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About Katie Lambert
Katie Lambert
After pitching articles on obscure medical conditions with a touch too much enthusiasm, Katie Lambert was made health editor at HowStuffWorks.com. She also co-hosts the “Stuff You Missed in History Class” podcast as a convenient excuse to talk about dueling and historical plagues. Katie earned her bachelor's degree in English at the University of Georgia. She spends her free time rearranging her Netflix queue, buying books to read in the park, planning imaginary trips to Morocco and Argentina, and deciding which fantastic restaurant she'll try next.
Most Recent: Katie Lambert Postings
This Week in History Podcasts: A Vanished City and an American Princess
November 20, 2009
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In Monday’s podcast, Sarah and I debated whether or not there was ever an Atlantis.
The Atlantis story comes from Plato, but was he telling the story of a historical event, or simply teaching a moral lesson? In Plato’s unfinished trilogy of dialogues, he recounts the destruction of Atlantis due to the greed of its people. Throughout the years, the idea of a sunken city has captured the imagination of the most unlikely bedfellows. Heinrich Himmler, for example, used his position within the SS to send expeditions to such far-flung locales as Tibet to look for Atlantis.
Pocahontas was the subject of Wednesday’s podcast. “Pocahontas” is no one’s favorite Disney movie, but the woman herself has an interesting story.
Pocahontas became acquainted with the settlers when she was 10 or 11, but the story of her rescuing John Smith may have been completely made up. Smith’s accounts were notoriously unreliable, and he didn’t publish this sensationalized account until after she’d become famous.
This Week in History Podcasts: Don Juan and the Enchantress of Numbers
November 13, 2009
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Considering Byron popped up even in our podcast on Lucrezia Borgia, Sarah and I thought it high time for a podcast of his own. He’d become our Where’s Waldo for a while.
Oh, Byron. Handsome, rakish, promiscuous, well-traveled, brilliant. Exactly the sort of man you can’t help falling for, even when you know it’s a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea.
On Wednesday, we brought you Lord Byron’s daughter, Ada Lovelace. Ada’s mother, Annabella Milbanke, Lady Byron, is determined that her daughter will turn out nothing like her dastardly father. Her stratagem? Ban little Ada from poetry.
Instead, Ada studies math and music, and she happens to be very talented at the former.
Hiding Hiroshima
November 12, 2009
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I remember the first time I saw a photo of a survivor of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings. I was young, and I stared at that picture of a person’s melting skin and felt like it was something I could get into trouble for looking at. It was a powerful moment in my American history education. That came back to me vividly today when I read a piece in the Huffington Post by Greg Mitchell.
After the second bomb dropped, a Japanese company sent a film crew to document what was happening in the cities – the leveled ground, the dying. They were the only ones filming. If you were an American, you hadn’t seen a thing but a mushroom cloud. The news told you that we’d bombed the Japanese, and why we did it – ostensibly, to end the war.
But the U.S. military stepped in and banned the filming, taking what the Japanese had already recorded. Later, the military selected one of its own to head up a camera crew, Lt. Daniel McGovern, and document this campaign in Japan. They recorded every horror they saw.
What happened to that film, the footage we’d sent soldiers and civilians in to radiation-blasted cities to capture?
The Little Knife Lives
November 10, 2009
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An article in Slate yesterday on the castrati caught my eye. I remember the first time I learned about the castrati, from a professor who guest-taught one of my classes. She lectured on Farinelli, who some consider the greatest Italian castrato of them all. He and his three-octave range became very famous, and he spent his later years singing solely for the melancholy Philip V of Spain.
Castrati are in the news due to Cecilia Bartoli, an Italian opera singer who has just released a recording of some of the gorgeous arias written for them — men with heartbreakingly beautiful voices who were castrated before they hit adolescence.
Was this in the Dark Ages? No — rather, the 16th through the 19th centuries.
This Week in History Podcasts: Incest! Murder! A Dead Bird!
November 6, 2009
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The subject of Monday’s podcast is a handful: Lucrezia Borgia, the femme fatale of legend. The question Sarah and I posed was this: Was she a victim or a cunning woman in her own right? An incestuous poisoner or a pawn?
