Podcast appearances and mentions of thomas hicks

Le marathon des Jeux olympiques de Saint-Louis en 1904 est sans doute l'un des événements les plus désastreux et rocambolesques de toute l'histoire olympique. Prévu comme un moment de gloire sportive, il tourna en une épreuve d'endurance surréaliste, marquée par des conditions extrêmes, des choix logistiques absurdes et des comportements pour le moins... inattendus.Une organisation calamiteuseLes Jeux de 1904, organisés aux États-Unis dans le cadre de l'Exposition universelle, furent déjà critiqués pour leur manque de cohérence et leur durée interminable (plusieurs mois). Le marathon, quant à lui, fut programmé en pleine après-midi, sous une chaleur écrasante de plus de 32 °C, sur un parcours poussiéreux, non asphalté, long de 40 km à travers les collines du Missouri.Pire encore : un seul point d'eau était prévu, à mi-parcours, et les organisateurs pensaient même que la privation d'eau permettrait d'étudier les effets de la déshydratation sur le corps humain. Résultat : les athlètes furent frappés de crampes, vomissements, hallucinations, et beaucoup durent abandonner.Des concurrents… inattendusLes participants eux-mêmes formaient un tableau déroutant. Sur les 32 coureurs engagés, plusieurs n'étaient ni professionnels ni préparés. L'un des favoris, Fred Lorz, abandonna après 14 km… avant de reprendre la course en voiture. Tombé en panne à 8 km de l'arrivée, il repartit à pied et franchit la ligne d'arrivée sous les acclamations. Il fut brièvement félicité par la fille du président Roosevelt, avant d'être démasqué et disqualifié.Un autre coureur, Thomas Hicks, fut déclaré vainqueur après avoir été littéralement dopé par son équipe : on lui administra plusieurs doses de strychnine, un stimulant utilisé à l'époque, mélangé à du brandy. Il termina la course en titubant, semi-inconscient, porté par ses entraîneurs.Quant à Andarín Carvajal, un facteur cubain, il courut en chaussures de ville et en pantalon coupé au couteau. Après s'être arrêté pour manger des pommes fermentées dans un verger, il souffrit de crampes violentes, fit une sieste… mais termina quand même quatrième.Une épreuve absurde devenue légendaireLe marathon de Saint-Louis est aujourd'hui considéré comme un symbole du chaos olympique des débuts. Aucun autre marathon n'a connu un tel mélange de tricheries, d'expérimentations douteuses, de malchance et d'improvisation totale.Mais derrière l'absurde, il révèle aussi les débuts tâtonnants du sport moderne, avant l'ère des règles strictes, du professionnalisme et des normes sanitaires. En 1904, courir un marathon n'était pas encore une science… c'était une aventure hasardeuse à la limite de la comédie. Hébergé par Acast. Visitez acast.com/privacy pour plus d'informations.

Jane Blasio was six years old when she was first called a 'black market baby.' Taunts from her peers at school forced her parents to tell her that she was adopted. The news planted the seed of desire to learn the truth about her birth family. But on her quest for answers, Jane learned that she was stolen at birth and sold as part of a sinister baby trafficking ring. Author Jane Blasio discusses her quest for truth and justice and shares how she broke the story of the horrors that took place inside of Dr. Thomas Hicks' clinic, as detailed in her book, Taken At Birth. Follow Emily on Instagram: @realemilycompagno If you have a story or topic we should feature on the FOX True Crime Podcast, send us an email at: truecrimepodcast@fox.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this episode, we delve into the creative world of Thomas Hicks, a rising multidisciplinary artist who seamlessly blends photography, mixed media, and sculpture. Through his work, Thomas demonstrates that art is an ever-evolving conversation—one where reuse, remixing, and reimagining old ideas lead to new stories. Building on themes introduced by our first guest, Ty Davis, we see how generational shifts have reshaped how artists approach their craft. Where Ty once felt a tinge of shame for painting over an old piece, Thomas boldly reuses and reinterprets materials without hesitation—reflecting how younger generations embrace art as a fluid, living process. We explore: How Gothic art, vintage photography, and found materials inspire Thomas's creations. The power of reworking and remixing, challenging traditional notions of "finished" art. His evolving creative process and its intersection with themes of preservation and decay. Why art history is both a guide and a starting point for innovation. Thomas's perspective invites us to let go of old stigmas and embrace the infinite possibilities that come from reworking what we already have. Thomas Hicks is a multidisciplinary artist from Greenville, South Carolina, currently completing his senior year at the College of Charleston. His work draws on themes of connection, spirituality, and transformation, using materials like vintage photography, textiles, and pastels. Thomas has exhibited at Redux Contemporary Art Center, the Halsey Institute's Young Contemporaries, and beyond, crafting art that reimagines the past for the future. Follow Thomas: Instagram: @th.hicks In THE club WE ALL CREATIVE XOXOX @susartclub hosted by @rabidlegion

(Antevíspera de la maratón masculina de los Juegos Olímpicos) Nunca ha habido en la historia una carrera como lo fue aquella. Partió el 30 de agosto de 1904 a las tres de la tarde, la hora más calurosa del día, con una temperatura de 32 grados centígrados que azotó sin piedad a los 32 corredores que participaron. Adelante iba un grupo de hombres a caballo escoltando a los entrenadores, periodistas, jueces y policías que iban en una pequeña caravana de automóviles que no dejaban de levantar polvo debido a lo secas que estaban las carreteras destapadas. Y para colmo de males, había un solo punto de avituallamiento con agua disponible en todo el recorrido: un pozo al costado de la carretera en la marca de los 20 kilómetros de los 40 en total. A los 16 kilómetros, uno de los corredores comenzó a vomitar y tuvo que abandonar. Otro corredor, que inicialmente iba a la cabeza, tragó tanto polvo que sufrió una hemorragia estomacal casi fatal. Sólo 14 de los 32 terminaron la carrera. El primero de los 14 en cruzar la línea de meta fue el estadounidense Frederick Lorz. Alice Roosevelt, hija de su presidente Teodoro Roosevelt, le colocó una corona de laurel, pero al rato el presunto ganador confesó que a los 14 kilómetros había comenzado a sufrir calambres y se había subido a un automóvil en el que había recorrido los 18 kilómetros siguientes antes de saltar del vehículo y correr hasta la meta. Lo había hecho como una broma —insistió—, sin ninguna intención de mantener la farsa. ¡No faltaba más!, ¿verdad? Bueno, también sucedió que en esa maratón de los Juegos Olímpicos de San Luis, Misuri, celebrados en los Estados Unidos de América, el dudoso ganador fue Thomas Hicks, a quien sus entrenadores, al verlo flojo, le dieron claras de huevo con estricnina —¡la misma que se usa como veneno para ratas, que casi acaba con él]!—, y luego lo llevaron hasta la línea de meta, ayudándolo a mover las piernas y desplazarse. Hicks no sólo marcó el tiempo más lento de la historia de las maratones olímpicas, sino que llegó a ser el primer atleta olímpico en usar sustancias destinadas para mejorar el rendimiento. Y finalmente, por si todo eso fuera poco, al corredor que acabó noveno lo persiguió una manada de perros salvajes durante un kilómetro y medio, y al atleta cubano Félix Carvajal —¡que corrió con zapatos de vestir!— el hambre lo hizo detenerse en un huerto para comer unas manzanas que resultaron podridas y le produjeron calambres de estómago que lo obligaron a acostarse en el costado de la carretera, donde tomó una siesta, ¡y después de todo terminó en cuarto lugar!1 De modo que cuando pensemos que estamos pasando un mal día, bien pudiera servirnos comparar nuestros contratiempos con los de los corredores olímpicos aquel azaroso día maratónico, y recordar que Dios nuestro Señor, Creador de cielo y tierra que «nunca duerme ni se deja rendir por el sueño», está siempre dispuesto a acudir en nuestra ayuda... si se lo pedimos con fe sincera.2 Carlos ReyUn Mensaje a la Concienciawww.conciencia.net 1 «El maratón de San Luis: la carrera más extraña en la historia Olímpica», Comité Olímpico Internacional, 29 noviembre 2020 En línea 27 enero 2024; John Hanc, «The Worst of the Modern Olympics Was Held ... ?» [¿El peor de los Juegos Olímpicos modernos se celebró...?], Newsday, 25 agosto 2004 En línea 27 enero 2024; John Gettings, «Distance runner Fred Lorz’s Olympics disgrace in 1904», Fact Monster, «Memorable Olympic Moments: Lorz of the Rings», 21 febrero 2017 En línea 27 enero 2024. 2 Sal 121:2,4 (PDT); Mt 7:7-8; 21:22; Mr 11:22-24; 2Ti 1:5; Heb 4:16; 13:6; Stg 1:5-8

