each other. So, like, we learned this in the volcano series that, like, this is a visual portion. So I have two plates. If I go, down with one, up with the other, then I can create, like, a volcano and, like, mountain ranges like the Himalayas.
>> Farz: Right.
>> Taylor: You know, because then I'm going, like, making these huge cracks in the earth and like, that. That's huge. Or I can have two tech kind of plates that rub against each other. Like, I think I saw this before, but this was the example that stuck with me in a book that I read about volcanoes is, It's like when you are parallel parking and you're. And you hit the curb, and you're like, next to the curb, and it kind of squeaks, you know, that's what. That's what the San Andreas fault is. So it is just those two kind of pushing against each other. So it's kind of like. Kind of like rumbles. It's not going to make Himalayas anytime soon, but it is going to make like little hills because it does all the rumbling and like kind of smushing each other. Makes sense, I think. I'm sorry.
>> Farz: Well, no, the reason I bring it up is because it's like obvious, like San Francisco is the scariest part of the world, I think when it comes to earthquakes or the assumption of what's going to happen in San Francisco. But it's like, why is it so. Because they're everywhere. But it sounds like it's because it's, like you said, it's the biggest one. And probably one thing I heard is that the pressure there has been building up for a lot longer than anywhere else and hasn't been actually really released yet. And so that's probably one of the other reasons why it's the scariest. Because when it does release, it's going to release a shit ton of energy.
>> Taylor: Totally, absolutely. Yeah. that totally makes sense. so. But because of the hills and again, like, I always think about people who live on like a hill in San Francisco and I'm like, that sounds terrible. Like I live on a hill and it's exhausting. Like I, when I walk to the bottom, I have to walk back up. I'm like, it's not even that big of a hill.
>> Farz: You drive up. You drive up the hill in San Francisco. No, you.
>> Taylor: No, I know. I go for walks.
>> Farz: Okay, okay, fine, fine.
>> Taylor: Okay. but I'm saying you're not walking.
>> Farz: Down to the bottom of the hill for the market.
>> Taylor: I know that sounds terrible.
San Francisco's fire department has over 500 full time firefighters
Yeah, that's what I'm saying. That sounds awful. Yeah. so it's also then hard to get water to those places because of the pressure and like going like up. The pressure going up a hill and like all of this. So just like keep that in mind. It's hard to get water to different places in San Francisco. Everything's made of wood and it has been very dry. Try. but nevertheless, the fire department is really great. It is as good as it can be for this time in history. So it is. They have over 500 full time firefighters. So it's not volunteers. It's like people who, it's their job. They have, like stations all over the city. They don't. There's. It's all horse drawn carriages right now. But you know, they are, you know, they're ready for, for everything. The fire chief, his name was Dennis T. Sullivan. He was 53 years. He was very proud of what he had done. Which totally is. Absolutely makes sense because like they work really really hard. the fire chief from Denver, Colorado happened to be in town on this night. So this is the night of April 17, 1906. And he was like, the buildings are all wood. This place is going to like unbelievably catch on fire. But then he met with Chief Sullivan and he was like, no, actually everything's gonna be fine because you guys are top notch firefighters. Like this is the best it can possibly be. So they, the fire department had of course like been at a fire the night before and they had. There's, it's the same thing that we heard in like Chicago. Like, you know, a building full of paper is going to catch on fire. You know, there's just, there's so much reliance on fire. There's actually Parts of San Francisco had been fitted with electricity. So there were like some like electric street lamps. and a lot of businesses had electricity. But most residential houses still had just like gas for their lighting. If they did like convert a gas powered home to electricity, they would like, this sounds so unbelievably unsafe. But they would just like, instead of putting the wires in the walls, they would just like hang the wires along the top of the top of the wall, you know. So like plenty of opportunity for shit to catch on fire, you know.
>> Farz: I kind of get it.
>> Taylor: Yeah. So, okay, it's April 17th, the night before. And this is like when you think the night before a disaster, you just remember everything from it, you know. Like you would never remember that night until the disaster happens the next day. And then you'll never forget what happened during that night. Does that make sense? Like, yeah, like I remember like September 10th to the day before September 11th. It rained a ton. I remember what I was wearing. I remember I went to. Yeah, I was, it was pouring rain and like I was super poor cause I was in college, I didn't have any money and I was wearing these like bell bottom jeans and these like huge shoes that I got in Germany. And like, but they were like soaked to my knees. And I had bought a bunch of bagels at our bagel store. Had a 25 cent bagels Monday nights. So I bought a bunch of them. I had my backpack. It was raining so hard. I usually walked like a mile and a half to my apartment. But I couldn't do it because it was so raining so hard. So I took the train. I remember sitting on the train and like a little girl told me she like, she liked my backpack. Like I remember all that happening. I went to my house. I cut all the bagels in half. I put them all in the freezer and wrote 9-10-10 on all of them. And then, you know, then I remember hanging my jeans in the back of my chair because they were wet. I went on like, AM&M was mad because the boy light didn't message me, like, everything. because the next day was September 11th. And then, then I remember that. You know what I mean? You're like, that's the last time that I felt. That's the last time I was before this event in my life.
>> Farz: You know, that amount of details. Intense. Like you remembered a lot of details.
>> Taylor: Well, I have a good memory, but also like, I just feel like it just, it's just like that's. That was the last time I was the person who hadn't been through that, you know?
>> Farz: Yeah. Yeah.
>> Taylor: Someone else. So there's a lot of stories, of the night before the earthquake, of people being like, you know, I did this and it felt normal. Or like kids being like, oh, I went to my friend's house and I came home and I went to sleep. And you just like, remember those things. it was a big opera night in San Francisco. There were, there was a Opera of Carmen and everybody loved it. And so there were a lot of people, like, out doing like, fancy things the night before. San Francisco also has a. I'm sure it's probably. This is like all big cities, but there's a ton of hotels and people who would like, live in like, rented rooms and just kind of like, you know, stay, in place for a short amount of time and then go somewhere else. So there's a ton of that happening. And so it was a very, very nice night.
The 1906 San Francisco earthquake struck at 5:12am on April 18
Actually, a couple, I think a couple days before this, Mount Vesuvius had erupted. and people in the Italian section of San Francisco were raising money to send back to Italy to help people. and so everything was normal, except some horses started to act weird because they always know.
>> Farz: Yeah.
>> Taylor: So people were like, especially in the middle of the night, people were like, I don't know, my horse is kind of going crazy and I don't really know why. and I have a bunch of anecdotal stories about the earthquake from the book that I'm reading. It's called the Longest Minute. So I'll put that in the notes as well. But the earthquake struck at 5:12am on, April 18, 1906. The epicenter was actually in the water. So like, they couldn't, they didn't know where it was for a while, but, like, it happened in, in the water. And there's a story of a dude who was swimming and he, like, he was like, things are weird. Like, he was, like, going for his, like, morning swim and he tried to go to the beach and, like, put his shoes on and he couldn't. He kept like, falling over because he was like, what is happening? You know, like, it was just like. It's confusing. Have you. You felt earthquakes when you were here, right?
>> Farz: Oh, yeah.
>> Taylor: And it's just confusing.
>> Farz: You're, like, very confusing. Your equilibrium is off in a way that you. Your brain cannot comprehend also. What a fucking psychopath. Like, can you imagine waking up in the morning at, 5:00 in the morning, going to an empty beach and swimming into the middle of the. What a lunatic.
>> Taylor: That guy is.100. We were just talking last night, like, my husband wants, like, an ice plunge. And I'm like, you're an insane person. but yes, those are fun.
>> Farz: Juan. Juan. I do support this. So I did it consecutively for three days. And then I realized I'm like, I'm not strong enough to keep doing this. But I really. It really did feel amazing. It really felt like a new thing in her body was like unlocking a new endorphin rush was happening. So I suppose, I think that that's.
>> Taylor: What I think that guy was trying to do.
>> Farz: That guy was nuts. 5am Taylor. 5am What a scary time to go into the. To go to San Francisco Bay.
