Citation Needed - James R. McClintock

Episode Date: June 24, 2026

James R. McClintock, with Horace Lawson Hunley and Baxter Watson, built the submarine Pioneer at New Orleans in 1861 to defend the city against Federal forces. The three men later constructed two submarines at Mobile, Alabama, the second of which was named H.L. Hunley. This vessel was taken to Charleston, South Carolina, in August 1863. On 17 February 1864, after two fatal accidents, the refurbished H.L. Hunley became the first submarine to successfully attack an enemy warship when she sank USS Housatonic off Charleston.

Hello and welcome to Citation Needed, the podcast where we choose a subject, read a single article about it on Wikipedia, and pretend we're experts because this is the Internet, and that's how it works now. I'm Noah, and I'm going to be leading the experiment tonight, but to do that, I'm going to need a few test subjects. First up, two men who would fight a minotaur if there was cheese in the center of the maze, Heath and Tom. Cheez-cheeziest, I'm cheesiest. I'm flattered that you think I'd even make it to the center of the maze. Noah, thank you.

I don't. I think you fight the minotaur, but... You're going to have to come get me, though. And also joining us tonight, two people who I am not going to identify as a guinea and a pig, because that would be too mean. But that's a shame, because otherwise that would be really fucking funny. It would work out so well. I'll reset the sign. It's been zero seconds since our last racism.

Well, we're up to four or five now. My mouth was full of laughing taffy before you made that joke. And before we go any further, I want to remind our listeners that normally you get fired for saying shit like. that about your coworkers, but not me because I work for our patrons and they're okay with that, apparently. They love racism. If you'd like to learn how to keep me inexplicably employed, be sure to stick around at the end of the show.

And with that out of the way, tell us, Heath, what person plays, think concept phenomenon or event are we going to be talking about today? We're going to be talking about James R. McClintock. All right. So who is James R. McClintock? He's the best. He was a 19th century engineer, an inventor and arms dealer who specialized in seemingly fictional weapons, mostly, and possibly a spy who faked his own death.

And he was definitely a con man. According to an article in Smithsonian, he's the guy who invented the first submarine. He started a company that offered exotic weapons to military leaders. He blew himself up while testing one of those weapons. and then he showed up a year later and became a secret agent for Queen Victoria and the UK. The title of that article in Smithsonian is the amazing, if true, story of the submarine mechanic who blew himself up, then resurfaced as a secret agent for Queen Victoria. So it felt like the perfect story for citation needed, you know, big if true.

Yeah, you know, I got to say the elevator pitch for the submarine must have been a tough sell. Like, okay, it's a boat, like it's just sunk a little bit. Not always, not always. Go on, like medium sunk? Interesting. And you're saying I can be inside it if you want. So the story of James McClintock begins just like the story of many other fraudsters in Ohio. He was born around 1830 in Cincinnati area.

And he left home in an early age to work on. on the crew of a riverboat on the Mississippi. And allegedly, he became the youngest steamboat captain on the river. During this time, he learned all about boat stuff, floating, mostly. I think floating is like the key. And he learned enough to become a mechanical engineer and inventor. And in, yeah, no, it's like how we've all been around microphones so long we could build one. Yeah.

What? It is just like that. And his first big idea as a disruptor of the old-timey weapons space was a machine for making bullets. He found himself in New Orleans when the Civil War broke out. And since both sides were, you know, equally bad, just like Democrats or Republicans, he decided to sell his machine to the Confederate Army. Okay, I'm sorry, Heath, but Abraham Lincoln's ex-girlfriend told the New York Times, he referred to them as his slaves.

So I don't know how to feel. Yeah, a quick historical reminder. During the Civil War, they were just using muskets. So the bullet itself was a piece of lead in a shape. That's the bullet. That's a whole ass bullet. Isn't that all bullets? No, bullets are lead in a casing with primer and gunpowder.

