Hi there all, just dropping a quick note, before I return to the writing desk… USA I’m aghast… and worried, and saddened by recent turns of events. And tonight I just wanted to send you all my love (well, obviously not all of you… some of you voted for a fascist) and just explain why I’m pulling an upcoming episode… hit play, spoken me explains it all better… No ‘Sources Include’ tonight - unless you’re in fight back mode - in which case no specific recommendation, but I’ll be looking round for a good book on the French Popular Front movement who formed in 1936, and destroyed the ascendant French fascist party, the Croix De Feu. Paul Mason’s How to Stop Fascism is as good a place to start as any… Hang in there USA…

This week, it’s Halloween! So, naturally I’ve got a tale of… well, historic hotel rooms in Kansas City, Missouri… And a notorious murder carried out in Room 1046 of the Hotel President..

Sources Include:

This fantastic article by John Horner, which appears the font of a dozen or so other articles I read through. This post by the ‘Murder She Told’ podcast This article on Tom Pendegast by K.C. Yesterday

And a handful of things found in online newspaper archives and genealogy sites.

Support the show on Patreon for $2 US a month and get access to exclusive content, or Try our 7 Day Free Trial.

Please leave Tales a like and a review wherever you listen. The best way you can support us is to share an episode with a friend - Creative works grow best by word of mouth. I post episodes fortnightly, Wednesdays.

Tales of History and Imagination is on

| Facebook |TikTok | Threads | YouTube |

Music, writing, narration, mixing yours truly.

This week we return to Cuba to conclude our miniseries on the Cuban Missile Crisis. This week we discuss arctic explorers, nuclear test sites, saboteurs, spy planes gone awry, submarines and why I think having such power out there in an age where a ‘mad king’ could come to power is still very disconcerting.

Sources Include: One Minute to Midnight by Michael Dobbs Nuclear War by Annie Jacobsen

Support the show on Patreon for $2 US a month and get access to exclusive content, or Try our 7 Day Free Trial.

Please leave Tales a like and a review wherever you listen. The best way you can support us is to share an episode with a friend - Creative works grow best by word of mouth. I post episodes fortnightly, Wednesdays.

Tales of History and Imagination is on

| Facebook |TikTok | Threads | YouTube |

Music, writing, narration, mixing yours truly.

On 16th October 1962, American President John F Kennedy was presented with three indistinct photos taken of several tubes laid out in a field in Cuba. Kennedy at first took the scene for a football field. His brother Robert, on viewing the scene, wondered if it depicted a farm house in mid construction.

It was, of course, a nuclear missile site in mid construction, and the following thirteen days brought humanity closer to nuclear war than any time before of since.

This fortnight, and next we’re looking at the Cuban Missile Crisis, primarily from the perspective of three potentially inciting incidents - one involving two saboteurs, another a spy plane, and the third a Foxtrot submarine. Sources Include:

One Minute to Midnight by Michael Dobbs And Nuclear War by Annie Jacobsen

Support the show on Patreon for $2 US a month and get access to exclusive content, or Try our 7 Day Free Trial. Patrons get bonus content, and an Ad-Free feed… usually a day or two early.

|Patreon|

Or, if you’re looking to support us other ways - please leave Tales a like and a review wherever you listen, and/or share Tales with a friend. Creative projects like Tales grow best by word of mouth, and higher star ratings etc also make it easier for folk to find us.

Tales of History and Imagination is on

| Facebook |TikTok | Threads | YouTube |

Music, writing, narration, mixing yours truly - with one credit I needs must acknowledge today. I stole the melody for the marimba music that plays under the Miguel Orozco parts from the verses of Jimmy Soul’s ‘If You Wanna Be Happy.’ Soul, in turn, had stolen that melody from the Trinidadian Calypso great Roaring Lion’s ‘Ugly Woman’ - no commentary meant on either artist, Mrs Soul or Mrs Lion - just needed a melody from that general location…

Hi everyone, this week we’re doing things a bit different. I’ll be back from my mid year break with new episodes in two weeks’ time. In the meantime we’re running a pledge week for the Patreon channel.