In this episode of Stupiracy, Rizz and Tim dive into the sweat-drenched saga of the 1904 Olympic Marathon—a tale so wild, it'll make modern marathons look like a walk in the park. Tune in as they recount how St. Louis' sweltering summer hosted a marathon that was more survival horror than sport, featuring wild dogs, rotten apples, and bizarre "performance enhancers." It's history, but not as you know it!Show Notes:Overview: "Stupiracy" Episode 3 unearths the chaotic story of the 1904 Olympic Marathon held in St. Louis. From hallucinating athletes to unscheduled car rides, Rizz and Tim unwrap the most bizarre marathon in Olympic history.Topics Discussed: The shift of the 1904 Olympics from Chicago to St. Louis due to the World's Fair. The unusual and hazardous conditions of the marathon including extreme heat and minimal water stations. Noteworthy competitors like Fred Lores, who famously "finished" by car, and Thomas Hicks, who crossed the finish line with the aid of strychnine and egg whites. Other memorable incidents involving wild dogs, rotten apples, and unintended detours. Entities Mentioned: 1904 St. Louis World's Fair International Olympic Committee Fred Lores Thomas Hicks Felix Carvajal Len Tao Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this episode of Stupiracy, Rizz and Tim dive into the sweat-drenched saga of the 1904 Olympic Marathon—a tale so wild, it'll make modern marathons look like a walk in the park. Tune in as they recount how St. Louis' sweltering summer hosted a marathon that was more survival horror than sport, featuring wild dogs, rotten apples, and bizarre "performance enhancers." It's history, but not as you know it! Show Notes: Overview: "Stupiracy" Episode 3 unearths the chaotic story of the 1904 Olympic Marathon held in St. Louis. From hallucinating athletes to unscheduled car rides, Rizz and Tim unwrap the most bizarre marathon in Olympic history. Topics Discussed: The shift of the 1904 Olympics from Chicago to St. Louis due to the World's Fair. The unusual and hazardous conditions of the marathon including extreme heat and minimal water stations. Noteworthy competitors like Fred Lores, who famously "finished" by car, and Thomas Hicks, who crossed the finish line with the aid of strychnine and egg whites. Other memorable incidents involving wild dogs, rotten apples, and unintended detours. Entities Mentioned: 1904 St. Louis World's Fair International Olympic Committee Fred Lores Thomas Hicks Felix Carvajal Len Tao Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode of Stupiracy, Rizz and Tim dive into the sweat-drenched saga of the 1904 Olympic Marathon—a tale so wild, it'll make modern marathons look like a walk in the park. Tune in as they recount how St. Louis' sweltering summer hosted a marathon that was more survival horror than sport, featuring wild dogs, rotten apples, and bizarre "performance enhancers." It's history, but not as you know it!Show Notes:Overview: "Stupiracy" Episode 3 unearths the chaotic story of the 1904 Olympic Marathon held in St. Louis. From hallucinating athletes to unscheduled car rides, Rizz and Tim unwrap the most bizarre marathon in Olympic history.Topics Discussed: The shift of the 1904 Olympics from Chicago to St. Louis due to the World's Fair. The unusual and hazardous conditions of the marathon including extreme heat and minimal water stations. Noteworthy competitors like Fred Lores, who famously "finished" by car, and Thomas Hicks, who crossed the finish line with the aid of strychnine and egg whites. Other memorable incidents involving wild dogs, rotten apples, and unintended detours. Entities Mentioned: 1904 St. Louis World's Fair International Olympic Committee Fred Lores Thomas Hicks Felix Carvajal Len Tao Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this episode of Stupiracy, Rizz and Tim dive into the sweat-drenched saga of the 1904 Olympic Marathon—a tale so wild, it'll make modern marathons look like a walk in the park. Tune in as they recount how St. Louis' sweltering summer hosted a marathon that was more survival horror than sport, featuring wild dogs, rotten apples, and bizarre "performance enhancers." It's history, but not as you know it! Show Notes: Overview: "Stupiracy" Episode 3 unearths the chaotic story of the 1904 Olympic Marathon held in St. Louis. From hallucinating athletes to unscheduled car rides, Rizz and Tim unwrap the most bizarre marathon in Olympic history. Topics Discussed: The shift of the 1904 Olympics from Chicago to St. Louis due to the World's Fair. The unusual and hazardous conditions of the marathon including extreme heat and minimal water stations. Noteworthy competitors like Fred Lores, who famously "finished" by car, and Thomas Hicks, who crossed the finish line with the aid of strychnine and egg whites. Other memorable incidents involving wild dogs, rotten apples, and unintended detours. Entities Mentioned: 1904 St. Louis World's Fair International Olympic Committee Fred Lores Thomas Hicks Felix Carvajal Len Tao Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode of Stupiracy, Rizz and Tim dive into the sweat-drenched saga of the 1904 Olympic Marathon—a tale so wild, it'll make modern marathons look like a walk in the park. Tune in as they recount how St. Louis' sweltering summer hosted a marathon that was more survival horror than sport, featuring wild dogs, rotten apples, and bizarre "performance enhancers." It's history, but not as you know it! Show Notes: Overview: "Stupiracy" Episode 3 unearths the chaotic story of the 1904 Olympic Marathon held in St. Louis. From hallucinating athletes to unscheduled car rides, Rizz and Tim unwrap the most bizarre marathon in Olympic history. Topics Discussed: The shift of the 1904 Olympics from Chicago to St. Louis due to the World's Fair. The unusual and hazardous conditions of the marathon including extreme heat and minimal water stations. Noteworthy competitors like Fred Lores, who famously "finished" by car, and Thomas Hicks, who crossed the finish line with the aid of strychnine and egg whites. Other memorable incidents involving wild dogs, rotten apples, and unintended detours. Entities Mentioned: 1904 St. Louis World's Fair International Olympic Committee Fred Lores Thomas Hicks Felix Carvajal Len Tao Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode of Stupiracy, Rizz and Tim dive into the sweat-drenched saga of the 1904 Olympic Marathon—a tale so wild, it'll make modern marathons look like a walk in the park. Tune in as they recount how St. Louis' sweltering summer hosted a marathon that was more survival horror than sport, featuring wild dogs, rotten apples, and bizarre "performance enhancers." It's history, but not as you know it!Show Notes:Overview: "Stupiracy" Episode 3 unearths the chaotic story of the 1904 Olympic Marathon held in St. Louis. From hallucinating athletes to unscheduled car rides, Rizz and Tim unwrap the most bizarre marathon in Olympic history.Topics Discussed: The shift of the 1904 Olympics from Chicago to St. Louis due to the World's Fair. The unusual and hazardous conditions of the marathon including extreme heat and minimal water stations. Noteworthy competitors like Fred Lores, who famously "finished" by car, and Thomas Hicks, who crossed the finish line with the aid of strychnine and egg whites. Other memorable incidents involving wild dogs, rotten apples, and unintended detours. Entities Mentioned: 1904 St. Louis World's Fair International Olympic Committee Fred Lores Thomas Hicks Felix Carvajal Len Tao Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In the 1950's and 1960's, the town of McCaysville, Georgia had an influx of tourists. But instead of coming to town to see the Mayberry-like atmosphere, they were there to pick up something very important: children. Dr. Thomas Hicks provided at least 200 babies for adoption out of his clinic. While helping children in need to find homes is a noble task, there is nothing honorable about the way Dr. Hicks trafficked children from Akron down to Atlanta.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crimecast--4106013/support.

150 Years Ago (January 1874) The editor of The Cold Spring Recorder, citing the burglary of Seth Secor's store on New Year's Eve and "satanic" vandalism inside the Rock Street schoolhouse, lamented: "Our village had a most unenviable reputation between the years 1865 and 1870; but, for several years past the public order has been comparatively well preserved. We regret to be compelled to record our conviction today that we, as a community, are relapsing into the former lawless and shameful state." The three young men accused of breaking into Secor's store offered to meet with an informant at the depot to sell the looted cigars, but only one showed up and was arrested. A second was arrested five days later in Dutchess County; the third remained at large. A resident who wrote an anonymous letter to the Recorder claimed he had opened the door of the saloon that doubled as the entrance to the courthouse and encountered three officers and the suspect arrested at the depot standing at the bar. The prisoner, in handcuffs, was sipping from a glass of rum. After transporting the two burglary suspects to the county jail in Carmel, Officer Morrison and Undersheriff Dykeman had a chilly return. Their driver, after leaving the turnpike, made a wrong turn in the dark and the officers didn't arrive home until 4 a.m. Brian Dailey, coming out of Patterson's store with a paper bag of flour, had confidently swung it over his shoulder when it burst. After three boys, ages 6 to 11, were convicted of stealing brass from Paulding, Kemble & Co., a judge sentenced them to nine days in the Town Hall jail. A police officer from Boonton, New Jersey, visited the village looking for a house painter who fled in a stolen horse and buggy valued at $300 [about $8,000 today]. Detectives from Dutchess County traced Thomas Hicks, accused of robbing and killing his employer, to Cold Spring. Hicks was arrested while waiting for his breakfast at Mrs. Welch's boarding house on Market Street. Police said he had the victim's pocketbook with $120 [$3,100] inside. An 18-year-old student was arrested at the schoolhouse in Fort Montgomery and taken to Albany to face charges by a 28-year-old woman that they had been married in 1872 and he was obligated to support her. He provided an alibi and was released. The Recorder reported: "The regular, weekly deposit of mud has again made itself manifest upon the boots of our men and boys and upon the shoes and dresses of our mothers and our village. Indeed, the same omnipresent stickiness is distributed upon every threshold, tracked through kitchen and parlor, and lies in brown flakes by the bedside when we wake in the morning." Petitions circulated for and against a proposal by residents who lived south of Indian Brook to secede from Philipstown. 125 Years Ago (January 1899) The directors of the Cold Spring National Bank declared a semiannual dividend of 2 percent. Mr. Muller of Hoboken, New Jersey, leased the saloon and cigar store from the estate of the late G. Snider. The Recorder opined about Gov. Theodore Roosevelt, who took office on Jan. 1: "The new executive has been called erratic, but if he lives up to his message New York State will have a fair governor and the charge will fall." The temperature on Monday, Jan. 2, fell to 16 degrees below zero, the coldest day recorded since Jan. 30, 1873, when it reached 28 degrees below, and a day in 1835 when it hit 29 degrees below. After John Delaney fell ill with the grippe [flu], Frank Early filled in for him as the Main Street railroad gate tender. The Recorder noted a state court ruling that allowed people to keep dairy cans if they were so old or worn they could no longer be used to store milk. Dr. John Holland, a graduate of the University of Munich in Bavaria who had worked at hospitals in St. Petersburg, London and Paris, joined the practice of Dr. G.W. Murdock. Dr. Holland was also said to be a talented violinist and pianist. Navigation of the Hudson River between Newbu...

