Category: Active

Every February 14, people around the world celebrate Valentine’s Day. It is a day for everything heart-shaped, flowers, flowers, candy, and romance. Why is this day the day dedicated to romance? What’s with the hearts? And who or what is a valentine? Is this all a giant conspiracy of greeting card manufacturers? Learn more about Saint Valentine’s Day on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, known to history as just Nero, was not the best of Roman Emperors. In fact, on most lists of Roman Emperors, he would rank somewhere near the bottom. In no small part, this is due to how he reacted after the greatest fire ever to engulf Rome and what he built in its aftermath. Learn more about the Domus Aurea, or Nero’s Golden House, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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In the middle of World War II, a small island in Scotland’s Hebrides Islands was suffering through war shortages like most of the country. However, on February 5, 1941, a very fortunate disaster struck the island, and the island’s residents couldn’t have been happier. The reverberations from this lucky calamity are still being felt today. Learn more about the wreck of the SS Politician and its incredible cargo on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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The Memory Palace is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX.

A note on notes: We’d much rather you just went into each episode of The Memory Palace cold. And just let the story take you where it well. So, we don’t suggest looking into the show notes first.

Music

• Metaphysical Waltz by Shirley Meyer Blankenship

• ...morphs into Jock O'Hazeldean by Cynthia Boener

• There's Dominique Dumont's La bataille de neige

• The Squimp from the Chico Hamilton Quintet

• Fruit of Dreams by Les Baxter

• Rags to Riches by Tony Bennett

Notes

• Best place to go if you want to learn a lot about Todd Storz is The Birth of Top 40 Radio: The Storz' Stations Revolution of the 1950s and 1960s by Richard Fatherly and David MacFarland.

• For a loving history of the whole era, you'd probably enjoy Ben Fong Torres' The Hits Just Keep on Coming: The History of Top 40 Radio

In 1901, Swiss archeologists Gustave Jequier discovered a large stone stele in what is today western Iran. That large stone was 2.25m or 7.5 feet tall and was covered with cuneiform writing. After it was translated, it was found to have been a list of 282 laws written down by the Babylonian King Hammurabi. The laws covered many of the same issues that people deal with in the modern world.

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