Tuesday through Friday I’ll be dropping on old Patreon minisode per day - today, after visiting the set of the Donohue Show, we ask the question… Is a Nude Horse a Rude Horse?

Check out my Patreon! For just $2 a month* you get a minimum of one tale every month

(we’re committed to 20 a year there this year, and will start releasing two a month every month when we hit the first stretch target.)

As a patron you are helping to keep independent creators like me keep going. This includes occasionally putting down a month’s membership on some paywalled newspaper or other. This episode was penned a long time ago, and I’ve since lost the bibliography - but am pretty sure it grew out of something paywalled I found in the Washington Post.

Unsure if you want to join up yet? Try a 7 day free trial.

*Dollars quoted in USD…

Hi everyone, this week we’re doing things a bit different. I’ll be back from my mid year break with new episodes in two weeks’ time. In the meantime we’re running a pledge week for the Patreon channel.

Monday through Thursday I’ll be dropping on old Patreon minisode per day - today we’re going to meet a now obscure, but terrifying General named Uqba Ibn Nafi.

Check out my Patreon! For just $2 a month* you get a minimum of one tale every month

(we’re committed to 20 a year there this year, and will start releasing two a month every month when we hit my first stretch target.)

As a patron you are helping to keep independent creators like me keep going, in my case Patreon money helps me buy books to research these tales, like the main source in this tale

Francois-Xavier Fauvelle’s ‘The Golden Rhinoceros: Histories of the African Middle Ages

Unsure if you want to join up? Try a 7 day free trial.

*Dollars quoted in USD.

Hi everyone, this week we’re doing things a bit different. I’ll be back from my mid year break with new episodes in two weeks’ time. In the meantime we’re running a pledge week for the Patreon channel.

Tuesday through Friday I’ll be dropping on old Patreon minisode per day - today we’re discussing one of history’s stranger What if’s. Thomas Johnson was a renowned smuggler, a talented escape artist - and it is rumoured he had a submarine - in 1820. Was he hired to bust Napoleon Bonaparte out of St Helena?

Check out my Patreon! For just $2 a month* you get a minimum of one tale every month

(we’re committed to 20 a year there this year, and will start releasing two a month every month when we hit my first stretch target.)

As a patron you are helping to keep independent creators like me keep going, in my case Patreon money helps me with the rental costs of the blog page - Speaking of blog pages, though I used half a dozen texts for this Tale - I first read this tale on the incomparable Mike Dash’s A Blast from the Past.

Emilio Ocampo’s The Emperor’s Last Campaign And F.W.N Bayly’s Scenes and Stories by a Clergyman in Debt were also very useful… book based resources.

Unsure if you want to join up? Try a 7 day free trial.

*Dollars quoted in USD.

Hi everyone, this week we’re doing things a bit different. I’ll be back from my mid year break with new episodes in two weeks’ time. In the meantime we’re running a pledge week for the Patreon channel.

Tuesday through Friday I’ll be dropping on old Patreon minisode per day - today we visit Milan, the year 1630. A comet blazing across the sky spooks the people. Augurers spoke, the comet portends death - in one form or another. Then people started dying. This reminded the folk of an ancient legend… That one day, The Devil himself would come to Milan.

Check out my Patreon! For just $2 a month* you get a minimum of one tale every month

(we’re committed to 20 a year there this year, and will start releasing two a month every month when we hit the first stretch target.)

As a patron you are helping to keep independent creators like me keep going. This includes occasionally putting down a month’s membership on some paywalled newspaper or other. This episode was penned a long time ago, and I’ve since lost the bibliography - but am pretty sure it grew out of something paywalled I found in the Washington Post.

Unsure if you want to join up yet? Try a 7 day free trial.

*Dollars quoted in USD…