That's more than just lead in a shape. This is just round. It's just a lead round. That's it. There's no rest of it. And yeah, that's what he invented. He invented a round metal, making machine. So the machine was meant to manufacture minie balls. The rifled, so it's rifled,

it's a little more specific. Okay. It's rifled. Conical. The rifled musket balls, Tom. Jealous. Thank you. That were used as ammo throughout the war. It's 1862 and McClintock teamed up with fellow engineer Baxter Watson, and they pitched the idea to Confederate leaders, hoping for some investment money. According to an article from the New Orleans B at the time, they claimed that using their machine, quote, two men can turn out a thousand balls per hour, or with steam power, it makes eight or ten thousand per hour. This one machine working night and day could turn out 1.2 million balls every week, more than enough to supply the Confederate armies in the most desperate and extended war possible. Yeah, but you do have to be careful because eventually

the machine will turn all the carbon in the universe into both. It turned gray for some reason. You know, I think we all knew that ball maxing was going to have a problematic origin story. Like a more problematic origin story. Yeah, but it ends up getting worse like now, like right now. But yes, it's problematic stories. So they did not ever make the ball maxing machine, mostly because they were lying about those numbers, like entirely lying. But apparently this helped McClintock and Watson make a name for themselves in the niche arena.

of New Orleans-based failed weaponry inventors. And using that very important cred, they found a rich guy who invest in their next idea, a submarine. Now, reminder, everybody in the 1800s was a very confused cowboy who believed everything you could ever say. And they found one.

They found a person in the 1800s who had money. They connected with a wealthy attorney named Horace Hundley, who agreed to invest about, $30,000 to finance a submarine. That's about $1.1 million today. It's a big sum, but the Confederacy had recently offered a bounty of $50,000 for sinking a union warship, almost $2 million today. So that was the plan for recouping the investment. It's a good thing about my fortune is, no matter what, it's underwater. Well, guys, if we sink two submarines, we can smoke the other one.

And if you cut the second one, you could actually have even more. So McClintock and Watson had a bunch of money, and they built a prototype. They tested the first one in a lake in Louisiana, but it didn't work very well. And they had to abandon the whole vessel and let it sink to make sure the union didn't eventually find it. Right, because they would get picked on how crabbed it was. Yeah, they would have got roasted for that. Their second try also went badly.

quickly sank during testing off the coast of Alabama. But third time was a charm, asterisk. And they had a submarine that actually kind of worked. They named it the H.L. Hunley, after the money guy. And that's why Horace Hunley is often given credit for creating the first operational submarine to sink an enemy ship during a war. But Hunley just paid for it. When Clintock and Baxter engineered it and built it, the H.L. Hunley was a 40-foot tube made of iron with just enough room for eight guys to power it with a giant hand crank that turned the propeller on the back. I actually found a schematic. I think it was from the Acme company. Clearly. It shows how it works. I put a little graphic in the notes for you.

Podcast listener, Heath has included the schematic in our notes. And I know this is a weird piece of feedback, but this is too roomy for a submarine. Is it? Be like standing room needed to come off their must list. You could put like a chair on the side for like somebody taking a break. Yeah, it feels big. Well, it's actually fine because the rickets that everyone had at the time made it easier to stay hunched over. Sure.

It's still an upgrade from premium economy. Isn't it, though? Yeah. All I'm saying is if the five of us were ever working a submarine crank shaft like this together, you know Eli would just be holding the fucking bar, right? I want me to call you out So now you have a big iron pencil With a propeller

That's what it looks like in the schematic And it can travel underwater How fast? But Heath, speeds of one miles an hour or I would have said one but I don't know the units Yeah, travel is too and a lot of heavy lifting in that sense Yeah, maybe not I don't know

I don't know it moved or not Who cares? It's confederate but it can travel Where the current was going Down is down are we counting down That's there's We're in three dimensions really four down counts

Yes So they've got a thing that can Sort of travel under order But you still need a way to sink a union warship The plan was Put a bomb on the front And smash into the enemy What could go wrong?

