Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Great Peshtigo Fire

Episode Date: August 4, 2020

The greatest fire in American history, in terms of loss of life, occurred in the town of Peshtigo, Wisconsin in 1871. Most people haven’t heard of it, and even people who live in the region today aren’t aware of the disaster which happened in their own backyard. 150 years later, there is speculation that the cause of the fire might have come from a highly unusual source, and some data from other fires might help solve the mystery. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The greatest fire in American history, in terms of loss of life, occurred in the town of Peshdigo, Wisconsin in 1871. Most people haven't heard of it, and even people who live in the region today aren't aware of the disaster which happened in their own backyard. 150 years later, there is speculation that the cause of the fire might have come from a highly unusual source, and some data from other fires might help solve the mystery. Learn more about the deadliest fire in American history and its possible cause on this episode of Everything Everywhere. daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day and tonight. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast

from NPR. This episode is sponsored by Fluent in three months. Have you ever wanted to learn a foreign language and do so quickly? My friend Benny Lewis over at Fluent in three months might be able to help. Benny has spent over a decade language learning around the world. His techniques have helped tens of thousands of people learn the languages they want to learn quickly through both his online courses and his language hacking guides. I've personally met Benny in many places all over the globe and have seen his language skills and action. He doesn't just talk the talk. He walks the walk when it comes to language learning, and I'm sure he'll be able to help you too. To sign up for his free Speak in a Week email course, just go to Fluenton3 Months.com

or click on the link in the show notes. It is astonishing that so few people know about one of the greatest disasters in American history, yet it's true. Pesh de Go is a small community that is situated in northern Wisconsin near the border with Michigan and about six miles from the shore of Lake Michigan. As of the 1870 census, the town had a population of 17, 1,149 people. On the day of the fire, the area had been suffering from hot and dry conditions in the preceding weeks, and on that day, colder temperatures and high winds came into the area. It's difficult to

give a description of what happened because there were so few survivors to tell the tale. What we do know is that between 1,200 and 2,500 people were killed in the fire. The fire was so hot that it became a firestorm. A firestorm is a fire that burns so hot that the updraft of the heat creates its own self-sustaining winds. It was estimated that the temperatures in the Pestigo fire might have reached 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit or 1,100 degrees Celsius, with winds as high as 110 miles per hour or 177 kilometers per hour. The fire sparked a fire whirl, which is basically a tornado made of fire. It was so strong that it tossed rail cars and houses into the air.

If you've seen footage from recent wildfires in California or Australia, as horrible as they were. They were not firestorms. Firestorms were known to occur after the bombing of cities in World War II, such as Dresden, Hamburg, and Tokyo, and after atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. People had to survive by jumping into the Pestigo River or into wells, and some of them even drowned. Over 300 people in Pestigo had to be buried in a mass grave because there weren't enough survivors to identify them, and many people who lived further outside of town may have been burned so completely that their bodies were never discovered.

News of the tragedy didn't reach the rest of the world for several days because the telegraph cables going out of Green Bay, Wisconsin were destroyed. The total damage from the fire scorched an area 50% larger than the state of Rhode Island. However, this is not the only fire I want to talk about. Another fire also happened in Wisconsin, not far from the Peshtigo fire. This one occurred across the Green Bay in the southern part of Wisconsin's Door Peninsula. The fire also occurred in 1871, and thankfully wasn't as destructive as the fire in Pestigo. The area of the fire wasn't highly populated, and the fire missed the village of Sturgeon Bay.

There was yet another fire in 1871, this time across Lake Michigan, that was known as the Great Michigan Fire. This was a collection of forest fires that affected the towns of Alpina, Holland, and Mazzany, all located on the eastern shore of the Great Lake. The fire wasn't as deadly as the Peschigo fire, but several hundred people died and several small towns were totally destroyed. The total number of deaths is unknown because there were thousands of lumberjacks in the forest at the time, and no one knows how many were there or how many died. Yet there's another fire from 1871 that needs to be mentioned. This was the Port Huron fire. Port Huron is on the opposite side of the state of Michigan, near the Canadian border along

Lake Huron. The towns of White Rock and Port Huron, Michigan, were heavily damaged, and it's estimated that 50 people died in this fire. And there's one last fire from 1871 that needs to be discussed. The Great Chicago Fire. If there's one disaster from this list, you've probably heard of, it's this one. Legend has it that the fire was started by Mrs. O'Leary's cow kicking over a lantern. However, this was really nothing more than anti-Irish scapegoating from the period. In fact, in 1893, a reporter from the Chicago Tribune admitted that the story was a total fabrication. The fire left over 100,000 people homeless and killed over 300 people in a city with a population

at the time of only 300,000. The fire basically caused Chicago to be completely rebuilt and was the cause for the creation of the strictest fire codes in the country led by Frederick Law-Omsted. What do all four of these Midwestern fires from 1871 have in common? Is there some sort of thread that ties them all together? The answer is yes, and it's a pretty big thread. You see, these fires didn't just happen in 1871.

They all took place on the same night. October 8, 1871. Several of the largest fires in U.S. history all took place in the same evening, in the same geographical area around the Great Lakes. Either this is one heck of a coincidence, or there was something which caused such massive fires separated by hundreds of miles. One of the theories that has been put forward is that there was a single cause of all the fires, and that the cause was extraterrestrial in origin. On October 8th, 1871, fragments of a comet or meteor broke up and rained down upon the Midwest around Lake Michigan. This certainly isn't impossible. Comets often have frozen flammable materials in them,

including methane and acetylene. With the high heat created from entry into the atmosphere, plus being put into contact with oxygen, there would be a potential for fire. Add to this the conditions that were in the area in the days leading up to the fire, and it's certainly plausible. In fact, a particular comet, Blia's comet, has been identified as the possible culprit. Recent video evidence from Russia of meteors that have hit the earth have shown massive fireballs that are burning all the way until they have contact with the ground. It would also be consistent with some of the eyewitness accounts which would describe fire raining from the sky and entire blocks igniting at once. There is little direct evidence of any sort of

fire from the sky, nor should we expect to find any after 150 years. However, what happened on October 8, 1871, are consistent with it not only being one of the the greatest disasters in American history, but perhaps the first such disaster to have come from space. Executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is James Mackala. Special thanks to everyone who supports the show over on Patreon. Please remember to leave a review over on Apple Podcasts. Even a simple review can really help the show get discovered in the sea of other podcasts that are out there.