Most Bay Area residents know about the long established Chinatowns in San Francisco and Oakland, but did you know that San Jose used to have a Chinatown? In fact, it’s had FIVE throughout its history. Why isn’t there a Chinatown in San Jose today?
Reported by Adhiti Bandlamudi. Bay Curious is made by Katrina Schwartz, Suzie Racho and Brendan Willard. Additional support from Erika Aguilar, Jessica Placzek, Kyana Moghadam, Isa Mendoza, Paul Lancour, Carly Severn, Ethan Lindsey, Vinnee Tong and Don Clyde.
The second Roman emperor was Tiberius. His right-hand man was the leader of his Praetorian Guard, Lucius Aelius Seianus, known to us as Sejanus.
Over the years, Sejanus slowly gained power and influence and a host of enemies throughout Rome. Eventually, however, all of his social-climbing and power acquisition eventually came to an end in one spectacular and disastrous day.
Learn more about Sejanus and his spectacular downfall, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
Last year we met Elmhurst gardener Nicole Virgil, who was fighting for the right to put up a hoop house in her garden. A hoop house is an inexpensive way to help extend the growing season. It protects the crops from the wind and snow and can keep the soil from freezing. Virgil took her fight all the way to the state legislature. Curious City’s Monica Eng tells us what happened next.
Last year we met Elmhurst gardener Nicole Virgil, who was fighting for the right to put up a hoop house in her garden. A hoop house is an inexpensive way to help extend the growing season. It protects the crops from the wind and snow and can keep the soil from freezing. Virgil took her fight all the way to the state legislature. Curious City’s Monica Eng tells us what happened next.
Located on a peninsula off of Southern Spain, best known for the massive rock which dominates its landscape, Gibraltar is one of the most strategic locations in the world.
It has been fought over for millennia, been the focus of many sieges, and is still the subject of diplomatic disputes in the 21st Century.
It also has the only population of wild monkeys in Europe.
Learn more about Gibraltar on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
According to legend, in 1945 an engineer by the name of Perry Spencer was working in front of an active radar installation. As he was working, he noted that a candy bar that he had in his shirt pocket started to melt.
His investigation into the phenomenon resulted in a new technology that has radically change how we cook and live.
Learn more about microwaves, how they were invented, and how they work, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
World War II was unquestionably the greatest bloodletting in world history. Never before had so many people lost their lives in such a short period of time.
Of all of the many tragedies during the war, one of the largest actually took place after the war.
It was the largest single migrations of people in human history, it resulted in millions of deaths, and almost no one knows about it.
Learn more about the Post-WWII German Expulsions on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
Sixty years ago at the Green Bank observatory in West Virginia, a small conference was held for astrophysicists. The meeting was organized by Cornell University professor and astronomer Frank Drake.
The subject of the conference was the search for extraterrestrial life.
In preparation for the conference, he jotted down his thoughts in the form of an equation.
Learn more about the Drake Equation on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
On April 15, 1920, two men who were delivering the payroll to the Slater-Morrill Shoe Company in Braintree, Massachusetts were killed in broad daylight.
The payroll was taken by the killers, and they jumped into a getaway car.
A few weeks later, two Italian immigrants with known ties to radical anarchist groups were arrested for the murder. It became one of the most controversial criminal cases in US history.
Learn more about Sacco and Vanzetti, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
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This episode was originally released in 2016 in the days after the shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando. It is re-released every year on the anniversary of the incident.
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.
Notes and Reading:
* Most of the specific history of the White Horse was learned from "Sanctuary: the Inside Story of the Nation's Second Oldest Gay Bar" by David Olson, reprinted in its entirety on the White Horse's website.
* "Gayola: Police Professionalization and the Politics of San Francisco's Gay Bars, 1950-1968," by Christopher Agee.
* June Thomas' series on the past, present, and future of the gay bar from Slate a few years back.
* Various articles written on the occasion of the White Horse's 80th anniversary, including this one from SFGATE.Com
* Michael Bronski's A Queer History of the United States.
* Radically Gay, a collection of Harry Hay's writing.
* Incidentally, I watched this interview with Harry Hay from 1996 about gay life in SF in the 30's multiple times because it's amazing.