So they They stuck a pole On the front of the submarine Holding a 90-pound ball Of gunpower Guys, we also invented a brand new gun You have to headbut the enemy to fire it It's like a whole thing

Yeah also that gun is a landmine You've strapped to your head All right, well Now it was time What if it was like a narwhal But it blows up, you know? That is basically, yes, That's exactly the idea

but not as good. So they're going to make some money now because they have a pencil made of iron with a bomb on the end, on a pole. But instead of just riding into a naval battle and getting that 50K, they got a little greedy. McClintock, Watson, and Hunley

decided they could make even more money by selling the submarine to the Confederates, like selling the tech. So they got in touch with Admiral Franklin Buchanan, the commander of the Confederate Navy at the time, and they invited him to Mobile, Alabama, to watch a demonstration of their, new invention in the bay.

And it actually worked. The crew steered the submarine up to an old barge and rammed it with the bomb on the pole, and it blew a big hole in the side of the barge, causing the barge to quickly sink. Admiral Buchanan loved it, and he said, we'll take it. And then he just literally took it. It's the better than me, paid them nothing and just took it and put the submarine on a train for Charleston, South Carolina. That's out of character for the South to steal something and force it into labor.

All right, but only I know how to retract the cup holders. Don't care. They don't care. Wait, the couple? How do you get? Never mind. Okay, nobody else cares except me. That's fine.

So at this point, the only way to make any money was for McClintock, Watson, and Hunley to offer their services to the Confederate Navy as, as like submarine consultants and help with the plan for eventually going after a union ship. Hey, guys. I know you stole our ship at gunpoint, but are you hiring? That's what actually is. If only there were another side of this war in the very same country that were the good guys. Like, I feel like there was other options.

So they did a few more test runs, and those went, not great. During a test in October of 1863, submarine sank to the bottom with the crew, inside killing everyone. Hunley at that point put on some kind of old-timey diving apparatus to attempt to rescue and he also died. So, the mission

was a go. Was it? On February 17th of 1864, the H.L. Hunley got deployed in a nighttime attack in Charleston Harbor and it successfully, Astorisk, rammed into the USS Husatonic of the Union Navy. The bomb detonated and the 1240 tonne Housatonic sank within minutes and five sailors in the Union Navy died.

Also, eight remembers on the H.L. Hunley died when the Hunley also sank pretty much immediately after, of course, smashing another boat with a bomb on a stick as a submarine. So if you're keeping score at home, final score, the H.L. Hunley killed 26 people, but 21 of those were from its own team between testing and the final mission. So negative 16 was the score for the Confederacy. And we all know what happened next. This was fun too, despite the Confederates having that amazing subrene. And of course, they had all the sophisticated genetic advantages of J.D. Vance's ancestors.

They lost that war. And McClintock had to play it super cool if he wanted to avoid getting hanged for treason. But also, he did invent a source. sweet fucking ninja boat. So he went up to Canada, hoping to sell his tech to the Royal Navy. And somehow he got a meeting there. Maybe he burrowed, right? Went on to resurfaced at the...

So the officers he met with were extremely impressed by all his knowledge, but they rejected the pitch, probably because the submarine he invented had very famously killed 21 of his team and five of the other team. I like to believe the Royal Navy knew they were. were definitely going to say no, but they took the meeting for fun just to fuck with him. The Canadians couldn't figure out how to both ram the boat with their own exploding faces and apologize at the same time while underwater. It was very confusing.

So McClintock left Canada in a big snit, and he found his way to Indiana, where he settled down for a while and tried to make money with a dredging boat on the Ohio River. I know a great spot where you can find five of my friends who trusted me. He's going to take this mobile on the road. So he's in Indiana. He'd ride around and pull up garbage from the mud at the bottom

of the Ohio River. Not so much money in that. So he needed a new scam. Ideally, based on his wheelhouse, of course, that would be tragic, insane weapons. And in 1877, he found the perfect business partners to make it happen.

