WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - This Week In History, August 24-30: Frankland, Opium, and Bob Dylan

Episode Date: September 5, 2025

Join Ava and Alessia this week as they discuss all things history, from the state of Frankland to St. Augustine's death and Bob Dylan being booed off stage, and play Guess that Year.

Welcome to This Week in History with Ava and Alessia, your one-stop shop for all things history. Hi, I'm Alessia, and this week we'll be talking about American, world, military, and pop culture history. And there may be a few surprises along the way. Ava, do you want to start us off with American history? Of course. Okay, guys, so back in the day, North Carolina used to be way longer extending into Tennessee. And us Tennesseans are still salty about that, by the way. But what is now East and Middle Tennessee used to be the western part of North Carolina?

Settlers living in Western North Carolina grew unhappy with their government of their state, and they tried giving some of the land to Congress to help with the national debt after the war for independence, and Congress rescinded the offer. I wonder why. That's a really weird offer. But it was a whole mess. Anyway, these Western North Carolinians, I guess I can call them that, decided to secede from the state of North Carolina, And they created their own state called Frank Land. What a name. That's so American. It's great.

It's not Franklin. Frank land, like land of Frank. And they had their own state constitution and everything. But a few months later in 1785, after they got their state constitution and everything, leaders in Frankland petitioned Congress for official statehood, but fell two votes shy of acceptance. So we almost had the state of Franklin. Two votes. That's insane.

So in hopes of revoting and getting more support for their journey to statehood, the name Franklin was changed to Franklin, an attempt to receive support from the one and only Benjamin Franklin. Do you think he took that offer up? Absolutely not. You would be correct, because he thoughtfully declined. Even though Franklin was never technically a state, they still semi-successfully acted. as one for almost five years. That's actually so impressive. Yeah.

And in 1789, North Carolina took back the land that was Frankland and yet again offered to cede it to Congress. And that was again denied. But the land eventually became part of Tennessee. And fun fact, both John Severe, the first governor of Tennessee and Davy Crockett were born in the state of Franklin. So that's wild. That's insane.

Yeah. What about you? Do you have a fun American history tidbit for us? Unfortunately, I do not. This is on a much, much darker note. Emmett Till was murdered on August 28, 1955. He was 14 years old, and he was accused of flirting with a white woman, and then he was kidnapped and brutally murdered in Mississippi. His body was dumped in a river, and then it was found out that it was the husband of the lady that he allegedly flirted with, and his brother was. law.

Oof. Till's mother was obviously distraught. Yeah. And she actually chose to have an open casket so that people could see what they did to her son. That's a boss move right there. If that happened to me, I don't know what I would do. But I don't know if I would have the confidence of that mother right there. I feel like I would be too upset.

Yeah. So I would want that to be a private thing. Yeah. She wanted to make a point and show that there was a serious problem in this country. And at the funeral in Chicago, there were thousands of people who showed up. Dang, that's awesome. And an abrupt change of gears, let's hop into world history. Ava, what do you have for us?

Oh, I got something good. Okay, so if you know me, I'm a big fan of military history and medieval history. And if you didn't know that about me, well, now you do. Anyway, so the crossbow is one of my favorite weapons of all time. I just think it's super cool. So our world history fact today comes from August 30th and 1146 AD when the crossbow was outlawed in Europe. Well, at least they tried to outlaw it as most things when you make a rule to say that you can't do something, that just means it still happens. As we can still see today, ha ha.

Especially at that time. Oh yeah, so true. So Pope Urban II issued an official edict stating that the crossbow was banned because of its brutality. war. But like I said earlier, that did very little to curb crossbow usage. And warriors felt that it was okay to use crossbows as long as you didn't aim them at other Christians. So I don't, everyone, people are people. I don't get that rule. But anyway. That makes no sense. It's okay to kill other people. As long as they're not Christian, you can murder is totally fine. That's not a very Christian thing to do. Exactly. But anyway, another attempt was made by the Catholic Church at the

second, I think I'm saying this right. And if I'm saying it wrong, you can let me know. Anyway, that the second Lataron Council of 1139, which added that Christians should not use crossbows, nor should they be aimed at another Christian under fear of excommunication from the church. So, I also don't know how they were really monitoring that. But the first... I mean, I guess if you see somebody carrying a crossbow down the street, that's a pretty... You see someone walking down the street carrying a crossbow, and you happen to be a higher-up in the Catholic Church, and you're like, dude, you have a crossbow, are you a Christian?

