Stuff You Missed in History Class

Heat waves don’t get as much attention as blizzards, floods, and hurricanes, but extreme heat is one of the deadliest weather events on average.
Research:
National Weather Service. “Weather Related Fatality and Injury Statistics.” https://www.weather.gov/hazstat
Last, John. “This Summer’s Drought Is Europe’s Worst in 500 Years. What Happened Last Time?” Smithsonian Magazine. 9/8/2022. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/this-summers-drought-is-europes-worst-in-500-years-what-happened-last-time-180980711/
Wetter, Oliver; Seneviratne, Sonia I. et al. “The year-long unprecedented European heat and drought of 1540 - a worst case.” Climatic Change 125(3-4), https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-014-1184-2
Orth, Rene et al. “Did European temperatures in 1540 exceed present-day records?” Environmental Research Letters. 11 (2016) 114021 doi:10.1088/1748-9326/11/11/114021.
United Nations Environment Programme. “Impacts of summer 2003 heat wave in Europe.” Environmental Alert Bulletin. https://www.unisdr.org/files/1145_ewheatwave.en.pdf
Pfister, Christian. “The ‘Black Swan’ of 1540: Aspects of a European Megadrought.” From Climate Change and Cultural Transition in Europe. Brill. 1/1/2018. doi:10.1163/9789004356825_007
Grodzinsky, Ewa, and Märta Sund Levander. “History of the Thermometer.” Understanding Fever and Body Temperature: A Cross-disciplinary Approach to Clinical Practice 23–35. 23 Aug. 2019, doi:10.1007/978-3-030-21886-7_3
John Huxham, Dr. Watson. “Remarks upon the Heat of the Air in July 1757. in an Extract of a Letter from John Huxham, M. D. F. R. S. to William Watson, M. D. F. R S. Dated at Plymouth 19th of That Month. With Additional Remarks by Dr. Watson.” Philosophical Transactions (1683-1775), Vol. 50 (1757 - 1758), pp. 428-430 (3 pages). Via JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/105279.
Huxham, John. “An Account of the Extraordinary Heat of the Weather in July 1757, and of the Effects of It. In a Letter from John Huxham, M. D. F. R. S. to Wm. Watson, M. D. F. R. S..” Philosophical Transactions (1683-1775), Vol. 50 (1757 - 1758). Via JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/105292
Smeaton, John. “Remarks on the Different Temperature of the Air at Edystone, from That Observed at Plymouth, between the 7th and 14th of July 1757. By Mr. John Smeaton, F. R. S.” Philosophical Transactions (1683-1775), Vol. 50 (1757 - 1758). https://www.jstor.org/stable/105286
Sunderland, Helen. “The Great British Summer? A Historical Heatwave.” Doing History In Public. 8/12/2025. https://doinghistoryinpublic.org/2025/08/12/the-great-british-summer-a-historical-heatwave/
Scott, John. “Four elegies, descriptive and moral.” London J. Buckland. 1760.
The Western Flying Post; or, Sherborne and Yeovil Mercury. Page 3. 8/15/1757.
Lind, James. “An essay on the most effectual means of preserving the health of seamen in the Royal Navy.” 1774.
Walpole, Horace. “The letters of Horace Walpole, fourth earl of Orford.” Vol. 3: 1750-1756. Oxford. 1903.
Zwierlein, Cornel. "Chapter 3 The Danger between Nature and Culture: The Quotidian Threat of Urban Fires in the Premodern Era". Prometheus Tamed. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004431225_004 Web.
Luterbacher, Jürg et al. “European Seasonal and Annual Temperature Variability, Trends and Extremes since 1500.” Science 303, 1499 (2004). DOI: 10.1126/science.1093877
Beniston, Martin. “The 2003 heat wave as an example of summers in a greenhouse climate? Observations and climate model simulations for Basel, Switzerland.” Global and Planetary Change. Volume 44, Issues 1–4, December 2004. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0921818104000980
Franck, Marcy. “Heat waves and annual death rates in older adults in the United States.” Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. 3/16/2026. https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/heat-waves-and-annual-death-rates-in-older-adults-in-the-united-states/
Poitras, Colin. “Warming U.S. climate linked to rising deaths from heat.” Yale School of Public Health. 11/7/2025. https://ysph.yale.edu/news-article/warming-us-climate-linked-to-rising-deaths-from-heat/
World Meteorological Association. “Western Europe has hottest June on record.” 7/9/2026. https://wmo.int/media/news/western-europe-has-hottest-june-record
Cole, Deborah. “Germany records nearly 100 drowning deaths, many of them young men, in June heatwave.” The Guardian. 6/12/2026. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jul/12/germany-drowning-deaths-heatwave-paris-france-spain
PBS News. “Europe swelters under an early heat wave as France records 40 drowning deaths.” 6/23/2026. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/europe-swelters-under-an-early-heat-wave-as-france-records-40-drowning-deaths
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This 2018 episode covers Libertalia, which, in truth, may be completely fictional. It's called a pirate settlement, though the man who spearheaded it claimed he wasn't actually a pirate.