More than 200 babies, known as the “Hicks Babies,” were sold by Dr. Thomas Hicks from the back of the Hicks Community Clinic in McCaysville, Georgia during the 1950s and 1960s. Until his actions came to light, he was a respected and beloved doctor in McCaysville, known for helping everyone…often taking things like a sack of potatoes in return for payment. Some town residents defend his actions to this day, but the “Hicks Babies,” as they became known, are still struggling to find their birth mothers and come to terms with their origins and the damage Hicks did by keeping his practice shrouded in mystery. Hosted and produced by Erica Kelley Researched and written by Gemma HarrisOriginal Graphic Art by Coley Horner Original Music by Rob Harrison of Gamma Radio Edited & Mixed by Brandon Schexnayder & Erica Kelley Sources:southernfriedtruecrime.com/thomas-hicks This episode is brought to you by: Take a break and lose yourself solving a mystery set in the roaring 20's with June's Journey. Download today on iOS or Android.This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/2975465/advertisement

This week on Flightless Bird, David Farrier investigates America's extreme love of cereal. He sets out to answer why America needs over 5000 different types of cereal, and why some of the most popular cereals have been discontinued. He meets with YouTube cereal reviewer Thomas Hicks, AKA The Cereal Snob (https://www.youtube.com/c/CerealSnob), to get the lowdown on how much milk should be used in cereal, and what types of cereal are the best. David also discovers that cereal was invented by John Harvey Kellogg in the 1890s, who created the humble cornflake. David finds that Kellogg was trying to create something so bland it would stop people masturbating or having sex!  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Before Europeans landed in North America, five Indigenous nations around what would become New York State came together to form the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. When the Europeans arrived, the French called them the Iroquois Confederacy, and the English called them the League of Five Nations. Those Five Nations were the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas; the Tuscaroras joined the Confederacy in 1722. Some founding father of the United States, including George Washington and Benjamin Franklin admired the Haudenosaunee and incorporated their ideas into the U.S. Constitution. Despite that admiration, though, the United States government and the state government of New York did not always treat the Haudenosaunee with respect, and Haudenosaunee leaders had to navigate a difficult terrain in maintaining their sovereignty.  Today we're going to look at the relationship between the Haudenosaunee and the United States through the stories of four individuals: Red Jacket, Ely S. Parker, Harriet Maxwell Converse, and Arthur C. Parker. Joining me in this episode is Dr. John C. Winters, Assistant Professor of History at the University of Southern Mississippi and author of The Amazing Iroquois and the Invention of the Empire State. Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Falling Leaves (Piano),” by Oleksii Holubiev, from Pixabay, used under the Pixabay Content License. The episode image is “Red Jacket (Sagoyewatha),” painted by Thomas Hicks in 1868; the painting is in the public domain and can be found in the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution. Additional Sources: Haudenosaunee Confederacy “Haudenosaunee Guide For Educators,” National Museum of the American Indian. “The Haudenosaunee Confederacy and the Constitution,” by Jennifer Davis, Library of Congress, September 21, 2023. “Indian speech, delivered before a gentleman missionary, from Massachusetts, by a chief, commonly called by the white people Red Jacket. His Indian name is Sagu-ua-what-hath, which being interpreted, is Keeper-awake,” Library of Congress, 1805. “The Graves of Red Jacket,” Western New York Heritage. “Red Jacket Medal Returned to Seneca Nation [video],” WGRZ-TV, May 17, 2021. “Ely S. Parker,” Historical Society of the New York Courts.  April 2, 2015 in From the Stacks “‘We Are All Americans:' Ely S. Parker at Appomattox Court House,” by Mariam Touba, New York Historical Society, April 2, 2015. “Engineer Became Highest Ranking Native American in Union Army,” by David Vergun, DOD News, November 2, 2021. “Building to be Named for Ely S. Parker First Indian Commissioner of the BIA Recognized,” U.S. Department of the Interior, December 15, 2000. “‘The Great White Mother': Harriet Maxwell Converse, the Indian Colony of New York City, and the Media, 1885–1903,” by John. C. Winters, The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, 21(4), 279-300.  “Harriet Maxwell Converse,” PBS.org. “Harriet Maxwell Converse,” Poets.org. “Research and Collections of Arthur C. Parker,” New York State Museum. “Arthur C. Parker and the Society of the American Indian, 1911-1916,” by S. Carol Berg, New York History, vol. 81, no. 2, 2000, pp. 237–46.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Originally Aired: October 24, 2022 On this episode, we welcome Thomas Hicks,  Chair of the Election Assistance Commission  and Academy Fellow to discuss voter engagement and turnout, security in elections, and advantages of a decentralized voting system.Links:EAC.govHelpamericavote.govSupport the Podcast Today at:donate@napawash.org or 202-347-3190Music Credits: Sea Breeze by Vlad Gluschenko | https://soundcloud.com/vgl9Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.comCreative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licensehttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en_US

Join us on an intense exploration of the US political landscape, with our special guest - Thomas Hicks, a dedicated voter from Atlanta, Georgia. Thomas brings his unique perspective on the voting process in his home state, where recent elections have been nail-bitingly close. Amid the swirling controversy around the integrity of Georgia's voting process, he stands firm in his faith in the system and passionately advocates for the implementation of secure online voting. From the legacy of the Trump presidency to the spectre of a Trump-Biden rematch, our conversation traverses a vast political terrain. We delve into the changing dynamics of union votes, the pervasive influence of lobbyists and the dark shadow of money in politics. The repercussions of Trump's judicial appointments and the spiralling national debt, are some of the high stakes topics we grapple with. We also contemplate how the two main political parties can truly champion the cause of the middle class and society's less privileged. But, hold onto your seats because the ride gets even bumpier as we lay bare the recent disturbing events that have shaken the foundation of US politics. We pick apart the multiple legal troubles Trump is currently embroiled in, including the shocking attempted siege of the US Capitol. Discover how the Presidential Records Act could potentially lead to espionage charges against Trump. Lastly, we reflect on our work on the Common Bridge, a platform for productive, non-partisan dialogue, and our ongoing commitment to involving our listeners in these compelling, timely discussions. So gear up and join us in this extraordinarily riveting journey.Support the showEngage the conversation on Substack at The Common Bridge!

If you're a Christian then you're going to love our very first unashamedly Christian interview. Jane goes deep into healing through Christ and I try to follow her. Do I keep up? Well listen in and make your own mind up. Then let me know! She takes a very intimate look at her off and on relationship with Jesus and what 'whole' means to her. Listen and be prepared to be stretched - in a good way. I know the interview stretched me and really enjoy that. Would you like to stretch me with a new take on thriving as an adoptee? Please email me simon@thrivingadoptees.comHere's more about Jane:As a baby sold at birth, I've made my way through life asking a lot of questions. Born and sold out of the Hicks Clinic in McCaysville, Georgia, to a couple from Akron, Ohio, as you can imagine, I grew up always looking for answers. I've made my way as an investigator, first as a novice and then as a professional. Gaining an education in English and Criminal Justice from the University of Akron.Beginning in the private sector in my late teens, cutting my teeth with basic private investigations research casework, to surveillance for workers compensation fraud and continuing with my work in birth family search, I've covered all the bases of working with people and situations. Today I'm considered a subject matter expert in the field of black market adoption search, my expertise is contributed to the decades in the making, unraveling of the mystery of the Hicks Clinic.I was the first adoptee to search for the truth of what went on at the Hicks Clinic and broke the case and subsequent story in 1997. My personal birth search, as well as, acting as a search facilitator and representative for those sold by Doctor Thomas Hicks, has personalized my expertise and reputation. Today, I continue to assist those who are still bound to the Hicks Clinic and looking for answers. I've found most of what I was looking for, but not how I ended up at the clinic in the first place. The search of what happened in the clinic will not end until the deception which has marked everyone it touches, is burned off and truth restored. Truth that is owed to all of us lost and torn from the Hicks Clinic.https://www.janeblasio.com/https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063382950567https://www.instagram.com/janeblasiobonafide/

Czy zawsze warto szperać w przeszłości? A co jeśli za historią adopcji stoi nielegalny handel dziećmi i rodzice przekonani o śmierci własnego potomostwa? Poznaj szczegóły makabrycznej działalności "Kliniki Hicksa"."Mordercy w bieli" to seria podcastów true-crime o zabójcach w szatach lekarza opowiedziana głosem Agnieszki Więdłochy.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

A number of individuals have stepped up to run in local May 6 elections; the filing deadline for candidates was Feb. 17 at 5 p.m. Due to office closures for Presidents Day, the Wilson County News was unable to confirm the candidates for all local cities and school districts planning elections by press time Feb. 20. However, here are some of the candidates. City councils •Elmendorf — Place 1, Hipolito “Polo” Maldonado; Place 2, Thomas Hicks; and Place 4, Manuel Decena; all are unopposed •La Vernia — Three at-large seats, Gary Gilbert and Garrett Rabel •Stockdale — Mayor, Juan Jesus...Article Link

