Nuns on the Run

The Awful disclosures of Maria Monk

In 1835 Maria Monk claimed that Montreal's Hôtel-Dieu convent was a vice den. She was making it all up... but Americans desperately wanted to believe her.

Categories: History, Hoaxes, Frauds & Forgeries, Series 13

Tags: anti-Catholicism Canada Catholicism Christianity civil law London, England Montreal, QC nativism New York State New York, NY nuns Philadelphia, PA Presented by #13 Protestantism Quebec religion Samuel Finley Breese Morse skepticism United Kingdom United States of America

Published: May 29, 2023

Nuns on the Run

Six Months in a Convent

In August 1834 Bostonians burned down a convent full of nuns, thanks to religious prejudice and the suspicious testimony of a lazy teenager with a grudge.

Categories: History, Series 13

Tags: anti-Catholicism Boston, MA Catholicism Christianity civil law crime criminal law Massachusetts nativism nuns Presented by #13 Protestantism religion Samuel Finley Breese Morse

Published: May 15, 2023

Kings of Pain

who gets the credit for an important discovery?

In October 1846, the world discovered surgical anesthesia. Four men would spend the next two decades fighting over which one of them deserved the credit.

Categories: History, Series 12, The Marvels of Science

Tags: Baltimore, MD Boston, MA civil law Cleveland, OH crime France Presented by #13 quackery Samuel Finley Breese Morse

Published: October 17, 2022