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Tracy shares the topics she considered for the recording in the Bahamas but decided against. Holly talks about her admiration for Thomas Huxley.
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Huxley is an example of having a good attitude about publicly acknowledging errors and learning from them. He earned the nickname “Darwin’s bulldog” for his very vocal support of Darwin’s work, and he wanted to promote science and education, particularly to people that didn’t normally have access to those things.
Research:
Bernoulli, D., Jenkyns, H.C. “Thomas Henry Huxley, a stone tablet, coccoliths, and deep-sea sediments in the high Alps.” Int J Earth Sci (Geol Rundsch) 112, 1661–1669 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00531-023-02330-5
Bowen, Keith. “Thomas Henry Huxley.” Ebsco. 2024. https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/history/thomas-henry-huxley
Burkhardt, Richard W.. "Jean-Baptiste Lamarck". Encyclopedia Britannica, 14 Dec. 2025, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jean-Baptiste-Lamarck
Darwin, Charles. “On the Origin of Species.” JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET. London. 1859. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1228/1228-h/1228-h.htm
Desmond, Adrian J. "Thomas Henry Huxley". Encyclopedia Britannica, 25 Jun. 2026, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Thomas-Henry-Huxley
Dolan, John R. “The famous and lesser-known illustrations of Thomas Huxley’s Bathybius.” History of Oceanography. International Commission of the History of Oceanography. https://oceansciencehistory.com/2020/07/13/the-famous-and-lesser-known-illustrations-of-thomas-huxleys-bathybius/
“Freshwater Bathybius.” Nature 4, 49–50 (1871). https://doi.org/10.1038/004049b0
“The Great Debate.” University of Oxford Museum of Natural History. https://oumnh.ox.ac.uk/great-debate
“The History of Evolutionary Thought.” Understanding Evolution. Berkeley University. https://evolution.berkeley.edu/the-history-of-evolutionary-thought/1800s/early-concepts-of-evolution-jean-baptiste-lamarck/
Huxley, T.H. “Agnosticism.” K. Paul, Trench. London. 1889. https://archive.org/details/a622650700huxluoft/page/169/mode/1up
Huxley, T.H. “Aphorisms and Reflections. From the Works of T. H. HUXLEY, Selected by
Henrietta A. Huxley. Macmillan and Co. London. 1907. Accessed online: http://aleph0.clarku.edu/huxley/Book/Aphor.html
Huxley, T.H. “Autobiography and Selected Essays.” Riverside College Classics. 1909. Accessed online: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1315/1315-h/1315-h.htm#link2H_4_0007
Huxley, T.H. “Collected Essays, Volume V: Science and Christian Tradition.” https://www.gutenberg.org/files/15905/15905-h/15905-h.htm
Huxley, T.H. “Evidence as to man's place in nature.” D. Appelton and Co. New York. 1863. https://archive.org/details/evidenceastomans00huxl/page/n1/mode/2up
Huxley, T.H. “On Some Organisms Living at Great Depths in the North Atlantic Ocean.” Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science. viii., new Series, 1868, pp. 203-212. http://aleph0.clarku.edu/huxley/SM3/bathy.html
Huxley, T.H. “On the Relations of Man to the Lower Animals.” Project Gutenberg eBook. 2001. https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/2932/pg2932-images.html
Joshi RS. “The Inner Root Sheath and the Men Associated with it Eponymically.” Int J Trichology. 2011 Jan;3(1):57-62. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3129131/
Lamarck, Jean-Baptiste. “Zoological Philosophy.” Macmillan. London. 1914. https://archive.org/details/ZoologicalPhilosophy
Lyons, Sherrie L. “Thomas Henry Huxley : the evolution of a scientist.” Prometheus Books. New York. 1999.