>> Taylor: I know. I think, I think maybe in general, slipping. It sounds terrifying. So that's a bad idea. But he was like. But anyway, that's all. That's what he remembered. So the earthquake lasted 42 seconds, which is really long. You know, some people were like. It felt like, you know, a day, like just 42 seconds. It was a 7.9 on the Richter scale. which is. I mean, I. It's like there's another scale on the other scale. It's just like extreme, you know, like crazy. Director Sale actually wasn't invented until a couple decades later, but in retrospect, it was a 7.9.
>> Farz: Yeah.
>> Taylor: And just use huge. it was felt all the way down in Los Angeles over in Nevada, which makes sense because it's right next door. the Winchester Mystery House lost some of its floors, as we talked about before, and, they were never rebuilt, which is why they have staircases that go to nowhere. We talked about that before. so a few earthquake reminders for myself. And you, in case there's ever an earthquake in Texas. and everyone else. So these are the ones I have so far. I'll probably have more. One of them is always put. Put shoes under your bed because the glass in your house is going to fall and break. So you need to be able to, like, leave your home and not cut, your feet. So you should have shoes under your bed to be able to do that. You also need a crowbar to get out of your room, potentially, and out of your house, because, like, the whole house can shift and you can't open doors anymore. So get a crowbar. And then also, as soon as the earthquake is done, as much as you can, just, like, fill everything. Like, fill your bathtub with water. Fill every. Every pot with water. Because you just, like, don't know when. What might happen with the water. It could definitely be cut off, like, asap. So those my three things so far.
>> Farz: do you have a crowbar under your bed?
>> Taylor: I don't, but I should get one.
>> Farz: Yeah, I really, really should.
>> Taylor: I don't have shoes under my bed either, but I. I know that I need to do that.
A lot of people died in their beds from chimneys falling on them
So. Earthquakes again, they're super loud. It's the buildings, it's the earth. It's, like, confusing and crazy. I'll talk about the death toll from this from both disasters next week. But, a lot of people died in their beds from their chimneys falling on them. like, a lot of people died that way, because a lot. Most houses had, like, a brick chimney, and those were, like, the first things to fall. So a lot of people died that way. A lot of people died, and you don't know, like, we'll never know what happened to them. You know, like, there's, like, people heard screaming in rubble, and then screaming stopped. So you don't know what happened to that person, you know, so, so many people who just, like, probably woke up and were like, everything's shaking. What's going on? And then they were dead or they were trapped for days. And, like, we'll never know. Like, it's like, really, like, horrible things. And a lot of people who were in, like, hotels, some of them were, like, just in town for something, and they. No one knew who they were, you know, so there were just, like, a lot of unaccounted for, like, dead bodies and things like that, that people were just, like. You didn't have, like, identification. All of that happened, too. So a lot of people, a ton of people died in the initial earthquake itself. one of the things that one of the stories that I heard is just so fucking terrible. So a couple people got caught in Murphy beds. You know, those beds that, like, go down.
>> Farz: Oh, God.
>> Taylor: And so, like, some of them died, and some of them were, you know, the friend. Like, they would be visiting someone, be in the Murphy bed, and then be, like. The friends would be like, oh, my God, we have to go check on our guests. You know, and, like, they would get them out, and they were, like, nearly suffocating. the one. The one story that I heard that's absolutely the worst is a man and his wife. They're both in their 60s. And as soon as the, earthquake started, the man sat up, and then the Murphy bed closed and broke his neck. And when the people who lived in the house went to go see them, they found them. The wife was alive and, like, almost suffocated.
>> Farz: That's horrific. That's like being bricked into a wall.
>> Taylor: Like, just, like, so. So terrible. So a lot of people died that way. And then also, this actually kind of remind. Reminded me of the Kansas City, Hyatt that you talked about. Because the, Some of the hotels, like, all of a sudden the fourth floor would be, like, on the first floor. You know what I mean? Like, it just, like, pancaked the floors below it. And, so people were drowning in the rubble that happened there, you know, because, like, they had, like, the water mains were breaking, and so people. Some people drowned, you know, some people were crushed. you don't really know. Some people, like, you know, burned right away. But you'd hear screaming or, you know, there's, you know, someone would yell like, there's three people here trapped. And then they were just like. You just never heard from them again. You know, they died there together somehow. so it is still really early in the morning, and one thing that happens right away. So the fire chief, Chief Sullivan, he had been in a big fire the night before, and when he came home, he didn't want to, wake up his wife. So he slept on the couch, like, in another room. So when the earthquake happened, he got out of. Got off the couch and went to go into the bedroom to see if his wife was okay. And when he opened the door, he didn't realize the, There was no floor in the bedroom because the building next door had collapsed into the bedroom. So he did one step, and he fell several stories down, and he was caught. And when they found him, he was still alive, but he was, like, getting, like, pummeled with, like, hot water from, like, a. A pipe. So he was, like, getting those burns from the water, and they got him out, and then they were like. He was like, you have to find my wife. You have to find my wife. And they found her, and she was okay. Her bed had fallen two stories, and she was just, like, wrapped in her bed and actually ended up being fine, which is crazy. so now people are like, what do we. What are like, people are trying to figure out what to do. Everyone's standing outside, and now it's quiet. You know, people are just, like, confused. A lot of people are, like, in different states of undress because they were sleeping, you know, so some people, like, they only have, like, a nightgown, and some people, like, only have, like, one or two things, and, you know, they're trying to find their children. So people are crying and trying, looking around, and they. You know, people are, like, sitting in the park together, but they're all, like, just. Everybody's confused. there's, like, rubble everywhere. And then, almost immediately, that's when the fires start, because of all sorts of different reasons. So we will talk about the fire that actually destroyed most of San Francisco, next time.
Doug experienced his first earthquake when he was subleasing an Airbnb
>> Farz: Doug, can I tell you that I. So do you remember you had a friend who had a friend who had an apartment that he was subleasing in Los Feliz, and we had never met before, but we knew we're going to start work at the same time together, and so you. I was like, I don't know where to live. You were going to Airbnb a place. But you introduced me to this guy, and I ended up subleasing his apartment. And that was the first time I experienced an earthquake where. I don't remember what time it was, but it was early. I think it was, like, two, three o'clock in the morning or something along those lines. And I just remember, like, the bed shaking and kind of moving quivering towards the center of the room. And you wake up and you're like, your brain can't even process what's happening.
>> Taylor: Yeah.
>> Farz: Remember that earthquake that would have been in 2013. Do you remember that one? You were. You were in an Airbnb.
>> Taylor: It happened that I was not gonna be the. For the first month. It was during that month.
>> Farz: I think it was probably during that month. Like, February, March.
>> Taylor: I don't remember. I remember, like, I remember one in. In la. We're like. Juan and I were watching tv, and, like, we used to look at each other, and we were like, what's happening because it's just like, loud and confusing. I felt a couple, like, little ones here out in. Out in Joshua Tree. But, But yeah, but it's confusing. And a lot of people in San Francisco, like, some people went back to bed, you know, because they like, kind of woke them up or whatever, and they were confused and if their house wasn't literally falling on them, you know, they just like.
>> Farz: Yeah, like, that's the. Like, earthquakes have, like, a weirdly scary effect to me because, okay, like, I lived in Florida, lived in Texas. Like, I've been through hurricane season and through tornadoes, but earthquakes, like, so super.
>> Taylor: Surreal, like in the. So another like, like, memory that someone had from San Francisco is like, you know, you're watching the road roll like a wave, you know, like that's. You're like, that's not, that's not supposed to happen.
>> Farz: You know, it's the fact that it can happen anytime. There's like, no warnings ever. No matter how advanced science gets, there's never going to be warnings for it. It's just. Okay, so like hurricane season in Miami, I was like, you. You knew, a hurricane was coming in and you could like, decide for yourself, like, how big of a deal is this? Am I going to vacuum? Am I not? Tornadoes, they're not really that horrible anyways. And if they are, you just go into the bathroom and whatever. Like, an earthquake can, like, bring down the entire building on your head. And I don't know, it's just so scary. Like one of them, when I left, When I left California actually had a tangible thought. Like, I at least don't have to think about that anymore because they always told us in la, they always told us, remember this? Like, the big ones coming. The big ones coming in.
>> Taylor: Oh, yeah, there are those signs. So I have like a. Like a first aid kit that like, has a bunch of stuff in it. And like, we're supposed to have a lot of extra water and like, things like that.
>> Farz: Shoes and crowbars, remember?