That would be George Holgate and J.C. Wingard. They each have a great. Great backstory. I'll start with Holgate. His job title was freelance bomb maker. About time. I am tired of all this corporatized ordinance.

Like independent munitions are the heart and soul of American capitalists. Farm to table artisanal bombs. Should wait, sorry, does the bomb guy have a talking cat with a tiara? Because I might know this one. I might have read this. So George Holgate was an immigrant from. Scotland. He settled in Philadelphia, where he invented a whole bunch of very elaborate devices that would blow up. And he sold them to anyone who wanted stuff that would blow up.

According to Smithsonian, his clients included Irish freedom fighters, Cuban patriots, and Russian nihilists. And, okay, the last one's weird, right? It seems like bombs are more of like a strong opinion type of that. But that's what it said. Either way, Holgate sold to anyone. That's the point. He told a local newspaper, quote,

I no more ask a man whether he proposes to blow up a czar or set fire to a palace, then a gunsmith asks his customers whether they're about to commit a murder. So by the time McClintock connected with Holgate, around 1877, Holgate had moved to Oshkosh, Wisconsin, and set up a store for his freelance bombs, along with some other inventions. One of those inventions was a device that injected ozone into your food, and Holgate claimed it would keep your fruit, vegetables, and even beef completely fresh for weeks.

It did not do that. Oh, okay. Yeah, okay, but did he try injecting with the ozone while wearing Levi's? in a hot tub because I hear good things. I feel like I should be more surprised that there was a heavy market for IEDs in Oshkosh than I am. This is the Begosh model of explosive ordnance.

And his other inventions, they were pretty insane too. According to a book called The Dynamite Fiend by Anne Larrabee, great book. Holgate's bombs and Sundry's Emporium included, quote, A cheap hand grenade, a bomb concealed in a satchel that had a fuse running through its keyhole, and a hat bomb comprised of dynamite pressed between two sheets of brass sewn into the crown with a fuse running around the rim.

That same book also meant, yeah, that's one of the things he made. And that same book, it also mentions a device that Holgate called the Little Exterminator. and it, quote, operated through a delicate watch mechanism that moved a tiny saw, releasing a chemical that smelled like cayenne pepper, killing anyone within a hundred feet. Wow. All right. Well, given that she knew he had all that shit, it makes it crazy that Ann Larraby would be talking shit about the quality of his hand grenade. So, quick while we make sure she's okay.

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That's Shopify.com slash citation. And we're back when we last left off. The Sinking Submarians guy met the weird cousin Q doesn't talk about. And I believe that means that we're due for the backstory of McClintock's other business partner J.C. Winger, presumably also a con man. Yeah, so J.C. Wingard started his career as a faith healer. That is. Nailed it in now. There it is indeed. This was in Alabama during the 1850s, and he was known for holding a

seance in a dark room, and eventually a spirit would show up and make a spirit drawing. And everyone had examined the totally blank piece of paper ahead of time. So that's not how they did. It was that nobody had written on it yet. Wingard was also known for doing automatic writing in which a spirit gets inside the medium and does some journaling as a ghost. Sounds like a liar,

but a revivalist preacher. OG, chat, TBT. Somebody backs him up here. Somebody backs him up here. A revivalist preacher named Jesse Babcock Ferguson. He sounds legit. He swore. that he witnessed the automatic writing.

He said, quote, I saw Wingard write with both hands at the same time holding a pen in each hand, sentences in different languages of which he was entirely ignorant. Many other persons of undoubted credibility saw him write sentences in French, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic.

I doubt it. Yeah. Turns out he just had my handwritten. Yeah. I'm sure everything Eli writes probably means something in some language or another. That's true. Historical ones. Yeah.

And apparently they had lots of experts in those languages in 1850s, Alabama. So his powers were fully appreciated. And business was going pretty well for Wingard. But when the Civil War broke out, it fucked up the demand for mediums, even the really good ones like him. So just like McClintock, He decided to get into the weapons game in New Orleans. In 1876, J.C. Wingard, now going by Professor Wingard, started selling a death ray.