And if they answer yes, you just say their excommunicate. I don't really know how that works. I don't know either. Anyway, I should probably read about that a little more. because that's high key interesting. Anyway, the first legal ban of the crossbow was by Conrad the third of the Holy Roman Empire in 1146. But yet again, like many things stating a ban doesn't really actually do anything. And there was still widespread crossbow usage until the popularization of firearms in Europe between the 15th and 16th centuries.

But yeah, crossbow history. Dang. And that's why people don't have crossbows anymore. Yeah. Well, guns kind of... Yeah. What about you? What world history tidbit do you have for us today? On August 28th, 430 AD, St. Augustine of Hippo died.

He's the author of Confessions and the City of God, which, let's be real, everyone at Hillsdale reads, at least once. Guys, the City of God is so cool. I cannot recommend it enough. The first chapter, if you haven't read it, he says he's not going to go on a rant about anything off topic. and then the majority of the book is him ranting about something off topic. And then the last couple chapters, he pulls it together. And it's great. St. Augustine is basically a Hillsdale icon. Yeah.

Anyways, that's my world history topic. Let's move on to military history. Eva, this is my favorite topic. My favorite section. I think we have this in common. Yeah. It's not like we've discussed this like 80,000 times, but we love it. Okay, I've got a good one for you all today.

So today we're going to talk about the opium wars. So on August 29th of 1842, the UK and China signed the Treaty of Nanking, which ended the first opium war. The war began out of pretty much a Victorian drug smuggling business and a lot of trade intolerance to put it literally in one sentence. So Britain was purchasing more goods from China than it was selling, like silk and tea, which were super popular all over the world after the Silk Road was established. and shipping and tea produce just skyrocketed. But Britain's idea to fix the trade imbalance was to use its colonies in India to produce opium that would then be smuggled and sold into China. And I don't just mean like a little bit.

There was around 1,000 tons of opium per year smuggled into China to reduce the trade imbalance between Britain and China. Britain was like, guys, we aren't selling enough stuff. So let's hook our, let's hook China on drugs. Which is kind of what happened in layman terms. But the Chinese obviously didn't appreciate a rapidly growing drug problem. Who would? Literally no one. So they started putting port towns and surrounding areas under super heavy trade and import restrictions,

even refusing to sell food to British. merchants who were there on non-opium-related business. Anyway, these restrictions escalated pretty quickly to threats of bombardment and even full-blown war, which did result in the first opium war. But that ended in 1842 with the Treaty of Nanking, which gave the land of Hong Kong to the British and allowed the British free trade in China and forced a Chinese government to pay for any British damages accumulated during the war. I wonder who lost that war.

Yeah, so a really interesting battle, but what about you? So on a much more positive non-drug-related note, don't mind me giggling over here at that. On August 25th, 1944, Paris was liberated by the Allies during World War II. So Paris, this is just a few months after D-Day, Paris is not really a strategic location. The Allies could honestly just go past it and the Americans really wanted to just go around it

so they could get to Germany faster. But Charles de Gaulle was like, no, we can't do that because either the resistance who had by this point rose up and was trying to fight the Germans, they will either be destroyed or the communists who were leading a large portion of the resistance. would become adored if they did win, and we couldn't have that. So the Americans were like, okay, fine.

So they roll into Paris, and there's great celebration. So Paris is liberated, and France is finally starting to be free again. We're getting closer to the end of the war, and we have roughly less than, we have less than a year to go, and the Allies are finally starting to win these major victories. and, I mean, after D-Day, it's kind of all downhill slope for Germany. We kind of slayed that one. Yeah, we kind of did. But the French are so happy.

De Gaulle gets a huge bump for this. He's much more popular because he's the one who wanted this. Wanted the allies to actually go into the city. If you're just tuning in, this is this week in history with Ava and Alessia on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. All right, let's move into pop culture. So in August 28, 1965, Bob Dylan, we all know and love Bob Dylan, the great folk singer. And there was just a movie about him played by Timothy Shalame. I highly recommend you go watch it.

It was honestly a really good movie. So he was playing a concert in the Forest Hills Tennis Stadium in Queens in New York. But he's, Bob Dylan is pretty well known for being one of the first. folk musicians to use electronic instruments in his music, which in the late 20th century folk music community, that was high treason. So he decided to start doing that at his concert in 1965, and he literally got booed off of stage for deviating from the classical roots of folk music. So here's a little clip of what that concert was like and Bob Dylan getting booed off stage. It must really not be cool to be booed off stage at something you were literally invited to do.