In today's episode, we kick off the new year by digging into the history of the for-profit adoption industry in America. We touch on key players like the Orphan Trains, Georgia Tann, and Appalachia's own Dr. Thomas Hicks. But first! We have some exciting announcements that you don't want to miss, and I take my first swing at covering some current events taking place in West Virginia.This week's episode contains a TW for content related to child trafficking/abuse and issues related to adoption/reproduction/abortion/infertility.If you enjoy the content of this episode, you can support the show at: http://linktr.ee/rednecksrisingResources & References:1) Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate2) https://news4sanantonio.com/news/nation-world/deputy-is-on-leave-after-fatally-striking-13-year-old-with-his-police-cruiser?fbclid=IwAR0-TjItVgNadl1YwNYmn81Jg64v0v-IfJwAa1foNI9YjCNPoX_o7s8GRCE#3) https://socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/programs/child-welfarechild-labor/orphan-trains/4) https://familytofamilysupport.org/2020/01/29/georgia-tann-legacy/5) https://iu.pressbooks.pub/perspectives4/chapter/the-black-market-behind-adoption-in-modern-america/6) https://www.chattanoogan.com/2020/3/8/404422/Jerry-Summers-Copperhill-McCaysville-s.aspx7) https://www.adoptionbirthmothers.com/adoption-truth/adoption-industry/8) https://shepherdexpress.com/news/features/exposing-the-for-profit-adoption-industry/9) https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/10/adopt-baby-cost-process-hard/620258/10) https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/07/when-abortion-was-illegal-adoption-was-a-cruel-industry-are-we-returning-to-those-days/11) https://www.genome.gov/about-genomics/fact-sheets/Eugenics-and-Scientific-Racism12) https://ihpi.umich.edu/news/forced-sterilization-policies-us-targeted-minorities-and-those-disabilities-and-lasted-21st13) https://www.chsamerica.org/history

If the nation learned anything in the last couple of weeks, it's that the process of voting is anything but simple. People overseas and people with disabilities can encounter logistics barriers to voting. The operations of elections is where the Election Assistance Commission comes in. To learn more about that operation, Federal Drive host Tom Temin spoke with commission chairman Thomas Hicks, who also just became a fellow at NAPA: the National Academy of Public Administration.

On this episode, we welcome Thomas Hicks,  Chair of the Election Assistance Commission  and Academy Fellow to discuss voter engagement and turnout, security in elections, and advantages of a decentralized voting system.Links:EAC.govHelpamericavote.govSupport the Podcast Today at:donate@napawash.org or 202-347-3190Music Credits: Sea Breeze by Vlad Gluschenko | https://soundcloud.com/vgl9Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.comCreative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licensehttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en_US

The national midterm elections are fast approaching, with candidates campaigning for offices across the United States. The Election Assistance Commission, the federal elections clearinghouse, turns 20 this year during a midterm year and EAC chair Thomas Hicks says his group has been helping state and local governments prepare for the midterm elections using lessons learned from recent previous elections. Recently, GovExec correspondent and frequent GovExec Daily guest Courtney Bublé interviewed Hicks about the ways he and his agency are preparing for the midterm elections. In this episode, Courtney's speaks to Hicks about the EAC's work with other federal agencies and other levels of government to make elections fairer and more secure.

Red Apple Media CEO John Catsimatidis is joined in-studio by Lidia Curanaj, Judge Richard Weinberg, Nelson Happy, Tony Carbonetti, Ed Cox, and fmr. Governor David Paterson. Columnist Michael Goodwin calls in to discuss a potential Eric Adams presidential run. Partnership for New York City CEO Kathy Wylde weighs in on the crime epidemic plaguing NYC businesses. GOYA Foods CEO Bob Unanue offers his condolences to the victims and families in Uvalde, TX. RNC Co-Chair Thomas Hicks describes what the Republican Party is doing to unseat Biden and his friends. Senator Al D'Amato sounds off on inflation, gun laws, and much more! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

RNC Co-Chair Thomas Hicks describes what the Republican Party is doing to unseat Biden and his friends. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Thomas holds many roles including husband, father, run club president, and many others too many to name. However, in all of those roles Thomas looks at where he has been to help him understand that anything is possible if we can continue to push ourselves forward. Join along for Thomas' journey with Multiple Sclerosis and what it has meant for every aspect of his journey, but more for his active journey. Hear the highs and lows, and how his running journey has transferred to a knowledge and insight that gave him perspective to respond to the COVID19 pandemic as the president of the Tidewater Striders. Don't forget to join our Active Faith Community on Facebook to share your journey and encourage and support others in their active journeys as well. https://www.facebook.com/groups/999882660818141 (Active Faith Facebook Community) Find us @activefaithpod on Facebook and Instagram Find Andrew on Social Media:Instagram: @RunninRev89Facebook: @andrewware12 Background Music from Yevhen Lokhmatov, 'Race For Glory' http://www.melodyloops.com/tracks/race-for-glory/ (www.melodyloops.com/tracks/race-for-glory/) Granted permission to use this Music by Melody Loops and its licensees, including Andrew Ware.

Join us as we discuss the topic of DETERMINATION with our special guest from Thomas Hicks, President of the Tidewater Striders as we talk about his determination to run and win numberous races while suffering from MS well into his 50s. Thomas' determination and love for his family will encourage anyone who is struggling to see that if HE can do it, YOU can too. We wrap up our episode, as per normal, with Que Pasa Hampton Roads and What's on Your Heart. Get your tissues, because this one is a tear-jerker and you're gonna love it!      

Struck with Multiple Sclerosis years ago, Thomas Hicks keeps on running! https://www.tidewaterstriders.com/ (https://www.tidewaterstriders.com/) www.forgedgloryathletics.com

Harvey Brownstone conducts an in-depth interview with Jane Blasio, Author of “Taken at Birth: Stolen Babies, Hidden Lies, and My Journey to Finding Home”About Harvey's guest:Today's guest has written one of the most shocking books of deceit and trauma that  I've ever read.  Knowing that she was adopted, she began searching at the age of 18, for her birth family.  What should have been a simple process to access her adoption records, turned into a gut-wrenching 30-year investigation and ordeal, because she discovered that she had been sold as a newborn baby in McCaysville, Georgia, by the town's local doctor, Thomas Hicks, who had built up a lucrative business of selling babies.  Sometimes the mothers were in trouble and willingly gave their babies away.  And sometimes, the doctor lied to the mothers, told them their babies had died, and then sold them to desperate couples who couldn't have children of their own.  Over 200 babies were illegally sold or given away by Dr. Hicks in the 1950s and 60s.   In 1997 our guest broke this story to the media, which launched a deluge of birth mothers and illegally adopted children searching for the truth.  In 2019, the TLC television channel produced a 3-part documentary series called “Taken at Birth”  about this story.  And last year, our guest released her book, entitled “Taken at Birth: Stolen Babies, Hidden Lies and my Journey to Finding Home”.  For more interviews and podcasts go to: https://www.harveybrownstoneinterviews.com/https://www.janeblasio.com/https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063382950567https://www.instagram.com/janeblasiobonafide#JaneBlasio  #TakenAtBirth  #harveybrownstoneinterviews

What makes a good podcast guest? We had so much fun last season with Thomas Hicks, a.k.a. The Cereal Snob, that we had to bring him back to share his secrets. From learning how to show up as a fuller, more energized version of yourself to embracing your journey, Thomas has all the tips you need to own your space and story. Join us for a special bonus episode of The Hectic Podcast.In this episode, you'll learn:What National Cereal Day looks like for one of the world's premier cereal reviewers.About embracing yourself uninhibitedly and how that can help you make the biggest impression on everyone you meet.How using his phone to amplify his growth helped him best represent himself and his brand.Why connecting with the people who resonate with your whole self is more fulfilling than being liked by everyone.What Thomas learned about himself when he pursued his dream of acting in L.A.The story behind his tattoo, plus the reasons he wants to change it now.Why the journey you take to pursue a goal is so much more important than achieving it.How to redefine success through your experiences rather than your accomplishments.What Thomas wishes for the world in 2022.Plus, some easy ways to pursue that wish for yourself.

Ever heard of the “Hicks Babies”? Devon takes us for a crazy ride by reviewing the details of the obstetrician who delivered hundreds of babies at his clinic, then sold them for his own profit.  https://www.aetv.com/real-crime/hicks-clinic-stolen-babies  Intro/outro music: New Media by Olive Musique. Visit our website: www.medcrimespodcast.com. Check out our merchandise: https://www.spreadshirt.com/shop/medcrimes/ Instagram: @medcrimespodcast

We recommend pouring a bowl of your favorite cereal before listening to this week's chat with leading cereal influencer (yes, you read that right), Cereal Snob's Thomas Hicks. Along with giving us a peek at the world of cereal reviews, Thomas shares what he's learned from this work and how he's using this experience to overhaul his brand. We also touch on authenticity and human connection, exploring how we can be better people and better creators through genuine curiosity about the people we meet.In this episode, you'll learn:What it means to be one of the world's leading cereal influencers.How Thomas went from noticing a new flavor of Cap'n Crunch to being a leader in this space.About his petition to bring back Rice Krispy Treats cereal and why you should sign it.Why he recently unlisted nearly 200 of his YouTube videos and how it plays into his current rebrand.The ways Thomas is using strategic experience, data, and knowledge to differentiate himself from other reviewers.What he loves about creating content.How perfectionism can strangle creativity, plus how he's fighting it in his own work.Why authenticity is essential to everything that we do in life.How connecting as people and pushing past labels makes the world a better place.Thomas' number one key to success.