He claimed the death ray could completely destroy enemy ships from five miles away. So you're probably wondering how the five-mile death ray might work. Well, in his promotional materials, Wingard kind of kept it vague so as not to give away the secret sauce. He said the death ray operated with a combination of electricity and the nameless force. Obviously, the death ray needed a big demonstration. So Wingard took out an ad in the Times Pekyoun telling everyone about the event on Ponchar Train Lake. It said, the nameless force, officers of the Navy, army, foreign consuls, and the public at large.

are respectfully invited to witness a practical demonstration of the nameless force by the destruction of a schooner at a mile distance on the lake between Bayou St. John and the lake end of the railroad. The exhibition is free to all. It is designed to transpire between the hours of 4 and 5 p.m. on Tuesday, May 9th, 1876. And then at the bottom of this thing, it says, the committee on The Nameless Force will please meet at 10 a.m. at 9 Basin Street.

Okay. Guys, we're going to walk over to the demonstration of the Nameless Force together, but everyone needs to stay with the group. Okay, if you miss the Nameless Force, your mom and dad have to come pick you up and take you home. You can't ride home on the Nameless Force. I love the little private communication at the end, right? It's like if the Geico commercial ended with the Gecko going like,

also Amanda Call Spencer, he's really sorry and he has a good. good explanation. Makes sense. So that demo went badly. Nothing got death raid. Then he tried the same thing again and nothing got death raided again. Cushing it. Third time is a charm.

On June 1st, he did another demonstration with a two mile range. This time the public was not invited. They were probably fucking up the nameless force. You know what I mean? He's like a name in it. Yeah. It's like a Heisenberg thing. But there was a quote,

Committee of Gentlemen to bear witness. Professor Wingard fired the death ray and the target boat blew up immediately. What? Okay.

Like 90 seconds later. Huh. Because apparently electricity and nameless forces go about 80 miles a hour. Yeah,

it turns out the nameless forces eight guys with rickets on Pelot. powering a suicide torpedo, but sure, Jan. Great job. Can you imagine that 90 seconds is fucking long. If he's like, blam! And then it's like, no, just give me, it'll be.

It's going. It's about to happen. They just played the jeopardy music the whole time until... You'd have to play the jeopardy music multiple times. Like 60 times in a row. It's like a six second jingle or something. So where is everybody from? Oh, it's blown up.

Okay. So, if I'm not. finally works, 90 seconds later, and Wingard was the talk of the town in New Orleans, briefly. Three days later, the fucking narcs at the Galveston Daily News fucked up the plan. According to their article, quote, a delegation of newsboys who happened to be in the vicinity with a spirit, scientific research, visited the schooner despite repeated warnings to keep away and reported they found a large gas pipe filled with powder. and a wire leading towards a skiff

that was anchored some distance away. What? Gunpowder is a nameless force if you don't name it, okay? You're the ones who named it. Technically true. That's the best kind of true. So now we've met all the characters in the new business

that's about to be created. James McClintock can't make any money on muddy garbage in Indiana, so it's gone bad for that. Yet that remains Indiana's chief export to this day. George Hogan. bomb store in Wisconsin, also going badly, and Wingard's death ray demonstration just got

revealed as a very obvious fraud in Louisiana. It still took three fucking tries and was 90 seconds late exploding. That's amazing. So they all meet up to figure out how to get back in the game, and they land on a torpedo business, and they'll head to Boston where nobody knows them. McClintock has the submarine warfare. expertise. Polgate knows bomb stuff. And Wingard is

the sociopathic liar, aka salesman. Everybody's got their role. Also, Wingard had some money. So they get to Boston, and they buy 35 pounds of dynamite for a test run. Now, you might be wondering, is that too much dynamite?

Well, I actually have no idea about the details of dynamite. But yes, that's definitely way too much dynamite. It's enough blow up some fucking Narc Newsboy. Snoopy little bitches is what it'll blow up. So the new squad isn't quite ready for a public demonstration yet. They're still in the testing phase.