>> Taylor: Yeah, because also gonna cut you off from, like, everything. And so like in San Francisco, immediately after it happened, all communication was cut off because all of the, like, lines broke. So that's going to be a problem coming up in the fire because they can't tell everybody.
>> Farz: You should have like, all your identification, like, photocopy and like, the cars and everything else and, like, have jugs of water everywhere and I don't know, like.
>> Taylor: Hm.
>> Farz: It's scary. I mean, you're less at risk in Joshua Tree than in San Francisco, obviously. But still.
>> Taylor: Yeah. And I feel like. But, yeah, like, if you. The idea of a building falling down is so scary, you know, in those things. And, like, that. also. Okay, so it. Also, some of the buildings that have been destroyed in San Francisco during this earthquake are ones that were earthquake proof, you know? And you're like, that's not a fucking thing, dude. You know? So, like, one of the, nicest hotel in town was the Palace Hotel at this time. And there were people. It did not collapse. And so, like, there were a lot of rich people in the lobby, like, eating rolls and drinking coffee and being like, what do we do? Trying to figure it out. But it, I remember when I worked at a, hedge fund in New York, I was on the 37th floor of a building, and we would have. I'm sure I told you this before, but we would have, like, a fire drill, like, once a quarter with the fire people, and they'd be like, okay, if there's a fire, you go to the 34th floor because that one's fireproof. And I was like, you go fuck yourself. I'm going outside. Like, what are you talking about? Going to the 34th floor because it's, like, allegedly fireproof. No, I'm going outside, walking away.
>> Farz: Fireproof, unsinkable. Like, these are words that you're like.
>> Taylor: Yeah, have my own personal fire extinguisher and run out of this building. I'm like, that's so. Yeah.
>> Farz: Well, crazy.
The San Francisco fire reminds me of a New York Times podcast episode recently
>> Taylor: Yeah. So things are confusing. Things are scary and about to catch on fire.
>> Farz: I also predicted this. Whenever you're doing the Chicago Fire, I was like, it's got to be the San Francisco fire.
>> Taylor: Well, yeah, of course I was gonna have to do it eventually.
>> Farz: Yeah, of course you're gonna do it. the daily. The New York Times podcast did an episode recently, and you, like, kind of reminded me of it because you talk about China in San Francisco, because they talked about how, like, the government in China is, like, making it so unp. Palatable for people that there's a guy who, like, got into an argument with the government there because they destroyed his business. Whatever. A bunch of stuff happened. And, he had to. He couldn't come to the United States directly. He had nowhere to go. But he was like, the United States is the only place I can go. So, like, he. But you can't go directly there. So what he had to do was to fly to Ecuador with his daughter and then walk from Ecuador through Texas, like, which I don't even know how Far, that is. But it. Like he was gonna get arrested. Like that was. Yeah, he was doing to do it. He knew what was happening. Anyways, it was, in a long story short, they shipped him to San Francisco while he's pending court trials and all that stuff. But anyways, interesting. Reminding me of that.
>> Taylor: But yeah. yeah, so, yeah, that's it for now.
Morgan used to work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York
>> Farz: Now, I'm looking forward to hearing the rest of this. Do we have anything we need to read out or.
>> Taylor: I do, I do. I have something fun. so my friend Morgan, who I told you, I mentioned that she had just started listening. She's really excited. And, she. I think she's listen to all of them. She's like, I just finished episode one. Like, she's a champ. She listened to like, us constantly.
>> Farz: Thanks, Morgan.
>> Taylor: But she used, to work at the Metropolitan M Museum of Art in New York. I forgot that she had done that.
>> Farz: You got engaged there?
>> Taylor: I, got engaged in the moma. But, so she. Thank you for remembering that. So some fun things that happened while she worked at the Met. This is like, in reference to the Mona Lisa and like, art heists. but she said that the Thomas Crown Affair, the interior in the Thomas Crown Affair where they tell you that they're at the Met Museum, they're actually in the New York Public Library because of the museum director thought that it would give thieves ideas on how to steal things out of the museum. And I was like, do you think that's true? And she was like, no, no one's watching Thomas Crown and being like, I'm gonna do that.
>> Farz: You know, Like, I wouldn't put it past.
>> Taylor: Very few people are following through on their art heist, you know. and she also said that one time someone had emailed in, in into an inbox that she was monitoring and they had some questions because they're writing a heist book and she wasn't allowed to answer them, which is like, they're like worried about it. and then she said actually most of the frames at the Met are actually just like pieces of art themselves. Like the frames that they talked about how, like, some people have like, been just gotten in trouble for like stealing the frame of a painting. But, that was cool. And then she also had one more art history thing that was fun, is that ancient Egyptians used egg based paints as well. We talked about that. That's what, Leo used on the, the Last Supper. And there's a problem because birds can still smell the egg and they're pecking away at the walls.
>> Farz: Wait, the walls of what?
>> Taylor: Like, of, these, like, buildings in Egypt where they had used the egg paint.
>> Farz: Oh, on the outsides. Okay. I thought you meant, like, the paintings. I was like, why are they. Why are there birds in the art gallery?
>> Taylor: so I think just like, outside. But that's fun. and I. I was so jealous that she worked at the Met, so. That's super cool.
>> Farz: That's a really cool job. That was a really, really cool job. I've been there. I've been there once. I'd never done New York. Right. And I m. Know I should. I should at some point.
>> Taylor: Yeah. M. I'll take you there. My, I was little. I loved the book from the Mix up files and Mrs. Basil E. Frankweller. I have it here. It's like, about, this brother and sister who go on a field trip to the Met and they stay there, they, like, hide and they sleep in, like, the night place, like the big grand bedrooms at night. And, they find, like, a missing statue. And like, it's just like, really fun and adventurous. And I always loved that book so much. So I was so excited when I finally got to go.
>> Farz: We did that when we were kids. When we're kids, like, I guess. Yeah. It would have been elementary schools in Dallas. We have a Dallas Science Museum. That's where the Omni thing. And like, it's. It's really cool. I really love it. They have, like, dinosaur stuff there. And they have. They'll have kids spend the night like once a year.
>> Taylor: And I did it in Chicago.
>> Farz: So fun. That was like the. Probably my best chocolate memory.
>> Taylor: I did it in the Natural History Museum or the Museum of Natural History in Chicago. And, that'd be incredible.
>> Farz: I can't imagine how, like, they, like.
>> Taylor: They turned off the lights and leave us flashlights and let us just go play. And then we would like. We'd like, turn a corner, there'd be like a mummy and we would, like, all scream. And they had like, something where they were like, pretending there was a ghost and just like all this stuff. And I'm like, I can't believe I should do that. That was so fun. It.
>> Farz: So cool.
>> Taylor: Wow.
>> Farz: Man. To go back to elementary school.
Next week we're going to cover the actual fire itself
so, okay, so next week we're going to cover the actual fire itself. But so far we're through the. Through the conception of California, through its acquisition. And now.
>> Taylor: Yeah. And it's so it's about. Let's say it's about 55 20. So it's been. Am. on April 18, 1906, you're outside. The earthquake just happened. You've been standing outside for like five minutes. You're super confused. and then you start to see smoke.
>> Farz: You're in your nightgown, wearing your, in your nightie, wearing like that nana hat that's like big and cone like in the old days.
>> Taylor: You're holding like the one thing that you thought to bring like the guy who was actually the main singer in the opera Carmen at that night. He had a signed picture of Teddy Roosevelt in his hotel room. And that's what he said, saved. Which is fair. I say that too. so everyone's outside holding their one thing and like super confused.
>> Farz: Well, join us next week while we, when we cover the actual fire of San Francisco. Looking forward to it. Sweet Teller. Well, go ahead and cut us off and I'll see you in 20 minutes. Last three days.
>> Taylor: Okay, great.
In the matter of the people of the state of California v. Orenthal James Simpson, case number BA09
>> Taylor: In the matter of the people of the state of California v. Orenthal James Simpson, case number BA09.
>> Farz: And so my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you.
>> Taylor: Ask what you can do for your country.
>> Farz: And we're back for another episode of Doom to fail. Which that means I did the int. Introductions properly. bars joined here by Taylor and Taylor, you're, you're.
>> Taylor: You.