But anyway, at the Newport Folk Festival, which was less than a month before this other occurrence, he also got booed, but he didn't get booed off stage necessarily. He was just heavily ridiculed, but he kept playing. I mean, what a trooper. Bob Dylan is just, what a guy. And his music is so cool. He just kept being himself, even when people said, you know, everything you like, that's not what we like, so you can't do that anymore. He just kept being himself.

And if himself was still storytelling through song, but with an electric guitar instead of an acoustic guitar, I mean, that's not really a problem. Alessia, what do you have for pop culture? So on August 26, 1951, an American in Paris, which is known as a really iconic movie, which I'm sorry, Eva, I have not seen, it premieres in London on this day. I got! Rhythm. EGAR! Music. My gal, who could ask for anything more?

Daisy. I got. In green pastures. My cat. My gal who could ask for anything more. Old man trouble, I don't mind him. You won't find him round my door. And so this movie has Gene Kelly in it, and that is everything that I know about this movie.

We love Gene Kelly. I know nothing else. It has that. Isn't that the movie with the scene where she's in the Louvre running down the stairs, and she goes, take the picture, take the picture. I think that's funny thing. That is funny face. Yeah. We're going to have to have a movie night. Yeah, for sure. 100%. I can't go the rest of the semester without seeing it. Guys, you know that special surprise that we said that we had in our intro? Well, now it's time for guess that year, the game where we may or may not embarrass ourselves about our extremely random historical knowledge. So to start off on a very lighthearted note, Alessia, do you know what year?

King Katrina hit the United States. It was in this week, but in what year? I know this is around the time I was born, like within a few years. Was it 2005? Yes. Oh, let's go. I should actually fact check that, though. I'm pretty sure that's right. Yes, August 2005. Yes, let's go. One point for me. All right, Ava, this is a tough one. This, I will be honest, before I looked this up, I had no idea. I would, nobody would know this. Hit me with it. All right.

What year was Mary Shelley born in London, the author of Frankenstein? Okay. Frankenstein is like one of my favorite books. She was writing in the 1800s. So she would, I think it was like the mid-1800s. Maybe you couldn't tell you. So she was probably born, what, 17-18s. 1998?

That is so close. Really? Yes. Wait, how far off am I? One year. No kidding. It's 1797. Elite.

Oh my gosh. That's actually so impressive. I never would have gotten that. All right. One point for me. One point for Ava. Okay. Alessia.

This week in what year did Princess Diana pass away? That's really sad. It is really sad. But we love Princess Die. Something sketchy. was happening there. Oh, yeah. But...

Girl, if you watch the last season of the crown, it's insane. I'm not going to... I totally binge that this summer, but... Okay, let me think. It's in the 90s, I want to say. Maybe. I think. Is it...

I'm just going to guess a random year. 97? That's right. Wait, no way. Okay. Ding, ding. I was thinking 95, but then I was like, wait, that seems to... Yeah.

It is. I don't know. But 97. Right on the dot. There you go. Let's go. All right, Eva. Okay.

Last question. I'm so ready. I have two points. You have one. Okay. Last question. All right. In what year did Puerto Rico become a U.S. Commonwealth?

Oh, goodness. Um, wow. That's, I want to say sometime in the 50s or 60s, but I need to brush up on my American Commonwealth history. Maybe I need to read more about Puerto Rico in Guam. You're in the right ballpark. I'm in the right ballpark. You are.

Yeah. I'm going to say 58. That's really close. It was 52. No. But, I mean, cool for Puerto Rico, I guess. I mean, I guess Hawaii was like, what, 49 when it became a state? So they were just kind of annexing everything at that point.

I think. High key, don't remember. I know the year that Tennessee became a state because it's drilled into my brain from childhood. As it should be. but 1796, by the way, if anyone's curious. All right, I think I'm going to claim victory on that one. As you should.

All right. That was guessed that year. All right, guys. I think Alessia gets the victory on that one. Yeah, I'm claiming that. Yeah, go for it. Well, thank you so much for tuning into this week in history with Ava and Alessia, the show where we talk about all things history, and we will see you next week on Radio Free Hillsdale at 101.7 FM.