That’s Terrible!

The Great Molasses Flood occurred on January 15, 1919 when a storage tank failed at the Purity Distilling Company in Boston's North End. Millions of gallons of hot molasses went pouring into the streets, then cooled down and thickened, creating a sticky mess. The wave swept up people and animals and destroyed buildings, and the cooled, thick molasses took so long to clean up that for decades afterward, people said they could smell it on a hot day.

This week, Amelia and Erika are joined by Steve Gurriero, director of education from the Charles River Museum of Industry & Innovation in Waltham, Massachusetts.

If you want to try Boston brown bread, we used this recipe.

 

Read more:

I Survived the Great Molasses Flood by Lauren Tarshis. There's a graphic novel too!

Leah Braves the Flood: A Great Molasses Flood Survival Story by Julie Gilbert

Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919 by Stephen Puleo. This one is more for the adults!

 

 

 

 

This episode is chock full of book recommendations, so scroll all the way through the show notes for links!

Amelia and Erika (and a surprise third cohost, some girl named Nora) are joined by New York Times bestselling author Alan Gratz, whose stories put fictional kids in the middle of terrible true events. He talks about how he chooses his terrible topics, his favorite themes to write about and why kids love learning about war and disasters.

Be sure to check out Alan's new novella, Flight, available for preorder now.

 

Some of our favorite Alan Gratz historical fiction:

Two Degrees. A story about climate change and Nora's favorite

Projekt 1065: A Novel of World War II. (This one has spy stuff!)

War Games: A Novel of 1936 Berlin

Heroes. Did you know there were kids at Pearl Harbor? We didn't.

Ground Zero: A Novel of 9/11. Another of Nora's favorites

 

Some of Alan's favorite books!

Save the People! by Stacy McAnulty

History Smashers series by Kate Messner

The Watch That Ends the Night: Voices from the Titanic by Allan Wolf

Junius Leak and the Spiraling Vortex of Doom by Allan Wolf

The Vanishing of Lake Peigneur: A Graphic Novel Based on a True Story by Allan Wolf

 

If you want to learn more about the Little League Baseball World Series, visit our favorite bookstore in Williamsport, Pennsylvania for a local perspective!

Questions? Ideas for an upcoming episode? Email us at thepodcastgrotto@gmail.com.

 

The morning of April 18, 1906 brought a rude awakening for residents of San Francisco, California. At 5:12 a.m., a massive earthquake struck, breaking gas lines and starting fires that burned throughout the city for days. On today's show, Erika and Amelia talk with Jack Grippi, a retired geologist who now conducts walking tours for the San Francisco Historical Society. He talks about the science behind earthquakes and tells the story of a young girl who survived.

 

Learn more about earthquakes here!

See photos of Lily Sung and read more of her story here!

 

Read more about the 1906 San Francisco earthquake:

I Survived the San Francisco Earthquake by Lauren Tarshis

Lily and the Great Quake: A San Francisco Earthquake Survival Story by Veeda Bybee

 

Questions? Ideas for an upcoming episode? Email us at thepodcastgrotto@gmail.com.

If you haven't listened to Part 1, we highly recommend you do before listening to this one. 

The Radium Girls were factory workers who painted clock dials at the United States Radium Corporation in Orange, New Jersey and the Radium Dial Company in Ottawa, Illinois. They were well paid, and the job was fun. The paint made things glow in the dark, and the girls often used it on themselves as well, painting their dress buttons, their nails and even their teeth. Everyone in town knew who the girls were. But soon, the whole world would hear about them.

What the girls didn't know was that the paint they were using, and the way they were told to use it, was very dangerous. Some got very sick. Their employers refused to help them, so the Radium Girls had to stand up for themselves.

In the last episode, Erika and Amelia talked with Kate Moore, author of The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women, about the dangers of radium and how the factory workers were instructed to handle it. This week, we talk about what happened after the women got sick and how they're remembered today.

If you want to read more about the Radium Girls, we recommend:

The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women by Kate Moore. This is an excellent book but definitely for the adults! Younger readers should check out the edition of Moore's book made just for them called The Radium Girls: The Scary but True Story of the Poison that Made People Glow in the Dark. 

The Story of Marie Curie by Susan B. Katz and Who Was Marie Curie? by Megan Stine tell the story of the woman who discovered radium.

If you want to see a sneak peek of a production of the play that inspired Kate to write her book, you can find one on YouTube from 2024 done by Columbus State University.