>> Farz: Did you just change between recordings?
>> Taylor: No, I don't. Wait, I took my sweatshirt off because I'm getting hot.
>> Farz: Oh. then we're trying to do wardrobe changes between recordings. sweet.
San Francisco fire is the topic of this week's podcast
And we're back to a new topic where this can be a tailor joint. And she's gonna play the regular game of me guessing what she's going to cover and I'm gonna be wrong.
>> Taylor: I mean, you know what I'm gonna cover because I covered the first half last week.
>> Farz: San Francisco fire.
>> Taylor: Yes, got it. so, okay, I feel like I got like 70% of the way there. And then the book I was reading was just like so long that I was like, I want to die. I was listening to it at 2.5 speed last night and I was like, this, this has to end. So, I feel like my ending of this, I'm not going to land this as much as I want to, but we'll, we'll talk about it.
So before we go and recap last week and talk about the fire, I'm going to send you a picture
So before we go and kind of recap last week and talk about the fire, I'm going to send you a picture. Can I send it in the chat in this?
>> Farz: I don't know, but if not, you can Send them slack.
>> Taylor: It's a link. I linked it twice. I'm, like, doing that. I'm 100 years old. There's a link. Can you click on that link, please, and describe what you're seeing in that picture?
>> Farz: complete and utter devastation and a giant fire that is black and white. There is a clearly a trolley system running down the center of the city. One building, for some reason, is missing its entire facade, which seems bad because of the earthquake. that'll do it. But the rest of the, rest of the buildings are standing. I mean, there's a lot of rubble in the street, but.
>> Taylor: Yeah. So this is. Okay, so this is like the day after the earthquake, and I'll share this on social media, but I think it's wild. So there's like, a building missing a facade. So like a dollhouse. You can see inside and see the rooms. And then there are people sitting on the street, sitting in the rubble, kind of sitting in chairs, looking down a big hill. And the fire's just two blocks away. It's coming for them, you know, so I'm sure all of this area was destroyed as well.
>> Farz: Yeah, but you don't know that. I mean, you don't know that it's coming for you when you're looking at it, because fires change directions all the time.
>> Taylor: No, I think you know it's coming for you. I'll tell you why a little bit, because it came for everyone. remember that the earthquake happened at 5:12am on April 18, 1906. It was a 7.9 earthquake, and it was like 42 seconds long, which is just so unbelievably long, I can't even imagine. So a lot of people died immediately. Chimneys fell, buildings collapsed. And then do you remember what happened to the fire chief by chance?
>> Farz: He walked home. He was sleeping in the living room, but he walked in to check on his wife, and he walked into an open hole.
>> Taylor: Yes. So he goes straight to the hospital. That is Chief Sullivan. He never wakes up. He is like, he's there. They don't tell him what's happening. He dies a couple days later. So the fire chief, he is, He. He doesn't make it. But, So there's like an acting fire chief that I'll tell you about in a second, but the fire chief dies. I also posted and sent you a text that I got a crowbar. I said I would have one. Thank you. And I was going to bring it in here to show you, but then I was like, I should keep it under my bed. Duh. that's where it needs to be. So I left it under my bed. So it's there.
>> Farz: I've also seen crowbars before.
>> Taylor: I know, I know. So I have a crowbar. But, so also I'll add shoes under there. And then the third rule is to make sure you have water, because water is going to be a big problem in, San Francisco, like, literally right now. So almost immediately after the earthquake, communication is cut off between San Francisco and the rest of the world. the telegraph system, telephone system, everything is, is down. And the, earthquake is pretty much over. It has a couple little aftershocks in the next couple days, but the earthquake damage is done. Like, that is already done.
The 1906 San Francisco earthquake destroyed approximately 25,000 buildings
And now it's time for the fire. So, and we talked about this before because of societies like in, In London in 1666, like, there was just fire. That was the only option. You know, like, you had candles, you had a fire in your house. And then in Chicago, you know, there was like, you have a gas stove, you have gas, lights. And then now in San Francisco, some things have electricity like the businesses usually do, but homes usually still have, like, gas lighting and gas for everything. So immediately there are a bunch of fires because gas mains are broke, chimneys fall down. There's little fires kind of all over the city, but a lot of them are put out by people because they're, like, in their house. So if you're, like, in your kitchen and you see a fire, like, you talk. We've talked about this before. Like, you saw a big fire and like a window or like a mirror, and you, like, had to go put it out.
>> Farz: Oh, my God. Yeah. Terrifying.
>> Taylor: Yeah, but. So that probably happened hundreds of times, but someone was there. So you're at your house, you do it. So there's no, like, it doesn't spread. It's just you at your house. But then a lot of places where the commercial buildings, where there's maybe like a night, one night watchman, but not a lot of people. So those fires got out of hand, like, really quickly. most businesses did have electric lights, but it was mostly the gas, the gas, like, lines exploding that started all the fires by 7:30am so about two hours after the earthquake, all of the gas had been cut off. And it would be cut off for 23 days. So for 23 days, they would not have access to gas. And what people will do later is they will build stoves out of bricks on the street. So people were outside cooking for about A month. They weren't allowed, like, back in their homes to, like, have open flames and do things like that. I also wrote. I have no idea how to do that. If you're like, was this. It was April.
>> Farz: Okay. So it wasn't, like, freezing cold or anything?
>> Taylor: It's not freezing. I mean, it's San Francisco. So it's like San Francisco gets pretty cold and damp. It's, like, damp, but, like, not in the rubber. so within fires about three to four days long, there are 30 different fires about that kind of converge, like, into one big fire. It destroyed approximately 25,000 buildings. 490 blocks were destroyed. And in today's money, the damage would be eight and a half billion dollars. So it just, like, destroyed the city. in the beginning, the death toll that they were saying was about. About 300. But, like, that cannot be true. You know, like we talked about with, like, the other fires. Like, that's ridiculous. Like, you don't. You. There's so many people whose bodies you're never going to find, and people who you don't know were in a certain place or whatever. And especially, like, they were discounting the people in Chinatown for a long time. So now that they started to count them, then we think the number is a little bit higher. So obviously, like, the death toll is probably closer to, like, 3,000, if not more.
>> Taylor: a lot of bodies were just, like, unable to be found because they were burned so badly. They're just, like, part of this rubble. The chief dies. but I do want to emphasize that, Chief Sullivan, a lot of the good that happened during the fire and how prepared they were were because of him. He made sure that his, you know, his department, they were fully trained. They did a ton of drills. They were, like, ready to help. The problems that they had were, like, you know, water and, like, the fire was huge and all the things, but, like, the firemen were as ready as they could have been, and that was because of him. So now that, he is, you know, now that he is essentially dead, he dies a couple days later, but they never talked to him again. there's going to be a new chief that is going to have to step up, and then the military is going to get involved as well. There are a lot of stories of things like, and I hate this. I think this is, like, the worst thing of, like, parents dying and, like, the kids being left alone, you know, and, like, trying to figure out what to do. So, like, finding, like, a baby by itself. Like, I hate that. I so upset. But, like, you know, so, like, a lot of, like, that is happening. So right when it happens, when, the fire starts, the last message that the Navy gets out of San Francisco to the rest of the world, like, over the wires they say, earthquake, town on fire. Send marines and tugs, and that's it. So rest of the country kind of starts to know that it's happening, and they start to kind of start to send relief, but they really don't know, like, the extent of what's going on there. Oakland is not on fire. San Francisco is. So people are able to, like, escape to Oakland. We'll talk about that in a second.
Taylor Ham: There are rumors that San Francisco is going to be destroyed
So some stories, just, like, some, like, anecdotal stories, like, from people who are, like, doing really brave things, really crazy things are happening to them as this fire is just, like, building and building. the author, Jack London, do you know who that is? He wrote, like, the Call of the Wild about the dog.
>> Farz: Oh, yeah. There you go.
>> Taylor: Yeah.
>> Farz: Yeah.