Quick, switch over to Vodacast to see the pictures I talk about in the episode! From using a train in a car race to marathon doping with deadly poison, there's far more excitement in racing than simply declaring a winner. YBOF Book; Audiobook (basically everywhere but Audible); Merch! Hang out with your fellow Brainiacs  .Reach out and touch Moxie on Facebook, Twitter,  or Instagram. Support the show Music by Kevin MacLeod, Steve Oxen, David Fesliyan.   Links to all the research resources are on our website.     Born in New York in 1901, Frank Hayes dreamed of being a race horse jockey.  Though he was short in stature, he was too heavy for the job, so he found himself working as a groom and stablehand instead.  Sadly, Hayes wouldn't live to see himself ride a horse to victory, but he *would win a race.  My name's...   LeMans, Grand Prix, Bathurst, the Indy 500, car races are big business around the world, but there was a time when people believed these new horseless carriages were a novelty item, too flimsy for such an activity.  In 1908, a race was organized to prove otherwise, in which six teams of drivers tried to be the first to get from New York to Paris.  Considering the state of the automobile technology and the lack of road infrastructure at the time, that was no mean feat.  Only three of the six competitors would even complete the course.  The race was a 169-day ordeal, still the longest motorsport event ever held. The starting line was set up in Times Square, on a gray morning, the 12th of February.  The six driving teams competed under four flags, Germany, France, Italy and the United States. The French set off with the highest number of cars, as three distinct automobile manufacturers participated.  The event brought almost 250,000 people on the streets of New York City to witness the start of the contest, considerably more crowd than the very first ball drop in New York at the New Year's Eve celebration, welcoming 1908.  The starter's gun fired at 11:15 AM, 15 minutes late.  Mayor George McClellan was supposed to fire the pistol, but he wasn't there on time and apparently, an impatient bystander did the job and the racers took off.  This was the first of many unexpected challenges.The planned route would take the racers across the United States, north through Canada into Alaska, over the frozen Bering Strait to Siberia, across Russia to Europe and finally to Paris.  The decision to have the race rolling in the midst of winter-time added to the challenges of the racers.  Drivers needed to stop often to repair their cars. They even used locomotive lines when it was impossible to find the road.  Not the rails, though.  The American car straddled the rails, bumping along on the ties for hundreds of miles.  The Italian team complained that this was cheating.  The car that would win had a 4 cylinder, 60 hp engine and a top speed of 60 mph.  Cars of the day offered little in rider comfort or amenities, like a roof.  They drove around the world, fifteen hours a day, in winter, in open-top cars without windshields.  Antifreeze hadn't been invented yet, so the radiators had to be drained each night.    While most teams were made of a driver and a mechanic, some teams included journalists, and even a poet, instead.  The first car, a French Sizaire-Naudin, dropped out after only 96 miles, with a broken differential they could not repair.  Another French team lost a man after they became stuck in the snow and the teammates began to fight.  They were about to duel with pistols, when the mechanic fired his assistant, an Artic travel expert he would be sorely lacking later on.  Not even in Iowa yet, the Italian car had mechanical troubles and the driver tried to cheat by loading the car onto a freight train.  He abandoned the plan when a photographer caught him in the act.  The car's owner then sent him a telegram, received a cable from the owners of his car: “Quit race, sell car and come home.”  The American team, driving a Thomas Flyer, took the lead when crossing the United States. The team managed to arrive in San Francisco in 41 days, 8 hours, and 15 minutes, 9,000 miles ahead of the car in second place.  This was actually the very first crossing of the US by an automobile in winter.  The route then took the drivers to Valdez, Alaska, by ship.  The American driver, George Schuster wasted no time investigating the Valdez-Fairbanks Trail in a single-horse sleigh, and concluded that the only way to cross Alaska in a car would be to dismantle it and ship the parts by dogsled.  The Parisian race committee abandoned the idea of Alaska and the Bering Strait and ordered the Americans to return to Seattle. The new plan was for the cars to sail to Vladivostok and drive to Paris from there.  While the Americans were still at sailing back to Seattle, their competitors arrived there and set sail for Russia. Then the Americans lost time getting their Russian visas in order.  The Flyer had been the first to arrive on the Pacific coast but was now the last to leave, a weeks behind the competition.  The race committee also decided that  the American team was given an allowance of 15 days, meaning the remaining teams could beat them to Paris by two weeks and still lose, *and penalized the team that tried to use a train.    The driving resumed from Vladivostok, but by this point, there were only three competitors left: The German Protos, the Italian Züst, and the Flyer from America.  Not an American Flyer; a little red wagon wouldn't fair well in these conditions.  What do all these cars look like anyway?  I'm glad you asked!  I put pictures in the Vodacast app, partner for this episode.  Vodacast is a brand new podcast player that makes it easy to see all the bonus content the creator wants to show you all in one place.  It even syncs to the audio, so you can see what I'm talking about right then and there!  It's still early-days, but it's going to be a real boon for both listeners and creators.   So the drivers, who you can see on Vodacast, agreed to start again evenly matched.  They had extreme difficulty finding petrol in Siberia, leading the French driver to try to bribe the other teams to let him ride on one of their cars, so he could still at least be *on a winning car.  This prompted his sponsor to pull him from the race.  The two two teams faced another set of major challenges as passing through the tundra realms of Siberia and Manchuria.  The spring thaw turned the Asian plains into a seemingly endless swamp.  Progress measured in *feet per hour, rather than miles.  The driver had to push their cars as much as drive them and even resorted to hitch up teams of horses to pull them along.  They also got lost, a lot.  The racers couldn't ask locals for directions as no one spoke Russian and a wrong turn could cost you 15 hours.  Once they neared Europe, roads improved and the race sped up. The Germans arrived in Paris on July 26, while the Americans were still in Berlin, but the 15 day allowance for the Americans and the 15 day penalty for the Germans meant that the Flyer had a month to drive to the next country.  The American team arrived in Paris on July 30th, 1908, to win the race, having covered approx 16,700 km/10377.  Even though the victor had been declared, the Italians trove on and made it to Paris in September 1908. The victory meant huge recognition for Shuster, who in 2010 was also inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame.  If you're ever in Reno, NV, you can see the Flyer in the National Automobile Museum.   ADS - Podcorn and Healthy Postnatal   America's first Olympics, held in 1904 in St. Louis as part of that year's World's Fair, stand unchallenged for the title of most bizarre.  The Olympics' signal event, the marathon, was conceived to honor the classical heritage of Greece and underscore the connection between the ancient and modern.  The outcome was so scandalous that the event was nearly abolished for good.  A few of the runners were recognized marathoners, rest could be described as “assorted.”  There was a man who did all his training at night because he had a day job as a bricklayer, ten Greeks who had never run a marathon, two men of the Tsuana tribe of South Africa who were in St. Louis as part of the South African World's Fair exhibit and who arrived at the starting line barefoot, and a Cuban mailman named Félix Carbajal, attired in a white, long-sleeved shirt, long, dark pants, a beret and a pair of street shoes, who raised money to come to the States by demonstrating his running prowess by running the length of the island.  Upon his arrival in New Orleans, he lost all his money on a dice game and had to walk and hitchhike to St. Louis.   The race was run on August 30, starting at 3:03 p.m.  If you know anything about daytime temperatures, that's what we call hot time.  Heat and humidity soared into the 90s.  The 24.85-mile course involved roads inches deep in dust, seven hills, varying from 100-to-300 feet high, some with brutally long ascents, cracked stone strewn across the roadway, the roadway that was still open to traffic, trains, trolley cars and people walking their dogs.  There were only *two places where athletes could secure fresh water, from a water tower at six miles and a roadside well at 12 miles.  Cars carrying coaches and physicians drove alongside the runners, kicking the dust up and launching coughing spells.   William Garcia of California nearly became the first fatality of an Olympic marathon we he collapsed on the side of the road and was hospitalized with hemorrhaging; the dust had coated his esophagus and ripped his stomach lining.  Len Tau, one of the South African participants, was chased a mile off course by wild dogs.  Félix Carvajal trotted along in his cumbersome shoes and billowing shirt, making good time even though he paused to chat with spectators in broken English.  A bit further along the course, he stopped at an orchard and snacked on some apples, which turned out to be rotten. Suffering from stomach cramps, he lay down and took a nap.  At the nine-mile mark cramps plagued Fred Lorz, who decided to hitch a ride in one of the accompanying automobiles, waving at spectators and fellow runners as he passed.   Thomas Hicks, the bricklayer, one of the early American favorites, begged his two-man support crew for a drink at the 10-mile mark. They refused, instead sponging out his mouth with warm distilled water.  (Purposeful dehydration was considered a positive 115 years ago.)  Seven miles from the finish, his handlers fed him a concoction of strychnine and egg whites—the first recorded instance of drug use in the modern Olympics.  Strychnine, in small doses, was commonly used a stimulant.  Hicks' team also carried a flask of French brandy but decided to withhold it until they could gauge his condition.   Meanwhile, Lorz, recovered from his cramps, emerged from his 11-mile ride in the automobile. One of Hicks' handlers saw him and ordered him off the course, but Lorz kept running and finished with a time of just under three hours. The crowd roared and began chanting, “An American won!”  Alice Roosevelt, the 20-year-old daughter of President Theodore Roosevelt, placed a wreath upon Lorz's head and was just about to lower the gold medal around his neck when, one witness reported, “someone called an indignant halt to the proceedings with the charge that Lorz was an impostor.” The cheers turned to boos. Lorz smiled and claimed that he had never intended to accept the honor; he finished only for the sake of a “joke.”  You know, it was just a prank, bro.   Hicks, pumping with strychnine, had grown ashen and limp.  When he heard that Lorz had been disqualified he perked up and forced his legs to keep going.  His trainers gave him another dose of strychnine and egg whites, this time with some brandy to wash it down. They fetched warm water and soaked his body and head.  He began hallucinating, believing that the finish line was still 20 miles away.  