Imag­ine Vice Pres­i­dent Joe Biden being on the receiv­ing end of a vocif­er­ous attack in the press by for­mer Sec­re­tary of the Trea­sury, Tim Gei­th­n­er. Now, pic­ture Biden demand­ing sat­is­fac­tion, and tak­ing the morn­ing off from his vice pres­i­den­tial duties to set­tle things man-to-man, and Gei­th­n­er wind­ing up in a coma. As unbe­liev­able as this episode may seem today, this kind of affair played out some 200 years ago on a much grander scale when Vice Pres­i­dent Aaron Burr fatal­ly shot Alexan­der Hamil­ton dur­ing a duel. The Burr-Hamil­ton con­fronta­tion remains an infa­mous black mark on Amer­i­can pol­i­tics. Burr, serv­ing as VP in Thomas Jefferson’s admin­is­tra­tion, is wide­ly seen as a vil­lain for mur­der­ing Hamil­ton. Hamil­ton, for his part, is beloved as one of the Found­ing Fathers and a vocal cham­pi­on of the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion. For our non-Amer­i­can read­ers, this adu­la­tion trans­lates to his face now grac­ing the $10 bill.

But were things real­ly so sim­ple? Dana O’Keefe, the film­mak­er behind Aaron Burr, Part 2, answers with a resound­ing no. “His­to­ry is a con­test, not unlike a duel. I end­ed his life. But he ruined mine. I won the duel, but I lost my place in his­to­ry,” Burr declares in the open­ing mono­logue of O’Keefe’s 8‑minute short, and it is pre­cise­ly Burr’s place in his­to­ry that the film seeks to address. In O’Keefe’s mod­ern retelling, Burr emerges as an unfair­ly maligned fig­ure, whose brav­ery in bat­tle has been over­shad­owed by the incom­pe­tence of supe­ri­ors such as Gen­er­als George Wash­ing­ton and Richard Mont­gomery. It’s effec­tive. Mix­ing archival footage of orig­i­nal doc­u­ments with re-enact­ments and present day shots, O’Keefe cre­ates a grit­ty, some­times wit­ty, hard­boiled feel to Bur­r’s sto­ry, and view­ers begin to sym­pa­thize with the dis­par­aged fig­ure. To the sounds of tracks like Dr. Dre’s “The Next Episode” and some cre­ative use of iPhones, O’Keefe dis­pels the idea that Burr shot Hamil­ton first. Rather, Burr is the hon­or­able par­ty, and Hamil­ton is the scoundrel. It’s well worth a watch.

via The Atlantic

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman, or read more of his writ­ing at the Huff­in­g­ton Post.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Drunk His­to­ry: An Intox­i­cat­ed Look at the Famous Alexan­der Hamil­ton – Aaron Burr Duel

Alexan­der Hamil­ton: Hip-Hop Hero at the White House Poet­ry Evening

Free Online His­to­ry Cours­es

I’ve always been jeal­ous of friends who stud­ied his­to­ry in col­lege. They’ve got a work­ing knowl­edge of the caus­es of wars, eco­nom­ic crises, polit­i­cal upheavals, and any oth­er triv­ia ques­tion-wor­thy events. Thank­ful­ly, what­ev­er I’d like to learn is mere­ly a click away: we’ve got over 800 free online cours­es (includ­ing 67 free his­to­ry cours­es) list­ed on Open Cul­ture at the time of writ­ing, and edu­ca­tion­al insti­tu­tions con­tin­ue to upload new lec­tures every week. Most of the lec­tures, how­ev­er, last from 30 min­utes to an hour, requir­ing users to cor­don off a block of time for study. Want some­thing short­er? Enter the 15 Minute His­to­ry pod­cast, cur­rent­ly the fourth most pop­u­lar pod­cast on iTune­sU.

The result of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas at Austin’s Hemi­spheres and Not Even Past pub­lic out­reach efforts, the 15 Minute His­to­ry pod­cast focus­es on key sub­jects in world his­to­ry and U.S. his­to­ry. Although the pod­cast is tai­lored to Texas teach­ers and stu­dents, empha­siz­ing the state’s K‑12 cur­ricu­lum, it also hap­pens to be a trea­sure trove of free con­tent for any­one inter­est­ed in his­to­ry. The short pod­casts, which last some 15 min­utes on aver­age, cov­er every­thing from Russia’s Octo­ber 1917 Rev­o­lu­tion, to the Ottoman Empire, to the glob­al con­text of the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion. Each episode is led by one of three UT Austin aca­d­e­mics, who dis­cuss the top­ic at hand with anoth­er uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor or grad­u­ate stu­dent. Con­ve­nient­ly, on the 15 Minute His­to­ry web site, the pod­casts are accom­pa­nied by a care­ful­ly for­mat­ted tran­script, plus addi­tion­al read­ing mate­ri­als for those who find them­selves curi­ous about a par­tic­u­lar top­ic.

Inter­est­ed read­ers can find the whole pod­cast series on iTunes, or on the web.

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Crash Course in World His­to­ry

The Com­plete His­to­ry of the World (and Human Cre­ativ­i­ty) in 100 Objects

The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy, from 600 B.C.E. to 1935, Visu­al­ized in Two Mas­sive, 44-Foot High Dia­grams

It fits per­fect­ly into ear­ly 20th-cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can lore, this all-too-real dis­as­ter: on Jan­u­ary 15, 1919, a fif­teen-foot wall of molasses rushed through Boston’s North End, killing 21, injur­ing 150, doing $100 mil­lion in today’s dol­lars worth of dam­age, and requir­ing 80,000 man-hours to clean up. Those fig­ures come from a post on the sub­ject at Men­tal Floss, which inves­ti­gates what loosed the Great Molasses Flood in the first place. The Unit­ed States Indus­tri­al Alco­hol Com­pa­ny, own­ers of the brown, sticky sub­stance in ques­tion and the explod­ing tank that con­tained it, pinned it on bomb-chuck­ers, claim­ing that, “since its alco­hol was an ingre­di­ent in gov­ern­ment muni­tions, anar­chists must have sab­o­taged the tank.” Inves­ti­ga­tions lat­er revealed the cause as none oth­er than seat-of-the-pants cap­i­tal­is­tic hubris, anoth­er stand­by of ear­ly 20th-cen­tu­ry Amer­i­ca.

The tank’s “absurd­ly shod­dy con­struc­tion work,” led by a man who “could­n’t even read a blue­print,” came down to this: they “threw up a gigan­tic tank as quick­ly and cheap­ly as pos­si­ble, skimped on inspec­tions and safe­ty tests, and hoped for the best.” You can learn more about what hap­pened in the video above, a drama­ti­za­tion of the events lead­ing up to the Great Molasses Flood from the pilot episode of The Folk­lorist. 

The con­tem­po­rary images above and below come from the Boston Pub­lic Library’s Flickr set. For the most defin­i­tive study of this gooey calami­ty, you’ll want to seek out Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919 by Stephen Puleo, who speaks in some detail about the event and its after­math in this Real His­to­ry video. All these well-doc­u­ment­ed facts aside, leg­end has it that, on a par­tic­u­lar­ly hot day on Com­mer­cial Street, you can still smell the stuff.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Voltaire & the Lis­bon Earth­quake of 1755

The Titan­ic: Rare Footage Before Dis­as­ter Strikes

How the Titan­ic Sank: James Cameron’s New CGI Ani­ma­tion

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, lit­er­a­ture, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on his brand new Face­book page.