>> Taylor: So he lived 40 miles away, and Collier's magazine called him that morning, and they said, can you go to San Francisco and tell us what happened? So him and M. His wife, went to San Francisco, and they kind of just like, walked through the city as it was burning and, like, talked to people and, like, met people. And he wrote an article for Colliers, and I listened to it today. It's available on Wikipedia. So I'm. And did, like, an audio version of it. And some of the things that, you know, he says is, you know, san Francisco is gone. The earthquake is going to make this so much harder. So this isn't like a fire in a place where, like, things aren't already destroyed. You know what I mean? Like, there's, like, the rippling of the streets, and, you know, all the water mains are broken and all the gas mains are broken, so the town is already destroyed. And then it's on fire, which makes it, like, that much worse, you know?
>> Farz: Yeah.
>> Taylor: and people were, like. He said people were very calm. he saw someone offering $1,000, which is like, 1906, to help bring, like, a wagon of. Of trunks somewhere, and then no one would help him. And he eventually saw those trunks on fire. Like, everything caught on fire. People were like, I was this. Like, yesterday I was worth $600,000, and today I have nothing. And he went to a, man's house, and. And the man was like, this is my house. Like, it'll be gone in 15 minutes, you know, and he was like, this is my wife's China. He's like, look at my piano. Isn't it beautiful? And, like, he knows it's going to be destroyed because of the fires coming, which is, like, horrifying.
>> Farz: Okay, Taylor, you have 15 minutes.
>> Taylor: Miles, save the piano.
>> Farz: Okay, so that was what I was going to ask you. You have 15 minutes to save the three most valuable things.
>> Taylor: In my home.
>> Farz: Yes.
>> Taylor: I feel like I have, like, papers, like, our passports and, like, our birth certificates and stuff. So I feel like I'd want to save those. I also feel like I've. You know, I thought about it, like, I don't know. I feel like I would just, like, take a bunch of clothes and, like, underwear and, like, pajamas, because, like, a lot of people are going to be, like, dirty for a really fucking long time after this because there's no running water, and water is so, so important. Thank you, Miles. And so rare that, like, you can only use it for drinking and cooking. You can't use it to, like, take a shower.
>> Farz: Yeah.
>> Taylor: You know.
>> Farz: You know what. What I thought was I would take my laptop, cell phone, chargers and papers.
>> Taylor: Chargers is a good one to remember. Yeah.
>> Farz: Because that's, like, the only connection you can really have, the outside world. But you're. If we came together, then we'd be set.
>> Taylor: Yeah. But. Yeah, so people are thinking. So there's some rumors, and this happens in every disaster, but there's rumors that, like, this is the end of the world. People are like, chicago's on fire, too. You know, like, every major city is on fire. Like, the world's ending, which, like, obviously is not what happened, but people were kind of panicking a little bit.
>> Taylor: there are a couple hotels, obviously, and apartment houses that collapsed, and they're just full of bodies. And we'll just never know what happened to those people. I think we talked about that last week, but they're just once the. They're trapped in the rubble, and then the fire comes, and we'll never know. one of the fires. So several fires that kind of converge into one. So one fire is called the Ham and Eggs fire. They tried to say that a woman was making breakfast, but I don't think that that's true. I think, like, that could have happened anywhere, you know, but that ends up being one of the worst ones. I don't really know. Same with this good geography. But this one is, like, south of Market street, and that one ended up being the worst. But other fires were starting, like, simultaneously. people were doing the same thing that they did In Chicago, where they were, like, burying their stuff. So they would, like, bury all their china, bury their pianos, try to bury stuff so it would be safe from the fire. But a lot of that stuff was so hot. And another thing that I think is. It's science, but it's wild, is like, the oxygen is one of the things that makes things catch on fire. So people had stuff in. In, like, a safe at their house, and they couldn't open the safes for at least a month because one, like one organization tried to open theirs on May 2. So April 18 to May 2. And as soon as they opened it, everything caught on fire inside of it because it's still so hot inside. And then once the oxygen hits it, that's when it ignites. So they had to wait, like, at least a month to open things that were, like, super sealed, which thing is crazy. it's the same story that we had heard over and over. We heard it in London, we heard in Chicago, where people were, like, charging a lot for, like, their carriages and their cars and to get people out of. Out of the town. so, you know, the prices were, like, obviously increasing. Like, of course they would.
A man named Bertard D. Sadow invented rolling luggage in 1970
one person in, the book I. I read, one person said, like, if he thinks that. Because, you know, in the Bible, when in Sodom and Gomorrah, Lot's wife turns around and turns into salt.
>> Farz: Why would I know that?
>> Taylor: I don't know. It's like a famous story. But some of someone was like, I think that she didn't die from that. I think she died from carrying her trunk out of this town. Because, like, everyone was carrying all their shit. Like, one guy had, like, was carrying his dead wife. People were carrying, you know, the. All they could just trying to, like, get away, like, save their couple. You know, their couple little things. But then that got me thinking, like, why would you have a trunk ever as your luggage? It's going to be super heavy, and it's like a brick. So it's like, when did we invent luggage with wheels? And do you want to guess what year we invented that?
>> Farz: And when did we invent wheels? Do we have wheels back then? Did they invent. Did they know that round things roll back then?
>> Taylor: First it was 1906. We've had wheels for, like, thousands of years.
>> Farz: Oh, okay.
>> Taylor: Oh, my God. Anyway, it was 1970, which I think is way late to figure out that you should put. Put wheels on your luggage. A man named Bertard D. Sadow invented rolling luggage in 1970. And patented it in 1972.
>> Farz: Can you copy and paste his name and find out what his net worth is? I bet it was like $3 billion.
>> Taylor: I mean, like, I can't believe we didn't think of that earlier. That's real dumb. Everyone to have like a really heavy drunk. So, people are trying to just like get out with whatever they have. one fun story is the California Academy of Sciences on Market street had a goddamn hero named Alice Eastwood. She was a self taught botanist and she had preserved a ton of plant specimens and all of the science material and things there. And so she went in the middle of the fire, climbed over like all of the broken stuff from the, from the earthquake and saved a shit ton of scientific research. She would. She climbed up six stories through all the rubble, got as much as she could, and she lowered it down to her friends with a rope and they were able to save it. She had to move it several times, but she saved a lot of scientific work then. So. Great job, Alice. people were rushing to the water, so Oakland was out on fire, so they needed to like get their ferries, which is like moving people, moving people, across the bay to places that like, obviously were not engulfed in flames. at the pier it was women and children first. And, and that reminded me that Lindsay also wrote. My cousin Lindsay wrote to us because she said that, like, you kind of backed into being on the right side of that women and children first argument because, like, essentially it is based on, like, the patriarchal idea that women are nurturers. But also I'm for it because I want to be first on the boat.
>> Farz: If you want to be a true feminist sailor, you will sacrifice your life to save mine.
>> Taylor: I will not. I will be first on the boat with my kids. So I have to grapple with that on my own. over in Oakland, the three major English, English language papers, printed a paper together the next day. So they did like a joint newspaper to tell people what was going on. a lot of people went to their workplaces to save them because they were like, my house is okay or my house is gone. So what do I do next? I'm going to go to my office and try to save it because this is my place of employment and I don't want to be a dick, but I would literally never do that. I mean, could you imagine, like, going to our old office and being like, I'm super worried about this? I'd be like, I'd be like the last thing I would think of.
>> Farz: No, I Guess not. I guess, like, my relationship to my place of employment is different now than it was back then, so maybe I would now. But also, everything's online, everything's in the cloud, everything's digital.
>> Taylor: Right? Like, now. I would never do that. But, like, again, people did that then, but this was like, oh, my God. I would literally never risk my life to save my office.
>> Farz: Us, we have to save the staples chairs.
>> Taylor: Yeah, no, like, this is. This is a $1,500 chair. But still, it has wheels. You could, like, pull stuff out on it.
>> Farz: No, they clearly did not have wheels on chairs. If it took that long to admit wheels on luggage, they definitely didn't have wheels on chairs until, like, 2013, probably.
>> Taylor: No, I think I'm going to fact check myself. who invented chairs with wheels? Because I think it's Charles Darwin.
>> Farz: Wait, it's Darwin?
>> Taylor: Yeah. Okay. I thought it was Thomas Jefferson, but the Internet is telling me now it's Charles Darwin. I'm going to Quora for no reason. but it was a long time ago. Like, longer ago than wheels on luggage. Well, now people are saying no. I thought maybe it was Thomas Jefferson. Either way, the history of the office chair, anyway. Well, maybe we'll get there.