McGraw, Donald J. “Bye-Bye Bathybius: The Rise and Fall of a Marine Myth.” Bios, vol. 45, no. 4, 1974, pp. 164–71. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4607257
“Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1963.” The Nobel Prize. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/1963/summary/
Pearce, JMS. “Thomas Henry Huxley.” Hektoen International. Sept. 18, 2020. https://hekint.org/2020/09/18/thomas-henry-huxley/
Schwartz, Joel S. “Darwin, Wallace, and Huxley, and ‘Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation.’” Journal of the History of Biology, vol. 23, no. 1, 1990, pp. 127–53. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4331120
“Thomas Henry Huxley.” Darwin Correspondence Project. University of Cambridge. https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/thomas-henry-huxley
“Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895).” Humanist Heritage. https://heritage.humanists.uk/thomas-henry-huxley/
Tunstad, Erik. “Darwin's Bulldog: Thomas Huxley 200 Years.” Prosa. July 10, 2025. https://prosa.no/artikler/aktuelt/darwins-bulldog-thomas-huxley-200-ar
Wyhe, John van. “It ain't necessarily so ...” The Guardian. Feb 9, 2008. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2008/feb/09/darwin.myths

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For part of its history, Nassau was a notorious hotbed of pirate activity. And it was home to a maritime criminal network known as the Flying Gang.
Research:
"Bahamas, the." The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia™, The Columbia UP, 2025. Gale OneFile: High School Edition, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A69385873/GPS?u=mlin_n_melpub&sid=bookmark-GPS&xid=7f7affa4. Accessed 8 July 2026.
Ahrens, Wolfgang P. “Naming the Bahamas Islands: History and Folk Etymology.” Names and Their Environment. Proceedings of the 25th International Congress of Onomastic Sciences, Glasgow, 25-29. August 2014. Vol. 1. Keynote Lectures. Toponomastics I. Carole Hough and Daria Izdebska (eds). First published 2016 by University of Glasgow under Creative Commons license. https://www.gla.ac.uk/media/Media_576595_smxx.pdf
Butler, Lindley S. “North Carolina 1718: The Year of the Pirates.” The North Carolina Historical Review, Vol. 95, No. 2 (APRIL 2018). Via JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/45184933
Cartwright, Mark. "Benjamin Hornigold." World History Encyclopedia, 09 Sep 2021, https://www.worldhistory.org/Benjamin_Hornigold/.
Craton, Michael. “A History of the Bahamas.” London. Collins. 1962.
Enthoven, Victor. “‘That Abominable Nest of Pirates’: St. Eustatius and the North Americans, 1680—1780. Early American Studies , Spring 2012, Vol. 10, No. 2. Via JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/23547669
Fox, E.T. “Jacobitism and the ‘Golden Age’ of Piracy, 1715-1725.” International Journal of Maritime History, XXII, No. 2 (December 2010), 277-303.
Hahn, Steven C. “The Atlantic Odyssey of Richard Tookerman.” Early American Studies, Summer 2017, Vol. 15, No. 3 (Summer 2017). Via JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/90011103
Keegan, William F. “The Native Peoples of Turks and Caicos.” Florida Museum. https://www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/caribarch/education/tc-peoples/
Kinsella, Pat. “The real pirates of the Caribbean: your guide to Nassau's pirate republic.” History Extra. 1/20/2022. https://www.historyextra.com/period/stuart/nassau-pirate-republic-flying-gang-real-pirates-caribbean/
Lane, Kris. “Pirate Networks in the Caribbean.” From Empires of the Sea: Maritime Power Networks in World History. Brill. 2020. Via JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1163/j.ctv2gjx041.18
Leeson, Peter T. “An‐arrgh‐chy: The Law and Economics of Pirate Organization.” Journal of Political Economy , Vol. 115, No. 6 (December 2007). Via JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/526403
Moore, David D. “Captain Edward Thatch: A Brief Analysis of the Primary Source Documents Concerning the Notorious Blackbeard.” The North Carolina Historical Review, Vol. 95, No. 2 (APRIL 2018). Via JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/45184934
Queen Anne’s Revenge Project. “Did You Know Blackbeard’s Mentor Was a Pirate Hunter?” 3/8/2018. https://www.qaronline.org/blog/2018-03-08/did-you-know-blackbeards-mentor-was-pirate-hunter
Rediker, Marcus. “‘Under the Banner of King Death’: The Social World of Anglo-American Pirates, 1716.” The William and Mary Quarterly , Apr., 1981. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1918775
Saunders, Gail. "Rogers, Woodes (c. 1679–1732), privateer and colonial governor." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. January 03, 2008. Oxford University Press. Date of access 9 Jul. 2026, https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-24006
Sheposh, Richard. “Republic of Pirates.” EBSCO. 2023. https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/history/republic-pirates
Wilson, David. “The 1715 Plate Fleet and the Rise of the Pirates.” History Today. 6/30/2015. https://www.historytoday.com/1715-plate-fleet-and-rise-pirates
Woodard, Colin. “The republic of pirates : being the true and surprising story of the Caribbean pirates and the man who brought them down.” New York, NY : Mariner Books. 2007.


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