The plan is to get a cheap boat and blow it up with their torpedo. Although it's not a torpedo. It doesn't move. It's just a mine. I guess they were planning to figure out the moving element of the torpedo at a future date. And the mine moves to you. Yeah. And for now, they're just testing...

Just back into it. They're just testing 35 pounds of dynamite, like, as a concept. Sounds fun, yeah. Yeah, I guess. It's 1879 in Boston, so you can just carry a giant box of dynamite right up to the docks, get in a sailboat, and head out into Boston Harbor. Nobody's asking any questions. Might be true right now in Boston, too.

So that's what McClintock... Yeah, that's fucking true. So that's what McClintock and Holgate do, along with a sailor they hired to help out, named Edward Swain. Meanwhile, J.C. Wingard gets on a steamboat that they all rented, and he gets their old target boat from its mooring, and he tows the target boat into place for the test. McClintock, Holgate, and Swain are loading the dynamite mine into a little dingy to run the test. And this is when Holgate says, I'm a little seasick, guys. Yeah, so he can't get in the dinghy with Swain like they planned, the dingy with the 35 pounds of dynamite. And McClintock has to take over for the whole game instead.

I really, I want to get on the little tiny boat with the tactical nukes worth of dynamite, but I totally, I pulled my head, head, ankle, something. So McClintock and Swain, they agree and they start paddling out toward the target. they're about a mile from the sailboat now and two miles from the target boat and then 35 pounds of dynamite explodes. The unthinkable happened. The unthinkable. Exactly. Of course, Holgate and Wingard are aghast at their business partner and some other guy getting blown up. So they say absolutely nothing to anyone and immediately leave Boston.

Willgate grabs all of McClintock's possession. from his hotel room on the way out of town. McClintock and Swain are officially declared dead via accidental explosion by a typical civilian dynamite test in Boston Harbor. Oh my God. Rowing out there. You guys don't mind if I smoke while we row, do you? Okay, so two strange details.

I got to mention here. One, according to a report in the Daily Globe following the explosion, the trigger mechanism devised by Holgate was electric and involved a remote detonation using a long wire. The same article also mentioned a, quote, reliable witness. It was some Boston guy on the shore nearby who was, again, quote, shooting at ocean spray with his gun. And that guy claims he saw the dinghy still intact and afloat after the explosion. So according to that, very reliable witness who was just firing a gun at Ocean Spray,

McClintock and Swain could not have been blown up while they were on the dinghy. Ocean Spray, like the cranberry juice bottles? Is that what we're talking about here? Also, what the fuck was a reliable person doing in Boston? Not at all clear. Something doesn't add up here. It does not. That's correct.

So you think the confusing details about this giant explosion, or really any giant explosion, or really any giant explosion, regardless of the details being confusing or not, that would lead to a big investigation by the Boston Police Department, but they barely did anything. Basically, a Boston cop just like walked over to the dock and he's like, yep, two guys got fucking vaporized, playing bombs, Mondays. All right, all right, case closed. And that was it. It was closed for the Boston Police Department, but not for us. Perhaps you'll remember from the very beginning,

I mentioned James McClintock becoming a secret agent for the UK. Well, the British Embassy in Philadelphia gets a visitor in 1880. James McClintock. He just walks in cold and asks about becoming a spy for them. Yeah, okay, big deal.

Look, background checks at that time consisted of, Do you pinky swear you can keep a secret? So. Confused cowboys, everybody, even the British people. So the British guy in charge of the embassy, his name's Robert Clipperton, and McClintock explains that he's infiltrated a group of Irish separatists. It's planning to get some explosives in the U.S. and use them to attack British Navy ships in England. McClintock says he's the official bomb guy for the Irish, and he wants to offer his services. as a double agent.

All he wants is $200 a month in return. So, Fliberton's like, cool, yeah, I'm just going to step out for a second. He comes back and he's like, hey, I just did like a quick Google, a telegraph, whatever. You died last year from your own month. And McClintock is like, nope, faked it. You should hire me.