Taylor: Why don't we do a bonus episode where we list everyday items
>> Farz: So, Taylor, why don't. Why don't we, like, why don't we. You know, why don't we just, like, put our heads together and just list off everyday items and figure out if they're better with chairs on it?
>> Taylor: With wheels.
>> Farz: Wheels.
>> Taylor: I love everything about that idea. I'm 100% in.
>> Farz: Okay, well, we'll. Guys, the next. We'll do a bonus episode where we just list off every item we can think.
>> Taylor: Go 5,000%. so people were doing that. Like, one photographer got a lot of really good shots of the city because he went to a photography store and the guy was like, take anything you want. It's going to. You know, it's going to get burned anyway. So just, like, take it. I know you. You have not seen Peewee's Great adventure, right? I mentioned it during the Alamo episode.
>> Farz: I think I have.
>> Taylor: So jump.
>> Farz: Well, I haven't seen all of them, but I've definitely seen. I mean, I have. I. No, you didn't say, was it Peewee?
>> Taylor: Yeah.
>> Farz: Okay, maybe not. I'm thinking about the other guy. Who, the other weird guy. He also got caught jerking off in a. In a theater.
>> Taylor: Not Peewee.
>> Farz: He goes to death row.
>> Taylor: Ernest.
>> Farz: Ernest. I'm confusing Ernest with Peewee.
>> Taylor: Okay, I disregard Blair and I watched Ernest say's. Halloween or one of them recently. And it's still. Still pretty fun.
Two young men saved all the pets of a pet store during a fire
so, okay, so Peewee's great adventure. He is somewhere and there's a pet store on fire. And he is like, I gotta see the animals. So he goes in and he's like opening the cages and there's like monkeys and there's dogs and cats and like bunnies and he's holding the fish tanks. Every time he goes in, he sees. He sees a cage full of snakes. Snakes. And he's like, every single time. And he brings out all the animals out. And finally he. The last animals in there are the snakes. So he comes out of the birding building and he's holding two handfuls of snakes. And he's like, heidi hates it. It's so funny. But during this great fire, two young men did save all the pets of a pet store, which is very nice. They broke the windows.
>> Farz: Yeah, that would be me. While you're saving the orphans from the orphanage, I'm saving the animals for sure.
>> Taylor: Perfect. I don't know if you remember last week we talked about the Palace Hotel, which was like the nicest hotel in town. And it had survived. It was earthquake proof. Oh, really? Is that where that was?
>> Farz: I thought it was, yeah.
>> Taylor: Cool. But, it burned down. They rebuilt it in 1909 and it's still there. But the original one did burn down, even though it did survive the earthquake. another kind of fun thing that happened is there was a bank called the Bank Bank. A lot of the banks, I mean, they burned out. But the bank of Italy was run by a man named Amadeo Pietro Gianni. And he was the owner and he took all of the money to his house, which was like $2 million, like a shit ton of money. He took it to his house, he had some men guard it and he was able to give loans and take deposits. So he was really important in like, rebuilding because he knew, he knew all of his customers, he knew what they needed. He was able to like, you know, loan money to get more money. and in two years, the bank of Italy was in a new building and kind of ready to go. And he pioneered branching. so he was like one of the first people to have like, branches of his bank like around, around the city. And then in the 1920s, he, merged with a smaller bank in Los Angeles and became the bank of America, which is cool.
>> Farz: Yep. I. So my. Well, not my first job, but the longest job I had before we worked together was at, ah, bank of America. And So I looked at the history of. It was, like, wild.
>> Taylor: Pretty cool. I don't know if you remember, also, there was an opera the night before the earthquake, and the singer, Enrico Caruso, he's the one who saved his signed picture of Terry Roosevelt. That's the thing that he saved. But he said, I will never return to San Francisco. And he didn't. He died, you know, like, 20 years later. But he also looked awesome. So if you ever want to look up Enrico Caruso, he looks amazing. Some buildings were saved by locals, so there was a cathedral that was saved by people. And what they did is one guy climbed to the roof and he tied a rake to a, to a rope, lowered the rake down, and they attached a hose to the rake, and he pulled it up and soaked the roof. Roof so that it wouldn't catch on fire. As fire was kind of going through the air, and, like, ashes and embers were flying through the air, people would. They'd land on the roof and they would just chop off those shingles, you know, just to, like, stop it as much as they could. So a lot of people were able to do that. People would soak sheets and wine and put them on their roofs just to, like, try to get the fire to stop. And, another building that was saved was the mint that had all the gold. And, like, the money in it was saved by a few people who were very invested in saving it. And it was one of the only buildings to survive in, like, downtown San Francisco. the people were inside fighting the fire as it kind of came closer and closer. And when it ended, they, you know, opened the doors to nothing, you know, which was just, like, crazy. They were, like, in this building protecting it, and they're not even really paying attention. And then, like, everything was gone when they. When they opened the doors.
The fire was stopped, but not before it spread
so a little bit more about how they actually stopped the fire because it wasn't rain and the winds didn't change. Like, it was stopped, but not before it spread. So the hydrants and sewers started to dry up. Not all of them, but a lot of them did. And active, active fire chief. Daughter. Daughter. He was in. In charge, and he was trying to create fire breaks, but they were doing it, like, the absolute wrong way. They were using gunpowder and dynamite, and they were only knocking down buildings that were already on fire. But what you have to do is be, like. Like ahead of it by a lot.
>> Farz: Yeah. You know, walk over the next building.
>> Taylor: So the. They're knocking down buildings that were already on fire. So when they ex. When they essentially bombed the buildings, all of the embers and the air would just set the next house on fire. So it would just, like, keep going, you know. So that really helped. Helped it, like, get bigger and bigger. there was a job.
>> Farz: It kind of works so well.
>> Taylor: It didn't work.
>> Farz: No, no. It. No, no. If you played out to this end, conclusion, it would work. Because if you just did that all night long, eventually you would have destroyed every house, thereby extinguishing the fire when it hit the ocean.
>> Taylor: Sure, sure, sure. If everything's gone, then there's no fire.
>> Farz: Well, there you go. So it would have worked.
>> Taylor: Great. Congratulations. that order came from. That order came from General Frederick Bunston, nicknamed Fearless Freddie. He was in the military, and he got the military involved right away. His superior, General, Major, Greeley. Major General Greeley, he was out of town, but was slowly coming back. But in the meantime, this kind of crazy dude, Frederick Funston, he did a whole bunch of stuff. Like, he had a, He was the one who was. Who said to use a dynamite to only do houses that were already on fire. He, had, like, like, finally gotten a message out, because a lot of messages were not getting out. People were like, you know, obviously, like, send one of the messages to their family. Like, I remember when there was a earthquake, in San Francisco in the 90s. My Aunt Vianne, who lives there, called and said, we're okay, right before the phones went out, you know.
>> Farz: Yeah.
>> Taylor: And we were, like, so grateful that she was able to get through to us, because I remember. I remember calling and she's like, there's an earthquake. We're okay. And then the phones went out and we. Lisa knew she was okay, but these people don't. Some people will never know what happened to their family. And some people are just, like, waiting for anything. So telegraphs and mail was free, but it took a long time for it to, like. Well, it took a while for it to get going. but they did eventually get, you know, ah, news over to D.C. teddy Roosevelt was the president. He asked people to donate to the Red Cross because this was 76 years before FEMA was, spun up. So he asked people to do it to the Red Cross to be able to contribute. Taft with the Secretary of War. And he was, you know, in contact with Funston and Greeley as well. So one thing that Funston did is he did kind, of a pseudo. A pseudo martial law. Like, it wasn't martial law. He they would, like, say that later, but, like, it kind of was. So the order was anyone who was looting or, you know, lighting a stove or a fire in a place they shouldn't, should be shot to kill. It was a shoot to kill order. So a lot of military people came over and they had. They were fully armed and being, like, pretty aggressive. They would, like, yell at people who. If they had, like, a candle lit, they would, force people to help with certain things. And it's like, they would have probably helped anyway. They didn't need to do it, like, at gunpoint, you know.
>> Farz: But I. I am in favor of, like, when everything's fucked beyond all beliefs, life dealing with, like, basic human greed or criminality or whatever, it's like, yeah, just shoot them. Like, we have way too many normal bodies to bury. We don't need all this anymore.