In the last mile he begged for something to eat, then he begged to lie down. He was given more brandy and two more egg whites. Swinging into the stadium, he tried to run but was reduced to a graceless shuffle. His trainers carried him over the line, holding him aloft while his feet moved back and forth, and he was declared the winner.   It took four doctors and one hour for Hicks to feel well enough just to leave the grounds. He had lost eight pounds during the course of the race, and declared, “Never in my life have I run such a touch course. The terrific hills simply tear a man to pieces.” Hicks and Lorz would meet again at the Boston Marathon the following year, which Lorz won fair and square.  Bonus fact: The 1904 Olympics also saw gymnast George Eyser earned six medals, including three gold, despite his wooden leg.   MIDROLL  Patreon, names and increase Review and CTA While it's usually easy for humans on a race course to navigate, how then do homing pigeons figure out where they are?  A researcher at the US Geological Survey, Jonathan Hagstrum, has come up with a novel suggestion. It involves, of all things, pigeon races.  In Europe, and to a lesser extent in the US, pigeon racing has become a passionately-followed sport for which birds are carefully bred and trained.  Birds from many lofts are taken to a common distant location, released together, and their return speeds timed.  90% of the birds usually return within a few days, and eventually almost all do.   On Sunday, June 29, 1997, a great race was held to celebrate the centenary of the Royal Pigeon Racing Association.  More than 60,000 homing pigeons were released at 6:30 AM from a field in Nantes in southern France, flying to lofts all over southern England, 400-500mi/640-800km away.  By 11:00 AM, the majority of the racing birds had made it out of France and were over the English Channel.  The fastest birds should have arrived at their lofts by early afternoon. But they didn't.   A few thousand of the birds straggled in over the next few days.  Most were never seen again. The loss of so many birds was a disaster of previously unheard proportions in the pigeon racing world.  One bird could get lost, maybe a hundred, but tens of thousands?   A theory would later emerge.  At the very same time the racing pigeons were crossing the Channel, 11:00 AM, the Concorde supersonic airliner was flying along the Channel on its morning flight from Paris to New York.  In flight, the Concorde generated a shock wave that pounded down toward the earth, a carpet of sound almost a hundred miles wide. The racing pigeons flying below the Concorde could not have escaped the intense wave of sound. The birds that did eventually arrive at their lofts were actually lucky to be more tortoise than hare.  They were still south of the Channel when the SST passed over, ahead of them.  Perhaps racing pigeons locate where they are using atmospheric infrasounds that the Concorde obliterated.  Low frequency sounds can travel thousands of miles from their sources. That's why you can hear distant thunder.  Pigeons can hear these infrasounds very well as they use them for navigation.   What sort of infrasounds do pigeons use for guidance?  All over the world, there is one infrasound, the very low frequency acoustic shock waves generated by ocean waves banging against one another!  Like an acoustic beacon, a constant stream of these tiny seismic waves would always say where the ocean is.  This same infrasound mapping sense may play an important part in the long distance navigation of other creatures. It could explain how Monarch butterflies in the US are able to find one small locality in Mexico, or how Brazilian sea turtles are able to find their way to their homes on tiny Ascension Island a thousand miles out in the Atlantic.  Even more valuable to a racing pigeon looking for home, infrasounds reflect from cliffs, mountains, and other steep-sided features of the earth's surface. Ocean wave infrasounds reflecting off of local terrain could provide a pigeon with a detailed sound picture of its surroundings, near and far.  The enormous wave of infrasound generated by the Concorde's sonic boom would have blotted out all of the normal oceanic infrasound information. Any bird flying in its path would lose its orientation.  The incident is referred to as the Great Pigeon Race Disaster.  The Concorde stopped flying six years later, for reason unrelated to the pigeons. Not every race goes to the swiftest, one was meant to go to the friskiest.  Charles Vance Millar practiced law in Ontario for 45 years until his death in 1926.  He was also a shrewd investor, which meant there was a nice fat bank account before his fatal heart attack.  A lifelong bachelor with no close relatives, Millar wrote up a will that was as mischievous as he had been. For example, Millar would amuse himself by dropping dollar bills on the sidewalk and then watching the expressions of the people who bent to furtively pocket the cash.  In death, Millar outdid himself in roguishness. He wrote “This Will is necessarily uncommon and capricious because I have no dependents or near relations and no duty rests upon me to leave any property at my death and what I do leave is proof of my folly in gathering and retaining more than I required in my lifetime.”  He left the shared tenancy of a Jamaican vacation spot to three men who could not stand the sight of each other.  He tested the resolve of teetotallers by leaving them shares in companies involved in the alcohol business.  The Ontario Jockey Club is an august body whose membership is drawn from society's upper crust, so Millar left shares in the club to an unsavoury character who existing members would find repellent and to two opponents of racetrack gambling.   He parcelled out much of his estate to test his theory that every person had a price; the only mystery being at what level would greed trump principle.  But, it was Clause 9 of the will that caused the most fuss; it was the legacy that triggered a race to conceive.  Simply put, he directed the residue of his estate be given to the Toronto mother who gave birth to the most children in the ten years immediately following his death.  The money involved wasn't chump change. By the time the race came to an end, the total prize was worth $750,000; that would be a bit more than $12 million today.  What came to be called the Stork Derby was on, especially at the three year mark, when the Stock Market Crash of 1929 ushered in the Great Depression.  You might have heard of it. With so many people experiencing unemployment and poverty, the pot of gold offered by Charles Millar was enticing, even if the attempt meant creating a *lot for mouths to feed.   Newspapers followed the fortunes and fecundity of the contestants closely.  It was a welcome distraction from grim reality.  Five women leading the pack, mostly lower income and already with a slew of children, became household names.  Those five of most fruitful loins had delivered 56 kids between them, 32 of which had born by 1933.  From Time Magazine from Christmas Eve 1934: “Last week in Toronto each of the two leading contenders for the prize money bore a child. Mrs. Frances Lillian Kenny, 31, gave birth to a girl, her eleventh child since the race began. Mrs. Grace Bagnato, 41, gave birth to a boy, her ninth ...”  While citizens followed the race keenly, the Ontario provincial government was not amused. It called the maternal marathon “the most revolting and disgusting exhibition ever put on in a civilized country.”   VODACAST   Midnight on Halloween 1936 was the deadline for baby-birthing.  On October 19, The Daily Journal-World of Lawrence, Kansas carried a story that started, “A hesitant stork circled uncertainly today over 1097 West Dundas Street with what looked like a $750,000 baby in his well-worn bill.”  However, the productive resident of that address Grace Bagnato was soon disqualified from the derby; her husband turned out to be an illegal Italian immigrant and that didn't sit well with the authorities. Everything old is new again, eh?  Lillian Kenny, who had ten births to her credit, was also tossed out of the event because she had the misfortune to deliver two stillbirths and that was declared not to count.  Pauline Clarke also gave birth ten times during the competition period but several of her babies were conceived out of wedlock; an activity deeply frowned upon at the time, so they were out.   As the final whistle blew, four women were tied at nine babies each.  Annie Smith, Alice Timleck, Kathleen Nagle, and Isobel MacLean each received $125,000,or about $2mil today.  Lillian Kenny and Pauline Clarke were handed consolation prizes of $12,500 apiece, or $20K.  Mrs. Bagnato, got nothing.   When Millar's law partner found the will he thought it was a joke rather than a legal document. Others thought its purpose was to tie the legal system into knots.  According to The Canadian Encyclopedia, “The question of whether Millar intended his will to take effect or merely to amuse his lawyer friends remains in doubt.”  The Ontario government, which had earlier huffed and puffed about the unseemly nature of the Stork Derby, tried several times to have Charles Millar's will declared null and void. The premier, Mitchell Hepburn, had said it was “the duty of the government to stop this fiasco.”   A few of Millar's *distant relatives popped up to challenge the will; hoping to score the jackpot. But, the will, and its Stork Derby clause, held up and, eventually, the Supreme Court of Canada said it was valid.   It's pleasing to report that the winners handled their legacies sensibly and were able to buy homes and provide an education for their children. The winners, that is.  Nobody knows how many women started the Stork Derby and then dropped out. However, by the end, at least two dozen mothers had produced at least eight babies. This placed an enormous burden on the families who were suffering through the Great Depression with 25% of Toronto families receiving government support in 1935.   The prize money was a direct result of Millar's capricious nature.  He once missed the ferry between Windsor, Canada and Detroit.  This angered him so he bought the property that would eventually be used to construct the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel, which put the ferries out of business.  It was money from this investment that largely funded the Stork Derby.   And that's….When Frank Hayes was given the chance to fill in for another jockey, he had to lose a lot of weight fast, like 10 lbs/4kilos in 24 hours, which he probably did by not eating or drinking and possibly sweating or purging.  Doctors then and now think that's why he died suddenly of a heart attack in the second half of the race.  He didn't fall out of the saddle though, even after his horse crossed the finish line first.  He was declared the victor, and remains the only jockey to have ever won while dead.  The horse, Sweet Kiss, was immediately retired, because no one wanted to ride a horse nicknamed Sweet Kiss of Death.  Remember...Thanks    Some races go off the rails, but there are plenty that were made to be weird.  Every year, young women line the streets of Moscow to run for a higher purpose – shopping.  Glamour magazine hosts an annual stiletto race. Young women strap on their tallest heels (3.5”/9cm minimum), and run a 164ft/50 meter course in hopes of winning a $3,000 gift card. Most of the women taped their shoes to their feet, but that did not stop all the trips, slips, and falls.  Thanks for spending part of your day with me.   Sources: https://www.thevintagenews.com/2017/01/01/the-historic-new-york-to-paris-race-in-1908/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-1904-olympic-marathon-may-have-been-the-strangest-ever-14910747/ http://biologywriter.com/on-science/articles/pigeons/ https://owlcation.com/humanities/The-Toronto-Stork-Derby https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/paris-or-bust-the-great-new-york-to-paris-auto-race-of-1908-116784616/  