Questions? Idea for an upcoming episode? Email us at thepodcastgrotto@gmail.com.

This topic was so big, we had to split it into two episodes. Trust us: It's worth it!

The Radium Girls were factory workers who painted clock dials at the United States Radium Corporation in Orange, New Jersey and the Radium Dial Company in Ottawa, Illinois. They were well paid, and the job was fun. The paint made things glow in the dark, and the girls often used it on themselves as well, painting their dress buttons, their nails and even their teeth. Everyone in town knew who the girls were. But soon, the whole world would hear about them.

What the girls didn't know was that the paint they were using, and the way they were told to use it, was very dangerous. Some got very sick. Their employers refused to help them, so the Radium Girls had to stand up for themselves.

In this episode, Erika and Amelia talk with Kate Moore, author of The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women. She tells us about the dangers of radium and the women who worked at the factories. In the next episode, we'll hear about how the Radium Girls fought back against the companies responsible for making them sick.

If you want to read more about the Radium Girls, we recommend:

The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women by Kate Moore. This is an excellent book but definitely for the adults! Younger readers should check out the edition of Moore's book made just for them called The Radium Girls: The Scary but True Story of the Poison that Made People Glow in the Dark. 

The Story of Marie Curie by Susan B. Katz and Who Was Marie Curie? by Megan Stine tell the story of the woman who discovered radium.

Questions? Idea for an upcoming episode? Email us at thepodcastgrotto@gmail.com.

On January 15, 2009, US Airways Flight 1549 took off from New York's LaGuardia Airport bound for Charlotte, North Carolina, but it wouldn't get far. A few minutes after takeoff, the plane hit a flock of Canada geese, losing both engines. Captain Chesley Sullenberger III called LaGuardia and asked to come back, but he quickly realized he wouldn't have time and made the decision to land the plane in the middle of the Hudson River. Because of his quick thinking, all 155 on board survived. People called it the "Miracle on the Hudson."

This week, Erika and Amelia talk with Dave Sanderson, the last passenger off the flight. He tells the story about what happened from his perspective and whether it's changed the way he feels about flying.

Read Dave's story and more in this book:

Brace for Impact: Miracle on the Hudson Survivors Share Their Stories of Near Death and Hope for New Life

You can also read about Maverick Foletta, an eight year old who is learning to fly!

 

Questions? Ideas for an upcoming episode? Email us at thepodcastgrotto@gmail.com.

 

July 24, 1915 should have been a wonderful day for the employees of Western Electric Company's Hawthorne Works and their families. The company had chartered five passenger steamers to carry around 7,000 people from Chicago to Michigan City, Indiana for a picnic. But one of those ships, the Eastland, capsized before it even left the docks on the Chicago River. In this episode, Ted and Barb Wachholz from the Eastland Disaster Historical Society join Erika and Amelia to tell the story of the disaster and its survivors.

 

Stories from the episode:

Marion Eichholz 

Borghild "Bobbie" Aanstad 

Clara Schuster 

 

Read more about the Eastland Disaster:

 

Scritch Scratch 

Capsized! The Forgotten Story of the SS Eastland Disaster

Sylvia's Story: The Chicago River Tragedy of the SS Eastland

 

If you want to replicate Ted Wachholz's "Ultimate Whitey's Experience" (which we officially do NOT recommend...but let us know if you do it), you can visit Whitey's Ice Cream in the Quad Cities.

 

If you want to play it a little safer, visit Maddy's Ice Cream and More in Gardner, Massachusetts and enjoy a sweet treat this summer!

 

Questions? Idea for an upcoming episode? Email us at thepodcastgrotto@gmail.com.

This week, Erika and Amelia are joined by Dimitry Pompée, one of the hosts of the Eurovangelists podcast, to discuss something that is NOT terrible but is affected by terrible things: The Eurovision Song Contest.

Eurovision is a contest that brings together the nations of Europe (plus a few others) with one great song from each country, each year. It began as a way to unite Europe in the aftermath of World War II, but many events have affected the contest in big ways, some of those being quite terrible indeed.

There might have been a few terrible songs along the way too, but that's bound to happen over 70 years.

If you'd like to hear some songs from Eurovision, our friends at Eurovangelists helped us make a playlist for this episode. You can find it on Spotify as That's Terrible's NOT Terrible Eurovision Playlist. So give that wolf a banana, and enjoy the music!

If you'd like to tell us what you think of this or any episode, you can send us an email at thepodcastgrotto@gmail.com.