>> Taylor: Like, yeah, I'm sure. And I'm sure officially there were very few deaths by gunshot, but there are probably more. Like you said, like, I'm sure that happened more often some. And like, one of them, they killed a Red Cross worker by accident. You know, like, people were. Were riled up and scared and so the wrong time to have a gun. but people, you know, they were kind of forced to help, which I also, again, think it's kind of okay. Like, they would have helped anyway. Like, what else are you going to do? Like, help rebuild? So, there was a fire boat called the Fire Boat Leslie, and they tried to get water from the sea, but it was like, the piers are wood. It was, like, hard to get to them. They did some pretty incredible things by, like, coupling hoses together, and some of the hoses would go for over a mile from the ocean to the houses. And that saved, like, a part of the city as well. they use sewer water, which is gross, but, like, you know, whatever you can get.
>> Farz: I mean, M. It's 1900s. Like, everything probably smell like, anyways.
Are MO12 cocktails legal? Is this question. That's a good question. Of course they're not legal. Yeah, but you can own
>> Taylor: Exactly. I mean, it was like. I think one of the first things in the book that I read the longest minute was like, everybody was wearing hats because you had to wear hats, because it. Like, there's constantly, like, in there, you know, like, there's everyone's burning coal. Everyone's all these things. So, like, yeah, like, no one smells. but another thing they did is they stopped liquor sales almost immediately, and they broke all the bottles of booze that they could. There was a distillery that had. Because they don't want people to, like, get drunk and freak out. But also, I'm like, If anything, and.
>> Farz: Like, ration it and like, literally just give it out to people. Like, why would you. I know the opposite.
>> Taylor: I know. there was a distillery that made. That made whiskey, and they had, like a hundred barrels of whiskey, and they were like, excuse me. we basically have bombs. Like, we have this whiskey. Like, it is going to catch on fire. It's going to explode.
>> Farz: Is that possible, though? Because I was thinking about when you said the wine thing was, like, ever clear. Like, it's not flammable. Because the liquid content, the O2H2O content, has to be so significantly higher. The flammability of the liqu. Liquor in there.
>> Taylor: Right. That's a good question. And I don't know. So Please email us dipdefeldpodmail.com if you know, because I was thinking that too, but I was like, wine must have less of an alcohol content. And then like, whiskey and like, vodka and like, hard liquor feels like that could be flammable more like, isn't that what a Molotov cocktail is? I don't know all the things. But anyway, they moved all of the barrels of whiskey to a place that had already been burned so that it was, like, out of the way. talk a little bit about.
>> Farz: I literally. I literally reached over while you were, like, talking, and I was. I. I typed what into Google and I was going to follow with what is in a Molotov cocktail. And then I was like, that is for sure going to flag me for the FBI. So I'm going to go ahead and change if, anybody just happens to have that information handy or willing to sacrifice our search history to the dt.
>> Taylor: No, I think it's just. I think it's just. Just booze and then a, rag.
>> Farz: Well, it's got to be more specific than that. It can't. Like, what is it? Like, it can't just be like a Mai Tai, right?
>> Taylor: No, but it's like.
>> Farz: But like a margarita.
>> Taylor: No. Yes. Yes. And salt rim and Molotov cocktail, little wedge of lime.
>> Farz: That be so cute.
>> Taylor: That'd be such a cute bottle. Oh, I guess it mostly has, like, gas in it, probably. Are MO12 cocktails legal? Is this question. Of course they're not legal. You're stupid. You were stupid if you're asking that question.
>> Farz: I mean, the components are legal if we figure out what's in it.
>> Taylor: Yeah, but you can bomb someone's house.
>> Farz: Yeah, but you can own a Molotov.
>> Taylor: It's like owning a. I own a Molotov. I have bottles. I have Rags, I have gas in my car.
>> Farz: You know, we got to stop recording our crimes.
>> Taylor: Anyway. Okay.
People in Chinatown didn't want to leave because they were afraid of deportation
Anyway, so another thing I talked about last week was, like, the relationship that the Chinese Americans had to the rest of the city. People, in Chinatown didn't want to leave because they were afraid that they weren't, you know, they were going to get deported. And they were right to be afraid. they had to. If they didn't have their papers, like, they were definitely, like, in trouble. And a lot of people during the rebuilding wanted to just, like, not have a Chinatown and banned them from coming back to San Francisco proper. but that was. Ended up being overruled, and they were able to come back and build the Chinatown that is there today. People were definitely, like, scared. And then also, of course, like, the soldiers who are just there in the. Under martial law are, like, raiding people's homes. So they raided Chinatown, which was, like, bummer.
>> Farz: Yeah.
>> Taylor: people started to make their own fire breaks. They had their own, like, committees. There were, like, people trying to figure out what to do, because the communication is kind of all over the place. Place. Everyone is, like, sleeping in parks. It gets really, really foggy. People are getting sick, sleeping on the ground. They have, like, one blanket. That's something that happened a lot in the other ones we talked about, too, like outbreaks of cholera and the refugee camps, things like that. everyone, though, is helping. Like, if people are working, they're working. So people are, like, you know, they're helping in bakeries. They did not run out of food. They ended up. They were able to, like, you know, feed a lot of people. Everyone was pitching in. at one point, someone had, like, a. A. Like, there were, like, 2,000 chickens in, like, a, I don't know, chicken farm that they, like, let loose. And everybody was, like, grabbing chickens, which I think is hilarious, because also, I would not know what to do with the chicken.
>> Farz: With a chicken. I mean, you. You. You cut his head off, right?
>> Taylor: Feathers. Yeah. And then what?
>> Farz: Yeah, you cut its head off. you plug his feathers, I guess they didn't have fried chicken back then, so, like, you probably have just, like.
>> Taylor: They'Ve always had fried chicken. either way, people are pitching in, kind of helping each other. another person who is a hero from this time is Lieutenant Frederick Freeman. He was, on a boat, and him and his men stopped the fire from spreading. On day three, they went to, like, a big portion of the city and were able to. Able to save it. He worked kind of on his own with no direction, and so he really, you know, really saved a lot of people, saved a lot of property. And later in his life, During World War I, he was the captain of a ship that was torpedoed. And then he started. He was so upset about it. He started drinking and going into addiction. Ended up being dishonorably discharged and kind of living, like, a vagrant lifestyle. But in 1941, before he died, FDR pardoned him and gave him an honorable discharge because of all the work that he did during the earthquake and other things he had done before that. But he had, like, felt so guilty about being torpedoed. but so people are working together and they are working really hard. Like, 80% of the city is destroyed. But the mail was working by Friday, which is a big deal, because it was like, Tuesday to Friday. The mail was working. People were able to, you know, talk to their. To tell their. Their family around the country, around the world, and they were safe. And. And the fire ended up stopping because, you know, the people stopped it. They did the correct fire breaks. They. It didn't rain. It wasn't anything like that. It just, like, they ended up stopping. And also, obviously, like, it ran out of shit to burn because it was like, it burned most of the city. in the aftermath, there was no water. So we just talked about this, like, for bathing. So people were getting sick. People had to dig poop holes in their backyards. You know, like, it was like a pretty bad, like, sanitation issue for a while. people were giving donations, but some of the donations had strings attached. Like, there was a part of the city that did not have cable cars. And the cable car company was like, we'll donate, you know, a hundred thousand dollars if we can build a car in this place where we couldn't have one before things like that. A little bit of corruption happened. the judge who was the judge of the Wong Kim Ark case that we talked about last time, he was actually the president of the American Red Cross at this time. So he was able to, like, he, like, invested a lot and, like, helped in, In San Francisco. The, Like, the Empress of China tried to donate money, and the people were like, no. Which is so racist and dumb. Taken.
>> Farz: Yeah, stupid.
>> Taylor: Like, I hate in a movie when someone's like, I am too moral to take this check. I'm like, I'll take that check. Thank you.
>> Farz: No kidding.
>> Taylor: You know, like, you're dumb.
>> Farz: I have no principles.
>> Taylor: Yeah.