Investigator and author of “Taken at Birth: Stolen Babies, Hidden Lies, and My Journey to Finding Home” Jane Blasio shares her story of going from finding out she was adopted to finding out she was one of thousands of babies sold by Dr. Thomas Hicks.

Investigator and author of “Taken at Birth: Stolen Babies, Hidden Lies, and My Journey to Finding Home” Jane Blasio shares her story of going from finding out she was adopted to finding out she was one of thousands of babies sold by Dr. Thomas Hicks.

On this week's episode of “The Christian Post Podcast,” reporter Leah Klett unveils the absolutely unbelievable story about an abortion doctor who sold 200 babies on the black market — and victim Jane Blasio's journey to uncover the truth. “[Blasio] discovered that she was one of 200 babies sold in an illegal operation run in the 1950s and 60s by a Georgia abortion doctor named Thomas Hicks,” Klett explained. Listen to Klett reveal the details of this shocking story on this episode of "The Christian Post Podcast." 

20 Minutes of Free Learning: https://www.wirebuzz.com/jordan https://www.wirebuzz.com/jason  

In this week's case, we are going to be looking at Dr. Thomas Hicks and his clinic. The Hicks Clinic performed illegal abotions and was a front for an illegal adoption ring that wasn't discovered until one of the children looked into her ancestry.

The need for content and brand building to scale your company is becoming more apparent everyday, just ask a Youtuber. As an entrepreneur, whether your a start-up or an established company, people don't just buy your products and services, they buy you and your core values. Being the face of your brand allows you to build that connection with your audience; more so, it makes your company more familiar, approachable and authentic.  Thomas Hicks shares what's worked in 5 years of building his own brand on his channel The Cereal Snob