So Flipperton confers with British intelligence for a couple of weeks. And they confirm that McClintock is, is in fact a known explosives guy. And the alive guy who showed up the embassy, that does track with somebody faking his own death. Because, you know, alive if you fake it. So they actually offer him the job of spy. If you think about it, fake messing up is succeeding.

So I'm like a great... Honestly, if I'm clipperton, it's worth $200 just to get the guy known for accidentally exploding shit out of my office. So, as usual, McClintock was running a scam. The part about the Irish separatists, that was real. A group called Clan Nagale was planning to amass explosives and smuggle them over to England for an attack. They set up a facility called the Dynamite School in Brooklyn, and McClintock did get hired as their bomb expert. His job was to build devices that, quote, sink an ironclad, but were small enough to be smuggled in

the pocket of a great coat. He was getting paid $200 a month by the Irish for that. And then he doubled his income by working for the British, too, as the double agent. And then he fucked him both. His new job as a double agent was to pretend he was making those bombs, but intentionally stall the process and eventually deliver any real completed bombs to British intelligence. He kept this going for about five months, making over $65,000 in today's money between those two employers. During that time, he built some fake bombs for the Irish, and then he stole the fake bombs at the end and delivered them to the British. But by the time the British examined the bombs and realized they were fake, Clintock had completely disappeared with all his money.

They're not fake. You just have to attach them to the business end of a narwhal to activate them. All right. So one final twist to this story, McClintock, faking his own death, is only one of two major theories on this. The other theory is that James McClintock did actually die in Boston Harbor, and the guy who showed up at the British Embassy in Philadelphia was actually George Holgate, using the fake identity to keep himself off the radar. Proponents of this second theory point to the fact that Philadelphia is where Holgate lived in 1880. Now, it seems like you'd want to go, you know, anywhere else to do your giant lie, but that's mentioned. proponents also bring up the question

who really hates the Irish and the English. That's right. Everybody. Scottish, just like George Holgate. So maybe Holgate faked the seasickness, waited until the dingy

with the bomb was far enough away, triggered the detonator through that long wire, took over the Irish sounding name of his dead friend and got a job as a bomb expert. Also, he could then get a job as a double agent fake bomb spy and con the Irish and the English at the same time

for about five months of a medium salary. All right, so if you had to summarize what you've learned in one sentence, what would it be? The entire 1800s was a live-action Bugs Bunny cartoon. I was sure. I could have done so many good cons. And are you ready for the quiz? Let's do it.

All right. At this time in history, every bomber was a, suicide bomber. But it was A. Still a better job than all the other jobs in the late 1800s. Oh, yeah. It's A. Yeah. It is. It is. Yeah, they were all shit. It was just shit. All right, Heath. What

was McClintock's codename? A. During the Civil War, he was code name Deep Boat. Oh, nice. To be. Deep Boat. Because underwater game. Yeah. Oh, nice.

Hold on. Bravo. Or B. In the last part of his career, he was known as Boady McDoofis. That's a bad. That's fine. That's fine. That's so good.

Nice. Turn Cody McBoat face. I like this very much. I'm going with... I'm going with B. I like that one. I like that one. That is correct.

All right, Heath. When the submarine with the large pole and the bomb on the end was closing in on their target, what song was playing? A. All in all, it's another wick in our wall. Ooh. Oh, it's good. Is it? I don't have another thing.

Cecil wins. I think Cecil is the winner this week. All right. Well, she's no. All right. Well, for Tom, Heath, Cecil, and Eli, I'm Noah. Thank you for hanging out with us today. We're going to be back next week.

And by then, I'll be an expert on something else. Between now and then, you can check out our other podcasts or even catch us on various video clips and shit. on the YouTube's now. We're even doing that. And if you'd like to help keep this show going, you can make a per episode donation at patreon.com slash citation pod or leave us a five-star review everywhere you can. And if you'd like to get in touch with us,

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