You have to have separate earthquake insurance from your regular home insurance
people were given tents. Some people had insurance, so some insurance companies paid out. A lot of the ones that were based overseas are on the east coast coast never really paid out what they were supposed to pay out because a lot of it. And I don't know if I'm sure you remember this from owning a home in California, but, like, you have to have separate earthquake insurance from your regular home insurance. And so people had to prove that their house was destroyed by the fire and not by the earthquake.
>> Farz: Yeah, you know, it was like when I was living in Florida and I knew people who were homeowners in Florida and they had to get separate hurricane or flood insurance from everything else. And. Yeah, it was. Yeah. Expensive.
>> Taylor: Yeah. Yeah. So a lot of people ended up living in little housing camps. So they would build these like, little, like 200 square foot houses and then you could move them later. So you would like, put down a down payment and then end up being able to move the house to maybe where your original land was or moving it. all the little houses were blue because the army had extra blue paint, which is kind of fun. there was another, another story where like the army had all these boots that were the wrong color and the people didn't want to wear them, so they were in a storage room. So they just gave them to everybody, which is also cute.
>> Farz: That's awesome.
>> Taylor: Yeah. So, yes. So this is kind of where I stopped my research about, like the rebuilding and such, but, you know, they rebuilt better than before. but I think that the thing that is so scary about this is just like one disaster after the other and like a fire could happen anywhere. But, like, that earthquake was crazy and it's going to happen again. You know, like, California is not safe. We're going to have other earthquakes. So I also, this reminded me, my friend Morgan sent me a article about that tower that you had talked about in San Francisco that's falling or tilting. Millennium Tower. So I read an article about it. It was called the Millennium Tower. And it's on Mission street, which is one of the streets that was like totally destroyed in the Mission District. And it's like six inches off and like one. The lady that in the article that she sent me, like, figured it out because, like, she was like doing a putt putt in her apartment, in her 3 million dollar apartment. And all of the golf balls would, like, go into one corner.
>> Farz: I, mean. Okay, yeah, you. You know what, Never mind. That was good.
>> Taylor: What?
>> Farz: I was good? Well, because my house is also like, not level, but like.
>> Taylor: Wait, but you're like. But you're on the first floor. You're On.
>> Farz: I know. Exactly. It's different when you're, like, 40 stories in the air. I get it. Yep. It's different.
>> Taylor: Yeah. Like, if my house was tilted a little bit, Meh. I'm on. I'm on bedrock.
>> Farz: Yeah.
>> Taylor: You know, like, I'm not worried about it, but, like, this. This, like, gigantic tower, is. Oh, my God. It's crazy.
>> Farz: Also, it's funny to think that $3 million in San Francisco, that's probably, like, a starter condo for any. Anyone who lives there.
>> Taylor: I cannot imagine. Like, so it's. It's, It's 58 floors, the whole building. but they have 60. They say they have 60 floors because they skipped 13, which happens, and 44 because people think the fours are bad luck. Have you heard the blue? Yeah, I don't know. I don't really hear that one more, but, Jesus Christ, I'd be so fucking mad if I bought a $3 million.
>> Farz: Did they fix it?
>> Taylor: No, it's like they're trying to figure out how to fix it.
>> Farz: What's it called? Millennium.
>> Taylor: It makes you kind of want to throw up a little bit. Like, even it makes me. It makes me so upset and, like, so nervous.
>> Farz: I mean, I don't know, maybe. Maybe in, like, 3,000 years, your home will be like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. And, there'll be a landmark for people to visit.
>> Taylor: But also, like, there's no way that if there's an earthquake that isn't topping, toppling over literally, immediately.
>> Farz: I know if I was a neighbor, I'd be like, I want a refund.
>> Taylor: Yeah. And you can't. You can't, you know, like, oh, God, I hate it so much. I could really like it. Honestly, my hands hurt. You know, like, you get nervous, your hands are talking about things like, I just hate it so much. I don't know what to do. so, yeah, I mean, I. I know that, you know, this. It was a good. Good time to, like, Industrial revolution time is a good time to start over on a city so they could build better because, like, they had done things like, you know, we should have stronger construction.
San Francisco has some of the strictest regulations for building things
We should not build everything out of wood. But, like, they hadn't retroactively put those laws in place, so if you have to start over, at least you can start over better. in some cases they did, some cases they didn't. People just wanted some place to live, like, really quickly. You know, those camps were open for years. People trying to figure out where to go. Like, in all these disasters, rich people could figure it out. But poor people, they have fucking nothing. You know, what are they supposed to do? But, now there just seems to be a lot of tall buildings in San Francisco, which makes me nervous.
>> Farz: Man. This, this millennial thing, I hate it so much.
>> Taylor: I was in New York. So the. The week that. This was 13 years ago, but the week that we had our wedding reception in New York City, we had to move it because there was a hurricane. So there was like hurricane time. So we had to cancel our reception due a couple months later. It was fine. But that week there was also an earthquake. And I was on the 38th floor of a building and I felt my desk go bloop, bloop. And I was like.
>> Farz: Yeah, yeah. It's interesting too, because California has, like, probably some of the strictest regulatory guidelines for building things. And you think that, like, how was this able to happen?
>> Taylor: I mean, in 1906 or this millennium Tower?
>> Farz: No, the Millennium Tower also. It is the. It's gotta be like a developer's worst nightmare to have, like, a bunch of millionaires living in your building when your building, like, fucks up really badly because, like, they're going to sue you into oblivion. And it sounds like that's what they're doing right now, but they're not gonna.
>> Taylor: Like, what are they like? the what? The woman in the article I read. I'll share the article, but like, a, like, tech bro bought, the apartment above her for like $15 million. And he was like, I don't care that it's tilting. I like the view. And I'm like, you're the worst.
>> Farz: I mean, that would be the dream, to be that rich. We would, we. Taylor, you might say he's the worst, but we would both love to be in that position.
>> Taylor: I would not. I wouldn't. I would not want to live there.
>> Farz: Yeah, I definitely wouldn't want to live there. How scary.
>> Taylor: I'm on a no from that, guys Just.
>> Farz: Just live on level land. I have no idea how we got to this conclusion in the, San Francisco Fire episode, but that is my takeaway.
>> Taylor: I'm. I think we both, we both live in one story houses. And I'm happy that we do.
>> Farz: Amen. Please don't move. sweet. So that is the same. We got San Francisco, we got Chicago wrapped up. I'm sure there's plenty, plenty more fires. I know.
>> Taylor: Well, I'm gonna start doing, Women's History Month next week. And I'm very excited to have some things that, some fun stories, but if you know women's history, you know, there is a very important fire that I will talk about, but I was going to do it next week, but I'm just so tired of talking about fires that I'm going to maybe do the weekend after.
>> Farz: good. I don't know what that is.
>> Taylor: I'm sure if you know, you know. But I'll tell you later.
>> Farz: I will probably know after you tell me, because you know that I don't. You know me. I don't connect dots real quick. It takes a little bit for the marinade, and so I'm sure I'll. I'll know when you tell me, so.
>> Taylor: Okay, cool.
>> Farz: but, yeah, that was awesome.
Get VIP passes to our live shows at Madison Square Garden with your email
Thanks for sharing, Taylor. We got our episodes in for the week. Sorry for the late start. Per usual, it was my fault. but we got them taken care.
>> Taylor: I re released Mutiny on the Bonnie today, so there's something out there.
>> Farz: Enjoy Smoothny. cool. again, write to us@doomdevelopallpodgmail.com. find, us on the socials at Doomdefeld Pod. We're trying to become rich and famous, and I don't think that's a bad thing.
>> Taylor: No. Tell your friends.
>> Farz: I think y'all should want us to be rich in famous because some of.
>> Taylor: Y'All like doing this.
>> Farz: Yeah, we like doing this. It's. It's like. And, And. And like, as our friends, you know, we'll give you VIP passes to our live shows at Madison Square Garden.
>> Taylor: Email us today with your name, and you will be on the list forever.
>> Farz: Forever says a lot. sweet.
Those fun things from Morgan were. Were fun. Make sure you see them
Anything else before we shut off?
>> Taylor: That's it. Just that those fun things from Morgan were. Were fun. And, she gave me some other good ideas of things to cover and how people have sent us Instagram messages of, like, some true crime things. So I'll make sure. Make sure you see them.
>> Farz: Love it. Awesome. We'll go ahead and cut things off and.