Wednesday’s podcast was a listener suggestion: the Mad Trapper of Rat River! As far as nicknames go, that one’s hard to beat.
The Mad Trapper was the subject of a huge manhunt in the middle of a Yukon Winter. He’d survived a 15-hour siege in his house by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police that included dynamite, sneaking away in a blizzard.
The Feral Child in George I’s Court
November 4, 2009
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Peter the Wild Boy appeared to the world in 1724 in Hamelin in Germany. Like an animal, he was said to have walked on all fours, even though he was a 12-year-old boy (or was it 13? 15?). He ate moss and climbed trees like a squirrel. He was naked and couldn’t talk and was frightened of humans.
George I took in the little wild boy, and London society was absolutely fascinated by him (much like we are with Balloon Boy, if this year’s Halloween costumes are any indication). At court, he ate fruits, vegetables and raw meat and hated wearing clothes. He became a present for Princess Caroline, who had him dressed in special outfits and gave him a watch.
No one knew where Peter came from, or how long he’d been in the forest, though creative minds said he was nursed by a bear from birth.
But the question about Peter that still isn’t answered is this: If he simply wasn’t able to be like everyone else, was it due to his time in the forest, or was it something within Peter himself?
Nazca Civilization Felled by a Tree
November 2, 2009
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Coolest Stuff blogger and adventure editor Amanda Arnold wrote about the Nazca lines recently – a collection of drawings at the ground that you can only see from the air. These geoglyphs (some are geometric shapes, while others are figures such as a monkey or an astronaut) are a mystery to this day. Why were they created? What were they for?
While we still don’t have an answer to that, we do have a clue as to what happened to the Nazca people themselves.
The Nazca civilization produced art, pyramids and beautiful textiles, along with the Nazca lines. Cahuachi, the capital for a time, may have been the biggest mud city in the world. But the Nazca had disappeared by the time the Incan Empire rose to prominence, and our answer to why they vanished may rest on a tree, the huarango tree.
This Week in History Podcasts: Frankenstein, a Vampyre and a Voodoo Queen Walk Into a Bar
October 30, 2009
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On Monday’s podcast, Sarah and I got to wear our English major hats – our favorite chapeaux of all.
In honor of Halloween, we talked about a little ghost story competition that gave us both “Frankenstein” and the vampire.
Wednesday’s podcast brought us Marie Laveau, voodoo queen, a person Sarah and I had a devil of a time researching.
The legend of Marie Laveau speaks of a 20-foot snake named Zombie and powerful magic that could make people crawl on their bellies on the floor, disappear or fall in love.
The Pope Who Kidnapped a Child
October 29, 2009
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Today at the HowStuffWorks office, employees’ kids are invited to come trick or treat. This is making my desk, currently home to Snickers, Butterfingers and Starbursts, a popular place to be. In exchange for candy, I made my writer, How-to blogger Molly, give me my blog topic today. “What about the pope who kidnapped a kid?” What about him indeed.
That pope would be Pius IX, he of the longest pontificate, and the kidnapped child was named Edgardo Mortara. In 1858, Edgardo was 6 years old and living with his seven siblings in Bologna when he was taken away by order of the Inquisitor.
The Mortara family was Jewish, but they had a Catholic servant. When he was very young, Edgardo became seriously ill, and the servant, fearing his death and damnation, baptized him. She confessed her act to Church authorities and set history in motion.
Quakers Executed in Massachusetts Colony
October 27, 2009
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Today, I am blogging about something gloomy: martyrs. Specifically, the Boston martyrs.
In 1657, 11 members of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) set sail for the American colonies to spread George Fox’s teachings. They traveled in a ship called the Woodhouse, which a man named Robert Fowler had felt called by a divine power to build, although he’d had no purpose in mind at the time. The ship wasn’t made for the rough ocean voyage, but the Friends felt that a divine hand would guide them, and they made it safely to the New World.
The American colonies were far from being a haven from religious persecution, contrary to the teachings of my elementary school textbook. The Puritans, especially in the Massachusetts colony, wanted nothing to do with the Friends and their message of personal revelation. And the Friends were provocative, bold and vocal in how they chose to bring Fox’s light to the people.