Welcome to episode forty-eight of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs. This one looks at “Rock With the Caveman” by Tommy Steele, and the birth of the British rock and roll industry. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a bonus episode available. This one’s on “The Death of Rock and Roll” by the Maddox Brothers and Rose, in which we look at a country group some say invented rock & roll, and how they reacted badly to it  —-more—- Resources As always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. This double-CD set contains all Steele’s rock and roll material, plus a selection of songs from the musicals he appeared in later. This MP3 compilation, meanwhile, contains a huge number of skiffle records and early British attempts at rock and roll, including Steele’s. Much of the music is not very good, but I can’t imagine a better way of getting an understanding of the roots of British rock. Pete Frame’s The Restless Generation is the best book available looking at British 50s rock and roll from a historical perspective. Billy Bragg’s Roots, Radicals, and Rockers: How Skiffle Changed the World is one of the best books I’ve read on music at all, and covers Steele from the skiffle perspective. Fings Ain’t What They Used T’Be: The Life of Lionel Bart by David & Caroline Stafford gave me a lot of information on Steel’s songwriting partner. Steele’s autobiography, Bermondsey Boy, covers his childhood and early stardom. I am not 100% convinced of its accuracy, but it’s an entertaining book, and if nothing else probably gives a good idea of the mental atmosphere in the poor parts of South London in the war and immediate post-war years. And George Melly’s Revolt Into Style was one of the first books to take British pop culture seriously, and puts Steele into a wider context of British pop, both music and art. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Let’s talk a little bit about the Piltdown Man. Piltdown Man was an early example of a hominid — a missing link between the apes and humans. Its skull was discovered in 1912 in Piltdown, East Sussex, by the eminent archaeologist Charles Dawson, and for years was considered one of the most important pieces of evidence in the story of human evolution. And then, in 1953, it was discovered that the whole thing was a hoax, and not even a particularly good one. Someone had just taken the jaw of an orang-utan and the top part of a human skull, and filed down the orang-utan teeth, and then stained the bones to make them look old. It was almost certainly the work of Dawson himself, who seems to have spent his entire life making fraudulent discoveries. Dawson had died decades earlier, and the full extent of his fraud wasn’t even confirmed until 2003. Sometimes researching the history of rock and roll can be a lot like that. You can find a story repeated in numerous apparently reliable books, and then find out that it’s all based on the inaccurate testimony of a single individual. The story never happened. It was just something someone made up. [Excerpt: “Rock With the Caveman”, Tommy Steele and the Steelmen] We talked a little while ago about the skiffle movement, and the first British guitar-based pop music. Today, we’re going to look at the dawn of British rock and roll. Now, there’s an important thing to note about the first wave of British rock and roll, and that is that it was, essentially, a music that had no roots in the culture. It was an imitation of American music, without any of the ties to social issues that made the American music so interesting. Britain in the 1950s was a very different place to the one it is today, or to America. It was ethnically extremely homogeneous, as the waves of immigration that have so improved the country had only just started. And while few people travelled much outside their own immediate areas, it was culturally more homogeneous as well, as Britain, unlike America, had a national media rather than a local one. In Britain, someone could become known throughout the country before they’d played their second gig, if they got the right media exposure. And so British rock and roll started out at the point that American rock and roll was only just starting to get to — a clean-cut version of the music, with little black influence or sexuality left in it, designed from the outset to be a part of mainstream showbusiness aimed at teenagers, not music for an underclass or a racial or sexual minority. Britain’s first rock and roll star put out his first record in November 1956, and by November 1957 he was appearing on the Royal Variety Show, with Mario Lanza, Bob Monkhouse, and Vera Lynn. That is, fundamentally, what early British rock and roll was. Keep that in mind for the rest of the story, as we look at how a young sailor from a dirt-poor family became Britain’s first teen idol. To tell that story, we first have to discuss the career of the Vipers Skiffle Group. That was the group’s full name, and they were just about the most important British group of the mid-fifties, even though they were never as commercially successful as some of the acts we’ve looked at. The name of the Vipers Skiffle Group was actually the first drug reference in British pop music. They took the name from the autobiography of the American jazz clarinettist Mezz Mezzrow — a man who was better known in the jazz community as a dope dealer than as a musician; so much so that “Mezz” itself became slang for marijuana, while “viper” became the name for dope smokers, as you can hear in this recording by Stuff Smith, in which he sings that he “dreamed about a reefer five foot long/Mighty Mezz but not too strong”. [Excerpt: Stuff Smith, “You’se a Viper”] So when Wally Whyton, Johnny Booker, and Jean Van Den Bosch formed a guitar trio, they chose that name, even though as it turned out none of them actually smoked dope. They just thought it sounded cool. They started performing at a cafe called the 2is (two as in the numeral, I as in the letter), and started to build up something of a reputation — to the point that Lonnie Donegan started nicking their material. Whyton had taken an old sea shanty, “Sail Away Ladies”, popularised by the country banjo player Uncle Dave Macon, and rewritten it substantially, turning it into “Don’t You Rock Me Daddy-O”. Donegan copyrighted Whyton’s song as soon as he heard it, and rushed out his version of it, but the Vipers put out their own version too, and the two chased each other up the charts. Donegan’s charted higher, but the Vipers ended up at a respectable number ten: [Excerpt: The Vipers, “Don’t You Rock Me, Daddy-O”] That recording was on Parlophone records, and was produced by a young producer who normally did comedy and novelty records, named George Martin. We’ll be hearing more about him later on. But at the time we’re talking about, the Vipers had not yet gained a recording contract, and they were still playing the 2is. Occasionally, they would be joined on stage by a young acquaintance named Thomas Hicks. Hicks was a merchant seaman, and was away at sea most of the time, and so was never a full part of the group, but even though he didn’t care much for skiffle — he was a country and western fan first and foremost — he played guitar, and in Britain in 1955 and 56, if you played guitar, you played skiffle. Hicks had come from an absolutely dirt-poor background. Three of his siblings had died at cruelly young ages, and young Thomas himself had had several brushes with ill health, which meant that while he was a voracious reader he had lacked formal education. He had wanted to be a performer from a very early age, and had developed a routine that he used to do around the pubs in his early teens, in which he would mime to a record by Danny Kaye, “Knock on Wood”: [Excerpt: Danny Kaye, “Knock on Wood”] But at age fifteen he had joined the Merchant Navy. This isn’t the same thing as the Royal Navy, but rather is the group of commercial shipping companies that provide non-military shipping, and Hicks worked as wait staff on a cruise ship making regular trips to America. On an early trip, he fell in love with the music of Hank Williams, who would remain a favourite of his for the rest of his life, and he particularly loved the song “Kaw-Liga”: [Excerpt: Hank Williams, “Kaw-Liga”] Hicks replaced his old party piece of miming to Danny Kaye with a new one of singing “Kaw-Liga”, with accompaniment from anyone he could persuade to play guitar for him. Eventually one of his crewmates taught him how to play the song himself, and he started performing with pick-up groups, singing Hank Williams songs, whenever he was on shore leave in the UK. And when he couldn’t get a paid gig he’d head to the 2is and sing with the Vipers. But then came the event that changed his life. Young Tommy Hicks, with his love of country music, was delighted when on shore leave in 1955 to see an advert for a touring show based on the Grand Ole Opry, in Norfolk Virginia, where he happened to be. Of course he went along, and there he saw something that made a huge impression. One of the acts in the middle of the bill was a young man who wore horn-rimmed glasses. Tommy still remembers the details to this day. The young man came out and did a three-song set. The first song was a standard country song, but the second one was something else; something that hit like a bolt of lightning: [Excerpt: Buddy Holly, “Peggy Sue”] That song was young Thomas Hicks’ introduction to the new music called rock and roll, and nothing would ever be the same for him ever again after seeing Buddy Holly sing “Peggy Sue”. By February 1956 he had finished working on the cruise ships, and was performing rock and roll in London, the very first British rock and roller. Except… There’s a reason why we’re covering Tommy Steele *before* Buddy Holly, the man who he claims as his inspiration. Buddy Holly *did* perform with a Grand Ole Opry tour. But it didn’t tour until May 1956, three months after Thomas Hicks quit his job on the cruise ships, and about a year after the time Tommy claims to have seen him. That tour only hit Oklahoma, which is landlocked, and didn’t visit Norfolk Virginia. According to various timelines put together by people like the Buddy Holly Centre in Lubbock Texas, Holly didn’t perform outside Lubbock until that tour, and that’s the only time he did perform outside West Texas until 1957. Also, Buddy Holly didn’t meet Peggy Sue Gerron, the woman who gave the song its name, until 1956, and the song doesn’t seem to have been written until 1957. So whatever it was that introduced young Tommy Hicks to the wonders of rock and roll, it wasn’t seeing Buddy Holly sing “Peggy Sue” in Norfolk Virginia in 1955. But that’s the story that’s in his autobiography, and that’s the story that’s in every other source I’ve seen on the subject, because they’re all just repeating what he said, on the assumption that he’d remember something like that, something which was so important in his life and future career. Remember what I said at the beginning, about rock and roll history being like dealing with Piltdown Man? Yeah. There are a lot of inaccuracies in the life story of Thomas Hicks, who became famous under the name Tommy Steele. Anything I tell you about him is based on information he put out, and that information is not always the truth, so be warned. For example, when he started his career, he claimed he’d worked his way up on the cruise ships to being a gymnastics instructor — something that the shipping federation denied to the press. You find a lot of that kind of thing when you dig into Steele’s stories. In fact, by the time Hicks started performing, there had already been at least one British rock and roll record made. He wasn’t bringing something new that he’d discovered in America at all. “Rock Around the Clock”, the Bill Haley film, had played in UK cinemas at around the time of Hicks’ supposed epiphany, and it had inspired a modern jazz drummer, Tony Crombie, to form Tony Crombie and the Rockets and record a Bill Haley soundalike called “Teach You To Rock”: [Excerpt: Tony Crombie and the Rockets, “Teach You To Rock”] However, Crombie was not teen idol material — a serious jazz drummer in his thirties, he soon went back to playing bebop, and has largely been written out of British rock history since, in favour of Tommy Steele as the first British rock and roller. Thomas Hicks the merchant seaman became Tommy Steele the pop idol as a result of a chance meeting. Hicks went to a party with a friend, and the host was a man called Lionel Bart, who was celebrating because he’d just sold his first song, to the bandleader Bill Cotton. No recording of that song seems to exist, but the lyrics to the song — a lament about the way that old-style cafes were being replaced by upscale coffee bars — are quoted in a biography of Bart: “Oh for a cup of tea, instead of a cuppuchini/What would it mean to me, just one little cup so teeny!/You ask for some char and they reckon you’re barmy/Ask for a banger, they’ll give you salami/Oh for the liquid they served in the Army/Just a cup of tea!” Heartrending stuff, I’m sure you’ll agree. But Bart was proud of the twenty-five guineas the song had earned him, and so he was having a party. Bart was at the centre of a Bohemian crowd in Soho, and the party was held at a squat where Bart, a card-carrying member of the Communist Party, spent most of his time. At that squat at various times around this period lived, among others, the playwright John Antrobus, the actor Shirley Eaton, who would later become famous as the woman painted gold in the beginning of Goldfinger, and the great folk guitarist Davey Graham, who would later become famous for his instrumental, “Angi”: [Excerpt: Davey Graham, “Angi”] We’ll hear more about Graham in future episodes. Another inhabitant of the squat was Mike Pratt, a guitarist and pianist who would later turn to acting and become famous as Jeff Randall in the fantasy detective series Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased). Hicks, Bart, and Pratt started collaborating on songs together — Hicks would bring in a basic idea, and then Bart would write the lyrics and Pratt the music. They also performed as The Cavemen, though Bart soon tired of playing washboard and stuck to writing. The Cavemen became a floating group of musicians, centred around Hicks and Pratt, and with various Vipers and other skifflers pulled in as and when they were available. The various skiffle musicians looked down on Hicks, because of his tendency to want to play “Heartbreak Hotel” or “Blue Suede Shoes” rather than “Bring a Little Water Sylvie” or “Rock Island Line”, but a gig was a gig, and they had to admit that Hicks seemed to go down well with the young women in the audience. Two minor music industry people, Bill Varley and Roy Tuvey, agreed to manage Hicks, but they decided that they needed someone involved who would be able to publicise Hicks, so they invited John Kennedy, a PR man from New Zealand, to come to the 2is to see him. Hicks wasn’t actually playing the 2is the night in question – it was the Vipers, who were just on the verge of getting signed and recording their first single: [Excerpt: The Vipers Skiffle Group, “Ain’t You Glad?”] While Hicks wasn’t scheduled to play, at the request of Varley and Tuvey he jumped on stage when the Vipers took a break, and sang a song that he, Bart, and Pratt had written, called “Rock With the Caveman”. Kennedy was impressed. He was impressed enough, in fact, that he brought in a friend, Larry Parnes, who would go on to become the most important manager in British rock and roll in the fifties and early sixties. Kennedy, Parnes, and Hicks cut Varley and Tuvey out altogether — to the extent that neither of them are even mentioned in the version of this story in Tommy Steele’s autobiography. Hicks was renamed Tommy Steele, in a nod to his paternal grandfather Thomas Stil-Hicks (the Stil in that name is spelled either Stil or Stijl, depending on which source you believe) and Parnes would go on to name a whole host of further rock stars in a similar manner — Duffy Power, Johnny Gentle, Billy Fury, Marty Wilde. They had everything except a record contract, but that was why Kennedy was there. Kennedy rented a big house, and hired a load of showgirls, models, and sex workers to turn up for a party and bring their boyfriends. They were to dress nicely, talk in fake posh accents, and if anyone asked who they were they were to give fake double-barrelled names. He then called the press and said it was “the first high society rock and roll show” and that the girls were all debutantes. The story made the newspapers, and got Steele national attention. Steele was signed by Decca records, where Hugh Mendl, the producer of “Rock Island Line”, was so eager to sign him that he didn’t check if any studios were free for his audition, and so Britain’s first homegrown rock idol auditioned for his record contract in the gents’ toilets. A bunch of slumming jazz musicians, including Dave Lee, the pianist with the Dankworth band, and the legendary saxophone player Ronnie Scott, were brought in to record “Rock With the Caveman”: [Excerpt: Tommy Steele, “Rock With the Caveman”] The single went to number thirteen. Tommy Steele was now a bona fide rock and roll star, at least in the UK. The next record, “Elevator Rock”, didn’t do so well, however: [Excerpt: Tommy Steele, “Elevator Rock”] That failed to chart, so Steele’s producers went for the well-worn trick in British record making of simply copying a US hit. Guy Mitchell had just released “Singing the Blues”: [Excerpt: Guy Mitchell, “Singing the Blues”] That was actually a cover version of a recording by Marty Robbins from earlier in the year, but Mitchell’s version was the one that became the big hit. And Steele was brought into the studio to record a soundalike version, and hopefully get it out before Mitchell’s version hit the charts. Steele’s version has an identical arrangement and sound to Mitchell’s, except that Steele sings it in an incredibly mannered Elvis impression: [Excerpt: Tommy Steele, “Singing the Blues”] Now, to twenty-first century ears, Steele’s version is clearly inferior. But here was the birth of something particularly English — and indeed something particularly London — in rock and roll music. The overly mannered, music-hall inspired, Cockneyfied impression of an American singing style. On Steele’s subsequent tour, a nine-year old kid called David Jones, who would later change his name to Bowie, went to see him and came away inspired to become a rock and roll star. And we can hear in this performance the roots of Bowie’s own London take on Elvis, as we can also hear a style that would be taken up by Anthony Newley, Ray Davies, and many more masters of Cockney archness. I don’t think “Singing the Blues” is a particularly good record compared to Mitchell’s, but it is a prototype for something that would become good, and it deserves recognition for that. Mitchell’s version got out first, and went to the top of the charts, with Steele’s following close behind, but then for one week Mitchell’s record label had a minor distribution problem, and Steele took over the top spot, before Mitchell’s record returned to number one the next week. Tommy Steele had become the first British rock and roll singer to get to number one in the UK charts. It would be the only time he would do so, but it was enough. He was a bona fide teen idol. He was so big, in fact, that even his brother, Colin Hicks, became a minor rock and roll star himself off the back of his brother’s success: [Excerpt: Colin Hicks and the Cabin Boys, “Hollering and Screaming”] The drummer on that record, Jimmy Nicol, later had his fifteen minutes of fame when Ringo Starr got tonsilitis just before a tour of Australia, and for a few shows Nicol got to be a substitute Beatle. Very soon, Tommy Steele moved on into light entertainment. First he moved into films — starting with “The Tommy Steele Story”, a film based on his life, for which he, Bart, and Pratt wrote all twelve of the songs in a week to meet the deadline, and then he went into stage musicals. Within a year, he had given up on rock and roll altogether. But rock and roll hadn’t *quite* given up on him. While Steele was appearing in stage musicals, one was also written about him — a hurtful parody of his life, which he claimed later he’d wanted to sue over. In Expresso Bongo, a satire of the British music industry, Steele was parodied as “Bongo Herbert”, who rises to fame with no talent whatsoever. That stage musical was then rewritten for a film version, with the satire taken out of it, so it was a straight rags-to-riches story. It was made into a vehicle for another singer who had been a regular at the 2is, and whose backing band was made up of former members of the Vipers Skiffle Group: [Excerpt: Cliff Richard, “Love” (from Expresso Bongo)] We’ll talk about both Cliff Richard and the Shadows in future episodes though… Tommy Steele would go on to become something of a national treasure, working on stage with Gene Kelly and on screen with Fred Astaire, writing several books, having a minor artistic career as a sculptor, and touring constantly in pantomimes and musicals. At age eighty-two he still tours every year, performing as Scrooge in a stage musical version of A Christmas Carol. His 1950s hits remain popular enough in the UK that a compilation of them went to number twenty-two in the charts in 2009. He may not leave a large body of rock and roll work, but without him, there would be no British rock and roll industry as we know it, and the rest of this history would be very different.